There’s a very easy way to log on to your LTSP server from Windows.
Just follow these instructions :

• Install [ VNC ] on your Windows workstation
• Install VNC server on your LTSP server. The easiest way is to install it from your Linux distro’s CD, most major distros now have VNC server package available.
• Login to your LTSP server.
• Run the server. For example:
  

  vncserver :10 -geometry 800×600 -depth 16

  This will make the vncserver to listen on port 5910, giving you a 800×600 screen with 16-bit (65000+) colors

• If this is the first time you run it, it’ll ask for a password. Enter the password that you want.
  (tip: to later change this password, type vncpasswd)
• If you connect now, you’ll be presented with a bare screen, because by default VNC will execute twm – instead of showing your server’s desktop.
  To change this: Open file /$HOME/.vnc/xstartup, you’ll see a remark saying “Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop” – so do that, unremark the next 2 lines.
  Save that file.
• If you connect to yourltspserver:10 from VNC viewer, you’ll be presented with your server’s standard desktop.

OK, so it’s not really connecting per LTSP’s usual way, but it still give you access to your LTSP server 🙂

Enjoy.

I was intrigued when I read that [ our Indonesian IT expert was invited by Microsoft to discuss about “platform” ]. Is this the (early) beginning of a major shift in Microsoft future strategy ? Then [ Microsoft’s Platform strategist launched his blog on the subject ], so I think it’s quite safe to say that indeed they’ll be focusing on this topic more.

About platforms – intererstingly, in IT, the platform has changed several times.
At first, the platform was the computer architecture itself. We have x86 (Intel) architecture, also PPC, MIPS, SPARC, and so on. Microsoft got their fortune by milking the x86 platform.

However, people then started to make their software available on multiple platforms. Then Java made a big splash – it proved to the public that a platform doesn’t have to be based on a hardware infrastructure – a platform can be based on software, which in turn runs on many hardware. Also a few operating systems then started to be available on multiple hardware platforms – Linux, *BSD, and even Windows itself (eg: NT used to be available for MIPS, Alpha, and x86).
Of course we must not forget the web as a platform; Microsoft was wise enough to quickly include Internet Explorer on its Windows95 release, making themselves available on this platform.

One problem though; on these new platforms, Microsoft has realized that it’s not been able to effectively monopolize it. Unlike the Wintel (Windows-Intel) platform, where Microsoft can do whatever it pleases; these new platforms are based on (many) open standards. Although Microsoft has attempted to hijack these standards, I think it’s not as successful as it wished.
When most of your income came from locking your customer on your chosen platform, these chain of events probably have caused the Microsoft high command to start to worry.

Microsoft then tried to create a new platform for its future : .NET
However, this attempt is again at risk from the Mono project, headed by Miguel de Icaza. It looks quite good – I think the only thing that won’t run are ActiveX controls. Otherwise, you should be able to get .NET apps to run on it.

With many alternatives now available for their Windows platform (Linux, etc), and .NET not fully in their grasp, they probably have started to see the possibility of the decline of the biggest software company in the world.
If Microsoft can find another platform to lock their customers in, then they’ll be in for another 10-15 years of joyride. I think, therefore, this is among their highest priority at the moment.

Comments/insider’s info welcome.

I just spoke on a mailing list about the fact that LTSP is pretty much a Linux distro on its own.
Then I found this : [ LTSP on Windows ]

There you go 🙂 been like that since 2001 too. Cool.

Panduan berikut ini akan memungkinkan Anda untuk mengakses disket di workstation, pada instalasi FC3 (Fedora Core 3) dan LTSP.

Diterjemahkan & diadaptasi dari http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/LocalMedia, dengan penyesuaian khusus untuk distro FC3.

1. Update instalasi LTSP Anda :

[1a] Atur agar ltspadmin mengakses situs LTSP:
Jalankan ltspadmin.
Lalu pilih menu nomor 2 (Configure the installer options).
Pada pertanyaan “Where to retrieve packages from?”, ketikkan http://www.ltsp.org/ltsp-4.1/, dan tekan Enter.
Teruskan sampai kembali lagi ke menu utama.

[1b] Kini Anda bisa meng-update instalasi LTSP Anda:
Pilih menu pertama (Install/Update LTSP Packages). ltspadmin akan menghubungi situs LTSP, dan menampilkan daftar paket yang terpasang.
Kalau ada yang statusnya bukan “Up to date”, maka pilih paket tersebut, dan lalu tekan “Q”.
ltspadmin kemudian akan meng-update paket-paket tersebut.
Teruskan sampai selesai dan kembali lagi ke menu utama, lalu keluarlah dari ltspadmin.

