The Open Source Advocate

Introduction In my job as a network engineer, I am constantly looking for ways to increase the availability of the network. This is especially true in the data center, where services are expected to always be available. One of the ways to increase the network availability of a server is by using multiple network interfaces. This technique has many different names, but I am just going to call it NIC teaming. Purpose of NIC Teaming NIC teaming increases network availability by removing single-points-of-failure (SPOF). These SPOFs are components that will cause a service outage if they become unavailable. If we consider a single network connection from your server to your switch, we can identify quite a few SPOFs: Server NIC failure Network cable failure (such as being cut or unplugged) Network switch failure (such as a planned firmware upgrade or unplanned outage) Methods of NIC Teaming The reason I am writing this blog is to help people understand the different options for NIC team...

I have followed the ZipTie project ever since it's first release . If you have not heard of ZipTie, it is an incredibly powerful open source network management tool that allows you to discover and manage hundreds of network devices, all with an easy to use interface. Does that sound too good to be true? First, I'll give you some background. The project was created in November of 2006 and was sponsored by a company called Alterpoint. This was great because they funded four developers to work on ZipTie for over two years. Here is a link to my first review of ZipTie : I started using ZipTie on a university network that contained hundreds of network devices. ZipTie automatically discovered my devices by crawling the network. Then it automatically made a backup of my configs, and kept a history of revisions that I can use to recover from. Additionally, I can send commands to hundreds of devices at once, saving me countless hours of time. The amazing thing about ZipTie was that I cou...

I just wanted to share that I have no idea why a random selection of my older posts decided to jump on the Ubuntu Planet again. I know that this sort of thing happens when I edit an old post, but I had nothing to do with this recent incident. When is it wrong to fix a typo? On the planet I apologize for all the noise, and I'll try to figure out what happened. Thanks for your understanding! :)

Introduction It has been over a year since I last posted about an exciting open source project called ZipTie . We use ZipTie to automatically discover our network devices, backup their configurations, and perform a variety of functions related to these devices. Many things have changed with ZipTie since my last post and I want to share those with you. I'll start with the positive changes first, because I am a positive type of person. New Features The most obvious improvement is the slick web interface that replaces the previous Java fat client. This interface is powered by Adobe Flex , so it has a great look and feel to it. Having a web interface also simplifies deploying ZipTie, because you don't have to worry about installing a Java application and all the required dependencies. Check out the screenshots : ZipTie has also added a great community resource called ZipForge , which is a place where anyone can publish custom tools that perform specific functions on network...

Introduction If you have followed this blog for a while, you will know about my passion for open source software. I have always predicted that open source software would revolutionize the software industry, but I didn't quite understand how this would happen. My initial views expected that open source would disrupt traditional software companies so much that it would eventually put them out of business. I am now realizing that the future of open source software looks much different than I first expected. Proprietary software will be quietly built on open source software One of the primary benefits of open source software is that it reduces the cost to produce software. Gartner agrees with this point; open source software is the most efficient method to create software. Traditional proprietary software vendors are realizing this fact , and are beginning to quietly build their closed software products using lots of open source software. I say "quietly" because these...

I blogged about open source web conferencing software a while back, but I wanted to share this significant update of the DimDim project. They have justed released version 4.0 of their software which adds significant functionality and makes DimDim a serious competitor to proprietary web conferencing solutions like Webex and GoToMeeting . Because there are so many new features, I am only going to list my favorite ones below. For a full-list of features, go visit the DimDim website. Recording and Archiving Any Dimdim session can be recorded and made available with the click of the mouse. Simply press the record button. You can email the recording URL or grab an embed code and paste it on your blog or website. You can even upload your recording to YouTube or Blip.tv. Mac Screensharing Mac users can share their desktop with other Mac (and even Windows) users - even if they aren’t using Dimdim. With Mac live screencasting you can share your desktop with anyone (it’s like iChat withi...

Today I needed to reset a password on an Ubuntu system. While doing this, I was reminded of just how simple it is to get root access on a default install of Ubuntu. I wanted to share these steps on this blog to remind people that if someone has physical access to your Ubuntu system, they can get root access in just a few seconds. Boot up your computer When asked, hit "Escape" to enter the GRUB menu Select the option that displays "recovery mode" Select the option labeled "root prompt" You are now logged in as root with the ability to change anything It is really just that simple. This root console is great for advanced users who need to reset a password, but the average user will have no idea what to do. For instance, here is how I found the main user of this system: root@laptop:~# cat /etc/passwd | grep 1000:1000 tristan:x:1000:1000:Tristan Rhodes,,,:/home/tristan:/bin/bash This output shows that there is a user named "tristan" who is the ma...

