Linux+: Exam Day

I took the Linux+ exam today and passed. The test was pretty much what I expected. It was heavy on BASH commands and file names and locations. If you have about a year of Linux administration experience the test should be pretty easy. Simply using Linux at home would not be enough to prepare you for the exam.

I used the ITExamWorld.com and Sybex practice tests. The ITExamWorld.com test was far superior and there were several questions on the exam that were in the practice test nearly verbatim.

I am overall very happy that I took this exam. I learned a lot in the studying process and while it is not the most prestigious or technical Linux exam out there, the Comptia name carries a level of familiarity with even non-IT professionals that should help in my future endeavors.

openSUSE 11.1 on Virtual PC 2007

There has been a lot of interest in my post about installing openSUSE on Virtual PC 2007 so I decided to post a walk through for openSUSE 11.1. Here it is in all its glory.

What you will need:

• A PC running Virtual PC 2007 - Virtual PC 2007 is available free from Microsoft here.
• Either an installation DVD or LiveCD for openSUSE 11.1 - available free here. I use the DVD to keep the actual install time down.
• Either a DVD writer or some software that lets you mount an ISO file. I use Power ISO - available free here.

I will continue from this point forward assuming that you will be using the install DVD and mounting the ISO to a virtual drive. If you wanted you could burn the ISO to disk and proceed that way with no real difference.

Let's get started:

After downloading all your required software we need to mount the ISO or burn it to disk. I am going to mount it using Power ISO.

Once you have the ISO mounted to a virtual drive you need to setup a virtual machine. Open Virtual PC 2007 and click New.

Click Next

Select Create a virtual machine and click Next

Name your VM and browse for where you want to save it and click next. Note, this is not where the virtual hard drive will be saved so a place like the desktop in fine.

Select Other for the OS and click next.

Chose the amount of RAM for the VM. I went with 1GB for improved performance within the VM but the recommended 128MB would be sufficient. I like to keep this around 1/3 of my total RAM or less.

Select new virtual hard disk and click next.

Select the size and location of the virtual hard disk. I would recommend 5GB for the default load of openSUSE. This will allow you to install all of the common packages and features.

Once you click next you will see a summary of your virtual machine and then click finish. Virtual PC 2k7 will then create your new virtual hard disk and you will now see your VM in the list of machines in the Virtual PC console.

Select your VM and click Start and a new window will open and your VM will begin to boot. Click the CD menu on the VM and select the drive that you mounted your ISO to. Once you have selected the drive the VM should start to load the openSUSE installer. This might take a little while so be patient. Eventually you will see the welcome screen below. Also, in case you are unfamiliar with Virtual PC and having trouble with switch mouse control between the host and guest OS the right ALT key is the default host key. Pressing the host key will allow you to move back to the host OS.

This is where we need to enter our boot options to ensure openSUSE loads properly. Select the Installation option from the menu and a Boot Options field should appear at the bottom of the screen. It this field enter noreplace-paravirt i8042.noloop clock=pit and then press enter.


For a more detailed explanation on what these options do see my other post here. After a moment or two you should see the screen below.

Read the license agreement and click next.

The default selections here are fine. Click next.

Selected your time zone and correct your date and time if needed. Depending on your system you may need to deselect the UTC option but for most machines that is fine.

This is the desktop environment selection screen. GNOME and KDE are the two major Linux desktops. It is a matter of personal preference really but if you have never used Linux before I would suggest GNOME. It is the most Windows like of the two in my opinion. You can also setup a second virtual machine and run both until you find one you like best.

Here you select the file system scheme for your VM. If you have no Linux or UNIX experience I would suggest using a partition based setup for the familiarity to Windows. But I prefer LVM for its flexibility. Here I choose the partition based setup for simplicity and since this would be more familiar for most users.

Enter your name and desired username and password. Unless you are an experienced Linux user I would leave everything else as default. You might also notice that a window will pop up saying something about loading cracker-lib. This is openSUSE checking your password strength. If you use a dictionary word or some other overly easy password it will notify you. I really like this feature, which is in many other Linux distros as well. When you are all done click next. You will be shown an overview of the installation options you have selected and prompted with any issues with the install. Here you can go in and change the default packages that are installed but I would recommend leaving them at default for a new user. And finally...

