As previously blogged I surf the web a lot on my Nokia N95 and hate the fact most websites don’t include support for mobile web browsers. I also felt guilty because this very website was also commiting the same sin. But not any more. Courtesy of MobilePress plugin for WordPress this blog is now mobile friendly. I can now rest a little easier as I rewrite this site to use my own CMS system (which will be mobile friendly) as I’ve much bigger plans for this site other than just my blog

As previously blogged my wife bought me a Slim Aluminum Apple Keyboard which I’ve been slowly configuring to work with Ubuntu and now I believe I’ve gotten a sweet configuration, to the point where I’m now more comfortable with my Apple keyboard than the standard Dell keyboard I use at work.

Initially there were a couple of quirks about the Apple keyboard under Ubuntu. I’ve only used this under Interpid and Jaunty. I believe that there are some basic issues with this keyboard in Hardy due to the version of the kernel it’s running.

Let’s begin. Firstly the keyboard function keys only worked when the Fn key is pressed. Ideally I’d rather press the Fn key to access the extra function like Brightness, Volume, etc. The solution is really simple. Add the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/apple_kbd.conf.

Intrepid:

options hid pb_fnmode=2

Jaunty:

options hid_apple fnmode=2

Now run the following command to make this change persist across reboots.

sudo update-initramfs -k `uname -r` -u

Reboot to take effect.

The second problem was a little more confusing. Basically the Apple keyboard doesn’t appear have a # key!

Hint: It does, it’s just not printed on the key.

I initially installed Ubuntu with the United Kingdom keyboard. So the following are the steps I followed to allow me to overcome this issue …

1. Select System > Preferences > Keyboard
2. Go to the Layouts tab
3. Click Add…
4. Under the By country tab I chose Country: United Kingdom and Variant: United Kingdom Macintosh
5. Click Layout Options…
6. Under Miscellaneous compatibility options, select both Default numeric keypad keys and Numeric keypad keys work as with Mac
7. I then removed the old United Kingdom keyboard layout.

Now with the new United Kingdom Macintosh layout enabled you can get a # symbol by pressing Right-Alt + 3. You can now also get the € symbol by pressing Right-Alt + 2

That’s it.

Downtime

For about a month this site has been down. I host this website from my home cable connection and the PC it was running on developed several hardware problems and died. No data was lost because I had/have up-to-date backups. you can never be too careful ! So I used this opportunity to redistribute the hardware I had remaining amongst my 3 main PCs (Tyr, Thor and Loki) and retired several lesser spec’d PCs.

Upgrades

Loki

My Media Center was way over spec’d for my needs and so I wound up switching the motherboard/CPU/RAM/GPU with Tyr. I’m still using Windows Media Center 2005 because the rest of the family want TV and I’ve yet to have time to check out  Mythbuntu; so it’s Windows Media Center 2005 until then.

Thor

This Pentium 4 box had it’s RAM and hard drive upgraded as I’m going to use this machine as a VPS Host. I’m currently setting up OpenVZ on there, under Hardy, to consolidate the tasks several PII/PIII machines were doing, although I may try XEN.

Why OpenVZ/XEN? I know the officially supported Virtualization  software in Ubuntu is KVM, but this machine can’t run KVM (CPU is too old). I’m not bothered about using a GUI to administer an Ubuntu Server,  I can do everything I need from the commandline as all good server administration should be done.

The 4 machines I’m currently replacing are …

1. An SSH server – To tunnel traffic securely when I’m away from home.  (OpenSSH)
2. A Web Server – To host this site and  a secure site to hold my photo album. (nginx, mysql, PHP5)
3. A File Server – To host the backup shares used by my wife and myself. (SAMBA)
4. Source Control – To hold my source securely and under revision control.

I know it’s probably overkill to set each of these up as a separate VM but with 2 of them being exposed to the internet 24/7 I don’t wish to expose my personal data as well so I figured I may as well run them all as VMs. One feature of OpenVZ, which I prefer to XEN, is if I login into the Host I can easily backup the files within the VMs without having to log into each VM separately. This is because OpenVZ uses directories not hard disk files to store each VM. One simple Bash script later and cron is merrily backing up each VM.

Tyr

I’ve finally got this one up and running with Jaunty. I set it up as follows …

• 250Mb – ext2 – /boot
• 10Gb – ext4 – /
• 10Gb – ext4 – /home
• 460Gb – ext4 – /media/data

I’ve used XP Pro (just to test the difference between XP and Ubuntu), Intrepid Ibex and now Jaunty Jackalope on this system. I installed each OS and timed it then I optimised each one as best I could. At best this machine takes 70 seconds to boot to a desktop (via autologin) with Intrepid and over 2 minutes to boot to a desktop (via autologin) with XP Pro SP3! However under Jaunty (RC I might add) it boots to a desktop (via autologin) in 20 seconds flat and it’s ready to use straight away, no speed tweaking required. I had to switch it off and  on 3 times, and timed it booting again each time, just to be sure I wasn’t imagining it. This is brilliant, a big, big “Thank you” to everyone who made this possible. Launching applications is lightning fast and everything just feels incredibly responsive.

It’s nearly a year since I stopped using Windows on my home PCs (Media Center excluded because that only shows/records TV and plays DVDs) and after the quick comparison I did on this machine I don’t think I’ll be needing Windows on my desktop for a long, long time (if ever).

Yes I’m feeling slightly self-indulgent today but hey it’s my birthday and amongst other things my beautiful wife bought me a Slim Aluminum Apple Keyboard and a Samsung NC10 in black.

Slim Aluminum Apple Keyboard

This is one of the nicest keyboards I’ve ever used although it doesn’t work quite perfectly under Ubuntu. I’ll blog as soon as I work out all the configuration required to work under Ubuntu.

Samsung NC10

This 10″ netbook is nothing short of brilliant. Currently it is running XP but I’ll soon be replacing that with Ubuntu (Intrepid or Jaunty). There are a couple of issues with this netbook under Ubuntu but I’m sure I’ll get them sorted. I’ll post more in detail when I’ve completed the upgrade.

Just in case I don’t say it enough “I love you Sonia”

And so ends the worst 12 days of my life…

On Jan 15th our baby daughter Sophie (9 days old) was admitted into hospital with suspected Meningitis! Every parents worst nightmare. It turns out she had a group A streptococcus infection (Bacteraemia); just as serious as Meningitis, in fact the same bacteria which causes Meningitis, but quite treatable.

Today we were told that the blood cultures taken on Jan 21st are clean, she no longer has the group A streptococcus bacteria in her blood.

Sonia and I can’t praise the Doctors and Nurses at the Alexandria Hospital, Redditch enough for all the wonderful care they gave Sophie during the worst 12 days of our lives.