Imboogled

Pokoogle?

2010-09-09T01:23:00.005+01:00

Just a quick one Imbooglers. Take a look at this... but sit down first:

Google Chrome Logo + Pokeball = Pokoogle?

Dy-na-mite!

2010-09-09T01:59:00.008+01:00

What. On. Earth. The Google devs seem to be on some kind of go-faster crack right now. Yesterday they decided to get creative and greet users with pointer sensitive multi-coloured blobs using dynamic CSS3... but only US and European users. People from the remaining 5 continents (yes remaining five) were greeted with the regular logo.

Google's official statement says merely that "today's doodle is fast, fun and interactive, just the way we think search should be".

Adding to the wonderfully hyped-up geek fuelled mystery, the company also tweeted on Twitter, "Boisterous doodle today. Maybe it's excited about the week ahead..."

The following day, it was replaced by a similarly dynamic greyscale Google that filled with colour at each key stroke, letter by shining letter. Aww. They reported, "doodle is dressing up in its brightest colours for something exciting coming very soon".

There was some wild speculation on what this could all possibly mean... Google's September birthday maybe? Or the arrival of HTML5 (even though it was coded in CSS3). Only on the second day did word leak out that it was all to do with Google's new dynamic search feature.

What? Dynamic search? Chrome=Pokeball? Yes. Google have created a mechanism whereby instead of searching once for a term, you are now searching on the input of every single letter. Apparently all this to reduce search times, however slower connections will struggle, and the behemoth's search traffic will most likely sky-rocket, nicely congesting an already busy super highway. I could have however, swallowed all of this, if it wasn't for the fact that Google made this a default option today, forcing users to trial this new technology. Google. Dynamic. Sigh.

Yawn!

2010-09-09T01:42:00.005+01:00

2 AM and the UnifiedBlue relaunch is officially complete. The unified wiki originally at the main domain has now been split into subdomains between secure and public content and the wiki software has been changed to Dokuwiki. The wiki-blog entries have now been deprecated and have been manually been moved to Imboogled. The mailserver has been officially launched, and work will shortly begin to move content and subscriptions. Finally the main domain now hosts a gateway page linking to the two wikis, the mail server and the server subdomains.... Phew!

The decision was taken to move from Mediawiki not because it was not proficient enough, but simply that it was not fit for purpose. It was almost too powerful for the limited use the UB requires, and also lacked innate security features that the secure wiki required. As mentioned previously, an OpenID token authentication method was active for the secure wiki previously, however it's integration to Mediawiki was limited, and showed signs of possible security flaws. The new site features secure basic https authentication provided by Apache as a first line and then a subsequent wiki user/pass combination to access content.

The deprecation of wiki-blogs was simple; Mediawiki or Dokuwiki for that matter, have no business hosting blog entries and are not built as such. It was fitting that they should move to the Imboogled blog.

It was an epic move, but one that will help shape the future of UnifiedBlue.

Which Media

2007-10-04T13:59:00.002+01:00

Introduction

This article should serve as a point of discussion for choice of daily media. We all are required to keep track of life's events; whether it be in written form, in printed form, in digitally scanned form, online; but where do these lines become blurred? When is one medium more appropriate for storing information, and when are we creating problems for ourselves by using our chosen methods? This article serves as a discussion about the mediums themselves, and not the technical challenges or experiences surrounding them.

Media Exploration: Offline Storage

Offline storage for me is potentially a case-closed, although I will discuss it later (When Media). I choose to to store all information, or as much as possible, in digitally scanned form. Whenever I receive say a bank statement, that statement is scanned in as a searchable PDF document which is then stored in an offline location. The originals are then destroyed, with the option to reprint when required.

Benefits of this method include a searchable, non-degradeable, portable method. An entire life's history can be taken with you in a portable, cross-compatible form. Issues with this method include security implications, possible data loss if backups are not maintained, and having to keep original copies of certain documentation that you may have to provide at a later date (certificates for example).

Media Exploration: Google Notebook

Google Notebook at its release, was for me a way forward. It appeared to be the solution I had been looking for. Quick streamlined user interface, an option for both public and private storage, and provided by one of my favourite pioneers. I quickly backtracked here, because Google Notebook had some very coherent flaws. No images (or limited support), a messy (albeit clean to-the-view) user interface which garbled text input, no editing by untrusted sources and once it had began filling up... very slow indeed. It served one purpose however, it sparked my innovation, and told me that there must be something better out there.

Media Exploration: HTML

HTML was a medium that I briefly considered. With myself at the helm it would have the advantages of being clean, and quick to access. The disadvantages to this method however would be that files would need to be coded by laborious HTML, manual uploading of files would be required, there would be no dynamic editing and no area for external comments. In short, it was a method with potential, but just lacked an ease of use feel. It should be noted that although I considered HTML, it was never actually used.

Media Exploration: Blogger

Again, with Google's acquisition of Blogger, I was excited. Could this be the method I had been looking for? It certainly had the features of Google Notebook, with a quick streamlined user interface, an option for public and private storage and again the support of Google; but there was something missing. Although Blogger really brought home a blogger style feel, it lacked manageability for non blogger content. For example, every entry had to be organised by date. It also followed Google Notebook in garbling input, meaning that editing or adding information was sometimes a hit and miss affair. I understood this, that Blogger was never meant to be a general use all medium, but I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed, so the search continued.

Media Exploration: Wiki

Wiki was a medium that I had previously ignored. Certain that it must be some type of collaboration deal, and used only for project based recording, I had completely dismissed it. It wasn't until I started looking into wiki that I became interested. I became aware that wikis could be used for the smallest sites, for a huge array of data management needs. I had found my solution.

Wiki was online, quick to access, quick streamlined user interface and an option for public and private storage. With wiki, content could be categorised, could be commented on by registered users and where appropriate, edited by those same users. If a user saw that one of my notes was incorrect, that same user could correct it. If a user had more information on a subject I had written about then that user could add that information, not in comment form but actually into the main body of the information.

Wiki had a few flaws; HTML content could not easily be added. To be able to add HTML content a security setting had to be disabled, lowering the security of the wiki. Additionally secure HTTPS could not be used for extra sensitive information, HTTPS seemed to have an adverse effect on the wiki. Image management would be my last gripe, because images had to be uploaded using a built in uploader and then referenced from within the wikipage.

Conclusion

As you can guess I finally settled on the wiki medium of online data management and digital archiving for the storage of offline information. The next question, and indeed point for discussion will be not Which Media, but When Media; a look into proprietary when using different types of media.

To Scan, or not to Scan

2006-12-29T13:57:00.004Z

Years ago now, before Linux, I started scanning and storing all my paperwork electronically. Those who live in this century will attest that we are simply plagued with paperwork. Be it bank statements, receipts, tax records... we live in an age where paperwork can very soon become overwhelming. Before Linux, I would happily use the software included with my scanner to scan as a searchable PDF, meaning that a simple OCR was performed on the document (information on the OCR process). All was right in the world, that is of course until my "migration".

Although SANE supports scanning to PDF, the process is very messy, and the PDF has to be reduced further (an letter sized document can run into MBs). After many hours of searching, I have not been able to find a reasonable solution. Reducing the pdf further is very simple using tools provided by ImageMagik, but attaining the searchability is the main problem. If anyone should have thoughts on this, do let me know. In the meantime I'll look at DocMorph, an online service for translating to PDF... such a service might be the only feasible service if Linux's support is lacking. gscan2pdf is also a program I'll have to investigate.

The Final Scan

Hours later, I've turned up nothing on the searchable PDF front. I can only find reference to high priced commercial solutions. The scanning to pdf process seems to be well documented, however the scanned document then being searchable seems to be a requirement with little interest. During my search

I found the Adobe PDF Online service, and took up a trial (5 conversions). I had very limited success with the service, although to the service's credit, I was able to partially translate the test page, and there were a plethora of configuration options which might hold the key to a fuller conversion.

Adobe PDF online can be subscribed to for $9.99 p/m or $99.99 p/a.

For the first time since I started using Linux, I've found myself having to settle for failure. There may be a solution out there, but for the time being I feel that I've exhausted every avenue of determination. Sometimes walking with Linus can be a little challenging. For now I'll have to *gulp* boot in to Windows so I can file my ever-building paperwork.

Not So Portable

2008-09-14T23:03:00.007+01:00

The next for me living that paper-free lifestyle I've been chasing for a couple of years now is being able to publish the PDFs I scan online (right now I only store offline local copies).

That way, not only can I access them from anywhere in the world, but I can also allow certain people to access certain files that they may require. An example here would be allowing my investment advisor access to my investment account statements etc.

The additional benefits to going online would be searchability (see below), but also the added bonus of knowing that my data is safe against loss (as the majority of mainstream providers have a wide variety of redundancies in place).

I only have three requirements here:

1) The files need to be ultra secure. We are talking about my entire life, so serious encryption has to be used in order to ensure the integrity of my data.

2) The files need to be searchable by metadata. Metadata is not document content, it is information about that content. At a simple level, metadata literally means data about data. So a title, author, date written would all be classed as metadata. In the context of PDF files, being searchable by metadata means that I can search by document title, author, creation date... or even text contained in the document.

3) The solution must include a viewer. Simply storing the PDF files is not enough, a flash viewer (ideally) should be available to browse and search the archive.

Most providers meet the third qualification, however surprisingly the first two seem to be harder to come by. It would be great if Google Docs met these qualifiers, however it only currently meets the third. It lacks a secure interface and also does not currently allow for PDF metadata searching. There are other providers, some even meeting the second qualifier, however the first seems to be all elusive.

