State of the Angst
It's been a while since I revisited this page, since I really haven't had any positive advice to contribute.

First, SuSE posted their KDE 3.2.3 updates to their mirrors in the YaST format, and that managed to be the worst set of packages posted so far, with many errors and very difficult to update.

Then SuSE released 9.1. Unfortunately, Novell chose not to mirror this release, so it was left to the amateur volunteers. After trying for three days to get a decent copy via rsync, I thought I had a good copy, but after adding the source to YaST and performing a system update on two systems, they proceeded to deteriorate badly until I really just couldn't use them.

After two days of messing with my main workstation trying to resolve the issues, I gave up and installed Mandrake 10.0 on it. While not quite as finished looking as SuSE 9.0, it at least worked with everything I needed it to, and looked half-way decent. Package selection was certainly adequate, and according to on-line statistics there are more packages available for it than for SuSE 9.x.

Once I had the workstation up, I went back to try to get the Winbook Si's SuSE 9.1 problems resolved. One obvious problem is that I had upgraded KDE already, and the 9.1 release did not include the upgrade. Packages were available for 3.2.3 on 9.1, but somehow the mix just didn't work.

I have it mostly working now, with the exception of some video codecs, and sound.

Sound is an issue. I would like this unit to make it possible for me to listen to my MP3 collection in bed, or in the garage. (It would be great if I could listen to on-line "radio stations", but that's another problem entirely.) Unfortunately, sound hasn't worked on this (or many, many other) laptops since KDE released 3.2.1.

I have yet to delve in and try anything with the sound. Summer's here and there are other demands on my time.

To wit: I am now doing support for a small office (3-5 users) with a gentoo server. Actually, a fileserver doing samba, a firewall, and a workstation.

I'm gradually ferretting out the configurations. Gentoo has a bad habit of coming up with creative places to put configuration files, much like SuSE and Mandrake are starting to do with their scripts. (STOP IT!) Particularly these systems were last properly maintained in 2003, and many of their configurations were made before gentoo improved it's compliance with LSB standards. As I migrate things to release 2004.2, some thnings are breaking, and some are improving. The breaks help me figure out where things are, but I have yet to get the MS-Compatible Kerberos authentication working.

In order to get more experience with how a gentoo system should run, I've torn down the old auxilliary server in the basement, thrown the 120G drive into it, and made it into a gentoo-based file and webmail server. So far, it's not been too difficult. I tried to set up the cyrus-imap virtual domain support, where mail is stored in a database and users need not have shell accounts on the machine, but the doccumentation for that assumes too much familiarity with the process of adding users, and it just didn't work out. For now, Squirrelmail just uses imap to the NT server.

Squiurrelmail has been a real breeze to set up, and I've put it on the server I maintain for emol.org as well.

A real review of the ups and downs of gentoo is the topic for a seperate post, but suffice it to say that like all current releases it's a compromise, with advantages in some areas and problems in others.

So that's the state of the systems currently. The workstation is humming happily away on Mandrake 10, without any notable difficulties in the install and configuration. The laptop is limping along on SuSE 9.1, hopeing for some time to seriously check the updates and adjust the problem with KDE sound. The new gentoo server is mostly doing what's asked of it, but is not ready for the mailserver migration by a long shot. The old NT 4 server is starting to show it's age in the slow response of IMAP, but it's still chugging along without complaint.

Arthur Benson & Associates Is stumbling along on a mix of old and new gentoo, gradually cleaning up it's act. Actually that server is a remote host, as are moprairie.org and midtowndemocrats.org, which I'm maintaining and gradually reworking.

Have a great Summer!
- posted by Jonathan Hutchins @ 1:03 PM 0 comments