Linux Wizard

While reading KDE Planet, I've noticed this blog post from Peter Penz : Internal Cleanups. He was talking about code cleanups and refactoring he was doing in Dolphin code, which is a very good thing IMHO. Then I learnt something very annoying : since KDE 4.x and Nepomuk integration Dolphin is unable to show metadata informations for a file if the file is not indexed by Strigi and Nepomuk ( KDE bug #193592 ). This explains why I had more and more issues having the size of a photo ... Most of the time I did end up starting Gwenview for this ! This is really insane to have to rely on indexing to show a simple information like the dimensions of a photo. Here are the issues I could see :

1. On my workstations at work, we are using /home on NFS, and really I don't want to enable Nepomuk and Strigi indexing. I do fear about the NFS support for Nepomuk/Strigi, and the fact that I will clutter my file server with the indexing database of each of my users. I have 90Go of data on my file server, I can't imagine the size of the indexing database ... SCSI disks are not cheap !
2. Even if I do activate Nepomuk+Strigi indexing, by default only the user $HOME will be indexed. However what about the service/staff directories ? Indeed, several people of the same staff do share some common directories where they did put all of their files. What about this ? Do I have to enable manually the indexing of theses directories each time, and end up with duplicated indexed contents ?
3. Still on this subject, if you go to /usr/share/pixmaps or /usr/share/wallpaper or on an usb key, you won't be able to see the metadata of the file as theses locations are not indexed. It means that from the end user perspective, Dolphin behavior will change for no reason as one time it will display the info, and another time not. For the end user : Dolphin will not be a reliable way to show basic informations about a file !
4. Activating Nepomuk/Strigi is not without issue for Dolphin too ... I did notice that since I do have activate Nepomuk and strigi on my personal laptop, sometimes when entering a directory or when double-clicking on a file, Dolphin will just ... freeze ... No feedback, no error message, no wait message, no explanations ... If you click on the UI, you will notice, once Dolphin will unfreeze, that your actions were taken into account. Just now, Dolhin was frozen during at least 30 seconds after trying to open a OpenOffice Writer document by double-clicking on it. So dolphin end up being unreliable for me ... Each time I do something, I do fear about Dolphin freezes.

These kinds of behavior should really be avoided on a modern desktop environment, and reliability and speed should be top priorities. Consistent behavior should be important, especially for basics features. If I understand well, I may not expect a fix for this before KDE 4.5/4.6, which means ... 2011 at worst in a stable Linux distribution ...

Today I was willing to configure 2 laptop running Mandriva 2010 to do presentations during a meeting. So I was willing to use clone output. Unfortunately, doing so will resulta in an instant system freeze. Eeven worst, if the projector is plugged before powering on the laptop, the kernel will crash at boot ! Both laptop were using Intel chipsets ( Dell Latitude E6500, Asus A6VA ). The only solution is to disable KMS support. For this you need to generate an initrd without the i915 module ( use --builtin=i915 ), and then to eventually add in modprobe.conf : options i915 modeset=0. Once done, reboot the computer. Whereas you will not have KMS support, at least you will have dual ouput in clone mode support with no fear on freezing the kernel ...

I have a separate server which hosts my database. Each night, a cron script is run to dump the databases contents and rsynced the backups to another server. The backup script will log the backup in /var/log, but also send a mail. Most of the time I'm using ssmtp to use my ISP SMTP server as a relay. However my database server most of the time is not connected to internet ( and this on purpose ). This is where the issue comes : ssmtp doesn't allow local mail delivery :( Even stranger, by default local mail delivery seems to not work at all in a default Mandriva installation :(

To handle local mail delivery, you need a local Mail Delivery Agent ( MDA ), and your Mail Transfert Agent ( MTA ) should called the local MDA to deliver local mails. So here are 2 methods to handle local mail delivery.

