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Have been helping people out with their FreeRADIUS deployments (usually for hotspots). As a result, I’ve started a little collection of Freeradius packages that I’ve built for Ubuntu. FreeRadius is available from the repositories but what you get sometimes is not the latest and greatest. I’m putting my builds up for download so that someone else doesn’t have to go through the stress of compiling. 

These were compiled using version 2.1.6 of Freeradius.

Hardy amd64

• freeradius-dbg_2.1.6-0_amd64.deb
• freeradius-dialupadmin_2.1.6-0_all.deb
• freeradius-iodbc_2.1.6-0_amd64.deb
• freeradius-krb5_2.1.6-0_amd64.deb
• freeradius-ldap_2.1.6-0_amd64.deb
• freeradius-mysql_2.1.6-0_amd64.deb
• freeradius-postgresql_2.1.6-0_amd64.deb
• freeradius_2.1.6-0_amd64.deb

I’m getting really sleepy so I’ll add some more builds tomorrow. Coming soon, instructions on how to build your own packages.

Update: i386 builds for Hardy are also up. i386 builds for Karmic
will follow shortly.

Over the holidays, I spend a few days in Accra. While I was there, one of the things at the top of my todo list was to go and watch James Cameron’s Avatar (which I hear is a fantastic movie, by the way). Only place to watch it of course, was the Silverbird Cinema at the Accra Mall. So, being the consummate geek that I am, I checked their Twitter feed for scheduling information. Turns out Avatar would be showing that evening at 9:30pm.  Alright then. Since I would be leaving for Kumasi the next day, that left me just about enough time for me to finish packing, take a nap and have supper first.

Only one tiny hitch; I wasn’t paying attention and misread the time. It was actually showing at 7:30pm. I’m sure you will be able to figure out how the rest of the evening played out. Anyways, fast foward two days later. I’m still grumpy and decided that I would have to do something, even  if it as completely useless. So I threw together a little php script that displays the Silverbird movie lineup in a somewhat more reasonable manner.

Much better

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If you happen to manage a hotspot that uses Freeradius with the sql module for authentication, you might want to pay attention. The default queries used by Freeradius sql module are case-insensitive. So if user “kwame” is successfully authenticated, another user “Kwame” can also successfully autheticate. And so can (more…)

I like Ubuntu. I like being able to tweak the bits off my desktop environment. However, I also happen to like the MintMenu, the menu applet that is set up as the default for Linux Mint, a linux distro based on Ubuntu. Of course, this being Linux and all, I just had to install it.

• First, you need to download it(~99kb).

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I finally got round to filling my National Service forms online and I just so happened to notice that their website sucked. A lot. What about it sucked? Well…

• First of all, clicking on the enrollment link causes two windows to pop up. One of the windows contains a form that accepts a PIN number and redirects you to your enrollment form, other is a “Highlights Page”. (more…)

I love my HP dv6915nr. It’s not the fastest or prettiest notebook around but it does most of what I want it to and does it quite well. However, one of the things that I hate is the bundled HP Quickplay software, which like the name suggests allows you to access your media very quickly. Versions 1.x to 2.3 of QuickPlay were based on Linux or Windows XP and had their own partition. As a result, it started up real fast and was battery friendly (kind of).
Version 3.x,which comes with my notebook, is different creature altogether.

HP QuickPlay

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Around 4am this morning, I finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade my Ubuntu installation to Jaunty.(Yes, I know the release date is tomorrow but I just can’t wait anymore). The simplest way to go about that is to hit Alt-F2 and then run:
update-manager -d
That will add the necessary repositories and perform the upgrade. I’m still downloading packages so check back in a few hours for updates.

Update: About a 2/3rds of the way through downloading packages. I hate Ghana Telecom. With a passion.

Update: Finally done! The upgrade process itself went through without a hitch. However, I had a problem with the driver for my Nvidia card not being detected. That was fixed in a jiffy using this guide. So now, I’m rocking the Jaunty release candidate. The only noticeable difference, for me so far, are the notifications. Anyways, let me play with it a little and see what more I can find.

I can’t wait for the final release so I can full upgrade.

I’m on a quest for a mythical object; an aesthetically pleasing desktop that is not too distracting and lets me keep track of my tasks. This is the result of my search so far.

[singlepic=32,320,200,,center] (more…)

I wanted to try out the GlassyBleu theme that gets bundled with HP’s version of Ubuntu(MIE) for netbooks. However, after applying the theme, I noticed something was off:
[singlepic=29,320,240,,center]
I had been using the Mac4Lin theme previously and as you have probably noticed, OSX’s window decoration layout is a bit unique. To restore the settings back to normal, we need to fire up Gnome Configuration Editor, gconf-editor:
Alt-F2 > gconf-editor > Enter
Now waltz over to the /apps/metacity/general and look for the button_layout key. You need to make sure it’s value is “menu:minimize,maximize,close”. Right click on it and select Edit Key.
[singlepic=30,320,240,,center]
That’s it. Your settings should be back to normal.
[singlepic=31,320,240,,center]

When you’re working with limited system resources, every bit that can be freed up counts. And if you have do your web development on machine with only 384mb of RAM, you start to be become a bit, um, mercenary about your resources. Running an Apache+PHP+MySQL stack alongside a GNOME desktop (xfce or fluxbox would be better but we all like our little luxuries) , Firefox and a text editor is not my idea of an efficient workspace. When you take the fact that I’ll be working on a wordpress install with about 19k entries, you start getting a sour taste in your mouth. (more…)