A Man and his Penguin

I used to have problems with Apache 2 (web server software) on Ubuntu.

You see, I run an Apache server on my own computer, so my friends can download songs and videos of my/their favourite group Hi-5. Before I got Ubuntu, I ran a WebSTAR server on Mac OS 9 (with custom-written access control provided by Python).

My friends had almost no trouble downloading from my WebSTAR server. Their downloads rarely finished prematurely, and when they did it was usually because I was trying to use the computer at the same time . When I switched to Ubuntu/Apache, it would happen even when I wasn’t using the computer.

I fiddled around with the configuration file to limit the number of processes spawned, and now it all works perfectly. I don’t think my friends have had any failed downloads since, and I’ve also used the computer while uploading files and there not be any slowdown.

I’m very impressed with its performance now. However, although Apache uses very little memory when not in use, I’d still like to be able to turn it off without actually killing it (for security, among other things). I tried doing "sudo apache2ctl -k shutdown", but it gave me an error: "httpd not running". Anyone have any ideas what’s wrong? I’m using Apache on an obscure port. I also can’t get the "server status" thing working either.

Speaking of ports, I went to the ShieldsUp website and did the port scanning and MSN spam tests. My computer completely passed, with every port "stealthed". The only port which wasn’t stealthed, and which partially failed the test, was the one which was connected to Apache. (and I had to run a custom test on that port in order to check it). Admittedly, this isn’t all due to Ubuntu’s secure design; I have a hardware firewall.

Of course, the other big news of the day was that Apple have released software to allow you to run Win XP on Mac hardware. ON THE HARDWARE ITSELF!

Which makes me wonder: Why the heck did the Intel Macs ship without a Compatibility Support Module? (which emulates a PC’s BIOS chip). Because all this "Boot Camp" software does is resize the Mac’s HFS partition, burn a CD of drivers for Windows, and install the CSM into the EFI.

("Install the what into the what?" Sorry, I’m just a big fan of acronyms).

However, this is a big step. Originally, I thought that I would buy a standard PC (when I have enough money) and dual-boot Ubuntu with Windows. I wanted a dual-core computer, but the cheapest one on the market is the Mac Mini. Now that setting up a Mac to triple-boot no longer involves jumping through hoops, and no longer holds the danger of "bricking" it, a new Mac has become a real option for someone who wants Ubuntu and Windows.

Yes, I know my blog is about Ubuntu, but I’d like to interrupt the technology stuff for a minute to talk about Gene Pitney.

1. He was a kind man. He had a lot of time and respect for his fans and fellow musicians. Whenever Gene toured Australia, his support act was a local comedian/singer who was pretty much an unknown artist. This guy had written an album and once asked Gene if he could do a guest appearance on it. Of course, Gene accepted.

Such was his spirit. I also noted how, at the end of each concert, he would make this gesture with his fingers where he would point at every single person in the hall, to thank them for coming.

2. He was a true professional. In his really early recordings, Gene played almost every instrument. He was a good songwriter AND a good singer, but he didn’t have the snobbish attitude that he could only sing his own songs. And when Burt Bacharat and Hal David wrote all those brilliant tracks, Gene put all his heart and soul into singing them in studio and live in concert.

Last night I listened to most of the Gene Pitney songs we have on CD, and in the near future I’ll watch the video. My four favorite songs were his cover of "Angels", the reggae version of "Nobody Needs Your Love (More Than I Do)", "Oceans Away", and "Count the Days".

Gene Pitney will be sadly missed.

One thing I’d always assumed you couldn’t do was natively mount HFS and HFS+ partitions. Previously, whenever I wanted to transfer something from the Mac to Linux, I would put the file onto my HFS partition, boot Ubuntu, then use the hfsutils command line programs to copy to and from the Mac drive.

But thanks to a post on the Ubuntu Forums regarding mounting HFS flash drives, I found out that it *can* be done.

The "fstab" file (/etc/fstab) contains the information that Linux needs to be able to mount a disk or partition of a disk. It needs the path to the disk (/dev/hda8, in my case - partition 8 on Hard Disk A), a "mount point" (which is just an empty directory - I chose /media/Polly), and the format of the partition. In my cases, they were "hfs" and "hfsplus" respectively, but if you want to access your Windows partition it would be "fat32" or "udf".

And hey presto! After executing the "mount -a" (mount all drives) command, my Mac disks appeared on the desktop. Now they mount automatically on startup. Great! (I still can’t modify the HFS+ one though)

I like XMMS. It’s a pretty cool looking interface, except for the preferences box and the menus. It also does a good job of playing MP3s.

However, I’ve been having a couple of problems with it. I am playing a randomised playlist. Occasionally in between tracks, it tells me that the sound card is already being used by another program. Pressing "OK" and then the Play button would play the next track. I checked the Preferences box and XMMS is using ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) not OSS (Open Sound System). OSS apparantly only allows one program at a time to access the sound card, whereas ALSA doesn’t have that problem. So, I shouldn’t be getting this kind of error.

Also, one of my MP3s is hanging XMMS at about 3/4 of the way through. Strange.

I’ve changed the XMMS settings to use eSound rather than ALSA, and now I don’t seem to be getting the sound card errors. It’s just occurred to me that I have the same problem with Totem Movie Player (but not Rhythmbox)!

I hope this sorts out all the problems, because I’d like to use my computer as a jukebox at a barbeque I’m planning for June 1st. A celebration of Dapper’s release, although my friends wouldn’t know and I wouldn’t tell them unless they asked what OS my jukebox was running.

Yesterday, I tried out Damn Small Linux (DSL). It only runs on x86 processors and of course my Mac has a PowerPC processor, so I had to use a program called QEMU to emulate a x86 computer.

It was terribly slow. Terribly terribly slow, and the included CPU load monitor showed 50-70% of the emulated CPU even when idle; and whenever I tried to do anything it would go up to 100%.

It also didn’t automount the CD-ROM I inserted, although I suspect it’s due to a non-implemented part of QEMU. I also take issue with some of the packages included - exactly why would someone run a web server from a Live CD?

But its system requirements are much more modest than Puppy’s, which I’ve never gotten to work in Bochs or QEMU. (probably due to low emulated memory). 48 megs of emulated RAM was enough to boot it and run XMMS. It also doesn’t require any setting up. Excellent! It looks more complicated than Ubuntu (I had a look at the file manager and the Preferences dialog), but probably not rocket science.

If you want to try out a fast Linux Live CD, you could do worse than DSL. It’s only 50 megs and should download on reasonable broadband in about 20 minutes. Just be aware that it’s more difficult to use than many installable Linuxes, and doesn’t look so great. If you’ve got 256 megs of RAM, you should maybe think about Puppy instead - it has persistance (i.e. can save your data back to the CD or to hard disk) and a huge range of programs.

Now I want someone to port Puppy to PPC! Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be able to do it But it’s made me much more interested in learning how to create one’s own distro.