First I installed SparkleShare on my Ubuntu laptop from the Ubuntu Software Center. (At the time of writing the SparkleShare version in Software Center is a bit dated. I’m hoping it will be updated from 0.25. to 0.4 soon.)

Once SparkleShare was installed on my client machines I logged in as root on my OMV server and installed Git:

apt-get install git-core

On my OMV box I ran:

adduser ––disabled-password git
cd /home/git
git init ––bare MyProject
mkdir .ssh
vi .ssh/authorized_keys

Following the instructions, I pasted the key into the authorized_keys file on the server, which SparkleShare had created during installation in my home directory on my Ubuntu laptop.

Lastly, I ran:

chown -R git:users .

… for git to own everything in that directory.

I also tested a version of this adding a user from the OMV UI:

cd /home/username
git init ––bare OMV01
mkdir .ssh
vi .ssh/authorized_keys

And again, I pasted my key into the authorized_keys file.

The final step was to chown everything in the directory to the user:

chown -R username:users .

Now, I re-started SparkleShare on the Ubuntu laptop and re-ran the “Add folder” wizard, using username@[omv-server-ip-address] in the “On my own server” field and /home/username/OMV01 in the “Remote path” field.

It seems to work fine so far. Next I’ll try it on a Mac. (There is no Windows client yet.)

Now, if this could be set up through the OMV interface, that would be awesome. Unfortunately I don’t know how to write the plugin and get all this automated, but I’m hoping someone else will come along who does know how to do it, because having it built in to Open Media Vault would be

As a side-note, there’s another interesting open source project, which is similar to SparkleShare, called Syncany (http://www.syncany.org). Syncany doesn’t seem to be as far along as SparkleShare when it comes to working clients, but it does seem promising, has some nice features, and is arguably a better solution than using Git, since Git may not be the best solution for large files.

The one function I really would like to see in Wunderlist is todo templates, for things you tend to do relatively often. Grocery shopping is one simple example. Many times when I go shopping for groceries I buy all the staples. You’d think I could easily remember what those are. But, surprisingly, I don’t all the time. If I could have a groceries template that I could use to create a todo list, that would be great. Now, that’s something Wunderlist doesn’t do. So, I had to find a way to mimic this functionality myself.

Wunderlist does allow you to email yourself tasks from the email account you signed up with. To create a todo list you simply put the name of the todo list in the subject of an email and all the tasks in a simple list with each task on a new line. Well, that’s convenient. To get things to work the way I wanted it to work, I created a bunch of email templates for my repeating todo lists. When I want to create a new todo list quickly and easily, I simply take one of my email templates and fire it off to me@wunderlist.com. This creates a new todo list in my Wunderlist on the fly. Pretty nice, huh?

CREDITS: I got a lot of assistance from various people on the Proxmox forums, and specifically from one user, Marius.

Prepare the Host Node

There are a few things you will need to do up-front to prepare your “Host Node,” that is, your Proxmox VE host to allow for the TUN network interface that OpenVPN requires. Log in to your Proxmox VE host and open:

nano /etc/vz/vz.conf

Then, scroll down to the section that says “## IPv4 iptables kernel modules” and load a few extra modules for iptables:

IPTABLES="ipt_REJECT ipt_tos ipt_TOS ipt_LOG ip_conntrack ipt_limit ipt_multiport iptable_filter iptable_mangle ipt_TCPMSS ipt_tcpmss ipt_ttl ipt_length ipt_state iptable_nat ip_nat_ftp"

You must restart VZ to load the new modules by running:

/etc/init.d/vz restart

(NOTE: This will shut down any running VMs.) Now, you’re ready to install the OS.

Install the OS

First off, at least for the time being, OpenVPN AS needs a 64-bit OS. Currently there are pre-packaged installation files for Ubuntu and Fedora. Installation packages for 32-bit OSes and other distributions are supposedly in the works. Because Proxmox is based on Debian and there are several Debian and Ubuntu OpenVZ templates available already, I chose to use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS 64-bit. That particular template isn’t included in the “Appliance Templates” in Proxmox (at least not in my version), so I had to download it from the Proxmox repositories first. Simply download the “ubuntu-8.0-standard_8.04-1_amd64.tar.gz” template to your Proxmox host. Go to the Proxmox repositories and find the template you want. In my case it was at ftp://download.proxmox.com/appliances/system/ubuntu-8.0-standard_8.04-1_amd64.tar.gz, so:

cd /var/lib/vz/template/cache/
wget ftp://download.proxmox.com/appliances/system/ubuntu-8.0-standard_8.04-1_amd64.tar.gz

Once the template is downloaded, log in to the web interface of your Proxmox VE host.

