Richard A. Johnson

OK, so today freenode migrated to their new server. It was a bit rough around the edges at first, however they have finally added support for connecting via SSL and using a script in Irssi you can authenticate via SASL. So, I will quickly show you how to get SSL and SASL setup for Irssi and Irssi only, and I am assuming you already have a connection to Freenode already setup.

WARNING: It has been brought to my attention that the Irssi folks get mad when people tell you to edit the config file instead of using the commands, so with that, backup your config file first, and if anything goes wrong, not my fault

1. Let’s install the necessary packages (I think this is all, I already had openssl installed but had to install the libcrypt- packages for the SASL script below):

   sudo apt-get install openssl libcrypt-openssl-bignum-perl libcrypt-dh-perl libcrypt-blowfish-perl

2. Grab and save the cap_sasl.pl script to ~/.irssi/scripts and setup a link for it to autorun:

   cd ~/.irssi/scripts
   wget http://www.freenode.net/sasl/cap_sasl.pl
   mkdir autorun  ## only if you do not have this directory already
   cd autorun
   ln -s ../cap_sasl.pl .

3. Fire up Irssi without connecting to anything:

   irssi -!

4. Once in Irssi, setup your username and password for SASL:

   /sasl set freenode your_nick your_password DH-BLOWFISH
   /sasl save
   /save

5. Quit Irssi
6. Using a text editor, edit ~/.irssi/config and in the section that says servers = ( you want to remove the stuff between the { and } for freenode, and then add the following in its place:

   address = "chat.us.freenode.net";
   chatnet = "freenode";
   port = "7000";
   use_ssl = "yes";
   ssl_verify = "yes";
   ssl_capath = "/etc/ssl/certs";
   autoconnect = "yes";

7. Now under the chatnets = ( section, you want the freenode = part to be changed to:

   freenode = { type = "IRC"; };

If you get a message about your nick being “Juped” or “temporarily unavailable” and get switched to Guestxxxx nick, read the following, otherwise enjoy your new secure connection.

Now you can go ahead and connect to IRC like you are used to. If you have the ENFORCE flag set for your nickname, you may come across some issues with identifying, and the one message I kept getting was:

Nick nixternal is Juped

If you get this, you need to disable the ENFORCE flag on your nick (make sure you are identified with your correct nick first):

/msg nickserv set enforce off

After that, disconnect from IRC, then reconnect to IRC. You shouldn’t be getting that error message now. If you do, go to #freenode and complain accordingly If all is well, you can go ahead and set the ENFORCE flag back to on:

/msg nickserv set enforce on

Now all should be well. Enjoy your new secure, SSL and SASL authentication, connection.

Yes, as many of you have read recently, Canonical has created a deal with Yahoo! to provide the default search for Firefox in the Lucid release. I decided that I would sit back and parse not only the information that Canonical has put out, but also the information I am reading on the web, Twitter, Identi.ca, and mailing lists. To be honest, I was actually surprised that a large scale attack or a FUD campaign never started over this, and I feel there just might be a turning point in all of this. Before I go on, let me throw a bit of a disclaimer in here as to hopefully not provide a lash back against either Canonical or Ubuntu.

Disclaimer

1. I am not an employee of Canonical, I receive zero money from them for anything I do.
2. I am not a speaker on behalf of the Ubuntu project nor the Ubuntu community.
3. I speak for myself and nobody else.

OK, I think I covered the grounds. I know this post has the potential to either be popular or very unpopular. I am not here for a popularity contest, so if it sinks or swims, I do not care. I just want to provide my opinion of the deal and the atmosphere I have experienced since I first got involved in Linux some 17 years ago.

I personally think this deal between Canonical and Yahoo! is a good one, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of these deals. I wouldn’t mind seeing a deal with Google, Ask, Bing, or whatever else there is out there. The reason I like this deal is that it brings the potential of hiring more developers for the Ubuntu project. Seeing as I am a Kubuntu user and developer, I would love to see some of the money make its way into Kubuntu. Wait a second, did you just say Bing? Isn’t that the search engine, or rather the decision engine, ran by that big evil empire known as Microsoft? Oh boy, how many of you just went, “WTF IS WRONG WITH THIS IDIOT?” I am sure some of you did, and that was to be expected. I mean, Canonical did strike a deal with Yahoo!, and for some reason, many of you feel that Yahoo! is now Microsoft, or at least powered by Microsoft. If you read more than a couple of blog posts here and there, and dive into the news by not only Yahoo! and Microsoft, but read the stuff by the WSJ, NYT, and more. You will see for one, this deal has yet to be approved by the powers to be, and who knows if it will. Saying that Yahoo! is powered by Microsoft is not only incorrect, but it can be construed as either trolling or FUD at best.

You see, I have been around this Linux community for the better part of 17 years. There were good years and plenty of bad years. There were two things that always stood out during these years.

