I’ve been running Debian Etch via SSH from a Windows box for a couple days now

I’m pretty lazy. I turned off the monitor and have pretty much been running a Debian Etch box over SSH on the local network from my Windows box.

I’m using PuTTY to start the session, then Xming to run X apps. Before all this worked, I had to install sshd on the Debian box and then enable X over SSH.

The last time I played around with this, I got over my thing about running a full GNOME desktop over SSH. That just doesn’t work. But I can certainly run any X app I want with Xming.

It’s pretty sweet. Next thing I want to do is run a terminal over the serial port. I almost had it figured out with my old Powerbook 1400, but not quite. I’ll have to try with a Windows box. I just need a DB25-DB9 with the proper genders to get my null modem cable hooked up.

Who’s got the most cloud?

It’s Amazon.

I’ve been researching a story on backups in the cloud, and let me tell you, Google may still be contemplating it’s Gdrive service, IBM is making moves to get its cloud offerings off the ground … BUT GOOGLE IS ALREADY THERE, OPEN FOR BUSINESS, AND IN THE PROCESS GIVING THE NEXT WAVE OF WEB STARTUPS THE PLAYGROUND IN WHICH TO CREATE AND BUILD THEIR BUSINESSES.

Was that loud enough for you?

Ubuntu 8.04 Suspend/Resume not treating me so well today

Thinking that Suspend/Resume was working OK on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), today I was disappointed to see things go downhill.

One time, the laptop wouldn’t resume at all. The next, the keyboard and mouse were unresponsive.

Not a good sign.

MacX: the software you need to do a Unix X session with a Mac System 7 machine

I want it. MacX, the software that Apple itself used to sell to get an early-’90s Macintosh to do an X session from a Unix box.

Sure, there are solutions for OS 9 Macs, and any OS X box can easily be made to do this. But System 7.6.1, which is what I run on my Powerbook 1400cs, that’s another thing entirely. With 48 MB of RAM and a 117 MHz processor, System 7 is what works, and I have the whole System 7 Today site to guide me.

For those who want to explore MacX, here is a PDF of the manual and an intro page (thanks, Stanford), and here’s a page from Apple on an update to the program.

Here’s an interesting page from The Mac Orchard listing free and nonfree terminal apps for Classic and OS X Macs. The entire Mac Orchard page of Internet apps is worth a look. Or drill down to just those apps for Classic Macs. All the biggies are there.

But what I really need is MacX (1.2, 1.5 or ??? I need to do more research), and I will not rest until I find it.

Here’s a page on MacX 1.5, here’s a fix for MacX 1.2 on some PowerPCs (it’s a 68000 app). Here is a little clarification on the conflict betweeen MacTCP and OpenTransport when using MacX (and I do mean a little …).

Also:

A page on MacX 1.5

A Powerbook 1400 talks to a Linux box (and actually hears back)

It was my initial frustration with just getting my Powerbook 1400cs to work at all with the “modern” World Wide Web and Internet e-mail that led me to abandon the project (and the resulting This Old Mac blog for the infinitely greener pastures of Linux and BSD on older, cheaper, more-compliant PC (as in IBM-PC, or Windows and MS-DOS compatible) hardware.

But I never forgot about the Powerbook 1400. Sure, I didn’t take it out of the bag for over a year, but when I got it in my head that I could use the Powerbook not as a stand-alone Linux box (the only alternative for this vintage of PowerPC-equipped Mac being MkLinux, a distro as dead as can be and not even downloadable) but as a terminal with my many Debian, OpenBSD and various other Linux/Unix setups.

I did get to the point where I had wired and even wireless networking on the Powerbook, and with the most modern browser I could find (the hard-to-get Netscape Communicator 4.8), I could kind of, sort of use the Powerbook with the Macintosh System 7.6.1 for basic Web browsing. Before I go on, everything I know about 7.6.1 I learned from the fine people at System 7 Today, a terrific resource for anybody thinking of running an old Mac on System 7.

That’s where I got MacSSH, which, not coincidentally, I managed to configure today to run an SSH session over the local network with my Debian Etch box. First of all, read the documentation for MacSSH. I had to create a “Favorite” for my Debian box, and part of that was creating the SSH keys.

Once I turned off compression and selected MD5 authentication, the connection began working. I typed in the password for my SSH key when the Mac prompted me (I picked a long password, unfortunately). As the MacSSH documentation suggested, I entered my account name for the Debian box, but not the password.

