Squid: connect (111 Connection refused)

This morning when I turned on my computer, Firefox greeted me by saying "Firefox is configured to use a proxy that is refusing connections." However, my proxy server was turned on and seemed to be functioning correctly - I could ssh into it quite fine, so no network issues. I rebooted, but still no help. My server was running Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) Server Edition with a squid proxy server.

Turns out, by examing the /var/log/squid/cache.log file, I discovered the problem was no free disk space. After freeing up some space on / and restarting squid (/etc/init.d/squid restart), proxy was up and running again.

How To Enable Curl in PHP on Linux

 To enable PHP Curl support on Linux with apache 2:

$ sudo apt-get install php5-curl

Or do it manually (compiling sources):
http://au2.php.net/manual/en/curl.installation.php
http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/php/install.html
http://www.wallpaperama.com/forums/how-to-find-out-if-php-is-compiled-with-curl-extension-installed-enabled-t1576.html

"All Squash" in Samba FIle Server

NFS has the ability to "root squash" or "all squash" - map authenticated users to alternate user ids, for purposes of security. This makes it easy to setup an NFS public folder where all users share the same permissions.

Samba on the other hand, does not have such capabilities. However, you can achieve similar functionality by configuring a "guest" user, which maps to a specific local user id on the server.

Simply open /etc/samba/smb.conf and enable the following line:
guest account = [mapped user id]
That's all there is to it! Now any anonymous client can access the shared folders, and they will automatically have the same access rights as if they were logged into the server locally, with the username specified in the smb.conf file.

Amarok 2.0 Released!

Amarok 2.0 has finally been released! Amarok is an excellent music player and manager for Linux (primarily). Version 2.0 features a complete interface redesign and beta support for Windows and Macintosh.

Removing Plasmoids when Plasma crashes

I had some trouble with Plasma the other day. For some reason, it suddenly crashed and wouldn't start up again. I tried pressing Alt+F2 to bring up the run dialog, and typing "plasma", but it still wouldn't start. I then tried the command line.

david@suse:~/.kde4/share/config> plasma
plasma(5728) KWallet::Wallet::openWallet: Pass a valid window to KWallet::Wallet::openWallet().
plasma: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/kde4/plasma_applet_showdesktop.so: undefined symbol: _ZN6Plasma14ToolTipManager4selfEv
plasma(5727): Communication problem with "plasma" , it probably crashed.
Error message was: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply" : " "Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)" "

Something seemed to be wrong with the plasmoid "Show Desktop". Only problem is - it's pretty hard to remove a plasmoid when plasma won't even start. With a bit of help from Google though, and a few bash commands, I found the configuration file that plasma uses to configure the applets:

david@suse:> kwrite ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc

In this file, I simply had to search for the text "plugin=showdesktop", remove the configuration section associated with this, and start plasma again.
This is a simple way to remove a plasmoid (plasma applet/widget) without starting plasma.

Microsoft Bashed by the EU

The European commission has accused Microsoft of monopolistic practices quite harshly in a recent speech. Personally I think they deserve it - all the negative press I've ever seen about Microsoft has been true. What do you think? Any Microsoft fan boys out there, or are all the fanatics F/OSS devotees?

Plasma Theming - Doesn't even compare with Vista

Yes, some people have been complaining that KDE4's Plasma looks like Windows Vista. Well, complain no longer. Liquidat has posted a gallery of KDE4 Plasma themes, and boy do they look good! As you can see, you're not even restricted to single colours for the theming!

KDE4 Rocks!

Microsoft Office to Support ODF, but not OOXML

Microsoft has turned in it's tracks today and announced that Office 2007 will be supporting the ODF format. Just a few weeks ago Microsoft was saying that their own format was good enough for everyone, and they didn't need any "competing format". However, it seems they have changed their mind very quickly, preferring the ODF format even to their own ISO standard, OOXML.

What is even more surprising, is that Microsoft has said they will not include OOXML in Office 2007. Users will have to wait for the release of Office 14 to get support for this format. David Worthington reports:

... the company is not quick to embrace its own creation. Mahugh stated that Microsoft would not implement the final ISO version of OOXML until Office 14 ships at an unstated date in the future. This variant of OOXML was designated ISO/IEC 29500 at the time it was certified as an ISO International standard in April.

“One way to look at it is the prioritization of formats,” Mahugh explained. “We reach a point in time where we have to decide whether to continue to invest in a previous version [of Office] or to cut the cord and move forward.”

ODF support was a priority for Microsoft, Mahugh noted, adding that “real world” customers say that there is a pressing need for PDF [AU: ODF?] support. “At this point there are no products using [ISO/IEC 29500] in the marketplace.”

