Editors' Choice

Tune Up Your Databases!

Shawn Powers — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 18:54:57 +0000

My last full-time job was manager of a university's database department. Ironically, I know very, very little about databases themselves. I'm no longer in charge of college databases, but I still do have a handful of MySQL servers that run my various Web applications. Apart from apt-get install, I have no idea how to make databases work. Thankfully, help is available.

MySQLTuner is a Perl script that checks your local (or remote) MySQL server and gives recommendations for improving security and performance. It does not edit files or actually make changes to the server, but it does give a very lengthy list of recommendations. If you (like me) are the sort of person who just tends to copy/paste database setup instructions, running MySQLTuner is a really good idea.

You can download your copy at https://mysqltuner.com. Be sure to read the documentation to get the most use out of the program. And, if you discover security problems like the ones shown in my screenshot? Fix them!

Thanks to its ability to help improve and secure MySQL servers that otherwise might be vulnerable, MySQLTuner gets this month's Editors' Choice award. If you're imperfect like me, download a copy today and fine-tune your databases!

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Poppins

Shawn Powers — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 19:53:39 +0000

by Shawn Powers

My friend and fellow Linux Journalian Kris Occhipinti recently posted a reminder on Facebook for everyone to back up regularly in 2016. Although it's something we already should be doing, if you're not a regular backer-upper, you should start today! The method of backup isn't nearly as important as the act itself, but this month, I found a new project that simplifies the backup process nicely.

Poppins is an open-source project that builds on the SSH and rsync programs to create an incremental backup system that is simple, fast and reliable. Tons of other backup programs are available, but Poppins doesn't try to be a full-blown system; rather, it's a simple one-liner that will do file rotation, snapshots and more. It can be automated with cron, or you can run it manually from the command line. (But you should really, really make a cron job!)

Other backup systems have more robust interfaces, restoration options and so on, but the beauty of Poppins is its simplicity. It's just one step above manually running rsync yourself, but that one step means it's simpler to do. In my world, simple is about the only way to make sure something gets done at all!

In fact, even though it's a new project and still in beta, Poppins gets this month's Editors' Choice award. It's simple enough that you might actually get around to using it, and it has enough features to really benefit you in the case of a catastrophic failure. Check it out today at https://poppinsbackups.wordpress.com, or go right to the Bitbucket page: https://bitbucket.org/poppins.

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Help Me, Uncle Shawn

Shawn Powers — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 18:41:00 +0000

by Shawn Powers

If you're anything like me, the holiday season is spent fixing Wi-Fi and removing spyware. Occasionally, I get to install Linux for a relative who is ready to give up Windows or needs something that will run on a circa-Windows 2000 computer (Xubuntu is usually my choice). The problem with helping friends and relatives with their computers over the holidays is that you become their first call when something goes wrong. You either can fight it or make it easier on yourself by preparing in advance.

I love Team Viewer. It's not an open-source program, but it's free for personal use with no frustrating limitations. Plus, it runs on Windows, OS X and Linux. The best part is how easy it is to use. I generally don't set up the "automatic availability" feature that logs the computer in to the Team Viewer network automatically on boot. I like to use the standard startup, which requires users to call me with the code on their screen.

The best thing about Team Viewer is how easily it handles NAT situations. Since the software connects to the Team Viewer servers, those servers act like a connection broker, meaning there are no router ports to forward and no proxies to set up. As long as the computer is on-line, you should be able to take over and help someone. Again, you might not like the ease with which you'll be able to help, but having access to a user's computer in real time is so much nicer than explaining to Uncle Harry what "right click" means.

Due to its free license for personal use, cross-platform compatibility and incredible ease of use, Team Viewer gets this month's Editors' Choice award. It's not new software, but after a stretch of holidays, I'm reminded just how nice it is to have installed on all my relatives' computers. Be sure to install the client before you leave their houses, or else be prepared to explain software installation over the phone! Get your copy at https://teamviewer.com.

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Non-Linux FOSS: Airsonos

Shawn Powers — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 16:15:48 +0000

by Shawn Powers

I love Sonos. There probably are some audiophiles reading this who rolled their eyes at my lack of auditory prowess, but honestly, the speakers sound wonderful to my 1980s-damaged eardrums. Granted, the Wi-Fi-enabled speakers are very expensive, thus limiting my supply. I'm amazed at the ability for the speakers to sync a single audio source throughout my house perfectly without the need for wires. At all.

The problem (apart from the price tag) is the limited options for music sources. You can stream radio stations, Pandora radio and even MP3 music files from a central network-accessible server. For my family of teenage girls, however, the inability to stream via Airplay (yes, my family has many Apple products) is a showstopper. So in their upstairs bathroom there's a $300 speaker on the shelf, and they just listen to their phone speakers while in the shower. It breaks my heart. Sonos offers line-in options for its larger speakers, but it's really a kludge and doesn't work well.