1. Free is on one side of the fence and open source on the other side, in other words a split camp with common goals.
2. Microsoft is a big and evil empire

So, Microsoft is big and evil, and don’t think I could disagree with that statement, and they haven’t proved themselves worthy of us removing this title, or whatever we want to call it. How many of you actually feel that striking this deal with Yahoo! is striking a deal with Microsoft? Don’t be shy, I have seen you on Twitter and Identi.ca stating the same, and on the Ubuntu Developers Mailing list as well, oh and on IRC. How many of you use Dell equipment? HP? IBM? Intel? I could keep going, but I wanted to kind of use companies that Canonical has worked with that Microsoft has worked with as well. How many you out there love your new Intel i7? Why? Don’t you remember the late 90′s when Microsoft was driving Intel to only do things a certain way that would benefit Microsoft only? How many of you are driving a Ford? Shoot, how many of you own a car? How many deals do they have with Microsoft? What about that bicycle, as I know there are a few of us nuts who prefer to ride instead of drive? Your TV? Cable? Shop at Best Buy? Oh man, I could keep going. How many of you just went, “WTF DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE PRICE OF TEA IN <nsert county so I don’t offend anyone>?” It has a lot to do actually, and yes it is probably beating yet another dead horse. The reasoning I see a lot of with dealing with $X who in-turn has a deal with Microsoft, in this case Yahoo!, in many cases can be seen as hypocritical. Imagine a life if you only dealt with companies or people that didn’t have a deal with Microsoft. For those of you against this and use Google, not to long ago Google made a deal with Twitter who already had a deal with Microsoft in terms of searching. Did you just switch your default search engine because of that? How about Microsoft and Facebook? Strategic alliance between Microsoft and O’Reilly? Gonna stop reading O’Reilly books now? Sugar CRM? Xen Source? And the list goes on.

Let me cover those of you who are using System 76 or Zareason, or some other Linux only manufacturer, that want to keep the attack going possibly on the deal. Ever consider the hardware that is used in those systems? I know System 76 uses, or was using, MSI equipment. Guess what, big Microsoft deal there. I don’t care what it is, there is a damn good chance you are using something right now that has struck a deal with Microsoft.

Is this the year of the Linux desktop?

or…

Is Linux ready for the mainstream?

Two of the most sickening questions I have seen for over a decade. The answer will always be “NO!” until we realize we need to step from underneath this rock we, yes we, have put ourselves. We have this great product, but if we continue being split on whether the Free Software side or the Open Source side is the correct side, or we shouldn’t be doing these types of deals, let’s just keep our mouths shut and enjoy this lovely rock canopy we have created for ourselves. Oh, here comes a big bomb, Novell. I am not about to rip on Novell, sorry Boycott Novell. I do not agree with their merger whatsoever, but I am a first hand witness of the good that has actually come out of the deal. Guess what Novell is doing that we aren’t right now? They are showing large companies, Fortune 500 and then some, that there is a choice out there, there is more than just Microsoft for your infrastructure. I went to their IT In Action tour here in Chicago last year. Granted I didn’t appreciate it when they said, “Microsoft is now the largest provider of Linux service,” nor did I like when one of their speakers decided to take off his jacket and reveal this nasty Detroit Red Wings hockey jersey (/me points at the Ubuntu Michigan people with a grin). What I did like, and I was wicked impressed with, were these people who were almost to the point of bashing Linux before the event started, to being super stoked over the Linux platform and the tools that Novell had when it was all over. Here I was an Ubuntu guy, and they knew that and welcomed me with open arms, who came in defending Linux and left helping some of these companies switch to, or look at the possibilities of switching to Linux. So thanks Novell for helping me get a few consulting gigs out of the tour.

I feel we, the Linux community, need to unite more so than we have. Not a fan of President Obama, but last night during his State of the Union address, he talked about reaching over those party lines. I think we need to do the same thing. Hey, if Microsoft is evil and they won’t reach their hand out, then why shouldn’t we try? OK, no more politics, OK maybe one more. Let’s tear down this wall! OK, that was lame, but I had to do it because it made me chuckle a little. I am not saying lets sell out to Microsoft, because that is definitely the last thing I want. You see us Linux people look at the big guy and concentrate on trying to make them look bad. In my eyes, we aren’t winning that battle, and while we keep carrying it forward, there is this person in the middle who is seemingly getting bigger and bigger every time they announce an iSomething. So instead of spending membership money to stand out in front of some silly event with a sign, lets think of better ways to use it. There are so many people out there who see people with signs picketing something, and a majority of the time these people go unnoticed, except for that one rogue honk, which believe it or not wasn’t supporting your campaign.

OK, that should be it. I am sure it is all confusing, so please feel free to respond anyway you feel is right in the comments. Thank you, and I apologize for causing you to spend this time possibly reading absolutely nothing.

