Recover from a bad superblock

When things go really bad, you may not be able to recover a disk. In those times, think of salvaging the data, reformat and live to fight another day. Consider how valuable the data is versus the time spent on repairing something that is damaged and may not be salvagable. testdisk photorec ddrescue are the tools to think of when you come that decision
But I do enjoy a challenge and when a USB disk was brought to me with mounting problems, I just couldn't pass it up. It was an uncommon setup. The USB stick had two partitions, one with an ext3 filesystem and the other with FAT32. I decided to focus on the ext3 filesystem first.

FSCK (Photo credit: SFview)

To cut a long story short, my efforts to mount the disk met with screens full of error messages and cryptic clues as to what went wrong. Running fsck seemed to clean it first but it still would not mount the partition. Running fsck again would yield more and a different set of errors. My previous boss love to used the expression "time to decide: Fish or cut bait". It was one of those times.
This is probably the last ditch effect before you make that fateful decision. This is the line in the sand and the one you have to cross before deciding to put your effort in getting the data out and start all over again.
The recovery process involves rewriting the information about the partition. Specifically, reinitializing the superblock and group descriptors. However, reinitializing does not touch the data part of the partition. It does not touch things like the inodes and the blocks themselves. So by starting out with a 'fresh' set of information that is used to mount the disk, there is a possibility that the data may still be readable. After that, the data part gets checked and hopefully what you end up with is a filesystem that can be mounted properly.
The process can only be done when the partition is not mounted. If you have tried other ways, it most probably isn't. Mine wasn't, obviously.
So here's the process.
1. First, figure out the block size of the USB drive (in this case /dev/sdf1). I need that information to re-build the partition information. Run the command
dumpe2fs /dev/sdaf1 | grep 'block size' -i
Block size:               4096

2. Then format the superblocks. The command below won't format the whole partition, only the superblocks. It is critical that you use the correct block size gathered from the previous step
mke2fs -S -b 4096 -v /dev/sdf1

3. Now that the partition information is 'fresh', I checked the inodes to figure out what else could be wrong with the filesystem. Remember ext3 = ext2+journalling. So, ext2 tools still work
e2fsck -y -f -v -C 0 /dev/sdf1

4. Now that I've done with one element of the ext3 equation, it time to fix the journalling system or more specifically the journal data .
tune2fs -j /dev/sdf1

5. Re-attempt to mount the partition. If everything went well, you should be able to mount the partition and read the data.

After that, for hard disks, you have to determine whether the disk has reached it's threshold limits. Things like SMART properties will help you get that information.

Interested to know more: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1681972&page=5&p=10434656#post10434656

Fix CMOS Battery Issue with NTP: the NetworkManager Edition

While in the previous article, I described a solution to trigger a script when the network goes up. This works on most server Linux setups but it does not work if you are using NetworkManager. NetworkManager has a different way of doing this. If you are not sure whether you are using NetworkManager, consider this: if you are using a wireless network and configuring it using an applet in the task bar or through a GUI program, it's likely that you are using NetworkManager. That and the fact that the script in my previous article didn't work.

NetworkManager applet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NetworkManager can still do it. It can run scripts after a network interface is connected or disconnected. It's just not apparently forthright about it. But first a little clarification. In Linux parlance, when a network is connected, it is known as "a network being brought up". This is because the network interface state is changed from DOWN to UP.  And vice versa. When talking about network connections, both set of terms are used interchangeably.
NetworkManager offers this feature through a mechanism called a dispatcher. Basically, the dispatcher looks into the /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d directory and run scripts saved in there. Scripts start with a two digit number that determines the order they are run. The scripts are passed two parameters from the main NetworkManager system. They are the network interface that was connected or disconnected and whether it was connected or disconnected.
In my case, I didn't care which network interface it was but it had to be just connected. So the script looked something like this.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Run ntpdate when network interface goes up using NetworkManager
#
export LC_ALL=C
if [ "$2" = "up" ]; then
        /usr/sbin/ntpdate -u pool.ntp.org
        logger Updated time due to network interface going up
fi

Save the file as 10-ntpdate.sh and change it's attributes to be executable. Drop that into the /etc/NetworkManater/dispatcher.d directory. That's it.

