Webs’ Random Ideas

What’s the AwesomeBar you ask? Well I have been using Firefox 3 for the last month and the AwesomeBar is the greatest thing since sliced bread!!! Well actually Firefox 3 is the greatest thing, but the AwesomeBar is pretty sweet too.

The AwesomeBar is the new revamped full feature URL address bar that can do a hell of a lot of stuff. When you start typing into it a list of possible URLs appears as a drop down list. At first it will likely be filled of sites that are a possible match and items from your bookmarks. But as you continue to use Firefox 3 the list will start searching through sites in your history too (porn surfers beware).

The way Firefox 3 does this is by utilizing a SQL Lite database that keeps track of sites you visit, bookmark, as well as other important info, and this allows for better tracking, management, and meta data applications. From what more intelligent minds than myself say, this is long overdue…

But if you don’t wanna take my word for it, Lifehacker has a 10 ten list of features for Firefox 3. Go check it out! Then download Firefox 3.

I could of written one, but that would be reinventing the wheel. Instead read this Ars Technica review of Ubuntu 8.04.

The review is very well done and convers some areas of Ubuntu I didn’t know existed. One complaint I have with the article is it seems to be written from the standpoint of, “If your Linux Distribution is not perfect I’m going to harp on you, and shame on you for not being perfect.” Maybe I read too much into it but I thought the end was a little annoying with this:

A strong 8.10 release with fewer problems out of the box would help put Ubuntu back on track.

I have yet to encounter any distribution of the big players (Windows, MAC, and Linux) that is without major flaws out of the box. There is so much work that goes into a distribution it’s incredibly difficult to catch everything. So the statement above just seems to me to be a pointless gripe about a piece of software.

The thing that’s great about Open Source Projects is the community of users. If there are major problems users can leave feedback and developers can fix the problem. If developers cannot fix the issues quickly, then anyone can step up and fix the problem since the software is Open Source. It’s a very efficient model and is helping to push Linux into wider acceptance.

Other than my one complaint the article is a pretty excellent review of Ubuntu 8.04. Go check it out.

This is really more of an update to my project of creating an Internet Kiosk Management Server.

The gist of the project is this: Currently we have a boot CD Linux distribution for Internet Kiosks, or walk up Internet/Email stations at work. What this means is that I have a Boot CD with a fully contained Operating System that runs off the CD. So no hard drive or floppy is needed. The system boots directly into Mozilla Firefox with no other applications or options available to the user.

Sounds wonderful right? Well yes, but I have been running into issues with this current system, called Boothbox. As mentioned in my previous posts on this topic, I have run into issues getting Boothbox to run on Dell Hardware. The problem is Boothbox is based on a really old kernel. And updating the kernel in Boothbox just wasn’t working out for me at all.

So a new system is in store.

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I always do the same thing before installing an OS, no matter which OS it is. I grab my handy Ubuntu 7.10 disk, boot up, and partition the drive. I don’t really install it as my favorite OS is Xubuntu, but the partition editor is really easy to use.

It’s important to note this can be done without touching a pre-existing OS install. Follow the directions below and you can be all set for a dual boot. Here is what I do when I need to partition drives:

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This one still has me baffled a little, as from what I can gather the differences seem very miniscule. From the MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual, scroll down to the comments and find “Eric Stevens”:

Please note that REPLACE INTO is a much slower performer than an UPDATE statement. Keep in mind that a REPLACE INTO requires a test on the keys, and if a matching unique key is found on any or all columns, a DELETE FROM is executed, then an INSERT is executed. There’s a lot of management of rows involved in this, and if you’re doing it frequently, you’ll hurt your performance unless you simply cannot do with any other syntax.

The only time when I can see where you’d actually need a REPLACE INTO is when you have multiple unique constraints on a table, and need to drop any rows that would match any of the constraints. Then REPLACE INTO becomes more efficient from DELETE FROM… INSERT INTO…

Makes sense to me.  I also found another link, I have now lost, that alluded to REPLACE being useful for older versions of MySQL and when a different database structure was used. I have no way to verify that, but it sounded scholarly.

Anyways, It seems to make more sense to use UPDATE to me. Does anyone else have thoughts or know more? I guess that’s the wrong question since everyone knows more about MySQL than me… Does someone with more knowledge want to weigh in?

I am in the process of moving my hosting over to a different company. If things seem a little laggy the next week that might explain it. I think I got all my Wordpress stuff moved, but at some point a switch over is going to occur. I will post a notice when this happens to make sure everyone is aware.

Problem:
Multiple users have reported their shared calendars disappearing. They will log off and back on the next day to find their shared calendars are gone. Sometimes they will restart or shutdown and the shared calendars will disappear. Sometimes they will log off, restart, or shutdown and the shared calendars do not disappear. The issue seems very sporadic.

