I have been working with Jon solving some file and print puzzles for the network that he manages. The network has Windows XP and Apple OS X clients and provides services from a Suse server running OpenLDAP for authentication and Samba for file and print.

The little puzzle we have been working on has been incorporating the Apple OS X machines into the authenticated file and print network. Connecting the eMacs to the wider network would provide more services to the users of the machines and give Jon less management and security headaches over the current local users / afp-island that the machines currently live in.

Here’s a link to the wikwikwah on Central home directories on a linux server

The instructions so far…

# Peel the otter…

Seriously though… getting the X clients to authenticate against the existing LDAP servers was easy. It is well documented and searchable thanks to the big G.

# Stew 6 hours in a server room / back office

NFS and automounts have eaten a day our time in research and testing. We don’t think that NFS is the best method of providing network home directories in this environment. If the SMB client on the OS X client wasn’t so mangled a connection via Samba would have been prefered as Samba is already serving up /home and /other/dirs to the network of Windows XP workstations.

# The pan is now ready. Discard contents and begin again with the prepared pan.

Looking again at a page from early in the day and now that we’ve been investigating LDAP, automount and NetInfo Manager the information on it makes more sense. I think we discarded the information earlier as we didn’t want to install AFP on the file server. Thinking about it now, using AFP makes the most sense: Samba is installed to speak SMB to Windows clients, why not AFP?

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I just wanted to say a quick hello to the frequent visitors out there (you know who you are). Thanks for popping by, reading this site and (hopefully) providing reciprocal links back here. leave a comment, say hello back.

FUD? Check wikipedia…

Received the first campaign materials from Team Yellow Gold and Team Red since the elections for local government in May. Sorry for the blue tint on the scans, I think my scanner is broken.

The BELD are thanking people for voting for them in Mapesbury and give people the contact numbers of their new local councillors. I won’t reprint them here though – surely you can get them from Brent Council (after 6 or 7 clicks) or from the BELD website (well actually you can’t find any info about your local councillors or FOCUS TEAM on the BELD website).

The QP Labour people have been distributing their July newsletter which highlighted the power sharing between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives in the new Council Executive. Vote Lib Dems and Get Tories says the headline with the story claiming that the first thing the LDs did when getting voted in was to join forces with the Tories. That’s not wholey true… the first thing the LDs did was to attempt to forge a power sharing agreement with the three parties, leading to coalition. This being rejected by the second largest vote winners (Team Red), the result is a coalition between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives.
If it wasn’t so heavily couched in political sniping I might have draw greater attention to the news on the rear of the QP Labour flyer that the LD/Tory exec plan to cut the publicity budget of the council. Oh, well, go on then… ‘The Knives Are Out!’ leads the back page. QP Labour are concerned the budget cuts will affect campaigns around areas such as knife carrying. Cut the funding as far as I am concerned….stop publications such as the Brent Magazine with the budget cuts but still continue to fund issue specific campaigns. That’s my 2p worth any way…

I’m hoping that this coming week will see two local residents associations get online with powerful internet based self-publishing tools provided by comwifinet. These two groups, one in Stonebridge and one in Mapesbury, will also become part of the Bonnet network of community interest groups, extending the Bonnet network and improving their own effectivness as a result. I’ll be posting links to their websites and to their Bonnet information pages as soon as they are active.

Civic reporter has received an initial ‘thanks but no thanks’ from Brent Council. I’m going to post their analysis of the application and my reponse here. this morning I was at home with the baby. I love being at home in the day, it gives me the chance to stand and watch my neighbourhood go by. I counted five Brent Council branded vehicles go past my house, collecting my green box, then my green bin and later my household wheelie bin. A fourth pickup collected some dumped household furniture and the fifth was street sweeping. I know Brent Council take our street care and waste management seriously: let’s see how seriously they take transparency and participation in service delivery.