Solve CMOS Battery Issues with NTP

Hewlett-Packard Mini 1000 netbook Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I guess it was time. My HP Mini 1000 netbook was giving me the wrong time and date every time it booted up. It made going to websites with HTTPS impossible because I was apparently accessing them from the past. Resetting the time didn't work because it would forget the current time and reset back to 2002. I would then manually reset the time using ntpdate.
After a few times, I got tired of this and decided that there is a better way. Since the netbook is connected to the Internet most of the time, I knew that a script could be triggered to run every time the network card started up. All I needed to do was to add the ntpdate command and options to it. Problem was I didn't know what script it was. I wasn't also big on making a custom change that would affect future updates.
I knew the scripts that set the network configuration was in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. My network interface family was eth so the script that set it up was /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-cfg. At the of end of the file was the command

exec /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-post ${CONFIG} ${2}

Reading the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-post file, I found the following command at the end.

if [ -x /sbin/ifup-local ]; then
    /sbin/ifup-local ${DEVICE}
fi

However, the file /sbin/ifup-local does not exist. So I created one with the ntpdate -u pool.ntp.org command in it.  So now, every time the network is configured, the time is correct.
I know it doesn't address the problem of the battery being dead or needing replacement but it'll do for now.

This didn't work for you? Maybe you're using NetworkManager. Run NTPDate automatically with NetworkManager too.

Reveiw of Blogger for Android 2013

Updated September 2012.
I am posting this on Blogger for Android. I am happy to report that it is a better app than the previous version. I am also not happy to report that Google has delivered a product that seems to be uneven and confusing to first time users, again.

There are many things to like about this app. All of your Blogger blogs and their posts are immediately accessible. It is faster and more responsive. Switching between blogs is almost immediate. It does feel like the Blogger App is pulling the RSS feed of the blog instead of pulling it directly from the Blogger system but it still works quickly. (Which should help explain the problem I had were the Blogger app just stomped over a published post).

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you are a Blogger user and need to note ideas for posts and work on drafts, this is what this app seems to be built for. However, since there is little or no layout formatting options, sites whose design language calls for a specific layout (e.g. each post has to have a related photo on the left side of the post), will find that final posting will still have to be done at the PC. Which is odd is because one of the highlighted features is the ability to include photos taken from the phone's camera. 

In fact, if you are thinking of using Blogger for Android as part of your blogging workflow, consider this advice: opening a saved or published post is a multi-step processs. First, the app will show the complete post, including labels. Then you need to select or activate/touch the post text to edit it. The good news is that it now hides the HTML formatting and show the complete formatting. 

Post settings are still missing from the Blogger App. But handling labels has improved. There has always been the ability to add labels to the post edited but now when you start typing, you get a list of previously used labels. Which is really useful if you have many labels and can't remember which one to use off the top of your head. There is still no Schedule option to schedule when you post will be posted. This makes using the App to post on Blogger seem like an all or nothing proposition. And knowing other Blogger users, they will miss the powerful SEO-friendly option of providing a search description because it still isn't available.The Blogger App for Android (2013) is now good to use for general blogging but leans towards immediate posting.

It could be that Google is now leaning towards Google+ a blogging platform. However, Google+ is still missing a killer feature: to customize the layout and therefore the user experience. If you blog using Google+, your posts is just a post in a stream of other posts. You can set up Google+ Pages but your audience will mostly come from reading your post in their stream as opposed to going to your specific Google+ page.
Also is missing is a way to monetize your Google+ posts or page. This could mean people who do make money from Ads will not be interested in posting in Google+. They may post publicly there to reach a bigger audience but it'll just link back to their Blogger site. It may not be a big revenue generator for most but some prolific posters will find posting solely to Google+ to blog, a turn-off.

Again, download the Blogger App for Android because it is great for capturing ideas and first-drafts. It is also increasingly becoming an equal companion to the Blogger site. 

TFS Internet Gateway: The way to connect commercial mail systems in the mid 90s

TFS Brochure from Australia

Back in the mid-1990s, I was connecting businesses to the Internet. I was selling software to connect people to the Internet. This was back in the day when you had to buy software to connect to the Internet. It was even pre-Windows 95 times. What many people don't remember was that Microsoft wanted to charge extra for software to connect to the Internet. They called the add-on pack Windows 95 Plus Pack. I was selling a software suite called Internet-In-a-Box which competed directly with them. Truth be told, there were free software available to connect people to the Internet but this was early days and you had to have skills (like editing a text file) to setup things correctly. Strange thing was that I was still selling Internet in a Box pretty well even though competing with Microsoft. The Box had more software. Internet In a Box's big brother package, even had a sweet TN3270 terminal emulator. But I found out that people were buying it because the setup was easier and we provided phone support. Try getting that from Microsoft back then.
My boss and I saw the writing on the wall and we started to diversify. We were talking to a lot of companies that were interested in the Internet. But most of them were interested in the Internet as a resource not for communication. It's not like they didn't have e-mail systems. They did have e-mail systems for internal communications but they were built just for that: internal communication. Most of the systems didn't have the optional module of connecting the e-mail system to the Internet.
A little work on the Internet and I found this unique product from Sweden called TFS Gateway. They have been making a living building a system that allowed different commercial e-mail systems to talk to each other. They did this by using the mail system's API or mimiced a remote system via the e-mail system's remote gateway. TFS Gateway converted mail messages into a common format (pseudo X.400) before passing them on to their final destination. It supported Microsoft Mail, Lotus Notes and cc:Mail and Novell GroupWise. What interested me was that TFS Gateway also had a module that connected to Internet mail systems, specifically, an SMTP gateway. A market opened up as more and more companies saw the benefit of Internet mail communications and wanted to connect their systems to the Internet.

