Like I said, I can do NFS mounting if I want; but that does not do much for me remotely. Enter SSHfs on Ubuntu. Here’s the few tricks to this treat.

1. apt-get install sshfs
2. add yourself to the fuse group
3. create a mount point perhaps off of /media or something
4. optionally add the commands to the /etc/fstab

By adding the mount commands to /etc/fstab, you can simply do as a user mount /nameof/mountpoint and voila! Now you are all securely mounted up. You can increase the timeout for SSH by adding a user level config file to $HOME/.ssh and add something like this ServerAliveInterval 120 and that will increase the timeout.

Want a step by step? Do a google. I’m purposefully not including links because I learned by doing and you can too! This is a great way to securely mount stuff, edit files, make changes, then save it all.

Screen - screen is this wondrous little tool that is big. It can make you more productive, make sure you don’t lose work, and give you a chance to start a thing at work, let it work at the task while you drive home. Then whammo! Done!

Rsync - well, rsync is something that has to be delved into to be appreciated. Its one of those tools which seem so basic. A file synchronization tool; but it does so much more.

MOC - what da heck is MOC? Music on Console of course. Way back when, I used this other one called mp3blaster which is not a living thing any longer; but is still plenty cool. Then there is MOC. MOC rocks the music collection by freeing you from graphics applications. Grok the Moc.

BTW, if you use Windows, I’m sincerely sorry… You cannot play in this playground. Go get the Ubuntu and join in. There is no activation key to fret over and the price of admission is well worth it.

Perhaps I need to go back to Debian Sid to regain that excitement and thrill. Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 are usable and I can be productive and I’m getting spoiled with the 6 month release cycles.

When I go to use Vista, I’m always kinda shocked at its interface and its strangeness. UAC on; its almost unbearable. UAC off; it works. But its still Vista. Perhaps Windows 7 will be different…

Meanwhile, the brown one seems to work; but I’ve read of issues with wifi. The promise around the Linux side of things is that developers “use”. And being users they get hit by the same things we all do. Perhaps that’s an incentive to fix things quicker.

But lets get down to the Ibex. What are the compelling reasons to upgrade or why delay it for a bit? Well, some of the things I will like to see like the file encryption for things I just don’t want to encrypt with secret commands and things. The second are the new goodies for my desktop. I’m a gadget sort of guy. I’d like integrated widgets like Yahoo Widgets on my Linux boxen. A final reason is the promise of longer battery life. On this laptop I have the extended thinkpad battery and it appears to get about 4 hours of life. Not sure how accurate that is. In previous versions of Ubuntu I had to mess with suspending and hibernating. These are two features I make use of since I travel on occasion or even more often. Lets be serious. In the past, Linux suffered in this area. The advice I would get is to shut the laptop down when I’m done. Why in the Hell do that I’d wonder? I have a laptop because its a “mobile device” for a mobile life. If I wanted just a desktop I’d haul a shuttle around.

So there are about 5 reasons to upgrade. Goodies, kernel, power management. Enough? Well, I may do one laptop since I have dual laptops of the same make. Or I may pop in a new laptop drive and give it a whirl.

A work colleague told me I was in prison with Windows and to break free. he was right and I thank him for that bit of advice. Now its time to look at the Intrepid one. Hopefully the treat is there and the trick is less

Anomie is a sociological term from back when. I like its meaning overall. It bridges a few gaps. I always felt that sociologists were kinda funny kids on the block back when I did anthropology. We used to joke that they were “almost enlightened”. But psychologists were unworthy. I still feel that way for some reason. Perhaps because they always felt that they had some magic answers and they only did the observation for an hour a week. After all, anthropologists study behaviors for years and often admit to still not knowing nearly enough. This is human and cultural behavior folks. How can you sum up another culture in an hour a week?

Sincerely Moving Away from Center

I find myself these days getting some kind of wanderlust. I drift off sometimes to find a reality that I once had. Advancing years? I still feel in command of my senses (for the most part). No, I think its some mental wanderlust. I still connect to Alexander Supertramp and still see that magical bus and wonder at his life and places. Darn that Sean Penn anyways. He had to do that movie. He left me scarred.

