Linux

After following the article published earlier, you ended up with two OpenVMS 7.3 systems running on SIMH VAX emulator instances. Networking was configured, both over DECnet and TCP/IP. Next up: clustering those two systems.

Last week, I decided to pick up a pet project I started once but never got around to finish succesfully; building my own OpenVMS cluster. OpenVMS is one of the oldest operating systems that is still actively developed; it was originally created as VMS by Digital Equipment Corp (DEC, in short), which was bought by Compaq, which was bought by Hewlett-Packard. While most people know Linux and its UNIX roots, this system is a totally different cup of tea.

Three different architectures of machines can run VMS: the oldest being VAX, which was replaced by Alpha, which was in turn replaced by Itanium (the HP Integrity line of machines). Getting that kind of hardware for home use is not impossible, but would be both costly to purchase and hurting your power bill - and they're not exactly quiet either. Emulation is the way to go. Hence, a new goal: getting an emulated VMS cluster up and running. In this article we'll create two VMS machines and prepare them for clustering.

A while back I did an article on a catch-all solution for streaming content to the Playstation 3 using MediaTomb and a big transcoding script. It served me well: every movie I had - be it avi, mkv, mp4, dvd iso, RealMedia, ... was properly handled. I didn't care for HD content, mainly because my TV was a plain old CRT tube and couldn't tell the difference between a 720x480 mpeg2 and a 1080p h.264 movie anyway.

Last month I did get me a HDTV finally, and my original transcoding script wasn't ready for it.

I'm not a developer, but I like Trac. I like its wiki syntax, and the way you can create a simple, effective ticketing system without a billion options you'll never use anyway. I like how you can disable whole chunks of the system - like the code repository subsystem, which I don't have a use for. It's easy to modify (it's python, after all) and has a billion plugins available.

What we were looking for was a system that does wiki, ticketing, has a way to set ACLs on both, and supports LDAP.

I've been using MediaTomb with my PlayStation 3 for a while now, and it's been working just peachy. However, it takes a lot of work keeping up with the different media formats in the library, and especially those media which don't play by default on the PS3: QPeL MPEG4, RealMedia, Flash, DVD ISOs ... After creating the umptieth transcoding profile fit for one specific filetype, I wondered if I could just create one single transcoding profile that fits everything I throw at it.

After the previous story about authentication of Linux services against your USB ActiveKey, I received a lot of questions about using actual web applications with that same key. Is it possible? Well, as some people already pointed out in the comments, sure it is.

As I started working for my new employer, I got a new laptop. Linux is allowed here (thank goodness for that!) so I decided to go for a Debian install. I also got this nifty USB ActiveKey token, which can be used to authenticate to a plethora of services - Windows domain login, SAP login, ... fun stuff. But what about Linux? It turns out you can make good use of this key for Linux authentication too.