YWAM Information Technology - Open Source - Comments

This is old but...

alicam — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:58:19 +0100

Hi again, Alex.

Long time since Lonavala!

Just wanted to alert you and others that Vertical Response is free for all non-profits. This is not just US ones but international

If you are in doubt, then email them directly on this, as I have done. They just need to know your official non-profit status and you're off and running.

I don't think it's an unlimited account, or such, but it's a great start.

I found this out when I did some reseach on the Network For Good project (http://www.groundspring.org/services/dms.cfm) - which is pretty amazing in itself!!

Cheers,

-Alister

---
Alister Cameron // Blogologist
www.alistercameron.com

Mob. 04 0404 5555
Fax 03 8610 0050

DTS 2004, Melbourne AU
CRIT 2007 Participant
Communications advisor to Lynn Green (INTL), Tom Hallas (ASIA-PAC) & Jeff Fountain

re: 64Studio

neo — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:57:37 +0000

Hi Takabuntu,
I checked out UbuntuStudio when it came out, well, when it was downloadable anyways. But at the end of the day I couldn't really test it because I didn't had a extra computer for a test install and I didn't want to make it dual boot just to see how it looks like. So I made a VM which was of course unusable with the hardware I have. But I really just wanted to see it.
And guess what, I still don't like the Gnome Desktop. But that's another story. However, I liked the overall work they did with that distribution. I just realized that non of my hardware would be capable for sound recording & editing. Besides that fact that if I want to run any of this software I also could install that on my desktop.

If I would have got another laptop than the one I have now I would have had other plans. But I'm happy that God provided for this machine. It might be just not the time to get into more serious audio recording.
The 64Studio is a good find. I came across that as well. However, about the low-latency kernel I must say that this is nothing magic, that one is available for UbuntuStudio as well. Well, actually for every distro. Although it's nice that they have it in there as default. This is how it should be.

So, just for the record I add the link here to 64Studio, in case anyone is interested:
http://64studio.com

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

64Studio

Takabuntu — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 12:28:17 +0000

And it comes with a great variety of graphics tools, just like ubuntu-studio (somehow my previous post got in here twice and I can't delete it...so I edit it short sorry)

Tried it, but switched to 64Studio

Takabuntu — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:24:00 +0000

Hi Neo,

I tried ubuntu-studio immediately when it got out. I was already a Kubuntu user at the time and had my system set up for audio processing. It might have been my PC (a PIV-1.8Ghz-750Mb-7200rpm pata), but somehow it responded slow and seemed bloated to me. I was kind of disappointed because Ubuntu is great as a workstation. I also tried Jacklab, but could not get past the installation process. I heard it is a decent 32-bit audio distro too (OpenSuse).

After some research I ran into 64Studio, a 64-bit Debian audio distro, that also had a 32-bit version available. I really started to like Debian, so I gave it a shot and guess what: it worked out-of-the-box, got lower latencies (because of their tweaked low-latency kernel) and the overall response was great. I also tried it on a lower-end machine (PIII-1GHz-256Mb-5400rpm pata) and it also performed very decent and left ubuntu-studio disappearing in the rear mirror. One of the contributors is a developer with Debian, so that must count for something. I now have 64-bit PC and am running the 64-bit version of 64Studio and am having a blast.

Out-of-the-box it comes with Gnome installed. But you might as well use it with KDE, because the case libraries of KDE are already installed. GNOME is a bit lighter on the memory so I like it better, but it is all a matter of taste basically.

sounds exactly like that

neo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:50:17 +0000

Hi Kev,
your right. Our terrible loud vacuum cleaner is nice compared to that.

Luckily the fans are spinning down after a short while. Otherwise I guess the guys from across the street would watch out ufos. haha
But seriously I thought about getting out my ear plugs as long as I have to sit next to the server. But with the fans spinning down it's OK.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

Sounds like...

KevinColyer — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:40:07 +0000

...it will go VRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Have fun!

Cheers,

Kevin

server setup

neo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:06:53 +0000

Hi @ all,
& thanks for your comment, mate.