Using SENDMAIL

The easiest to have local mail delivery is to install ... sendmail. Just install sendmail package and start the corresponding service, and your are done.

• Install sendmail package : urpmi sendmail
• Check that sendmail is used to provide send command : update-alternatives --display sendmail-command
• If this is not the case, instruct update-alternative to use sendmail : update-alternatives --config sendmail-command
• Start the sendmail service : service sendmail restart

Using ESMTP

Another way is to use ESMTP. i do advised to use ESMTP because it allow to configure easily a SMTP relay host, and handle also local delivery. However by default, ESMTP is not usable in default Mandriva configuration as it will not install a local MDA ( mdv bug #56759 ) and does not provide a default system-wide configuration file ( mdv bug #56757 ). So here his the procedure for a very simple ESMTP configuration which handle a SMTP relay and local mail delivery :

• Install esmtp and procmail packages : urpmi esmtp procmail
• Check that esmtp is used to emulate sendmail : update-alternatives --display sendmail-command
• If this is not the case, instruct update-alternative to use esmtp : update-alternatives --config sendmail-command
• Once done, create an empty system-wide configuration file for esmtp : touch /etc/esmtprc
• If you want to configure a SMTP relay host to send mails outside, add the hostname option followed by the SMTP address in /etc/esmtprc. For example :

  # The place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required
  # no MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com
  hostname = smtp.myisp.com:25
  

• Now add support to procmail as local MDA for local mail delivery by setting the mda option in /etc/esmtprc :

  # Use procmail as MDA for local mail delivery
  mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T"
  

Testing you local mail delivery setup

Now that sendmail or ESMTP are configured, you should test if local mail delivery is working correctly. The easiest way is to use the mail command to send, but also read your local mails. For example to send a mail containing the content of /etc/nsswitch.conf to the root user, just type : mail -v -s "Local mail test" root < /etc/nsswitch.conf. Now log as root, and type mail to consult root mails. you may want to use Mutt eventually to read your mails instead of mail.

This testimonial comes after reading a blog post from Albert Astals Cid : Consistency. Indeed I do find useless the debate about UI and buttons consistency ( which is different from buttons order issue ). So here are the point for which I do care as a Linux sysadmin with nearly 75 workstations running Linux, 5 notebook running Linux + Windows, and 7 servers running Linux. As a Linux sysadmin, when :

• /home on NFS support is not optimal ( sqlite usage, akonadi, digikam database, ... ) : I do care
• when applications have regressions ( printing support, lack of complete POSIX ACL support in NFSv4 ) : I do care
• when applications are slow or slower under Linux than under Windows ( openoffice, PDF printing with okular vs acroread, Kmail 3 vs Kmail 4 ) : I do care
• when applications crashes ( plasma ) or are buggy ( system-config-printer ) : i do care
• when french accentuated characters are not correctly handled : i do care
• when sound is not working correctly ( pulseaudio, pulseaudio support in phonon, mute mixer entry ) : i do care
• when setting a wireless connection may be buggy ( unstable drivers ) and the connection is unreliable : i do care
• when using a video-projector ( for presentations/meetings ) is not evident for the users and easy : i do care

So the UI look & feel is somewhat useless. I just want something that look mostly good, is acceptable, with a good usability. Good wallpapers ? most users just put their childrens photo as desktop background, and put a lot of icons on the desktops. Good theme ? most of the time, they don't care. Consistency ? they don't care : they just want to be able to distinguish closed and minimize buttons

The only time my users were impressed by something visual was the "present windows" effects of kwin ( left upper corner ) which shows all windows at once as they find it useful. Plasmoïds ? they don't use them. i trained them to use the folder view to have faster access to services directories, but they are not using them most of the time, they'd rather create shortcuts on the Desktop. When we switch from KDE 3 to KDE 4, they do only care about the fact that everything was still working as expected.

