New article: Creating your local Ubuntu/Debian Mirror
Because i've needed one, i wrote done the steps i've used to create one - maybe it's of interest for some of you out there.
Read here: http://www.matrix44.net/cms/notes/gnulinux/create-a-local-ubuntu-mirror
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Kerberos Tutorial
Kerberos is not only the Hound of Hades, but also a sophisticated Network authentication and authorization protocol. If you need to set up a Linux network which has centralized user authentication and authorization, you'll probably don't get around it - even if you're using a Windows Active Directory it makes sense to know this piece of technology, as it's also the core of this one.
I am currently planning to authenticate all my home systems using Kerberos and OpenLDAP, i digged around a little bit to learn it - and found a really good introductory tutorial over at cisco.com:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk59/technologies_white_paper09186a00800941b2.shtml
For your convenience the PDF from above is also mirrored here: Kerberos Cisco
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Excellent LDAP Tutorial
I am currently playing around with LDAP to authenticate all my Linux systems to a central point. Because i am not the kind of guy who just blindly follows How-To's i was looking for some introduction to LDAP in general (and later on in depth) and OpenLDAP in particular. There are many tutorials out there, but one stood out of all others:
http://www.zytrax.com/books/ldap
This one is awesome! It's written in a clear and funny manner and provides plenty of information - introductory ones, and in depth ones.
Excellent work done here, guys, keep on going!
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WebDAV and AutoFS
I am running a webserver with a webdav enabled directory for privately sharing files with my friends and colleagues. For easy access to this share from my Linux boxes, i use the userland davfs filesystem in combination with autofs. This post describes the steps necessary to do so:
1. Install the necessary packages
apt-get install davfs2 apt-get install autofs
2. Configure davfs2 to automatically pass your username/password and accept the self signed server certificate when mounting the remote volume:
2.1. Edit /etc/davfs2/secrets and append a line with the URL, username and password:
https://dav.mydomain.com myusername mypassword
2.2. Copy the Public Key of your WebDAV share (PEM Format) to /etc/davfs2/certs
2.3. Edit /etc/davfs2/davfs2.conf to accept this key when mounting the volume by adding a line with
servercert mycert.crt
2.4. Test it out by manually mounting the filesystem with:
mount -t davfs https://dav.mydomain.com /media/mymountpoint
3. Configure Autofs to automatically mount the filesystem on access
3.1. Append the following line to /etc/auto.master:
/media /etc/auto.webdav
3.2. Create /etc/auto.webdav with the following content:
mymountpoint -fstype=davfs,rw,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0666 :https://dav.mydomain.com
3.3. Restart autofs:
service autofs restart
If you now access /media/mymountpoint the remote webdav volume should be automatically mounted.
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Office 2010 – Odd UI Font behavior
First of all, i have to declare that i am a passionate font antialiasing/cleartype hater. For that reason, the first thing i do is to disable all kind of that stuff.
Office 2010 uses the "Segoe UI" font for it's user interface per default, which only looks good if you have ClearType enabled. If not ... even my 1982's C64 Console looked better on a blurry TV back then. After doing a little Google Research, it turned out that you can disable the Segoe UI by creating a Font replacement entry in the registry.
Take a look at the attached .reg file to see how - i included a substitution to replace Segoe UI with Tahoma (the default font used for windows applications)
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Gtk-Sharp: Inserting custom Widgets in Gtk.TextView
Cool stuff: Gtk.TextView supports displaying (and interacting) with custom (and of course default) widgets in a TextView. Take a look at the following screenshot:
The Arc is a custom Widget (derived from Gtk.DrawingArea) which receives Keyboard and Mouse Input when it has the Focus. The Button is a standard Gtk.Button, which is also pressable and displays a simple Gtk.MessageDialog when pressed. This is really amazing stuff which opens up a huge amount of possibilities.
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