2. Edit file /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf : Di bawah baris “[Default]”, ketikkan baris ini:

LOCAL_DEVICE_01 = /dev/fd0:floppy

3. Setup script LDA (Local Device Access) :

[3a] Download LDA-setup.sh, dan taruh di /usr/local/bin/

[3b] Download LDA-shutdown.sh, dan taruh di /usr/local/bin/

[3c] Buat agar 2 file tersebut executable:

chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/LDA-s*

[3d] Edit file /etc/kde/kdm/Xstartup, dan lalu sisipkan baris ini:

/usr/local/bin/LDA-setup.sh

[3e] Edit file /etc/kde/kdm/Xreset, dan lalu sisipkan baris ini:

/usr/local/bin/LDA-shutdown.sh

4. Setup LDA sudah selesai. Sekarang hidupkan workstation,tunggu sampai selesai booting. Lalu login sebagai salah satu user.

5. Kini kita akan tes akses ke disket di workstation tersebut:

[5a] Masukkan sebuah disket yang bagus ke drive di workstation ybs.

[5b] Buka Konqueror: Applications – Internet – Konqueror

[5c] Di address bar, ketikkan: smb://nobody@[wks_ip_address]/drives/floppy
(ganti [wks_ip_address] dengan IP address dari workstation ybs)

[5d] Kalau Konqueror meminta password, kosongkan saja / langsung tekan OK

[5e] Akan terlihat bahwa drive disket bekerja.
Kalau kemudian malah muncul pesan error di Konqueror, tekan saja tombol REFRESH (atau tekan F5, atau pilih menu View – Reload)

Kini Anda sudah bisa mengakses disket di workstation.
Selamat mencoba.

To: asosiasi-warnet@yahoogroups.com
From: Harry Sufehmi
Subject: Billing di Linux: OpenKiosk

Berikut ini adalah informasi cara instalasi salah satu program billing di Linux, yaitu OpenKiosk : http://openkiosk.sourceforge.net
nb: program ini TIDAK bisa digunakan di LTSP.

Salah satu kelebihan OpenKiosk adalah bahwa client / workstation bisa menggunakan sistim operasi Linux, FreeBSD/OpenBSD, maupun Windows.
Program billing ini juga gratis.

Continue reading Instalasi software Billing di Linux: OpenKiosk →

Calypso adalah sebuah program email freeware (di Windows) yang tidak begitu populer seperti software email lainnya, namun sebetulnya cukup powerful. Selain itu, Calypso juga tidak “mengunci” email kita – kita bisa dengan bebas meng-ekspor email kita ke format .MBOX, yang bisa dibaca oleh nyaris semua program email yang ada.

Posting berikut ini akan membahas cara konversi mailbox Calypso ke mailbox Evolution, sebuah mail-client yang cukup populer di Linux.

Continue reading Migrasi dari Calypso ke Evolution →

Situs berisi tutorial-tutorial komputer yang bagus : [ CompTechDoc.org ]
Contoh: [ tutorial Linux ].

NX is a thin client solution from [ a href=”http://www.nomachine.com/”>NoMachine ]. From what I’ve heard, it seem to be quite impressive, rivaling Citrix’s ICA protocol.
Now a free version of it is available, called [ FreeNX ]. I’ll be definitely trying this later.

Stumbled upon [ this ] when I was browsing, looks like a FC3 kernel specially optimized for Desktop role. Looks interesting, but I wonder how it’ll affect a machine functioning as server ?

I just managed to upgrade a Debian woody server to Debian sarge (the new stable version of Debian Linux), phew 🙂
It’s pretty painles actually, thanks to the clear information in the [ Sarge release notes ]. Just read it carefully, and you should be ok.

Also, I finally found out why using backports.org is not recommended as a normal practice (even by its own author) – turn out that you may have issues upgrading Sarge if you have backports packages installed. Not the author’s fault, it’s just that it’s not part of official Debian releases, so you SHOULD expect it to be unsupported by Debian’s team, and it’s consequences.

Regarding the long release time (woody: 2002, sarge: 2005), I don’t think it’s that long really. Major Microsoft releases is like that, if not longer. I’m talking about NT4 to Windows 2000, Windows 2000 to 2003, etc. (95 to 98 does not count)
As a sysadmin, I actually like this because upgrading (however painless) is still a disruption, and always has the potential of causing problems.

