• Download VMWare server from VMWare website. VMWare server is free, but you need serial number which can be requested by registering to -VMWare. Extract the source, it will create a directory called vmware-server-distrib
• Download VMWare patch from from here.
  
• To install VMWare, you’ll need linux-headers, build-essentials, and xinetd. Download those from repo by executing the following

$sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-2.6.27-7 xinetd

Note that the version of your linux-headers may differ. Up to now, my intrepid uses kernel 2.6.27-7-generic.

• Go to the vmware distrib directory, and execute the ./vmware-install.pl

$cd vmware-server-distrib
$sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Just use the details, but note that when you’re asked if you’d like to run the vmware-config.pl, select [no]

• Extract the vmware-patch

$gunzip < vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

• Go to the update directory and execute the patch script

$cd vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2
$sudo ./runme.pl

The script will patch the source, and ask whether or not you want to run the vmware-config.pl script. This time, select [yes]. While running the script, I accepted all the defaults value.

I assume that you can configure networking on your own.

Environment :
- Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex running kernel 2.6.27-7-generic

• Network Manager Improvement

Ubuntu recognizes the mobile broadband boom, and lots of people using 3G network to browse the internet. In the last release (Hardy), configuring 3G could be a hassle, especially for those who are new to linux. Now in Intrepid, it recognizes my E220 modem immediately after I plugged it in, launch a wizard to help me choose which provider I’m using, then create a network configuration for that. All I need to do is to configure it to use my username.

The beauty of it? It doesn’t even need additional software. (Well, 3G doesn’t require additional software in Hardy  for 3G, but those requires configuration on wvdial, ppp, etc). Integrating it to network manager is brilliant. Back in hardy, everytime I launch Firefox after connecting to 3G network, it wasn’t aware that I’m online and I have to manually untick the “Work Offline” mode. Now, that pain is gone

There’s also additional section in network manager for DSL connection, but since I don’t have DSL connection, I can’t give it a try.

• Tabbed File Manager

Intrepid includes Nautilus FM version 2.24.1, now comes with tabs. Just like a browser, now you can browse to different part of filesystem, without have to open several instances of Nautilus. Good feature.

• Encrypted private folder

This is a feature to allow user to create an encrypted folder in their own home directory. Unfortunately, it doesn’t comes by default. You have to install it manually (use apt-get or synaptic to install ecryptfs-utils). Worse, you can only configure it from terminal (which probably the first reason why Ubuntu doesn’t include it by default in the first place). Before they can put a good interface into this, I think I’ll stick with TrueCrypt.

There are some other features available like private filesystem, integrated USB startup disk creation, etc, but I haven’t given them a try yet. Will keep posted on that.

Any of you discover a new feature you’d like to share?

Getting a new (well not new, actually) laptop, Dell Latitude D630, and after finished downloading the new Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, I decided to give the new Ubuntu a try.Here’s a quick review :

• Installation

Installation is fine, as with the last Hardy, it’s also an easy install. Aside from partitioning and time zone, you can probably accept all the default setup. It took me about 30 minutes to install the whole system. Booting is fast, I think it’s slightly faster than my current Hardy (well, probably because my Hardy is already bloated with additional services )

• Devices

D630 uses a restricted (proprietary) driver for wireless card, i.e. Broadcomm Wireless. Once you activate the driver and restart the system, it works like charm (probably won’t need restart, but I don’t want to get into a hassle trying to configure it. besides, restarting take less than a minute :p). Display gets 1200×800 out of the box, and is fine. Bluetooth and sound works. One thing that bug me is the that the touchpad response is very slow, probably need some tweaking for that later. Other than that, everything works perfectly !!

• Printing

Continuing hardy tradition, printing is extremely easy to setup. Once I enable printer “Show printers shared by other systems” in System -> Administration -> Printing -> Server -> Settings, then I click new, it detects both Xerox Document Center 236 and HP Color Laserjet 3800 available in my office network. I already setup the Xerox using Generic PCL 6/PCL 6XL Foomatic driver, and it prints fine.

• To Do List

Last thing I need to configure is vmware. Back in hardy, it required some patches, which will probably the same case with this one. Also will need to check whether presentations work ok to projector.

