So today i logged in to my browser and fired up my Gmail. This is something i do first every day i come in, or when i boot up any computer. Gmail is a big part of my life, it's simply the best e-mail client i've ever used. A couple of days a go the nice message reached me that it's now possible to enable Google voice chat + video in Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) this was awesome news for me, before i had to use Empathy or Pidgin to do this.

Today a even bigger suprise came to me, i can now actualy dial normal numbers directly from Gmail! You have to install a plugin from Google and then your good to go. At this moment it's free in the USA and Canada, and when you have Google Voice your outbound number will be shown. In the other countries your able to actualy make calls but not able to call back to that number. This will come with Google Voice.

Me as a VOIP engineer thinks that this is a great new move from Google. Allot of small companies would love to use VOIP but don't want to spend to much money on expensive servers. Especialy when the Google Apps intergraton whill come.

Of course we all know that Apple just simply took Rsync, created a fun GUI and called it a awesome new product; Time Machine. Well this weekend it was time for me to create the same product but then on a Linux kind a way. If your not a commandline warrior, don't worry, i'll explain the script.

This is the script:

#!/bin/sh

HOST=192.168.2.24

SOURCE=/home/peter

DEST=/home/peter/backup

date=`date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"`

rsync -azP --link-dest=$DEST/current $SOURCE $HOST:$DEST/back-$date

ssh $HOST "rm -f $DEST/current && ln -s back-$date $DEST/current"

What you need for this script is a remote host with Linux and Rsync on it. I've created a new virtual machine on my home server just for back-ups. What you have to do is change the 3 things in the top, to your preferences.  Host = the server you want to back-up to, SOURCE is the source you want to backup and DEST is the destenation on your remote server. As you can see, i'm backupping my home folder, on the remote host 192.168.2.24 and i put it in /home/peter/backup on the remote server. I've addes this script to my local PC and run it every saturday by putting it in a cronjob.

Now you create a new folder every saturday with the date + time of that moment. It hard links to your old backup and only re-backups the changes. So you won't need lots of TB's just to simply back-up your PC. The latest back-up can also be found in the folder "current"

So i woke up early this morning wondering what ever happened to the Asterisk 1.8 that should have came out yesterday. So i grabbed my Android phone and checked out Twitter. Hey! there it was, the new Asterisk beta. I hurried out of bed, to get in to the shower and grabbed a bole of Froot Loops  and a fresh nice cold can of Red Bull. Time to compile the latest and of course greatest version of Asterisk!For those who have never heard of Asterisk it's a PBX (Private branch exchange) and that basically means that it's a phone system. But just calling it a phone system will not be enough in the case of Asterisk so i would recommend that you read this page. So what is so great about this update? Well for me, they included SIP security. This means that the RTP stream will be encrypted so no easy audio sniffing anymore for SIP traffic (a feature that OpenSips has for a while now, but don't get me started on that).  So basically this is a list of the most important changes:

• Secure RTP
• IPv6 Support
• Connected Party Identification Support
• Calendaring Integration
• A new call logging system, Channel Event Logging (CEL)
• Distributed Device State using Jabber/XMPP PubSub
• Call Completion Supplementary Services support
• Advice of Charge support
• Much, much more!

But of course there is more, please check out this article on the Asterisk website, and of course like always test it, report bugs and most off all love it, because isn't open source just great?

Today the Joomla! project released a security update of there popular CMS system. Like always with a security update of Joomla there are a couple of vulnerabilities fixed. So if you are running a Joomla! site (like i do) go update right now! You can find the updated packages on this page.

I've been using XCP (Xen Cloud Platform) for a while now in a semi production environment and i was very happy with how it was working. But it was still alpha software and the developers didn't give it there stamp of approval.

Until today, after a short break from the office (even nerds needs breaks now and then ) i came in and checked my usual websites for updates. No Asterisk update, no Debian update, nothing changed on slashdot but wait! What's that? The thing i've been waiting on for the last couple of months! It's XCP 0.5! I know what your thinking what is this? Can i eat this? Nope you can't! Well you can try but i wouldn't do it if i where you. No XCP is a platform for virtualization. It's a ISO with on that CentOS and some tools you need to run VM's. But it's more than that, you can load balance, failover, create awesome high availability stuff and a lot more.

So, if you are new to virtualization and you would love to try it? No problem all you need is hardware, and read the how-to's. Are you a Linux engineer thinking of new cool stuff, please check this out also, you will love it!

Oh, and if you need a great management tool, don't forget to check out OpenXenManager.

The last couple of weeks i was using Spotify at home on my Mac. At the office i was running Spotify in Wine and of course on my Android device i could also run Spotify. But it bothered me that there was no native Linux version. Well today this has changed. Spotify announced the Linux version and at this moment there is only a Debian/Ubuntu repo (that means updates right from Spotify).

The instructions can be found here. And the blog post can be found here. Are you running Arch? No worries somebody already repacked it, get it here! What's cool about this, is that actually Spotify developers it self always create there code in Linux. So they kinda needed the port them selfs.

On Ubuntu 10.04, don't download the second package from the instructions this will fail and you actually don't need it. It's bugged at this moment and it will be fixed. Are you testing and would like to report some bugs (you know, kinda the Linux way ) check out this page. Keep an eye on the comments at the Spotify article to check out fixes for the gconf bug.