While Microsoft claims to be supporting "open" standards with this latest move, many critics think that this is simply a lock-in trick, designed to keep users on Microsoft Office by introducing propitiatory "extensions" to the standard. This would introduce a perpetual cycle of "Microsoft breaks the standard, the world adapts the standard, and Microsoft breaks it again" But regardless of Microsoft's intent, this is certainly an admission that open standards are having a big impression on Microsoft, and the IT industry in general. They can no longer afford to rely on monopolistic tactics to lock in users, but are being forced to comply (at least partly) with others. Let's hope that this latest move truly does drive innovation and openness in the field.

KDE 4.1 looking promising

KDE 4.1 alpha 1 was released yesterday. The adoption of Qt 4.4 will bring some significant new features to the Plasma desktop shell, but the bumpy transition has made this release very fragile. Ars looks at alpha 1 and the impressive feature set that is being developed for the final 4.1 release, scheduled for July.

Can we rescue OLPC from Windows?

FSF president Richard Stallman calls on Negroponte and the OLPC project leadership to reject overtures by Microsoft and recognize the importance of free software to its core educational mission. RMS has just started using one as his main machine.

What languages are supported by Google App Engine?

What languages are supported by Google App Engine?

Currently, Google App Engine allows you to write your applications with Python 2.5. For security reasons, some Python modules written in C are disabled in our system. Also, since Google App Engine doesn't support writing to disk, some libraries that support this and other functionalities are only partially enabled. Our developer documentation gives a good overview of the Python runtime environment. A description and full reference of Python libraries that are disabled or partially disabled can be found here.

Additionally, your website templates can include Javascript along with your HTML. Among other things, this allows you to write webservices that make use of Ajax web development techniques.

From the Google FAQ

Google AppEngine

What is Google AppEngine?
How to get a Google AppEngine Account
Google AppEngine Accounts giveaways
Free Google AppEngine Account
Account details: username and password for a Google AppEngine Account
Date and Time of Google AppEngine release account register

Do these words make you excited? They do for me. Here's why.

Google just launched a new service, Google AppEngine. Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users.
Here is the official announcement:

Today we’re announcing a preview release of Google App Engine, an application-hosting tool that developers can use to build scalable web apps on top of Google’s infrastructure. The goal is to make it easier for web developers to build and scale applications, instead of focusing on system administration and maintenance.

Leveraging Google App Engine, developers can:

• Write code once and deploy. Provisioning and configuring multiple machines for web serving and data storage can be expensive and time consuming. Google App Engine makes it easier to deploy web applications by dynamically providing computing resources as they are needed. Developers write the code, and Google App Engine takes care of the rest.
• Absorb spikes in traffic. When a web app surges in popularity, the sudden increase in traffic can be overwhelming for applications of all sizes, from startups to large companies that find themselves rearchitecting their databases and entire systems several times a year. With automatic replication and load balancing, Google App Engine makes it easier to scale from one user to one million by taking advantage of Bigtable and other components of Google’s scalable infrastructure.
• Easily integrate with other Google services. It’s unnecessary and inefficient for developers to write components like authentication and e-mail from scratch for each new application. Developers using Google App Engine can make use of built-in components and Google’s broader library of APIs that provide plug-and-play functionality for simple but important features.

I'm still waiting - it's apparently not release time in America yet, so I've been put on the waiting list. I can't believe that 10K accounts have gone in such a short time, so I'll still hope that it's not release time yet!

KDE 4.0.0 Tagged Ready for Release!

Today KDE 4.0 was officially tagged for release. Now the tarballs will be prepared, and pre-released to the big distros. In about a week (next Friday to be precise) the announcement will be made to the public and the tarballs and packages will be released. But I'm going to see if I can get hold of the svn version first...... ;)

KDE 4.0 release draws near

KDE 4.0 is now nearing completion, with the release event scheduled for 17 January 2008. The desktop interface is being finalized now, and the 2nd Release Candidate has already been released, providing an early look at the new Plasma interface.

Although the background APIs and data structures underlying KDE4 were finalized a while ago, Plasma is only nearing completion now. From the various previews around, it looks as if KDE 4.0 is going to be the introduction to a new era in the evolution of the Linux GUI. Plasma looks really smooth, and the APIs behind it are just as neat.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to build the RC2 properly. I keep getting a segmentation fault. So I can't give you a first hand account of KDE4 (yet!), but for more info check out the official announcement - it's got heaps of screenshots.

Google Highly Open Participation Contest - GHOPC

Recently Google launched a new program called the "Google Highly Open Participation Contest", or GHOPC. This initiative allows younger developers (13 and above) who could not join in the Google Summer of Code to help work on open source projects such as Apache and GNOME. For every 3 tasks that an individual completes, Google will award USD$100, up to a total of $500 (15 tasks). The tasks vary from simple ones such as "Create a short slideshow of distinctive plone websites", to highly advanced tasks such as " Implement WorldKit.org Mapping as a Joomla! v 1.5 Extension". So far there has been a huge amount of work on behalf of the developers, especially in the tasks of well-known projects like Joomla.