I wonder if I could set up my own solution. That way at least I could control the security. If anyone has any thoughts on this, fire away! Paul has some interesting thoughts on Google Docs PDF support, detailing some of the limitations and frustrations he's experienced.

Purely You

2007-01-05T13:53:00.004Z

Something very strange happened to me today.

At the end of last year I bought a Dell Inspiron notebook. I chose Dell for many reasons (customer service, excellent build quality), but I had also just read a story about about Dave Mitchell, a reporter from the UK, who was able to obtain a refund for his unused Windows XP Home Edition notebook license. He had simply declined the end user license agreement and installed Linux.

Apparently although Dell policy does not allow for this... it does not disallow either. When I received the notebook, I was careful to decline the end user license agreement and erase Windows Home from the notebook, installing SuSE instead. That was some months ago now and I had been meaning to call Dell to request the refund. Due to a combination of working and traveling, this issue was very much at the back of my mind.

Until today that is. I came across an article by Serge Wroclawski entitled How to get a Windows tax refund. (He humorously refers to it as the Windows tax). This article goes in to great depth about possible responses and counter arguments that you may receive when talking to Dell. So now a couple of months on and armed with this document and a refreshed dislike of the forced Windows tax... I headed to my phone and dialed Dell Small Business Customer Service (1-800-456-3355).

After exchanging details with the representative I made my case. As expected the representative (Madhu), claimed that the license was actually free and bundled with my notebook. I countered by arguing that Dell has to pay for every license, and that the EULA allowed me very specifically to "return the product for a refund". After stressing my point a couple of times and reading excerpts from the EULA, the representative put me on hold.

Some minutes later, she returned; She asked how much of a refund I was requesting. Using the article as a guide I reported that the license retailed at $89. I should point out at this stage that the article owner received $52.50, which seems to be the price that Dell as an OEM partner would pay for each home license. I of course expected at best the $52.50. To my amazement, she very quickly agreed, and informed me that the amount of $89 would be credited to my Master Card. A reference number later the call was over.

I left the call feeling rather confused. Something which has clearly taken a good many people much effort was over for me in one quick ten minute call. Furthermore, I was awarded the full retail price for the license, something that I had not anticipated for one moment.

When it comes to issues such as this I seem to be very lucky. I seem to be successful in the most unlikeliest of places sometimes. Perhaps this is some new directive from above? Considering this notebook was a low cost notebook to begin with I am very pleased. Just one of the reasons I recommend dell so vehemently to both consumers and investors.

Update (January 18th) The credit was processed today. I received an email containing a credit memo (see right) and the following note:

Dear O'CONNELL LUKE,

Dell has processed your credit, and the credit has been sent to your financial institution. Please be aware that there may be up to a 5 business day delay before this credit becomes visible to representatives at your financial institution.

Please contact your financial institution with any questions about the posting of this credit to your account.

The details of the credit are as follows: Account Type: MASTER CARD (account number ending in 1940) Amount of Credit: $94.34 Date the credit was closed by Dell: 2007-01-17 Time the credit was closed by Dell (Central Time): 18:04:29

Thank you for choosing Dell.

It would seem that they have also refunded tax at 6%. Madhu @ Dell Small Business (1-800-4563355) Ref: 83543337

All Hail NdisWrapper

2006-12-26T23:00:00.002Z

I am fairly certain that the Linux scene would be very different if NdisWrapper was not around. NdisWrapper is a simple, easy to use network driver wrapper allowing you to use Windows network drivers under Linux. Here is a brief overview from the NdisWrapper site:

"Some vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a Linux driver for their wireless network cards. This project implements Windows kernel API and NDIS (Network Driver Interface Specification) API within Linux kernel. A Windows driver for wireless network card is then linked to this implementation so that the driver runs natively, as though it is in Windows, without binary emulation."

In my limited work with Fedora Core 5, NdisWrapper would prove to be quite the challenge. Fedora at that stage utilized a 4KB stack size. This may seem innocent enough, but it seems that the kernel stack size on Windows required up to 12KB. This meant that the kernel would need patching to support 16K stacks. The patches were thankfully available on the NdisWrapper site here.

Before patching, the driver would crash the system on modprobe. The downside to patching the kernel was that some platform specific packages would no longer work. Another option would be to recompile the kernel with a different stack size. This is something I looked into briefly but realized that I would need a great deal more Linux experience beforehand.

This particular incident would teach me a great deal about kernel sources, stack sizes and sheer persistence. When I moved to openSUSE, the problem was negated as SUSE utilizes a 16KB stack size by default (I believe). I've always wondered about native vs NdisWrapper performance... do you suffer a performance hit when using NdiWwrapper?

Incidentally, those people who use NdisWrapper should consider donating to the cause, enabling the team to buy new test equipment. You can donate through SourceForge here. Donations will not be tax deductible.

Oh Package of Packages

2006-12-30T13:47:00.004Z

Let's talk about the RedHat Package Manager, now known as the RPM Package Manager, and while we're at it... let's talk about packages under Linux in general. Packages at a basic level are modular. They mostly play a part of a bigger picture. Think of them as building blocks. A good example would be a simple calculator program. The calculator itself would have an umbrella package, but this package would require certain packages to be installed before it would install itself. These required... or dependent packages might include a graphical API, a math package and a fractoral package. The great news about this method of package control is that if another program was introduced into the system, say a loan calculator, it would be able to re-use the graphical, math and fractoral packages... saving system resources.

This means that Linux packages are generally smaller in size compared to their non-Linux counterparts... because these core functions do not have to be built in. Windows packages perform some re-use when it comes to .dll files, but this practice is limited... even though a loan calculator and a calculator may use 50% of the same components, they will just be installed for the second time. This process of dependencies is well known in the Linux world.

Here though, we must pause and identify a difference between software installation in Linux. There are generally two ways of software installation in Linux and this can confuse users.

Firstly, there is the RPM practice of installation... the easiest. These RPMs are installed by applications such as YUM or apt, which are online repositories of RPMs. Why wouldn't everyone use RPMs then? For one simple reason... RPMs are platform dependent. When I unveiled my loan calculator (ex), I would need to build several RPMs, for Fedora Core 4, Fedora Code 5, Fedora Core 6, SuSE 10.0, SuSE 10.1, SuSE 10.2 ... additionally I would need RPMs for different architectures (32bit, 64bit).

I would then submit those RPMs to the correct repository and the next time a client requested my program the repository would deliver the correct version. Sometimes, RPMs can be used on more than one platform/architecture, but this can result in unexpected behavior and is unusual in complicated software.

As you can see... a good deal of atypical software is therefore published as source.... but what is this strange term? In recent decades our own source has been brought into question... giving the term an almost higher-power meaning... in the Linux world the meaning differs only slightly. Welcome to the exciting world of open source programming.

The term "building from source" can seem a little daunting at first... I know that it was to me. Unlike a simple GUI based point and click installation, building from source can be a tricky CLI (command line interface) task. Building from source has a huge advantage though, the same piece of software can be used (for the most part) on any distribution and architecture... it is universal.

Take a look at the graphic below; the source code (left) talks to the headers and build executables (center), they then build that source code around the system distribution and architecture and it is then installed on the system to be executed (right).

Pretty straightforward? Well there are some drawbacks to this method. Firstly, the headers and build executables have to be installed, then the dependencies must be installed before any compilation can begin. Unlike RPMs, these dependencies are not automatically installed. In some cases the user is informed of the missing dependency... in some cases not. In addition, development packages are sometimes required that would not otherwise be required if installing from an RPM. These development packages are critical to the build process... during a complicated install you may have tens of packages that you would not have otherwise needed installed!

Boot Screen of Death

2008-01-20T23:14:00.001Z

I guess it's time for another weekend project! Today I decided to fix an old Windows Server 2003 MultiBoot DVD. Although the DVD could create ISO images using a Windows front end, the much acclaimed boot loader simply did not work. My initial assumption was that it would be something as simple as the boot image not being linked when the DVD was copied. How wrong could I be?

Recreate ISO Linking Boot File

Obviously had to recreate the ISO file using mkisofs. Had some trouble deciding on settings here; using some internet sources and common sense lead me to the following command:

mkisofs -r -R -l -J -joliet-long -no-cache-inodes -iso-level 2 -no-emul-boot -b BSCRIPT/BSCRIPT.BIN -c boot/boot.catalog -boot-load-seg 0x0 -boot-load-size 0x0 -o nrmeaio_en.iso /home/lukeoconnell/Desktop/NRMEAIO_EN/cdrom/

-no-cache-inodes: Stops hardlinks being detected. The option seems to be needed whenever a filesystem does not have unique inode numbers. Cygwin apparently creates fake inode numbers using a hash algorithm which is not 100% correct, so if mkisofs were to follow these inodes, it would believe that some files are identical even if they were not. Hmm, on second thoughts (after revisiting this option to find out what it does exactly), I've decided that this option was not needed unless using mkisofs under a Microsoft operating system.

-R: Creates SUSP and RR records using the Rock Ridge protocol to provide additional file structure information on an iso9660 filesystem. To my understanding, this allows for backward compatibility, as when folders violate depth (6 seems to be limit), they are recreated on root under RR_MOVED and Rock Ridge points to them instead.

