Technobabble

I have to interact with a lot of Windows systems, so pptp is the norm.  I’ve often tried to configure IPSEC but to honest, I’ve never made it work!  I read up on it, understood it in theory and then sat down to try again.  But heterogenous systems (Linux, my router, their router, etc.) all seem to present a different set of incomprehensible options with different names.  In the case of the routers, add questionable documentation.

Anyway, I just discovered the networkmanager-pptp plugin.  First, I installed network-manager-pptp and pptp-linux.  You need to make sure that your wired interface is configured to roam, otherwise you will not see the options for VPN configuration.

After that, I configured my VPN but couldn’t work out how to make the option appear to connect to it.  After some Googling, I found the answer:-

sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager restart
sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/26NetworkManagerDispatcher restart

I suppose a reboot would have done it but I like to avoid those!

Now, I can just click and connect instantly.  Very neat!

Having switched from KDE to GNOME about 6 months ago, I got to like GNOME a lot but found some aspects of Metacity annoying.  I quite liked compiz-fusion but found that I tended to turn most effects off so was not really making good use of it.  I decided to try out openbox with GNOME and really liked it.

Following some of the great info online, I was seduced by the idea of trying a pure openbox session, and that is what I’m still running.

Why all the changes you might ask?  Well, having used Linux full-time for a year and a bit and having mainly stuck with the same bunch of things, I wanted to really take time to look around and see what was out there.  Also, it’s all about learning new (old?) ways of doing things, new skills, and getting a deeper understanding of the free software universe that I’m coming really to adore.

The other reason is that my feelings have changed about two aspects of Linux that scare new users sometimes, especially Windows refugees.  The first is that there are hundreds of choices to be had, and that is a good thing not a bad thing.  To those used to the idea that there is one OS, one Word Processes, and to whom the idea of mixing and matching panels, window managers, etc is alien, this can be vertigo-inducing.  But now, I’m like a kid in a sweet shop.  All these amazing things to try!  So much freedom to tweak and mix!  The second is that I am losing the need to have the comfort blanket of Windows-UI metaphors around.  KDE is great and I do like it, and I’m looking forward to KDE 4.1.  GNOME is great too - clean and simple and well-integrated.  But when I used to see things like Fluxbox, ICEWM, or apps like MUTT, vim, and others I used to run screaming thinking “ugly! dated! complicated!”  Now, I’m willing to try anything and find the appeal of these light, fast, customisable tools growing all the time,

So I’m currently running openbox, xcompmgr, nitrogen, wbar, pypanel, conky and gdesklets.  I’ve finally purged all KDE apps and libs from my system and am trying to live without my last few favourites (amarok, k3b, TaskJuggler, KTorrent, digikam).  I am using transset to modify window transparency with the mouse-wheel.

I’m really finding this combination awesome and a joy to work with at the moment.  That’s not to say I won’t start tweaking again soon!

I’ve tried this out a bit, and while it looks exactly what I want, the execution seems very poor.  It’s buggy and unstable (or at least, the mergeant tool is).

• If I start mergeant and try to add a datasource, I can’t type in any of the text fields in the dialog box.
• I used copy and paste to create an ODBC data source linking to the working ODBC source I discussed earlier.  When I try to open it, mergeant segfaults.
• If I select the already existing SQLLite source, and then press “Data Sources” I get an error saying that the gnome-database-properties program cannot be found.
• I tried the command line and found gnome-database-properties-3.0.  I used this to create a FreeTDS data source, bypassing ODBC.  Joy of joys, it worked!
• I tried to create a simple query in the main program against my database and mergeant segfaulted.

Overall, a pretty bad first impression.  It’s a shame, because the screenshots look great.  It probably works really well with mysql and sqllite!

I was wondering if this is possible, and it seems that it is.  I am using Ubuntu 7.10.

First I installed unixodbc and tdsodbc packages.  Then I mainly followed the instructions here starting at the “Configuration” part.  These were the key, because in my ignorance I tried editing odbc.ini directly and was also looking at /etc/freetds/freetds.conf which I don’t think is actually used when running with ODBC.

I can now use:-

isql <dsnname> <username> <password>

…and get a console to type arbitrary SQL in.  I tried using OpenOffice.org’s oobase, and although it connects and shows me a list of tables, it can’t seem to query any of them due to malformed SQL.  I’m not sure where the problem lies, but I was just experimenting.

Ideally I’d like to find something a bit like SQL Server Management Studio Express as a front-end, because I use that a lot.  I run a work site hosted on ASP.NET with a MSSQL backend, and I often have to run raw SQL to get around the lack of proper admin pages because the lazy developer (i.e. me) hasn’t written them yet.

While browsing package lists, I spotted mention of GNOME Data Access (gda) which has a freetds backend, so I will check that out too.

More links:-

• http://www.freetds.org/userguide/freetdsconf.htm
• http://www.unixodbc.org/doc/FreeTDS.html
• http://www.freetds.org/userguide/odbcconnattr.htm

Like a lot of people, I want to record cool things I find, and solutions to problems.  The reasons are partly so that I can look back to see how I did something, and partly to satisfy the ego by thinking that other people may find it useful too.  You never know…