Planet TLLTS

I really love Mint, just let me get that out of that way first. That being said, there are usually a couple things I catch, per release, that filter down from Ubuntu, that I wish were taken care of before Mint hits my desktop.

This time it is DNS.

I installed Mint 13 and was cruising around my home network and noticed that my dns searches weren’t appending my local domain. I had to use the FQDN to get to *anything* on my home network. Well, this frustrated me a bit because I worked hard to set up my own home network, I have resources on it including DNS, and I would like to actually use it. So, I went on the hunt for WHY I had to use a fully qualified domain name on my network…

For some strange reason, someone, somewhere thought it would be a great idea to mess with the way we handle DNS. In fact, the way Linux/Unix/unix has traditionally handled DNS for ever. That being if you put stuff ™ in the friggin /etc/resolv.conf file, your DNS just magically works. Well, not any more.

I have done 3 Mint 13 / Cinnamon installs now (assuming that Mate is the same here) and, in fact, THERE IS NO RESOLV.CONF file! What has happened is this, as far as I can tell. Someone in the Ubuntu camp (I assume) decided that it would be a great idea to start using dnsmasq through the NetworkManager to take care of DNS because they wanted to skirt some VPN issues with single homing. In layman’s terms, when you use a VPN, you are *ONLY* supposed to be able to connect to that network to be secure. Using dnsmasq, you could conceivably be on your VPN and route local traffic around too (multi homing). IPSEC guys frost themselves over stuff like this, BTW.

So, I set about to correct this injustice. Here is a simple script you can run which will turn off the dnsmasq garbage, put your resolv.conf files back in place where they belong and start those services back up so stuff works like we have been doing it for 20+ years.

#!/bin/bash

clear

# Test for UID=0
if [ "$(echo $UID)" != "0" ]
then
echo “You must be superuser to run this program. Try ‘sudo ./fixmint13.sh’”
exit
fi

sed -i -e 's/dns=dnsmasq/#dns=dnsmasq/g' /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

ln -s /run/resolvconf/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
resolvconf --create-runtime-directories
resolvconf --enable-updates

reboot

This week I am in NY visiting helping out my mother after her knee surgery. This morning around 7am I ran to the post office for her and stopped at the gas station to pick up a pack of smokes. On the way home, about 2 houses down from my parents place I see this guy aggressively yanking on the leash of his dog he’s walking down the sidewalk. I keep an eye on him as I drive past and then I see him throw his dog down to the ground and start kicking it (think superbowl field goals here) and then he doubles up his fist and just starts pummeling the dog. I slam my breaks on and jump out of the car and yell at the guy to stop and he tells me to mind my own “effing” business. I tell him he needs to simmer down and he says he can’t get the dog to walk (no kidding, if he beats the thing like that). I tell him he needs to understand that dogs have the mentality of small children and ask him if he would beat a child like that. Again, I get the mind my own business stuff. I tell him I will call the cops and he says “do what you want”. So, I pull up 2 houses and park in my parents driveway and watch this guy go to his house. Turns out he’s my parents’ new neighbor on the street, almost directly across from them.

So, I call the cops. They have me call the dog warden. I call the dog warden. She has me call the State Police. They said they would send someone by but “couldn’t really do anything about it.” I asked them if this guy has this much of an anger issue, what happens when he gets mad at his wife/girlfriend/kids/etc.? They said they could send someone out to talk to him. That was over 4 hours ago now. Sheesh!

I am certain if this had happened outside Philly, where I live now, there would have been some kind of reaction from the authorities. Here in nowhere NY I guess it is completely legal and acceptable to be cruel to animals. It really makes me sick. Honestly, in hind sight, I should have just run the prick over and taken the dog.

CentOS 6.2

Right before I left, I decided I wanted to press an old Dell laptop into service for giggles. It is a Dell Latitude D810, which has a 2.mumble Ghz processor, 60 or 80Gb hdd and 1.5 Gb of ram (I confess I did upgrade that a bit from 1Gb). The really great thing about this particular laptop is it has a 1900×1200 resolution on it’s 15.4 inch screen. This makes for a great work laptop because it has so much screen realestate.

