Nearly six hours to fix my internet connection…

…and it was (almost) all my fault. :(

The story goes like this: many years ago when I first got ADSL I setup up a dedicated firewall/router using IPCop using a spare 486 box. It worked, and worked well.

Recently it started showing it’s age. Odd errors, spurious failures and taking far too long to boot up. I had a spare Pentium III box lying around, and I’d never made the jump to IPCop 2, so this lunchtime I decided to switch the hardware and software. Bad, bad idea.

Everything installed fine, but the NIC needed replaced (no big deal). The big problem though was needed the firmware for my USB ADSL modem, and I had no connectivity. After diagnosing the faulty NIC, completing the installation, and realising the firmware issue, I tried to bring the old router back up. It didn’t want to play though, so I was stuck without any Internet at all!

I ended up using the Personal Hotspot feature of my iPhone over very slow GPRS. Not fun.

I got there though, (despite the firmware not installing *after* I’d downloaded it at ~2Kb/s!) and I have a shiny new router to configure. Now I just need to catch up on the list working hours…

As part of my new role as a team manager I want to make sure I’m readily available for both my direct reports, and the internal customers my team services.

This means getting clever with my IRC setup.

Since I first got an iPhone I’ve used Colloquy for IRC, which has “bouncing” (sharing a single connection between multiple clients) and push notifications, however these require using Colloquy, which in turn requires OS X. I wanted something less restrictive.

I discovered ZNC - a bouncer application - that does lots of nice connection sharing things and - with plugins - supports push notifications. Great! Except that the version packaged for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (which all of my servers run) is way out-of-date.

Packaging is one of the areas of Ubuntu I’ve never really got involved in, but I took the opportunity to a) backport the current version for Precise Pangolin to 10.04 LTS b) setup a Personal Package Archive. After a bit of hair pulling, I succeeded in both.

Now I had my connection sharing up and running (along with nice features like automatically changing my nick when I disconnect and auto-replying to people while I’m disconnected), I needed push notifications. Fortunately Colloquy provide a ZNC plugin that does exactly that.

Except it doesn’t work with my iPhone 4S. The plugin compiles, loads etc. and works fine with my iPad (running iOS 5), but it refuses to register my iPhone as a push device. :(

I then discovered another ZNC module for interfacing with Prowl, an app I’d installed, but never really played with. Fortunately this does work. The notifications are a little slower than Colloquy, but the app is very flexible and now I’m wondering where else I can make use of it.

Unable to find an existing package, I’ve backported the current version (0.202) of the ZNC IRC Bouncer from Precise to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

You can get the packages from my ZNC personal package archive.

Ubuntu One for Windows:

The personal cloud that brings your digital life together. For Windows XP, Vista and 7.

A significant accomplishment for the Ubuntu One team.

I missed an option in my previous post: Ubuntu One: Mobile

To be fair, I deliberately missed it - despite my day job, I am openly addicted to products from Cupertino. Since my day job revolves around web development, most of my work takes place in virtual machines (mainly because I’m targeting 10.04 LTS, but also because MacBook Pro support in 10.04 LTS is flaky), which means I’m still using OS X as the host operating system to get the most out of my hardware. (I am running 11.04 natively too, but I still use OS X + VirtualBox more.)

I also run a Windows Vista (Home) PC in the living room, which is the shared/gaming (Steam, World of Warcraft and Minecraft - all cross-platform) computer. There’s also various iOS devices to consider.

All of these are supported by Dropbox and Spotify, so I don’t really bother with Ubuntu One which is, naturally, Ubuntu-focused. They are going to put more emphasis on other platforms soon, but Dropbox and Spotify work now.

Still, Ubuntu One (+ Mobile) is another option, and freedom of choice is important.

This past week I had the pleasure of travelling to Budapest, Hungary to attend the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) for Oneiric Ocelot. Even better, my wife and baby daughter came along (my other two children had the *ahem* pleasure of staying at home and going to school).

This trip marked a number of firsts:

• It was my first UDS as part of the Platform Services team (I attended previous summits as part of the QA team)
• It was my first time in Budapest (and Hungary)
• It was my first time flying with “budget” airline Jet2

Let’s dive into these in reverse order.

Jet2 does the typical budget airline trick of advertising extremely low prices, and then hiking them as you actually try to book a realistic trip. In my case, I just wanted to get from Manchester to Budapest without transferring. The rest of it was organised by Canonical’s travel agent, so I had no interest in the choice of airline.

