Tag Archives: Ubuntu

Install and Secure RabbitMQ

First follow the simple instructions on the RabbitMQ site. I recommend using their Apt repo if your using Ubuntu like me.

Next you will want to install the management console. To do that you just need to run the following command:

rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management

Now the part where we divert from the simple install. We next will want to generate the some certificates. Personally I used the /opt/cert/rabbitmq/ directory that I created to store these in. To do that run the openssl command you see below:

openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 365 -nodes

Now this is a self-signed cert which should be fine for most development. If you want to do something in production I recommend making your own internal CA so that you can load the CA into your browsers and not get the self-signed error all the time. As this should not be used by 3rd parties getting a 3rd party signed certificate seems a bit over board.

Next is to configure RabbitMQ to use these certificates.

[
    {rabbit, [
              {ssl_listeners, [5671]},
              {ssl_options, [{cacertfile, "/opt/certs/rabbitmq/key.pem"},
                             {certfile, "/opt/certs/rabbitmq/cert.pem"},
                             {keyfile, "/opt/certs/rabbitmq/key.pem"},
                             {verify, verify_peer},
                             {fail_if_no_peer_cert, fasle}]}
     ]},
     {rabbitmq_management, {
              {listener, [{port, 15672},
                          {ssl, true}]}
     ]}
].

Now you should just be able to run the following command to restart the server:

service rabbitmq-server restart

After the  server reboots you should be able to access it via AMQP over SSL via port 5671 and get to the management console via https on port 15672.

Next we should lock down the management interface. First login using the guest account (guest/guest). Once you are logged in click on the Admin tab.

selectAdmin

Then click on the “Add a user” section. At this point fill in the username you want, add a password, and select the admin tag.

addUser

You should now see the user in the list. This user though will still have no access off the bat. Click on the user name to get more information about the user and to edit it.

newUser 

Once you’re in the user’s information go to the “Set permission” section and you can just set the default. This will give the user full access to the default virtual host.

setPermission

At this point you can click on the guest user and delete it. At this point got a server setup to use SSL for connections and without the default user. You are set with a decently secure setup. Have fun developing with RabbitMQ.

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While installing Gentoo I ended up with Kubuntu

So today I thought would be a good day to switch my desktop back to Linux. As normal when i try out Linux again I tried Gentoo. Last time I tried I managed to get a booting kernel on the first try and everything worked. Well this time it couldn’t been further from the truth. I didn’t start with high hopes. I spent some time this morning reading some of the Gentoo blogs and to say the least the amount of fighting the Gentoo developers are doing right now is pretty scary. Little did I know that the developers relationships were in better condition then there installation documentation.

While trying to install the 64bit version of Gentoo I managed to find numerous places in the Gentoo handbook where there were either files mentioned that no longer seemed to exist as well is a complete lack of updates (they had no mention of ext4 but still mentioned reiser as though its something people really use still). In the end I managed to get my setup configured or at least I thought though with the instructions I felt as though I messed up smoe of the networking. That didn’t matter though as on boot it got to USB loading and just stopped. Well normally I would recompile the kernel and try again but tonight I figured the few hours I had already spend were enough.

Well I pulled out my Kubuntu 11.04 disk and amazingly it worked… for the most part. I managed to crash the partition manager by attempting to click the format checkbox for the swap partition but that was about all. In the end I got a fresh install of Kubuntu now. Going to have some fun tomorrow playing with Go now that I don’t have to work in VM’s to do the work.

Linux hits 1% but will it stay?

I actually find this entertaining cause I was at Net Applications site the other day and told a friend “Hey Linux could hit 1% this month”. Wonderfully that has come true. But don’t get all excited about that just yet. If you have been paying attention to the news you would not Ubuntu 9.04 just released a week or so ago. Well you might ask what does this mean? Well something very important for web hit numbers. When a new version of Ubuntu comes out tons of people try it. It tends to get press and so everyone wants to see if this Ubuntu thing might be right for them. Of course not all these people will stick with the OS so the question becomes. Ubuntu is 1.02% now but will it be able to not lose more then .02% from those who remove Ubuntu? Personally I think we might be more like 1-2 months from the actual 1% mark but at the same time I actually think we have been past the 2% mark for awhile. Net Applications doesn’t get to measure important things like computers without Internet which is large part of the world still and some of these people do have old machines running Ubuntu. So what does this all mean? Nothing really except that from the main stream market that shows up on Net Applications charts Linux is growing a bit still at the expense of OSX and Windows. Nothing new here.