Well, what to run on this machine? It originally came with Windows XP, but, as you can imagine, I just cannot see fit to run Windows on my laptops, so which Linux? I decided on trying CentOS. Specifically CentOS 6.2 i386, which is current as of this writing. As it turns out, that was a really great choice!

The CentOS install was exactly what I had come to expect from it, short and sweet. The only issue of note is an error you get about half way through that says “insufficient memory to start Kdump” or some such thing. This is really nothing to worry about and can be safely ignored. Other than that, after a reboot from the installer, the system was ready to rock-n-roll. As in completely! Everything was working. I had sound, wireless, X, you name it! No muss, no fuss. To me this was wonderful as the last time I put CentOS on a laptop, I had to mess around a little bit to get wireless going. This time I ended up in luck because apparently my Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2915ABG is completely supported out of the box. Woot!

Anyhow, I ended up following my own recommendations I blogged about earlier here to get all my required softwares going like I prefer. The only noteable there is that, apparently, the EPEL repo (that’s Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux for those in the know) has changed the URL to:

http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-6.noarch.rpm

or

http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-6.noarch.rpm

respectively.

Also of note, I seemed to have a bit of trouble getting dropbox on here. The solution was to NOT use the dropbox package available in the repos, but to go directly to dropbox and download the package available for Fedora, which worked just fine.

Once all that was done, this old laptop worked WONDERFULLY, and, in fact, I am typing and working on it now.

Often I hear people say things like “get more use out of your old computer with Linux”, and, while this is certainly true, I tend to discourage that because running a modern operating system like Linux on older hardware can many times give the wrong impression. Things run slow and laggy and often that is interpreted as being Linux’s fault, when, in fact, you are just trying to shoehorn it on to your old 486. You REALLY get a superior Linux experience when running it on modern hardware and it becomes VERY easy to contrast it then to other modern operating systems. At any rate, I wanted to say that this is NOT the case here. Linux on this older hardware runs so phenomenally well that I am seriously inclined to recommend purchasing this particular laptop used for persons looking for an inexpensive but capable mobile computing environment. I see them listed on ebay and amazon for very close to $200, which is, in my opinion, quite a bargain compared to the performance I experience from my much newer and more expensive netbook.

In conclusion, I would have to say, don’t discount older hardware, and certainly don’t discount CentOS as a viable, capable and speedy desktop (yes I did say desktop) Linux distribution!

The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall by Edgar Allan Poe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a mouthful of a story, very wordy, yet at the same time hysterical. The science involved in this while ludicrous is utterly imaginative on Poe’s part. I could only imagine people reading this during his time period and being duped into believing this adventure to be true. Avery enjoyed it and so did I!



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The Forest Monster of Oz by Robert Evans

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am torn about this book. It is an Oz book, but it is not written by Baum, and that is plainly evident. It is not badly written, just differently. The story takes place soon after the second book of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, and starts to fill in some of the story on how Ozma settled into her tenure as Queen. There are a handful of new characters and peoples that are met along the way, who are at the outset very typical of Oz denizens and very fascinating. But still, you can readily tell it is not Baum.

First, the book tends to be very morals based, almost to the point of preaching. At times, the ethics posited can be very heavy handed and almost feel like a wrap on the knuckles warning or a lecture.

The period is off compared to the other books having been written at some time around the end of the 20th century, or could be early 21st; I cannot seem to find an accurate date. But this surprises me anyway as it seems to have been written around the 1950′s or 60′s. Regardless, there are references to technologies and even some political events, that are a far cry away from Baum’s period.

Towards the latter third of the book is a long story about baseball. While an interesting segue I do not see how it fit into the rest of the story and the character is merely a vehicle for this story, leaving upon the continuation of the quest when they arrive at their destination.

There was a point in the story where it felt like a chapter had mystically disappeared. One minute the party (Ozma and the animals) is fighting the land sharks and the next minute a major arc of the quest is resolved. Somehow their long journey took them in a complete circle both story wise and geographically. Avery and myself were a bit perplexed.

While a fun read, it was definitely not a Baum book. If you have read all the Oz books by Baum and want to continue the journey, The Forest Monster Of Oz is a decent jaunt.



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