UNIX Administratosphere

In a Windows environment, people have gotten used to just picking up any device (whether it is a CDROM, PCMCIA card, printer, or modem) and expecting it to work. While the concept of “plug and play” is not yet here, the fact is that when installed everything should work with Windows.

And it isn’t just Windows - other large commercial vendors have access that you and I do not. Apple comes to mind - MacOS X has much better support than Linux or FreeBSD, for example.

Open source operating systems rely on hardware manufacturers to make the details of their hardware available for free or low cost - and then for someone to come and craft the software drivers needed. Usually, the latter is not a big problem; the former is.

The problem can be deeper than that as well, since the label on the product is not the same as the label on the internal devices: so it is not possible to simply look for a brand and use it. Worse, manufacturers can change hardware vendors on the same model, so that discerning which model is which can occasionally be difficult - the revision becomes the determining factor as to which hardware was used.

First thing is to determine which devices are supported. Start with the release documents for the operating system and look for supported hardware. Another place to look is the man pages (or other documentation) for the drivers. Keep the list of specific hardware handy, on another screen or printed out.

Then, look for the device (or devices) at your chosen store. Write down what you find, even if it isn’t listed (and even if it is). Then look up the device on the Internet using your desired search engine. Pay attention to mailing list threads and watch what sort of trouble people had (or didn’t have). The mailing list threads should also help you identify the hardware sources used in otherwise unidentified products, and also will keep you up to date on people’s experiences.

Once you have a product chosen, given few problems on mailing lists and a well-supported and identified hardware chip set, then buy it. However, for best results, make sure there is a good return policy in case it doesn’t work - otherwise, you are taking a chance (albeit a very small one if you’ve done your homework).

I’ve gone through this with several wireless cards under FreeBSD. The first was the Netgear MA401 (researched as given here) - worked flawlessly until it was smushed. The second I received as a bonus with my laptop purchase was a Zonet 1502 (definitely a mistake, but it came with the laptop). I’m sure the Zonet works fine under Windows (and probably OpenBSD: they reverse engineered the driver). Currently, I’ve added a TP-Link TL-WN610G (again researched as described here) - also working flawlessly.

This isn’t just good practice for wireless cards, though - networking cards, mice, video - all benefit from this research. Even laptops: when I bought my laptop, I researched the two brands that were available (for sale used at my favorite local used computer store) and found that one had lots of difficulties and the other did not. Guess which one I bought?

Setting up OPIE (One-time Passwords In Everything) in OpenSUSE was easy: there is a opie RPM in the standard repository, and it installs cleanly and easily.  Then it is just a matter of initializing the database and modifying the PAM configuration to match.  Then each user is added to the database (/etc/opiekeys) one at a time.  I’ll describe the exact process on OpenSUSE at a later time.

Insufferingly, it appears that Fedora (and Red Hat) do not offer any form of one-time passwords anywhere - and certainly not OPIE.  RPMs for opie are exclusively for OpenSUSE and for the Polish PLD distribution (both of which seem to have everything).  How extremely frustrating!  This sounds like a good time to switch my home system from Fedora 5 to OpenSUSE 10.3.

OpenSUSE has supported LVM, XFS, KDE, and many other technologies when Red Hat staunchly refused to.  Even now, OpenSUSE support for all of these is much more integrated and time-tested than Red Hat’s.

Lest I sound like I hate Red Hat - I don’t - and that’s what makes it so frustrating.  Grrr….

The search for one-time passwords for HP-UX and for OpenVMS was even more fruitless.  HP-UX apparently has a third party skey package available; OpenVMS has nothing - though it could be added through programming the ACME interface (which provides similar capabilities to PAM - though perhaps not as flexible).

It looks like the BSDs aren’t a lot better: FreeBSD has OPIE built into the core (with a full section on OPIE in the FreeBSD Handbook on it); NetBSD and OpenBSD do not appear to have it (!).

Looks like my settling in to FreeBSD and OpenSUSE has paid off.  I don’t even need to suggest Debian - Debian has everything - and OPIE is no exception.  And of course, Ubuntu follows suit as well.