The install might take a while so be patient. You do have the option of clicking the Details tab and watching the install work. After a little while the install will finish and begin the Automatic Configuration. Once this is done you should see this screen.

Browse the links on this page or click close to start using openSUSE 11.1!

This is a pretty quick and dirty walk through but it should give you all you need to start using openSUSE on Virtual PC 2007. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments and I will do my best to answer them.

New Snake

I just purchased this 08 male het albino possible super salmon boa from Rich and John at salmonboa.com. He looks great in the pics they sent and I can't wait to introduce him to my 04 albino female. They should be shipping him on Tuesday so I will have an update with unpacking pics some time in the middle of next week. I had mentioned in a few posts that I was a little torn on wether or not to try to resume breeding. I finally decided that with the drop in prices in the boa market it was a minimal investment to pick up another male and try again. I actually sold some extra cages I had to pay for this male so there is really no new money going in to it. If this breeding goes well I can recoup most of my initial investment the first season. Even in this poor economy it looks like I can make a few dollars on the side doing something I really enjoy.

News Week Article

News Week has an article up today, link, that talks about all the same issues with multinational corporations I brought up about a week ago in this post.

Makes me feel like a real blogger!

Tom Selleck UFC Pride Fight

Linux+ : Week 3

I just finished reading through Mike Meyers' Certification Passport Linux+. I really like the Mike Meyers' books. They are easy to read and offer a decent amount of information without getting overwhelming. This is the third book of the series I have read and continues to be a great resource. The books are not for beginners or those looking to really dig deep into the selected topics. They are perfect for users with some experience who are looking to sharpen their skills to pass the given exam.

This book is written by Michael Jang who holds a number of Linux certs including his RHCE, LPIC-2 and of course Linux+. He does a good job covering the basics of RPM based linux distros with attention given to which topics are important for the exam. Since the book was published in 2008 and the last Linux+ exam update was in 2005 there are some topics of interest that will not appear on the test. The author does a good job of balancing these two areas. Because Comptia is neutral within the industry the exam covers no specific distro but the author manages to point out some of the differences between the RPM based versions of linux pertaining to the exam, Red Hat/Fedora, SUSE, Turbolinux and Mandriva.

The true test of the book will come when I take my exam as that is what this book aims to prepare you for. I am getting ready to start the Sybex study guide and some practice exams so we will get an early glimpse at how prepared I actually am. Overall I would say the book is a solid 8/10 for those looking to take the exam. If you are looking to expand your general linux skills or for an introduction to linux I would suggest looking elsewhere. Also, since Ubuntu is by far the most popular linux distribution today I should mention that Ubuntu is not covered in this book, nor is any other Debian based distro. I am no linux whiz but the book has given me a good boost and I think it would be plenty for someone with maybe a year of experience working with linux.

Pop Champagne

This is my new catch phrase.

Examples of use:

Steve: "We are having another baby."

Rob: "Pop Champagne!"

Chad: "I got a raise at work today."

Rob: "Pop Champagne!"

Brad: "Pop Champagne!"

Rob: "Pop Champagne!"

Spread the word.

Shipping Jobs Overseas

I overheard a conversation at work this morning about how part of our current economic predicament is because of US companies sending jobs over seas and President Obama's plan to change our current international tax laws. I guess the idea is that US companies are moving jobs over seas to take advantage of low cost labor. Now, I am not saying that some companies are not guilty of this practice but the majority of companies that establish foreign affiliates do so for other reasons that actually help the US economy and jobs.

The main reason for operating a foreign affiliate is to sell products to foreign markets. Producing and selling your product in your target market has the added benefit of lower-cost labor, ready access to raw materials, reduced transportation costs and proximity to their ultimate customers. These give huge advantages when competing in a global market and targeting a specific foreign market. Many people cringe at the idea of low cost labor, immediately envisioning some Dickensian hell with under paid, half starved workers slaving away while American corporations get rich. But in reality the lower labor costs are typically only lower compared to US wages. Many foreign countries benefit from the presence of a multinational corporation's presence. In 2006 US owned companies employed 9.5 million foreign workers, talk about some true foreign aid! Not only that but these workers were not producing goods at a lower cost that were then shipped back overseas to be sold to Americans at a higher profit. Nearly 90% of goods produced by US foreign branches are then sold in either the host market or some other foreign market. This is not the evil multinational corporation we are used to thinking about. This is wealth being created in countries where it might not otherwise be generated and certainly not as quickly.

