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1. Bacula is good, but very confusing. It’s clearly very flexible, but perhaps I’m not mentally geared up to it yet.
2. Don’t let a cat walk on your keyboard whilst backing up your data via Unison. Bad things happen.

Well, I made it back from LUG Radio Live in one piece. It’s all a bit of a blur now, as I flaked out when I got home about 8pm on Sunday night. I do remember having a great time though, it was just a shame that I couldn’t see all the talks. Mark Shuttleworth was highly entertaining, telling stories about his space trip. The live recording was very funny too - I’m in there a couple of times, unless Jono edits me out. All in all, it was a really relaxed, social atmosphere, very different from the corporate expos I’ve been to. Even the representatives from RedHat, a typically corporate Linux company, seemed informal. It was nice seeing a few familiar faces too, Ian Lynch, Jon Masters and MJ Ray to name a few. On Saturday night I ended up having a curry sat between Christian Schaller, Fluendo and Gstreamer guy, and Daniel Barron of Dan’s Guardian. Of course, it took me half the evening to work out who they were, as I’d not seen either of their talks. *blush*. They both seemed really nice people, as did Daniel’s wife, Jane.

The following day brought the paintball. Having arrived on time, we then had to wait half an hour for the LUG Radio presenters to turn up. The team I was on ended up, erm, not winning, but that didn’t really matter as every one seemed to have a good time getting shot.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded my photos.

LUG Radio Live is tomorrow and I’ll be there. Looking forward to it, some interesting speakers scheduled.

The AFFS seems to be having some problems following the resignation of MJ Ray. Their e-mail archives show the nature of the disagreements - mainly that the committee haven’t been following the procedures laid out for them.

Well, after months if not years of hard work on behalf of the Debian developers, Sarge went stable a couple of weeks ago. Having had all sorts of problems installing Woody on some SCSI servers at work over the last couple of years, I was eager to see how Sarge and it’s famous new installer would fare on a new SCSI system - an HP DL380. Branded as Linux compatible, support for the hardware shouldn’t be an issue for a modern distribution.

I was impressed with the installer, which I ran in “expert26″ mode. The RAID arrays and Broadcom gigabit cards were all detected without problems. It was great being able to set up an LVM system on top of one of the RAID arrays all from within the installer and without having to drop down to a shell.

It would have been nice to get offered a wider range of kernels during the installation than simply a 2.4 series or 2.6 series kernel. The 2.6 series kernel on offer was compiled for a 386 processor. I had to install a 686-SMP kernel manually after finishing the rest of the installation.

For some baffling reason, the extended attributes flag for Reiser is not enabled in the Debian kernel - it is necessary to use POSIX ACLs with Reiser. Given that this box is a file server, it is a bit of a pain, as I had planned to use Reiser for the data partition. Most of the other filesystems (ext2, ext3, XFS, JFS etc. etc.) all have ACL support enabled where possible, so it was odd that Reiser didn’t. I did have a stab at a kernel compile, but I didn’t have time to ensure I’d got all the options correct, and ended up converting the partition back to ext3.

But apart from that, it was a great introduction to a fresh Sarge installation, and I’m impressed with it.

I’ve just seen the last episode of the current season of Doctor Who. I knew that Christopher Ecclestone was leaving the role, but had assumed that the regeneration would be in the Christmas special. When the penny dropped and I realised that it was going to happen, right here, on my TV…

I’ll miss Dr. Who number 9.

Linux User & Developer seems to buck the trend for PC magazines shipping two months earlier than the cover date. The latest issue, 50, arrived during the week and according to the website is the May 2005 issue.

Inside, “The Lugger” (a column written at least partially by Jon Masters) writes about LUGs, specifically comparing UK LUGs with US ones. He contrasts UK LUGs (informal pub-based gatherings) with US LUGs (budgets and boards of management.) He includes enough conditionals to placate anyone who might try to be offended by the article, but in the end decides that a middle ground between the incorporated US LUGs and the informal UK ones might be the best bet. Well, I think I’m in a position to have some relevant comments. As well as having a full time job, some of you might know that I’m Chairman of Hampshire LUG. It’s one of the larger LUGs in the country (~200 members) and has been around for quite some time. We have a constitution and committee to ensure the LUG continues to meet its objectives - supporting Linux users and spreading the word. Committee members are elected every year and are accountable to the membership. We have a bank account where we save money from donations to buy equipment for the LUG - networking equipment for meetings, that sort of thing. Having defined roles designates responsbility for tasks and ensures that the LUG continues to run smoothly and is open to members of all skill levels. It also ensures that there’s a representative point of contact for external agencies. Certainly such an infrastructure might prove stiffling or just pointless for new or small LUGs, but once a community has been established around a LUG, it’s worth thinking about protecting the LUG with some formal rules. They don’t have to be called upon, but they’re there when you need them. By the time you realise you could do with some formal rules, it’s usually too late to establish them.