-r: Option is "like" the -R option, but file ownership and premissions are set to more useful values. UIDs and GIDs are zeroed as they are only useful on authoring system. All file read permissions are set to allow and if executable files exist, all execute permissions are set to allow. Additionally all write permissions are set to deny as will be CDFS. All special mode permissions are also cleared.

-l: Allows 31 character filenames. By default ISO9660 filesnames will be in an 8.3 format (XXXXXXXX.XXX) which is compatible with MS-DOS. Although the ISO standard allows filename s up to 31 characters, the disk may be difficult to read on MS-DOS systems when using this option.

-J: Creates Joliet directory records. Mostly useful when disc is to be used on Microsoft OS. Filenames are specified in Unicode and each path component can be up to 64 characters. CDs that use only Joliet extensions but no Rock Ridge extensions can usually only be used with Microsoft OSes.

-joliet-long: Allows filenames to be up to 103 characters, breaking the Joliet specification, but "appears to work". 103 is comprised of maximum Directory Record Length (254), minus length of Directory Record (33), minus CD-ROM XA System Use Extension Information (14), divided by UTF-16 character size (2). Sort of understand that, but an area of further learning. Hmm... second thoughts on this one as well, do I actually need this extension?

-iso-level: Sets ISO9660 conformance level. Options are 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Level 1: Files may only consist of one section and filename are limited to 8.3 characters.

Level 2: Files may only consist of one section.

Level 3: No restrictions (other than ISO-9660:1988) apply.

With level 1, 2, and 3, filenames are restricted to upper case letters, numbers and the underscore. Maximum filename length is restricted to 31 characters and directory nesting level (depth) is restricted to 8. Maximum path length is limited to 255 characters.

Level 4: Does not officially exist. There is no level 4. Stop reading... mkisofs maps it to ISO-9660:1999 which is ISO-9660 version 2. This version uses an enhanced volume descriptor. Nesting more than 8 directories is AOK, there is no requirement for periods in filenames and the period has no specical meaning/reservation. Filenames do not have version numbers and the maximum length for files and directory is raised to 207 (unless using RR in which case reduced to 197). The grass really is greener with level 4!

(I'll be opting for level 2, as it seems to be the norm for MS OS based discs (as 8.3 limit is raised))

-no-emul-boot: Determines that the El Torito boot image used is a no emulation image. System will therefore load image without any emulation.

-c: Specifies where boot catalog should be placed when creating an El Torito bootable CD. Stopped using this as boot catalog is automatically created on the root as boot.catalog when not specified.

-boot-load-seg: Specifies load segment address for the boot image (for no-emu images). This option seems to be more prevalent with MS based burning apps; mkisofs seems to determine automatically. Stopped using this.

-boot-load-size: Specifies virtual (512-byte) sectors to load in no-emu mode. Default is to load enture boot file but some BIOSes apparently have problems if not multiple of 4, so in essence, padding image file.

-o: Specifies ISO output file.

Result: No go. Just blank screen on boot. Hmm, decided to try loader.bin instead... no go also... that same blank scree.

ISOLINUX Boot Attempt

To further explore the boot process, I decided to try and bring in ISOLINUX which was already included on the CD. Initially tried this with:

mkisofs -r -R -l -J -joliet-long -no-cache-

inodes -iso-level 2 -hard-disk-boot -b isolinux.bin -c boot/boot.catalog -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -v -o nrmeaio_en.iso /home/lukeoconnell/Desktop/NRMEAIO_EN/cdrom/

Result: Error in booting. Decided to cut down on params, using only those from an Internet guide.

mkisofs -o bootcd.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -J -hide-rr-moved -R /home/lukeoconnell/Desktop/NRMEAIO_EN/cdrom/

Some new extensions appeared here, maybe some of them may be useful?

-boot-info-table: Specifies 56-byte tabel with information of CD-ROM layout. This is patched in an offset 8 in the bootfile (almost like a map?). The bootfile seems to be modified in the source filesystem, so must be backed up.

-hide-rr-moved: Simply hides RR folders created on root. Seems like a good idea!

So much simpler syntax, but l

acking ISO level... I guess that the default level is 1?

Result: ISOLINUX booted OK, but tried to load linux kernel instead of the MEMDISK kernel I specified (MEMDISK seemed to be used when loading .img files).

After much investigating I discovered that

isolinux.cfg (which I was using to direct to MEMDISK) was very specific about location, I then discovered that the format I was attempting to use:

label dos
kernel /BSCRIPT/MODULES/ISOLINUX/MEMDISK
append initrd=/BSCRIPT/BOOT_MSD.IMG

Was not enough, and ISOLINUX was therefore ignoring config completely. Changed to the following which loaded AOK:

DEFAULT /BSCRIPT/MODULES/ISOLINUX/MEMDISK
APPEND initrd=/BSCRIPT/BOOT_MSD.IMG

During this investigation I tried using the simpler mkisofs params for bscript/loader.bin with no luck.

Working with the LOADER

Determined that the boot loader was a third party application, used by the creator of the DVD. This application, called BootScriptor was responsible for the menu front end (the menu front end that was not loading). The documentation specified the following mkisofs syntax:

mkisofs -o output.iso -b bscript/loader.bin -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 root-of-iso-tree

Result: So I retried by rebuilding the bscript completely. No luck... grr! I then tried to go back to basics and create a new ISO with just the bscript loader. This worked AOK, so tried to recreate the CD from scrach.

This process was incredibly frustrat

ing. Something was happening structure-wise as boot would not occur when there were files in the root folder. Boot would also not occur when I moved all files to data directory, but when I renamed that directory to temp, it worked! What on earth? Then discovered that previously booting .img files were not, so decided to burn current work to CD and attempted real time boot (not VirtualBox boot as had previously been using).

Result: Booted OK! Rebooted back in to OS and attempted again, with success also. What happened? Did restart clear some kind of VM cache? Had VB just become too confused?

Whatever the reason, I then recreated file structure to include all data.

Result: New ISO appeared to be working for the mostpart; .img files seemed to be working, but no OS installs would begin with message NTLDR missing.

Much investigation later, and an attempt to put NTLDR in all manner of places, I was still no closer, I even fully investigated how the boot loader was calling the DAT files (and how they subsequently booted) and the editing process required to achieve that.

Still no closer. At this point I decided that there was a fundamental issue with the DVD filestructure (come on... what else could it be?!) and decided to use the guide at MSFN (http://flyakite.msfn.org/) to recreate the DVD from scratch. To do this I had to actually use the Windows interface to obtain the ISO files and then work from there. At the same time I also added in W2000 Professional, so there was some silver lining after all. The process of adding the structures in to the AIO DVD and hex editing the files was certainly a learning curve!

Slipstreaming W2000Pro

While slipstreaming SP4 with W2000 Professional, I decided to refine my mkisofs syntax. I used the following to create the ISO:

mkisofs -o w2000p.iso -r -R -l -J -iso-level 2 -hide-rr-moved -V W2PFPP_EN -no-emul-boot -b /home/lukeoconnell/Desktop/boot.bin -boot-load-size 4 /media/disk/windows2000/

-V: Being the only new parameter. This simply sets the volume label, which is E2PFPP_EN for Windows 2000 Professional (English).

Result: Hmm... CDBOOT: Couldn't find NTLDR. How strange, seems familiar. Will have to revisit this, but will include on AIO DVD.

Mounting .vdi Images

After spending some time recreating the AIO DVD in my VirtualBox WXP installation, I was left with an ISO file of many gigabytes and source files of even more gigabytes... I needed to find a way of mounting my virtual hard disk image. After some searching I came across this post (http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=52) which suggested that an NTFS or FAT32 .vdi file could be mounted with the following command:

mount -o loop,offset=x,umask=000 virtualdiskimage.vdi /mountpoint/

Where offset is the place in the .vdi file that the partition begins. I used the hex editor KHexEdit to open up the vdi file. I then used the View menu to change the current view to text and the Offset as Decimal option in the View menu also (which will allow for offset determination). I then scrolled down (took a while!) until I saw the following line:

0000073728 ëR.NTFS    ..........ø..?.ÿ.?............å?.............Yþ......

I understand from further reading that this would read FAT32 for FAT32 partitions. I've also heard that you can set the volume label to enable easier location of this line, however I'm guessing this only applies to FAT32 as I had a volume label set with this NTFS partition.

After creating an empty directory in /media I then simply ran:

mount -o loop,offset=73728,umask=000 virtualdiskimage.vdi /media/vdifs/

I must admit that it was one of those moments that I just didn't expect to work, and when it did was a little overwhelmed! It mounted flawlessly in the mount point and was ready for access. If nothing else, this exercise has taught be a good deal already.

Investigation Continues

So I now had access to both the newly created AIO ISO file (created with CDIMAGE.EXE) and the source files. The advantage to CDIMAGE.EXE is that it reuses data when creating ISO files, almost like the Linux process of creating softlinks except that this process happens transparently within the ISO file. Very interesting. I quickly saw the difference after I had created my own ISO using mkisofs. The CDIMAGE.EXE ISO was 1.7GB while the mkisofs ISO totaled 3.0GB. Ouch! I'm wondering if there is a way to have mkisofs do the same?

