This was from the Network “Authentification-isms” BOF – we were talking about LDAP, Kerberos, and all kinds of other nastiness.

As we’re trying to figure out what the hell we are going to do with this seemingly impossible task, Andrew is off scribbling on the whiteboard. This is what he came up with:

Then we had a surprise guest show up and all of our heads exploded. The end.

Sophomore in #linux just asked “Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to send in off-lease/old used donated laptops?” The answer is no. The OLPC isn’t a PC per say. It’s a completely new architecture and way of looking at computing. The thing doesn’t have a BIOS, it’s using Sun’s OpenFirmware (and I just heard all the guys in #linux groan). Built in network meshing – so each machine can become a node in the WLAN or WWAN. Very cool stuff.

The OS is completely revamped as well. I came in late to the preso (traffic was freaking HORRIBLE today), but I did catch stuff like the OS patch model is one gigantic patchfile to bring you to the next level (like OS X). All the apps are enabled for wireless collaboration.

I can’t stress enough how this little machine will change education worldwide. Rather than continue blathering on about it (TOO LATE!) I’ll just link the site in here.

Check it out at www.laptop.org.

I’m glad I did. I’ll have a ton of flexibility (adding a virtual CPU, upping RAM, etc) and backing up the machine is as easy as copying the directory.

Anyhow, once I got the blog, webserver and other stuff migrated to the new VM I figured I’d tackle the hard part — my mailserver. I was previously running the Sun Java Enterprise System stack (affectionately called “The Pile” by us who used to (and still do) support it), so I was used to having a fairly functional webmail client. I’d been looking at Scalix and Zimbra and when Zimbra released a Ubuntu-specific version of their mailserver I knew I was there. I grabbed a copy of the Open Source version from the site, installed Ubuntu Dapper server in a VM, and threw it on the VM.

The install was surprisingly easy – I was done in less than a half hour and the documentation was clear and easy to follow. I used ImapSync to migrate the email from the old server to the new one and boom! It was all done.

Let’s take a quick look at Zimbra. Zimbra aims to be an Exchange-killer, and it seems like it’s got a great start toward that goal. It’s got out of the box IMAP/IMAPS/SMTP/SMTPS/POP3/POP3S. The webmail client is amazing – I may ditch Thunderbird and use it alone.

Here’s what the webmail client looks like:

It’s got all kinds of great features. On top of that, it’s AJAX-y, so Kyle will love it. It’s got a pretty good contact manager:

One of the coolest things about Zimbra is the excellent calendaring solution built into it. Shared directory, appointment, drag n drop, it’s all there, and works surprisingly well for a web app. I’m impressed.

The newest feature in Zimbra 4.0 is the “Documents” feature.  It’s basically a shareable wiki built into the mail client.  It supports embedded documents, uploaded documents and photos, and has different access levels based on what group you’re in.

On the mailserver side, Zimbra supports server-side filters… something that’s a total must for me.

There’s a darn nice web-based admin tool built into the product as well.  It even collects statistics on the server’s … status.

The stats engine also collects data on the built-in antispam/antivirus filters.  Speaking of spam, the antispam engine works very well also.  I was using vanilla spamassassin on the old box and quite a few spam messages were getting through.  No more – the built-in amavisd stuff works like a top.

If you are in need of a mailserver or a collaboration tool, check out Zimbra.  You won’t be disappointed.

Got EVDO going on the new kernel as well, it was as easy as getting the source, copying the config from /boot into the kernel src directory, and running make modules.  Then I stuck the new usbserial.ko module into the /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/drivers/usb/serial directory, and it JustWorked(TM).  I should probably package-ize that module, but I’m too lazy and overloaded to work on figuring that piece out right now.  Feel free to grab my kernel module and do the same, if you’re running 2.6.17-10-generic.  I used the same patch as last time if you want to build it yourself.  Have fun!

So anyhow, let’s start with Linuxworld on Tuesday. I got to attend as a guest of HP, which was very nice. Filet Mignon lunch, anyone? Mmmmm. All I had to do was speak on their blades and how they run under Linux. I meant to write something up, but didn’t have time (see work, as above), so I just got on stage and winged it. Wound up speaking for about a half hour, and it must have been OK cause I got several compliments afterwards, one of which was the district sales manager for HP. He’d said I should be one of their employees. Heh. I like their gear, but… nah.

I then visited Adam and Jorge as they held down the fort at the GNOME booth. Always good to see those guys. Jorge introduced me to Jane Silber, COO of Canonical – that was indeed a pleasure. Hung out with the GNOME crew till just before 5, then had to run and find a landline for my radio interview with John Iasiuolo. Kyle joined me as co-author of Ubuntu Hacks. (Jon Oxer, being an Aussie, had a hard time making the interview. ) The interview went very well, and I had a blast doing it. I was able to sneak off just before the interview and see Jorge and crew win the Golden Penguin award — GREAT JOB GUYS! Show those Novell fellas who’s boss.
Next, on Wednesday, Kyle and Paul joined the fun at Linuxworld. Kyle kicked off the O’Reilly booth action with a kickass talk on DVD Authoring. If you need DVDs authored, and you want to do it under Linux, may I suggest this book? After that, we hung with Adam some more, and banged around until my talk on Ubuntu at the O’Reilly booth. Again, I didn’t prep anything, sadly, but I did a talk off the top of my head on running Dapper on a laptop. It seemed to go well, though Kyle (as my shill) did prompt me a couple of times. Teamwork++. Again, I had a blast speaking – I think I’m beginning to get a taste for it.

Now, for the icing on the whole cake. The Novell guys had a HUGE booth this year, and one of their centerpieces was a special IBM X60 Thinkpad that had a cool custom SUSE paintjob. They had three of these units, and they were raffling off one every day. A bunch of the guys were all, “I’m gonna win that laptop”, and “It’ll be so sweet when I win that.” I wasn’t going to fill out a card, mostly cause I never win anything… but everyone else was filling out cards, and I was hanging out, so I figured, what the hell. Well, come 4:45 that day… the drawing happened, and they pulled my card out of the box. I damn near passed out. Here’s a picture of the incident (courtesy of one of the SUSE guys – I’ll get his name if I can).

Jorge has been bugging me for pics of the laptop, so here it is. SUSE folks, sorry, I didn’t even give it a chance. Popped a Ubuntu CD in it and booted straight to Dapper.

The fancy paint:

Ubuntu Booting on it…

And here’s the GDM splash screen…

So all in all, it’s been a pretty great few days. Now, back to work tomorrow….

I know the quality isn’t great, but hey, it’s a cellphone cam.  What do you want?    It’s just great to see the World’sGreatestOS(TM) publicized somewhere in the Real World.