But what about the American worker? Surely there is some poor American out of work due to this foreign outsourcing. This is simply not so. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found "a strong positive correlation between domestic and foreign growth rates of multinational firms." And separate studies by economists have found that domestic growth can be as high as 30% of foreign growth including increased compensation for the US employees. So we see that not only are most corporations not moving jobs overseas but those that do operate there actually create more jobs here in the good old US of A.

So why do many politicians, including our President, want to crack down on the tax breaks issued to these multinational US based companies? I have no idea!! The major US tax break is a deferral of corporate taxes on foreign income until it is brought back to the US. The income is not untaxed, these monies are subject to the taxes of the host nation. This tax exemption is made to encourage reinvestment in the foreign market. Which as we have already seen leads to an increase investment in the parent company here in the US. Every modern industrial nation gives at least this much to their multinational corporations. Denying this exemption would place US based companies at a major disadvantage in foreign markets and essentially double tax the money made abroad. If politicians truly want to encourage domestic growth they should look at lowering our corporate tax rate to encourage foreign corporations to setup shop here in the US, creating more jobs and reducing our need for imports.

Welcome Home Uncle Jim

My uncle Jim is coming home from California today. It has been years since I have seen him and I am pretty excited. When I was just a budding young awkward pre-teen, uncle Jim taught me about the nerdier things in life. He introduced me to IRC, quality Sci-Fi and most importantly role playing games!

It might be time to invest in a new 20 sided die!

Quote That Made My Day

“We have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering, the different technology that young people are using today.”

—outgoing Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan on the party’s Internet strategy, quoted in The Washington Post, January 5

Studio Plans

Like I mentioned in a previous post Steve and I are planning on doing some recording out of my garage. With the never ending supply of local bands in the area I think we could make a few dollars and have a blast doing it. I started planning the studio in February and after a few months of revisions and research I have completed the final working plans.

The dimensions are approximately 18'x24'x8' and it will all fit in my existing 2.5 car garage. As I move from stage to stage of the construction I will go into the details of each part of the build.

So far I have torn down the existing drywall and insulation from the walls. I have also started ripping out the electrical runs and outlets. I am currently working on reinforcing the external walls to provide maximum soundproofing. This will involve a layer of 1/2" rigid foam, 5/8" drywall, Green Glue, 5/8" drywall and fiberglass insulation to fill the rest of the space. This will all be placed against the outside wall in between the studs. The illustration on the right shows how it will be laid out. It is from a top down view and not to scale but gives a good visual of the whole outer leaf of the wall. The rigid pink foam is to cover the nails protruding through the sheathing so the drywall will have a flat surface to go against. This is the only step I have completed so far. Once I start hanging drywall I will post an update with some pictures.

openSuse 11.1 on Virtual PC 2K7: noreplace–paravirt i8042.noloop clock=pit explained

Seeing how I have some serious free time at work and have been studying for the Linux+ exam, I decided I needed a Linux machine at work. I am using openSUSE 11.1 with VPC 2K7. Now there are plenty of howtos out there so I won't post another one. I am going to explain something that seems to be a common thread throughout almost all the distros and VM software.