Regardless, I now tested both DVDs with the obvious thinking that they would both be identical in operation. Good news was that the CDIMAGE.EXE ISO worked AOK. Bad news was that the mkisofs ISO file generated the infamous CDBOOT: Couldn't find NTLDR message. What the heck? Maybe I am getting closer to the holy grail of answers here. I started by ensuring I had followed the guide at MSFN to the letter, and even compared the hex data from both sources (see left). After confirming that I had probably followed the guide properly, I decided to look back to the CDIMAGE.EXE command:

start cdimage.exe -lAIODVD -t08/23/2001,09:00:00 -b\AIO-DVD\BOOT\loader.bin -h -n -o -m \AIO-DVD C:\AIODVD.iso

Now CDIMAGE.EXE is a Microsoft internal application, so documentation is limited. But by running without any switches it revealed a list of all switches.

-lLABEL: As we would have guessed, the volume label.
-tTIME: The timestamp to be applied to every file/folder in the ISO.
-bPATH: Path to the boot loader.
-h: Includes hidden files and directories.
-n: Allows for long filenames (longer than 8.3).
-o: Optimizes storage by encoding duplicate files only once (thus the reduced file sizes).
-m: Ignores maximum image size of 681,984,000 bytes (650MB).

The only really interesting switch here is the timestamp. Why would it matter specifically when it was encoded? Maybe this is causing NTLDR to fail? Also, as a side thought, is the -n switch similar to the -l mkisofs switch? Or maybe it is more similar to the standard breaking Joliet switch in mkisofs? At this time however I am going to stay on track and try to find a way to master a timestamped ISO in mkisofs.

Touch!

After some digging it seems like the touch command can be used (I hope recursively) to change file timestampt. I will therefore try to set the CDIMAGE.EXE reference 08/23/2001,09:00:00:

touch -t 200108230900 *

Only downside is that I have to copy all files from vdifs as vdifs does not support writing to (NTFS). Although I wonder if it would be writable if it were FAT32? Something for future follow up I guess!

Due to the fact that touch has no recursive option, I actually ended up running the following. I could only traverse 5 deep though before touch complained with Argument list too long:

touch -t 200108230900 */*/*/*/*

Result: No luck... hmm...

Just Relax

My final try will be to use the -D option of mkisofs. The -D option disables deep directory relocation and leaves as-is. Although this violates ISO9660 specification, apparently it "happens to work on most systems".

 mkisofs -o aiodvd.iso -r -R -l -J -iso-level 2 -D -V AIODVD -no-emul-boot -b boot/loader.bin -boot-load-size 4 /home/lukeoconnell/aio-dvd/

Result: Still no go. Just one more attempt, this time I'll relax to ISO level 3 and include -joliet-long:

 mkisofs -o aiodvd.iso -r -R -l -J -joliet-long -iso-level 3 -D -V AIODVD -no-emul-boot -b boot/loader.bin -boot-load-size 4 /home/lukeoconnell/aio-dvd/

Result: Nope.

After searching the Internet (thank Google) I came across the following article (http://www.g-loaded.eu/2007/04/25/how-to-create-a-windows-bootable-cd-with-mkisofs/). Who would have guessed that someone was here before. In this guide the author George Notaras suggested the following command:

mkisofs -b cdboot/msboot.img -no-emul-boot -boot-load-seg 1984 -boot-load-size 4 -iso-level 2 -J -l -D -N -joliet-long -relaxed-filenames -V "WINSP" -o winsp.iso /pathspec/

Having very little faith at this point it seemed far from plausible. The only missing switches were:

-N: Which omits the version numbers from ISO9660 file names. Breaking the ISO9660 standard, but apparently the versions numbers are no longer used.
-relaxed-filenames: Which allows ISO9660 filenames to include digits, upper case chars and other 7 bit ASCII characters (except lower case characters). Again violates the ISO9660 standard.

Another difference is the -boot-load-seg address of 1984.

mkisofs -b boot/loader.bin -no-emul-boot -boot-load-seg 1984 -boot-load-size 4 -iso-level 2 -J -l -D -N -joliet-long -relaxed-filenames -V "AIODVD" -o aiodvd.iso /home/lukeoconnell/aio-dvd/

Result: Phew! Boot AOK! The holy grail has been answered. The case was a mkisofs switch all along. Frustratingly, this could have caused the issues from the get go, as some of my very early attempts with BootScriptor resulted in this, as did my W2000 slipstreaming.

I'm wondering which was the exact answer however, so will omit the -boot-load-seg address... as I believe this to be the most likely solution.

mkisofs -b boot/loader.bin -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -iso-level 2 -J -l -D -N -joliet-long -relaxed-filenames -V "AIODVD" -o aiodvd.iso /home/lukeoconnell/aio-dvd/

Result: Pass! So it has to be in the -relaxed-filenames switch. Incredible. Maybe (should have seen this coming), the fact that NTLDR has no extension prohibits its proper existence without the switch.

I can now rest easy. I've found the answer. I think that I'll use George's suggestion without the -boot-load-seg switch. I'm sure that other combinations would work, and that the ISO does not have to be that relaxed, but it works.

mkisofs -b boot/loader.bin -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -iso-level 2 -J -l -D -N -joliet-long -relaxed-filenames -V "AIODVD" -o aiodvd.iso /home/lukeoconnell/aio-dvd/

Windows XP x64

Slightly more challenging than the other installs. The guide as MSFN did not include an x64 section. Searching the web lead me back to MSFN with this post (http://www.msfn.org/board/Automatically-create-multi-boot-folders-files-t58446.html). Problems included the fact that there were two data directories (i386 and AMD64) and that the setupldr.bin had a checksum which prevented editing (see http://www.msfn.org/board/Solution-multibooting-Win-XP-2k3-64-Bit-Win2k3-SP1-WinPE-t58410.html for checksum solution). Also the install could not be started within Windows as others could, so boot folder generation was hampered. Overall solution was a script file which not only created all data directories for me, but also edited the setupldr.bin file accordingly. Phew!

Conclusion

Wow, what a marathon. The business of computing... but specifically Linux, takes you through some wild and wonderful turns. From making images to exploring boot processes, today has been an eye opener. I've learned about:

mkisofs: Inside and out; its interface and various switches. Its limitations.
CDIMAGE.EXE: Its use in duplicate file optimization and ultimately, the only way I currently know how to create an AIO DVD.
Bootable media: A little bit more knowledge on how bootable media, specifically CDFS media boots.
Boot scripts: Like BootScriptor and CDShell, and their varying uses.
Mounting VDI: Something which will definitely prove invaluable in the future.
Making HEX Adjustments: Linux HEX editors such as KHexEdit and BVI and Windows variants.

My next challenge will be to try and port this AIO DVD to a USB device... but that really is another story...

Boot Camp 101

2007-01-07T23:10:00.001Z

It's time for me to update my USB version of the live distribution, Knoppix. I was very excited some months ago when I discovered that entire Linux distributions could be booted from a USB memory device. It had occurred to me before, but I suppose I had never really considered that ramifications and uses of such a setup. Many advantages sprang to mind... including security and being able to take all your data with you and turn any terminal in to your terminal. The best part? When you are done, just unplug and walk, no local record at all. There is one problem with "USB Linux" however. Only new generation computers can actually boot from USB. In my experience... systems with just a couple of years on them just don't have the ability. Of course BIOS updates can sometimes take care of that, but it does limit the effectiveness vs CD/DVD booting, which almost ALL systems can boot.

The first step is to obtain a USB memory stick large enough for your requirements. Remember there are two versions of Knoppix, the CD version and the DVD version. I would say a 1GB stick is large enough to hold the CD distribution and any user data you may need to store. I use a Lexar JumpDrive FireFly 1GB for Knoppix. I'll be using the Knoppix 5.1.1 release, make sure you get the ISO image.

A few IMPORTANT notes before we continue. I'll sometimes refer to the USB memory stick as just the usb stick or usb device or just device. These terms are interchangeable. I'll also be working a lot from the mount point of the device, in my case /media/disk/ please remember to change this to match your own mount point.

Without further introduction, let us partition. You may find that your device is assigned a mount point as soon as it is inserted. For most cases very useful, but for our case... not so. Go ahead and umount using the device's mount point (or device address). You can check a list of mounted devices and their mount points by running mount.

In my case, the device address was /dev/sdb1 and the mount point was /media/disk. So my command was umount /dev/sdb1. Good! Now your device is free to be worked on. (Sidebar:: You can umount from both the device address and the mounted address. I prefer to use the device address because it is a constant.)

Just a quick reminder. sdb1 refers to a partition, not the drive itself... when you want to refer to the drive as a whole (as we will when we use the disk partitioner), you must remove the partition identifier, in this case 1.

So the address of my USB stick would actually be /dev/sdb. Commands such as fdisk are powerful, and sometimes lack idiot guards. If you try to partition a partition, the program will allow you to do so, but the results will be extremely erratic!

So... run the disk partitioner with the device address, in my case fdisk /dev/sdb. You will be greeted with a simple command prompt. Go ahead and type print. You will see a list of partitions. On a USB device you will probably only see one, but regardless, use the delete command until all partitions have been erased. When you have an empty partition table, it's always a good idea to write your changes and restart the disk partitioner. This is not a requirement, but it allows the partitioner to make a clean start.

Now we can create the new partition using the new command. Choose primary and partition number 1. You will at this point be asked to specify first and last cylinders. Just press enter to accept the defaults (which will use all space on the drive). Viola! Our partition has been created, but it needs a little editing for our purposes... it needs to be bootable! So use the active command to set partition 1 as active. We can now write the changes.

Just a quick note. Sometimes when writing your partition table changes, fdisk will report that it will make the changes on the next boot. The reason for this? Your wonderful distribution may try to mount the device mid partition. To avoid this, drop down to a low run level (1 perhaps), and use the write command there instead. No interference!

