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I want Asterisk!
Bart passed me a nice blog-entry over at Changelog about Asterisk. I really, really want to start using it. Soon. The features jgoerzen talks about are so cool. I’m quite sure this would be the solution for most SME’s. I can’t wait to start implementing it 
Small update
Okay, just something to write before I go to bed:
- Don’t use Nagat in Debian Sarge, since you need register_globals on, and trust me, you don’t want that.
- My sister bought me a garden-cage for Fluffy! She was here yesterday for her first look at Fluffy and immediatly fell in love. Hard not to, really, with such a sweet little bunny. Today she was at a garden-store and saw a cage that would be suitable for Fluffy. Now she can run around in the grass and still not be able to escape Kinda strange, really… We want our pets to love us and feel we’re their masters, but we make very sure they never get a chance to run away… Stuff to think about.
- Went dancing with Monique tonight and it went quite well. Better than last week, at least. So I’m happy about that.
- Working with Bart is really fun. Not only does he know a lot about servers (sometimes he makes me feel like a real n00b, but then again, usually I do understand what he’s talking about
), he’s easy to work with. He helps when he sees I can’t solve a problem and he leaves me alone when he thinks I should solve a problem myself I’m already looking forward to tomorrow.
That’s it. I’m off to bed now. Later!
Fluffy’s bottle is leaking! (2)
Before I leave you, I can tell you we fixed Fluffy’s waterbottle. Apparantly, one needs to fill the bottle to the top, until it almost flows over, or else there’s too much air in there to keep the water in. It seems to work, too. Sleep tight!
New project
Our latest project is well in it’s third week and going smoothly. Another migration from Microsoft to Linux. Tomorrow Bart and I start with installing the servers. So I’ll be at the customer’s place for the next two weeks. I’ll have my own laptop with me, though, so probably I’ll use some time on updating my blog here.
I’m excited about this latest project, since it’s a large firm and we’re getting the feeling this first project is sort of a pilot, to see if we’re capable and the technology is capable. So that are two wins on our side Let’s see where this will lead.
Angry at my dad
I’m furious at the moment. Really, really furious. I just caught my dad smoking. He quitted (at least, he always lied that he quitted) a few months ago, after his Thrombosis-diagnose last year. Apparantly, he didn’t quit, because I caught him smoking again today. And he was very indifferent about it, even. I’m so angry, so furious, I’m not even able to talk to him right now. It’s a good thing I have Fluffy here with me.
Java fallout: OpenOffice.org 2.0 and the FOSS community
Sometimes I just feel the need to post a “me too” about an article I read with a feeling of “that’s right, you say it, man!”. And trust me, sometimes I just feel the pain which caused a certain journalist to write the stuff. In this case, it’s about the best Open Source office-suite, OpenOffice.Org and a proprietary language that’s used for a lot of the functionality in the suite, Java.
Now, I’ve programmed in Java myself and I must say, it’s usually quite fast to make something in a working order. Not that you’re building nice code or anything, the most crappy code will usually run under Java. Which is nice for new programmers. Indeed, I think that was the reason for my University of Applied Technology to replace their C courses with Java. Java is easy to learn and works almost everywhere.
Although it’s nice to quickly build something in a language which has a lot of safeguards not there in a lower generation language like C. Think about the memory allocation and garbage collector. Nice features and especially nice because those little things allow you to quickly build working code. I don’t think I can emphasize the quick coding part enough. I’m not a C programmer, mind, but I’ve tried it a bit and it’s more difficult.
But you know, C has one great advantage: It’s Open. And Java is not. Being an Open Source Consultant, I feel myself morally challenged when I have to advise someone to use Java. I mean, Java is neat and all, but it’s not Open Source and it doesn’t look like Sun will ever release it under a proper licence. And that’s a problem. Does that make Java any less attractive? No, technically, it’s a nice piece of work (whatever the C and Perl hackers say, I think Java is neat). Did I tell you already you can build something nice really fast? I used it as Servlets and it worked perfectly. We made a lot of nice programmes with Java and it helped a lot that we could focus on the functionality we wanted and leave the tidbits to the language interpreter.
