I’ve been working pretty hard through the holidays at my full time job where I am a server administrator for a medium sized hospital in the U.S.  Recently (in December), I moved 2000+ users from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.  We considered farming out our Exchange environment to the cloud or perhaps going with Microsoft Exchange Hosting services but in the end, upper management decided they’d rather underpay someone to work exceedingly long hours with minimal training on a system not built by him.  So, that’s why I’ve been pretty inactive as of late.  As you can imagine working with Microsoft technologies…I always have something to fix and things are always unstable.

I know that some of you might be saying “why not use linux based exchange alternatives in your enterprise?” and I’d say, why indeed.  But I inherited this beast and it’s been Exchange since Exchange came out.  Not only that, but the primary application for all departments (ERM app) runs completely on Windows and plugs into Exchange and nothing else.  Talk about vendor lock in eh?  Well, it’s a job.

I used to work with Linux when I worked for rPath but parted ways with them about a year and a half ago when I had to move away to help out after a death in the family.  I was very sad to leave but am very happy with the large pay increase that came with my current position.  However, migrations do take their toll…lots of hours worked and frustrations vented.  Now that I’m over the hump, I’ll be able to get back into a normal swing of things.

For those of you who might be Exchange administrators in your day to day work, I’ve begun blogging about my experiences and setup a community to share tips, tricks, powershell commandlets, and a place to talk shop.  I figure if I have to work with closed source at least I can open source some help.  Find my Exchange blog at http://teknologist.net

Thanks for hanging in there everyone, and sorry for the inactivity.  Now that I’ve hit 6+ years blogging (in December) here I have even more incentive to continue sharing great Linux help with everyone.  I’ve got some good tips directly in the pipeline and here’s to a great 2010!

Status Update for Devnet originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on January 5, 2010.

Even if you’re not a Foresight User and are just curious about the Conary System Manager, Software Appliances, or software packaging…it would be a great boon to understanding how these things give Foresight an edge over most distros.

Signup on the wiki page (add your name) to attend and we’ll see you there

Foresight Users and Developer Conference 2008 originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on March 11, 2008.

sudo conary update spicebird=/foresight.rpath.org@fl:1-contrib

What is Spicebird? From the Spicebird.com homepage:

Spicebird is your one platform for many collaboration needs. It provides e-mail, calendaring and instant messaging with intuitive integration and unlimited extensibility.

1. View the Demo
2. See Screenshots
3. Check the Roadmap

Please remember that Spicebird is beta software currently so use it at your own risk. Enjoy!

Use Foresight Linux? Add Some Spice to Your Life! originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on January 15, 2008.

The first of many problems was mod_ntlm. This Apache module WILL NOT compile on my server. I emailed someone who actually got this to compile in Ubuntu and asked for how they got it to work, implemented their changes in the .c file, yet still couldn’t get it to compile. This reason alone is enough for me to not use it. But there are more reasons still that Ubuntu doesn’t do it for me.

The second reason is going cold. What I mean by going cold is that it almost froze up. For example, it would take over an hour to run apt-get update, about the same to run apt-get upgrade (depending on downloads) and even 20 minutes to do a standard ls -al | grep keyword command. After a reboot everything was fine. This led me to believe that some sort of power saving module was kicking in. So I removed all power saving modules, recompiled a kernel from scratch, turned off all BIOS power saving items, crossed my fingers and rebooted. Even with all of these actions, Ubuntu still went cold after a day of uptime. This is on an IBM NetVista P4 with 1 GB RAM. Ubuntu however will not be staying on any PC at my job due to the previous problems experienced.

I’ve got an exact match of this machine to provide backup for it so I’ve simulataneously been using CentOS to experiment around with it. There’s a reason that Red Hat is the leader in the server arena…because they get it done and provide a fantastically stable Linux environment. CentOS is repackaged Red Hat Enterprise Linux and it is fantastic. So from this point on, Ubuntu will not be actively developed on by myself…I’ll be using CentOS from this point on. Which leads me to the decisions I’ve been trying to come to.