What's next? Well we have to format the partition. Run mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1 to format the partition with the ext3 file system. It will give you some verbose information and (hopefully) complete without error.

Linux's default behavior with all storage devices causes it to run a disk check over a certain period of time and a certain amount of mounts. We need to disable this check, because the device is removable. To do this we can run tune2fs -c 0 -i 0 /dev/sdb1. The -c switch in this command sets the mount count and the -i switch sets the interval count. As you might have guessed, 0 is disabled.

So now we have a clean slate on which to begin the installation of the Knoppix image. Half way there!

First, let us mount the device. My command would be mount /dev/sdb1 /media/disk, but if you have a distribution that supports automatic mounting it might be easier to just remove and reinsert your device.

You should know where your Knoppix ISO is. We are going to (in a round about way) mount the ISO image by creating a loop (long story, but trust me). Browse to the location of your ISO file and run losetup /dev/loop0 KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso (adjust as needed). This will create a loop device at /dev/loop0. Now this loop device must be mounted. Create an empty directory anywhere (/media or /mnt is a good place) with mkdir. Now mount the loop device in to that directory. I used mount /dev/loop0 /media/loop.

Now we can simply copy across the contents of the image to the USB device by using a standard copy command. I used cp -r /media/loop/* /media/disk. Remember the -recursive option as the copy command will have to traverse directories!

After the copy process appears to be completed, clean up! Run a sync command to make sure no stray files are waiting to be copied to the USB drive. Umount the loop device with umount /dev/loop0 and remove it with losetup -d /dev/loop0.

The next stage is to install the boot loader. The first step of installation is to tell Grub that this device is a BIOS drive. Use echo '(hd0) /dev/sdb' > /media/disk/boot/grub/device.map. This will create the relevant device.map file. You may need to create the grub directory beforehand.

Now we can use grub-install... maybe. The Grub Install command is a little hit and miss. Sometimes if will work flawlessly, othertimes it will return with wonderful innocuous error messages such as /media/disk/boot/grub/stage1 not read correctly. If you want to go ahead and run the installer, use grub-install --root-directory=/media/disk --no-floppy '(hd0)' where /media/disk is the location of your mounted device.

If this does not work, copy the grub files directly from your distribution. I would run cp /boot/grub/* /media/disk/boot/grub/. Remember to change the device.map file (should only contain one line (hd0) /dev/sdb (or the hardware address of your device)).

Final step! We need to create a menu.lst file. This will be stored in /media/disk/boot/grub/. This is the boot loader menu, which passes certain boot options to the kernel. Sometimes these can be very specific, and change with each new release. Take a look at /media/disk/boot/isolinux/isolinux.cfg. On the second line down, you will see the boot configuration, in the case of Knoppix 5.1.1:

APPEND ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt.gz nomce loglevel=0 quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix

The above string will need a little work to bring it in to Grub compliance and should be used in menu.lst:

title Knoppix
kernel /boot/isolinux/linux ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt.gz nomce loglevel=0 quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix
initrd /boot/isolinux/minirt.gz

Hopefully you'll see how I converted the string. Just remember that when booting, your device's mount point will become irrelevant. If you are booting from the USB device, it will become /, so /boot... is all that's needed.

Phew! All done. Now just umount the device and test it out. If all goes well, Knoppix will boot. This tutorial was a little challenging. It never hurts to start from scratch remember... you may have made bad calls early on... sometimes you have to remove all assumptions... start from scratch. To help me along the way with this project I found various articles... the problem however was that a good deal of the time no alternatives are suggested and commands you are executing are not explained. Here is my main source article.

Not So Universal

2007-11-03T13:43:00.002Z

Linux burns. When it comes to burning media, Linux is extremely proficient. Powerful command line tools such as growisofs, mkisofs, cdrecord, wodim and a multitude of others will come to your aid, along with intuitive GUI tools such as K3B or Nero for Linux. Even with this outstanding level of support, it looks like Linux does not have burning completely "down".

I needed to make a copy of a 6.5GB partition, hosting an array of files. All the files in this partition were in the kilobytes, however one weighed in at 6.3GB. No problem I thought, as I dusted off the old DVD+R Dual Layer disks that I've long been looking to fill. I fired up K3B and selected the partitions files to add and received an odd message:

Problems while adding files to the project. It is not possible to add files bigger than 4.0 GB.

Hmmm, this can't be the case. Feeling defiant I opened up Google and began to investigate. As always, I was suddenly barraged by the sheer volume of results, the majority relating either to a 1GB or 4GB UDF restriction. What is this "UDF" I asked myself, remembering it vaguely from my early CD-ROM burning days. Turns out its the Universal Disk Filesystem, a filesystem that can be found "on most authored optical discs in the market, and on almost all recordable DVD media that are used for video recording".

Advice for this issue was limited, however a few threads pointed to a solution which involved setting up a disk based UDF image and burning it to the media directly. For me, this involved:

Creating an empty image file of the right size with the following command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/~/image.udf bs=1024 seek 7489799 count=1

The dd command is responsible for the "low-level copying and conversion of raw data".
The if operand represents the input file, in this case this is /dev/zero, a infinite source of zero fill data.
The of operand represents the output file, in this case the udf image.
The bs operand represents the block size for the file. 1024 for most operations.
The seek operand skips a certain number of blocks when writing to output. This means that we do not actually have to fill the image with 0s (which will only be replaced), and will result in a file creation time of milliseconds. Just think of them as virtual 0s.
The count operand dictates how many blocks will actually be written. In our case, our virtual 0s will suffice, and we can simply set count to 1.

We have our empty UDF image, the next step is to create the filesystem. We can use the mkudffs command to achieve this.

mkudffs /~/image.udf

Our new UDF image is now ready to be mounted. However slight tweaking is required to allow a file to be mounted. Previously I have used losetup to mount files, however the -o loop flag produces the same effect with little effort.

mount /~/image.udf /~/udf/ -o loop

The UDF filesystem is now mounted at /~/udf/ and ready to be written to.

Walking with Linus

2006-12-24T13:37:00.001Z

Saturday, December 23, 2006

In 1991, Linus Torvalds would begin working on a kernel that would change the world as we know it. Not only would Linus go on to receive two honorary doctorates from Stockholm and Helsinki, but variants of Linus' kernel would become home to 25% of Internet servers and 2.8% of desktop computers. This phenomenon of course is Linux. Join me in this wonderful world, share my frustrations, delights and honest opinions in this simple blog... Walking with Linus.

Brief History

Sunday, December 24, 2006

As this entry is entitled Walking with Linus, I think I had better start with my computing history in general, and how Linux came to be for me. This is my story.

Many years ago during my childhood, a family friend gave me an old Olivetti computer. This computer, running only MS-DOS at that stage, would be the foundation for my life in IT.

Working for so many years with Dos really shaped my understanding of control, flexibility and ultimately power. Sometimes yes, there was the feeling that you might be one or two keystrokes away from a reinstall, but once you knew how to reinstall, you were empowered... you were in control. Dos was certainly expert friendly, just not user friendly... a great deal learning and trial/error was invariable involved.

Over the coming years, I would explore and migrate through various versions of MS-DOS, through Windows 3.1x, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 I was truly Windows Compatible. Indeed I would later become an expert in Microsoft products through Microsoft certification programs.

It was my work with the server family of Microsoft products that would actually provide my first real understanding and thinking on Linux. The realization that 60-75% of Internet servers were actually Apache (used mainly on Unix based systems and Novell NetWare), would finally make me stop and ask the big question: Is Microsoft really the only game in town?

Dissatisfaction and lack of user control were other contributing factors, but news of the latest addition to the Windows family, Windows Vista, would be the final insult. Windows Vista would take everything I disliked about our new user friendly culture and amalgamate them into one bulk of a monster. Call it bulkware, bloatware, junkware... I called it Vista. Requiring at a minimum 512mb RAM and 15GB of free drive space, Vista promised to be a glorified entertainment center, and very little else.

So for me, something had to be done. I needed an alternative, and the very real question of Linux would prove to hold the answer. Late 2005, I decided to make the switch, and officially migrated from Windows XP to Fedora Core, a Red Hat based distribution. Why Fedora? At the time, Red Hat was about the only distribution I had actually heard of, so logically it was the only choice.

Christmas 2005 turned out to be a little problematic with a myriad of driver, compatibility and general usage issues. In early 2006, I decided that Linux simply was not "ready for me".

Six months later, mid 2006, with the impending doom of Vista, I decided once and for all to migrate... whatever the cost. Again I sought Red Hat as my steer, and after some weeks of troubleshooting Fedora met the criteria. The criteria was simple enough at the time... the distribution just had to meet the functionality of Windows. This criteria would change of course, because I would have to start doing something again that I blame Windows for loosing; thinking outside the box.

Although Fedora had met this level, speed was a constant issue. Still to this day I'm not sure why, but I presume it was an innate hardware incompatibility. Somewhat disheartened, I decided to seek out new life and new civilization... and locate another distribution. After many hours of research and some excellent comparison sites such as DistroWatch.com, I decided on Novell's openSUSE. This would be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Invent

2007-10-22T13:34:00.001+01:00

11:19, 20 October 2007 (BST)

At the beginning of this year, I managed to obtain a $94.34 refund for a version of Windows XP Home Edition bundled with my Inspiron notebook (see article). After selling my Inspiron during the summer and picking up an HP Pavillion notebook a couple of months ago, I decided to try my luck once again.

