Windows vs. Linux - Open Source vs. Commercial

I got sucked in to a bit of back and forth on our local Linux/Unix list a couple days ago and wrote:

Ten years ago I was consulting for a multi-national education non-profit, and I discussed with the systems manager the notion of using open source...in particular I was talking about replacing their Windows 2000/NT servers, with Linux. This would have been a logistical wrench, not least because they had several client/server applications that used SQL-Server as the back end. His point was that as an educational institution, they got such good discounts on any proprietary software that the amount spent on the software was a miniscule percentage of their IT budget. So, there was no economic benefit, and certainly no performance benefit that justified such a change.

Later that year I was doing an inventory of their machines at one of the european sites and couldn't find the terminal server box. Turns out this was a Linux box running VMC or something and it had been bricked up in a wall during a recent renovation, and been merrily running, unseen, for several months.

So, the moral for me was, use what works. At the time I actually got them to go from running four O/S's in the organization to two, Windows, and the aforementioned Linux. We dumped Macs in one site, and Novell in another, and my advice to subsequent clients was to run one and only one OS in the organization.

I'm happy to say that they didn't all run Windows.

Logging in as Root in Ubuntu with Live CD

We just had a little contretemps as we attempted to replace system files on our Windows XP embedded machine with a new image. The easiest way we've found to copy the files is to run an Ubuntu Linux Live CD, which boots up a Linux desktop. Since the default user in the Linux desktop is guest, the user does not have privileges to replace the files a second time. To get around this, you have to log in using the root account. Steps:

1. in the original desktop, under the security tab for logins, be sure to check the box "allow local administrator to log in" under system->administration->login window.



2. Open a terminal session

3. type sudo passwd root

4. enter a password for the root user

5. re-enter a password for the root

6. shutdown - change user, and log in as root with your new password.

Background: There are three sort of funny things about this process for users who are not familiar with Ubuntu.

1. Ubuntu does not install a root user account by default. Or, maybe it installs the account, but it doesn't allow its use. Thus, the act of assigning a password to the root user account is necessary to activate the account.

2. Even if you have a valid root account set up, by default Ubuntu does not allow you to log into a standard Gnome desktop. That's why you have the change the setting in the security preferences.

2. In this example, since we are using the Live CD, you have do step 1 first. If you restart the computer from scratch all configuration settings are lost, because the Live CD does not allow you to permanently write anything to the disk.

Woof.

In any case, this solved our problem; we were able to blow away the system files on our target hard drive C:, so that we were able to copy a fresh version of our XPe image to the drive.

Ubuntu Linux rescues Windows XP Embedded

This being summer, we're back on the Windows XP Embedded kick. After generating an image, the question was..how do we get this on to our target machine?

We wasted a lot of time on this one. As recommended in the docs, we installed "regular" Windows XP on the target machine to make sure that it would run Embedded. No problem there, it installed without problems from CD. We ran the Target Analyzer, to get our device.pmq. Copied device.pmq back to the development machine and generated the image.

At this point, we started fiddling with a second partition on the target machine. We created and formatted this using Acronis Disk Doctor, which comes on a bootable CD. Our plan was to install our target image on this partition, change the ARC listing in boot.ini to point to the second partition as the boot partition. We spent a day fooling with this, including changing the drive letters, hiding the partition, moving stuff around. Didn't work.

Finally, we reformatted the hard drive on the target machine. Now you'd think that Microsoft would have something like a "LiveCD" for this purpose, which would boot a version of Windows enough to allow copying to an existing hard drive. It doesn't, but Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora Linux all have this, and Ubuntu had drivers that would read the USB drive where we stored the image, as well as the NTFS formatted hard drive.

A quick drag and drop, and we're done!

Have they no shame? (Microsoft that is...) There is a Community Technology Preview out for a new version of Embedded...let's hope this issue might be addressed with a couple of extra tools.

Tech Friday: Installing Ubuntu on the Mac and the PC

I've been drinking a lot of coffee today, and I think it affects my ability to concentrate. So, one thing has been leading to another and another, and I've ended up installing the latest version of Ubuntu Linux on both my PC and my MacBook using virtual machine software.

Why Virtual Machines?

