April 27, 2013
by Rodney Gedda
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A while back I mentioned a number of global VPS hosting providers were adopting KVM alongside Xen and OpenVZ, but I could only fine one local provider. Since then I have found another.
Offers managed and unmanaged KVM VPS hosting from Adelaide. The company also offers a wide range of Linux distros.
There’s generally not a lot of KVM news around – apart from Kernel digests – but the KVM Forum 2013 will be held in Edinburgh, UK in October so there may be some big announcements then.
March 31, 2013
by Rodney Gedda
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This month I received my PRINCE2 certification for both the Foundation and Practitioner levels.
PRINCE2 (Projects IN Controlled Environments) is a UK government standard for project management and is used widely in Australia for managing corporate and government IT projects.
It was an interesting experience studying from 6 to 9pm three nights a week for 6 weeks. It goes without saying I was glad when it was over, but when you actually have an interest in the subject matter studying is a lot more interesting than if you were taking a course to make up “credits”. I haven’t studied project management since engineering school and and lot people I have dealt with over the years worked as project managers so the interest was definitely there, even if a crash course after hours was not my preferred way of learning.
When you have an interest in the topic you expect to do well. I had realistic expectations, but it was frustrating getting sample exam questions wrong after covering the material during course hours and after-hours reading.
Why care about project management? The short (and best) answer is it’s a universal discipline and skill set. Project management can be applied to any project, not just IT projects. IT does have an obsession with project management – perhaps due to the highly structured nature of the industry – but many a CIO I have spoken to believes project management should be applied to all business change, not just IT change programs.
One PRINCE2 trainer I spoke to told me project management can be like religion – people become immersed in the rules and forget about the outcome. I’ll save that debate for another forum. For now, I’m just happy to be a PRINCE2 practitioner. The exam results?
Again, not bad results, but when you have an interest in the subject you want to “know” everything. It’s time for me to apply the study and gain the valuable knowledge – to learn on the job.
February 27, 2013
by Rodney Gedda
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More developments in the open source file hosting and backup, or “personal cloud”, space.
ownCloud 5 is now in beta and I just learned about Seafile, which looks quite interesting. Last December SparkleShare 1.0 was released.
With so many commecial cloud services for file storage available nowadays, it’s good to see some open source projects available as well. As an ownCloud user I’m looking forward to version 5 which has a new UI and improved security model.
One day I might actually move on from rsync…
January 28, 2013
by Rodney Gedda
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A couple of people have asked me how to recover from a slip of the mouse when using the WordPress administration interface.
Call them flaws in WordPress’s admin design, but the world won’t end if you happen to do either of the following.
Both of these settings can be found in Settings -> General and Settings -> Permalinks respectively in the administration area. Both DO NOT warn the user that if their server settings are not correct changing the values will result in a site that doesn’t display – including the administration area that uses the same URLs.
NOTE: A friend tells me that the second of these only happens with a certain setup of Apache HTTP server. In any case, if it happens to you this method should help restore WordPress.
Change of default path
If you do happen to change the default path from, say, site.to.you.blog to site.to.your.blog/blog/ then you need to have all the WordPress files in that directory for it to work properly. If you don’t, you’ll break your site and be unable to recover it from the admin area as the path value has been changed in the database. There’s a page on the WordPress wiki devoted to moving WordPress.
If you have access to the MySQL server through PHPMyAdmin or the console simply restore the “option_value” value to the original site URL (the one before you changed it) in the wp_options table of your WordPress database. This should get everything working again.
Change of default permalink URL
If you want a more human-readable URL for your blog posts WordPress has a number of predefined permalink settings to choose from in the administration area. If you change the default permalink setting to another your site might not display. This is because WordPress writes a .htaccess file with new rewriting rules for the Web server. The text in the .htaccess file will look like this:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
To restore things, simply delete the new permalink entry in the wp_options table and then delete (or overwrite with blank text) the .htaccess file in the /wordpress directory (or wherever WordPress is being served from) on your Web server. To do this you will need ftp or console access to the server and the ftp client (like FileZilla) should be able to view “hidden” files which begin with a “.” dot.
It can be frustrating when a simple change breaks your blog. Maybe one day WordPress will include big fat warnings not to change these settings unless they will bring about the desired result.
December 30, 2012
by Rodney Gedda
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All the best for the holiday season and I hope you have a happy New Year.
I’ve taken some time off to be with family, work on a number of personal projects and NOT commute for a few weeks.
As always, I seem to be stuck with a lot of system administration work over the holiday season. I need to follow my own advice and backup everything before doing any upgrades.
For those looking to upgrade to WordPress 3.5 I performed the in-place upgrade from the dashboard and didn’t have any problems. Enjoy the much talked about new media manager.
Can’t wait to ring in 2013 tomorrow!
November 30, 2012
by Rodney Gedda
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There is so much I had to create a new page lest this post clogs up blog feeds.
The open source code inside your iPad
Random selection:
See, even the most “innovative” companies stand on the shoulders of giants.
October 21, 2012
by Rodney Gedda
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I couldn’t agree with it more:
It would be good to see some open source blogging projects join that list.
September 30, 2012
by Rodney Gedda
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I’m not much of an AFL fan, but hey, is there any team a Sydneysider can get excited about but the Swans when they are in form?
Congrats on the premiership and let’s hope there are more where that came from.
I saw most of the game up at Hawke’s Nest in Port Stephens. Crystal clear TV signal. Crappy mobile coverage though, grrr.
What’s your pick for the 2012 rugby league Grand Final? Not much choice if you’re from the Harbour City…
August 31, 2012
by Rodney Gedda
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Since my last post about OwnCloud, I discovered local VPS hosting company Echoman is offering locally hosted OwnCloud instances for just $6/100GB/Mth!
Perhaps my blog was an inspiration? 
That price is very competitive and shows we don’t need to assume the multinational cloud services will always be cheaper.
I intend to follow up these posts with a series of how tos for syncing a local client with an OwnCloud server.
July 31, 2012
by Rodney Gedda
0 comments
Just looking at Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud and I must say it’s a broad portfolio of open and Microsoft technologies. By offering:
to name a few, Microsoft has bet big on open source for its Cloud service. So Microsoft seems to be quite happy to offer open technologies for services, but the open source code seems to be “hidden” inside its product offerings. For years Microsoft has developed products containing open source (most notably BSD code) but it held back from offering a full Linux distribution, for example. This ostensibly has all changed with the advent of cloud computing.
Years ago I interviewed a senior Microsoft strategist and asked him why Microsoft did not develop more commercial applications on top of open source platforms. His response was “we choose not to” because it was inconsistent with licensing terms of some free software distributions. Microsoft’s choice is now clear in the Cloud.
I believe Microsoft has lost a big opportunity in the Cloud space by being too protective of its enterprise business. Microsoft also dropped the ball in the mobile space, but that’s the topic of another blog.
For now, Microsoft’s new-found love of open technologies – Azure even flaunts the word “open” as part of its marketing – raises questions for user and developers of open source software. Is Microsoft a company that is likely to commit to open source or will it use it as a beach head to help drive customers to its own technologies?
Only this week Microsoft announced a vague patent “licensing” deal with Amdocs involving its use of Linux servers in its Cloud. Perhaps that too is the topic of another blog…