Diary of a Network Geek

I know I’ve been sort of quiet this week, so here’s a tidbit.
I’ve been doing a LOT of bash scripting lately for the ZENWorks imaging project that I’ve been working on. Well, the first part of that goes live, or partially live, next week. Yikes! So, I’ve been refining and getting things ready for that. Busy, busy, busy! But, I did have time to notice someone asking for help adding color to the menus and such on a ZENWorks Discussion Forum at Novell. I posted a reply there, but I thought I’d do up something for the oh, so quiet blog, too.
First off, all this comes from the FAQs.org, Advanced BASH-scripting Guide, in the Colorizing Scripts section.

Now, remember, these are basically just escape sequences, just like from the old DOS days and batch files. (Thought you’d never have to do that again, right?) Keep in mind that once you apply one of these codes, it will be in effect until you cancel it out, one way or another.
Let’s start easy with a simple bold:
echo -e “33[1mThis line is bolded33[0m”;
Okay, notice that you need to append the ” -e” to your standard “echo” command for display. The actual “bold” code is “33[1m”. That’s it. Just add that to the begining of the quoted line and you’ve got bolded text. To “turn it off”, simply echo “33[0m”, either at the end of the quoted line as above, or on another line. Personally, I find it easier to turn off my codes ASAP. It cuts down on problems later on.
Now, we’ll make green, bold text:
echo -en “33[1mThis is bold and green”
tput sgr0

Okay, now notice that we “turned off” the codes with a different command. That command, tput sgr0, clears all the color and formatting.
Now, to do one color for the text and one for the background, do this:
echo -e ‘\E[34;47m'”This makes blue text on a white background”;

And, that’s really all there is to it. So, go experiment with your bash colors!

Here’s a table of some other colors for your reference:

Well, I’ve got another bit up on Novell’s CoolSolutions website.
This time, it’s a bit of bash code to let you choose which ZEN imaging server to use based on subnet. It works for any version of the ZEN for Desktops imaging system, since it’s pure bash.
For those of you who are not ” in the know” bash is the Bourne Again SHell which runs on Linux and has scripting capabilities. It’s pretty cool, considering that this will be the third or fourth thing I have up on Novell’s site and I get another t-shirt. Wooo! And, I’ve turned in enough articles that I have my very own Author Profile page. Cool!
Anyhow, go look at the article and vote it up higher, eh?

It always amazes me what people search for.

Especially when they end up with me, instead of what they were looking for in the first place! I used to check on this kind of thing a whole lot more than I do lately, but I looked yesterday and thought I’d put it up here.
Here are the Top 20 searchs that led to my site, with commentary:
1 “bootable usb linux” – Well, I have been working on this a lot lately
2 “crazy toys” – All my toys are crazy, yo
3 “geek pictures” – Er… Would anyone really want to look at me?
4 “linux resume” – Um, duh?
5 “strom thurman” – This one always gets me. Even after death, ol’ Strom is a draw
6 “virtual legos” – No idea at all here
7 “usb linux boot” – How is this different from #1?
8 “javascript encryption” – I am Geek. Hear me roar, er, type
9 “jim hoffman” – Well, DUH!
10 “zenworks imaging” – I am a Novell zealot, after all
11 “free cisco book” – Hey, a Fun Friday Link!
12 “geek art” – Must be me talking about the future ex-wife’s art
13 “hello kitty robot” – Hello Kitty is fun. Hello Kitty Mecha is more fun. Too funny.
14 “tales of hoffman” – Again, DUH!
15 “bootable windows cd” – Hmm, I think I talk about boot loaders too much
16 “case mod tools” – Never done it, but maybe in the future…
17 “linux resume software” – Gee, I guess I talk about Linux a lot, too…
18 “novell resume” – Yep, I’m a hardcore Novell geek allright!
19 “science fiction channel” – Or, maybe just a hardcore geek
20 “homebrew tivo” – Yeah, see the above comment.

Freaky! Well, at least no one is looking for goat-sex pictures and finding my website! You know, that reminds me of a story this Greek guy told me about somone from his village back home… Maybe another time.

Well, maybe….

According to this article on Groklaw, the recent spate of cases that Novell has brought against Micro$oft may, in fact, have far-reaching implications in the legal realm of intellectual property and anti-competition. Specifically, how these cases are handled may have some direct impact on the rest of the pending Linux infringement cases that have been SCO’s bread-and-butter. So, in short, the author (“marbux”), encourages us to pay attention to the outcome of these cases. They matter and can effect the lives of Linux geeks everywhere.