I was prompted for that, and upon entering it, I was in a Debian shell.

Basic commands worked fine, as did the Lynx text-only Web browser. I could even post to LXer.

Things seemed to get a little hinky when using vi and nano to edit configuration files, and I couldn’t get the function keys to work (and they’re kind of essential for Nano, at least).

And while running X on a computer with a 117-or-so-MHz PPC processor and 48 MB of RAM. But I’d like to try.

See, I get an old Powerbook to actually run a console session with a real, live Linux box, and already I want to get X on a machine that in all likelihood can’t handle it.

But I’ve already got quite a few leads on how to get an X server running, mostly for OS 9, but a few that just might work in System 7.

And while I’m at it, I got into System 7.6.1 and couldn’t remember how to open a text editor. I didn’t want to use MS Word (which I do have, and which is slow as anything, even though it’s the PowerPC build), WriteNow (very quick, but can’t make credible text files).

It took me a minute or so to remember SimpleText. I’m not sure whether or not I’m actually generating ASCII text, but it is quick, and yes, simple.

Anyhow, my initial wish, when this project began a few days ago, was to connect to a Linux or BSD box via serial port. I got a cable that connects that weird round printer/modem port on the Powerbook 1400 to a DB9 serial port. I don’t know whether or not it’s a “null modem” cable, so I also got one of those at Fry’s for a couple bucks, with an adapter to get the genders right on the DB9-DB25 connection.

The only problem is that I can’t seem to turn the Mac serial port on. I think I do have it. It has something to do with TCP/IP, but if I do turn on the serial port, I think I’ll lose the connectivity I have over Ethernet with my PowerPort Platinum card. So since MacSSH is working, I’ll stick with it.

I still wouldn’t mind getting Zterm to work over the serial port, since I wouldn’t even have to open up SSH if I didn’t want to (although I would have to enable serial connectivity, which I’ve done on the Linux end already).

But just getting a 12-year-old, pretty-much-obsolete Macintosh to even run as a terminal with a modern Linux system is a great thing. (Somewhat ironically, but not really, the Powerbook would be less obsolete, I figure, if it had an older Motorola processor; then I’d have a snowball’s chance of installing Linux or BSD on it, since many distros still support Motorola 68000 CPUs.)

So I’ll play with MacSSH for a few days and bask in the glory of actually finding something useful for the Powerbook 1400 to do. OK … I could just, you know, use the keyboard connected to the actual Linux box itself, but what’s the fun in that?

Before I go: MacSSH seems to die when the Powerbook’s screensaver turns on. No big deal, just an observation. The app itself doesn’t die, but the session does.

(Note: This entry was written with SimpleText in Mac System 7.6.1. It was then copied and pasted into a file with Nano, running via MacSSH, in Debian Etch. I then started an X session over SSH on my Windows box with PuTTY and Xming, then ran Geany and Iceweasel (aka Firefox) to copy and paste the entry into Movable Type, after which you see it here. Byzantine, yes, but that’s part of the whole geek thing. One thing I will say is that the PuTTY/Xming combination is a great way to run X sessions over SSH from Windows boxes. I’d love for the same thing to be true with Mac System 7.6.1, or even OS 8.5 or 9, to which I’m reluctant to upgrade, but I’m not holding out hope, although I will now start looking for MacX 1.1.7, something Apple shipped with A/UX, to further my quest.)

When all else fails, Puppy Linux is there

I’m having a bit of a problem lately. I began thinking that Damn Small Linux was the best of all possible distros to run on the memory-challenged $15 Laptop (1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt). But the latest version of DSL, numbered 4.3, teased me with the promise of Firefox 2.

Previous versions of Damn Small Linux have relied on Firefox 1.0.6, which doesn’t play nicely with Movable Type, Google Docs, or any number of other Web pages that do more than feed out straight HTML. For my work, basically, I need Firefox 2.

And while Puppy Linux features Seamonkey, the Web suite that works like the old Netscape, only better (and with a Firefox-compatible Mozilla engine), does the job for me quite well, with only 64 MB of RAM in the $15 Laptop, I can’t really run Seamonkey without bringing the whole PC crashing down around me. There’s just not enough memory. I have no problem with Dillo, of course, and while the Dillo that installs from packages in OpenBSD doesn’t enable cookies by default (and I need cookies, unfortunately), they can be enabled. That takes care of LXer, where the forums only work with cookies enabled.

But Dillo has no SSH, and there’s plenty I can’t do without SSH support. That’s what Firefox can do for me. Especially version 2.