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Ubuntu 9.04 Released

Ubuntu 9.04 was released today. This is the standard 6 month update with the normal slew of updates for the kernel, GCC, Gnome and many other applications. The major new addition in 9.04 is the addition of a new notification system. Unlike the old notification system that has been in Gnome for years Ubuntu has made a more clean looking notification system which is probably Ubuntu’s best change with this release. Of course the new login screen will be seen by many as a joke it doesn’t look as professional as the old Ubuntu login screen but hopefully that wont cause people to reconsider the OS. Overall its a great release and if you want to try Linux for the first time try Ubuntu.

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Canonical responds to Microsoft’s netbook FUD

Ok for those who don’t know what FUD means it’s Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. It is a tactic Microsoft has been using for years and probably should get them in trouble for slander but some how lying about a competitors product seems to just be Microsoft’s way again. I had thought they had gotten better about this and stopped using it but I guess I was wrong.

Ok now that that is out of the way on to the real show. Canonical has responded to Microsoft’s article on netbooks that I had done a nice rebuttal to. Well interestingly Canonical made a lot of the same points as me and even got some nice numbers for the driver issue and finally proving there is more drivers under Linux (seriously does this really matter Microsoft?). Overall I think this article does a good job of rehashing what Microsoft said that is wrong and is very well written and with more examples.

Links:

You can now use Chromium on Linux!

So its been awhile since Chrome 1 was released and now the same day the Beta of Chrome 2 is announced OSnews ran an interesting article for running Chromium (the open source project for Chrome) natively on Ubuntu! Not just running it but there is actually a ppa available for Jaunty and Hardy! This is great as it means Linux users will finally be able to use another good browser. Knowing most distros versions of Chromium will probably be very common on distros and the Google Chrome version will probably be in the minority in Linux. It will be interesting to see what will come out of all this though if nothing else at least there is more choice.

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The reasons Linux still is not going to gain market share

Since yesterday’s Android article I have been thinking about Linux a bit more and what it needs to do in order to gain more ground in the Operating Systems space. The major problems still existing are mostly in three areas. These are packaging, polish/ease of use and poor distribution.

First, not just Linux but the whole Open Source movement needs to solve the packaging problem. This is the largest problem for Open Source and it has been the biggest problem that it has faced for at least 5 years now and it has been pointed out time and time again. Well I am going to reiterate the problem since it is not getting solved but actually getting worse. Now we have Google’s Android which isn’t a proper Linux stack (just what we need more splintering) but also it doesn’t use proper Java (1). But how does this have to do with packaging right? Well think about it. With a different Java and Linux stack that means that Android has ANOTHER packaging style! Just what we need another package format. RPM, Deb, ebuild and pkgsrc are not enough we need another (btw that is only the most common ones). Of course recently the Open Source community has come together to work on PackageKit which is supposed to make all of these package types be handled from one application.  Great idea but not what we need (biggest problem is ONLY Fedora uses PackageKit). We need to stick to one package style and most companies see RPM as the one package type with deb being rather common as well. If it was just these two we could probably live but it seems every year a new comes up with a new packaging style for their distribution meaning they will get completely ignored package wise. What does this really mean though? Well Android should not called Linux in any way and I hope it doesn’t go onto netbooks because it will not be able to use any currently programmed programs from what I have seen so far on the net. How does that help people being so limited? Sure its fast but if you cannot do anything useful with all that speed what is the point? Overall Android will hurt Linux’s image do to its choices in packaging.