Creating the OpenVZ container

Hopefully you already know how to create an OpenVZ container in Proxmox. If not, since it’s not really the focus of this how-to, head over to Proxmox Tutorials. Moving on, for my VPN appliance I selected the following settings:

• Template: ubuntu-8.0-standard_8.04-1_amd64
• Disk space (GB): 8
• Memory (MB): 512
• Swap (MB): 512
• Network type: Bridged Ethernet (veth)

IMPORTANT: You must select ‘Bridged Internet (veth).’ ‘Virtual Network (venet)’ will not work.

You should of course also fill out all the other stuff, like hostname, DNS domain, DNS servers, and so on.

Now, simply start the VM.

Configuring and preparing the VM

First things, first. Update your OS! Use the “Open VNC Console” located in the ‘Virtual Machine Configuration’ settings for your VM and run:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade


You also need to configure the IP settings of the VM. Add the network config settings for your setup, like in the following example:

# Primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.20
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1

Then, restart your networking, like so:

/etc/init.d/networking restart

Install OpenVPN

Obviously, first things first, so you’ll need to download the installation file from OpenVPN. To download it you need to first sign up for an account. Once you’ve signed up, find the URL to the download you want. In my case, using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS 64-bit, the latest available version was OpenVPN AS 1.1.0, so I picked the openvpn-as-1.1.0-Ubuntu8.amd_64.deb file.

That out of the way, last thing to do before you can start configuring your OpenVPN Access Server is to actually install it. This is fast. Log in via SSH or using Proxmox’s VNC Console. Then, do this:

cd /tmp
wget http://path/to/openvpn-as/download/directory/openvpn-as-1.1.0-Ubuntu8.amd_64.deb

It’s a fairly small package, so it should download relatively quickly. Then issue:

dpkg -i openvpn-as-1.1.0-Ubuntu8.amd_64.deb

It should install everything. When the installation completes, to run initial configuration for your newly installed OpenVPN Access Server, issue the following command:

/usr/local/openvpn_as/bin/ovpn-init

Unless you have specific requirements, you can just accept the defaults during the configuration process.

I will not cover configuring OpenVPN for your specific needs here. OpenVPN has a good document outlining how to do that. It’s available to download from their website for people who already have OpenVPN accounts. Obviously, if you’ve already gotten this far, you should have an account.

That’s it. All it took in the end was a few “special” tweaks here and there to make OpenVPN run in an OpenVZ container, and overall it wasn’t that complicated once I figured out what those tweaks were. Of course, it would be more straight forward to install OpenVPN AS on a dedicated server, but that would cost you more. And if you already have spare capacity on a virtual host, why not use that?

I hope you enjoyed this how-to. Comments, corrections, feedback, and ideas below are greatly appreciated.

1. Plugged in the USB modem.
2. Created a new ‘Mobile Broadband’ profile using the connection wizard in Ubuntu’s (Gnome) Network Manager (which already had the T-Mobile USA ‘Internet’ settings pre-configured).
3. Clicked connect on the newly created ‘T-Mobile (Internet)’ profile.

Wow, that was easy! Easier than on Windows or on a Mac.

Again, I tested my download speed … in the same physical location as I tested it on with my Mac … i.e. with somewhat limited coverage. I ran it a few times. I got download speeds of over 800 Kbps every time. Even faster than on my Mac.

Yesterday OpenVPN Technologies, the company behind the OpenVPN open source project, announced the immediate availability of their new OpenVPN Access Server.

OpenVPN Access Server, or OpenVPN AS, is a commercial product based on the open source version originally developed by James Yonan. OpenVPN AS lends itself perfectly to use either on an appliance-style server or for running in a virtual machine. Installation is straight forward and the licensing agreement is too. The performance and scalability of running OpenVPN AS should be at least on par with most other commercial offerings, while no other, if any, commercial offerings comes even close in cost.