I’ve been trying to find a good portal CMS that can house documents and provide news announcements for my department. No chat is needed…no forums…just a repository for docs. With all of this being said, I need to provide a flexible solution to house these documents as well because who knows what the director will come back and say. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll change his mind and want to have all documentation developed and worked on in Sharepoint and all reports to go on our intranet page. So I need flexibility if I’m going to get a CMS running on Linux and I need it to be stable so I can show tangible results to upper managment. Otherwise, they’ll continue to go with what has been working for them…and that is Windows.

Some of you are probably saying, “just use OpenLDAP any distro”. Well, that would be just fine if my requirements were to use the LDAP database for user authentication making the user sign on one time only…however, stipulations for me were ZERO sign in…hence single sign on…they login to our domain here and then never have to login again. So, ntlm is the only way currently. Finding a CMS is up next.

I’ve looked at midgard but am thinking it is way to complicated. I just want a simple page that can act as a document repository. I’ve looked at and installed knowledgetree but there currently is no single sign on support at all so it is out of the question. I’ve looked at Zope and Plone and found it to be right along the lines of what I need. The problem I hit is that I have to use Apache to pass the ntlm to the Zope server…so it’s going to take some configuring (this is the #1 candidate right now though).

So does anyone out there have any idea of a CMS that can use SSO (Single Sign On) in a Win2k Active directory environment with minimal configuration (as this needs to go up in about 2 weeks)? I’m all ears. The next update should be my attempt to use CentOS with ntlm and apache/zope/plone.

Wish me Luck,

Devnet

Bringing Linux to Work – Portal Part 3 originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 17, 2006.

Of course, the real problem wasn’t getting the various software installed, the problem was doing it in the correct order. My advice to someone that wants to use mod_ntlm with Apache to pass parameters to a zope server for plone: Install zope and plone first…get a working site up and running on port 80 (intranet site that is) THEN install apache and work on mod_ntlm. I had trouble figuring this out as most of the instructions I found allowed for Apache to be working first before the zope server comes into play. Another thing you could do is turn off Apache during your zope/plone configuration.

Something else that is odd is that by default when you install zope in CentOS, it isn’t started. You can add it to automatic start using checkconfig in CentOS but finding out where the rpm installs zope is another story. Not being familiar with zope hindered my progress initially. After some fumbling I was able to get things working.

Overall on both the Ubuntu and CentOS installs, I was able to get things in working order but could not get Apache to use mod_ntlm correctly. Normally, if mod_ntlm is setup correctly and all directives are listed correctly (I was using .htaccess to house the ntlm directives) you’ll get to a page 404 not found if accessing the document root. Instead, I received 401 Unauthorized Access. This meant that I was not validating according to Apache to my active directory source.

I worked on it for about 3-4 hours with no extra information coming to light. I even emailed a few people who I know are running a zope/plone/apache intranet page for their business. They got me to where I was but couldn’t really help me solve the problem. The only direction they could give me is that AD (active directory) was setup odd on my network. That could very well be. It is a bit odd here and will be until we switch across to W2K3 and Active Directory (I originally tried to plug Red Hat Enterprise Linux but no one even heard my ‘new employee’ voice squeeking in the wings…I also didn’t get a call back from Red Hat. There must be bigger fish to fry eh?). So, for now, it seems tha zope/plone/apache is not the combination to get a portal page up and running. I may try again when the Windows 2003 AD environment is finalized (a project I’ll most likely have to roll out )

It’s very sad that after a few weeks of looking and a few weeks of trying various open source CMS portals that I cannot get a single one implemented with single sign on. You’d think that this would be where Open Source could really make innroads into the enterprise. With the rise of the enterprise Wiki and the ability to pull code from other projects because of the fantastic GPL license, you’d think we would see single sign on modules popping up all over the place in one CMS and another. That isn’t so. As of the writing of this article, I know of only a few php based CMS that offer single sign on: Moodle, Midgard, and Plone. Of course, I haven’t attempted midgard. I’ll be saving this one for last. It truly is an area that open source needs attention in.

Now that I think about it though, most CMS are simply forums and news sites on the internet. They really don’t have a huge demand for single sign on. So it makes sense that most CMS don’t provide this ability. However, I would think that single sign on would be a very popular plugin to provide for any CMS to allow it to gain a larger audience.