This is just amazing: did everybody coordinate this? Within the last three weeks or so, we’ve seen these releases come out:

• Ubunutu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon (and Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, et al)
• OpenBSD 4.2
• Fedora 8
• Red Hat Enterprise 5.1
• OpenVMS 8.3-1H1
• FreeBSD 7 Beta 2
• FreeBSD 6.3 Beta 1
• OpenSUSE 10.3
• Macintosh OS X 10.5
• NetBSD 4.0 RC3
• AIX 6.1

Several of these were released on the same day, November 1.

What next? Am I really supposed to choose just one? Sigh. And I just installed OpenBSD 4.1 and Fedora 7, too - not to mention installing FreeBSD 6.2 not too long ago.

From all the talk, I’ll have to try Kubuntu again. So many systems, so little time.

I have been using OpenSUSE 10.3 (with KDE). I just love it - and I love the new menu format, too.

Update: Sigh. I should have known. Microsoft Windows Vista celebrated its 1st Anniversary on Nov. 8.

Over at the Web Worker Daily blog, there is an article titled “Who Needs a Notebook?”  While this is a very good article and a good look at three alternatives, for our purposes there is one serious drawback: none run UNIX or Linux.

One notable thing about the Windows environment, especially in the embedded environment, is that its requirements are still much higher than any UNIX (especially BSD and Linux).

There are several PDAs and small devices that come with Linux pre-installed (for purposes of discussion, being able to install Linux or BSD is not considered). My current favorite is the Nokia 770 (now superceded by the Nokia N800).  These are sold as “Internet Tablets” but run a Debian-like embedded environment with their own window manager.  The tablets are quite expandable software-wise; available software (from the community) includes OpenSSH, xterm, minimo, xournal, and more.

A classic Linux-based PDA (which is legendary in the Linux community) is the Sharp Zaurus.  While not initially a Linux-based PDA, the CL-5000D was the first of many that would Linux-based. Currently, the Linux-based Zaurus line is only available in Japan. The demand is such that there are many exporters that will sell the Zaurus to non-Japanese audiences anywhere in the world.

However, be aware that buying a Zaurus from an exporter/reseller necessarily means that there is no warranty from Sharp.  It also pays to be wary about power requirements: many such Zauruses will ship without a power supply for the country being shipped to - so if the local power plugs and power output are not compatible with Japan, then you are stuck.

The current Sharp Zaurus page (in Japanese) is here.

The kind people at TuxMobil have an entire list of PDAs that run Linux, including notations denoting those that come with Linux preloaded. If getting a PDA with Linux preloaded isn’t enough, you can put Linux or NetBSD (“Of course it runs NetBSD!”) onto a PDA yourself if you are technically inclined.

Lifehacker has an article on a product called the decTop. It is billed as a Internet-browsing appliance, but is apparently a complete (and upgradable) computer as well. Sounds like the perfect hacker computer.

It does seem to be slowish by modern standards, and if my experience with 128M is any indication, it won’t run the most current distributions. There are some excellent discussions on how to install Ubuntu 6.06 onto it: one from Jonathon Scott and one from Ray over at Librenix. Juan Romero Pardines from the NetBSD Project has put NetBSD onto the decTop. Someone else put AstLinux onto a decTop - and added great pictures of the internals as well.

Over at Docunext there is a great series on the decTop, including pictures of the guts and of the locked drive (apparently no longer locked in current versions). There is also a set of tips on getting Debian to work on the decTop, as well as the author’s experiences in running the decTop on solar power.

The system advertises an ethernet connection, but it is, in fact, an USB-ethernet dongle. This fact combined with the USB-1.1 means that the ethernet connection is very, very slow. Everything hooks into the USB ports, including keyboard and mouse as well as the Ethernet connection. These two facts appear to be some of the worst drawbacks of the device.

There also appears to be no wireless support at all - the Internet browsing devices I’ve seen all use wireless connectivity as their main connection method - so this appears to be more of a desktop device, rather than a portable device. It is fanless, which means near absolute quiet. Who knows, maybe they’d make a good cluster (heh).

I must admit, when I first heard the name, I thought it might be a minature of one of these instead. Silly me.