For the past three versions of Ubuntu, I have tested seven news websites to find out if I could watch their video feeds using Ubuntu. You can read the results for 6.10 and 7.04 , and 7.10 . Each time, I was disappointed to learn that a majority of the video feeds did not play correctly on Ubuntu Linux. This time, however, something amazing has happened. I don't know which stars aligned to cause this, but every single news website that I tested with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS now has a correctly working video feed! I wasn't expecting this great of an improvement when I began this series of tests. I always knew that it would happen eventually, but never this quickly. So what is the reason for this change? The video news sites have obviously realized the value of having a cross-platform video player. Market share gains by Linux are still small, so it is more likely the growth of Mac OS that led to this change of thinking. Be sure to thank your local Mac OS user for their help in fo...

For those of you who don't know, Vyatta is an open source network appliance that functions as a router, firewall, and VPN device, all running on a customized version of Debian Linux . I have been following the progress of Vyatta for over a year now, and things are looking very promising. The latest release is called VC4 (Vyatta Community edition) and it includes a bunch of useful new features: New command shell allows you to modify Linux settings and network settings from one common interface Redesign of routing protocol offers greatly improved stability and performance Role-based user access Equal-cost multi-path routing Remote access VPN Support for IP tunneling protocols PPPoE support, commonly used with DSL connections WAN load balancing of outbound traffic across two or more WAN-facing interfaces Quality of Service policies provide congestion management and traffic conditioning As you can see, a lot of exciting changes have been made in the short six months since the previ...

Yesterday we held a release party in Salt Lake City, Utah to celebrate the release of several open source operating systems. The original announcement only mentioned Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and Fedora 9 , but we realized during the party that OpenBSD 4.3 was released on May 1st. We were all happy to celebrate the goodness of open source, without arguing over which distro was better. The Fedora guys showed us some cool improvements, and the Ubuntu guys also demonstrated some neat improvements. The great thing about open source is that all of these improvements will be shared by both distributions in a future release. I want to say thank you to our excellent sponsors who made this party a success. First, the amazing location was provided by the web-development company Code Greene . Second, the delicious Chipotle burritos were donated by the Utah Open Source Foundation , ran by Clint Savage . Lastly, thanks to the Fedora project who contributed funds, and Ubuntu/Canonical who contributed...

Introduction Both Mark Shuttleworth and myself have discussed this idea before. Because Mark brought it up again in a recent interview, I feel compelled to developer this idea further. The main concept is that Linux distributions, and open source in general, have a lot to gain by synchronizing their release schedules. Positive impact on the image of open source Can you imagine the news articles that would be written if Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSuse all released a new version on the same day? Every six months, the world would see that open source has successfully delivered a new version on schedule. Mark Shuttleworth made a great point when he stated : "We know when the next LTS will be probably with better confidence than we know when Windows 7 will ship. I would take that bet." Once the distro releases become synchronized, it would create a huge incentive for upstream projects to synchronize on the same schedule. Currently, we have upstream releases happening all over th...

Or, "Why Red Hat is pursuing the wrong business strategy" Red Hat has recently announced that they have "No plans for a traditional consumer desktop" . Let me explain why I think Red Hat needs to change their business strategy. First, a short history lesson. Before the arrival of Windows NT Server, Novell Netware claimed 90% of the market for PC based servers. However, Netware made a near fatal mistake when they did not provide a GUI interface soon enough. This comes from the same Wikipedia page linked above: While the design of NetWare 3.x and later involved a DOS partition to load NetWare server files, this feature became a liability as new users preferred the Windows graphical interface to learning DOS commands necessary to build and control a NetWare server. So server administrators became familiar with Windows 95 on their desktop, and they naturally preferred Windows NT 4.0 which included the same interface. Challenged by Ubuntu Red Hat is in a similar p...

What if this was your response to the command history meme? $ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn 2184 dir 1631 copy 560 edit 486 type 430 makedir 343 move 281 ipconfig 273 deltree 201 erase 164 format And how come we never see a meme like this? cat /etc/passwd;sudo cat /etc/shadow;netstat -plunt;ifconfig;sudo iptables -L Note: Please do not post funny memes if they have destructive commands. The meme above will display private information about your system that should never be posted online.

When I first tell people about open source software, one of the most common questions I get is this: "I just don't understand why people would create software if they don't get paid for it! How does that work?" This question makes sense, because we all know that people need to make money to provide for their families. And every good capitalist knows that the profit incentive is what drives people to create and innovate. This is true for many industries, but it does not explain why open source software is created. Here is how I answer this question: The birth of an open source project Most open source software projects were created by a programmer who needed a piece of software to accomplish a certain task. Rather than purchasing a commercial software product (assuming that one existed), this programmer decided to create the software from scratch. This programmer might have been paid by their employer to create the software, or the work might have been done on pe...