Since Zope and Plone aren’t an alternative for me…I must move on to something that can be. I’ve found a couple of really nice java based open source content management systems and during the next couple of days I’ll be testing them out on Ubuntu and CentOS using Apache/Tomcat. I’ll post my findings of course and we’ll see where this takes me. I really wish plone/zope would have worked for me…I really liked the flexibility that it gave which would have proved beneficial later on when (not if) management changed its mind and wanted more than an info/document repository portal. Once again, suggestions are welcome and needed…tell me how silly I am and post your comments.

Devnet

Brining Linux to Work – Portal Part 2 originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 9, 2006.

Unveiling the Beast
How could I have been so blind? I ask myself this question often now… Other new IT Professionals finding employment in corporate America might have asked themselves the same question. My conclusion is that Microsoft is far larger than I had EVER imagined. It’s model, its business presence, its structure, and its existence in IT. Straight massive. They’re everywhere IT is…no matter how large an operation or how small it is, Redmond is staring back at you from every neck of the woods. It is so large that I can’t even get a firm grasp of every market it is in or every area it encompasses, nor every niche it has found foothold. Microsoft has a department for every new technology and every standard currently being developed. They also have the largest piggy bank in the world and they don’t hesitate to raid it.

You’re saying, “Yes, Yes, we know this. Everyone that uses Linux knows this.” Perhaps some OSS users get it. But I don’t think everyone truly grasps how large Redmond is and how far its tendrils thread out in business…a majority of Linux users don’t have the whole sprawl of Microsoft in front of them daily to allow it to ‘sink in.’

Most Linux users have to settle for reading about this “whole sprawl” at a technology website or hearing it from a friend of a friend whose brother works at Microsoft. In these situations, reading or hearing about something and actually seeing it put to action are two separate things. With this line of thinking, most Linux users may not fully comprehend the size, involvement, and area that Microsoft currently has.

Realization
Being a project manager here has enabled me to see each and every area that Redmond has infiltrated in corporate America. It’s everywhere. And not just in my company, it is also ingrained in every other company that we work with. It’s everywhere and in everything. I was flabbergasted and knocked for a loop when the realization hit me. No longer was it David vs. Goliath. Microsoft is much larger than Goliath could ever hope to be. Nay, it became a spec of dust vs. the sun.

I was completely sunk for about a day. I looked at the Linux business desktop (mainly Suse 9.3 and Red Hat) and then back to XP with all of its enterprise and server manipulation tools staring at me on my work computer and I physically dropped my jaw and slumped my shoulders in disappointment. The Linux business desktop is far inferior in abilities to Microsoft and is conversely inferior to corporate businesses because of its lack of features and abilities. I do understand that this isn’t the fault of Linux but rather, because most vendors develop third party applications to run using Windows. The lack of third party server admin applications and enterprise manipulation tools on the Linux desktop is painfully evident and completely understandable as most vendors do not support *nix desktops. I’m sure that there are many active projects in this area right now. That’s the beauty of Linux…when something isn’t present and there is a need for it, a project springs up and developers begin to remedy the situation.

Optimism
I firmly believe that, despite being at a disadvantage on the business desktop and inferior currently to Windows, Linux will make progress there. It is the nature of Linux and open source to overcome obstacles and persevere. Unlike desktop systems of the past such as GEOS and OS/2, Linux will not fall out of the limelight nor be bullied into non existence. Two factors dictate this: 1. Linux has no central company for anyone to attack or discredit so it cannot be undermined and 2. When you take out one Linux based company or a Linux programmer/coder, another picks up where they left off.

I’ve heard some Microsoft supporters say that Linux is a virus. In the sense of how Linux spreads and the philosophy of open source, they are right. But Linux is far superior to any “Virus” a programmer could write. It will continually perpetuate despite attempts to thwart it and with each thrust it turns aside it becomes smarter. Inevitably, Linux will push forward and improve because users take pride in that which they create. Since most users don’t own a stake in Microsoft, they are uninterested in making improvements to any Windows desktop…in this line of thinking; proprietary software is its own worst enemy while Linux reaps the benefits of user pride and involvement.

