Knoppix and Qparted

Technology

Open source came the the rescue again this weekend when I needed to reformat a hard drive. I use to keep handy a Windows boot floppy to get the job done but I have not used a diskett in years. Not to metion of the three machines I currently have none of them have a floppy. Now of course I could have burned a CD or used a Windows rescue CD but none of those was available.

Enter Knoppix.

A few months back I burned a copy of Knoppix 3.6 just in case I ran into a scenario of needing a quick format. This weekend it did the trick. There are certainly other tools available to format a hard drive but QParted was the quickest access.

A spare 20GB laptop drive that was Fedora Core 2 needed to load XP Home. The reason for using Knoppix is the XP install CD was not getting anywhere with no NTSF partition. A quick boot to Knoppix and a couple clicks later, where done.

Creating Web Pages in Linux

Technology

Being a jack of all trades and a master of none I’m always looking for some help here or there when it comes to getting the job done. Now if I was a web developer I could write about web pages from a completely different angle, but I’m not. Recently I found a product called Bluefish that is very cool.

For what I’ve needed to do over the last few years didn’t need much imagination. I’d use the stock templates that came with the product and because of the implementation I didn’t really need to alter the html… and if I did I’m not a web developer so even if I wanted to there was only so much I could do. But of course the more you know the more you want to know so digging into html is something I’ve been toying with.

For the most part I’ve been using gedit or the vi editor but it always seems like I’d get lost matching up a table or column. That’s when I came across Bluefish. I have not had a chance to work with it very much lately but I can say I like what I see so far. The reviews from the site are from a few years back but the Sourceforge Project site is active. Looks like it could be the ticket for now.

I’ll post more after I get a chance to dig in.

Update April 29, 2005

Well I’m not sure how deep I’ll get into Bluefish I’m just not at that knowledge level yet. It has been a great asset though. See the Bluefish Features List for more details.

Open Source and CMS

Consulting,

As I talk with customers every day more and more information is moving to the web. Either an application from a software provider, a business process from a supplier or vendor, and even the customer themselves. Yes the web has been around for a while and this might seem like old news but from a business perspective sharing information over a public channel has been somewhat scary. However for the information that can be and should be shared internally, externally or both there are some very fine open source products to help.

Late 2001 I started a side project, for a proof of concept, to create an intranet for then department with my currnet employer. My requirements were it needed to be web based, users with accounts could post documents, and anyone can search to find information. In my search I found a number of CMS (Content Management Software) applications but only one stood out, Plone. What caught my eye the most was it’s UI, it conformed to all web standards and was usable in any browser. Now that didn’t mean a lot to the company, were’re a Microsoft shop, but it was important to me. Not to mention the fact is was a GPL product and the whole project would cost $0.00.
That was good cause I was completely on my own with no resources from the company.

The backend of Plone is Zope which is a great tool itself for building intranets and interactive sites from scratch. The pro’s I found were:

  • Considerable room for customization
  • Submission workflow so that posts can be reviewed prior to publishing
  • Users can be assigned different permissions which control access
  • Keyword association for like documents
  • Plain text, formatted text, html or proprietary document formats can be posted
  • Separate directory tree display for folder structure view
  • Ports for Linux, Windows, Mac, and BSD

The con’s were not that many:

  • Not current Linux distribution friendly, one to two distros behind
  • For non programmers could be difficult to modify or customize

Needless to say it has been a great learning expierence and has been well received. After 6 months the site had 25 different catagories of information with a total of 200 + pages of documentation, news, a calendar and a place for members personal web pages. And all of it came from the vanilla setup.

If you are looking for a CMS type solution on any major platform consider Plone.

Viruses, trojans, and worms

Personal,

..are every where these days and for me I can gladly say I’ve not had to worry about them. Maybe it’s cause I’m lucky, maybe it’s cause I don’t get much spam… really it’s true, or maybe it’s cause I don’t wonder what the email could really be about from someone that I’ve never heard of. Better yet with a sender or subject that are not actual words.

