lix blog

In the past week I practically bullied all my friends into reading the first post about the Linux experience and to my surprise, it did trigger a certain wonder in the non-nerd community that I know. The biggest curiosity had to do with its looks. I felt like trying to describe someone for a blind date… “Is not so boring! Seriously, it looks really good”, “No, I know you are not a computer person but I’m telling you, it changed its appearance completely and it looks amazing now”. This was actually the thing I was most surprised about when I first interacted with my Ubuntu interface, cause it’s really intuitive and friendly to the eye. Almost all of its software has a resemblance to one that we are familiar with already (Libre Office to Word, Banshee to iTunes, GIMP to Photoshop and so on). Most people think of Linux in the same way I did: is not for me cause I’m an “average” user, it’s the OS for programmers. That may have been the case some years ago, but now even a blond girl (hey that’s me!) can find her way around it without feeling hopeless or lost in an unfamiliar environment. However, the success of a blind date doesn’t have to do only with looks, because the important things usually transcend the limits of what’s visible to the eye. The open nature of this operating system makes all the difference in the world, and even if we are not familiar with the technicalities of it, even if we don’t understand how Linux is better than other OS because on the surface it “looks” the same and we are not particularly turned on by the cleanliness of the processes running in the back-end, we should try to be aware of the social and political implications of our daily choices and own those choices rather than let others decide for us.

It all started as a discussion on security. I’ve never considered this an issue of importance before, even as an avid computer user. But it was made clear to me that the world is changing and apparently not in the “right” direction. Eager to get out of my shell of microsoftian comfort, I decided to try GNU/Linux, when Lx kindly offered to install it for me. He guided me through the process like the patient “older brother” (note that I purposely didn’t use “big brother”) teaching the younger sister how to ride a bike. Which is why my old windows OS was kept intact in a different hard drive. Kind of giving me a “safety” feeling, like those little wheels on kid’s bikes. I needed the reassurance that my computer world as I knew it, was still going to be available for me, two clicks away. It wasn’t difficult to get on the road of open software this way. And the curious thing is that I haven’t accessed my “little wheels” (the windows hard drive) ever since I got the new one cause I don’t seem to need it. I can ride smoothly on the GNU/Linux and it has that “cool toy” aura to it. But it is important that I could do everything I needed to, and remarked that some things work even better now! (like video chatting and the general performance of my computer). So far, I don’t miss anything (beyond some unimportant shortcut and some spanish character) and I’m overall quite happy with the change. I had prejudices, like most people, because we tend to think that things are to be valued by their price, rather than by their nature. Like most people, I too thought that open software “can’t” offer enough because it’s free. As if there was an intrinsic correlation between high price and high quality. Reality dictates this is a fallacy that we choose to ignore.

That’s all for now. I’ll continue my quest of riding GNU/Linux and sharing my experiences with all of you who want to read about it.

Links:
GNU/Linux Ubuntu
GNU Project
Linux Newbie Guide
GNU/Linux Ubuntu Forum

On my Nagios Server I use twitter to send status alerts. It works nicely with Identica & Twitter.

The setup is easy. First install twidge with

root@host:~# apt-get install twidge

Then write a twidgerc file with the according twidge configuration

nagios@host:~# vi /etc/nagios3/twidgerc
[DEFAULT]
oauthaccesstoken: %(serverbase)s/oauth/access_token
oauthauthorize: %(serverbase)s/oauth/authorize
oauthdata: [("user_id","XXXXXX"),("screen_name","YOUR_SCREENNAME"),("oauth_verifier","XXXXXX"),("oauth_token","XXXXXX"),("oauth_token_secret","XXXXXX"),("oauth_callback_confirmed","true")]
oauthrequesttoken: %(serverbase)s/oauth/request_token
sendmail: /usr/sbin/sendmail
serverbase: https://api.twitter.com
shortenurls: yes
urlbase: %(serverbase)s/1

Make sure the file is readable by Nagios user. (!)

nagios@host:~# chown nagios /etc/nagios/twidgerc

Then add the following lines to /etc/nagios3/conf.d/contacts_nagios2.cfg (on GNU/Linux Debian).

define contact{
contact_name twitter
alias Twitter
service_notification_period 24x7
host_notification_period 24x7
service_notification_options w,u,c,r
host_notification_options d,r
service_notification_commands notify-service-by-twitter
host_notification_commands notify-host-by-twitter
email twitteraccount_to_contact
}

… and add “twitter” to the members in the contactgroup (in the same file).