OK, so I think most people know that I have grown quite fond of Taskwarrior for managing my Getting Things Done stuff. Many of you might also know that Mutt is my e-mail client of choice, for the past 15 years. Recently you saw a post on Planet Ubuntu by the rockstar Bryce Harrington concerning Mark emails in mutt as tasks in gtg. Well, I have had something similar, actually pretty much the same damn thing, just with a different GTD application. So without further ado, here is what you need to do in order to mark an email in mutt as a task in taskwarrior.

Setup Mutt Macro

macro index t "<pipe-message>mutt2task<enter> <save-message>+TODO<enter>"

What this does is set the t key, while in the index of mutt, as a macro. The macro pipes the email message to a script I wrote that strips the header from the message and adds that as a task. The save-message part saves the email to my TODO folder.

Setup Mutt2Task Script

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/task add +email E-mail: $(grep 'Subject' $* | awk -F: '{print $2}')

What this does is call the command task add which adds a new task. The +email tags the task, and the E-mail: $(grep ‘Subject’ $* | awk -F: ‘{print $2}’) greps the Subject line and then prints the part after Subject: from the email, therefor just giving me the subject text. Make sure you place this script somewhere in $PATH and make it executable.

Make sure you add a TODO message folder in your mutt configuration so you can see the TODO messages.

Hey everyone, just wanted to drop a quick note to those of you who are in or around the Chicago land area, on Sunday, January 17th from 12:30PM until 5:30PM the Ubuntu Chicago LoCo team will be meeting up in Chicago for a documentation jam. If you would like to show up, here is the address of where we will be hanging out:

On-Shore Inc‎.
1407 W. Chicago Ave.
Chicago, IL

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If you can’t make it to the event, no worries, as you can join us on IRC in #ubuntu-chicago channel on the freenode IRC network. Plans are to work on Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu system documentation, as well as cleaning up the team wiki pages as well as community documentation on https://help.ubuntu.com/community.

If you plan on working on system documentation, here is what you can do prior to joining us on Sunday:

READ how we use the Bazaar repository for doing system documentation.

Ubuntu Documentation
Install build dependencies for the ubuntu-docs package:

sudo apt-get build-dep ubuntu-docs

Kubuntu Documentation
Install build dependencies for the kubuntu-docs package:

sudo apt-get build-dep kubuntu-docs

Xubuntu Documentation
Install build dependencies for the xubuntu-docs package:

sudo apt-get build-dep xubuntu-docs

Once you have done that, then you need to check out the latest documentation for Lucid for the documentation you are going to work on:

Ubuntu Documentation

bzr branch lp:ubuntu-docs

Kubuntu Documentation

bzr branch lp:kubuntu-docs

Xubuntu Documentation

bzr branch lp:xubuntu-docs

System documentation is in DocBook/XML format, which is a very simple markup language. Don’t worry if you really don’t know it as Jim Campbell and myself can quickly teach you what you need to know, in order for you to get up and running.

Don’t worry, if you don’t feel you are ready to work on system documentation, there is also plenty of wiki documentation that needs to either be cleaned up or added.

Hope to see you Sunday!

To go along with the spirit of most big things in the United States, Ubuntu Chicago is filing Chapter 13. Well almost big things, as they all filed Chapter 11 pretty much. Anyways, Ubuntu Chicago isn’t going anywhere, it is just going to restructure itself to become a much more efficient LoCo team. Some of the restructuring is going to bring:

• Regular online meetings
• Regular in-person group meetings
• Regular Jams (we are doing a Doc Jam this weekend as a matter of fact)
• Much more visible in the community
• and more…

So, we have already started the process for regular online meetings and online gatherings where we will follow and not follow an agenda. We are going to start scheduling regular in-person group meetings as well, which will more than likely go hand-in-hand with the various LUG meetings in the Chicago land area. We are going to start doing regular jams, and starting this week we will be kicking off a Doc Jam. We are planning on becoming much more visible to the community and to people who are outside of the community. One major complaint we had was our website not only sucked, but was so outdated. To alleviate any issues regarding the website, I will now be hosting our website, which will bring news, events, information and more to the people of Chicago. The buzz right now is pretty high in Ubuntu Chicago and I feel like I did the day myself and Mike Greenwood decided to make Ubuntu Chicago a reality damn near 5 years ago. I will keep you updated with the changes coming and being implemented as I am sure Nathan and Jim will as well. If you are in or around the Chicago land area, please do not hesitate to join us in #ubuntu-chicago on the Freenode IRC network, or join our mailing list to follow along with current and upcoming activities.

Ubuntu Chicago Coming Soon!

"We’ve got this LoCo team, and it’s f@#kin’ golden!" – Governor Tuxgojevich