Deploying FreeRadius against eDirectory coming soon.

Current Project: integrating Cisco Wireless Lan controller with Novell eDirectory

Status: Cisco Wireless Lan Controller hooks into FreeRadius that authenticates users against eDirectory. Single Sign on into eDirectory currently works with issues.

Issues: During login of 802.x across the wifi, the user is granted access into eDirectory, this happens quicker than the user gets an IP address. This means the users are not getting drive mappings or the container login script to run. About 5 seconds after login the user gets an IP address and can login a second time.

Schema extensions: none
Radius Server: SLES10sp2 X86_64
eDirectory/LDAP server: same SLES10sp2 X86_64 server
Client: Novell Client 4.91sp4 on WindowsXp

A few weeks ago I took my CLP/CLE10 upgrade test. It was a difficult test as I was asked to do some things that I have never done before, but thanks to common knowledge I was able to figure thing out and work my way to passing and becoming both a CLP10 and CLE10. As most of you who have taken these test know, CLE10 is Novell's top Linux certification based on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. I can tell everyone some tasks that I had to complete but I can not go into detail. The CLP covers advanced linux based tasks such as scripting, logging, creating users, and performing advanced tasks on user accounts. CLE covers services that can be ran on a Linux server such as nagios, DHCP, DNS, FTP, squid, and many other services that may be used on Linux. During my test I was asked to configure two DHCP servers in a fail over fault tolerant state. Not only was I asked to configure these servers to be fault tolerant but I was also tasked to perform advanced features within the servers themselves for DHCP. I was also asked to configure a syslog-ng server with some very advanced features for logging. My third tasks had to do with advanced configuration of LVM data groups and NFS for both client and server. Many of you would say NFS is simple, but there are many advanced features on the server side and client side that I was asked to perform during this test. I then had a request to perform a maintenance check on a certain part of the system and write a script to perform actions based on the different states the specified part of the system was in, these were not easy tasks and the script was very advanced itself to include sed and awk statements in order to work properly.

If you are thinking of taking the CLP and CLE, I suggest that you get all the training materials that you can and study each chapter to the point you completely understand every word. Build a lab and perform the tasks in each chapter over and over again. I have been working with Linux on a daily basis in an enterprise environment for many years now, and this test was extremely hard. I wish anyone that is looking to become a Certified Linux Professional or a Certified Linux Engineer the best of luck.

Most of you SLED10 users out there have come to love the integrated music player and library Helix Banshee. I thought I would post a few of my own tips and tricks for this fantastic application.

Creating a play list using the smart play list.
The nice thing about a smart play list is that it is always working. This means any rule that you have in your smart play list is always active and working. If we make a rule to put all songs by Def Leppard into our Def Leppard play list, then any song from then on out that is from Def Leppard will automatically be put in into our smart play list. Fantastic.

You can see from the screen shot we have the option in defined Smart List to make our play list to stay at a size that would fit on a CD. I have also created a play list called favorites, my rule on this is for the smart play list rule to look for all songs with a rating of 4 or 5. As I rate my songs, those that I like most make it into my favorites play list. Enjoy.

I will cover one other tip. Many people love banshee because it is so easy to burn your favorite songs to CD. One nice feature about banshee is the ability to choose the format that the music is put on the CD. If all your songs are mp3's but you need your songs to play on a regular cd player, well banshee will convert those songs for you on burn.

Select edit at the top of the page and the select preferences. Under CD importing you have a few options to select for your output format. Free Lossless Audio Codec, MP3, Ogg, and Wave Form PCM. Give them all a try and see what sounds the best and what plays in your cd player the best. I just hope all the SLED10 users and other Linux users with Helix Banshee enjoy this great open source software that truley shines above it's proprietary cousins over on Windows.

It is about time for me to do another post. I have been spending the last few weeks comparing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 sp1 together. As the both servers can serve the same purpose and do many of the same things, I have found one to be very well polished and a highly competitive to Windows 2003 server.

Red Hat Enterprise Server 5, for some reason seems to have the same look and feel as I have always known Red Hat to have. Virtualization seems to be a big factor in the Enterprise Linux distributions, Red Hat now boosts an XEN kernel for all your virtualization needs. I tried to find some other features that would differ RHEL5 from the other versions, and besides the XEN kernel I was baffled into what has actually changed.