Blogger for Android review: Getting better

Google released a new Blogger for Android and I'm happy to report that it is an improvement over the past version. I blog from everywhere. I used to use the Springpad App to capture the initial ideas before forming them into posts. Then, it would be a cut and paste away from being posted via the Blogger web interface. Then, I switched to the previous version of the Blogger App. I used it at every opportunity I could. Then I hit a bug. I could live with idiosyncrasies of the app but when it became destructive, I ditched it. But before that, I had used almost all of the features it offered, perhaps working it enough to find that bug.
The best new thing about this version is the way it allows you to manage posts. In the past, it used to be in one long list. But now, you can view them separately. You can safely view and edit  drafts and not have to worry about accidentally opening a published post.
I reviewed a more recent version of the Blogger app for Android here.

Insert a Table of Contents in a Google Doc with LibreOffice

In another post, I told of my troubles with LibreOffice and Outline Numbering and how it stopped me from setting a table of contents in a file I downloaded from Google Drive.  Finally, I successfully inserted a table of contents into a Google Docs document using LibreOffice with the correct page numbering. It's not hard but somewhat tedious. There are basically 4 things you need to do.

Step 1: Setup the document.

Download the Google Doc document as an LibreOffice/OpenOffice .ODT file. It will likely download it into a temp file. Normally, you can't edit that. So save the file somewhere else to allow for editing. Move the cursor top of the page.

Insert a manual break and change the type to Page Break. Then set the Style to be Default. Now change page number to 1.
Again, move the cursor up to top of document.  Press F11 to bring up the Styles and Formatting window. Select the Page Styles icon from the top row and double click on the First Page style.
Just to check, move the cursors between the top of the document and into the other section and back up and check the name of the section on the status bar at the bottom of the window. The top one should say First Page while the one below it should say Default.
For a better way to do it, scroll down to the comments sections and check out Julian's way of doing Step 2 onward.

Step 2: Correct Outline Numbering styles

Click on Tools - >  Outline Numbering to bring up the Outline Numbering window.
Select Level 1 from the list on the left. In the Paragraph Styles section, choose Heading 1.
Now select Level 2 from the list. Under Paragraph Styles, select Heading 2.
Repeat the process for all levels that have an empty Paragraph Sytle.

A tale of Tables of Contents, Google Docs and the Outline Numbering Monster

I love Google Drive. Specifically, I love Google Docs. It gives me what I always wanted. A word processor on demand, whenever, wherever I need it. As long as I'm near a browser. On a PC connected to the Internet.
Both of which is becoming more common by the day.

To tell the truth, I never really pushed Google Docs. I never really asked too much out of it because I never really needed more than a simple word processor. Have you ever been to a Microsoft Word class where they say that 90% of Microsoft Word users never really use more than 30% of it features. I'm one of those 10% of Microsoft Word users. There is not much I haven't done on Word. Frames. Pictures. Multiple Columns. Sections. Cross-references like footnotes and endnotes. Renumbering pages. Hierarchical documents, where a document is made of many documents that other people are writing. I've even done some marcos and VBA. Did you know that holding SHIFT and selecting text with a mouse will select a square block of text, not lines of text. Did you also know that you could set the background of the editing areas to blue. It was a feature to make WordPrefect users feel at home.
Despite all that, I've never asked a lot from Google Docs. I did ask much perhaps because I was still in awe of the ability to have word processor in a browser. A browser!
That changed recently when I did a proposal for a client. Working with other people in different geographical locations in a single document is what Google Docs was made for. No sending files back and forth. No problems of updating different versions of files. Once the document proposal largely completed, it was time to prepare the document to present to the client. The group had been careful to use the proper headings at the correct level. So all that was left was to generate the table of contents and the cover page. I had resigned to the fact that the cover page was going to be in another document. This was because I couldn't put my head around how reset page numbers in Google Docs. Then, when I went ahead and inserted the table of content, the table of contents didn't have any page numbers.