All in all, this release is satisfying. Back when Hardy is initially released, I need to tweak some stuffs to get sound working in my Compaq V3000 series.

Let’s get Intrepid

Untuk network backup, sebenarnya ada beberapa kandidat, antara lain Bacula dan Amanda (secara keduanya gratis). tapi constraint yang saya temukan (dan saya belum temukan solusinya) adalah, karena bacula dan amanda menggunakan protokol samba untuk windows backup, fitur incremental backup jadinya tidak bisa dicapai (entah saya yang tidak bisa configure juga barangkali). Sesudah browsing sana sini, akhirnya ketemu solusinya, gabungan antara DeltaCopy di client dan rsync di server.

Langsung saja ke konfigurasi-nya ya:

Konfigurasi di server

• Install rsync dan xinetd di server (rsync secara default sudah ada di ubuntu server, tapi just in case, tetap saya tambahkan di sini )

$sudo apt-get install xinetd rsync

• Buat file /etc/xinetd.d/rsync dengan isi kurang lebih seperti ini :

service rsync
{
disable        = no
socket_type    = stream
wait        = no
user        = root
server        = /usr/bin/rsync
server_args    = --daemon
log_on_failure    += USERID
}

• Buat file /etc/rsyncd.conf dengan isi kurang lebih seperti ini :

log file=/var/log/rsyncd
pid file=/var/run/rsyncd.pid
[data]
comment = public archive
path = /data
use chroot = yes
lock file = /var/lock/rsyncd
read only = no
list = yes
uid = [user yang punya akses write ke path]
gid = [group membership dari user]
auth users =  [user yang akan diberikan akses]
secrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets
timeout = 600

dalam konfigurasi di atas, backup dari klien akan disimpan di folder /data, dan akan ditulis dengan user support

username:password

RSYNC_ENABLE=inetd

/etc/init.d/xinetd restart
Konfigurasi di Client

• Download Deltacopy dari website DeltaCopy
• Ekstrak file dan jalankan setup
• Sesudah instalasi selesai, jalankan DeltaCopy Client
• Buat satu profile, dan edit parameter-nya (server, path, folder yang ingin dibackup, schedule jika diperlukan, dsb). Hal yang menarik dari DeltaCopy adalah kemampuan untuk scheduling, serta incremental backup. Jangan lupa tambahkan username dan password yang didefinisikan di server pada DeltaCopy Client

Untuk mapping hasil backup client dari Ubuntu ke Windows, saya pasang samba server di Ubuntu.

Secara keseluruhan, konfigurasi-nya sangat mudah. Selamat mencoba

So here goes.

• Install Sun Java JDK

There are two alternatives for Java in ubuntu, i.e. OpenJDK and Sun Java JDK. In this environment I’m going to use Sun Java JDK.

$sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Having OpenJDK installed previously, we need to update the system to use the new JDK
$sudo update-alternatives --config java

• Install Glassfish Application Server

$sudo apt-get install glasshfishv2

By default, apt installs the apps server into /usr/share/glasshfishv2/ directory, and the web application folder goes to /var/lib/glassfishv2.

• Start the application server

$/usr/share/glassfishv2/bin/asadmin start-domain
.: 7: Can't open /usr/share/glassfishv2/config/asenv.conf


Now this is weird. I check the /usr/share/glasshfishv2/ and there is no config/ directory in the folder.
For some weird reason, apt seem to forget to configure the application server (or maybe I do something wrong?). After I installed it, i didn’t check the installation, and shutdown my laptop immediately since I need to do something else. Only after I boot my laptop and trying to configure it, I noticed that there are something wrong.

Since this is my first time using Glasshfish, I really don’t know my way around . Ask Google, and all references failed. Trying dpkg-reconfigure, failed as well. Being lazy as I am, I took the shortcut, reinstall the damn thing
$sudo apt-get install --reinstall glassfishv2

Finally, there it is. I finally get it right. Fire up my browser and browse to http://localhost:4848/ the admin page appears.

“Community distributions such as CentOS, Debian, and Gentoo are gaining enterprise respect for quality code, stability, response, and of course, for being “free as in beer” and “free as in freedom”. These community distributions are becoming a more significant market factor with growing enterprise acceptance and use of them”

Apparently more enterprises, especially in Europre, are willing to take chances running community-based distro (as opposed to commercial distro like RHEL or SuSE) using their internally capable resource for system administration, support, as well as application migration, although sometimes they still seek assistance from third-party consultant, which turns out to be cheaper than paying support from commercial-based distro.