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 sp1, I can only say one thing about SLES10sp1; WOW! I am amazed that every Linux shop is not jumping ship to this well polished animal that Novell created. The only thing I could figure out was that many in the I.T. industry supporting Linux are still bitter about the Novell Microsoft deal over a year ago. I can not get over the YAST setup carried over from SLES9. Many visual differences are seen from install but the functionality has greatly approved. The great thing about installing with YAST is that an engineer has the ability to fully customise their server from the time of install. This has been one part in Red Hat that I have felt has been missing for a long time. Red Hat has the different install types, where SLES10 is fully customizable from the start. The GNOME GUI is so well visually polished that a new engineer could function on SLES10 in no time at all. Many other Linux distributions utilize GNOME, but the SLES10 GNOME interface seems to be more seamless and easier to utilize. Changes to the start menu and to YAST2 graphical interfaces are much improved and end up being easier and less complex than Windows 2003 servers graphical interface.

I will not say much more about the two operating systems, but for those of you who are running Red Hat, I have one suggestion. Get off the Novell Microsoft deal and get over it, you are missing out on the best enterprise Linux to date and should tackle SLES10 with an open mind.

My view on the Novell Microsoft deal is this. Novell has become an open source company that is attempting to launch open source forward and make it a viable solution in the enterprise. Novell has done something that other Linux distributions have been afraid of, create an environment where Linux and Microsoft will work together. Novell is absolutely correct that the enterprise will not replace Windows Servers, but by working with Microsoft we can now bring Linux and Windows together and help grow the Linux market.

Here we go, OpenSuSE 10.3 is now out as of Oct 4th 2007. Being the huge SuSE and Novell fan that I am, I had to download the full version and get started. Now that I have completed my first week of SuSE playing, I though a nice review would be in order.

My first tasks was to do an inplace upgrade of the product. I went from OpenSuSE10.2 to 10.3, and everything was well in tact, so we have an A for upgrade.

I then wanted to see our new version in a fresh install with the 64bit flavor. I installed on an HP dv2200 with an AMD 64bit dual core processor and 2GB of memory. The first anoyance showed up right off the bat. The install CD could not support my nvidia graphics card and I was never able to see my install load up. The fix was to use the VESA driver by pressing the F3 option at the install selection window. The VESA driver brings linux up in text mode, then YAST2 starts in graphical mode. Not too bad, although exact same issue I had with OpenSuSE10.2 and SLED10sp1.

I did notice that during the install I had the option to review the release notes. At first I thought this was great, I could review the release notes now while software loads and I won't have to hit the release notes phase of the yast configuration. I was wrong, even though the release notes are there during software install you are still required to see them again as you go through the post configuration. Kinda silly if you ask me.

The very first thing I did after logging in was try out the online update engine. Very easy to setup, but my first experience was bad. My computer locked up when I attempted to install all required updates. My first few day's were actually filled with computer lock ups. I think this is a good way to turn a future OpenSuSE user or even a SLED user off of linux or SuSE. My laptop is fairly new, and these distributions need much better testing. For a PC to lock up right after a fresh build is just asking me to look elsewhere for a desktop operating system.

After a few reboots I finally got through the update process. I find another dissapointing issue; in SLES10sp1 you can select a user to be allowed to run the online updates without being prompted for the root password during every single online update. In OpenSuSE 10.3 I guess we took a step backwards, because I could not see where to select this and now find myself entering the root password everytime a new update appears. This is just asking for users to log in with the root account for regular desktop use.

Now for the fun part, I got a chance to try out the OpenSuSE build services and utilize the one click install feature. My software of choice was compiz-fusion. I could not believe I clicked the once click install, and that's all it took for my PC to lock up again. What's going on here guys? After another reboot the one click install service worked, and it worked good. This service is a big plus for any desktop windows or linux. Not only did my 1 click install work, but it resovled all my dependincy's for me at the same time. I love it.

Compis-fusion working was another story, I ended having to review the install procedures on the opensuse wiki. The wiki is very easy to use, I just entered compiz-fusion in the search bar at the top and my install instructions where right there. In order to make this a successfull product we need to get away from users having to do extra things, like enter in commands in the terminal in order to make things work.

Issue #2 with compiz-fusion; I had no menu bar on any application. After lots of time researching, like a new user should never have to do. I found that I needed to have emerald --replace run during my gnome startup. So my comment is, why can't the people at compiz and beryl and the people at opensuse get together and work these issues out so the end user doesn't have to.

Overall, I was disappointed in the fact that a brand new user to OpenSuSE could be turned off of the product with this new release. After resolving all my issues it seems to be running very well except for the occasional lock up, which is very annoying. OpenSuSE needs a bit more polishing and we need more communication within the open source community. I will be putting SLED10sp1 back on this laptop as I never had any issues what so ever with that distro, and the $50.00 a year is very very worth it for how well polished SLED10 is. As far as OpenSuSE goes I hope we can get it right in the future.