Anyway, I’m still impressed by this. Kudos & thanks to the Debian team 🙂

Install Flash

1. Cara pertama:
yum --enablerepo=flash install flash-plugin

2. Cara kedua:
# download RPM untuk FC3 dari http://macromedia.mplug.org/
# Login sebagai root, lalu ketikkan:
rpm -Uvh flash-plugin-*.i386.rpm

Memungkinkan FC3 untuk memainkan file MP3

Ketik:
yum install xmms-mp3

Kalau diminta untuk download GPG key,
klik Applications – System Tools – Terminals,
lalu ketikkan :

rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY
rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-test

Tidak bisa chatting

Biasanya karena server IRC ybs mensyaratkan adanya ident server.
Cara instalasi ident di FC3 :

# download oidentd-2.0.7 dari :
http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ojnk/oidentd-2.0.7.tar.gz
# Klik Applications – System Tools – Terminals
# Lalu ketikkan :
tar xzvf oidentd-2.0.7.tar.gz
cd oidentd-2.0.7
./configure
make
make install
# Jalankan oidentd-2.0.7 dengan mengetikkan : /usr/local/sbin/oidentd
# Agar ident dijalankan secara otomatis setiap kali kita menghidupkan server, masukkan baris tersebut diatas ke dalam /etc/rc.local

Well, the more precise term might be “blog aggregator”, since I’m talking about [ Bloglines ], but since I rarely read news on the traditional news media and have considered blog / online media as my main news source- there you go.

I’m very happy that I have easier access now to even more interesting news sources, thanks to the explosion of blogging scene. Bloglines is helping me to access those separate news sources into a single place.
One annoyance though – Bloglines keep grouping the news by the source. It’s not able to show the news from the newest first regardless of its source, or maybe I haven’t found the switch for it. If anyone has found out how to accomplish this / other site which can do this, kindly please let me know. Thanks!

I found so many interesting news from those, here’s a few of it, and then some :

• [ MetaVNC ] – while other VNC transmit the whole screen, MetaVNC is able to transmit just parts of it; a window for example, transparently to your current desktop. So you can be working on Windows, but have Konqueror window opened on it – which is actually accessed remotely via MetaVNC. Way cool.
• [ Dealazon.com ] – the easiest way to find the hottest deals on Amazon.com; it’s not uncommon to find items discounted up to 90% here ! If you live in USA – you lucky bastard 🙂
• UltarVNC’s [ NAT2NAT ] project : NAT2NAT enables you to connect client to server where BOTH of them are behind NAT, with no need to do any portforwarding. I’ve been looking for this kind of stuff for a while now, cool. The UltraVNC team seems to be quite good, with other creative projects such as [ UltraVNC Repeater ] etc.
• If only [ this guy ] provide RSS feed of his website, I’ll subscribe in an instant. He rarely write, but when he do, it’ll be either very clever, or very funny, And definitely very interesting.
• [ The Zen of Freelancing ] – if you’re a freelancer / IT consultant, you must read this. It can make your life much enjoyable. Thanks to [ Kemas ] for the link.

[ LinuxISOtorrent.com :
Wished this existed when I was still in UK (where I had blazingly fast broadband access to the Internet) *sigh*
Oh well, enjoy… hunting for ISOs of linux distros is now much easier than before. (wished somebody would put up SLYNUX though, looks interesting)

[ A Gamer’s Manifesto ] :
If you ever played computer / console games in the last few years, you’ll have lots of laughter reading this. Absolutely funny – and spot on too. Quite a refreshing read.

Walaupun tidak terlalu dipublikasikan, namun ternyata [ peserta lomba karya tulis IGOS cukup banyak ].

Saya lihat, banyak sekali karya tulis yang sangat menarik dan kemungkinan besar bisa sangat berguna bagi masyarakat. Mudah-mudahan, IGOS akan mempublikasikan semua karya tulis yang masuk dan membuatnya bisa diakses oleh siapa saja.

Pengumuman pemenangnya sendiri akan dilakukan pada tanggal 24 Juni 2005. Andakah pemenangnya ?

I just bought Debian woody’s CDs from gudanglinux.com, and then I noticed that Debian sarge has been supported by Debian’s security team since 3rd of May 2005. Doh 🙂 if I knew that, I’ll buy Sarge CDs instead.

But anyway, personally I feel confident enough to use Debian sarge to run servers, now that it’s supported by the security team and has been frozen / prepared to become the next stable version of Debian.

Some people complained about the long release cycle of Debian. Well, if you run servers, the last thing you want is to stop your server and upgrade it every few months. So I’m perfectly happy with that (of course for desktop I prefer others; like FC3, Ubuntu, etc).
But, now I wrote it, I remember that with OpenBSD, you can (quite) easily upgrade your server to the next stable version. Probably you can do that too with Debian – that would be great. I’ll look around for the instruction.