I couldn't be here for a while, so sorry for my late reply.
We now have all the hardware, everything sits in the rack and is ready to be installed. First thing I needed to do is figuring out how to set up the RAID. Never done that before but it should be working now.
So, quickly after I turned on the system for the first time I was surrounded by half the folks from our office. Not because they all wanted to see how it looks like with all the flashing lights but because they couldn't figure out what the noise was. Well, a server with redundant power supply, redundant cooling fans and a disk enclosure with redundant cooling as well make quit some noise & wind when turning on and every blows at full speed. It's like a jet engine, I guess.

Anyways, I wanted to install the system but couldn't read the install CD on that machine. After a while I found out the problem. I downloaded the Debian Image for IA64 (Intel Architecture 64bit), exactly that what we have. But then I figured out that this is only for Itanium processors but we have a Xeon 64bit. So, I need to download the AMD64 install Image. I just thought I don't have an AMD so I need the other one. I guess I should have done my homework better.
So, tomorrow morning I will download the correct one and then I'll see how it goes.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

server setup opinion

crashsystems — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:02:02 +0100

I think that the answers to most of your questions boil down to two main things: how the server will be used and personal opinion. Since I do not know much of the former, I'll give you my opinion. Debian is a good choice for an OS no matter what use the server will be put to.

As far as swap amount, there a lot of disagreements in that area. I've heard a number of people say it should be double your ram, but with 4gb, I think that would be overkill. The main server I'm administrating (also running Debian) is performing NAT with three ethernet cards, running Samba/LAMP/SSH, has 1gb of ram, and only uses 32mb of swap. Even (or espessialy) Linux kernel developers cannot agree on this.

For your file system, the most common choice is ext3, as it is a good all-around file system. However, its not the fastest one out there. My personal favorite is XFS, which is good for both general desktop usage as well as file server usage. It has amazing performance and is very efficiant. Two caveats about XFS though: first, if you use grub as your bootloader you must make a small non-XFS /boot partition, and second, you really should run a power backup if you use it (which you should do in any case). Another option is JFS, which I've heard is good for mail servers and anything else that involves read/write to many small files. Yet another option I've researched recently is LVM, though keep in mind that if you go this route, XFS volumes do not shrink.

Two backup programs I've used quite a bit are rsync, and more recently rdiff-backup. Both are easy to automate with cron + bash, and work with Mac too.

Here are some articles I've read that you can check out to read more. Have fun playing with your fancy new hardware!

File system comparisons: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388
LVM: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388
Rsync: http://www.linux.com/feature/113847
Rdiff-backup: http://arstechnica.com/articles/columns/linux/linux-20060202.ars/2

hi kevin

neo — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:54:55 +0100

Yes, it's working. Finally. But I must say that it really was my brother-in-law. For example all the settings been correct but he figured out that that when connecting to an IPaddress (with Xming) it got routed through my VPN for what ever reason. No other program is doing that. Of course this IPaddress couldn't be found there. I don't know why it happened. But at the end of the day it meant using either the VPN connection (for all my emails) or the remote connection to the server in the office, both at once was not possible. Then there is also a general problem with DNS in the office network which I didn't discover earlier for different reasons. The 3rd problem, uhmmmm, I forgot, how bad is that!?
I tried Xming as well as Cygwin as soon as it finally worked but both had been so slow, oh boy. I could've used a Flash drive to transfer files between my laptop and the remote computer and it would've been so much faster. haha.

Luckily we discovered NX and also tried it, I mean I was close, very close, to just give up on that. The reason I wanted to have it exactly that way is that I can work on 2 computers at once. I tried VMWare but my laptop is simply not capable to run 2 OSs at once. To always reboot when I want to test something on Linux is just a pain, then changing something and rebooting again to test it with Windows. Well on a busy day I could spend half the day with rebooting my computer. So, now with the remote connection I can simply use 2 computers without a big hassle.
I must say that many times I didn't test things I changed on websites because the constant rebooting was something I'm simply was to lazy to do. So, I just assumed it worked. Very bad practice....

LTSP is something I want to try as well. I have an USB stick I can use for that purpose. But that would be more something for evaluation for future use. Means, I can do that when I have nothing important to do. In other words not right now. But since I don't have a desperate need for that in the very near future that's OK. I have a lot of ideas though but everything at its time.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

I use NX - nomachine

Donovan — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:10:40 +0100

I have been using NX - nomachine for the last two years. It simply rocks and continues to get better. I have been convinced it is one of the best kept secrets on the internet because many techies I talk to don't know anything about it.

