After getting Cacti up and running successfully on Fedora Core 5, I had a problem with the graphing. Caci was receiving the SNMP data correctly (the graph legends would show the proper data values), but the actual neato colors and lines were absent in the graph image. After some research I found a fix: Everything in the rra file must be owned by the cacti user, or the user running the poller crontab. Pretty simple:

chown -R cacti.cacti /usr/share/cacti/rra

Once the rra files were owned by the cacti user, the graphs started to appear in all their colored and lined splendor!

Here’s a quickie tutorial on how to add Virtual Hosts to Apache on Ubuntu. This tutorial assumes that you have a basic understanding of Apache configuration and that your Apache is installed and able to serve websites.

1. cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
2. sudo vim yourdomain.com.conf and enter your VirtualHost directive. Below I’ve put the most basic example, see Apache docs for details and additional features:
   <VirtualHost *>
  ServerName yourdomain.com
  DocumentRoot /home/youruser/public_html
</VirtualHost>
   Save & exit.
3. sudo vim /etc/hosts and add your new domain to the 127.0.0.1 localhost line so it looks like this:
   127.0.0.1 localhost yourdomain.com
   Save & exit.
4. Enable your new virtualhost:
   sudo a2ensite yourdomain.com.conf
5. Reload the Apache configuration:
   sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

That’s it! Repeat for each of your VirtualHosts.

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Now playing: Al̬may̬hu Esh̬t̩ РTchero Adari N̬gn
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I recently purchased a cheapie Dell Inspiron 530 to use as a new local devbox with the intent of installing Fedora 7 on it (the machine came with Ubuntu Desktop pre-installed). Foolish me, I just assumed that if Ubuntu was compatible with the hardware, then Fedora surely would be as well. WRONG. Fedora was unable to detect/install both the SATA controller and the integrated ethernet port. After a few hours trying to get Fedora to install, I decided to give up and give Ubuntu Server a try. Of course it wasn’t easy, so here are some of my notes in getting Ubuntu Server installed onto the Dell Inspiron 530.

I wanted to keep it simple so I just installed all of the defaults presented by the installer, including the LAMP package. Everything installed fine, however, the Integrated Network card was not detected/installed, so here’s how to get it up and running by compiling and installing the driver.

1. First we need to install some prerequisites that are required in order to compile the driver. Make sure your Ubuntu Server CD is in the CD drive and run the following:
   sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.20-15-server
sudo apt-get install gcc
2. Download the ethernet driver from Intel. The one I used is e1000-7.6.5.tar.gz. If you can’t find it at Intel, just Google the filename and I’m sure you’ll be able to find it somewhere.
3. Burn the driver to a CD, mount it on your Ubuntu machine, and copy it to a local dir:
   sudo mkdir /mnt/cdrom
sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
sudo cp /mnt/cdrom/e1000-7.6.5.tar.gz /usr/src
4. Compile and install the driver:
   cd /usr/src
tar xfvz e1000-7.6.5.tar.gz
cd e1000-7.6.5/src
sudo make install
sudo modprobe e1000
5. Now configure your network card:
   sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces and your file should look like this (substitute your IP of choice):
   # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
 
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
 
# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
mapping hotplug
script grep
map eth0
 
# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.66
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
6. Setup your DNS servers:
   sudo vim /etc/resolv.conf and it should look like this (I am using OpenDNS here but you can substitute your own):
   nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
7. Restart the network:
   sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
8. Upgrade your system for good measure:
   sudo apt-get upgrade

That should be enough to get your Ubuntu Server up and running on the Dell Inspiron 530 with full network connectivity. Once you’re up and running, here are some other tweaks I did, although some of these may be personal preference.