How to make a PDF for free with Ghoscript

I few weeks back I faced a problem with PDFs. I needed to combine several PDFs into a single PDF. The solution was to use Ghoscript. (I later found another tool that could do the same). This brought back fond memories of ghostscript and how it introduced me to the concept of "printing to a PDF".
At one time or another we've all been asked how do you make a PDF file. The natural reaction would be that it would require Adobe Acrobat and would cost money. A lot of money for something so trivial. This isn't a problem on Linux because the ability to print to a Postscript file has been around for a long time. Run the file through the ps2pdf program and your done. Nowadays, you don't even have to do that. You can print to PDF straight from CUPS and some programs like LibreOffice even offer the ability to export directly to PDF.
I'd like to share with you how to "print to a PDF" on WindowsXP or even Windows7. Basically, it's creating a PDF file by printing. Except that instead of printing to paper, it becomes a PDF file. This opens up tremendous opportunities. First, any program can create a PDF. So long as it prints on Windows, the program can be used to create a PDF, sort of.

The tool that makes this possible comes from the makers of Ghostscript. Its called RedMon. It redirects the output of a printer and feeds it into another program on Windows. Basically, it takes the output of printer, instead of printing it on paper, and gives it to another program for further processing. This has many uses, if you are creative enough. But it's most useful if you want to create PDFs with ghostscript.
There two ways to do this. The first way is to install Ghostscript and RedMon, create a few files and configure a new printer. It's not terribly technically complicated. The instructions to create a PDF printer using just Ghostcript and RedMon is very clear.

The second method is just as clear although a bit shorter and requires one more program called MakePDF.

Modify a PDF

I received a comment after my recent post on how to combine PDFs. The result was that I was reminded of another PDF tool called pdftk. It's a command line tool that does a lot of things on a PDF files. You can extract pages, burst the entire PDF into individual PDFs and yes, merge multiple PDFs into a single PDF. So, if I wanted to do the merge the same documents with pdftk, the command would be

pdftk source1.pdf source2.pdf source3.pdf cat output merged.pdf

PDFtk can also encrypt or decrypt a PDF. That means putting or removing password protection.
It can even insert a watermark or a stamp. The difference being is that while a watermark is an image underneath the document text, a stamp is an image or lettering on top of the document. An example for this is  a stamp marked "NULL AND VOID" on a document. But that it not the strangest thing it can do.

How to combine PDFs

Recently, I had to figure out how to join pdfs files into one. This used to be something non-trivial. Nowadays, you can use SimpleScan to scan in documents and create a multi-page PDF. But a few days ago I found myself on an older Mandriva PC with a scanner and the need to create a multi-page PDF. I scanned the pages of the documents with trusty old XSane.  Now I have the pages individually. I was thinking of something clever like opening up Scribus and pasting each image per page. I was also thinking of pasting the images in a OpenOffice document but the images would shrink too much. I gave up thinking like a Windows user and looked at the problem in it's most basic form. I could print the images into individual PDFs but then I would need to combine them together. I was thinking along the lines of printing out in postscript and then concatenating the files together. Then convert the resulting postscript file into a PDF, which is trivial.
Finally, I decided I wasn't that smart and asked Google. I found the answer here, in a Macworld article, of all places. Basically, I had to print out the pages individually as PDFs, which involves setting the printer to print to file. Then I use good old Ghostscript. The command is

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf source1.pdf source2.pdf source3.pdf etc.pdf

Replace source1.pdf, source2.pdf, source3.pdf and etc.pdf with the names of the files that I had printed earlier. Run the command and rename merged.pdf and I'm done.
Basically the command takes the list of pdf files as input and 're-prints' them out as one pdf file using the printer definition called "pdfwrite" which is a basically generates a PDF output.
Never underestimate the power of the command line tools.
Here is another tool I found to change PDFs.

When in doubt, Webmin

I was listening to the Linux Outlaws podcast. Well catching up more likely. My time has been quite filled up lately and I'm behind on my listening to podcasts. I don't listen to a lot but they are just so deep and the discussion that go on just spring my own opinions and ideas. Some of it, those that are better formed, end up here.