Been a while in between Novell stories…

So, I thought I’d remind all my regular readers about NUI, Netware Users International.
First of all, if you use Netware, you’re probably already familiar with NUI. Novell did a pretty big marketing campaign a couple of years ago when NUI was just starting to get big. Well, now they’re big.
Secondly, it doesn’t cost anything to join. Yep, that’s right, it’s free.
Thirdly, you actually get benefits! Yeah, no charge to sign up, but you still get membership benefits. Cool!

So, anyway, if you haven’t signed up, or even thought about NUI, lately, you might want to check it out. Hey, it’s free, what have you got to loose?

Wow, there’ve been a lot of stories about Novell in the past two days!

Let’s see, where to start…. First off, Novell whupped Micro$oft to the tune of $536 Million, according to this press release from the networking giant. Apparently, Novell and Micro$oft agreed to “settle potential antitrust litigation related to Novell’s NetWare operating system in exchange for $536 million in cash.” Hmm, not a bad deal. I wonder what that will do to their stock? What’s even more interesting to me, is that Novell also announced it will file “an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the United States District Court in Utah seeking unspecified damages in connection with alleged harm to Novell’s WordPerfect application software business in the mid-1990s.” More cash? One can only hope.

In other Novell news, my favorite Open Source company has released a “new” Linux desktop. Yes, that’s right, they’ve got a Linux desktop, with the option to purchase support. I guess there really are advantages to living way out in Orem and not having anything else to do during the winter months but think! If you follow that link, by the way, you can download a free trial. I know I will be!

Yea, Novell! You go!

I’m finally getting it!

Okay, so it only took three months and a visit from a Novell Service Engineer for me to finally get it, but I have. Here’s the big secret to making ZENWorks imaging Linux boot CDs: key information is not anywhere to be found on the web. But, of course, the Network Geek will share with his loyal readers.
Now, I’ll do this in more detail later, but here it is in a nutshell. To update the bootable CD, first, get a good image and, using the instructions for adding a driver to the ZEN Boot image, get into the initrd.gz file on a machine that has the kernel version you want to update the CD to use. Now, copy all the drivers you want to use from the patched/updated server to the mounted initrd filesystem. Unmount that and re GZIP it. Now, copy your bzImage, or whatever, to a temp directory and rename it to “kernel”. Now, copy both of these files into the ISO, or make a new one with everything else on the CD. Burn it and go.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I went too fast, I’ll do it again with more detail later. I just was excited about it and had to throw that out there. Way cool!

Now, that’s my kind of error message!

Okay, I finally got a document that has all the details on how Novell builds their bootable ZENWorks CDs. More Linux work for me! Yea! So, this week, I’ve been building a Linux server and learning about updating/recompiling the kernel. As you can tell from the title of this entry, I haven’t been too successful. But, I’m getting there! I’m really headed into unknown waters at this point, but they’re the most fun. Never know what’s going to happen next.
I’m really becoming quite a Linux expert now, whether I like it or not. Luckily, I like it. Linux is fun, to me, even if it is a bit confusing and challenging sometimes. I’m usually pretty good at figuring out what’s wrong and fixing it, or making a work-around. It’s not exactlly rocket science, after all. Now, I just have to figure out what I did wrong that caused the kernel panic. And, now, why my “mkinitrd” is returning an error about an MPT device. But, at least I have a clue where to look, thanks to the error message, and I have a hope of solving the problem. If only my personal life were so simple and straight-forward…

Ah, well, back to the ol’ uranium mines!

A follow up to yesterday’s entry.

Okay, so, if you follow Slashdot, you’ve seen this, but I thought it was worth reposting. Of course, part of that is because I’m just a little bit of a Novell zealot. To put it mildly.
I thought the article was interesting. I especially liked the way that Mr. Schlaeger emphasized the idea that Novell was really supporting Linux, KDE and OpenSource. It’s really the way of the future with IT and computers in general. I have a friend that used to work for Microsoft and is now totally hooked on Netware, Linux, and Mozilla. All it took was a little push from your friendly, neighborhood technology pusher (i.e. ME!) and the rest was as easy as blue-screening a Windows server.
In any case, the interview over at KDE.org is worth reading if you have anything invested in Linux of any flavor, Novell, or KDE. I hope it’s a continuing trend for both Linux and Novell.

I saw this on Slashdot.

And, I think that means that Novell is finally getting their marketing right! First of all, there was this story on Slashdot, which, of course, generated all sorts of anti-Microsoft chatter. Then, I followed the link over to Novell’s site, which redirected me to this SuSE news release. So, not only is Novell developing for Linux and supporting OpenSource projects, but they’re getting plenty of exposure in the IT community.

About damn time.