Now I am moving off the center beam. I remember when I went into my wild. For me, it was those days of wandering deserts, mountains, hills. I could have stayed there for those years and more. Anthropology was such a mistress folks. Demanding, sometimes demented; but always very possessive and needing more.

And I miss it sometimes very much and other times even more. But I miss it in a way of not wanting to go back. I like what I have now; in fact would say I love it. But its the secret life of my own conscience that drags me around its hurricane force winds.

Linux on the Corners of the World

Back to my travel to Chennai. I like India folks. I told a colleague that India and Linux are a lot alike. Both seem unfinished, promising, rich, and tapestried. They both have potential and like most human conditions some flaws. Software is never finished and my feeling about India is its not finished either. And that’s a wondrous thing. Its mold is still be shaped and I think the people know it. So off I go soon.

Wish me well and safe travels. I wonder why Dave and his Offbeat Guides guys won’t invite me. I’m a good traveler guys. I like adventure. Gimme a try. I want to be a Offbeat travel guy. I’m going to Singapore and India soon. I have 3 days of a weekend to go poke around in dusty corners.

My phone, a Motorola Q9 global, still does what I want. Its the hub of my own collaboration approaches and lets me keep updated with email, calendaring, tasks and I don’t interface all that much with exchange.

I do have a infrequent need to access specific programs like Visio so I have a native Server 2008 box all pimped out looking like Vista for those rare times.

You can live in a Windows-centric world and use other tools. Its not hard to get there.

1. ECS GeForce 6100SM-M2 Socket AM2 Motherboard (RETAIL) GeForce6100SM-M2 (V1.0A)
2. Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Chipset
3. NVIDIA nForce 405 Chipset
4. SATA RAID 0/1
5. NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Video Onboard

My particular system has 4g of memory but I could go farther with it as it all the way up to 16gb of memory and it has a dual core AMD64 6000+ CPU in it.

Note that most of the list above will not work with ESXi. Well, the memory and CPU will and perhaps that’s the most important. Here is what I had to add to make it work though:

• Promise SATA300 TX4
• 2 x 500gb Seagate SATA 3.0 Drives
• 1 crummy but reliable E100 Network card

So I assembled all this into the system, booted the ESXi installer ISO image and off it went. It found the Promise SATA controller, gave me a choice of drives to install to. The install went fine but of course the Marvel Yukon gig ethernet card is not found. Hence, the E100 card above that I have a few of. When done, I got the warning from the ESXi install that I had no “persistent memory”. So I configured two disks worth of 900gb of usable storage space.Promise SATA300 TX4. The other nice thing about this promise controller is that I still have two more SATA ports left with nothing on them and plenty of space in the case I chose.

So what to do with this you may ask? Well, its a home experiment and I already had the system. Just had to add the Promise controller which cost about $70.00. Its baremetal so things are different than VMWare Server at a few levels. Its faster, cleaner, and more dedicated which is fine for me. it also has a very constrained HCL that VMWare openly promotes; but as you can see it is possible to do ESXi on a comfortable; yet minimal system at home.

The next step is to run the VMware converter which talks to ESXi directly and “port” a few VMWare workstation images I have to the server. I could also just do installs of new guests if I wanted; but I have a few different ones.

If you decide to go play in the fields of ESXi, read the vm-help website for tips and tricks to get you through the experience. You too can have a whitebox running a baremetal hypervisor!

Final Steps

Why you may ask would I do this? Mess around with temporal and spatial things like virtualization. This leads me to my last area. My position has changed dramatically at the company. I am know working as a product evangelist and technologist/product manager for our evolving and emerging solutions which includes our Linux portfolio. I am expected to participate in wide-ranging technology discussions with partners, assess new technologies (like virtualization) and then promote their use in the company ecology. I’m very excited about this move because I think I’m good at this. I’ve been around Linux for about 12 years now in a few settings. I’ve managed deployments, built custom distributions, managed large PS engagements. I also feel that I understand its place and what it offers as a compelling alternative in a few settings to more standardized solutions. Call me a disruptive solutions specialist if you will

Things never stay the same and when they change, they really change. Change is good and I believe our minds and spirits and bodies thrive with it. If we just stay the status quo, we never feel the challenge.