But now I’m an Open Source Consultant, and I feel I should not promote an application that uses a proprietary protocol. But then again, I also promote Samba. Where to draw the line? Well, I don’t draw lines. I advise about things I know and know well and will solve the problem of the customer. So I will promote OpenOffice.org as a very viable alternative to the world’s de-facto office suite. But I don’t have to like it.
In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes open for office suites that are more Open. When those are ready and work like the known office suites, I’ll switch my advise.
Technical support for the neighbours
A bed-time-story for me. This article sounds so very familiar. Indeed, most people get tempted into buying a computer, but when they have a problem, there’s noone qualified around to fix it. That’s one gap we’re trying to fill with our company, but alas, most computers are still sold with Microsoft Windows on there and we do only Open Source. So if people want our (quite affordable) help, they have to learn to use something new and that’s a hurdle few are willing to take.
Not that the neighbours are part of our target audience, but still, if you really want to help people, you need them to switch to the operating system you know best. And in my case, that’s Linux. And if you want technical support on a Microsoft machine, you’ll be paying them an arm and a leg, because not only do they need to travel to your house often, they also need to travel to your house often since Windows will do all sorts of strange stuff all the time…
But hey, that’s just my opinion.
Fluffy’s bottle is leaking!
Darn it! Fluffy’s water bottle is leaking. And it’s leaking hard. I refreshed the water this morning and already a third was gone from the bottle. Now, I don’t mind refreshing her water each day (actually, I plan on doing that anyway), but it also means she has a whole ‘wet spot’ in her cage. And we all hate to sleep on the wet spot, now don’t we?
So I removed the bottle and filled a soupbowl with her fodder and filled her stone fodderbowl with water. Hanneke was afraid she might not now how to drink from a bowl, but when I returned her the water, she started drinking from the bowl right away, so I’m not worried about that anymore. Dad will return the bottle tomorrow to see if we can get one that doesn’t leak.
I also started to housebreak her today and I thought her usual ‘relieve spot’ was on the spot where her water bowl was leaking. Now I know I was wrong, so I’ll have to replace the rodent litter tray on the spot where she does relieve herself. Not sure where that is, since she seems to poo around the whole cage. I’ll clean her cage tonight, so we can start anew with that question. Sometimes even real life needs a reboot…
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Security no match for theater lovers
Sometimes you read something about security that just makes your hair stand on ends. As someone who thinks security is his job, I always get the jiffies when I read about these things. We invest so much time in technical security measures and even laws that try to protect those technical security measures, but the weakest link will always be the people with the passwords. Okay, this article talked about personal information, not really passwords, but still very sensitive. Especially the anecdote at the start of the article says a lot… Scary stuff, really.
Fluffy’s age
I just called the petshop where I bought Fluffy. They told me that she’s 7 weeks old, so that makes her date of birth somewhere around February the 4th. I’ll pin it on there
My bunny!
Today, Monique and I went to a pet shop in Sittard, just to look around and we saw the cutest bunny ever. Now, since I work a lot in my own room and my dad’s dogs aren’t able to get there (they are not allowed to walk up the stairs, that’s bad for their hips), I was thinking about buying myself a pet for some weeks now. When I saw the little bunnies, I was sold.
Of course, I didn’t think it correct to buy a bunny there and then. Such a creature needs a cage and food and all kinds of materials, which I didn’t have lying around. And of course, I live with my dad, so I felt I needed his permission first. Even though I’m 25, I still live under his roof and his rules, buying a pet needs at least an announcement. Monique didn’t think my dad would allow it, actually.
