Hamachi2 and Linux and Haguichi
I just realized that I haven’t written anything about LogMeIn Hamachi² here. Just like the predecessor Hamachi, Hamachi² is a peer-to-peer VPN service. Free version for non-commercial use and reasonably priced for commercial. I’ve been a fan for years – great way to link my various computers together.
Hamachi² changed things a bit by moving all the network management to a central web site and giving some more options to configuration. For instance, you can now configure “Hub-and-spoke” networks in which the clients can only see the servers (or the “hub”). Not quite as simple to configure as the prior version but I do like the additional security and configuration options so I upgraded last year. Always meant to mention it here, just never got the round ‘tuit…
When V2 was initially released it was only for Windows. Very disappointing. Happily, I recently noticed Linux and Mac beta versions on the LogMeIn Labs page – command line only, but better than nothing (and no, I have no clue when they appeared. Been a long time since I had checked the labs page!).
I installed it on my little Ubuntu Netbook Eee last month and have had no issues running it. Just pop to a terminal window and type hamachi –? to see your various options. It wasn’t too tough to sort out.
Today I discovered Haguichi. [hat tip to Web Upd8] A slick little graphical user interface for Hamachi2 on Linux that runs a lot like the original Hamachi for Windows UI but also supports Hamachi2 (as beta). I love it!
Start it up and it runs up in the notification area just like you’d expect. Single click and you get an easy to use interface to see your networks and their contents. Right click a machine and you’ll get some options. All very friendly.
I haven’t analyzed exactly how much space it uses… as a C# app built on the Mono framework there is bit of a footprint here. All I know for sure is I still have space left on the little 4GB SSD drive so I’m happy.
If you’re using this with Ubuntu Netbook Edition you’ll want to make one small change. By default, all apps are maximized when ran – that makes haguichi rather ugly… In a terminal window run gconf-editor In the resulting application, navigate to Apps and then click on maximus. On the right pane, right-click on “exclude_class” and click “edit key.” Now click the add button and type in “Haguichi” (this is case-sensitive, be sure that’s a capital H). Log out and back in and no more maximizing.
A Very Quick Look at the Sharpie Liquid Pencil
My friend Rich recently sent me one of the new Sharpie Liquid Pencils to play with (thanks Rich!). He knows I’m typically a G2 pen guy and was curious to see what I’d think.
At first I absolutely hated it.
Don’t get me wrong, it really isn’t horrible… but my initial impression was that it writes a lot like an old ball point pen with ink that’s on the verge of drying out. Not quite smooth and almost feels like it “skips” a bit. Things get a bit better when I press harder than normal but that eventually results in a sore hand.
However, when compared to the erasable ink pens of the 80’s (when I was in school) this thing is incredible. I’ve successfully erased things I wrote several days ago. In fact, the erasability of it all is why this will be added to my daily kit.
While I really enjoy my G2 pens, the amount of stuff I scratch out leaves such a mess when I’m doing a lot of writing and – I can’t lie – that drives me nuts. With this liquid pencil I have something that doesn’t blur nearly as easily as pencil but is still very erasable. Turns out I’m willing to put up with a less than G2 writing experience just for that.
Anyone else tried it out? What do you think?
Oh, Did You Want a Timeout?
Back in February I mentioned that I was reconfiguring my IIS 6 web servers to shutdown the App Pools after 2 hours of inactivity. That seemed a much better option than the brute force iisreset that I’d been scheduling as a nightly event.
Turns out I wasn’t quite done yet. Here’s a snip of a conversation I had earlier today with my CTO, Hans.
“Ya know, I wish I had some better tools to see how many active users we have across all the sites at a given moment,” I said. “That would be helpful when I want to sneak in a quick change during the day.”
“Well what do you currently do to check?” he asked.
“I just pop open the latest IIS log file, jump to the bottom and see if the most recent entries are from my once-a-minute WhatsUp Gold site monitoring. If the last few entries are from WhatsUp then I know we’ve been idle that many minutes.”
He nodded and we moved onto another issue which resolved around some memory related issues.
I commented, “It seems like this main w3p process never shrinks. It just keeps growing its memory usage. How weird. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a Windows Event about it shutting down or spinning back up…”
Hans just gave me the look and said, “Didn’t you mention your monitoring process hits that site every minute?”
#facepalm#
“oh yeah… I guess it’ll never hit that 2 hour timeout, huh?” Don’t laugh… If you poll the site every minute don’t expect it to ever go idle!
Today I spent some time fixing that. I’m not sure what the best practices are but I have an approach that seems reasonable.
First, I created a new site with just one page (ping.html). Next, I created a new App Pool called monitoring just like the Default. But instead of a timeout I configured it to restart itself at 1:00 AM nightly. Then I converted that new site to an IIS application using that new App Pool.
I changed the WhatsUp monitor to use a custom HTTP Content monitor pointed at the new site. Now it tests for content from the ping.html page instead of just seeing if something responds on port 80 so this is probably even a bit better than it was before.
This brought up another small issue though.
Wait! How do I know which w3p process ties to which App Pool?
Now I have more App Pools all running as the same user. How can I quickly tell which process goes to which pool? Easy!
This picture lays it out:
On the IIS server bring up a command prompt, navigate to the system32 directory and run:
cscript iisapp.vbs
The output lists the process ID (PID) and name for each w3p.exe process. Problem solved.
WP Schwag
Look what I got in the mail this weekend:
Pretty cool, eh? Back of the shirt has a WordPress.org logo.
I believe this is something I got for weighing in on the GPL side of things during last month’s Thesis theme / GPL kerfluffle.
I dig the certificate 
Trying out Ubuntu Netbook 10.04
I’ve been running Windows XP on my trusty Eee 701 netbook for about a year and a half now (last mention). XP worked fine and did the job. However, as time passed it slowly used more and more space. When you only have a 4GB SSD drive to work with, space is a precious commodity!
Today, while running updates, it ran out of space. And trust me, that’s with the bare minimum installed. Some Asus drivers, Google Chrome. Everything else — even .NET frameworks — uninstalled.
Seemed like a good time to try Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formerly known as Ubuntu Netbook Remix). Downloading and installing went quite well thanks to some great instructions and I’m happy with how well it runs on this first generation netbook. Remember, I’m sporting 1GB of RAM and a 900 Mhz Celeron here… Boot times are crazy fast. I’ll have to get a stop watch out soon, but I’m thinking well under a minute.
Speaking of performance, the included Firefox browser wasn’t so great (nor was it all that great in XP on this thing) but installing Google Chrome was easily done. The chrome install didn’t add an icon to the menus, but that was easily done with the Menu Editor. Chrome runs great on this rig.
Primary use for this machine is to sit on my desk during the day and run a few monitoring web pages (connected to a 17″ monitor and slaved via Synergy+) and be my little “on the go” machine when I’m out and about. I look forward to seeing how well this fresh install works.
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