Linux

Tethering WiFi Only Galaxy Tab To Motorola Droid

Bought my signifigant other a Galaxy Tablet for an upcoming trip and decided to get her up and running with WiFi tethering. I tether my laptops to my Droid’s frequently and love it. Long story short, it wasn’t as straight forward as I had hoped. After several hours of frustrating work trying to get a wifi only Samsung Galaxy tablet connected to an ad-hoc network, I finally have found a solution. The problem is that I needed to be able to connect the tablet to one of our rooted Droid 1 phones which are running wifi tether. This is quite difficult (thanks Google) to do because Android filters out and hides ad-hoc networks. After trying many things including switching out the wpa_supplicant for a different one via Root Explorer, I have found the following to work well. Keep in mind that simply allowing the OS to connect to ad-hoc networks would be ideal.

Be sure to have a working setup of wifi tether running on your phone if that is where you are sourcing the ad-hoc connection.

Step 1: Root your tablet using Z4root and reboot as required.
Step 2: Install ZT-180 on the tablet from the Android Market.
Step 3: Configure the ZT-180 application to connect to the SSID of your wifi tether application.
Step 4: Switch to ad-hoc mode within ZT-180 and enjoy 🙂

It appears to me that the ZT app acts as a proxy between the tablet and the ad-hoc peer.

Truly shame on Google here, there are so many user forums filled to the brim with requests and issues. I can only begin to think of the number of people who have to void warranties and/or for go support by rooting their devices to do something the iPad allows by default.

–himuraken

Nexus S OTA Update to 2.3.4

Just dropping a quick post as a time stamp. I woke up this morning to an alert on my Nexus S indicating that Gingerbread 2.3.4 was available.

I haven’t had anytime to dig in or read change logs yet, but I did notice that Gtalk now has front facing camera / video support.

***Update*** Looks like the Gmail app now has Priority Inbox features.

–himuraken

Running a “datacenter”

It has been way too long since my last post.

In my spare time, along with two other partners, I run a virtualization datacenter in a collocation facility. In addition to generating income, it also serves as an excellent test lab for open source products. It is my conviction that the small business market can seriously benefit from open source applications.

Pfsense, for example, will match up to any mid-level commercial router/firewall for a fraction of the cost (hardware needed to run pf). Virtualization further reduces this expense. Much of the current server hardware in use today will run VMware ESXi (not open source, but no charge). VMware estimates that most desktop and server hardware is only in use 5-15% of the time. Server virtulization reduces physical storage space, cooling requirements, energy consumption, all part of total cost of ownership. VMware certainly is not the only server virtualization host available. Check out offerings from MS, Citrix or Ubuntu. There are others as well.

Note: yes, ESXi is 100% $FREE. There is no requirement to purchase support.

For data storage, we have successfully proven (many times over) that linux (Ubuntu server) NFS is a solid, valid option for shared storage. Production MS Windows and *nix-based virtual machines run flawlessly. MS Windows Server 2008 (all versions) runs particularly well in a virtual environment.

Note: MS Enterprise license allows four instances of server to be installed on a virtual host. Further reduction of expense.

Virtualization is also excellent as a test platform. Windows or *nix servers and desktops can be spun up very rapidly on a single host. I will frequently load a server to install an application evaluation. There is no fear of corrupting existing production servers. If I choose not to use the app, I simply delete the vm and resources are recovered.

I am also successfully using an open source VoIP PBX. Various distributions based on asterisk are very strong and offer all of the common phone system features found in key systems and even pbx.

Today’s take-away: check out virtualization. Check out open source. The benefits will  be clear. The savings will be immediate.

Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 Netbook Performance Issues

Being that it is my job and my nature to keep systems running, I generally don’t upgrade OS’ quickly. Doing so introduces change which in turn breaks things. After performing an install of the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 I found the performance to quite poor. After a quick Google search I found that I was far from the only one with the issue. You can follow more on that here. It is worth mentioning that I had this installed on an HP Mini 311 which is one of the faster netbooks available at the time of this writing. I went back to 10.04 and it is now a useful system again.

–Himuraken

Crontab Generator Makes Scheduling Even Easier

For those that have never used crontab, it can be a daunting task to schedule a simple script. As with all things, I highly recommend that you learn the meanings of CLI programs and their usage etcetera. With that said, I wanted to check my crontab job against a generator of sorts just to be sure I had it right. If you want a simple click and go on crontab generator, I recommend using the one provided by HTML Basix. Enjoy!

–Himuraken

Calling all Ubuntu fans

This week I joined the Ubuntu LoCo Florida Team and participated in last night’s team meeting (via IRC).  Seems like a great group of people AND an excellent way to get more involved with Ubuntu (and really any Linux).

In addition to the IRC meetings, there are scheduled meetups to perform various activities such as installing networks for youth homes/schools, bug testing, documentation writing, and just plain fun. Anyone out there enjoy bar-b-que and beer???

I look forward to greater involvement!

If you have no idea what IRC is and need a Linux client to get started, I recommend xchat (sudo apt-get install xchat)

For more information and to join:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeams
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=225
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FloridaTeam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat

– habanero_joe

Android Apps You Need

I am still buzzing with joy over my recent Android phone purchase. The Android Marketplace has proven very useful, I have found many useful apps and wanted to share a few worth trying out.

1. Listen – This Google app is a must have if you listen to podcasts. Forget the old days of downloading them and syncing them to your mobile/DAP. With Listen, you subscribe, download, and stream right from your phone.

2. Seesmic – This great little app is for those Twitter users on the go. After installing and logging into my account, I was able to perform all of the tasks that I expect from a Twitter client. Simple and intuitive.

3. NewsRob – If you are a Google Reader user you probably are familiar with using GR from your mobile browser. It isn’t any fun. NewsRob is simple, fast, and free. With numerous options for reading and syncing, this app is great.

4. Advanced Task Killer Free – The name is pretty self explanitory, it kills running processes. This is especially useful on the Android operating system which seems to leave everything running in the background even though you think that you exited.

5. TorrentFu – This app is excellent for controlling Transmission and other torrent clients. Uploading, starting, pausing, and all the other basic controls are available. A neat feature is the ability to search for torrents right from the phone and submit them to any of your configured profiles for downloading. There is also a built-in barcode scanner which converts barcodes into torrent searches. Perfect for those times in the movie/music aisle.

6. Katawa – Web comics! If you are a fan of XKCD, Indexed, Dinosaur Comics, and the like, this app is for you. It pulls the latest strip on demand.

There are many others… far to many to list actually. Anyways, I hope that this short list helps out new Android users.

–himuraken