Archive for the ‘OSs’ Category

12
Jun

ClearOS: Caching Reports

ClearOS has to be one of the laziest things ever, but one of the coolest things ever, too. It’s a Gateway, Proxy, Shares manager, and much more rolled into one. Easy to manage in-all, update, and hack (OK, maybe not all the time, but what do you expect?).

A few things that attracted me to the ClearOS solution was (and still is):

Now I’m sure there’s others out there, and you can also build this solution yourself. Seeing how I’m familiar with most of these to use, and implement, I did not really care to get lazy and use a web interface with it. I can spend all day in the console, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little cushion there, er.. or to be lazy. The main thing that pulled me towards ClearOS and its all-in-one approach was the caching.

Thus, I wish to share the home network’s caching reports. It surprised me at how much of an impact using a local caching server actually helps.

Reports

This isn’t entirely a month, but I’m sure you can get the idea.

At another glance, by month.

Against what?

In rough-draft-mode, there are at least 4 to 6 active physical machines utilising the Internet. May it be some streaming activity, mail retrieval, or mass-storage movement between here and remote servers .. There can be a huge amount of data consumed. Some screens straight from the feeder (router) itself:

253GB in (if I did my maths right ..) in total passed in May. So the Squid is doing a great job I’d say at attempting to capture what it can.Whether it’s caching more than serving is up to question. Reviewing some of the domains it’s been serving most is generally photo and music sites. (YouTube, HypeM, Grooveshark,  Facebook, etc).

So I’d safely say, that in some cases this is a relief to the network. It may not be the “all and all” solution for using less bandwidth when it comes to mass-storage movement, but it does indeed lower web (http/) traffic to free up some space for something else.

Visit ClearOS

21
Feb

How to Free Space and “Clean” Files on Linux, and Windows, Easily.

Maybe you don’t have much space on your hard drive, or you’re just a clean freak, or OCD kicks in and you’re pulling your hair out over all these random files that mean nothing to you. Enough said, we all want our PCs to perform to their fullest potential. (and)Believe me, clogged hard drives can impact the performance of a computer more than some think.

I’ve recently come across an all-in-one free spacer tool called BleachBit.

BleachBit quickly frees disk space and tirelessly guards your privacy. Free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn’t know was there. Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it wipes clean 90 applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari,and more.

I’m going to demonstrate and share my thoughts.

Install BleachBit

Installing BleachBit was simple for me. I installed it through the Debian Software Center. You can probably install it on your distribution’s software center. Or download it from the website if you’re using Windows. Continuing on..

Start BleachBit (Normal. Not “as root”)

You’ll be presented with a pleasant screen asking which “drives” (directories), and if you’d like to overwrite these files after deletion. Basically, it’s going to not only delete, but will also shred them so it makes it a lot harder to recover them in the future. Valuable to those have crazy ex-partners. Kid, I kid.

I went ahead and also selected “Overwrite files to hide contents,” too. Then hit close.

The selections

Now is the part where you’ll need to decide what you wish to clear. You must do this carefully as you may accidentally delete all of your bookmarks. You definitely don’t want that.

I selected some simple elements. Notice I left out “places,” in Firefox, as that relates to Bookmarks. If you have your bookmarks backed up, then go ahead–Though that just defeats the purpose of keeping bookmarks inside of the web browser.

The more touchy

Now that you’ve selected the obvious files, it’s time to move onto the more touchy. System files, and Package files (for Linux).

I’m not recommending that you mess with any of these. Though I did select “Clipboard,” and “Recent Documents.”

Preview Your Deletions First

It’s time to review what you’ve did. You can click the “Preview” button at the top left to see what exactly this program will delete, based on your selections.

This is the basics. If you’re running Debian that is, or something similar. It’ll vary from distribution to distribution. Also it’ll most likely look different on Windows.

Permission Error Time

If you’re satisfied with the Preview, go ahead and select “Delete.” You’ll get this nifty-little screen..

You can safely click “Delete” if you have not messed with anything else in-between Previewing, and clicking Delete. If you have, then I recommend Previewing the deletion selections again, then coming back to Delete the files. Note: You’ll also need to have any programs that may be accessing these files closed. Aptitude, Synaptic, Google Chrome, Firefox, Pidgin, and any other programs you’re telling BleachBit to clean. As it can conflict due to other permission errors.

Re-open “as root”

Before, as I didn’t point out, I also selected an APT clean. Which, because I was not running BleachBit as root it did not work. You’ll need to close the current BleachBit, after everything besides the APT clean, and re-open it as root.

It’ll might ask you the same things, go ahead and select “Overwrite files,” too. Then re-select the APT fields (or whatever your package manager may be) again, and hit Preview. All OK? Good, go ahead and “Delete.”

If all goes well:

Nice? I hope so.

