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Sansa ClipI have always wanted a good quality audio player that works well with Linux and plays Ogg Vorbis files. Even though the Sansa Clip was originally released in 2007, I somehow missed it. The gang on The Linux Link Tech Show mentioned the Sandisk Sansa Clip as being an affordable, quality portable audio player that worked well with Linux so I decided to give it a shot. I did a little bargain hunting online and found a refurbished 1GB unit for $18.95 plus shipping so I thought it was hard to go wrong for that price. The unit arrived three days ago and I spent all weekend using it.

All of the reviews I'd come across (including a few video reviews) gave it high marks. The latest firmware available for it allows for playback of .ogg (Ogg Vorbis) and .flac (Free Loseless Audio Codec) in addition to .mp3, .wav, .wma and Audible.com DRMed audiobooks. It DOES NOT play .m4a (AAC) format. I prefer to use formats that are not patent encumbered so the vast majority of my music is in .ogg/.oga format.

Yeah, this is Microsoft Windows related, but it doesn't hurt the share the info since so many of us work in mixed environments.

To view the video, click on the full story.

H&B #2I got an email from Jeremiah Gray announcing a new issue (#2) of Hackett and Bankwell, the educational comicbook about Linux and Free and Open Source Software from Intarcorp Ltd. Issue #2 is currently only available in electronic format (PDF) and they have decided to release it under a Creative Commons license. Thank you!

Intarcorp Ltd.You may recall that I bought the print version of Hackett and Bankwell last year at Linuxfest Northwest 2008 and mentioned it in my LFNW 2008 Report. I'm a comicbook collector from way back but I don't have much of a collection to speak of these days.

It turns out they have done some updates to the original issue #1 and also released it in electronic format (PDF) but are calling it #1.1 because of the updates. If you haven't checked this comicbook out, do so. Pass it along to younger readers too... it is for all ages. I can't say enough good things about Hackett and Bankwell... and will definitely be dropping by their booth at Linuxfest Northwest 2009 to say hello.

H&B #1.1Almost forgot to mention... a couple of months ago they were kind enough to mail us (the BozemanLUG) 10 issues of #1 to give away to LUG members. They are very interested in getting feedback from readers so they can improve the comicbook with each issue. They are really stressing the educational approach. Please download issues #1 and #2 (you can find the PDFs as attachments to this post), share them with everyone, and give them some constructive feedback if you are so inclined.

You are also encouraged to buy a copy of the print version of #1 or make a donation to help them produce future issues.

We need another Linux Sys Admin in our Hosting group at RightNow Technologies in Bozeman. Some scripting / coding experience would be helpful but all that is really needed is a solid Unix/Linux background and a willingness to learn.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Pippin Wallace
RightNow Technologies
nippip@rightnow.com

Thursday 4/2/09 6pm at Sean Kellys
Hope this goes to the front page :P

I would like to announce, a new old forum, for advanced topics on scripting, kernel compiling, packaging deb/rpm, networking, etc... etc...

http://hackmy.pclosbe.org

This used to be a PCLinuxOS forum, but not any more. The Admin wanted to branch out to include any help for Linux, so we took the forum out of the PCLinuxOS community. Most of us use that distro however, so for a while, I guess that will be the focus by default.

RH SlideVirtualization has been a buzz word for a few years now. Some people think it has been over-hyped but I'm not one of those people. The big competing products seem to be: VMware, Xen, KVM, VirtualBox, Parallels (including OpenVZ), and Hyper-V.

Is there too much choice out there? Choice isn't bad, is it? Will there eventually be a market shake up with a thinning of product candidates as a result? Will someone try to proclaim that they are the virtualization "standard"? I don't really know. I certainly like competition and don't think having a number of competing products is bad. There are both proprietary products and FOSS products. As you can guess, I lean towards the later if at all possible.

Update: Full article now includes two embedded flash videos from Red Hat.

Intro
Proxmox VE version 1.1 does not ship with a firewall. This is a bad thing for a production server for obvious reasons. Proxmox VE 2.0 is supposed to ship with firewall support built in. Until that time here is an easy script that you can put on your Proxmox VE box to protect it and the virtual machines running on it, if you so choose. This is based off of http://wiki.openvz.org/Setting_up_an_iptables_firewall but works with KVM machines and tailored to a Proxmox install.

Installation and Usage

Proxmox VEProxmox VE is a “bare metal” ISO Linux distribution that is a virtual machine platform. It is geared towards enterprise users and designed to be installed on enterprise grade hardware. The Proxmox VE distribution combines two virtual machine technologies; KVM and OpenVZ as well as a web interface to manage everything. Proxmox VE also integrates into its web interface a way to manage multiple computers as a cluster. For the rest of the article Proxmox VE shall be referred to as PVE. This article is written about PVE 1.1, the latest stable release.