His reaction was quite the opposite: “If you go get the bunny, I’ll get a cage and all the other material.” So we rode back to the pet store in Sittard, Monique and I together with Marina, Hanneke’s daughter. Dad and Hanneke went to a special pet store in Brunssum to get all the other stuff. During the trip to Sittard, Marina and I tried to come up with a suitable name. Of course Monique helped too, but she was driving. My first idea was “Flappy”, which is a common name for bunnies here in the Netherlands, refering to the floppy ears of a bunny. But since everyone calls their pet Flappy, I wasn’t satisfied. After some other unsuitable names, Marina called out “Fluffy”! I liked it, Monique liked it, so I’m calling the bunny Fluffy. It has a nice ring to it.
She’s adorable and still very small. You know, I forgot to ask the pet shop when she was born, so I’ll have to call them about that tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some pictures we took today of Fluffy.
Fluffy in her own cage. The thing is quite large, don’t you think?
A close-up of Fluffy’s left side. See the line on her nose? That’s so cute.
She spent her first few weeks of life in a normal home, not with a breeder, so she’s already quite well adjusted to humans handling her. She almost didn’t need time to adjust to her new cage and surrounding. Although she doesn’t really like being petted, she’s absolutly not afraid of humans. That’s a good thing, because with me, she’ll eventually have to learn how to be hugged a lot
Here you can see Monique with Fluffy on her lap. There a towel between Monique and Fluffy, because Fluffy of course isn’t housebroken yet. She will be, eventually. Hanneke told me rabbits can be housebroken, so I have a small kitty-litter including the stuff to fill it with. I’ll try my best to have her housebroken.
She’s so cute with that line on her nose.
My dad made this picture. Monique with Fluffy on her lap and me next to her. A cute bunny with a beautiful girl, who needs more?
That’s all for now. I’ll probably post more pictures later. Since Fluffy is in the room where I’m typing this, I’d better go to bed, so she has a bit of rest.
A day off
Since Monique has a day off, I’m gonna take the rest of the day off, too. Time for some ar-n-ar. Maybe we’ll go walking with one of the dogs, if it isn’t raining. That’s the thing of being so far south in The Netherlands, although the temperatures are usually higher here when the sun starts shining, we do have a bit more rain than the rest of The Netherlands. Ah well.
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stunnel
On the premise “I need to do something utterly useless”, today I enabled SSL on our IRC-server. Since the Dancer IRCd can’t do SSL (at least, as far as I know), I used stunnel to get it to work. The steps to do this are fairly simple, though I did have to spend some time working on a correct config and SSL-certificate. I’ll detail the steps below. For your information, we’re running FreeBSD as our irc-server.
- First, create a SSL-certificate. You can do so with the standard OpenSSL tools. I used the command:
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:1024 -keyout key.pem -out req.pemI’m not exactly certain if this is the right command to create the document I need, since you need to manually combine those to files. Just do:
cat key.pem > stunnel.pem; cat req.pem >> stunnel.pemThen edit the resulting file (stunnel.pem) en make an empty line between both the lines:
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----and
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----We’re all set to go, now.
- Now, create the stunnel.conf file. Mine looks like this, replace the values as you need them, though:
cert = /usr/local/etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem
chroot = /tmp/pid = /stunnel.pid
setuid=stunnel
setgid=stunnelclient=no
[ircssl]
accept = 7000
connect = irc.cidev.nl:6667If you’re on a Linux-host, you probably want to add as the final line:
transparent = yesIt’ll try to give people their proper host. Not that it’s really that important. The documents tell me this only works on Linux, though.
- Since I’m on FreeBSD and I want the tunnel to start on boot-up, I need to edit /etc/rc.conf. I add the lines:
stunnel_enable="yes"
stunnel_pidfile="/tmp/stunnel.pid"Don’t forget to change the location of the pidfile!
- Now, start stunnel with
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/stunnel startand all should work well. You’ll be asked the password you entered when you created the certificate. This means of course that the next time you start the machine, you’ll need to manually enter this command again to start stunnel. It’s possible though to put the password in a special file, but at the moment I’m too lazy to figure that out.
