Tom at 16

Week of May 6th, 2002

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Friday May 10, 2002

HELLO [tap-tap-tap]... TESTING [tap-tap-tap] ? ? ?

Good morning SASK-A-TOOOOONNNNN... [heh]. Yup. More connectivity problems. Not a problem for me -- a problem for SaskTel. You see, *I* know what the problem is. The new DSL modem they gave me is flakey. But after some very long-winded retoric on my part, they have to... ahem... -investigate-... ahem. OK folks, whatever. So please bear with me for the next few days, as we all know what it's like to deal with large corporate structures.

Hi, and welcome to Friday.

It's shaping up to be a good one here in Saskatoon. Looks like we might finally be getting some "proper weather"... well, at least "proper" for this time of year. It's been unseasonably cold and windy, and a good dose of high temps and sun will do everyone good, me thinks. Which is exacly what's forecast for the weekend. (big grin)

I solved my Samba/LDAP problems today. Remember a long time ago when I talked about the necessity of understanding the underlying system before you can correctly troubleshoot a problem? For those who missed it, I had an extremely good instructor when I was in trade school who taught me that before you can correctly troubleshoot a problem, you need to fully understand the underlying systems. Turns out that was very sage advice, and not just for troubleshooting hydraulic systems or diesel engines -- for just about everything that has an underlying "system".

It's all about authentication. And the underlying system behind the authentication. Windows uses a unique "hash" to encrypt its passwords. UNIX systems use a different hash to encrypt its passwords. Which is why its always been a problem sync'ing passwords between Samba and the underlying OS. Enter a third variable: PAM. PAM stands for Pluggable Authentication Modules and serves as an intermediary between a given program and the underlying UNIX OS's authentication system.

With me so far? Good.

Here's the mostly-undocumented juicy bit -- If you enable "encrypted passwords = yes" in your smb.conf file, that effectively cancels out any kind of PAM authentication. Why? Because PAM is UNIX, and UNIX passwords and Windoz passwords do not "grok" each other. The problem? I was building my Samba configs "--with-pam" which became a totally confusing oxymoron when I added in "encrypted passwords = yes" into my Samba config file. This probably would not be the problem in a normal passwd/smbpasswd environment, but when you factor in an LDAP backend... so it's been a insightful week.

Anywhooo, I trust you are all well. No so in the Middle-East where, if I read things correctly, the situation is grim. Dispite my distaste for war (and everything related), it would appear an incursion of Gaza is inevitable. Which will -- no doubt -- bring huge causalties to both sides. Think about it. No matter where you live, or how much you feel a "lack of space", Gaza is the most densely populated region on EARTH! Send an army into such a region to face a band of armed, volitile, terrorists and the potential outcome can only be described as "messy". Mmmm. Peace be with you on this Sabbath, Moshe. If I could be with you, drinking fine whiskey on your porch, I would be.

I got a new lawn mower today. A signature event in my live. Forty-four years old, and this is my first brand-spanking-new lawn mower. It's still in my garage. I don't want to use it -- I don't want it to get dirty -- I don't want the pretty yellow wheels to get dirty

Onward and upward; my problems are trival in context.

Be well and enjoy your weekend.

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Wednesday May 7, 2002

Another long day... I spent most of it trying to figure out an error I'm getting with one particular process in the Samba/LDAP tutorial. It's complete save for one panel, but if the error is in one of my configuration files that could potentially affect the outcome in other panels as well. In short, I have to find where the problem is and so far I'm stumped. What's really annoying is I had everything working like a top a week ago. Then I wiped the drive and started fresh to doublecheck each step on a clean system. This time around I get an error (which is another reason I think it's one of my config files). Sigh.

Everything else is hunky, thanks. I spent some time playing around with the waimea desktop today. It's a takeoff on Blackbox, 'cept more streamlined and "lightweight". It certainly is fully configurable. Still a little buggy in spots, but it makes for a nice alternative and man is it FAST when you strip out all the overhead normally associated with KDE (like DCOP, etc). I'm back working under KDE tonight, but it was an interesting learning experience to try something completely different, and that didn't come preconfigured.

I also stumbled across an awesome site for some of the best desktop wallpapers I've ever seen. Check out digitalblashemy.com. Spectacular stuff, and all CG.

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Tuesday May 6, 2002

Later... SuSE installed without incident. They really do have the best installer in the business, methinks. And with the 8.0 release, it just got a couple notches better. Clear, intuitive, and basically, fumble free -- which in this day and age, is a Good Thing (tm).

I have one serious bitch about SuSE, though... their filesystem and init layout is grotesquely non-standard (if there can be a standard around UNIX). I've been around Linux long enough now that if I'm uncomfortable with a distro I'm going to know it in the first five minutes, which is exactly how I felt with SuSE 8. If someone can tell me how to get rid of the "framed SuSE logo" on startup, I'd really appreciate it. I did it on an early release, but it truly escapes me now what exact magic spell I cast...

--oOo--

Well, I think it's safe to say we're finally settled in our new digs. We did most of the final tweaking this weekend -- unpacking the last few boxes, organizing the closets, etc. We still have at least one box that's MIA, which has left both Leah and I in total puzzlement. We both did a final walkthrough of the old house, so we know it was empty when we turned over the keys. And we've been through everything in the new house, and checked all the cupboards; every box has been gone through or unpacked. Yet we're missing a set of stainless steel bowls, a glue gun, and a thingy for fixing screen doors. Nothing critical, but at this point in time, most annoying simply cuz we don't know... Ah well.

A copy of SuSE 8.0 arrived yesterday by courier. I'm not fond of SuSE's init system, and some YAST modules have caused me grief in the past, but they certainly produce a comprehensive and well polished package and their documentation/reference material is top notch. I plan to install it on one of my boxes later today -- maybe Thor, the loaner IBM server. I'll let you know how it goes.

And finally (at least for this morning), I've posted an errata page online for my Samba/PDC tutorial; many thanks to all who've taken the time to send me comments, feedback, and edits. I'll wait 'til the end of the week and send what I've got to the editors at IBM. For all those asking, the URL for the tutorial is here.

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