I’m shocked I haven’t came across this sooner! This is a great tool to have for the quick free’r. If you have any tips, suggestions, etc, feel free to let me know. Remember this is also on Windows.

Download BleachBit

11
Feb

Is Ubuntu Shelf PC Ready? – It Needs to be Ready

We’ve seen Ubuntu grow into something very interesting. Being backed by the excellence of Debian, hard working teams pushing new stability and user-friendliness, and steered by the captains at Canonical; Is it Shelf PC ready?

What I mean by that, can Ubuntu be sold in stores such as Wal-Mart? It’s being pushed in several places, among companies such as System76, but could it survive mass exposure?

Batman Light

I said that 10.04 appears to be shelf PC ready. It’s easy, friendly, and I’ve not had a problem installing or using anything on it. Providing that it comes from the repository (Software Center). If it comes from somewhere else, if supported it should go smoothly. Yes I know that LibreOffice or OpenOffice isn’t the friendliest looking thing out there, but it is extensible given the chance. Yes I know it’s lacking the game options, but if games like Xonotic keep popping up.. it would hopefully continue to attract more.

Monopoly

There’s just one tiny issue: Microsoft has wrapped up a monopoly regarding the operating system that is massively shipped via retailers. I’m not dissing their way of how they got it that way, but I do put down and discourage what they do to stay there. Twisting company’s arms for license agreements, harsh lash-outs against various Open Source, many other things I care not to mention.

The Continued Development

Now whether or whether not Ubuntu is still being actively vamped on-top of the Debian structure is up to question. I have not dug into the core of Ubuntu in some time, and quite frankly, it’s too much of a mess for me to bother with.

Though, I was reading some articles that spoke of Debian’s “[2]relevance,” to the Linux community – I thought this was rather a silly question, but I guess it was needed to be asked.. simply because that person was wondering if it was. Among others too, probably.

Relevance

It doesn’t exactly matter how relevant or irrelevant Debian is to the community. I’m sure there is projects unknown out there that are driven by the base of Debian in one shape or another. The fact that the Debian team takes their time in developing, and releases points out a clear fact: They really care about their project – Or just don’t like new stuff.

Irrelevance

In the case that other [1]competition does get there first, would it actually be too late for Ubuntu to show up? We’ve already seen Android being tossed around like hot potato, so it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine Ubuntu at the same stage.

What is stopping it though? I’m truly lost.

Not Ready?

Is there something stopping Ubuntu from being shipped to the masses? Is there something that the general public is unaware of that is stopping it?

The “Vision”

Since Ubuntu’s announcement to ship newer versions with the Unity desktop, there has been some rage, and compliments. Some don’t like the idea that Ubuntu is starting to head off in their own path – It’s completely understandable in both directions. Though you can’t just expect something to appeal to everyone when it looks like everything else. It’s the reason Apple has that sleek feel to their products, minus the [3]defects of actually using them (the application store, screws on hardware, etc). That still doesn’t stop Apple from being different.

It pushes them out there – That’s what Ubuntu is aiming for – At least that’s what I believe.

On the other hand, the Wait

I understand how Ubuntu could be holding out to see what happens with “Ubuntu” in general. Whether this Unity will be a good idea, or bad idea that flops the community to crap – I hope not. So later on, maybe I will see my wish come true, to see Linux PCs in Wal-Mart.

Refs:

7
Feb

My Overly-Excited Debian Squeeze Install

A couple of days ago (Feb. 5) Squeeze released. Very happy – As a Debian fan(boy) I decided to upgrade. Actually I haven’t upgraded my desktop just yet, because I’m still seeding the torrents. However I did put it on my Thinkpad. Screenshots.

Don’t forget to try Debian :)

Yes, that’s a broken E. :



11
Nov

Route ClearOS HTTP Proxy Through Tor

So you have ClearOS installed, and you’re wanting to not only use the “Content Filter,” but you also want to make your connections go through tor. That’s really no issue, but will take a few minutes to setup.

Shell Access

Yes, you’re going to need shell access to your ClearOS box. Preferably root, but if you have another user that is allowed and has sudo access, that’ll work too.
(Side note: More detailed information about proxying via ClearOS can be found here.)

(1-3) Prepare Your Environment – Privoxy

Since ClearOS repositories do not contain any traces of Privoxy you’ll need to manually build it yourself. Head over to the Privoxy website, towards the downloads. You’ll need to “View All Files” and scroll down to the “Sources” directory. There you should see a tar.gz, click on it – Make sure it is “stable” (Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/files/)

Copy the direct link and put it into the shell – I’m going to assume you’re in /home/admin. Example ..

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ijbswa/Sources/3.0.16%20%28stable%29/privoxy-3.0.16-stable-src.tar.gz?r=http%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fijbswa%2Ffiles%2F&ts=1289336405&use_mirror=cdnetworks-us-1

Something like this..