I was listening to the edition that was done right after OggCamp. By all accounts it was brilliant. Well, except apparently there was some problem with food for the volunteers and that there was a mixer with some grannys. It's hilarious and you should listen to it yourself.
But what piqued my attention was Fab's issues with setting up a DHCP server. He had some problems and that although there were loads of Linux people around, most of them couldn't help him. Not that they didn't want to. But it's because they weren't Linux server people. They were Ubuntu users but mainly on the desktop.
Now I'm a server guy. Or so I keep telling myself. But I was wondering what would I do in Fab's situation, given that I have some basic ideas for what to do. Or what would I tell someone in that situation.
Well, there seems to be only one sure thing to do. Install Webmin. The dependency is Perl and no distro worth it's salt does not have packages for Perl. Perl was the PHP of it's day. And for most of the stuff that you want to do with Webmin, the standard perl packages would do. Even then, if you do need them, Webmin is smart enough to suggest to you what to do or ask permission to do it itself.
So if you are ever caught having to so anything server-like on a Linux box (or Solaris box for that matter), just grab Webmin from the distro's repos or the webmin site itself. It supports many languages and has add-on for all sorts of things. But even with the standard Webmin, you could do almost all of the daily admin tasks. I do recommend installing it and gaining some familiarity. Help is uneven with some modules having excellent help while others barely have any. Install it even on a desktop machine, it'll work. There is almost no difference in the basic OS for a desktop and a server.  So give it a try. It's not the first time I've thought webmin is great.

A Linux state of mind

A admin friend of mine asked me some time ago whether I knew how to prevent a user from burning a DVD on their office PC. I told him that was easy. Simply remove the user from the group that is able to use cdrecord and set the execution permission to only the user and group. Most distros have a cdburning group. Remove the user from that group and the user can't burn a CD or DVD but he can still read them. My friend looked at me like he was going to eat me alive.
He meant on Windows.
I sincerely didn't know but I did have some ideas. We talked about some ways including editing the registry and removing the service that is used to burn CDs. The problem stemmed from the fact that the PCs came with the software pre-installed. While it wasn't a problem, in the past, the users recently figured out how to do it and were doing it in the office, causing some concerns with some managers. The discussion went on and on and degenerated into finding the driver files and deleting them. At this point, I told him to stop and offered a more pragmatic solution: Remove the DVD writing software. If you don't have the software, then they can't write to the DVD. This seemed to suit him. I think he'll have to set up some group policy to stop the software from running, propagate that and hope for the best. And that the users don't figure out how to download and install their own DVD writing software.
He we talked recently and he noted that removing the DVD writing software worked. I asked him why only now was this a problem. He told me that some users learned a torrent was and were downloading and burning DVDs.
It was my turn to want to eat him alive.

Blogger ate my post, Google Search gave it back

I am a writer at heart. Just look at the number of blogs I contribute to (listed as the Techsplatter network at the bottom of this page). So I prefer Blogger over Word press because it takes care of a lot of details and hassle of running a blog. Don't get me wrong. I've setup Joomla systems and know my way around httpd.conf. But like all racing car drivers and chefs, sometimes you just want drive and cook and not worry about the car or whether the fridge is fully stocked.
Well, I blog everywhere and I used to use Springpad to capture thoughts and snippets that I would include later in my blogs. But then Springpad decided to be more Pinterst-like and that messed up the way I take notes by simply making it harder (it's gotten better since then). It drove me nuts and I sought out and found the Blogger app from Google. I had tried it earlier and it was in a rough shape then. But any other app I tried didn't work all that well.
So I installed it and with the caveat that the post would be typed in html in mind I started using it. I didn't care about formatting because I just wanted to write and have it ready for final editing on Blogger web itself. Well it turns out that the posts can be formatted when you start off. After the first save, it gets wonky and decides to dump you in this mode where you could put in html markup but you really can't see what Blogger will put in. I didn't care because I just wanted to write. And for that, it served me well. I could start a post in the phone and pick up later at home. As you can see in the archive of the blogs, the number of posts have picked up. And because I was out of a job and had tons of free time.
In the end, I thought that I had it licked and was working well within the confines of the app. Then I found out it had one more dark 'feature'.

Kicking the tires on Google Current

I wasn't happy with how Dynamic Views look like on tablets. So, I am trying out Google Currents as an alternative. I wanted to play around with it to see how it works.

Google Currents is both an advanced RSS feed reader as well as future platform to compete with Apple's Newstands. A user can subscribe to RSS feeds as well as magazines within Currents called Editions. Anybody can build an edition and draw content from their own stuff as well as create all new content just for the edition. So there is a Techsplatter Edition on Google Current that you can try out. If you are on a tablet, open that link and install the app on IOS or Andriod. Click on the link to subscribe to Techsplatter on Google Currents. It is a bit spotty but I am sure it was due to me or them.
I will changing around stuff and experimenting with it. I really would like to hear back on the things you like and the stuff you don't. There is some extra content there but not much. My entertainment review site, watchlist.blogspot.com has it's Gooogle Current edition. That has more content that I draw from other places like YouTube and my other sites.