So the geekish excitment was palpable. To use yet another cliche, you could feel it in the air.

OK, so the bar is low for me when it comes to operating-system excitement.

Anyway, Damn Small Linux 4.0 runs great on this underpowered laptop. I’ve got X configured just right, my wireless card works. I’ve even got sound properly configured.

So I grab my recently burned DSL 4.3 disc (I never tried 4.2; 4.0 was doing so well …) and boot the Compaq.

I get a few error messages I’ve never seen before. Modules are either not found or not loading.

Then I’m in a Fluxbox desktop, not the JWM that recent DSL releases have featured. And barely anything works. I can start Firefox (which has been renamed for some unknown reason, and that name escapes me for the moment), but I can’t even get the DSL Panel to show up. I also can’t exit DSL. On the newer Gateway Solo 1450, DSL 4.3 wouldn’t even boot, so I went to my VIA C3 Samuel test box (a converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client).

On the test box I get the JWM desktop, but again, the DSL Panel won’t start, nor can I exit the OS and shut down the box without CTRL-ALT-DEL.

So unless I burned a very bad CD (unlikely because the damn thing boots), Damn Small Linux 4.3 has more than a few problems that need immediate attention. I’ll have to go back to 4.2 (and the still-being-maintained 3.x series) to see if DSL took its wrong turn at 4.3 or before.

Anyway, I went back to Puppy 2.13. I know they’re on 3.01 or something, and I’m using 3.00 on the Gateway laptop, but I still like 2.13, my first Puppy.

For one thing, even in 64 MB, there’s a lot to be said for running as much of your system in memory as possible.

One thing I’ve probably got to give up is running Firefox in 64 MB of RAM. If it can’t be done in Dillo or Lynx, I just need to wait for more memory so it can be done. I hope the maximum 144 MB on the Compaq will make a difference. And I hope DSL gets fixed enough so I can use the latest version.

Previously I’ve found that Puppy Linux is very happy with 256 MB of RAM. I do have swap on the hard drive, and I will see if that makes it happy in 144 MB.

Of course, if the performance of OpenBSD in X improves measurably with 144 MB (and conversely, so does that of Debian), I’ll have many more choices of what to run.

Update: Puppy doesn’t exactly thrive in 64 MB. I also downloaded a slew of recent Damn Small Linux ISOs — 3.4.11 (regular and initrd images), 4.3 (aregular and initrd) and 4.2.5. I need to get a better feel for why DSL 4.3 wasn’t working. I could’ve had a bad ISO or burn … or it could be something else.

PCLinuxOS goes the extra mile

Ever since my exploration of the various PCLinuxOS spins, I’ve been impressed with the project. Now that I’m having so much relative success with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, it’s unlikely that I will be running PCLinuxOS on my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop, but a) you never know and b) I’m looking for a good system to install for others, and PCLinuxOS is a top contender in that department.

Since I achieved the holy grail in the world of the Gateway Solo 1450 and Linux, that grail being properly working Suspend/Resume, I know that, at this point in time, Ubuntu is the best distribution for this hardware. But if I could learn more about how Suspend/Resume work, I might be able to level the playing field and run anything I want.

I’ve reached this point when it comes to managing the Gateway’s CPU fan. I can make most any version of Linux turn the fan on and off at the proper times (and temperatures) via ACPI. I can’t do the same in OpenBSD (although I really, really want to … and I think I eventually will do it), and in FreeBSD it works automatically on the day of install and then not at all after that. But in Linux, I’ve got it down.

I’d like to be at the same place with Suspend/Resume. But where to start? As I’ve said, Ubuntu 8.04 is the first and only distro to properly Suspend/Resume this laptop. So it’s certainly possible to do it with just about any modern Linux kernel, right?

Just to see where I’m at, I did a few tests with live CDs. Fedora 8 and CentOS 5 would suspend the Gateway but wouldn’t resume it.

Since PCLinuxOS is renown for its hardware detection, I wanted to see how it did on Suspend/Resume.

I had discs of PCLinux2007, PCLinuxGNOME-2.21.2 and PCLinuxOS-mini-me, but I couldn’t find any of them. So I reburned PCLinux2007 and downloaded the newer PCLinuxOS-GNOME-2008.

First of all, Suspend/Resume wasn’t available as an option in the KDE-based PCLinux2007. When I checked the power management in KDE, I was told that I had to enable ACPI first. Since ACPI was already enabled, I didn’t know what to do next.