So now that we’ve did that. Let’s run some other useful tasks.

Before compiling or installing Privoxy, you need to set a specific user/group for it. Mostly because you don’t want this tool running under super cow powers.

Do this:

useradd privoxy

Then:

passwd privoxy

Think of something good :)

Now, run make. It’ll then give you some tips on doing some other commands first – Whatever that is about. Either way, just press the y key and you’ll be set. Hopefully no errors occur. If so, just post them and I’ll see what I can dig up.

So… if everything does go OK. Issue make install – This will then install Privoxy to its suitable environment.

Side Note: Since there is 2 proxies by default installed on ClearOS (Squid, and Dans Guardian), you would naturally think you could direct Squid to Tor. This is not the case. ClearOS has the Squid configuration in a specific way, in-which I really didn’t not feel like editing. So I came up with this solution instead. If you have instead wanted to use Squid and came up with a suitable edit, feel free to pass it along.


Time to edit the configuration! Head over to /usr/local/etc/privoxy/ to edit the config. Like so:

cd /usr/local/etc/privoxy/

nano config

Go all the way to the end of the file and add:

forward-socks4a / IP:9050 .

Do not forget the end dot (.). Replace IP with the IP of the machine (the loopback IP. E.g. 127.0.0.1 or LAN, 192.168.1.2).

Save/Close that file.

(2-3) Tor

Now it’s time to cook some onions. Go to the Tor Project website to grab a binary or source of tor (http://www.torproject.org/download/download-unix.html.en). I recommend grabbing the source tarball.

Copy the link of the source tarball, at this time it’ll be 0.2.1.26. Make sure you’re still in /home/admin or something suitable. (I have an admin account setup for pseudo reasons if you hadn’t noticed.)

wget http://www.torproject.org/dist/tor-0.2.1.26.tar.gz

tar xvf tor-0.2.1.26.tar.gz

cd tor-0.2.1.26

./configure

make

OR

make install

If you only issue make you can execute directly in src/or/tor after compiling. Or you can issue make install and it’ll install it. Remember the account you’re installing / running under – You may not want tor running under a root account.

Small configuring with Tor

Now that Tor is installed, and hopefully working, it’s time to change a few things. Even though tor will be used by the entire network (HTTP) via a single machine, maybe some people will want to go directly to Tor, rather than around tor to use tor.

Open up /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc and find (if torrc does not exist, do: mv torrc.sample torrc):

## Replace this with “SocksPort 0″ if you plan to run Tor only as a

## relay, and not make any local application connections yourself.

SocksPort 9050 # what port to open for local application connections

SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1 # accept connections only from localhost

This is for connecting local Internet applications through port 9050. We want to add an listening host/port in-case someone wants to connect directly to Tor that is not on the machine. It should look like this instead:

## Replace this with “SocksPort 0″ if you plan to run Tor only as a

## relay, and not make any local application connections yourself.

SocksPort 9050 # what port to open for local application connections

SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1 # accept connections only from localhost

SocksListenAddress IP:9100 # listen on this IP:port also

“IP” should be the LAN IP of the machine, such as 192.168.1.2. You can set the port to whatever you prefer (as long as it’s not in use by something else).

Generally some people will want to run Tor in the background, so if you want to do this find #RunAsDaemon 1 and remove the #. But if you don’t think anyone is going to run Privoxy / Polipo or some other translator on their owncomputer to connect to Tor then don’t worry about adding an extra listening address.

Once you’re all finished with that, save and close.

(3-3) DansGuardian

Yay – We’ve made it this far!

Let’s start editing DG now. Open up /etc/dansguardian-av/dansguardian.conf and find:

# the port DansGuardian connects to proxy on

proxyport = 3128

3128 is Squid’s port. We want to change this to 8118 (which is Privoxy). Save and close.
Finishing Up
Login to the web interface of ClearOS, head to the Content Filter, and restart it. If all goes well, it should come back online – If not, change the proxy port back and start over.
Everything should be correctly setup now. You’ll be connecting to DansGuardian, which connects to Privoxy, and that will connect to Tor. This is rather a complicated solution, however DansGuardian is the layer that offers some blocking and stuff.
Execute Privoxy, Tor, and you’re set. Point your browser to IP-Of-ClearOS:8080 and hit up google.com to see if it works. Remember, you may want to run these programs with different rights/etc, so think clearly about what you’re doing. :)
Please post any conflicts. I understand I’m not the best tutorial’r.

Best of luck!

30
Oct

Windows 7 Review

Now I am going to be biased here, Windows 7 is not that bad once it has been configured properly. Some of the things on that list would be UAC (User Account Control) and Automatic updates.
[more]

26
Oct

What if GNU/Linux was Closed Source?

Well? What if? I’m asking you.

Just a random thought.