members root,nagiosadmin,twitter

Then add these lines to etc/nagios3/commands.cfg:

define command {
command_name notify-service-by-twitter
command_line echo "#Nagios $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$ $HOSTNAME$($SERVICEDESC$) is $SERVICESTATE$" | twidge -c /etc/nagios3/twidgerc update
}
define command {
command_name notify-host-by-twitter
command_line echo "#Nagios $HOSTSTATE$ alert for $HOSTNAME$" | twidge -c /etc/nagios3/twidgerc dmsend $CONTACTEMAIL$
}

Nagios will tweet the service notifications and send a directmessage to the according user with the host notification.
Here’s an example:

=^.^= Lx

Since I’ve discovered twidge I find Twitter very useful, as my Server tweets me it’s status.
Therefore I wrote the following simple shell-script:

#!/bin/bash
#CC-BY-SA 11th of March 2011 by Lx
time=`date +"%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S %z"`
if [ ! -e "~/log/$1_status.log" ]; then touch ~/log/$1_status.log; fi
lastlog_on=`tail -n 1 ~/log/$1_status.log | grep ONLINE`
lastlog_off=`tail -n 1 ~/log/$1_status.log | grep OFFLINE`
control=`ping -c 3 -W 1 google.com | grep "[1-3][[:space:]]\(packets received\|received\)"`
if [ -n $1 ]; then
 echo "Sending pings to "$1
 pong=`ping -c 3 -W 1 $1 | grep "[1-3][[:space:]]\(packets received\|received\)"`
 echo "Ping result: "$pong
 if [ -n "$pong" ]; then
  echo "Host "$1" is online"
  if [ -z "$lastlog_on" ]; then
   echo $time" "$1" status ONLINE" >> ~/log/$1_status.log
   echo "Host "$1" is online" | twidge dmsend twitteraccount
  fi
 elf [ -n "$control" ]; then
  echo "Host "$1" is offline"
  if [ -z "$lastlog_off" ]; then
   echo $time" "$1" status OFFLINE" >> ~/log/$1_status.log
   echo "Host "$1" is offline" | twidge dmsend twitteraccount
  fi
 else
  echo "Network down"
 fi
elif [ -z $1 ]; then
 echo "Usage: $arg0 hostname|ip"
fi
exit;

Then I use a cronjob accordingly:

*/5 * * * * sh ~/path/to/shellscript.sh foo.bar.baz > /dev/null 2>&1

You can easily also tweet the server uptime, load or whatever 😎

uptime | twidge update twitteraccount

Have phun!

I am very happy and proud, that Georg Greve, the former President of the Free Software Foundation Europe, was awarded with the German “Bundesverdienstkreuz” today.

My felicitation, Georg!

I recently tested some of the new “features” that the lately released “iLife ’09” software of Apple is offering to their users. The new iPhoto ’09 for example offers Geo-tagging of your images, so that one can see when and where photos have been taken. This further leads to the assumption, that some tracker could abuse this data. If it’s Google or any other “big brother” who is watching you, we have to admit, that we’re living in the age of George Orwells “1984”.

Kind of funny was though messing around with the “face recognition” feature. I assorted some of my images in iPhoto and tagged the recognized faces with names, when suddenly iPhoto offered me the following proposal: (see picture).

The picture shows Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu) and Georg Greve
(FSF Europe) at the Linux Tag in Wiesbaden 2006. iLife ’09 suggests to tag the detected face of Georg Greve as “Richard Stallman”, which is kind of funny. 😉

I think personally think, that a machine, based on a binary structure, will never achieve the possibility of suggesting truly diversified ambiguities because it only may answer “yes” or “no” such as “1” and “0”. We’ll have to wait for Quantum-electronics that such things may happen…

(read more on “informative binarity and lifeworld-philosophical androgyny“)

[update: there is a youtube clip that shows the iPhoto feature.]

“The Washington Post” and “der Standard” have reported today, that chinese hackers have tried to break into tibetan activist organisations networks and computers to steal encryption keys. Encryption keys are used to sign and encrypt electronic messages like E-Mails. China operates the world’s largest and most restrictive “Firewall” to censor internet communication and obscure information. Further it is known that in China a certain hacker group called “Titan Rain”, that is most probably financed and supported by the chinese government has been attacking the Pentagon and the german “chancelor house. Many tibetan organisations and activists notice a higher amount on suspect trojans and viruses. But thanks to the operation of Free Software such as the GNU/Linux operation system and Free Sowftware applications, such as GnuPG for encryption and the Tor Project for anonymous internet, the damage has been kept low.

I urge tibetan activists, journalists and news reporters to use encryption technology to secure and assure internet communication. To bypass the chinese firewall (e.g. to access the internet from Lhasa) it is most advisable to use Tor or similar anonymiser software. (see my blog post from the 18th of march 2008).