Week of 05/04/2008 - 00:00 to 05/10/2008 - 23:59

This is somewhat old news but I just got around to reading my April 21st copy of Information Week.

Something I hadn't noticed previously in all the news is that Sun Microsystems pre-tested and certified Ubuntu 8.04 to run on Sun's x86 servers. That's the first time that a hardware vendor has bothered to test and certify Ubuntu Linux to run on their equipment.

That's an impressive milestone if you think about it. Ubuntu has taken a lead as the Linux desktop of choice in a very short period of time, something I think a lot of people hoped would happen to Mandriva (Mandrake) or Redhat a long time ago. This event not only validates Canonical as a company, but validates their official entry into the server market.

I've been running Ubuntu on servers for a few years already. I've never waited for someone to certify Linux, I'd just test and go. Lately I find that Tyan AMD based servers work exceptionally well with Ubuntu 64 bit server edition.

I recently migrated my site to a new server and new blogging software. The maemo feed followed my old site redirect, but my new site's RSS feed doesn't automatically provide just the Maemo related posts like the old special feed I had set up.

Working on a fix. In the meantime, you guys might want to stop watching the RSS feed for www.maro.net unless you don't mind a lot of unrelated posts...

Well this is odd... after a little over 24 hours of functioning properly, my blackberry suddenly stopped sending e-mails on the first attempt again. Hitting "resend" would always work.

Yet again, logging into the blackberry web interface, deleting the account and recreating it fixed the problem.

What's up with that? Sending an e-mail results in "Invalid error from server". Immediately hitting resend sends it just fine. I've watched the Cyrus IMAP server logs and found something interesting...

When it stops working, on the first attempt cyrus shows "login: localhost" when I try to send a mail, then it fails.

When it works (and on a "resend") it shows "login: bda356c.bis.na.blackberry.com"

I'm stumped as to how "localhost" could even happen...

This is a near perfect solution. I run an Asterisk Vo/IP system for my office, and eGroupware with Cyrus for our mail system. We migrated from Microsoft Exchange some time ago and I've never looked back.

With eGroupware, we were able to replace 99% of the functionality of our Microsoft Exchange server with open source software. With sieve filters users can set up an unlimited number of server-side mail filters, something you can't do with Exchange anymore, and the web interface works much better with Firefox than Microsoft's web access. Our Asterisk phone system integrates into the mix and will deliver voicemail to the user's e-mail box.

Now, with my Blackberry I can download and play those voicemails without ever having to dial into the phone system, because they are wav files attached to e-mail that is picked up by my Blackberry. I'm feeling so "connected" right now it's not even funny :-)

It's official. I'm chronically disorganized.

Actually, I like to think I'm an organized individual trapped in a disorganized world. Disorganization frustrates me but really causes me to be more introverted than to solve the problem of disorganization around me.

I mean, really - I got a dual monitor setup, only to clutter not one, but both screens with icons of stuff I've recently downloaded, tested, or written.

I've got the spring cleaning bug...

On a whim instead of just deleting my 1500 spam messages in GMail, I looked through the first page... and found 4 that weren't spam.

Wow. That's just from today. I thought I was getting less mail lately - I just assumed nobody loved me anymore.

I need to watch that more closely.

ZD is blogging about why many MCSE's can't or won't learn Linux.

The judgement?

"Basically, to learn Unix you learn to understand and apply a small set of key ideas and achieve expertise by expanding both the set of ideas and your ability to apply them - but you learn Windows by working with the functionality available in a specific release."

He goes on to say:

"Put a Solaris guy who’s never used Linux in front of SuSe 10 with a list of complex tasks and [...] he won’t be either intimidated or deterred; and the job will get done because he knows how the tools he needs should work