Mageia2 Upgrade Survival Guide

It's been over a week since I upgraded my netbook to Mageia 2. I'd like to share what I've learned so far and hope it would be of use to someone. Given that my experience is on a netbook, the smaller screen size may have an influence on how well Mageia behaves. But my expectations before I upgraded was high since I had Mageia 1 and had no problems with it. I will update this from time to time as I find out more things and install Mageia on more boxes.

First Things First
Backup. No two ways about it. With the cheap network storage available, it's nuts not to back up. If you don't have 50Gb Box.net account, get an external hard disk. Just back it up somewhere. You don't want to be sorry.

The Upgrade 
If you are doing the software upgrade (as opposed to an upgrade using a DVD/CD), I strongly recommend to set to "download the files first". I once did a software upgrade on a previous version without it and upgrade broke halfway through. I had to do a disk upgrade/install to recover. Once the upgrade is done, it will ask to reboot and you will rebooted into Mageia 2.
If you are doing a disk upgrade, make sure you pay attention to the disk partition information screen. Preferably, do this while you are awake. I had a friend who thought it would be nice to start it in the middle of the night and wake up to a new system. You guessed it, he clicked through not realizing the installer had asked to delete the entire hard disk. In fact, the installer didn't do that by default. He thought he was being smart by checking the partition manually. With one eye closed.

Welcome to Gnome3
If it isn't clear already: Gnome3 is nothing like Gnome2. Here are some of the things to get used to in Gnome3

• Everything changed - accept it and you won't go crazy. In fact, don't even think of this as an upgrade to Gnome2. Gnome2 just melted away.
• Doing the Gnome3 jab. That is the move you do when you move your mouse to the top left hand corner of the screen to do anything: change windows, move between workspaces, run applications. Deeply reminiscent of the move rappers do to pretend scratching a record as they rap. I gave up and got a trackball instead
• Remembering the name of the program you want to use. Because the fastest way to get to an application is to type the name of the application in the search box on the top right corner of the screen.
• Add programs to the favorites bar for quick access. Right click on application icons to add it to favorites bar for easy access.
• Using multiple workspaces needs getting used to. Gnome3 developers claim that workspaces are now unlimited. They are referred to as either "down" or "up" not numbered as they were before. You can move applications to other windows by right-clicking but then they can become nuisance to get to. Do the Gnome3 jab and click on the workspace. Alt-Tab will get you there too but if you are the type that sorts windows according to workspaces, alt-tab will bounce you between workspaces and it can get confusing.
• By the way, Alt-Tab switches between programs. To switch between windows of a program, say between multiple windows of Firefox, use Alt-~ instead. Learn that.
• The top panel can't be hidden. For a system supposed to be tablet friendly and thus limited-screen-space friendly, this is strange. I used to set my top and bottom panels to Auto-hide and thus moving my mouse to the top or bottom to reveal the panel was normal. Which essentially means that the Gnome3 UI designers made the same thing I used to on Gnome2 harder by making my target smaller.
• Access Advanced Settings, the next step up from Systems Setting, like it is a separate application. Strange? Not really because it is a separate application. Go there to set advanced settings such as the size of fonts, what to do when you close the lid of the laptop and putting back maximize window button.
• The over-bearingness of the Gnome3 UI designers. Talk about a nanny-state. Discard the notion of choice (and thus individuality). Nobody wants different screensavers, right? It's too difficult. Gnome3's policy is very clearly: "less choice is good" and "go somewhere else for it". Okay, I'm sorry if I said that Gnome3 removes a person's individuality. They constantly remind you of who you are at the top right corner of the screen. Bizarrely, their stand that "the options are not gone, just hidden" is an invitation to hacking. Which brings me to my next point...

Extensions.gnome.org is you friend. 
Extensions are basically Javascript hacks to give users access to the hidden options in Gnome3. They are not part of Gnome proper so use the same judgement you use for installing browser extensions. Just go to extensions.gnome.org in a browser to install individual extensions. Here are some of the the important gnome3 extensions to install to add back some of the functionality taken away.