I moved on to PCLinuxOS-GNOME-2008. First of all, the 2008 GNOME disc offers a radically different-looking desktop when compared to that of the GNOME-2.21.2 spin. I thought the earlier GNOME desktop was way, way too boring. The 2008 version, however, has a futuristic, dark theme that reminds me of the mini-me spin. I like it. I don’t think it’s “me,” but I do like what I see.

I tried to suspend the Gateway from PCLinuxOS-GNOME-2008, and I got a message that Suspend failed. But I also got some help. There was a link in the message to the HAL Quirk Site, where one of the links focuses on ways to fix poorly sleeping PCs.

I haven’t been through it yet, but I do plan to scour the site for hints on how I can tame Suspend/Resume on this laptop. It’s a nice touch from the PCLinuxOS team: Something doesn’t work, but you immediately get the help you need to tackle the problem. Very nice, indeed.

While I continue to admire PCLinuxOS, I’d love to get Suspend/Resume working in Debian Lenny, the distro I use the most. Without Suspend/Resume working there, however, I will most likely be migrating over to Ubuntu on this laptop. I left the Gateway on for most of the weekend, seeing how the Suspend/Resume worked in Ubuntu 8.04, and I continue to be amazed and impressed at how well Ubuntu is taking care of me. It seems like a little thing, but to me it’s huge.

On a desktop, it’s not such a big deal. But with global warming, not to mention the cost of electricity, power management should be a top priority for all hardware manufacturers and OS coders.

And if you like GNOME but haven’t tried PCLinuxGNOME-2008, I strongly suggest that you take a look.

DeLi Linux — finally!

Note: This post from 9/05/07 was just a couple of URLs. I do remember that it was the key to actually installing DeLi Linux. Once I did the install, I couldn’t get networking configured properly, so I abandoned DeLi pretty quickly. But at least I got through the install, something that eluded me until then.

Today is 4/28/08, and while this isn’t a great post by any means, it does offer a little help for people who want to actually install DeLi. I had a note on the entry that said something like “why run DeLi instead of Damn Small Linux?” I don’t really have an answer for that.

Here is the entry, which I put together so I could run it and get it out of the “unpublished” file:

I could never get DeLi Linux installed. But this post, and this one, helped me get past what was stopping the install.

Here are some DeLi blog entries, including one from April 5, 2008. It led to a pretty nice DeLi page.

Saturday’s Tech Talk story — the HP Mini-Note

I did a column for the Los Angeles Daily News (and presumably all the other Los Angeles Newspaper Group business sections) that ran Saturday. I wrote about the HP Mini-Note, the low-priced Linux (or Windows) laptop, contrasting it with the high-priced Apple MacBook Air.

I had to cut the piece quite a bit for the print edition. Here is the full column:

Laptops get smaller — and so do their prices

By Steven Rosenberg
Staff Writer

Did you hear the story about Steven Levy, the Newsweek technology writer who lost the MacBook Air that Apple loaned him? It’s so small and thin, it got thrown out with the trash. He thinks.

It wouldn’t be such big news if, besides being the techno-lust object of the fortnight, the MacBook Air didn’t cost between $1,799 and $3,098.

In my world, that kind of money buys a decent used car, or a serves down payment on a new kidney. Not a computer, least of all a laptop.

Laptops are convenient — I’m writing this on one right now — but they’re also extremely hard to repair or upgrade, easy to steal and easy to break. That’s no recipe for dropping three large. Or even 1.8 large — you feel me? (This is the part where I pause to reflect on whether I’m watching too many back-to-back episodes of “The Wire” on DVD).

Luckily the rest of the action in these “subnotebooks” is on the low end.

I’m talking about extremely small notebooks like the ASUS Eee PC and the Everex Cloudbook, as well as Intel’s Classmate PC and the One Laptop Per Child XO computer that has grabbed plenty of news coverage as the computer aiming to revolutionize education in the Third World.

For me, the subnotebook only became real in the past week with Hewlett-Packard’s announcement that it will offer the HP 2100 Mini-Note PC starting at $499 later this month.

The HP Mini-Note weighs about 2 1/2 pounds, features an 8.9-inch screen and — most importantly — a keyboard described as being 92 percent of full size, something those typing on the tiny ASUS Eee keyboard are bound to appreciate.

Primarily aimed at the education market, the HP Mini-Note features a sturdy aluminum case, specially durable keys, a mechanism that shuts down the hard drive during sudden movements — like when it’s being dropped — plus built-in wireless and wired networking.

