JDPFu.com 2025

Messaging is easy, but Enterprise Calendaring is hard. I’ve just learned about the guys over at SOGo who have a GPL/LGPL competitor to Zimbra and MS-Exchange. Sure, you pay for support, but using the server software doesn’t cost anything.

• If you want to connect MS-Outlook clients, that’s fine.
• If you want to connect smart-phones, that’s fine.
• Thunderbird seems to be their main integration client, which is nice. That’s what I use.

Anyway, go take a look.

I’ve just pulled the VM appliance VMDK down and will be playing with it on ESXi in the next few weeks. They claim it was setup for VirtualBox, but I’d rather not run this sort of thing on that VM technology. This could be perfect timing for my company – we have been planning a Zimbra upgrade and honestly, it scares me.

There are lots of search hits on SOGo on freshmeat.net – that’s encouraging to me.

Check back here later. If SOGo is great, I’ll certainly write more. If it is crap, it will be in the comments below.

This could be good, really good. I’m hopeful.

I was going to create a Top 10 List of 2010 here. Then started looking through the articles and some constant themes can out.

1. Virtualization For Desktops and Servers
   • Tagged as Virtualization
   • Laptop Virtualization
   • VirtualBox Performance Tips
   • VirtualBox on Ubuntu
   • KVM on Ubuntu
   • Win7 and VMware
   • VM-Explorer for Backups
2. Disk Encryption
   • Laptops
   • Prevent Data Loss
   • Password Managers
3. Backups Rock!
   • Back-In-Time
   • KNOW You Have Good Backups
   • Rdiff-backup Isn’t Perfect
   • VM-Explorer for Backups
4. Risks and Concerns for Cloud Computing
   • Cloud in Centralized or Federated Services
   • Real World Cloud Computing Costs
   • Private Cloud Computing
   • Cloud Computing Risks
   • Understanding Software As A Service Risks
5. Quicken Runs on Linux – ’nuf said.
6. Security Isn’t Easy
   • Passwords – Never the Same and Use a Password Manager
   • Desktop Security Tips
   • Browser Security Settings
   • WiFi Router Security Checklist
   • Privacy Is Gone Online
   • Don’t Use Adobe Software
   • Windows Software to Avoid
   • Free Security Tips Ebook
   • Dealing with Computer Viruses
   • Been Hacked?
7. How To Build A Home Server – Cheap
   • Part 1
   • Part 2
   • Part 3
   • Part 4

Previous Best Articles Here

Happy New Year!

A picture is worth …. 1,000,000 words in this case.
This link shows the way that different distributions are related, started, and some died. It only shows the most popular distros, perhaps 300 of them. I didn’t count.

Where to download the latest vSphere Client?

I just spent the last 90 minutes hunting the vmware.com web site for the latest x64 Windows7 vSphere client. VMware has lots of things you can download prominently displayed … just not the latest vsphere client.

It still bothers me that I’m required to run MS-Windows to use the mandatory client.

In the end, I had to select a new download of ESXi, agree to give my first born to them, sign a contract, then they showed a list of about 5 more downloads – including the damn vsphere client that I wanted. While I was there, I grabbed the 4.0 to 4.1 ESXi upgrade package.

For the last 2 years, ESXi has been rock solid … until about 10 days ago. That’s when a 32-bit Linux VPN server stopped responding. The other machines are available and working, just that one is not. Got an error trying to use the v4.0 vsphere client to connect.

The error that the old vsphere client, v4.x, displayed was error parsing clients.xml This error happened on both x64 and x32 machines running either Win7 or WinXP. Basically, only the unsupported ssh login was available. According to the google results, a new vsphere client will fix everything. I hope it does.

I can’t wait for KVM to be as good.

Over the years, we all come across software that we decide to uninstall and never use again (unless forced to do so by a company). I expect that some software on my hate it list is loved by someone. Most of those tools that make it to this list became bloated, lost their core purpose or did something nasty like installed a search bar or some other spyware.

Anyway, here’s my list for Windows.

I’ve been interested in saving some money on home phone service since around 2001 when I dropped the babybell service for a VoIP solution. Over the years, I’ve switched providers and ended up with the cable company phone service to get the best quality for the buck. Now they’ve raised the prices and I’m looking again. I’m not interested in Vonage at $25/month when a $3/month plan will cover me. Further, I already own the necessary equipment to get this all working. You may already own the equipment too.

It always seemed that a $3/month SkypeOut account could be linked to a PBX (Asterisk/FOSS) to make this happen. A few months ago, I asked about this on Lifehacker, but didn’t get any acceptable answers.

As some of you may know, I am a consultant, primarily with UNIX, virtualization and systems architecture. The last few days, I’ve been setting up a fairly low cost backup solution for a 100% MS-Windows shop running VMWare ESX 3.×. They have 15+ VMs and the old backup system had been shutdown and wiped more than a few months ago. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the prior backup solution except that the day-to-day system users didn’t know much about the setup. My task was to get that system working again.

The Tools

1. Trilead VM Explorer – the VMware compatible VMDK backup software. Not the free version.
2. Fire Daemon Pro – to run the backup task on a schedule.
3. MS-Batch – .CMD files – to selectively control which VMs are backed up on specific days without point-and-click requirements.
4. Service Accounts – this is very important in the MS-Windows world.

How to ask for help for Linux issues.

All of us need a little help now and again. Linux users aren’t any different than MS-Windows or Mac users in that regard. The difference is that to get help for Linux, you need to do a little more research first.

We’ll assume you don’t have a nearby Linux knowledgeable friend that knows everything. You’ll need to ask people you do not know for help. Or, perhaps you are the Linux guru in your circle of friends and your questions are more complex than most.

Below, I’ll suggest a few methods to use to get help and outline the data you should include in your requests to optimize the ability of others to actually be helpful to you.

Xen as a Dom0 is not supported in Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) by Canonical. Both Canonical and Redhat have decided to get behind the KVM virtualization method instead. I think this was a choice driven by the required maintenance effort, since KVM hooks have been in the baseline Linux Kernel for about a year and Xen inclusion into the Linux kernel doesn’t seem likely at any point in the future. Supporting Xen kernels is just too tough.

I use virtualization … a lot. I started writing an article entitled Converting WinXP from VirtualBox to KVM today, but couldn’t due to issues.

The latest thing I’m trying to accomplish is to migrate to KVM for all the current VM needs that I have. This may not be a good idea since we’re running Xen, VirtualBox and ESXi VM hosts. Today I attempted to convert a WindowsXP Professional install running under VirtualBox 3.x to KVM. I’ve attempted this conversion before, but it failed, badly. This time, I’m using VMware Converter and it failed before it even got started.