Mobile broadband has the major benefit of allowing you to continue to use the Internet for all of things you would use it for whilst you are away from home. It is great for people who often travel or those who have to travel a long way to work. As long as the area you are in has at least decent coverage, it is possible to connect to the Internet through your mobile wherever you are. Mobile broadband doesn't require a fixed phone line, and there are plenty of options available where you only pay for the amount of time you spend on the Internet. Even if you don't subscribe to a mobile broadband service, you can still use either free WiFi hotspots to access mobile Internet or others by paying for the time you spend online by receiving a password.

If you live in a rural area, it is likely that your part of the country has yet to be equipped with 3G technology, and instead only has a second generation network, meaning you are likely to suffer with limited coverage of your mobile broadband. To have a chance of overcoming this problem of poor coverage in rural areas, visit different mobile broadband provider's websites and use their coverage checker to find out the standard of coverage you can expect from their service. That way, you can pick the provider who offers your area the highest amount of coverage. If you do live in a place where only a 2G network is available, you should still be able to check your e-mails and perform other simple tasks via your mobile broadband connection.

Another problem with rural mobile broadband mobile broadband is that you are unlikely to receive the maximum connection speed advertised by the mobile broadband supplier you choose to use. Connection speeds are usually affected by the amount of mobile broadband users connected to the network you use in your area and if there is any electrical interference present in your rural area. Slow connections again can result from the rural area in which you live not having a third generation network, and only having 2G. Again check on suppliers' websites to see if any of the providers offer a superior connection speed to your area compared to other providers. If there are no companies with 3G networks in your rural area, unfortunately mobile broadband is not probably the way to go if you want to use the Internet quickly and for many different purposes.

I'm now using this script to do a strategy #1 backup of my citadel server as a cron job.

It assumes you have a /root/backups/ directory and works on Ubuntu 8.10 Server with Citadel installed using "Easy Install"...

Basically, it shuts down citadel, waits for a bit for the service to complete shutting down, tars the citadel files to the selected location and restarts teh citadel service.

Enjoy.


#!/bin/sh
# Fear of Mice's Backup for Citadel
# http://www.fearofmice.co.uk/blog

CITADEL_DIR=/usr/local/citadel
TIMESTAMP=`date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S`;
echo $TIMESTAMP


echo -n "Stopping Citadel... "
if $CITADEL_DIR/sendcommand DOWN >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
sleep 10
echo "ok"
rm -f /usr/local/citadel/citadel.pid 2>/dev/null
echo "backing up..."
tar -cvf /root/backups/citadel_$TIMESTAMP.tar /etc/init.d/citadel /etc/init.d/webcit /usr/local/citadel/ > /root/backups/citadel_$TIMESTAMP.log
sleep 5
echo "backed up"
echo -n "Starting Citadel... "
if $CITADEL_DIR/citserver -d -h$CITADEL_DIR
then
echo "ok"
else
echo "Starting Citadel failed"
fi
else
echo "Stopping Citadel failed"
fi


Firefox in both Windows and Linux lets you drag a tab to the Desktop which gets saved as a .url file. Inspecting these files shows the url in question is saved as text inside the file.

On Windows, Firefox is quite happy to open the browser at the url when double-clicking the .url file. In Linux (at least in KDE which my Kubuntu install uses) this doesn't happen. Firefox opens the file itself so you get a browser window containing the url text.

This is how I got Firefox on KDE to open my files as desired.

1 - create /bin/url.sh
#!/bin/bash
IFS=$'©'
FFOPENURL=$(less $1)
firefox $FFOPENURL

2 - Right-click a sample .url file, select "Open with" from the popup menu and enter /bin/url.sh in the edit box. Make sure you tick the "Remember application association for this file type" box. Click OK.

This should now work...

I've always been a big fan of Lotus Notes and have been "happily" using v7.01 under Wine. The new Lotus Notes 8 is built on Eclipse (another tool I use extensively) and so I've been keen to get any of the current beta versions to work. Beta 2 was a dead loss but Beta 3 seems to be that more usable.