Enter Airsonos. An open-source project, Airsonos is a Node.js-based application that runs on a server and probes the network for on-line Sonos speakers. It then creates Airplay devices for each speaker, and an iPhone or iPad easily can stream to a Sonos speaker. I personally run Airsonos as a Docker app, and it's a "set it and forget it" sort of application. In fact, Airsonos has all the makings of an Editors' Choice award-winning project:

It's open source.
It runs on a Linux system.
It's easily Dockerized.
And, it solves a real problem in an awesome way!

So, this month's Editors' Choice award goes to Airsonos, with shared award status to the Dockerized app version maintained by "justintime"—thank you for making my nerdy world a better place!

Airsonos: https://github.com/stephen/airsonos.
Dockerhub: https://github.com/justintime/docker-airsonos.

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Tiny Makers

Shawn Powers — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 21:16:50 +0000

by Shawn Powers

If you've ever dropped Mentos in a bottle of Coke with kids or grown your own rock candy in a jar with string, you know how excited children get when doing science. For some of us, that fascination never goes away, which is why things like Maker Faire exist. If you want your children (or someone else's children) to grow into awesome nerds, one of the best things you can do is get them involved with projects at https://www.makershed.com.

Although it's true that many of the kits you can purchase are a bit too advanced for kindergartners, there are plenty that are perfect for any age. You can head over to https://www.makershed.com/collections/beginner to see a bunch of pre-selected projects designed for beginners of all ages. All it takes is a dancing brush-bot or a handful of LED throwies to make kids fall in love with making things.

(Image via https://www.makershed.com)

Even if you don't purchase the kits from Maker Shed, I urge you to inspire the youngsters in your life into creating awesome things. If you guide them, they'll be less likely to do the sorts of things I did in my youth, like make a stun gun from an automobile ignition coil and take it to school to show my friends. Trust me, principals are far more impressed with an Altoid-tin phone charger for show and tell than with a duct-tape-mounted taser gun.

You can buy pre-made kits at https://www.makershed.com or visit sites like https://instructables.com for homemade ideas you can make yourself. In fact, doing cool projects with kids is such an awesome thing to do, it gets this month's Editors' Choice award. Giving an idea the award might seem like an odd thing to do, but who doesn't love science projects? We sure do!

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Android Candy: Copay—the Next-Generation Bitcoin Wallet

Shawn Powers — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 18:20:20 +0000

by Shawn Powers

When I hear the word "copay", I think of the doctor's office. Thankfully, the Copay app from the folks at Bitpay doesn't cost you anything, and it keeps your Bitcoin healthy and secure. I've mentioned many Bitcoin wallet applications and cloud solutions during the past few years, but Copay truly is different. It has features other wallets can't touch, such as:

Truly cross-platform with availability for Android, iOS, Windows, OS X, Linux and Chrome.
Fast Bitcoin communication with Bitcoin network, no blockchain download.
Payment verification (BIP-0070-0073).
Shared wallets (multi-party transfer approval).
Wallet backups, multi-device access of same wallet.
100% open, downloadable source code hosted on GitHub.

I'll admit the first time I tried Copay, I didn't quite understand the hype. It feels like every other app accessing a cloud-based Bitcoin wallet (for example, Coinbase). But Copay is an actual wallet, with private keys stored only where you back them up. Thankfully, it allows simple backup of your wallet keys, so you can access your Bitcoin from multiple locations. In fact, you really really really need to have your wallet backed up and/or accessed from multiple locations. If you lose your phone and don't have a backup of your wallet, there's no way to recover your Bitcoin.

(Photo Credit: https://copay.io)

Thanks to its devotion to multi-platform open-source development and attention to security while never compromising flexibility, Copay gets this month's Editors' Choice award. If you want to manage your own Bitcoin without trusting an on-line cloud provider, Copay puts the control in your hands. Check it out today at ttps://copay.io.

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Non-Linux FOSS: Flaky Connection? Mosh it!

Shawn Powers — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 18:52:41 +0000

by Shawn Powers

Most of the work I do on computers is done via the command line. When I'm off on vacation somewhere, that means shoddy Wi-Fi and cell-phone tethering. Because cell-phone tethering gets expensive quick (I also have three teenage daughters with which I share a data plan), I try to use free Internet whenever I can. The biggest hassle with that method is dealing with broken SSH sessions. Yes, I can use programs like screen or tmux to make sure I don't lose work, but it can be very frustrating to have an SSH session lock up because the "TotallySafeBro" SSID in my hotel goes down. And, don't get me started on lag.

That's where Mosh comes into play. I was lamenting in IRC, and user "bkidwell" mentioned Mosh as being a great terminal client for questionable or often-changing connections. It uses a combination of TCP over port 22 and UDP on a higher port to provide a smooth, flexible terminal session regardless of your connection reliability or performance. Rather than waiting for the remote server to echo what you type, Mosh displays your local typing and edits in real time, then "catches up" with the server as quickly as it can. The coolest part, however, is that Mosh will keep your connection alive and running even if you change network addresses! Switching from McDonald's Wi-Fi to your phone's shared data? No need to log out and back in.

