Searching high and low in the Network Manager applet on Ubuntu Heron, I could not find an option to connect on a specific port number. Bruised, I dumped my Open VPN config into /etc/openvpn and brought up the link manually.

Today, as I sat behind a fresh install of Open SUSE 10.3, I decided to set up the link again using Network Manager, just to see if it was Ubuntu at fault. Sure enough, there was no option to specify the port number that the client should connect.

Fixing the issue is however straight forward enough to do. Open a terminal window and then enter in the command “gconf-editor &“. This will fire up the gnome version of a “windows registry” (note I use that is a very lose way).

Click on “System” then “Networking” and the “vpn_connections“. You should have given your vpn connection a name, something easy to identify I hope. So click on that too. You will see on the right hand side a window populated with various name and value pairs. This is where the configuration of your VPN is kept.

The very last key value pair should be called “vpn_data“. Double click on that and a new dialog box will appear. Click on “Add” and enter in the word “port” then click on “Ok“. Now click on “Add” again and this time enter in “443” (you can enter in any port you like actually, but the one that your Open VPN server runs on is best here ) and then “Ok“.

Its probably best to close Gconf Editor now, as you should not need it. Restart the network manager if possible, I actually done a reboot, but its not necessary (You can tell where my computer lineage started). You should now be able to click on the Network Manager applet and start the Open VPN connection without any problems.

Note, that if you reconfigure the Open VPN settings using Network Manager, you will need to repeat the above steps as when the config is saved, your old one is over written. I am sure there is a way around that.

Now, Evolution is a great mail client, and it has connectors to GroupWise too, however, for me I don’t like the big clunky icons and the overall general responsiveness of the app. I do however like the GroupWise client (Although let it not be said, it has lots of problems).

Now, be warned, Novell, do not support the GroupWise client on Ubuntu, however it should be possible to get it to work. So here is a quick stab at it.

1. Download the Novell GroupWise Client for Linux from www.novell.com
2. Extract the archieve
3. You will see two RPM’s. We will need to convert them
4. Open a terminal in ubuntu and enter in sudo apt-get install alien
5. Now to convert the GroupWise rpm to a deb package, simply enter sudo alien –scripts novell-groupwiseclient.xxx.rpm (Where xxx are the version numbers)
6. Do the same for the other rpm, the GroupWise check app
7. Now, you have the packages converted, install them with sudo dpkg -i *.deb
8. The GroupWise client is then installed into /opt/novell/groupwise.
9. You should see the GroupWise client icon now on your desktop, double click to start it and hey presto you are done.

If you get a chance, do check out the Novell product line, especially the Linux stuff, some of the stuff, that runs on Linux is mad cool (IMHO).

Update: You may need to not use the JRE that comes with the packages. To use the open-java6 one complete the following;

1. sudo mv /opt/novell/groupwise/client/jre /opt/novell/groupwise/client/jre.old
2. sudo ln -s  /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/ /opt/novell/groupwise/client/jre

Now, not wanting to arse around with Tomcat all the time, I use the standalone build generally as its quite sufficient for my purposes. The problems arise when we have remote workers, whom are behind restrictive firewall policies. So that means I have to provide the service on 443. Now you could spend a bit of time configuring Tomcat to run on said port, but thats not recommended, plus you may want to use other technologies such a PHP etc. So here is a quick how to on getting confluence up and running on port 443 on Suse Enterprise Server 10 (Al tough the same applies to most Linux distros with the exception of the convoluted config Novell apply to Apache). This post presumes you already have installed Confluence standalone and its running fine.

1. Make sure you have Apache 2.2 installed
2. Open /etc/sysconfig/apache2 in vi (make sure you back it up first…)
3. Around line 296 you will see a list of the modules apache loads at start up. Add the following to the list;
proxy proxy_http proxy_connect proxy_ajp proxy_balancer
4. Save the file.
5. cd /etc/apache2/conf.d
6. Create a new config that will hold the information for your confluence configs;
vi confluenc.conf
7. Add the following lines

<Proxy balancer://confluence>
BalancerMember ajp://localhost:8009
</Proxy>
8. You can run this on port 80 just as well, but if its an internal wiki, you should allow public access only via HTTPS


