Given the budget of next to nothing and the relatively small size of the office, I decided it was best to proceed with a Linux based Samba server. Although their office is 100% Microsoft (a mix of XP and Vista machines), Linux would be a great light weight solution. The added benefit was we re-purposed an ancient workstation (circa 1996) to run the Samba server so no new hardware was purchased and we prevented another machine from polluting a land fill.

We created three shared drives for the business.

1. A share everyone in the office could access
2. A share only the executive could access
3. A share for the exclusive purpose of backing up everyone’s workstation

I simply installed Centos 5.2 distribution on the old workstation, created three distinct user accounts and group permissions, enabled the samba service, and locked down access through iptables firewall.

Creating a secure, readable, smb.conf file was really important to me. Not only for readability but also because I won’t be supporting this server after installation. Any other administrator should be able to walk into the office and quickly & clearly see how to make edits for upgrades or changes.

The smb.conf file:

#smb.conf
 
[global]
	#set up what the end user would see on their desktop
	workgroup = H4LSharedFiles
	server string = common files for H4L
 
	#general user perms
	security = user
	passdb backend = tdbsam
 
	#printing support
	load printers = no
        printing = bsd
        printcap name = /dev/null
        show add printer wizard = no
        disable spools = yes
 
[AllSharedFiles]
	comment = Files for everyone to share
	path = /sambashares/allAccess
	writeable = yes
	browseable = yes
	guest ok = yes
	write list = +allemployees
 
[Backup]
	comment = Files to back up everyone's computer
	path = /sambashares/backups
	writeable = yes
	browseable = yes
	guest ok = yes
	write list = +allemployees
 
[AdminOnly]
	comment = Access for sensitive files
	path = /sambashares/admins
	writeable = yes
	browseable = yes
	guest ok = no
	write list = +administrators

Utilizing twitter, he sent out a tweet with a link to where people could view his stream. Interacting with the audience of over 700, he gave a quick tour of the plane from his seat, showed his viewers his neighbor and the view from his window.

A very cool interactive experience which shows that the Internet is becoming more ubiquitous all the time.

Zune article: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/the-day-microsoft-zunes-stood-still/

IE losing market share: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123092719894149695.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments

The article was profound in explaining Linux’s potential power play in the netbook arena; netbooks are small low power laptops. They’re great for surfing the web, doing emails and many other normal, everyday, tasks. Their low power makes them very affordable but has a major shortcoming when it comes to loading an operating system. Without a lot of memory (Ram) or hard drive space, large operating systems with many background processes would cripple the tiny netbook and render them useless.

Enter Linux. Linux is a highly configurable dream of an operating system that technologists love to play with. Because of its configurability, it’s a perfect candidate to run on a netbook. Processes that are never used can be shut off automatically. Shutting down processes means 1) more memory to do web surfing 2) more processor cycles for web surfing and 3) less space taken up on the hard drive.

Another very important consideration is spyware/malware. Linux is a very secure system by its very nature. The kernel (the brains of the OS) is more protected by its very design. Because of its seemingly insignificant market penetration, spammers and malware developers don’t have any incentive to develop their bugs for this OS. Linux wins again.

Finally, slapping Linux on the netbook follows a bigger trend in the commodization of hardware. Computers are getting cheaper and cheaper as business processes become more efficient and components become less expensive. The operating system has become a bigger slice of the total purchase price of a system. As hardware continues to become more of a commodity, vendors like IBM, HP and DELL will look for ways to jettison the proportionately higher cost of the OS.

As netbooks become more popular, Linux will become more familiar. This familiarity will enhance a seemingly insignificant player in the consumer operating system battle and that could really change the game.

original link:

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/2009-year-linux-revolution

Google announced today it will also be releasing a Android Market, a service designed in the image of the iTunes Store with YouTube functionality. An interesting market shift is taking place which could quite possibly be looked in hindsight as the great mobile revolution. First, it was the laptop, coming up next the mobile phone that acts like a laptop?

Mobile developers have been going nuts over development of iPhone applications and they have been making a mint doing so. Some reports have the Store making $1M per day. Wow. Google joins the fray today in their announcement albeit with a slightly more open source bend. They will at first accept only free applications with the paid-for apps coming at a later date.

Expanding the development of mobile apps from a few scattered developers, say, on Research In Motion’s Blackberry devices to many many developers all over the world on Android and the iPhone are setting up a potential for a Brave New World of mobile phone functionality.

I didn’t want to ruin the installation of Apache2.2 that comes native on Leopard, so I started from scratch:

cd /usr/local
mkdir src
curl -O http://www.mirrorgeek.com/apache.org/httpd/httpd-2.2.8.tar.gz
tar -zxvf httpd-2.2.8.tar.gz # a bunch of output will fly by; that’s normal
cd httpd-2.2.8
./compile –enable-so –prefix=/usr/local/apache2 # a ton more output will fly by
make
sudo make install

Now we have a new apache install in your /usr/local directory. If you want to connect this installation to your usual web directory on your mac, you need to edit your httpd.conf to direct your web root folder to /Library/WebServer/Documents. You do this by executing the following commands:

sudo vi /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
Change DocumentRoot “/usr/local/apache2/htdocs” to: DocumentRoot “/Library/WebServer/Documents”
Next, change to
issue the vi command :wq

Your Apache Installation should be set to go now.

Before we can install php, we need to cimpile the IMAP c libraries. Go to and download these libraries at ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/ . Then, move them to your source directory with the following command:

mv ~/Downloads/[your-imap-download] /usr/local/src
./compile –prefix=/usr/local/imap
make
sudo make install

When this finishes, you can install php

PHP Installation:

Go to http://us3.php.net/get/php-5.2.5.tar.gz/from/a/mirror and download a package
On Leopard, you would issue the following command to move the package to our source directory:

mv ~/Downloads/php-5.2.5.tar.gz /usr/local/src

Now, we compile:

tar -zcvf php-5.2.5.tar.gz
cd php-5.2.5
./configure –prefix=/usr/local/apache2/php –with-apx2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs –with-imap=/usr/local/imap –with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql
make
sudo make install

Following the completion of this install, you should be able to issue the command:

sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

and your installation is complete. SugarCRM should recognize the imap libraries and php should run smoothly.

Please note that this is not a particularly secure installation, but will work great for local intranets to keep your users involved with the crm.

Please post comments if you run into trouble.