I found a few interesting newbie things with Hyper-V which took me a bit to deal with. Ubuntu 7.10 no matter what just won’t install and its been reported a few times. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 server and it works fine but you have to assign a legacy network card and you also have to “associate the real card” with the virtual card or at least I did to make networking work. Then you can just reboot the VM and networking/dhcp comes right up. Hyper-V is pretty cool though once you learn its little tricks and traps. I can see why VMware is threatened. It does some stuff and I’m just starting. Bundling it with an Operating System is smart. Damned smart Microsoft. Good one! That makes VMWare have to give things away like ESXi.

On to VMware Server. As I noted, something is just wrong with Server on Ubuntu 7.10 and I don’t know what. Server Console won’t work but I can RDP and ssh to the guests. What’s up with that? VMware Server seems to be a back step since it does all kinds of weird stuff with web and console. Forget about it!

I could probably just stabilize on Hyper-V but I have been a VMWare customer for years and I want it to work. VMware Workstation is still plenty nice but I think VirtualBox threatens it with its transparent or seamless modes for guest applications. I have not tried VirtualBox on Ubuntu yet; but I may do that at work. Truth is, it appears that VirtualBox is a great personal virtualization thing but I cannot serve up images. Since I am involved with building out a support lab that is all virtual for work; I need to serve up the guests.

I also wonder what’s next for VMWare? They seem to be giving away stuff now and Hyper-V is plenty cool and its something for VMware to worry over. Gnaw that bone VMWare guys. You need some competition! It gives the rest of us new toys and tools to test out.

• Will Linux on the desktop ever truly arrive for the masses? People point at Dell selling Linux as though this is the first time it happened. Here’s a bit of news for ya. In 2001, Dell was packaging 4 different forms of Linux on desktop machines and laptops. Linuxcare Labs certified that hardware for Dell back then and I managed the technical relationship with Dell back then.
• Will KDE and Gnome ever see it will be better to come together? Perhaps there is one integrating platform between the two camps. We also need to evolve applications in general. Applications are organisms. They require feeding and watering and they need to take a dump every so often. Dumps mean learning for developers I think.

I went to the show at Moscone this year. We need something else and I suggest that its SCALE in Los Angeles. Linuxworld has lost whatever vision and participation it once had. Drop the feeble attempts guys. You’ve lost the thread of what the show is. Somehow its some next generation data center show. You’ve lost the consciousness and evolution of things. The show is not a show-case of Linux and it does not capture a meeting place between Linux and users (corporate, personal, company). its some bastardization of open source and show with a dash of feeble representation by dwindling attendees and exhibitors.

For me personally, I love Linux and what it is and does. I’ve just moved beyond using it on the desktop and have gone backwards unfortunately. Perhaps this habilis has gotten lazy and wants something simple. The idea for me is the tool. The tool must deliver and give function. If I have to run one thing to launch another thing which in turn is virtual and I do that to take care of default tools, I have questions. Like Why. Why am I doing things this way and am I doing the best job at tool using?

I visited Linuxworld Expo for the day yesterday. It was yet again different and a few folks commented on the overall size reduction of the exhibition floor. Gone were Novell, no Redhat (again), no Sun, no groups of others. At this point it could move back to San Jose for size reasons much like it moved out of San Jose back in 2001 or so for size reasons.

The show is sad and it seems to be like an anxious shadow casting about furtively for its master image. It just don’t know what it wants to be. Am I data center show focusing on Linux or a Linux show focusing on data center? There was a huge trailer with the next generation data center in it but there were not enough visitors to keep the show floor busy.

At the other end of the spectrum, thanks to the folks at SCALE for making 7x a Westin LAX Hotel event again! The accomodations, staff, location make the Westin a great conference location. I will be attending next February 20-22 for sure! The difference is the difference. SCALE is enjoyable, rewarding, and fun. There is the mix of big enterprise and individual contributor there. I like the spread of papers that one can listen to and enjoying a beverage at the hotel of the event each evening.

I’ll probably drop to one Linux show each year now and it won’t be LWE in SF. I cannot afford OSCON. SCALE remains my show of choice especially after seeing this last Linuxworld. I commented to Doc that it was like someone washed the show in very hot water and it shrunk.

So true; so sadly true.