Nice to hear it is working...

KevinColyer — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:05:23 +0100

Dear Neo,

Good to hear you got it working so well. I tried NX a few years back and it sounds like you are having more success with it now than then.

The great strength is in the compression plus that they have decent clients for Windows platforms.

Although here in Brussels most of the desktops run LTSP so they get their displays over the network via the X protocol very quickly anyway, plus no need for encryption here on the lan. But I often SSH into my Linux desktop and run apps on my Laptop. I have even opened a port on my lan and can tunnel into my desktop when I am away from the building (it is quite slow then!). For my Windows machine at home I use Cygwin and run the X server that comes as part of that. Then SSH into the Linux box ('ssh kevin@merode -X' the -X bit allows you to tunnel X over SSH sessions) and run the application I want...

When you compare speed of X to the VNC remote control solution (and that is a life saver too!) it is amazingly faster - and the X windows system is a 20 year old design too - but it started with the goal on allowing remote connections so it is not a suprise it works so well!

online application

orasearch — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:49:56 +0100

hello from kona!

yes, we finished our first online application last year. we designed this with cold fusion and sql server.

Integrated Systems:

*****Online application for DTS and any other UofN courses

- user name/password for future applications
- course list controlled by the local registrar system ('online','offline')
- photo upload
- each course can have uploadable files for 'supplement forms'.
- standard form sections - personal/education/background/finance/etc.....
- email alerts to school leaders -application with photos
(step 1: when app starts/step 2: app submitted)

*****Local registrar system
- 'receives' application from the online apps
- status on the online app (submitted or 'in process')
- work flow for acceptance procedure (configurable by base)
- email alerts of process to school leaders with student photos
- security: 6 level security setup - admin/regional registrar/
base registrar/school leaders/housing/view only
- Form B/C1/C2 submission to Int'l UofN Record system
- various status/stat reports and printable forms

*****Housing and Personnel system
- buildings(configurable by room types/room qty)
- reads from the local registrar from the 'accepted' students

*****Int'l UofN records system (Tom Bloomer) - security locked down!

** all of the above system are database driven and configurable per base information. we tested this out in Kona for a year then offered to one other base (Montana). Also, tested with India at the national level (without the local registrar system) - Form B,C1,C2 submission to Int'l Rec System only.

so far so good.... but we need more man power to 'support' globally. its one thing to build the system but another to 'support'. we are moving slowly in this area of multiplication.

hope this helps.

blessings,
chong ho

apply.uofn.edu

bill.hutchison — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:26:29 +0100

I just sent a message to the IT guys in Kona through their Kona IT site to see if I can find out a bit more about the application that they use on apply.uofn.edu. Below is the e-mail that I sent to them:

We have been having a discussion over on www.ywamit.com about an online application process for YWAM bases. We are in the process of building one here at Reef to Outback that will hopefully be able to serve many locations, but we also saw that there is an online application on ywam.edu that YWAM Kona and YWAM Montana is using.

Can you please help me to understand a bit about the online application that is being used on apply.uofn.edu?

Is it available for other locations to use?

Thank you very much for your help. I look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Hopefully I'll hear back from them soon and we can see if this might even be an already available option.

Bill Hutchison
Reef to Outback

JotForm

Sam Werner — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 23:54:49 +0100

Jotform is a good website where you can build forms online and edit and once complete you can get the source code. It's very pretty too.

What's going on with these guys here?

tofirius — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:29:53 +0100

Hi...
Just wanted to put this in the pot... don't know if it'll be of use...

YWAM Orlando has something of a preliminary online app that you must fill out before you can download the actual app. Not totally online, I know, but I do know the guy in charge of comm. there & they are super active at following up ANY request that comes in from the website.

YWAM Montana apparently has some deal with U of N Kona that they have an online application process that appears to be tied into the U of N database there... I know nothing more than what I'm assuming from the secure url of apply.uofn.edu. (See YWAM Montana's school page for usage)

Bless you,
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com