There are other reasons for using OpenVPN too. I won’t go into details about the architecture of OpenVPN and why it in many ways is superior to other VPN technologies. However, if you want to read more, you can read this thorough article on VPNs over at Linux.com.

Since I know most other Huawei modems work with Macs, I figured that the E181 must work with a Mac too. So, next I headed over to Huawei’s product support pages. I couldn’t find a download for the E181 specifically, but I did find one for the E180 here. The E180 is essentially the same modem, just for other markets. My somewhat educated guess was that the E180 software would likely work for the E181 too. So, I took the chance and downloaded what appeared to include Mac OS drivers. Curiously, the file included an .exe file. Hmm … Well, I inserted the modem in a Windows machine and ran the newly downloaded application. It warned me that I was about to update the firmware of the modem. Sure. A few moments later I was prompted that the software update had been applied successfully.

Next I moved the modem to my Mac running OS X 10.5.7. It automatically detected the modem and popped up a window with a “Mobile Connect” application. I went ahead and installed the app. Once it was done, I opened up the Mobile Connect app and entered in T-Mobile’s APN details, as follows:

 Name:      T-Mobile USA (this could be named anything)
 Number:    *99***1#
 APN:       internet2.voicestream.com
 Username:  voicestream
 Password:  <blank>

Then I hit connect … and voila … I was online. Sweet!

MobileConnect will create a new modem configuration called “HUAWEI Mobile” in your Mac’s Network Preferences. From now on, if you select the “Show modem status in menu bar,” you can use the modem icon in the menu bar to manage your T-Mobile WWAN connection.

Just out of curiosity I couldn’t help myself running a speed test. Although I only had one to two bars where I was at, I was able to get above 700 Kbps down and 250 Kbps up. Not too shabby, I’d say.

A small disclaimer:  The most expensive plan, about $60/month, does NOT include unlimited data. The $60 plan allows for 5GB/month of downloads. That’s probably enough for most people. But do yourself a favor, don’t watch YouTube or Hulu using your modem. It may end up costing you a lot in overage fees if you run over your 5GB/month.

Proxmox

Once you have downloaded and burned the ISO, it shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to install. Once installed, one can download ready-built VM OS and app templates directly from the management interface, which is all web based. That’s right, it’s not like VMware’s crippled web UI, where you can only take some actions, like starting and stopping a machine. All management is done through the web UI.

Proxmox VE is a very versatile product. Not only can one run KVM on top of Proxmox, but it will also run OpenVZ containers. The choice between KVM or OpenVZ usually comes down to what kind of OS you need to run. If you need to run a Windows machine, KVM will be your choice, while you will likely use OpenVZ for most Linux servers.

Back to the templates. All templates available at the time of writing this are OpenVZ templates. However, the Proxmox VE developers say that KVM templates are coming. Getting a template is as easy as point-and-click, and a few moments later, as soon as it’s downloaded to your “template library” you point-and-click again to create a new virtual machine container. It literally doesn’t take much longer than half a minute to build a new OpenVZ machine.

There is probably at least 10 different templates available already, varying from basic OS templates to full application appliance templates, such as:

• Ubuntu 8.04
• CentOS 5
• Fedora 9
• Zenoss Core Network Monitoring
• Joomla!
• Drupal
• WordPress

The full list of current templates can be found on the Proxmox VE Wiki.

Even if you don’t have “enterprise hardware” lying around at home, but only have some old clunker hardware with a CPU that supports virtualization, I highly recommend downloading and installing Proxmox VE. It’s a great virtualization platform.

In Part 2, I’ll be discussing more of Proxmox VE’s features and dig a little bit deeper. Stay tuned …

Congrats Hulu on the big win!

Only a few years ago, when illegal file sharing of music and the Napsters of the world were still one of the most hotly debated topics, and when Apple and iTunes was truly starting to make inroads to the market, I was sitting in a conference room with a bunch of people waiting for a software development meeting to start. The from the start casual discussion centered around the future of music distribution and who would come out on top. One of the developers, let’s call him John, a self-proclaimed music lover and code poet had just finished up some work for one of the large companies providing a media player, which at the time was building an online music store. During the conversation, which got increasingly heated, John was adamant that the big studios and the traditional distribution channel of physical medium, like CDs, in physical stores would remain the leader in sales of music. Well, we all know how that went. In the U.S. today, the trend is clearly pointing to more music being sold through iTunes than through any other individual retailer or etailer. As much as many people don’t like Apple, for good and bad reasons, Steve Jobs & Co have a vision and they’re delivering on it.

