On a more regular basis I’d like to keep a stream of technical write ups, gaming news, theological thoughts, and or general “what’s going ons” with me and my family. However with a work trip to Houston last week and general slap busy nature of my work since returning home; I’ve not had any time to collect some thoughts and formulate them into a blog post. I want to hit some high points, and perhaps elaborate on them more in future posts.
High point #1 Samba DC
Ok, so people who have known me for any extended amount of time (from the age of 16 to 30) knows that I’m a Linux fan. My work and lively hood mind you thrive around a Microsoft world, but I will never sell Linux short, nor fail to marvel at the amazing things that a thriving community of passionate individuals can create. I also maintain a Linux server out of my home to manage DNS, DHCP, VOIP (TeamSpeak) and File sharing (NFS, iSCSI, and SMB). I will also, on occasion, bring up outward facing game servers. Just recently I decided to convert that server into a SAMBA DC for my, primarily, Windows 7 environment at home.
I run CentOS as my server distribution, which is a downstream of RHEL. I’m running Samba version 3.5.4, at the time of this writing 3.6 is the latest stable release but didn’t offer enough improvements for me to go outside of my natively distributed yum version.
Also, aside from a few changes to the registry and local security policy that had to be made on the client side of the machines, the migration was fairly painless.
The first change resolves the issue of Windows 7 being able to find the domain for insertion, and the security policy solves the issue of Domain Trust at login. It’s also wise to disable the password reset of the machine to DC to avoid potential relationship issues. I’d not seen this issue myself, but until I see a confirmation it’s resolved (supposedly coming in samba 4) I’ll err to the side of caution.
My next step will be to integrate Open LDAP functionality into the DC, and an Apache http server. I assume these will be fairly painless projects, but for risk of breaking my current domain environment I’ll need to wait till I have the time to deal with a potential ldap migration failure. I also don’t have a strong enough list of pros for it since this is just a home network. Mind you it’s more sophisticated than the average home network, it just seems a bit over engineered. As for the Apache server, I really want to get back into some web development so I’d like the internal server for development purposes….
service httpd start
Ok, so now I’m running an Apache server off my server as well. Linux is so hard.
High point #2 Admin Studio 10
So I was in Houston last week. I’m now “officially” trained to use Admin Studio 10 for package (msi, app-v, xenapp, and thinapp) development, repackaging, and migration.
So what does that mean?
Well as most of you know I work with a product from Microsoft called SCCM. One of the primary features of SCCM is application deployment.
So what is application deployment?
Simply put, it’s installing applications to multiple machines over a network.
Ok, I think I see. So why would you need to do package development to deploy packages?
Well, you don’t have to. One could feasibly shoehorn an installer given by a vendor, but ideally you want to build out a standardized installer or load for your company. For us that means I’ll be building MSIs, MSTs, and App-v packages. As well as isolating application installs that might otherwise break functionality of OTHER applications they share hard drive space with.
Wait, what? Isolate, break, huh?
Almost all applications rely on libraries. Think of them as a set of shared instructions that applications go to when asked what to do. Well in most cases these libraries are shared by multiple applications. And, sometimes one application wants a vanilla library, and another wants a chocolate. Well these apps will fight, and one of them will win and another one will lose. By isolating them I can give them what they want so they don’t break the system, or each other.
Our company will also leverage App-v packages which are essentially virtualized installs of these applications that, although they run locally on the machine, they are actually virtualized (or encapsulated) and are separate from the actual operating system. Xenapp and Thinapp do the same thing. I’m particularly excited about application virtualization, it can come with a bit of overhead, but it’s nice and contained.
Ok, I stopped caring somewhere around chocolate and vanilla.
Yea I figured as much. Either way, it is a tangible notch to my hard skill set and I’m glad that I was able to get it done.
High point #3 Gospel in Life
What does a Gospel centered life look like?
What does it mean to be in the world but not of the world?
Is the Gospel as narrow minded to culture as people often proclaim it to be?
What does a Gospel centered community look like?
These are part of the current bible study I’m involved in with my brothers and sisters in Christ called Gospel in Life by Timothy Keller. It’s a great study that forces you to take a look at your heart, your life, and your community and compare it to what and how it is defined in the Gospel. I would recommend this study to anyone who is a believer. Even if the information isn’t new to you, as most of it hasn’t been for me, it’s still food for the soul. A reminder of the higher purpose we are called to as Christians.
Truthfully, I’d encourage non-believers as well to read this study. If for nothing else, than to hold Christians accountable to the teachings that we claim to believe.
High Point #4 Ignoring my Family
I’ve taken way to long to blog this, and my wife has informed me that I should blog about how I’ve ignored my family, to blog.
When she’s right she’s right. Thank God for her gentle reminders.