- Connect to port 7000 with
/sslserver irc.cidev.nl 7000from within your irc-client and all should be well. Of course, you’ll get a SSL-error, since the certificate is self-signed, but we don’t really care about that
- Done and done.
Of course, you want to have stunnel working on the same box as the irc-server, since the connection from stunnel to the irc-server is unencrypted. But you knew that, right?
Productive today
It seems we’ve been quite productive today. Not only did we finish the core functionality of B3, but we’ve also finished a rapport about the research we’ve done the last week. Quite on schedule, it was planned for tomorrow. So now I’m able to work a little bit on the Plan of Approach for the following fases of that project. It’s a nice day.
Cyrus IMAPd + SIEVE (2)
Sometimes I just need to try a bit more before I complain about stuff not working Everything works as it’s supposed to. The vacation-messages are sent, as ordered. Another job well done.
Cyrus IMAPd + SIEVE
Okay, I’m much further now. As I stated earlier, Cyrus is working now and Postfix is actually delivering the message to the correct queue. So now I can mail myself. Next step.
Since we need Squirrelmail together with avelsieve, the SIEVE plugin for Squirrelmail, I installed those and they seem to work. Seem, because I setup a vacation-message in avelsieve for my user and it didn’t trigger or at least didn’t send me a message back when I mailed myself. Ah well, next problem to fix. Ideas are welcome, of course.
Cyrus IMAPd (2)
Okay, just did some work on it, purged all the previous packages and tried the steps documented in README.Debian.simpleinstall.gz again and it works, now. Good. Let’s get to bed, I’m tired from dancing.
Dark gone
I didn’t tell you people about this yet, I just remembered you would like the news. Well, ‘like’ is not the right term here, I think.
I may have told you about Dark before, she’s one of the dogs of a German breeder, well known to my dad, because they provided the dog to breed with Anouk for the first time (now almost a year and a half ago). Due to several things happening at the same time, they asked us to take care of Dark, then a pup of 8 weeks old, for a time. My dad wanted to do them the favour, so soon Dark was here for a slumber party. She’s a very pretty silver-colored Old German Shepard and she stayed here for about 5 months, a little longer. My sister went to puppy training with Dark and Dark performed very well. Actually, she was first in her class. I always liked her best of all the dogs we have in house here, since she’s very easy-going and relaxed. She comes to you when she needs attention and when you’re not in the mood to give her attention, she just lied down on her cushion, next to the radiator. A very happy dog, too, the only one I let loose when Monique and I went strolling in the ‘Brunssumse hei’, some sort of park where a lot of people go for a stroll. I could let her loose, because I was sure she would always return to me when I called her. Not even Anouk does so and therefor I usually keep the other dogs leashed.
Well, apparantly, the breeders who own Dark falsified some document and dad’s dog society, the N.O.D.H.V., found out so they were forced to ask question about it. Dad didn’t believe a word of it, but when even a veterinary surgeon faxed them some evidence, it was hard to deny the charges. Last Sunday the breeders came for a visit to talk it over. Apparantly, it didn’t go very well, since they took Dark with them.
I’m not privy to the talks and I’m actually not really interested in what happened. I do miss Dark, though. She’s a very sweet, relaxed dog. Even though she always did look a bit like a hyena. I’ll honoustly miss her. Ah well, we knew from the start she wasn’t going to stay forever. Still, it’s sad.
Cyrus IMAPd
Ok, next to some PHP-programming I did today, I worked on our second server, amstel, to see if I could get Cyrus IMAPd working. It uses saslauthd and some other packages were needed on our Debian Sarge. A good thing cyrus21-doc has a lot of information, but I still wasn’t able to get it to work properly. I did everything that was needed by the Debian.simpleinstall-doc, but when it told me to add users to the cyrus-administration, it asked for an IMAP password, which I was unable to give. I tried all kinds of passwords I ever gave the computer to crunch, but it didn’t allow me to start cyradm as user cyrus. Very strange.
I’ll look at it tonight, after dancing.