• alternative status menu - give me back my hibernate capability. And does anybody know whether Suspend is Sleep or Hibernate. The discussion I read from the Gnome developers clearly indicate that they thought that Suspend was a state that "you could take out your batteries" and recover from that. Clicking Suspend on my machine only put it on Sleep mode. Pull out the battery and it's a reboot. 
• Left/Middle-message-tray - take control of the bottom right corner. You will find yourself fighting with Gnome3 over it because that is were you move the mouse to see the messages bar. The Gnome3 UI guys forgot that's also where the bottom scroll arrow button for maximized applications is. Oh wait, they removed the maximize window button.

We have a Springpad Notebook

I haven't been posting as often as I want to. In fact, I have a Springpad notebook full of unfinished articles. So Rather than dig myself out of the pile, I am sharing some of the stuff directly on Techsplatter's Springpad Notebook. It's not the same as the one I am using to draft articles but rather a holding area of the things I want to write about before I even put a word down. Get a peek into whats brewing.
Please visit and follow Techsplatter's Springpad Notebook

Export from Outlook to Thunderbird

An open mind is like an open road,
a journey waiting to happen

Never would I thought the road I take would lead me so far astray. But that is what is good about an open mind. It will lead you many places, often the place you should be. So when I had a problem to export mail from Outlook to Thunderbird, I never expected to use Outlook Express to solve that
A friend asked me to help find a way for her to take her personal e-mails with her. She didn't want nor have a smartphone or tablet. She just didn't want the hassle. Like many true blue users, they learn something and stick with it. Her idea was to find a way to export the message. She even asked me if she could move them to her Hotmail account.
I realized that where she was going, she may not be able to connect to the Internet. But she would still need access to those e-mails, even only if to read them. So my solution was technically complicated but from the user's standpoint, easy-to-use. PortableApps to the rescue!
If you don't know what Portable Apps is, it is a suite of free or open source Windows applications that have been modified to run off a thumb-drive / USB memory stick. The best thing is, you plug it in and click on the taskbar icon to pop-up a menu that acts like the Start button. It will list the programs installed on the USB drive that you can run with just a click. A right-click and you can add more apps from their library of open-source free software. They range from a screen magnifier to the big boys: LibreOffice, Inkscape, Firefox and Gimp. Just select and the PortableApps system will download and install it automatically.
I installed Thunderbird under the Portable Apps menu and made sure it could run ok. Then I exported the folder she needed from Outlook. Problem is, there is no format that Outlook can export to that can be read by Thunderbird. I tried various extensions that neither installed nor were compatible. I finally was ready to import the entire Inbox and then trim out what she didn't need. Which was a problem because she only needed about 25% of the messages in Outlook to take with her.

After reading the various hints and tips online, a common theme emerged. Thunderbird can import Outlook Express just fine but not Outlook. I fired up Outlook Express to see what I could do and was surprised to find out that it could import from Outlook by folders. So I imported the folders I needed from Outlook to Outlook Express. Once finished and satisfied that the messages were there, I closed Outlook Express and started Thunderbird. I then imported Outlook Express (which had all the folders she needed) and they appeared in Thunderbird, on the thumb-drive.
On Linux, you could coax Wine to run Outlook Express and use it as the middle man.
Roundabout way? Yes. Problem solved? You bet. So don't shy away from a solution that is complicated, if you are going to use it only once. Just do it and make the user happy. And sometimes that's all that matters.

Choosing an Android Smartphone: My Favorite 5 Android Apps

Like I said before, half of the battle of owning an Android is choosing the right hardware.
The other half is finding useful apps that double or quadruple it's value. Here are my favorite 3 Android Apps. These are apps that I use every day or those that provided me a function that made me wonder how I managed before it came across them. I've excluded any Google apps (e.g. GMail, Maps) and Messaging Apps (Yahoo Mail, Y Messenger) because I consider those as basic apps that should be in any phone, smartphone or not. Also Battery Savers and Task Killers would really depend on the hardware you bought.

Springpad - I write for a few different blogs that cover different subject matters. Which means I am basically constantly writing. And when I am not writing, I am thinking about what to write. Blogger goes some way by accepting posts via mail. That gives me the opportunity to capture an idea in a short mail and send it to Blogger where it will be filed as a draft post. But the pace has picked up (life happens) to the point where I don't even have time to formulate thoughts before drafting it out on e-mail. Ideas have to be captured, even in it's raw, almost incomprehensible form before they get lost. That's where Springpad came and saved the day.
I first came across SpringPad while using Chrome. It offered a web-based service to what seemed to be a document management system. You could create containers where you could upload files, provide a brief summary and tag them. Or you could create notes and attach files and URLs to them.
But it went beyond that. You could create notes and lists. Or you could create a container which contains items for a list. Or you could use custom templates to capture information about movies, TV shows, receipies. The second best part for me was the ability to just capture a voice memo. I have tried to use the standard voice recorder but my problem was I had to go back, find the recording among all other voice recordings, listen to them again and re-file it. With Springpad, I would choose the container / category before I begun recording. Which allowed me to add notes to my recording later but focred me to pre-file the recodring . Now I am capturing my thoughts on voice and listening to how stupid the idea was or chainging it before posting it.