The Lugger describes UK LUGs as small groups gathering in pubs and community centres. As The Lugger points out this often excludes people, for example those who can’t go to pubs for religious reasons. It also excludes those who can’t get into pubs with inadequate disabled access, those who are too young, those who can’t hear where music is played, or simply those who dislike smoky atmospheres. (This was evident when our LUG had regular pub-based meetings as well as bring-a-box meetings - attendance at the pub meetings was usually less than half of the bring-a-box meetings.) The Lugger says, “those in minorities or with disabilities [can be left] feeling a little left out (since they’re not always catered for by any level of forward planning).” At HantsLUG we actively try to make our meetings as accessible to all as possible. One of the many advantages of our Southampton University venue is that it is on the ground floor and has automatic doors and disabled toilets. It’s fairly neutral territory as far as religions go and the room is air-conditioned and there’s no smoking in the building. I’m going to sound like a old fart now, but I enjoy a nice pint as much as the next man. I just don’t think that pub meetings should be at the core of a LUG’s activites. Particularly, if they are the only LUG activity, they can exclude a large number of potential members. LUGs are there to support existing Linux users and to encourage everyone to try using it. Excluding sections of society doesn’t help further the cause.

One part of the article that I do disagree with however, is where The Lugger says “I was reading a story on Newsforge recently about the experiences one guy had as a president of a local LUG and was forced to wonder: what can be so hard about organising a monthly meeting that it turns in to such a perceived struggle?” Well, struggle might be pushing it (certainly things get easier with practice,) but organising a monthly LUG meeting isn’t a piece of cake. As part of the Chairman’s role I organise monthly meetings as well as monthly InfoPoints. Organising a meeting involves weeks of planning. People require notice of events, so they have to be announced two or three weeks in advance. (We also like to have details of our next meeting to give out at InfoPoints.) This means booking and confirming the venue, arranging physical and network access. Prior to the meeting we have to arrange volunteers for the front desk, find out what problems people need fixing so that the necessary resources can be brought along and help people with transport arrangements as necessary. If there are talks being given at the meeting, speakers have to be approached, details confirmed and requirements met. The schedule then has to be finalised and announced long enough in advance of the meeting for people to arrange to be there for a particular talk they want to see. On the day itself we have to arrange for all the equipment for the meeting - hubs, network cables, 4-ways, badges, donated items for give-aways, equipment for the front desk - to be delivered and set up. Furniture needs arranging. We need to improve our signage for the meetings - this would also mean more stuff to sort out in advance and use on the day. The meeting itself is a mixture of welcoming people to the meeting, ensuring they get settled in, getting plonked in front of a system running distro you’ve never used and trying to fix it, ensuring the speakers are happy, announcing talks and trying to talk to each attendee throughout the day. (At our last meeting we had 40+). Afterwards everything has to be packed up, boxed up and loaded into cars. After the meeting, well, there’s about a week to confirm details of the venue for next time. Oh, and an InfoPoint to organise. Don’t get me wrong - I enjoy doing all this for the LUG. But a walk in the park it isn’t.

So, whilst I don’t agree with everything in the article, it should certainly provoke some discussion among smaller or newer LUGs.

I’ve recoded part of the blog to only regenerate the XML in the RSS feed when a new entry is created or an old entry is edited. This means that there’s not a pointless extra load on the server as it generates the RSS output every time an RSS client requests it, but I still don’t have to regenerate the feed manually after blogging something. So, please make sure you don’t use the old feed and do use the new feed.

It also means that the RSS feed is entirely valid, so I’ve created and added a button, using the rather cool buttonmaker that generates all those little buttons that people use on their websites. It’s pretty configurable too.

The most important thing to happen today is that I won the first Geek Car Number Plate Game. It was an exciting contest and I was pleased that people wanted to take part. I’m also glad to have won, of course.

Other than that, this evening I have been mostly entertaining the kittens, assembling our new garden furniture, and doing some work on the Meeja Box. Thanks to the latest delivery of parts I should have a system that can now boot. Still waiting on a few peripheral (but important) headers for the motherboard though. I’m keen to look at installing the software, but I’m not sure when I get the time. One thing’s for sure, every time I want to record something on the TV, I get more motivated to finish it.

Welcome to the first entry on my new blog. I’m not too sure what I’m going to put up here, but it’ll probably be the odd bit of news mixed with general geeky stuff. There’s an RSS feed you can subscribe to if you want to ensure you never miss an entry.

Thanks to Neil Ferguson for letting me bastardise his blog script, which I have done beyond all belief. He wouldn’t recognise it if he saw it…