So endless debates about windows decoration consistency make me laugh hard. I'm giving lessons to futur sysadmins, and I do animate the Linux sessions, and theses guys care more about the possibility to manage Linux, ease of administration, ability to lockdown the desktop, administration tools, and coherence between the different distributions.

Now, some people may argue that Linux sysadmins represent 0.0000000001% of computer users. Sure, but we are managing most of the running Linux computers and servers ... As I already say : Linux can't succeed in the desktop or normal mass-consumer market. Linux can succeed only when you have controlled environment, this means :

• mobile market ( phone, smartphone, tablet, .. ).
• embedded market.
• and last but not least ( where Linux distributions and Linux consulting societies do earn money ) : workstations and server market.

As everybody^wnobody know, Hervé YAHI is no longer the CEO of Mandriva. So I decide to rip off an article from The VAR Guy to issue an open letter to the Mandriva direction. So here are 9 priorities for the new Mandriva staff :

1. A New Community: Sure, Mandriva has a strong open source community. And ??? will should work to strengthen that community, especially when seeing the clashes between Mandriva and its community. Still the new staff needs to strengthen a different type of community — a Mandriva business ecosystem that includes hardware and software partners, service providers, channel partners and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers).
2. Strengthen the Server Story: To date, Mandriva is known mostly as a desktop and mobile operating system, with relatively strong market share in the netbook market. But Mandriva recently launched its Mandriva Enterprise Server 5 and Pulse 2. Meanwhile, ???? offers some support of MES — as do upstarts like ??? and ???. But Mandriva needs more server partners… And whenever a noteworthy customer embraces Mandriva Enterprise Server, Mandriva needs to get the word out.
3. Show CloudCluster/Grid Success or Mobile success: Mandriva has been working closely with grid partners like INRIA and BSC. XtreemOS 2 is available since November. As XtreemOS seems to be a very good Grid solution, maybe the CERN could use XtreemOS instead of Scientific Linux ! Let us see if a research lab is using some Mandriva products ...
   But Mandriva needs to show some tangible examples of Grid/Mobile success. Who’s running MES/XtreemOS/InstantOn/Pulse and how are the deployments performing? Many people will be listening for answers.
4. Recruit Application Providers: (...) Mandriva Enterprise Server needs more ISV (independent software vendor) support. Is Mandriva Software Partner Manager ???? has been working on the ISV effort ? But real progress will require folks like Oracle, IBM/Lotus, Bull, HP, NEC, and other traditional application providers to fully embrace Mandriva.
5. Strengthen OEM Relationships: To Mandriva’s credit, ????. HP, Lenovo and other major PC makers haven’t shown much interest in Mandriva. Can a new staff change that? Hmmm…
6. Compete and Cooperate with Google, Intel: When Google started talking about Chrome OS in greater detail, Mandriva reveals InstantOn. Sweet. At the same time, Mandriva is working on Moblin v2. Impressive.
   Somehow, Mandriva must both compete and cooperate as Google, Intel and other technology giants size up their own Linux strategies.
7. Disclose Customer Wins: Which businesses are running Mandriva and which organizations are paying Mandriva/Edge-IT for support? Mandriva needs to brag more about customer victories as they happen.
8. Related Services: Mandriva is building a range of services and dedicated products to generate more revenue : InstantOn, Pulse 2, Mini, and Edutice. But Mandriva has to stay aggressive with Mini/Pulse 2/InstantOne/Edutice communications and messaging.
9. Mandriva Partner Program: Is Mandriva working with training centers — such as CESI and SUPINFO — to get more IT managers and resellers up to speed on Mandriva ? We want to hear from solutions providers that are building profitable Mandriva business practices…

No doubt, new staff will have a lot of work. Although it’s difficult to track Mandriva’s financial performance, buzz about Mandriva — particularly on desktop — is slowly growing.

The original articles but concerning new ubuntu CEO is available on the VAR Guy website : Ubuntu: Nine Priorities for Canonical’s Incoming CEO