1. I don’t like Ubuntu’s sudo setup (I prefer log in in as root when needed). Out of the box the root account is disabled and your default account is given admin rights to run commands via sudo. To get around this, simply reset root’s password:
   sudo passwd root
   Now you will be able to su - and log in as root directly.
2. Install SSH
   sudo apt-get install ssh
3. Disable root login to SSH:
   sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set the following:
   PermitRootLogin no
4. Change the MySQL root password:
   mysqladmin -u root password "newpassword"
5. Enable Apache’s mod_rewrite:
   sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload
6. Install some other useful goodies:
   sudo apt-get install vim
sudo apt-get install php5-mcrypt
sudo apt-get install php5-curl
sudo apt-get install php5-gd
sudo apt-get install php-pear
sudo pear upgrade-all
sudo pear install mdb2
sudo pear install pear/MDB2#mysqli

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Now playing: Apparat – Steinholz (Monolake Remix)
via FoxyTunes

After a recent automatic update of Trillian, I was unable to connect to AIM. The console stated:

Error Code: 10054

After searching around and trying a bunch of things, I was unable to re-connect until I found the following in the Trillian Technical Support Forum:

1. Click Trillian > Connections > Manage My Connections.
2. Select your AIM account, click Change button.
3. Under the Connection tab in the Server section, click Reset, then Save Settings.
4. Click Trillian > Trillian Preferences > Plugins.
5. Disable AIM & ICQ by unchecking it.
6. Re-enable AIM & ICQ by checking it.
7. Click Close.
8. Click Trillian > Connections > Global Reconnect.

This worked for me and I was able to connect to AIM once again.

If you’re trying to write some text using PHP/GD & the imagettftext() function, you will of course need some TrueType fonts to work with. I’ve found a great set of fonts available for free: Webcore. Webcore contains all the fonts web designers constantly use, things like Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, Georgia, etc..

To install, simply download to your server and install the RPM (Fedora):
shell> wget http://avi.alkalay.net/software/webcore-fonts/webcore-fonts-3.0-1.noarch.rpm
shell> rpm -i webcore-fonts-3.0-1.noarch.rpm

These fonts will now be available to you in /usr/share/fonts/webcore/.

Make sure you specify the full path when calling imagettftext(), eg:
<?php
 
// Set the content-type
header("Content-type: image/png");
 
// Replace path by your own font path
$font = '/usr/share/fonts/webcore/arial.ttf';
 
// Create the image
$im = imagecreatetruecolor(400, 30);
 
// Create some colors
$white = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);
$black = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
imagefilledrectangle($im, 0, 0, 399, 29, $white);
 
// The text to draw
$text = 'Hello world!';
 
// Add some text
imagettftext($im, 20, 0, 10, 20, $black, $font, $text);
 
// Using imagepng() results in clearer text compared with imagejpeg()
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
?>

Your mileage may vary if you are using a different distribution, but the docs state that this RPM should work on other distros.

If you’ve ever tried to edit a Windows-created file in Unix or OSX, you’ve probably encountered a messy translation in line breaks: A file full of “^M” characters. There is an easy search/replace you can use in vi/vim to format the file Unix-style:

:%s/\r/\r/g

One argument I see people using against the iPhone is the cost. Granted, $499-$599 is a bit pricey, but what really gets me angry is when people use the flawed argument that the total cost of owning an iPhone is “$2,600-$3,200” if you factor in the cost of the service contract. While that may be true, so what? Lets use some analogies:

• That new car you bought wasn’t $20,000, it was $200,000. You forgot to factor in the cost of fuel and insurance over the life of the car!
• That new computer you bought wasn’t $999, it was $10,000. You forgot to factor in the price of your ISP and electrical bills!
• That new flat-screen TV you just bought wasn’t $1,200, it was $8,000. You forgot to factor in the price of your cable box and service over the next 2 years!
• You really should stop drinking beer, it’ll cost you $5,000 over the next couple years!

See how ridiculous those arguments sound? Arguing that the iPhone will cost $3k is just as ridiculous. While the claim may be true, no one truly considers ancillary costs when making a purchase like this. It’s a disingenuous and dishonest argument used by people who are trying to find fault with this wonderful new device.

Not to mention the fact that no one is producing similar costs for rival phones in their arguments. I wonder what the TCO for a Crackberry is? I’d like to see that number compared to the iPhone’s. Maybe then we can start a decent dialogue about the iPhone vs. its rivals when it comes to cost.