Is this the end of commercial-based distro? Well it may be is too early to say so, but commercial distro should start reviewing their business model.

Some interesting findings from the report are as follows :

• 87% of the security breaches could have been avoided with basic security measures
• Two-thirds of the cases involved data that the organization did not know was present on the system
• 39% of the breaches involves business partners

Verizon Business has released a white paper about the report here.

Now, what is interesting about the report is the fact that, while information security as a discipline has gone a long way, the real world doesn’t seems to move forward. I mean, attack methodologies has evolved a long way from simple buffer overflow on a code to the latest DNS insecurity flaw, from platform to applications, from macro viruses to phishing, but the real deal is still the same, which is basic security measures has not been applied. Most of the attacks still involve known vulnerabilites that has been published and patches has been provided for months, but still, it’s exploited, and breach occured. How does that happen?

Apparently with all the new technologies the industry provided, there hasn’t been a significant change the way people approaches security. People are still chasing the ghost, spending millions and millions of money on information security year by year, and the bad guys still manages to come in from the same doors. So what, are we doing things wrong?

Maybe we’re not doing things wrong, we’re just putting our efforts at a wrong place. Maybe we’re so busy chasing the new buzz every day, worrying about new methods, new vulnerabilities, new security products, that we forget to do the basics, default deny, least privileges, and essential services.

And if we look back, aren’t all those security hype actually just that? Default deny? Least Privileges? Essential Services?

Setelah download, selanjutnya adalah instalasi.

• Ekstrak file hasil download dan jalankan skrip instalasi

tar -xzvf mailarchiva_opensource_edition_server_v1_7_0_linux.tar.gz
cd mailarchiva_dist
sudo install.sh

Installer akan minta beberapa data untuk lisensi open-source-nya, nama perusahaan, jumlah mailbox, dsb

• Start mailarchiva

sudo /etc/init.d/mailarchiva start

• Coba login ke mailarchiva

Secara default, mailarchiva akan listen di post 8090. Untuk login ke web interface-nya, masuk ke http://server:8090/mailarchiva. Defaultnya username dan password-nya kosong, nanti bisa dikonfigurasi. Anda juga perlu setup volume baru untuk tempat arsip penyimpanan email (bisa dibuat di satu direktori existing file system, atau di satu partisi baru) serta setup local domain.

• Konfigurasi postfix

Tinggal tambahkan baris-baris berikut di file main.cf
milter_default-action = tempfail
smtpd_milters = inet:127.0.0.1:8092

Lalu restart postfix.

Selanjutnya, tinggal main-main deh

Interesting, huh? Go Firefox

I’m doing a POC work on one of our customer for Sun Secure Global Deskop (SSGD). The customer uses Windows 2003 Server as the application server that hosts the application, and Windows XP as the client. Now the problem is, the customer wants to print from SSGD to his network printer installed at the client. The problem is, he doesn’t want to install the printer driver on the application server.

Since all the applications run on the server, while printers are connected to the clients, then the print job from the apps server must be sent via SSGD server to the client printer. Now, what do we do if we don’t have any printer driver installed on the server and we don’t even want to install anything on the server ?

There are a few options :

• Uses printer driver mapping

This one is tricky. It’s basically said that we use printer driver installed by default on Windows 2003 server as a replacement to the printer installed on the client. Haven’t done this yet, need to explore

• Uses Universal PDF printing

The simplest way is to use Universal PDF printing. It works basically like this :

1. The print job from the application server is printed to PostScript (PS) format using one the PS printer installed by default in the application server
2. The PS data then sent from application server to SSGD server. SSGD will convert this job into PDF file using ps2pdf utility installed on the SSGD server (this required GhostScript to be installed on the SSGD server)
3. The PDF from SSGD server is then sent to the default printer on the client. This requires some sort of PDF reader on the client side.

Since PDF viewer/reader is basically a standard on desktop nowadays, configuring Universal PDF printer is very straightforward. All I need to do is configure Universal PDF printer as default printer on the SSGD server, and it all works like charm .