Here's my step-by-step guide to get it up and running:

1. Ensure the Notes fonts will look nicer than the default
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config
select autohinter, automatic, no for bitmap fonts

2. Link sh to bash. The Feisty default is dash which causes "Generic LSE Failure" errors when you run the client after install.
$ sudo mv /bin/sh /bin/sh.orig
$ sudo ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh

3. Extract the Notes Client download
$ cd ~/Desktop
$ mkdir Notes8Beta3
$ cd Notes8Beta3
$ tar xvf ../notes8_linux_beta3_prod.tar

4. You'll need to do this magic step to avoid a bug in the Installer:
$ sudo cp deploy/install.xml /root/
Basically copy install.xml into the root folder because that's where the Installer goes looking for it.

5. Run the GUI Installer
$ sudo ./setup.sh
You will now get the InstallShield GUI. Here is what I did in the GUI. It'll make sense when you go through it, and except for selecting all components, it's just the straight defaults.

Next (Intro screen)/I accept both terms/Next (License)/Accept default path (/opt/ibm/lotus/notes)/Next (Path)/Select all features/Next (Features)/Install (Summary)/ (Wait a while ) /Finish

6. Fix the /etc/lotus directory
After the install, you will have to change the parameters on the /etc/lotus directory.
$ sudo chmod -R 755 /etc/lotus
If you don't do this, you will get an error telling you that pernames.ntf can't be copied.

7. Application Icons
By default, the installer will create your Desktop icons. You may need to logout and back in again for them to be picked up. Failing that, the command line is:
$ /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/notes

8.The client will now launch. Eventually you will get the typical new-client wizard. If you've ever installed a Notes client before, it will all make sense...

Next (Welcome screen)
Name: {your name}
Server: (server name)
Next (User Information)
Next (Connect to server)
Network type: TCP/IP
Server address: (server address)
Next (Network Info)
File name: (Path to my ID file)
No (Do not copy to data folder)
(Password)/OK
Next (Setup additional services)/OK (Notes setup is complete!)

You should now have the Getting Started screen!

Good Luck!

Fear of Mice has recently partnered with Business West's "IT @ Work" funding programme to offer SOHO & SME businesses in the South West up to £500 to help fund e-commerce web solutions. Click the link above for more details...

Since installing IE7 this week I started getting the following message whenever I launched an application installed on a network drive (ie. a location on my Samba server):

"The publisher can not be verified. Are you sure you
want to run this software ?".

It seems the new internet security features in IE7 decided that my network was a risk. I guess it's sort of fair, since I've never explicitely told IE7 that it's safe but still, it's a bit galling.

Anyway, to fix the problem,

1. Open Intenet Options from the Control panel


2. Select Security/Local Intranet/Sites/Advanced


3. Enter the network drive letter or UNC and click Close

This should add a rule for file://{servername} and should fix the problem for all EXEs on the server in question.

Boo Hoo. My perfectly stable install of VMWare Desktop v5.5.5 stopped working today. Clicking the icon on my desktop popped up the Hourglass cursor which went away after 3-4 secs with nice VMWare screen at the end of it.

It turns out a recent Ubuntu Automatic Update installed new Kernel files (I'm now on v2.6.15-27) and as VMWare was compiled/configured against my older kernel, it fell over.

So. To fix it:

1. Start a console session


2. type

   sudo apt-get install kernel-headers-`uname -r`

   to install the C header files for the current kernel


3. type

   /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl

   to recompile the VMWare binaries


4. You can now run VMware Workstation by invoking

   /usr/bin/vmware

Worked a dream.

Using W3C's CSS validation service, you might see Warnings about your CSS stylesheet such as:

"You have no background-color with your color"

The link above gives a simple overview of the issue and the "fix".

Basically, you should ensure that each style that uses a "color" attribute has a corresponding "background-color" attribute at the same level. For styles that need a transparent background colour, use "inherit".