I spent a few hours this weekend trying to test KDE 4 in Ubuntu only to find it unusable. I tried to different virtual machines but both had the same problem: immediately after logging in the session ends and returns to the login screen. I spent longer than I'd care to admit trying to resolve the problem but to no avail. I was able to find reports of similar behavior but no useful solutions. I think I may just give up on KDE 4 until the 4.1 version is released and made available.

A changelog for the recent versions of Passenger (1.0.3-1.0.5) was recently posted. I decided to do a quick upgrade to 1.0.5 following the steps I’ve used previously. Those steps are documented as follows.

I’ve been sharing my thoughts about various virtualization solutions a lot over the last few weeks. Several people have asked me for my opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of various products. I’ve also commented online about these issues. I’ve decided to list some of my observations in order to have something to refer to, for myself and others. I’ve listed options separately for servers and desktops and by order of aptitude to those roles.

A couple of friends have some Actiontec GT701-wg DSL modems and I wanted to get their DSL modems flashed. The latest firmware (which was released in 2004) fixed a number of issues with those modems. These friends have simply gotten used to rebooting the modem fairly frequently to get their internet connection working properly. So I found some links to the firmware and some supplemental information:

• gt701-wg firmware from Qwest
• New firmware out for Actiontec GT701-WG

I’ve been evaluating Passenger for a while now and I’ve generally been pleased. I find that an Apache + Passenger setup has been easier to manage than alternative Rails stacks. Performance has been good and memory consumption has been lessened which also helps performance on the systems in general. However I have seen some strange bugs while using my web apps under Passenger. I am hoping that this upgrade will resolve these issues. The upgrade was relatively easy and the steps I took follows.

I’ve been evaluating the versions of Gnash and SWFdec that are included with Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and it took me a while to figure out how to switch between them. The /etc/alternatives directory has 7 links for flash plugins. The correct command for Firefox 3 is:

• sudo update-alternatives --config xulrunner-addons-flashplugin

This allows the user to select Gnash or SWFdec for Flash playback in Ubuntu 8.04.

When helping people to upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04 I find myself doing the same post-installation tasks on many setups. Here are some of those tasks, to be updated with more later perhaps. But removing old kernels, installing java, installing flash, and removing cruft are all common and useful tasks following an upgrade.

Over time, especially with Ubuntu and it’s 6 month release cycle, a system can contain a number of packages that are no longer needed but still present on the system in some way. I have a number of techniques I use to locate these packages and remove them and I thought I would share them.

I really liked VirtualBox and got a lot of use out of it when running my old Windows XP system under Ubuntu. However, the lack of support for 64-bit systems proved too problematic. In testing Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) I was only interested in testing the 64-bit versions as that was all I would be running. As some bugs are architecture dependent (iproute and monsterz come to mind) it's important to perform testing on the architecture you will actually use. Under Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) I had some issues with QEMU and KVM though I was able to use them enough to do testing (though often only through QEMU with specific parameters at a less than ideal speed). However in Ubuntu 8.04 I found both applications improved and decided to search for a nice front-end to replace the functionality I was used to with VirtualBox.

I often find myself asking the same questions about package dependencies. It can sometimes be confusing to remember which command answers which question due to the similarity of the commands. These are the common questions:

Despite my best efforts there is still no graphical SILC client in Ubuntu. I feel I’ve commented on my frustration and disappointment with this fact enough in the past. So, here’s how to get SILC working through Pidgin in Ubuntu 8.04.

The InnoDB plugin for MySQL 5.1 was announced recently and listed fast index creation and data compression among its features. It should be interesting to compare the latest InnoDB storage engine against the latest PBXT storage engine. Hopefully both will be packaged with the Debian MySQL 5.1 package.

When working on backup systems I hacked together a script that would allow a set of commands, sometimes with substitutions, through a single ssh key. I figured someone else must have this needs and have designed a more robust program. So far the closet thing I have found it authprogs. It has some features my script lacks but lacks some features that my script possesses. So I’m not sure it I’ll use it or just borrow ideas to improve my script.

• The Authprogs SSH Command Authenticator

I’ve been looking at trying to get some threaded discussion boards going. The requirement of a threaded display eliminates a large number of sites. Of course it’s also important for the software to be free and open source. With so many forum applications available I had to try and pick a few that looked good for further testing while keeping track of other possible alternatives as well as those programs which did not meet my needs.

I wanted to finally explore the various tools for creating graphs of Rails models. I’ve been wanting to do so for a while because such graphs can really help when developing an application. I really wanted something that was a gem and not a plugin and I found that Railroad was just what I was looking for. Rails Application Visualizer seems to have been abandoned and is a plugin and Visualize Models is also a plugin. Here’s how I installed and used Railroad.

I’ve compiled a partial list of threads from ubuntuforums describing problems caused by sudo breaking when upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) in order to strengthen the case that this is a serious bug that should be resolved immediately.

Obviously I’m a fan of Ubuntu as I run it on my laptop, desktop, and even a number of servers (both physical and virtual). That can’t deter me from being critical of the Hardy Heron release. I can sympathize with the difficulty of the task of releasing a stable OS every 6 months. Perhaps that is simply an unrealistic goal. Or perhaps this is just a stage of growing pains for a new OS. I watched launchpad during the beta testing of Hardy Heron and saw the number of bugs being reported. Having a new bug report every 2-3 minutes accumulates a large number of reports for people to examine and remedy. And I suspect that’s where Canonical will have to increase its effort. The success is that so many people are contributing bug reports. The failure is that so few have been resolved, including some fairly critical ones that I will mention in detail.

Today (April 22, 2008) SILC Server 1.1.6 was released following 3 other releases since April 12, 2008. I’m glad to see the attention the software is getting though it seems unlikely that these fixes will be in Debian or Ubuntu anytime soon. Debian Sid is keeping pace but the updates have not yet made it into Debian Lenny. And it seems likely that Ubuntu 8.04 will ship with version 1.1.1 (hopefully with some additional security patches). Unfortunately neither the ChangeLog nor the Release Notes for these recent releases is accessible on the website.

• SILC Server

Here are some of the applications with available packages for Debian and Ubuntu:

• AIDE
• FCheck
• Integrit
• Samhain
• Stealth
• Tripwire

I’m leaning toward trying Stealth because I like the design. Lots of folks seem to like FCheck for its simplicity.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on storage solutions for a couple of projects. I’ve been delving into RAID setups for large numbers of disks and trying to determine in what situations a hardware RAID controller is appropriate instead of Linux software RAID. I’ve also been considering various nested RAID levels and their value.