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.

WD’s new 10,000 RPM drive has been sent to various hardware websites for testing. The drive has an unfinished firmware but so far seems to score at the top of performance tests, especially for multiuser benchmarks. However it suffers 2 flaws: low capacity and high price. For the same price one could buy 2 750GB Seagate 7200.11 drives and run them in RAID 1 or RAID 0 in order to match the performance of the VelociRaptor and have 2.5 or 5 times as much capacity. I think the only use case is for a large disk array where performance is important but larger number of disks is impractical. I would think a 16-disk array of VelociRaptors might be a better setup than a 32-disk array of 7200.11 drives. I am happy about the low power consumption of the new drives due to their 2.5” design. I’ve compiled a list of reviews and further comparisons below.