bodom_lx blog and things|

I've never been a big fan of rpm-based Gnu/Linux distributions, since I've always preferred the stability of Debian and Debian based distros, with their great dpkg system.
The problem with Debian on Macbooks is that I do not see both the stability and performance anymore, as I have to use Lenny/Sid. Etch is too old and I don't have the time (*sic*) to play with it to make it work well. Lenny should be next to be released but I don't feel the very famous stability AND lightness of Debian distributions on this release, like I was accustomed in the past years. Is this because I own a Macbook? Maybe, but a Macbook Santa Rosa is nothing more than an Intel-powered notebook with some strange input devices and a strange non-bios system

Regarding Ubuntu, I believe that this distribution has become naff and really slow. See this Slashdot discussion on this topic.

Yesterday I stumbled to Scientechie review of Fedora 10, which convinced me to try it out.
The software shipped with Fedora 10 is aligned with the one provided with the other distributions: Gnome 2.24.0, kernel 2.6.27.5, NetworkManager 0.7.0 (svn) and so on. Read the release notes for more information.

Fedora 10 really surprises me, as it is the first Gnu/Linux distribution in many, many years that makes me feel again the great stability and performance of the Penguin. Therefore I'm writing this review that is also a how-to, as it contains some fixes for Fedora 10 and Macbooks.

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It's a very long time since I abandoned Ubuntu, 1 year and 9 months being precise, although I continued to use Ubuntu derived distros.
I decided today to give Ubuntu 8.10 beta a try. Obviously, every time I decide to try a Gnu/Linux distribution it happens that a new release comes out: I downloaded Alpha 6 yesterday, I fell into problems with it and a apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade brought me Ubuntu 8.10 beta, correcting some of them
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I set up a site for testing my theme on a fresh installation of Wordpress. This immediately brought very interesting results, as I always tested my theme on my blog which had customization/plugins I could not remember.
Nevertheless, I'm going to use this test site for validating the theme against W3C's HTML and CSS validators.

The site is up on http://test.bd-things.net/

Introduction

This guide will help you to install OpenGEU and every other Ubuntu based linux distribution on your Macbook (either "normal" or pro). Even Ubuntu will work with this how-to.
The tutorial is aimed on how to succesfully partition the hard disk and to correctly boot the distribution. For a better post-install configuration I suggest you to follow the Ubuntu Wiki.

This tutorial is also posted on the OpenGEU Wiki
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You can find your favourite linux distribution at linode.com, a great hosting service where I'm transferring my blog and all other services I need. They offer great cheap VPS solutions, and you can choose Archlinux from the available linux distributions.
Archlinux is currently in testing: for example, ssh will not work after a fresh install. Here I'm going to explain how to fix this and how to access your VPS.

After the installation of Archlinux, if you try to connect to ssh, you will receive this error:

ssh yourUsername@yourIP
ssh: connect to host yourIP port 22: Connection refused

That's because Archlinux does not install the openssh server by default. Let's install it!
Linode offers a workaround to connect to your machines, called Lish, the LInode SHell. From this shell, you will be able then to connect to your machines.

ssh yourLinodeUsername@yourLinodeHost.linode.com

Where yourLinodeUsername is the username you chose for Linode registration, and yourLinodeHost is the host address of the machine (you can see it in this page, after a login: https://www.linode.com/members/remote.cfm, it's in the form hostNUMBER).

You will be then prompted to Archlinux console. Use your root access and install ssh:

pacman -Sy
pacman -S openssh

Add sshd to your deamons array in /etc/rc.conf

DAEMONS=(... sshd ...)

If you try to connect to your account via ssh, you will get another error at this time, because you need to allow external internet connections to the ssh daemon.
Your /etc/hosts.allow should look like this:

sshd: ALL

Start opensshd (/etc/rc.d/sshd start) or reboot the machine, you're finished!

Just after 15 days I'm publishing a second English tutorial. This time I'll speak about the Fellowship crypto card and how to make it work with a card reader (don't you know what I'm talking about? Read this page about the fsfe card).
There are some nice tutorials around the net, I assembled them and there you will find how to install a card reader (in this case the famous SCR335) under Ubuntu, but it should work with every distro which uses Udev.
With this tutorial, you will be able to access your smart card reader without being root!
This tutorial is COPY & PASTE capable, if you don't want to read all the comments, you can just copy and past these commands in your terminal, it should work without adjustments
EDIT: you don't need pcscd/libpcsclite-dev, I would really thank Michael Kallas and Matthias Kirschner for their help!
First, install libusb-dev:

sudo apt-get install libusb-dev

I reccommend to install pcsc for accessing the card reader:

sudo apt-get install pcsc-tools pcscd


Now we need to set up the Udev rules and scripts, for accessing the usb card reader.
Download gnupg-ccid.rules in the right dir:

cd /etc/udev/
sudo wget http://www.fsfe.org/en/content/download/17665/125518/file/gnupg-ccid.rules

Download gnupg-ccid in the scripts dir:

cd /etc/udev/scripts/ (create it if it doesn't exists)
sudo wget http://www.fsfe.org/en/content/download/17248/121800/file/gnupg-ccid

We need to set the correct permissions and a symbolic link:

sudo chmod +x /etc/udev/scripts/gnupg-ccid
sudo ln -s /etc/udev/gnupg-ccid.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/gnupg-ccid.rules

All the configuration files are in the right place and with the right permissions by now.

You will now create a group scard, give this group permission to access the smart card reader, and include the users who should have access to the card reader to this group.

sudo addgroup scard
sudo addgroup $USER scard

If $USER doesn't work, replace it with your user login name.
Then create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/smart_card.rules using this command (thanks to gerloff)

cd /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo wget http://download.bd-things.net/smart_card.rules

Install libpcslite-dev (you need it because of some Udev problems)

sudo apt-get install libpcsclite-dev


Restart the system. You can verify the correct installation of the card reader with:

gpg --card-status

I hope you will find this tutorial useful

Credits:

• FSFE's Tutorial:Setting up your card reader on GNU/Linux (udev)
• A gerloff's comment on that page
• The GnuPG FSFE card tutorial