Not feeling especially vocal about the whole deal, I thought that a good initial approach would be through HP's online chat. Below is the transcript:

Transcript of Online Chat (11:19, 20 October 2007 (BST))

Sylvia: Hello Luke.
Sylvia: Welcome to HP Total Care for Pavilion Notebook. My name is Sylvia. How may I assist you today?
Luke O'Connell: Hello Sylvia
Luke O'Connell: I need to open a refund request for part of my notebook
Sylvia: Could you please elaborate the exact issue of the notebook?
Luke O'Connell: I require a refund for the Windows Vista software.
Luke O'Connell: I have declined the EULA and installed Linux instead, so I would like a refund for the software.
Sylvia: Operating System is associated with the notebook.
Sylvia: HP doesn't sell the OS separately apart from the hardware.
Sylvia: And also HP doesn't support Linux Operating System on the notebook.
Luke O'Connell: Yes, but the EULA states that if I do not accept it's terms, I may return the software for a refund.
Sylvia: It applies if you purchase the Operating system alone from the Microsoft.
Luke O'Connell: I understand that every OEM license that you bundle costs money, and by returning the installation disks and license certificate, I am allowing you to use the license for another system.
Luke O'Connell: The EULA does not differentiate between buying the software "bundled" or otherwise.
Sylvia: Alright.
Sylvia: Let me check with this..
Luke O'Connell: Thank you
Sylvia: Thank you for your patience.
Luke O'Connell: No problem.
Sylvia: Luke, I have checked regarding this.
Sylvia: Its not possible to refund for the Operating system at any level.
Sylvia: I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you.
Luke O'Connell: Could I possibly speak to someone else?
Luke O'Connell: Sylvia?
Sylvia: In this case, I recommend you to contact our Phone support.
Sylvia: Please contact our Phone Support at 1-(800)-474-6836.
Luke O'Connell: OK. I will, thank you for your assistance.
Sylvia: You can speak to the Case Manager directly in this regard.
Sylvia: You are welcome. It was my pleasure assisting you.
Sylvia: Is there anything else that I can assist you with today?
Luke O'Connell: No, thank you again.
Sylvia: Thank you for contacting HP Total Care Real-Time chat support. If you need further assistance, please contact us again at: http://www.hp.com/support/chat. Chat support is available 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week.
Sylvia: Goodbye..

22:46, 20 October 2007 (BST)

The next step was to call phone support. Initially I spoke with Terek who escalated the call to "floor supervisor" Rex. Rex initially told me (when he believed that I had purchased the retail version of Vista), that I would need to return the software to Microsoft for a refund. After I then explained that it was an OEM version, he told me that I would need to return the software to Amazon. I told him that I was still unhappy, and the best he could offer me was the number of Corporate Office (650-857-1501).

After finding out that Corporate Office was closed on the weekends, I decided to try technical support again. This time I spoke to a wonderful lady by the name of Diane. She took the details of my request, and referred my query to a case manager, who would then call me back in 24-72 hours. She did not once question the validity of my return, although I am not sure that she fully understood the request. I was assigned a case ID of 8004078071 and a customer ID of 1073378566.

22:02, 22 October 2007 (BST)

Received a voicemail and email today from case manager Susan Broerken; after explaining the situation, and re-clarifying that I did not buy Windows retail, I was told unquestionably that this is something that "we just do not do". That the license was part of the notebook, and one could not exist without another. She told me that I would need to reinstall the OS if I required support (although I would have happily forgone the support). HP have a secure escalation system (for example, no immediate referrals), and this prevented me from escalating. Susan claimed that this was the first time this issue had crossed her desk. At least I'm raising awareness! I very much did feel as if the buck stopped here. I believe the only option now will be to actually return the license, and hope that this will bring a resolution.

Read an interesting article on ZDNet today (why is that website always slow?) about "naked PCs", which details the writers efforts to obtain OSless PCs from "the top five manufacturers". Maybe these guys are wisening up to the Linux deal? Shame that they are issuing policies about no Windows tax refunds instead of actually allowing users to opt out of the OS.

Incorruptibles Pt 2

2009-04-07T22:00:00.001+01:00

Following recent database pagefile corruption, I thought it important to log the recovery methods. When accessing the wiki dabase, I was receiving a message detailing that the SQL connection had "gone away". On further investigation I determined that the MySQL server was running, but every time access of the database was attempted, it would terminate and reload... sort of a protection mechanism.

On investigation of the logfile I discovered:

InnoDB: Database page corruption on disk or a failed file read of page 1414.
InnoDB: You may have to recover from a backup.
090402 18:29:27  InnoDB: Page dump in ascii and hex (16384 bytes): (ascii/checksum/location of corruption data snipped)
InnoDB: Page may be an update undo log page
InnoDB: Page may be an index page where index id is 0 77
InnoDB: (index keyname of table ufblue_wikidb/objectcache)
InnoDB: You may have to recover from a backup.
InnoDB: It is also possible that your operating system has corrupted its own file cache and rebooting your computer removes the error.
InnoDB: If the corrupt page is an index page you can also try to fix the corruption by dumping, dropping, and reimporting the corrupt table.
InnoDB: You can use CHECK TABLE to scan your table for corruption.

Luckily, the corruption was stored in the objectcache table, which simply stores frequently used data for quick retrieval, but as with most caches, the data is dual sighted, so if it cannot be found in the cache, it is simply accessed from the main store. It brings to light a secondary usage for wiki caches; frequently accessed data is at most risk from corruption, so by using a cache, it is essentially acting as an internal backup, helping to prevent repetitive access to the main store compromising data integrity!

Accessing SQL in CLI form was something I was fairly unfamiliar with. Its interesting how heavily we rely on interfaces such as phpMyAdmin to perform even the most simple tasks. Fortunately for me, I found a well written MySQL Commands page, which allowed me to connect to MySQL by simply running mysql from the command line with a user and password flag. I was then able to run the command use databasename; to switch focus.

The next challenge was actually accessing the database. In its present state, no access whatsoever could me made, it would crash out on any attempt. To correct this I had to start MySQL in recovery mode. I found detail on this mode from a blog entitled MySQL Performance Blog This mode essentially opens the databases in a safe mode preventing background operations from running. The mode is enabled by simply adding innodb_force_recovery=1 to the config file (usually my.cnf) and restarting MySQL.

This allows for accessing the data in a read only mode. That way I was able to make a connection. Once in, I simply pulled a table list by running show tables and then began extracting the tables one at a time. To do this I used the following command:

mysqldump -c -u username -ppassword databasename tablename > /tmp/databasename.tablename.sql

Then once I had the entire DB extracted, I created an empty database and began restoring the tables with:

mysql -u username -ppassword databasename < /tmp/databasename.sql

Once I had restored the tables I ran a check table command on each to check integrity, but as no corruption was found it was most probably index corruption. Needless to say, as I am reporting from a full and operative wiki, the DB was completely restored.

GPG Me

2008-03-15T09:31:00.001Z

This brief entry should help me remember (and maybe others) how to complete my monthly backup. Every month I backup critical data to DVD and mail it to a secure location. In theory, this means that my data is always safe... even if I might not be! Press mid-2007 I was mailing out completely unencrypted DVDs until I realized that this was probably a very bad idea indeed. Using Linux made this process very easy, as I knew immediately which encryption type to employ... GPG.

But what is GPG and how does it work?

Initially developed by Werner Koch in 1999, GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is a replacement for the PGP suite of cryptographic software. Where Wikipedia says "replacement" it should probably (for neutrality) so "alternative". GPG is open source, whereas PGP is owned and licensed by Network Associates. That is in a nutshell, the difference. More on PGP vs GnuPG here GnuPG encrypts messages using asymmetric keypairs individually generated by GnuPG users, it is a hybrid encryption software program in that it uses a combination of conventional symmetric-key cryptography for speed, and public-key cryptography for ease of secure key exchange; more on keys and keypairs below.

Keypairs

As mentioned above, GPG uses keypairs to encrypt "messages". Of course PGP/GPG was originally designed primarily with messaging in mind, but has the ability to encrypt any data. The basic idea is that you generate two keys, a private key and a public key. You then distribute your public key either directly or through keyservers, which act as indexes of public keys... kind of like a phonebook.

Once a user has your key and decides to send you a message or data, that user can use GPG to encrypt the message. Once encrypted even the sender cannot decrypt the data. The data then travels across either the Internet or physical media in a highly secure format. Once you receive this data, you use your private key to decrypt it. If you loose your private key, all data encrypted with the public key becomes unusable.

Using GPG to encrypt data

So we've got the basics of GPG, now time to put it to use. Generating keypairs is a fairly straightforward process. Michael Anckaert describes the basic steps at masuran.org under "Generating a keypair". Following this guide you will now have two files, a public and a private key. Remember that you will be using your public key to encrypt. Firstly, find your key ID by running gpg --list-keys. Here is my key list:

/home/lukeoconnell/.gnupg/pubring.gpg
-------------------------------------
pub   1024D/74B30C1E 2008-02-13 [expires: 2009-02-12]
uid                  Luke O'Connell 
sub   4096g/2167C1ED 2008-02-13 [expires: 2009-02-12]

pub   1024D/B22BEB02 2008-03-04 [expires: 2009-03-04]
uid                  Luke O'Connell 
sub   4096g/F0D92AA2 2008-03-04 [expires: 2009-03-04]

See how it starts with the keyring file? This is there your public keys are stored. The key ID is located on the pub line, so the key ID for luke@emailannex.com is 74B30C1E. Now we have the ID, we can go ahead and encrypt the file by running the following:

gpg -r 74B30C1E --output encrypted.txt.gpg --encrypt sourcefile.txt

Good practice would suggest that you leave the original extension intact, thus creating .txt.gpg in the above example. And the encryption process is as simple as that. Next lets look at backing up your private key, a very important task indeed.