Edit: So after a work day of use i love it, but there is one thing i miss, a nice menu entry, so i created one myself. Here is a how-to

1. Download/save this logo to your Linux machine.
2. Click with your right mouse button on the Ubuntu/Debian menu at the top
3. Click edit Menus
4. Click on Sound & Video
5. Click on New Item
6. Make sure the type is application, as name put Spotify and as command type spotify click on the icon to the left, and search for the downloaded icon above
7. You now have a Spotify shortcut in Applications -> Sound & Video -> Spotify

Awesome!

Edit Fri 16 July 2010: So Today i got a Spotify update and a few things i notice: full screen mode is fixed! And you can now install all the Ubuntu packages without a problem! Great work, when they released it i was a bit afraid that the support was going to lack but a update within a week is great. Oh yeah, it works for unlimited accounts also now. Good work team Spotify!

If you press on a e-mail address on the internet it will open your default e-mail client. This is fine and handy but not if you are a Gmail user like myself.

I was thinking that this should be easy to accomplish for Gmail and i did some research. Bellow you can find the instructions how to do this.

First open up your terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and create a new file with your favorite editor:

vim .mail.sh

Now paste the following in tho this file for Chrome:

#!/bin/sh

google-chrome "https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`"

For Firefox:

#!/bin/sh
firefox "https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`"

Now save the file, and go to System -> Preferences -> Preferred Applications and change your mail reader to custom. In the command field but the following:

/home/peter/.mail.sh %s

of course, change my name to the name of your home folder.

All done! If you open up your browser, press a e-mail link you will notice that Google Chrome or Firefox will open up, with a new compose message, filled in with the right e-mail address you pressed. This will also work if you use Gnome-do with Google Contacts synced!

The last couple of weeks, a lot of people are falling over the new looks of Ubuntu. They don't like them or they don't like how the Ubuntu team is acting.

A couple of weeks a go i've updated my home laptop (at work i use Arch Linux) to the new version and i must say that i'm in love with the new looks. I do understand why some people don't like it but why all the hate? Just change the theme.. I mean, it's open source.

My Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop (Clickable)

The team at Ubuntu is also putting a lot of work in the Ubuntu music store. A great new alternative for the iTunes store! (To check if it's done yet: isthemusicstorereadyyet.com) They've also added a new social input box in the Ubuntu bar, so you can update your status straight from your desktop.

I was about to switch to Arch Linux at home also, but i'm think i'm going to stick arround and see what Ubuntu 10.04 is going to do, the beta looks promising.

Like to give Ubuntu 10.04 a try? Get the beta here

]]> http://www.tuxtopia.nl/2010/03/20/the-future-of-ubuntu/feed/ 0 http://www.tuxtopia.nl/2010/02/07/open-source/ http://www.tuxtopia.nl/2010/02/07/open-source/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:31:47 +0000 Peter http://www.tuxtopia.nl/?p=23

This weekend, i was at a event called Fosdem. I'm an open source fan as long as i've been using computers but this weekend something hit me. It's not just the software that makes me happy when i'm using open source software, for a big part it's the community around it.

I saw a lot of people talking about the things they love this weekend, the projects they spend most of there time on and i realized how cool that actually is. I would like to spend my first words in this post on those guys a big thanks to all of you, everybody who works with open source software your the greatest.

Now let's get back to the reason why i wrote this blog post, it's not an how-to, or a guide but just a little peace of my mind i would like to share with you guys.

I spend about 99,9% about my time on or around open source software and i would like people to know the big + about this, first of all it's free! It's fast, and it's safe. If you need a replacement for your os, you got Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian & and allot more. If you would like to replace your office you can use open office, if you think you need all the stuff from the expensive Photoshop think again and take some time to check out the gimp.

What i'm trying to tell here is, don't just only listen to people around you telling you what kind of software to use but try to discover yourself. Be open, be free.

If you one of the lucky ones that ore allowed to use something like Ubuntu as an OS on there computer at work, but hate using your works webmail, or a virtual machine with Windows in it to just read your e-mail, please read on..

Installation:

First you need to prepair your Ubuntu, by simple copy pasting the following commands in a terminal:
This guide is tested under ubuntu 9.10 32 bit, and 64 bit.

Go to your software sources list, and click on add, and add the following ppa:

ppa:kbuel/ppa

sudo apt-get update
now install the evolution mapi plugin:
sudo apt-get install evolution-mapi

You are all done, the plugin is now installed correctly, i had to reboot first to get it working, after you've done so, fire up evolution and configure it, by creating a new "mapi exchange" account. Fill in the credentials provided by your system administrator.

Configuration:

Click in evolution on Edit -> Preferences. Then click on Composer Preferences and change the settings as shown in the screenshot bellow:

click for a bigger size.

This is not so important for you, but more for the people you are e-mailing, I've tested e-mailing and forwarding mails to allot of clients with this settings (outlook 2003/2007/2010, android devices & iphones) and these settings showed the best results for the people you are e-mailing.

This is my brief guide, how to install and configure evolution for usage of exchange 2007, if you would like more detailed information in this guide please don't be shy and post so below, so i can add more information to this guide.