The Internal Enemy
Only one enemy prevents Linux from making major headway in the struggle against Redmond. Linux itself.

The focus of the Linux desktop is the home user and the gootools for it are developed accordingly. A home user doesn’t often need business management solution software such as Altiris. This lack of applications and tools on the Linux business desktop is preventing it from making headway in corporate America. There isn’t anything wrong with this either because Linux is developed by home users FOR home users. No one wants to develop robust business management software to maintain a 4 computer network nor do they want to do it for free.

It’s a catch 22 situation. Very few companies use Linux for their business desktop (I’m speaking large corporations here) so it isn’t in the interest of a software company to develop applications for it…but in order to get a software company to want to develop for Linux, we have to get businesses to use the Linux desktop. It fast becomes evident that we’re stuck in a vicious cycle. For this reason and for the time being, the Linux business desktop will be sparse in this area of business software applications and will continue to be inferior to a third party application filled Windows desktop.

More Optimism
There are bright spots on the horizon such as Novell developing robust management systems like Zenworks 6.5. This software allows management of both Desktop and Server for both Windows and Linux. This is a small step in the right direction and will do much to speed adoption of the Linux business desktop. However, even with Novell and even Red Hat’s help the business desktop for Linux is pushing slowly uphill. Mandriva is a welcome addition to help Red Hat and Novell push the large stone that is adoption up the hill Microsoft sits atop currently. Perhaps all of these companies together may spark a revolution? Time will tell, and I’m hopeful that these three companies are heading in the right direction.

While I don’t think home users can make a chink in that armor, I do believe that companies such as those mentioned above can by invading the business desktop and developing apps for business software management. If big business is attracted to applications on the Linux business desktop…coders will be as well. Then we’ll all reap the benefits of having resurgence in application development for Linux.

What can we do as programmers, coders, and users? More than you’d think. Giving feedback to developers and their programs or distros is a necessity. If you know of an application that is only available in Windows and the open source choice for this application is lacking in specific features…make a specific request to those developers. Communication is key. A feature won’t add itself to a program or distro. In order to get things where they need to be, we need more feedback from users to tell developers exactly what is good or bad about a certain program. Be courteous and to the point and the developers will appreciate the feedback. After all, when was the last time you gave feedback to developers on say, your email reading app in Linux? Or you desktop window manager? Can you remember the last time you submitted a bug report or gave a developer a heads up on what would work better for a feature? If not, why not? Let’s pull together and work on making apps we have better and more feature rich.

Pulling a 360
I’ve constantly fought against business adoption of Linux as evident by previous articles here on Yet Another Linux Blog. I’ve been adamant about companies taking more than they give to open source. I’ve consistently trumped for Linux to remain geared toward home users. Since unveiling Redmond in the past couple of weeks at my new job and seeing the full stretch of Microsoft, I must revise my previous notions.

I see now that Linux on the home desktop won’t be a resounding success unless it is first adopted by business. If Linux gains steam on the business desktop, a large PC manufacturer such as Gateway might be more willing to adopt Linux in a line of PC’s for home. This will never happen unless Linux is already making vast headway in the business desktop sector. So while I still do think that many companies are only worried about their own agenda’s and care little for open source, it is evident to me that without those companies, Linux will not gain widespread adoption.

Conclusions
Sure I was worried when I viewed the beast that is Microsoft from behind the corporate curtain…but what supporter of Linux wouldn’t? If you had no idea about the reach of Redmond, you too might have audibly gasped at the pure volume of involvement present in these large companies. You might have done as I did and remain in a stupor for some time wondering how Linux could even compete. You might have come to the same conclusions as I have…that Linux can compete in the desktop if businesses show that it has a value and place there. Then again you might not.
It does me good to remember a few certainties to put things into perspective. First, Microsoft may a huge behemoth in IT but even the giants topple. When giants do, it doesn’t take much…just a small crack in the armor that allows something through and the giant will fall. And secondly, with the lull before the Longhorn storm, now is the time for Linux to strike. Thus far, with more than three large vendors offering business desktops, Linux is ready to answer the call. The question is…will businesses be calling? I hope so.

Discovering Redmond originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on June 25, 2005.