A virtual machine allows you to host multiple operating systems on a single physical computer. The classic reason for doing this is to run some form of Windows on the Macintosh OS because you just can't live without some crucial Windows program. (Think Quickbooks, or OutLook, or in my case OneNote). The Virtual machine program is a thin layer of software which sites between the original OS (on the Mac this is OSX), and one or more "guest" operating systems, (in my case Windows Vista). There are a couple to choose from. The people at our university recommended Parallels. Installing Vista and Parallels went pretty smoothly. So, as I hadn't seen a Linux desktop for while, I thought I'd try installing the latest and greatest Ubuntu.

Why Ubuntu?

Ubuntu appears to the current favorite for a "desktop" Linux. It is available on some Dell machines. It comes with a large number of applications, and an attractive desktop. There are several versions available for specific purposes. It is well supported.

I started with this step-by-step tutorial, which is available for a couple different combinations of Parallels and Ubuntu.

While waiting for this to install, I fiddled with Microsoft Virtual PC on my Windows box and found that I was using an older version 2004. I downloaded and installed version 2007. Looks just like 2004, but includes support for Vista as reported at Linux.com. After a couple of false starts dealing with the mouse, I was able to get Ubuntu installed.

Once installed there are several additional tweaks that need to happen which required editing the boot loader parameters and some config files to get the mouse working. Then a similar process is required for sound drivers, and network drivers.

Rather than go through all that, I downloaded VirtualBox and installed it on my workstation. Then I reinstalled Ubuntu. Mouse worked immediately. Networking came right up. The sound card worked as soon as I changed the default VirtualBox configuration to include the sound card. So far, Ubuntu works fine, and is surprisingly fast, and VirtualBox appears to be superior to Microsoft Virtual PC, at least when installing non-Microsoft operating systems.

Meanwhile, back on the Mac, its been more of a struggle. Here a couple issues and solutions:

1. When choosing which version to install, choose the "alternate" form of the Ubuntu installer. (There is a checkbox for this on the download screen.) This is a text-based installer. Otherwise, it will just hang as you start to do the install, and you'll get a funny message saying somthing like "Tried 6 times to start the X-Server and something is seriously messed up".
2. When you download the .iso file from the mirror, it will appear on the desktop as a disk. However, this is actually, just a pointer to the file ubuntu-7.10-alternate-i386.iso which is located in your download directory. This caused a lot of confusion, because when you attempt to assign an "image" for the installation process through Parallels, you have to point to the actual file with the .iso extension. (If in doubt...just burn it to a physical CD for heaven's sake; I should have done this and saved myself an hour of futzing. To be honest, my problems with the disk and the .iso are due to unfamiliarity with OSX on the Mac, not the fault of Parallels or Ubuntu.)
3. When installing, you'll be given the opportunity to select the screen resolutions that you want to install. The excellently named Muffin Research discussion page suggests selecting two resolutions: 1440x900 for using full screen, and 1280x800 for use when you have Ubuntu running in a window. Once you have installed, if there is still a problem, you can run the following command to start the selection process again:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
   
   
4. Parallels gives you the opportunity to set up networking to use the existing Mac network addressing, (shared), or the not-so-well-named (bridge). The bridge will treat the Ubuntu VM as a separate machine, so it will get an IP address separate from the Mac. There is an icon in the "system tray", located in the upper right hand of the Ubuntu desktop window, that shows if you are connected. If not, just click once on the icon and select "Wired Nework", if that is how you're connected.
   

More from LifeHacker on running Parallels on the Mac.

Trixbox Appliance: New Baby

Just unwrapped the new baby here... a Trixbox appliance (the so-called "base" model for about $999) that comes without landline interface cards. In its base configuration it is suitable for those who want to implement a fully IP-based VoIP system. I'll be adding hardware to this; an existing Sangoma A200 card which provides two landline connections. I'll only be using one of the two connections to start. I couldn't resist starting it up, and sorry, but contrary to all the assurances; the thing is noisy. Too noisy to have setting next to my desk. Damn.

The dual power-supply version that was demonstrated back in June sounded like a jet engine. Definitely that one is a unit for the server room, not deskside.

We had our first real snow that stuck today, about three inches. The Trixbox will be a great project on those cold winter days.

Ekiga, formerly known as Gnomemeeting, is a Linux based softphone/videophone. (A newer version is also available for Windows). They've thought of everything... STUN, H.323, SIP, a directory, NAT traversal, you name it.


I'm using version 2.03 that was in the stock installation of Ubuntu Feisty. After a couple hours of fiddling, (at least 30 minutes of which was finding out that my microphone was switched off...) I've been able to make test voice calls to what sounds like their Asterisk server. Looking around, it says they are up to about 2.09, and if you want it work full-screen, you have to compile from the source code.