<VirtualHost 192.168.0.1:80> # Note I always specify an IP address although its not required, you could use *
ServerAdmin you@mail.com # Your email address
ServerName host.domain.tld # Public FQDN of the server
Redirect / https://server.tld/ # Redirect everything to the SSL server
</VirtualHost>

9 I presume you will have pre generated your server keys, if not do so now.
10. Add the following to you ssl vhost config


<VirtualHost 192.168.0.1:443>
ServerName host.domain.tld:443
ServerAdmin you@mail.com
# SSL Requirments
SSLEngine on
SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL
# Use your certificate here.
SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/host.domain.tld.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl.key/host.domain.tld.pem
<Files ~ "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php3?)$">
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Files>
<Directory "/srv/www/cgi-bin">
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \
nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

# The important bit. Pass all requests onto your confluence instance
ProxyPass / balancer://confluence/ stickysession=JSESSIONID|seraph.confluence nofailover=On
</VirtualHost>

11. Shutdown Confluence and Open up your confluence instances server.xml file (backup first)
12. Add the following to below the first connector definition

<Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" />
13. Save and restart confluence
14. Start apache and browse to https://server.domain.tld and you should see your confluence instance.

The guts of this is mod_proxy_ajp which is a lot more delightful to play with than mod_jk.

For fun, you can add as many instances of Confluence as you like as BalancerMemers, export the confluence home via nfs and have your instances connect to a shared db. Is basic load balancing and will break things in confluence, but its good for a laugh.

While I will approve comments both for and against the freeing of Tibet, I will only do so should they be what I deem legitimate. I.e. They do not appear to be copy paste jobs, refrain from abuse and are sensible comments.

Otherwise, please bugger off. I’m not intersted in being a fora for the promotion of your sites. In particular, posters from;

• 168.144.250.89
• 206.155.48.217
• 128.221.197.21

have been banned (not that it will make much difference) but sure I may as well do something at the FW level seening as I was working on it anyhow.

1. The smaller countries like Ireland (Who’s government is ohh so found of telling its citizens how “well respected” it is on the world stage) should take a stance at at least threaten to boycott the games (We won’t miss much anyhow, we rarely win anything)
2. Don’t watch them

The second is a really nice passive way of resistance.

Now considering that this post will now be filtered out by the Great firewall of China, I hope that the rest of this post will go unoticed by the Chinese authorities and we’ll all catch them by surprise.

Proposal

I propose that any blogger who feels strongly enough, make a simple post on the 30th of April 2008 with the title of “Why I think Tibet Should Be Free”/”Please Free Tibet” or something with Free and Tibet in the title. If you think independence is not needed you can also post something similar. You can include as little or as much in the post body as you want to.

If you use Wordpress, you can even do it now, and select the publish date as the 30th April and forget all about it. I already have.

Sure its not as strong as storming the Chinese embassy, but its just another way we can all let the Chinese government (I doubt that they need reminding) that people in the world object to whats going on (BTW while I’m at it, China you should be ashamed of your conduct in relation toDarfur). As a side benifit, if enough blogs do this, it should send the Great Firewall into some serious filtering time.

Update: 00:04 01.04.08 - If you don’t feel like doing a blog post, on the 30th you can do simple things like set the status message of your IM client to read “Free Tibet” or similar. You can also do this with Facebook.

I will hopefully get around to completing the titles and brief info sections later this evening. FInd below quick links to my favorite ones.

Well done to all involved, I am looking forward to 2.6 already, I think its the start of something wonderful.

In Cuba, we were offered the choice of Fish, Pork or Chicken. There are no chicken breasts, only legs and the underside, unless you wish to pay silly money and stay in a hotel and be insulated from the real Cuba.

If a Cuban owns their own chicken (Yes even in a socialistic country people can own things) they can enjoy the benifit of the entire chicken. However purchasing a chicken is very expensive and can not be done without some saving or bartering. No doubt this gentleman traded something for his prize and will not be eating it in a hurry. Its far too valuable.

One of the amazing things about any city in Cuba is the dawn chorus. Not the typical one us Irish are used to. You are awoken to the cries of hundreds of rosters all exclaiming the joy of a new day at 6am from the confines of each block. It is a tad weird when you hear it first considering you are in the city. Still Cubans are resourceful and do enjoy a good fried or grilled chicken.

The best thing is, all of these are 100% organic, and they do really taste so great.