Figure 1. Mosh detects a disconnect and keeps trying to reconnect, even if your IP address changes!

Admittedly, Mosh is lacking in some ways compared to SSH. It doesn't do port forwarding, it doesn't keep a scrollback buffer, and its predictive text is sometimes wrong. That last one is most noticeable on a really poor connection, and it isn't really a problem—the screen just occasionally changes a bit when the server/client syncs up. It's still far nicer than typing eight lines of instructions, only to see a typo when the screen finally updates.

Due to its flexibility with poor connections, cross-platform server/client availability and convenience for mobile admins, Mosh gets this month's Editors' Choice award. Download the application from your Linux repository, or head over to https://mosh.mit.edu for download links and instructions for whatever platform you might be on, including Android. Installation is simple, and the benefits are immediate!

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One Port to Rule Them All!

Shawn Powers — Mon, 06 Jul 2015 16:22:38 +0000

by Shawn Powers

I was chatting with Fred Richards on IRC the other day (flrichar on freenode) about sneaking around hotel firewalls. Occasionally, hotels will block things like the SSH port, hoping people don't abuse their network. Although I can respect their rationale, blocking an SSH port for a Linux user is like taking a mouse away from a Windows user! I mentioned that I used to have a remote server running SSH on port 443 so I still could get to my servers. (Port 443 is the HTTPS port, which is rarely blocked.)

I also mentioned that it was inconvenient to use port 443 for SSH, because it meant I couldn't host secure Web sites on that server. Fred graciously pointed me to sslh, which is an awesome little program that multiplexes (or maybe de-multiplexes?) network traffic based on the type of traffic it sees. In simple terms, it means that sslh will listen for incoming connections on a port like 443, and if it's a request for a Web page, it will send the request to Apache. If it's an SSH request, it sends it to the SSH dæmon. It also has support for OpenVPN traffic, XMPP traffic and tinc.

Conceptually the program is simple, but I never considered it would be something a simple open-source application could manage! I assumed it would require a hardware appliance and lots of horsepower. I'm happy to say I was very, very wrong. In fact, it's such an impressive piece of software, it gets this month's Editors' Choice award! If you'd like to reach your SSH server over port 443 while still hosting secure Web pages, check out sslh at https://www.rutschle.net/tech/sslh.shtml.

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Non-Linux FOSS: Vienna, Not Just for Sausages

Shawn Powers — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 19:51:59 +0000

by Shawn Powers

Although the technology itself has been around for a while, RSS is still the way most people consume Web content. When Google Reader was ended a few years back, there was a scramble to find the perfect alternative. You may remember my series of articles on Tiny Tiny RSS, Comma Feed and a handful of other Google Reader wannabes. I don't mention standalone RSS readers very often, however, because I don't like being tied to a single computer for reading Web sites. That's where syncing comes into play.

Vienna is an open-source RSS feed reader for OS X. Because it's written in Cocoa, it's available only for Macs. There are many alternatives for Linux and Windows, but the RSS reader options for OS X are surprisingly few.

The interface for Vienna is about like what you'd expect from an RSS reader. The view is customizable, and you can open complete stories in tabs to see the original Web site if you so desire. The real beauty of Vienna, however, is under the hood.

The Open Reader API is a protocol that aims to be vendor-neutral and completely open. Google Reader used to be the back end that everyone used for RSS feed syncing, and since its demise, people sort of re-invented the wheel in their own way. The Open Reader API is one solution that may catch on. It's already supported by BazQux and FeedHQ, and although adoption has been slow, hopefully it becomes the standard protocol for RSS syncing.

Luckily, if you're an OS X user, you can take advantage of the protocol right now with Vienna. Thanks to its great interface and open attitude, Vienna gets this month's Editors' Choice award. I think it's the first time we've given a non-Linux program the Editors' Choice honor, but its great interface and commitment to open standards makes us proud.

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Chrome-Colored Parakeets

Shawn Powers — Tue, 05 May 2015 14:00:00 +0000

by Shawn Powers

I personally like Google's Chrome interface. It's simple, fast, elegant and did I mention fast? Unfortunately, I don't like how locked down the Chrome OS is on a Chromebook, nor do I like its total dependence on Google. I also don't like the lack of ability to install Chrome easily on generic hardware. Thankfully, Budgie is here to help.

If you like the simplicity and speed of the Chrome interface, but want a full-blown system underneath that deceptively simple GUI, I urge you to give Budgie a try. You either can download the Evolve-OS, or just install the PPA into a standard Ubuntu system. I simply typed:


sudo apt-add-repository ppa:evolve-os/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install budgie-desktop

Then log out, and when logging in, choose the Budgie desktop instead of Unity. You'll find a very Chrome-like interface but on top of a full-blown Linux system instead of Chrome! The preferences are fairly simplistic, but the entire interface is designed to get out of the way and let you work. Due to its blazing-fast speed and ease of use, the Budgie Desktop is this month's Editors' Choice. Give it a try today!

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