Configuration:

• Exchange Server 2003
• Office 2007 and Windows XP on all clients
• Clients running in Cached Exchange Mode
  

What I have tried:

• Installing all MS XP and MS Office updates
• Searching the web
• I found the two links below and neither makes any sense. There is nothing in the XML file about shared calendars.
• Some Google Groups posting that mentions items from the nav pane being stored in an XML file
• Another article mentioning similar information and recommends running the resetnavpane switch

Possible Solution:
The information for the list of shared calendars a user is connected to appear to be stored in the Exchange account for that particular user. Which means this information is also stored in the OST file locally. So the most likely scenario is the OST file is somehow corrupt.

Well our users have a Roaming User Profile (RUP). Their local user account folder on the computer is replicated to a server, and the information is snyc’d. So our best guess is the RUP setup is screwing up some files. We will be removing this setup from one user’s account to see if it has an affect as we no longer have a need for RUPs.

UPDATES:

05/09/2008 -
Good news with the RUPs, our control group (the user with the RUP) just reported having her shared calendars disappear. Our test group (the user without the RUP) has yet to report the shared calendars disappearing on her. So we will now remove the RUP from our control user and see what happens. I will keep anyone reading this post up to date!

Found an article on the Tubes that showcases the new Ubuntu Linux Distribution set to release soon! The author had pretty good things to say and was impressed with some new features. Go check it out, I just have one clip below…

For non-Linux users out there, the most significant changes present in Ubuntu 8.04 will be those related to making it easier to take Ubuntu for a test spin without hosing an existing Windows installation.

The first change that the Ubuntu dev team have made in the hopes that it will encourage Windows users to become Ubuntu users is the addition of Wubi. Using Wubi users can install and later uninstall Ubuntu through Windows as though it’s a Windows application in its own right. No partitions or changes to the bootloader are required to play with Ubuntu.

Found via Digg…

So I would like to bring up this topic again (I’ve written about this before, once here and another time here) in hopes I can finally complete what I set out to do awhile back. Get Boothbox working on Dell hardware.

Now that I’ve made that statement it’s time for a curve ball. I think I’m going to scrap Boothbox all together. It’s no longer under development and I am having a lot of trouble re-compiling the kernel so it runs on Dell hardware. The lack of support for Boothbox is just killing me.

So here’s my new idea. Create an Ubuntu Server that is fully configurable and have dummy terminal clients that boot from CD and load a terminal session from the Ubuntu server. Being based off Ubuntu means good hardware support and using a distro that is not likely to go away any time soon. The terminal clients would also be secure in having no local storage as no hard drive is needed.

Eventually the terminal clients will need touch screen support and quite a few scripts to run other items and lock down certain apps. Either way, for now I am going to test the waters and see what happens. If it looks like the idea is feasible I might create a SourceForge project and post more info there. We’ll see what happens.

For now I will post updates on my blog for this project. Officially titled: “Kiosk Ubuntu”.

Lenovo X23’s are fairly old laptops. By no means would I consider them ancient, but they have a P3 and usually 256mb of RAM unless updated by someone. One problem with older systems is all the other old hardware besides the CPU. It makes it tuff to find an OS that will support the old hardware. Generally if the system you are using has all Intel chipsets including an Intel wireless chipset you should be okay.

Well I have been meaning to fix up the X23 my Fiance has because the newest version of Ubuntu doesn’t like something on that laptop. My guess is Ubuntu 7.10 is using a kernel that doesn’t like a piece of hardware in the laptop. So I downloaded some ISOs last night and tried installing. I had Ubuntu 7.10 (was going to try a reinstall), Kubuntu 7.10, and Xubuntu 7.10 and 7.04. Well the only one I really wanted to install was Xubuntu and sure enough it was the only one that would boot.

I have to say I was really impressed with how fast Xubuntu booted and I really appreciate the minimalist styling of it. I was instantly a hug fan. I still have a bug to work out where the system tray doesn’t have the usual assortment of icons, but that’s okay I can make do.

After the install, which was an incredibly easy process, I rebooted and noticed that Network Manger isn’t installed. Network Manager is the best application I have found to get connected on Wireless Networks. I tried WiFi Radar and liked the look and feel, but it wouldn’t let me connect to a WPA network. Not sure why, but rather go with something I know works than spend my time troubleshooting. So I looked on the Internet and did the following to get Network Manager working:

1. Open a terminal and type in the following:

sudo apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome

2. After this runs, which may take a few minutes, Go to “Settings” and Click on “Autostarted Applications”
3. click “+ Add”
4. type in these values (without quotes):
   - name = “network applet”
   - command = “nm-applet –sm-disable &”
5. Then open a terminal and type the following:

sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.bak

6. Then type:

sudo mousepad /etc/network/interfaces

7. Place a “#” (without quotes) in front of everything EXCEPT:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

8. Save the file and exit
9. What you just did was create a backup of the interfaces file and make a change to it so Network Manager can control the Network Interfaces.

After this just reboot and then you should have an icon in the System Tray that allows you to connect to wireless networks. This seemed to work for me pretty well and once I completed these steps I was off and rolling. Like I said I love the interface and the speed of Xubuntu. It’s running faster than my X40 with Ubuntu 7.10!

As I mentioned above, it appears the laptop still needs some tweakage. I will post more developments as they arise…