At the moment I have temporarily paused my Android development in order to focus on the GHOPC. I believe it is more suited to my abilities at the present time. So far I've completed 2 out of 3 tasks, so I'm looking forward to the completion of the next one! It also means I may not be around much on the blog, as the tasks have fairly strict deadlines.

Here I see yet another example of Google's support of the open source community. Regardless of whether you like Google as a company or not, you have to acclaim them for continuing a good work here. Now, with the Google SoC, and the GHOPC, open source projects have a commercial backing, even if only once a year, which encourages upcoming business leaders to contribute to open source, and reaps huge benefits for the projects involved.

Android Apps

I've just got hold of Google's Android SDK, which includes an emulator of the Android platform. I must say I'm pretty excited about this, it looks like Android has the potential to create the "ideal" PDA OS - that is, one based on open standards (Linux), and that doesn't lock anything down (quote from the Android website:
Android does not differentiate between the phone's basic and third-party applications -- even the dialer or home screen can be replaced.) This is really going to be great for everyone who loves the iPhone's features but wished it wasn't locked down so much.

So, I started up the android emulator, and was extremely impressed with the sleekness of the interface. It's also very responsive - even with my CPU going 100% and no graphics card. The interface is very smooth and polished, with the capability to create translucent windows and animation effects.

I'm certainly looking forwards to writing apps for the Android. It uses a pseudo-Java VM called "Dalvik" (can anyone hear an "exterminate!" here?) to run third-party apps, and although there are a few new UI concepts (Activities, Views, Intents...), the API is overall very easy to learn. To encourage developers to write "great apps" for the Android, Google is offering USD$10 million worth of prizes for the most promising apps. This should create a huge incentive for developers, and I expect to see plenty of Android apps by the closing date of March 08.

Overall, the Android looks pretty darn good - it's not just the iPhone opensourced, but a whole new concept of open, integrated phones. I'll give you updates as I get used to the API and OS, but for now, rest assured that all the hype about the "gPhone" has been justified - and doubly at that. I just can't wait for the "official" release in late 2008!

NTFS write support for Linux

Hooray! Linux can finally write to NTFS partitions, thanks to the NTFS-3G project. Check it out, I've found that it is incredibly helpful in writing to my (Windows Formatted) external hard drive.

This just goes to show: no matter how closed Microsoft made the NTFS standard, somebody was bound to break it open.

New Ipod Hash Cracked, Linux Supported Once Again

Less than two days after the announcement came that the new iPod used a new hashing algorithm that rendered all iPod clients other than iTunes useless, here is a new announcement by wtbw:
From #gtkpod today:
>okay guys
>i think we're done.
>let me code something just to check
>[30 minutes later] can i hear a fuck yeah?
>works for both mine and xamphears :>

In case this is too obscure, here is the general gist of things. The iPod has been cracked.

Did Apple really think that they could lock down the iPod that easily? Come on, remember CSS and more recently the HD-DVD/Blu-ray encryption schemes. As sockdemon says on Digg:

"Oh, when I said that 'iPods will never work with anything but iTunes' I was using the modern definition of 'never', you know, the one that means in a few hours. What I really said was 'Ipods will work on linux in the next few hours, don't panic or sensationalize'.

Now I'm really surprised that Apple tried to lock down their platform. Especially with Linux rapidly gaining momentum in the commercial space, is this a direct hit at Linux (possibly as an alternative to the Mac), or just another instance of monopolistic vendor lock-in? Something seems very familiar here (read: Microsoft).
Please, Apple, don't follow the path of "The Big M" by locking people in to your way of doing things. Look to the future - share.

read more | digg story

Finally! A total switch to Linux

Previously, I haven't been able to rely totally on Linux because the only computers available to run it on have been old (Pentium II or earlier!), and therefore haven't been able to run KDE (or GNOME) smoothly. But now we have bought a new computer with Windows Vista installed, so that can be the only WIndows machine, and I can now install Linux on the old (Celeron 2.6Ghz, 750MB RAM, 80GB HDD) computer!

I'm going to be using SUSE running KDE as that is the best integrated and supported version (except for Ubuntu, the "beginners OS' in my point of view). I'm waiting in great anticipation for KDE4 to be released October this year (more about that one of these days), and using SUSE should guarantee a smooth upgrade process. So, stay posted, I'll be relating my experiences living in a Linux world as soon as I get it installed (a few days time hopefully).

Long Live Tux!

Links:
SUSE Linux
KDE Home
David's Nature Photography Gallery