Did I forget to mention that it costs $499? One of the reasons that HP can hit such a low price point for the Mini-Note is that the base configuration, like that of the wildly popular ASUS Eee, comes with 512 megabytes of RAM, a 4 gigabyte solid-state flash drive and Novell’s SUSE Linux operating system.

Linux helps the Mini-Note — as it does the Eee and the Cloudbook — in two ways. The machines run splendidly with 512 MB of RAM — something Microsoft Vista cannot do. And Linux can generally be installed by hardware vendors for free, with no need to pay Microsoft for Windows. I’m not sure whether or not HP is paying Novell to use SUSE, but if they are, it has to be a token amount in comparison.

I’m not sure of the exact software mix on the Mini-Note, but most of today’s Linux-equipped PCs either have a full office suite (usually OpenOffice) already installed or available at no cost with the clicking of a few buttons. And OpenOffice can do just about everything that Microsoft Office does. Free. Upgrades are free, too.

The HP Mini-Note is the perfect machine to get young students through high school or college. And spending around $500 can ease the minds of parents who cringe at the way kids — as well as adults — treat laptop computers.

One thing missing, though, is a CD/DVD drive. Not that the MacBook Air includes one either. For the Mini-Note, anyway, if you absolutely need a CD/DVD drive, USB-connectable models sell for $50 to $60. Again, with the Linux model, all your software is available over the Internet, so you may not need to read or burn discs.

Want a beefed-up Mini-Note? An extra $50 gives you double the memory and a traditional 120 GB hard disk drive. That’s the model I’d recommend. Another $50 after that gives you either Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows XP Professional. If you’re intent on Microsoft Windows and want no part of Linux, the choice is yours. But you won’t get access to all those free applications, you will be plagued by Windows-targeted viruses, and Linux will run much better — especially better than Vista.

At this writing, the top-of-the-line Mini-Note includes 2 GB of RAM, a bigger, longer-lasting battery and Bluetooth wireless connectivity. But remember, for $500 or $550, you get HP quality, Linux reliability and more coolness for your dollar than those Apple MacBook Air owners trying to keep their $1,800 baby from being thrown out with the old newspapers.

Steven Rosenberg writes about technology in a most frugal way at Click, http://insidesocal.com/click. Send comments and questions to steven.rosenberg@dailynews.com.

Click gets a new server on Monday, April 28

Click, and the rest of the insidesocal.com blogs that are part of the Los Angeles Daily News and the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, are getting a new server, with the transition happening some time during the morning of Monday, April 28.

We’ve been having more than one problem or another for quite some time — from the comments being creaky (I just turned them off when the spam got out of hand the and sign-in scripts weren’t working) to publishing of entries (and the dozens of category, index and archive pages that go with them) timing out.

Aside from the comments, you, the reader, might not have been all that aware of the pain we as bloggers have experienced. If you’ve tried to leave a comment and had your screen frozen for an age, you have an inkling of what we’re talking about.

In my estimation, the problems up until now have been, in various proportions, server overload, limitations of the Movable Type system that runs these blogs, and generally poor configuration of both Movable Type and the server apps themselves. (Historical note: I believe that insidesocal.com began on a Windows server and subsequently made the transition to Linux.) Until now, the server has been run by an outside company. Hopefully we will address all of the previously mentioned problems with our new server cluster, which is being run by parent company MediaNews in Denver.

Thus far, my far-away assessment of the new setup — and those who run it — is very high. We hope to fix a lot of broken things and make all of the insidesocal.com blogs better than they have ever been.

Cliches, I know, but as far as Movable Type setups go, I’m not aware of any that are as complicated as ours. We have hundreds of blogs spread over many different newspaper properties, with lots of add-ons to tie the blogs to our many Web properties. We’re also serving ads and trying to actually make this whole damn thing pay.

I’ll be spending a lot of time on Monday helping users get acclimated to Movable Type Open Source 4.1. It’s a bit different than Movable Type 4.01 (the non-free version), with added features, some things that work better but, thus far, a few new bugs. I think our setup can handle the open-source version, which gets new features and improvements. If I understand the process correctly (and I aim to understand much, much more about Movable Type), the open-source version is a kind of test bed for the non-free version. I’m OK with that.

Actually, if our many-dozen bloggers can manage to get their entries published, their comments moderated, and the whole thing doesn’t sink into the ocean, I’ll be happy.