Backing up your private key

Here we need to run gpg --list-secret-keys to find the ID of our private key. Here you'll find the result on the sub line. Once we have the ID, it's just a case of running the following to output it to a file:

gpg -ao private.key --export-secret-keys 0637B724

-a Denotes that the output should be ASCII armoured output, which is useful when backing up plaintext data (the format of your key).
-o Used for specifying the output. If no output is selected then the result will be output to the terminal.

You'll now be ready to store that highly sensitive file on backup media. I would strongly recommend not placing this file on the Internet or transmitting it across the Internet in any capacity.

Some really useful information

I found somacon.com's notes and the OpenSkils OpenPGP page extremely useful when getting to grips with the world of GPG. The two resources cover some topics not discussed here such as restoring keys and managing keyrings.

Friendly IIS

2008-01-07T09:28:00.002Z

So I don't often talk about Windows technologies such as IIS but I thought today would be the exception. I guess I'm fairly competent with Windows technologies, so don't really come up against challenges like I do while using Linux... but the South Bend Server is actually running Windows Server 2003 and today I really struggled with something Apache finds quite simple; friendly URLs. The basic concept behind friendly URLs is taking an address such as http://www.theblueroom.us/index.php?title=User:Luke and creating a provision for it to be accessed at http://www.theblueroom.us/User:Luke. The benefits? Well apart from being shorter, the URLs are then more readily indexed by the robots and spiders that search engines use to index.

It became apparent after TBR began being indexed by Google that the page addresses had to get, well, friendly. MediaWiki pointed me in the vague direction of ISAPI rewriters for IIS and after a couple of failed installs/configurations the frustration was beginning to show. After navigating a wave of permission problems and ISAPI status errors in IIS Admin I was finally able to get the filter up and running.

As usual, it was a combination of solutions that seemed to click. Finding the WikiMedia subpage Short_URL/IIS6 and then comments located at the parent page enabled me to cobble together a working ini file with the rewriter IIRF. The solution creates short URLs when accessing articles only, and not functions... which I believe results in a more workable wiki. The working ini file directive follows:

RewriteRule ^/wiki/?([^\.]*)$     /wiki/index.php?title=$1 [L]

I'm just hoping now that performance isn't too badly affected by the rewriter. As far as I can tell there is an initial delay, and the rewriter then seems to cache in some way and speed returns to my perception of normal.

Donate to Wikipedia!

2007-10-04T09:25:00.001+01:00

Many years ago, we had to resort to printed matter for reference, around thirteen years ago, we had to resort to offline encyclopedias such as Microsoft Encarta. Now we just fire up www.wikipedia.org and our every question is answered.

It is truly the new encyclopedia of the world. The truly unique feature of Wikipedia is its wiki nature, it allows it to become fluidic and expansive... every minute of every day people all across the world are adding and editing articles with up to the minute information. Wikipedia is truly a reminder that we are in a new age of computing. Even ten years ago the project would have been compared to the Tower of Babel.

In order to support its ongoing efforts, and the sheer amount of work that's involved, the Wikimedia Foundation is asking for donations and running a donations bar at the top of every page. Please consider donating... consider the money Wikipedia has saved you in encyclopedia costs, both online and offline. The good news? Its tax deductible, so please make a donation. You can reach the donation page here, with links to donation information and a letter from the board chair, Florence Devouard. Give the gift of knowledge by donating to the Wikimedia Foundation today.

All Links Created Equal

2007-05-01T23:04:00.001+01:00

Many Windows users crossing the big divide find the lack of shortcuts in Linux disconcerting. The apparent inability to manage without these friendly little links is overwhelming, but at a very basic level shortcuts can be dangerous. Working as an administrator for many years, the sheer amount of backuped links I've come across is staggering. Entire papers, projects and databases lost in the blink of an eye... with only a MyFile.lnk for comfort... like a ghost from the past.

Linux or more specifically Unix deals with shortcuts in a very different way... links. Using the ln command, links can be created and worked with very much in the same way as files. First off, let me draw the difference between hard links and symbolic (soft) links. Hard links are assigning a physical file an additional file name. These should not be considered shortcuts, because the original file and the newly created "link" are one and the same... they are on equal footing. Remember, "files" just point to an area of the disk where relevant data resides. In a sense they are just pointers... or markers.

Symbolic links (soft links) are more like shortcuts. Soft links simply point to a pre-existing file. If that file is deleted, the symbolic link becomes invalid. Conversely, only when the last hard link to a file is removed is the data actually removed from the drive. You can tell how many hard links a file has by pulling the inode value from an ls -l command:

-rw-r--r-- 4 cantin rcsg 78519 Aug 5 1992 bigcat.ps

(Here you can see that the file bigcat.ps has 4 hardlinks.)

Although hard links are preferable therefore, there are times when symbolic links must be used... when spanning different file systems for example. The big sell? The system transparently interprets soft links... so if I copy a symbolic link to my backup drive... the original file is backed up. Are all links created equal? Apparently not.

Bad Bad Internet Explorer

2007-01-05T23:06:00.001Z

Oh dear. More bad news for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6. Slashdot linked me to this Washington Post article yesterday sighting that IE was unsafe 284 days in 2006, opposed to Mozilla FireFox's 9 days. I tried to jump to Microsoft's defense as always, gently reminding that Microsoft held a ginormous amount of the market share... and that exploiters would be probing IE as a matter of course... but a quick witted repliant reminded me that it was not so much the number of vulnerabilities that Internet Explorer encountered last year but the response time.

Checking the raw data I quickly saw what he meant... Microsoft's response time last year over all vulnerabilities was a staggering 41.2 days per issue over all vulnerabilities and 26 days per issue over actively exploited vulnerabilities. No excuse.

Perhaps the corporate condition at Microsoft causes the delay of this giant, but if that is the case... MS needs to start decentralizing to cope with an ever changing... more dangerous world. Of course, whether Mozilla's response time drops in 2007 as FireFox increases in popularity remains to be seen. Remember I fight in Microsoft's corner recognizing the underdog. After all... the only two acceptable prejudices in the world today? The Catholic Church and Microsoft.

Drop It!

2010-09-05T12:16:00.010+01:00

After some serious musing over various CentOS server backup alternatives, I finally settled on the cloud for my modus primo. Obviously the server company could have provided either a secondary HDD or a network share to which I could have SFTP'd out, and I could have also gone third party and used SFTP with them... or even stored just critical data locally... but these options were all limited or costly.

Dropbox is a service I've been using for personal backup for some time, it's a free cloud based system, running from Amazon's S3 backend. It provides 2GB initial data offering, expandable on subscription to 100GB. OK, so it does cost in the upper storage bands, but to me $99 for a year of 100GB cloud storage isn't bad at all. I'm also thinking for people wanting to go above 100GB that Dropbox would happy oblige on a prorated basis.

I used both the headless Tips and Tricks page on the Dropbox Wiki and multiple forum entries to finally arrive at the solution.

My first step was to get the Dropbox client. Dropbox release a stable client on their website and a semi-stable client on their forums. I would recommend the latter; cloud technology is constantly evolving and Dropbox seem to fairly stable semi-stable releases... if that makes sense!

After downloading with wget and extracting to home, I started the process with:

~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd &

As soon as I had done this, the CLI issued me with a verification link, which I could then paste into a local browser either to setup a DB account or link an existing one. When the program detected that this link had been made, it completed execution and returned me to a prompt. Dropbox was running!

You'll see forum posts and web references to the official Dropbox CLI, which allows for starting/stopping etc. This is a useful script, however requires a very much updated version of Python. This was messy, as I had 2.43 already installed, and built parallel version of 7 in order to execute the script. Once both Python's are installed, you can prefix scripts with python (instead of just running them natively) to allow the higher version to be used. As certain system processes are built around Python, removing 2.43 would require other modules such as Yum to be recompiled as well. It would get very messy. I would actually suggest that you forgo this "official CLI" because in reality you will rarely use it, and the cost is not worth the gain.

So the next step was to manually edit some of the Dropbox settings. Without a GUI, the sqlite3 database has to be manually edited. First off stop Dropbox. If you haven't got your script working as above, then just kill the process.

Switch into your /home/user/.dropbox folder and run sqlite3 dropbox.db or... for newer releases such as mine, sqlite config.db.

The database interface will then load and you are ready to tweak some settings! These first two will allow you to remove the upload/download cap. If you are running on a server then you should definitely do this and take full advantage of your backbone. The third option stops Dropbox broadcasting locally looking for other Dropbox instances to P2P with. This is really important in a server environment, because your server company may see any local broadcasting, especially P2P broadcasting, as dangerous or consumptive. There are both new and old SQL statements below as Dropbox have usefully changed their DB structures between releases. If you have a config.db, then use the new statements, else use the old ones!