However, we were pleasantly surprised (especially compared to our trip to Dallas earlier this year with American Airlines). The planes were clean and comfortable, all staff incredibly helpful (I suspect our baby daughter helped get people on side) and the whole experience a lot better than we expected. We would happily fly with them again.

Budapest was an interesting place, but not somewhere I’d rush to visit again. The hotel was fantastic, but the city itself was less so. I can’t put my finger on it, we just didn’t enjoy it as much as Prague last year.

UDS itself was its usual, hectic, draining-but-rewarding experience (and it’s been a while since I attended one). As I mentioned, this was my first as part of Platform Services, and the attention on certification related topics was significant. Sessions that were basically just the certification team at previous summits were standing room only this time. Even our daily roundtable was packed out!

Our big push this cycle is the Ubuntu Friendly community hardware validation programme that will enable all Ubuntu users to help identify and promote hardware that works (well) with Ubuntu. I thoroughly enjoyed leading the various discussions around the programme, and the feedback we’ve had from the community has been overwhelming positive so far. Now we just need to make it happen!

Other highlights for me were the numerous design-related sessions that I attended, a number of the lighting talks on Friday, the “how do we pronounce Oneiric” improv session during Mark’s keynote, and the random Ubuntu user I met in the lift who just happened to be staying in the hotel - the sight of ~500 Ubuntu developers/users was a bit overwhelming for them!

One big realisation for though was how much my (non-certification-related) contributions to the Ubuntu community have dropped off in my time at Canonical. Hopefully I can do something about that this cycle too.

Victor (my boss) and Ara (my colleague) talking about our new community hardware validation programme Ubuntu Friendly.

My friend Alan Pope (who many in the Ubuntu community should know) has kicked off a new screencast project focussing on Ubuntu that he’s calling UCasts:

http://ucasts.tv

As you would expect, it’s 100% produced using FOSS.

Always good to get more exposure...:

I’m justifiably proud of the work I did on the public certification listings for Ubuntu. Posts like this reinforce that. :)

The nice folks over at Ubuntu UK Podcast discussing the Ubuntu Certification Database which I recently overhauled.

Lifted from their latest espisode “S03E14 - His Nose in the Book” (the audio is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license).

The new Ubuntu Stack Exchange site is now open to the public!

After just 7 days in private beta, we’ve already got 334 users who have asked 229 questions and written 542 answers. We’re off to a good start, and it’s time to unleash this baby on the public and see if it flies. (Sorry; mixed metaphor.)

Tell all your friends, blog about it, tweet about it, and write the URL (http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com) in chalk on the sidewalk in front of your neighbor’s house. Or paint. No, never mind, better use chalk.

Most importantly, go to the site now and start earning reputation and badges! We’ll see you there! Right now!

http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com <— that is the URL again

http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com <— it has not changed in the last 10 microseconds

All the best,

The Stack Exchange Team

You’ve got to love it when an organisation doesn’t take themselves too seriously.

Oh, Ubuntu… :)

Ubuntu Countdown:

Not long to go now…

Ubuntu’s New Web Office Integration:

Basically, you can now use Zoho in lieu of a local office application, with local document storage. Interesting.

It would be nice if this used something like Prism or Chrome’s Application Shortcuts.

My (new) current desktop setup:

• MacBook Pro 15” 2.66 GHz (mid-2009)
• Alto Connect Notebook Stand
• Dell E176FP 17” LCD Display (soon to be replaced with a 22” monitor from a friend)
• iPhone 3G (will be upgraded this year)
• Apple Bluetooth Keyboard
• Apple Magic Mouse
• Moleskine and pen

Out of shot are:

• 250GB Neso 2.5” external drive (used for virtual machines)
• 1TB Western Digital Elements external drive (used for an ongoing video project)
• Sony Headphones
• A now unused Apple Mighty Mouse
• Bluetooth Headset
• Various headsets and headphones used for VoIP, music, etc.
• Numerous books, including some I’ve written :)

In case you didn’t guess, I’m a big Apple fan these days despite the fact that my day job is working for Canonical on Ubuntu. All I can say is that VirtualBox is a wonderful piece of software!

Sharp Netwalker:

Just seen one of these in the flesh, and I have serious gadget lust. If it were a little bit cheaper and I didn’t already have a netbook…

Pocket sized, running Ubuntu, and 7 hours of use. A nice little conference sub-netbook.

Lucid Lynx Timeline:

Very cool timeline of the Lucid Lynx development cycle for Ubuntu. Makes a great desktop wallpaper. Via @evand on Twitter.