BeyondPod - is a podcast catcher. I listen and watch to a few podcasts. Mainly from the TWiT network. This is as straight-forward as it comes. It provides a few categories where you can group together podcasts of the same topic but really it's up to you. You can either ask it to search for a podcast in the category you'd like to listen to or give it an RSS feed where it'll pull it down. You can set up a schedule for each feed as to when to poll and download the latest podcast episode. I wish I could tell you about the SmartList capability but I don't really use it because it does what it does so well for me now I don't have to use it. It also is able to handle mixed media. I listen to TechNewsToday and watch ThisWeekInTech (TWiT). It plays the audio podcast internally and hands off the video podcast to the default viewer. Beautifully simple.
I don't go out and explore new podcasts and BeyondPod doesn't go out and try to suggest new podcasts so if you are into that, something else would be better. If there is a gripe, is that the play button is a tad small and placed above the delete button when the phone is in landscape mode. Other than than that, this is a great podcast app.

BookApps - I love books and buy them all the time. I don't get to read them immediately but I do buy books that interest me or that are on sale that time. That poses a problem at the bookstore because I agonize  as to which books do I already own and don't. After buying a few books twice, I found this app and it did what I wanted, get a hold of my library at home. It couldn't be any easier. Scan a book's barcode using the built-in reader and it'll pull down the information about the book (the author, publisher and even a cover image) from the Internet and add it to it's database. You can browse by title, author or publisher. It's like a mini library system in my phone. If the data is not available on the Internet, you can enter it yourself. You can even snap the cover of the book and add it in.
So when I am at the bookstore and am not sure if a book is on my to-read pile, I just pull out this app and look up the book. Some bookstores have taken to place a sticker over the ISBN barcode and replace it with their own. Probably because of Amazon. Which makes it harder but since you can do text searches, I quickly find out whether I have the book and decide whether to buy it.

More to follow..

Managing Old Dell servers

A few Dell servers I am working with were getting long in the tooth. I was worried about their performance so I decided to monitor them more closely. I didn't have a lot of experience dealing with on-board management with Dell servers, although at first glance, they took a different approach than HP or IBM servers. With HP or IBM, the on-board management system has it's own network interface with a web-based front end or accessible via remote clients. They worked independently of the server OS. Dell's approach was to have a system running on the server's OS accessing the management hardware, even though the management hardware had it's own network interface.

I've always known Dell for their support of IPMI, so decided to take that route first. This great article that explains how to get it up and running quickly. It was command line-based and flexible. However, it wasn't giving me the information I needed easily. IPMI spewed a lot of information but the output needed to be parsed. To decipher the data, it needed to be cleaned-up and restructured. Sorta like SNMP but a tad friendlier.
Then I read on-line about OpenManage which was Dell's own system. OpenManage was both the monitoring hardware on the system and the software suite that used it. It gave administrators information on the servers via a web interface. The servers had the hardware but I wasn't sure about the software.
A quick check revealed that the original CDs were long gone with the boxes after a clean-up some years ago. So I hunted for the files on Dell's support site. The site was helpful in throwing at me all they had but finding the explanaiton for what the files were required a lot of back and forth between web pages that didn't refresh well
In finding out what some of those files were from Google, I found another great article on thegeekstuff.com that was basically a howto to set up OpenManage. But I still needed the correct installation files. I first tried to get all the correct files mentioned in the article from the Dell Support site but couldn't sift through all the gunk. I found the MD5s for the files i needed but not the actual files. I felt more and more like Dell wanted me to download ISOs from their site and find them there.
Finally, I decided to dump the 'correct' way and use the files the article linked to instead. The files the article linked to were on a Dell ftp server but were meant for specific versions of Linux for specific versions of OpenManage. The files the article used didn't match the version of CenOS the server had nor the version of OpenManage that was compatible with it. Regardless, I downloaded a more recent version of OpenManage for the RedHat equivalent version. I reckon if yum/rpm craps out, then i'll just hunt some more. It was a CentOS instead of true-red RHEL but I guess they were close enough.