Old:

insert into config (key, value) values ('max_upload_kBs', 'RjAKLg==');
insert into config (key, value) values ('max_download_kBs', 'RjAKLg==');
insert into config (key, value) values ('p2p_enabled',0);

New:

delete from config where key='throttle_download_style';
delete from config where key='throttle_upload_style';
INSERT INTO "config" VALUES('throttle_download_style',0);
INSERT INTO "config" VALUES('throttle_upload_style',0);
insert into config (key, value) values ('p2p_enabled',0);

Then just quit and save with .quit. You can use the same process to move the Dropbox storage folder. There are scripts for this, however I found them to be outdated and resulted in corruption. By issuing the following commands as above you can change the location:

delete from config where key='dropbox_path';
INSERT INTO "config" VALUES('dropbox_path','/home/ufblue/Dropbox');

Your final step is to get Dropbox to start at startup and run as a sytem process. If you do this, the CLI script will become redundant because you'll be able to use the service dropbox command to either stop, start or restart the service.

For the service script, I used the script available on the Tips and Tricks page. You should be able to find your distrib there. I used the Fedora/Red Hat script and it worked just fine. It's really important to set the users file correctly if you are using symbolic or soft links, as permissions issues can occur. Dropbox looks at parent directory permissions rather than specific file permissions, so you can work around it that way, but for recursive permission liberated structures, you'll have to run the DB client as root. I'm really not sure of the ramifications of this, and can only entertain that the Dropbox company could potentially exploit this at worst.

If security is a concern, there are always the options of using TrueCrypt or encFS and then Dropboxing the encrypted volume in it's entirety. I can see why this is an attractive option, because you are still risking unencrypted data to both Dropbox and ultimately Amazon's S3 service.

The possibilities are then fairly limitless. Remember the you can use softlinks to link files into your Dropbox directory system wide, and these will then be included in the backup. Remember that Dropbox contains a 30 day revision history, so every time a file is changed, it's revision is stored. This got me to consider the possibility of Dropbox watching an active mySQL database. I'm not sure how this would work however and even if the files would be locked? There is no data about this on the net right now so it might be worth experimenting.

Consider the additional server based possibilities though, from torrents, to email stores, to databases, to VM instances... even more if you are running a local client and then you have a smooth replacement for SFTP or WebDAV... the options are limitless, and would provide an outstanding interface for any client. It's only a matter of time before we see more server-side application of this, but beware that although this will bring ease of use, it will also bring with it cost as people start to recognize it's value. DB is already more than Googleworthy, and I am sure they've been approached, but I guess for now they are holding out for their own reasons... for now.

Dropbox on their part are doing a stellar job at promoting the various uses, and don't seem to mind any of it's applications. There is even a DB client for smartphones now, enabling you to literally sync on the go. To me, effective cloud storage application is an important a milestone as VM. Your store of information is now truly dynamic, truly transversal. Information has ascended.

Reliably Tech

2009-11-21T00:18:00.005Z

Laptop reliability, or tech reliability for that matter is hard to measure. How do we really know if a laptop purchased from Dell will last longer than HP for example? We all theorise of course, based on different indicators... these including reviews from users, blogging, word of month, salespeople and of course personal experience... but this really isn't empirical data at all, and often the assumptions we make are flawed.

Interestingly, SquareTrade released statistical data today regarding just this. The data is based on the failure rates of leading laptop brands, and ranked on warranty claims in the first year. SquareTrade generally appeals to eBay buyers, who are given the opportunity to purchase a warranty after an eBay purchase. I need to add at this stage that this data is, in its own way, flawed. Its based on the premise of the majority of purchases being eBay based, rather than market purchased... and it also does not list all manufacturers, just a random cross section from someone at ST who obviously thought would be interesting.

Its also flawed by user type in the fact that different users purchase different tech. Could it be for example that Toshiba came out on top because the people that choose to purchase Toshiba are more technically aware or more careful? Could it be that HP is the first call for a great deal of tech first-timers, aiding their poor score?

So the message is simple, take it with a pinch of salt but it still makes for interesting reading... when the unquantifiable becomes empiric it is always interesting.

Corruption on the Bay

2009-10-24T00:16:00.001+01:00

I should start with the caveat that I am not generally a moaner. Working in both corporate America and corporate Europe, I understand the challenges large businesses face to become leaner, meaner, more cost effective and more resilient. Understanding these challenges gives me a unusual insight into why companies take actions which often seem, to the end consumer, heartless, rash, reactionary or just plain old senseless.

eBay however has forced me to break the rules. Over the last couple of months in the UK, eBay has been making changes to the way in which sellers can charge postage fees. Since last year, eBay has imposed maximum postage charges in categories, and the business logic behind this is just about tolerable.

It goes back to sellers abusing the postage system. For many years, across both the Americas and Europe, sellers have been “cheating the system” by charging say $0.99 for the item and $18.99 for postage. The net result? Two fold. Firstly, the seller does not have to pay final value fees on the $18.99 because it is technically postage, and secondly in the event of a refund for an unwanted item (in which postage is non-refundable), the buyer would simply receive their $0.99 back.

So eBay clearly thought long and hard about this one and came up with the detailed seller rating system. This is a great system, which allows for a more detailed feedback on the seller, in terms of speed of postage, cost of postage, item description etc. Each of these categories can be marked out of 5 stars. eBay's plan for this was simple... they would penalize sellers who had a poor postage cost rating by limiting them in one way or another, for example using maximum postage restrictions.

For some reason, this either never took off, or took off for a very short amount of time because before sellers knew what had hit them, this logic had been applied seller-wide... and postage restrictions had been imposed. It was a bad deal for sellers, simply for the fact that sometimes, on some items, postage just costs more.

So eBay reverted from an idea which would have allowed sellers to moderate themselves, via the rating of buyers, to a system which in effect penalized everyone. Still at this stage I did not blog. I could understand eBay's reasoning for doing this, the smart business logic (in being able to charge more of a FVF) and the possible legal avenues opening of discrimination based on a sellers feedback... I could just about understand.

Then it happened. Earlier this year some categories started imposing zero postage fees allowed. This is a complete scandal, and I'm not even sure it is legal. The books category for example has just been zero rated. This means that you must offer free postage, and build the postage into your item value. The net result is a vast amount more money for eBay in final value fees, as the item is now 100% chargeable. It truly is an unashamedly greedy ploy.

For sellers, this means increased fees, and an untrue reflection of an items value. If the whole item cost is built in, postage costs become opaque. As a seller I pride myself on being able to quote accurate postage, and guaranteeing on the auction that they will only pay for the postage plus a very small surcharge in packaging. I guarantee that if it costs me any less to post that I will refund the extra. That avenue is now closed.

For such a pioneering company like eBay to do something like this is bad for everyone. It's bad for the buyers, for the sellers, for the economies in which eBay operates, and for the Internet as a whole. Just because eBay does have a markable monopoly on online auctions, they have clearly become a law unto themselves... and when any company does this it represents the very worst of human nature, that of greed.

Reply to the Congressman

2009-09-15T19:52:00.004+01:00

Today I replied to Congressman Murphy's response I blogged about last month on net neutrality. I thought it was important in my own words to let the Congressman know my thoughts on net neutrality and the importance of the issue:

Dear Congressman,

Thank you for your email. I do understand your position on net neutrality, but I cannot agree with you. Free access to the Internet is something which must be protected at all cost, and the issue of providers charging for regulated access to the Internet is something which we must protect against, even if the plans and proposals are not immanent.

Your concern that net neutrality would limit customer choices is simply unfounded. Net neutrality would mean that a class based system would exist on the Internet, with the better system being available to those that could afford it. In essence, it would completely restructure the Internet as we know it, in what I believe to be a very commercial way, one that is ultimately bad for the consumer.

My concern is also that big networks and businesses are behind this with vast amounts of money, and I would hope that you could remain independent from this, and consider this issue from that of the consumer and the provider (who are of course often your constituents too).

The Internet and America use similar models. The Internet rewards individuals for their creativity and their independent thought. It does not judge individuals on their classes or beliefs, or who they are "subscribed" to, and more importantly the Internet is a place of free thinking and the sharing of information and ideas. It is truly is so much to so many people. As such I urge you to consider your opinion on net neutrality and ask you to join me in our fight to protect it, as you would fight to protect the values and foundations of this great country.

Yours faithfully,

Luke O'Connell

Reply from Congressman Murphy

2009-08-13T19:48:00.002+01:00

Today I received a response from Congressman Murphy on the issue of net neutrality. This was in response to my asking him to support it.

Dear Mr. O'Connell,

Thank you for writing my office about net neutrality. I appreciate being able to address your concerns.

The issue of net neutrality is an ongoing issue under review in the Energy and Commerce Committee, on which I serve. Though there is no single definition, the term "net neutrality" is used in reference to the practice of a network provider controlling a subscriber's access to Internet-based content. Supporters of "net neutrality" legislation argue that Congressional action is needed to prevent Internet service providers from building a multi-tier Internet. Under a multi-tier Internet, providers would bill users based on their consumption of bandwidth or limit unfettered access to content located outside the internal infrastructure. Net neutrality proponents worry that network providers will begin to favor content located on their internal network and restrict access to content located elsewhere.

Essentially, net neutrality legislation would allow the government to regulate access to the Internet. At this time, I see no impending threat to the Internet that requires legislation to protect access.

I remain concerned that "net neutrality" would actually limit consumer choices down the road by deterring innovation and other communications technology advances. The U.S. has enjoyed rapid expansion in high-speed Internet service and broadband applications in recent years, largely due to a balanced approach to Internet regulation.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with further questions or concerns. If you are interested in receiving my email newsletter describing important votes and key committee activity, I invite you to visit my website at http://murphy.house.gov and sign up.

Sincerely,

Tim Murphy
Member of Congress