Most people seem to hit a point where the install will freeze on them, they have mouse problems and/or they have system time issues. The common fix is to add noreplace–paravirt i8042.noloop clock=pit to the boot parameters. At first I had little understanding of what this really did aside from clock=pit and most google searches only turn up more howtos than explanations. So, here is my nowhere near expert look at these parameters.

clock=pit:

This was the one command I actually understood in depth. This tells the kernel clock to use Programmable Interval Timer (PIT), the only Linux 2.6 kernel clock that does not correct for lost ticks. It is this lost tick correction that causes Linux 2.6 kernels to gain time ahead of the host OS's system time. FYI, the other two Linux 2.6 kernel clocks are PMTMR and TSC. I do not believe that it is this command that fixes the freezing issue. This simply fixes time keeping issues for once you have Linux up and running, as always I may be wrong.

i8042.noloop:

This command was pretty tough to get a good explanation on. The short answer is that a lot of VM software uses PS/2 mouse emulation and the i8042 mouse and keyboard driver for Linux does not play well with it. This should be enough for most users and the parameter fixes the mouse issues in VP 2K7. Of course I wanted a bit more. Looking into the code for the driver it appears that the driver sends a 3 byte loopback test to the AUX port to detect the mouse. The mouse should send a 3 byte response and then the driver can use the mouse. This looks to me to be how the driver sets up USB mouse support but I am not sure. So why does this cause an issue within a VM...I have no clue! My best guess after about an hour of googling, installing openSUSE to VP takes a loooong time, is that VP uses software emulation that to the driver looks like a USB mouse but responds to the loopback test incorrectly. This cause a error or my guess is an infinite loop in the test and voila no mouse or a frozen mouse. So by disabling this loopback test I am guessing that the driver never probes the AUX port for the mouse and simply responds to the PS/2 emulated mouse as if it were a real PS/2 mouse.

noreplace-paravirt:

This command is pretty simple. the noreplace simply forces the loading of paravirt-ops. paravirt-ops is a virtualization performance enhancement. I did not look into how it works too much but it appears to modify Linux to run specifically on a VM. My guess on this one is that Virtual PC does not natively support paravirt-ops and so that is why we need the noreplace parameter.

Of course all of this could be totally wrong and in which case I owe the Internet some bandwidth...

Linux+: Week 1

I started studying for my Linux+ exam this week. As part of my studying I setup a dual boot laptop with Fedora 10 w/ GNOME and openSUSE 11.1 w/ KDE. The laptop is just an old HP with a Pentium M 1.6GHz and 512MB of RAM. Both distros installed fine and I am dual booting using GRUB with no problems. My only hang up was that openSUSE kept running the processor at ultra low voltage. All I did was change the power settings for the processor to disable dynamic frequency scaling. I would suspect the problem to be with the laptop and not the OS.

My first impressions of the distros are good. I am really digging the Fedora, I prefer it over the others I've tried so far. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in either distro last night so I will have to post more on the nitty gritty later. I may have to build a nicer Fedora box with a Windows VM.

As far as the exam goes I am confident that I can install and configure Linux. Past that I am still pretty rough so the studying continues. One neat trick I have learned is the whereis command. It returns the full path to the command and the location to the man page. Having grown up on DOS and Commodore Basic 2.0 I really enjoy having a way to find those less often used command paths.

One Year Later...

Thought I would give this whole blog thing another go around. So here is the depressingly short update on the past year.

I am in snake limbo, I am undecided as to whether or not I will continue trying to breed boas. I still have the big female and could grab a male and give it another go but something about that idea sits funny with me. The psychoanalyst in me says that since my male died and the female gave birth to stillborn babies around the time my grandfather was passing I have balled the whole lot up into one big mess in my head. I truly have no desire to breed or even keep snakes right now.

I am however embarking on another business venture, this time with Steve. Well, really it is more like building a really expensive club house for grown men... but don't tell my wife. Steve, pending the arrival of his 2nd child, needed to relocate some super sweet recording gear. So, we are converting my detached 2.5 car garage into a studio. I plan on posting build pics once the construction gets interesting. I am also planing on going back to school for audio engineering sometime in the Fall.

I am still employed as a Network Systems Engineer but now I actually give a rats ass so I have been bringing my certifications up to speed. I am currently working on my Linux+ exam and finishing off my exams for my MCSA. And again I plan on returning to school to get at least my A.A.S. in IT with a programing option. My hope is to sharpen my now extremely dull VB and C programing skills while building my network certifications.

Stuff not pertaining to me, my wife is kicking butt in culinary school and now working for the Brass Elephant downtown. My little brothers are playing little league, one sister is barreling into teenagedom and the other is now working and has her learners.

So that's my year in four paragraphs. I promise future posts will be more interesting.