Clearly, there’s something going on in the media distribution landscape. Technology is moving faster than the business models of the incumbent content provider companies. Doh! What else is new? We already knew that. Why don’t the executives at the large content provider companies get it? OK, it’s obvious, they’re just protecting their revenues and the status quo. But, with technology changing, creating new and more efficient sales and distribution channels, and new business models to go with it, if the old ways are stubbornly held on to, these companies will eventually become irrelevant, just like the traditional sales channels of music is becoming less and less relevant by the day. A few examples come to mind, like Tower Records and declining sales at big box retailers, and so on. Here are some articles on the topic in LA Times in Q2 2008 and in New York Times on New Years Eve 2008.

It is often said that the best way of predicting the future is to look into the past. In the case of TV and movie distribution, until fairly recently, peoples’ Internet connections simply were not “fat” enough to download or stream high-quality video. Moreover, the video compression codecs weren’t good enough. That has changed. This makes the video market analogous to the music market 5-10 years ago. Thus, what happened in the music market WILL happen in the video market. At this point, it’s not a question of if TV and movies will be distributed over the Internet, but rather how soon the majority of it will be consumed through computers connected to the Internet.

If the content providers were smart and realized the potential of companies like Boxee, instead of blocking access to Hulu through Boxee, they should approach Boxee and give them a capital infusion, or simply buy Boxee out.

I found AskoziaPBX, a very small distribution (currently) based on FreeBSD. AskoziaPBX is designed with a minimal footprint and runs well on low powered, embedded platforms.

Looking around in my stash of hardware I found a mini-ITX system with a 1.2 GHz VIA CPU, 512KB RAM, and a 1GB Disk on Module (DOM). A DOM is essentially just a solid state hard drive that mounts directly into the IDE socket on the motherboard. Plenty of horsepower to run Askozia PBX.

Since the system I had is essentially a standard x86 PC I downloaded the “Live Install / CD,” an .iso, and burned it to a CD. I connected an external USB CD-ROM and booted the system from my newly burned AskoziaPBX ISO image. Well, that didn’t work so well because of some error with the BTX boot loader, which apparently is a known issue with VIA and FreeBSD. My great master plan of a “simple” installation had failed. So now what? I had to come up with an alternate way of getting the AskoziaPBX image on my DOM. So, this is what I ended up doing, which was really pretty fast and simple.

Besides the hardware, this is what you need:

• Download the AskoziaPBX generic PC image (.img) and put it on a USB drive
• Download an the latest version of Ubuntu and burn the .iso to a CD.

And this is what you need to do to get the AskoziaPBX image onto your computer’s DOM.

1. Boot from the live Ubuntu CD
2. Insert the USB drive (let’s assume it’s named “USB-Drive”)
3. Start Terminal (it runs as user “ubuntu” when in “live” mode)
4. Create a password for the root account

sudo passwd root

5. Type in the password you want twice
6. Now, still in Terminal, log in as root:

su

and provide the password you just created

7. cd to where the USB drive is mounted (normally in /media). Assuming the USB drive is name USB-Drive:

cd /media/usb-drive

8. Check that the AskoziaPBX image is there by listing files in the /media/usb-drive directory, by issuing:

ls

The image should have a name similar to:  pbx-generic-pc-xxx.img

9. If the image is there, which it should be, check the mount point of your DOM by issuing:

fdisk -l

Be sure to find the right drive. In the next few steps you’ll be overwriting everything on the drive you select, so make really sure you know which drive to write to.

10. Assuming your DOM is mounted as /dev/sda, issue the following command:

gunzip -c pbx-generic-pc-xxx.img | dd of=/dev/sda bs=16k

11. The process of writing the image to the DOM could take up to a minute. If all went well, your DOM should now be flashed with the AskoziaPBX image.
12. Shut down Ubuntu.
13. Remove the external CD-ROM.
14. Boot up your system again and it should boot into AskoziaPBX

Now, all you need to do is to configure AskoziaPBX on your network and get a SIP trunk to use for incoming and outgoing calls. Configuring AskoziaPBX is a different article …