I have noticed a trend developing in the business models of successful open source companies. These companies are implementing a business model that is based on dual licensing their software. This press release provides an excellent summary of what dual licensing means. The guiding principle behind dual licensing is "quid pro quo," or a fair exchange. Under this model, vendors offer their products under both an open source license and a commercial license. This allows open source projects to use the software at no cost, which contributes to widespread use and testing of the software and the fast growth of a large installed user base. Companies redistributing the software as part of commercial products can also get the benefits of the open source software by purchasing a commercial license, which releases them from requirements to publish their source code. Commercially-licensed customers generate revenue for the open source vendors, which contributes to the rapid developmen...

For the two previous versions of Ubuntu, I have tested seven news websites to find out if I could watch their video feeds using Ubuntu. You can read the results for 6.10 and 7.04 . Now that Ubuntu 7.10 is out, it is time for me to test these websites again. ABC News Sound: NO Video: NO BBC News Sound: NO (Worse!) Video: NO (Worse!) CBS News Sound: YES (Improvement!) Video: YES (Improvement!) CNBC Sound: NO Video: NO CNN Sound: YES Video: YES FOX News Sound: YES Video: NO MSNBC Sound: YES Video: YES As you can see, we had one site that improved (CBS News) and one site that has actually gotten worse (BBC News). Congratulations to CBS news for joining the 21-century. I am not sure what to say about BBC News. Apparently, the BBC is now using a new video player called the " BBC iPlayer ", which only supports Microsoft Windows operating systems. Because of this, there was a lot of controversy about the highly restricted player, including this petition . I still consider i...

Introduction Have you ever wanted to attend a webinar but quickly discovered that the web-conference service doesn't even support your operating system? This has happened to me several times and it irks me greatly! I always make sure to tell the company that they should switch their web-conferencing service to one that supports multiple platforms including Linux. It is somewhat hypocritical when an open source company offers a webinar about their open source product, but they don't allow customers with open source operating systems like Linux to attend. I ran into this ridiculous issue when trying to attend a Zimbra webinar. I told them that it was wrong for them to have such great multi-platform support in their product and at the same time only allow Windows users to participate in their webinars. We'll see if they take that advice to heart. Fortunately for us, there are companies that offer cross-platform support for web-conferencing. Even better, there are a small...

I have recently read the announcement that Kubuntu 8.04 is NOT going to be an LTS release, thereby deviating from the release schedule of all the other Ubuntu variants. I believe that it would be more beneficial to synchronize the LTS releases between the official Ubuntu variants. First of all, Ubuntu needs to solidify its public image as much as possible. This is even more important while it has such a small mind-share in the overall technology market. Most computers users have no idea what an LTS release is, and they could be confused by mis-matched numbers. "Why is Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and Kubuntu 8.04 not LTS? Why is Ubuntu 8.10 not LTS and Kubuntu 8.10 is LTS?" Some IT departments might choose to only support LTS releases of Ubuntu. Now they must work with their KDE users who would need to upgrade on a different schedule than their Gnome users. I understand why Kubuntu wants to delay their LTS release. They have a shiny new version 4.0 that provides many new features...

I keep hearing people talk about the need for a legal test case against the GPL. This has not happened yet in the US, and some people think it is necessary to legally legitimize the GPL license. These GPL-supporters hoped that the recent Busybox vs Monsoon Multimedia issue would satisfy this requirement. This turned out not to be the test case because it settled outside of court. After hearing much debate and concern about how and when this all-important test case will take place, a very simple idea entered my mind. Why don't we just create this test case ourselves? Start with two pro-GPL parties, and have one party infringe against the GPL license. Then have the other party sue the first for its violation of the GPL license. Of course the specifics can be determined in advance to make the decision most favorable to defending the GPL. I expect that the legal costs for this case will be minuscule compared to the value it would bring. Once the case has been decided in favor o...

On October 20th, the Ubuntu Utah team held a " Gutsy Gibbon " release party in Salt Lake City. It was a cold and rainy day, and some people decided to stay home where it was warm and dry. Even so, we had around 20 people in attendance, including many new faces. This was a great time to meet people and ask them, " Why Ubuntu? ". Here are two Ubuntu laptops, but the guy at the end was using Windows. I tried to convince him to give Ubuntu a try, but he was too busy working on his resume. Need I point out that in this case, (Using Windows) = (Looking for a job). Nothing like anecdotal evidence, right? Please ignore the Fedora guy who came to crash the party. Just kidding Clint! I believe he was actually running Ubuntu in a virtual machine. This is my Ubuntu baby, and her name is Chloe. She hopes to become a member of the Ubuntu Women team even though she is only 6 months old. Isn't she the cutest Ubuntero you ever did see? :)