Delete em don’t look at em … if it was worth reading it would make sense !!!

Then you have the phishing email asking you to confirm personal information… are you kidding me !!! If a stranger knocked on your door saying he was from your bank, asked you to fill out this form with information they already have… you’d really do that ??? Come on if common sense says don’t do it in person why does the internet make it ok.

And of course just putting a machine on the internet with no firewall can be dangerous. What was it 30 minutes ? Microsoft put an unprotected machine on the internet and in 30 minutes it was compromised … at least I remember that from a Microsoft paid advertisement for XP on G4Tech TV.

Some ammunition about why you should have a firewall can be found on Microsoft’s TechNet but that is not to say they should only be used for Windows® based machines. You should have one period.

This brings me to my latest personal challenge, cleaning a machine that is infected. A friend was having trouble with a PC when it accessed the internet. Luckily they had Norton Anti Virus Software so it would catch anything that would come in but it did not stop the annoying pop adds nor the rogue processes that would bring there surfing to a screeching halt. Now I can honestly say I am no expert at this but I did learn from it.

The short version of the long story is with help from SpyWare Doctor, the Internet and good old Safe Mode the machine is back to normal… for now. I say for now cause there is still an issue with Internet Explorer, did not have time to completely research and fix, but surfing is no problem with Mozilla’s Firefox and email is working.

So it’s not a perfect fix but does get them up and running till it’s replaced, which should be soon. With some help from Zone Alarm for a firewall their experience should be uninterrupted.

I’ve put in my two cents for replacing it with a Mac. Since pictures and video are on the list of important features they could be a convert. I did not mention LINUX cause that did not seem to be a good fit for what they use a PC for… but in time it will.

March 21 update ..

Well after hearing back from the friends what I thought was fixed was not. After a few minutes of surfing internet access was bogged down by rougue tasks from some executables in \windows\system. Funny how Norton and SpyDoctor did not detect them. But I had a feeling that might happen, task manager just didn’t look right. I went ahead and installed SpyBot to try another angle, which helped. I also took the time to research the tasks a little more carefully with some help from Answers That Work which pretty much took care of any questions I had about something being legit. After tweeking msconfig, getting rid of the registery entries that were bogus it now appears everything is back to normal.

We’ll see …

An LCD at last

Personal

Yes I’m a little slow at times but I just didn’t want to give up my 21″ CRT until I found a good replacement. Thanks to the brother in law I was able to move up from a 15″ to the 21″, and WOW what a difference. Even though it could only due 1024 x 768 still it made a lot more room on the desktop. I was glad to use it for the last few years. At least I think that’s how long I’ve had it.

Sitting at the computer for 8 + hours means you need a good keyboard, screen and chair. I have no problems with the keyboard and chair. The last couple weeks though the monitor has been getting on my nerves. I think mainly cause the office is going to get redesigned soon and the 75lb monitor that takes up a big chunck of the desk is well, getting in the way. So to take a break the other day I headed up to Best Buy to check out what they might have. I really wasn’t going to buy anything either just wanted to see what I could get for the $300 – $400 dollar range. Needless to say I should not have gone.

I did not check any reviews on flat screens, I had not gotten that far yet. But when walking by the flat screen displays I knew I was in trouble. LG’s Flatron L1920P, 19″ flat screen with USB ports plus analog and digital outputs, $450 with rebates.

I wasn’t even going to go that big, I thought 17″ would be enough. But at that price, with digital, well lets just say I did not expect it. Yes it was an impulse buy but that price was only good for another day and they had one box left. Now maybe I could have done just as good or even better with a Dell or a NEC, but it’s not like I work with video all day. Using the digital output is great and the screen is excellent.

It’s been only a few days now and at this point I can say I’m feeling good. Now in three months when LCD prices drop and I could have gotten the same thing for $50 less, well then I might have to second guess the impulse by. But for now it’s worth it.

Now as long as I don’t do the same thing with the truck !!!!