Second, Linux needs more ease of use and polish. This is one area I see progress in with Ubuntu attempting to make a more polished distribution. The only problem is they are doing things that could backfire for them like PackageKit could backfire for Fedora. They are creating a way to make notifications look nicer. Unfortunately instead of working with other distributions to do this Ubuntu made a system and then gives it to the upstream saying “here adopt this its better” of course upstream will probably not all accept it (if any do) and it will end up becoming a series of Ubuntu only patches (more division). This is the problem! The Open Source community needs to come together to work on adding this polish not doing it individually. This is the big problem with the Open Source community it fails to work together many times at some very important aspects. Of course we could also look at the other problems related to polish where things like the X server are slow and need to be fixed in order to be faster though X related problems are being worked out in the correct way with DRI2 being added. I just hope that the distributions will in the near future learn that they need to begin working together to make a polished distributions cause last i checked the standard Gnome icons look kinda old these days and every distribution does icons completely different the only thing consistent is KDEs icons.

Third, poor distribution. Now this does not mean that distributions themselves are bad. Here I am talking about the way that Linux is introduced to new users. Yes, word of mouth has gotten Linux around and gotten a very faithful user base but it does not get mainstream desktop acceptance. If the Linux community wants to grow bigger (which I really don’t think is that important) then the community needs to find a way to prevent crap from being released. Now from this I mean things like the chopped down versions of Linux on many netbooks the best example is on the Acer Aspire One. While it looks like Linpus Linux is good enough that is just the problem. Dell I think is the only company really doing Linux on the netbook right by utilizing a strong distribution (Ubuntu) in order to provide the best user experience (and most applications) possible. But instead of a good distribution people get stuck with limited versions like Xandros (not too bad and would be fine if external repos were always enabled) and Linpus (horrible since you cannot easily modify the applications without knowing what you are doing). Overall I hope future netbooks will come with better versions of Linux based off modern Linux distributions (Linpus is based on a out of date version of Fedora) and hopefully will have a more full application experience.

Overall Linux has been moving a bit in the right direction but things like Android have an opportunity to weaken what Linux has done perception wise. Of course the perception war can only be won with hard work and lots of team work between many different communities. This is something the Open Source has both been good and bad at in the past hopefully they can come together to create a great desktop experience and win this perception war though since I would hate to see Linux get weaker.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_mobile_phone_platform

Will ARM kill Windows on the Netbook?

So today I saw some videos showing the new ARM netbooks (if you want to see them before reading the rest check the links below). The biggest thing I think is the fact that they are smaller AND cheaper then current netbooks as well as the fact that they run on Ubuntu Linux. Now what does that mean? Can Microsoft based netbooks that sell in the 350-450 range really compete with a AVM Netbook at the 200-300 range? I doubt it. Oh and the kicker? They can run HD content! Wait what HD that thing that Intel hasn’t got cause they use a dated graphics chipset. Yep that same thing! ARM unlike Intel is throwing more into the fight too with the fact that unlike Atom Netbook the new ARM Netbooks also need NO fans unlike the atom ones which generally have one fan in them. So what all does this mean? I think the weakening of Intel in the Netbook sector as well as a reason why Microsoft is guna lose out in the market! Oh and also this means Netbooks really are becoming giant cellphones.

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Interesting ext4 stuff

So some people may have never heard of ext4. This is not to surprising as it is pretty much a upgrade to ext3 which is the current standard file-system for Linux (much like NTFS is the standard for Windows). Ext4 is new and more powerful then ext3. It allows for larger files, can have a large file-system on it and allows more sub-directories. It also is faster then ext3 (though not as fast as some of the speed file-systems.). Fedora 11 will be shipping with ext4 as default and Ubuntu will have it in the kernel and available to use but wont be the default yet (maybe 9.10). I think this is great I have avoided using ext3 for awhile now but I doubt I will stop using JFS for my normal Linux installs.

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Next Ubuntu will be Karmic Koala

Wow not only are the code names coming out earlier these days but I swear they keep getting even stranger. Anways Mark Shuttleworth announced on Friday the name for the next Ubuntu as Karmic Koala which will be fun to see how many people fail at spelling it right!

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Announcement