We are simple too trusting. Lets face it, we wouldn’t be on Facebook or other social networks if we didn’t trust some level of Facebook protecting us. And then there is a complete generation who never knew anything but this form of communication. To them this fad has always been. They have not seen more than a couple shifts on the Net.

Rogue Applications

For starters you want to Control what your friends can share about you when using applications and websites from What your friends can share about you.

Again, in theory, if you deselect all items… this will stop others’ applications from accessing your information. Because you would by default allow friends access to see your profile, so does their applications they choose to Allow. Sorry to be a party pooper, but I don’t care if your nice quiz/game/farm/war can not harvest my information as payment for you to play their free game. They in turn can customize ads to suit my liking. How clever!

All apps give you a chance to Allow the application, the odds are that most users don’t read the disclosure before hitting the Allow button. Besides this disclaimer is pretty generic and pretty much the same for every app. One would hope it had specific juicy details about what it wants based on what you plan to allow. Instead it gets the full coverage of allowing whatever privileges the user has with other friends.

But there is more. For every application there are finer permissions to be set. Go through the different filters to show what apps match the various selections. I go through all of them to be sure I set all apps the way I want.

Here you decide again what relation level you allow the chosen app to have by clicking Edit Settings.

Then be sure to look at the Additional Permissions tab. Here you can decide if you want to allow this app to post activity to the News Feed stream. I choose not to for everything but Notes.

We have Contact

Anything I do not have populated I just set to Only Me. But for most everything else I suggest Only Friends. The exception, again, is Add me as a friend and Send me a message; I allow Everyone to find me and even send me a message.

Right Privacy

I think privacy is probably the most overlooked setting users will assume Facebook has set right from default. Nothing against Facebook, however, you have to understand something about marketing if you want to succeed with allowing free usage of your products. It does not work well when there are roadblocks in the way.

Start with your Profile Information. Facebook would like you to share as much about you as they can in efforts to broaden your visibility to others; including those you would rather not by proxy of other friends. So first thing you want to look at is changing who can view parts of your profile. I suggest Only Friends

With the exception of Photos and Videos of Me, I have a custom setting here that in theory should protect you from a smug friend who may try tagging you in some photo that may be less than appropriate. Only you and in this case, my custom friend I have selected may see this and hopefully help warn you that you were tagged inappropriately. From this point if you have been tagged and you do not approve, you always can go to the said picture and simply remove your name.

He sent me a few links to some howto’s and not all were the same. Looking over a few examples I quickly began replacing their Windows solutions with known Linux. Rather than recreate the wheel, I first searched how others have done it using Linux. These are a couple sites that have inspired my success:

• Slipstreaming Windows XP with Service Pack 3 in Linux by Jeremy Visser

• Slipstreaming Windows XP SP3 in Linux by Michael Gorven
• Intégration du Service Pack Windows sous Linux by Jacques Rouxel

The process is actually very easy but as usual ‘your mileage will vary’. I am using KDE 4.3.0 with Fedora 10.

1. Copy XP CD content into a clean working directory (/home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN/)

2. chmod -R 777 /home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN/
3. Convert everything to uppercase with convmv -r –upper –notest /home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN/. Don’t ask; who’d of thunk Microsoft was case sensitive!
4. Retrieve the redistributable SP3
5. Extract the service pack using cabextract -d /home/warren/software/SP3/ /home/warren/software/WindowsXP-KB936929-x86-ENU.exe
   
   

6. Install the service pack using wine /home/warren/software/SP3/i386/update/update.exe /integrate:D:\\home\\warren\\software\\VRMPVOL_EN_SP3.

   The D: is the wine drive letter I have my existing CD in. Run the wine configuration app and find the Drives tab.

7. Extract the boot loader from the original CD with ./geteltorito /dev/sr0 > /home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN_SP3/boot.bin.

   I didn’t have an rpm package for geteltorito so I got both files from the download page and chmod 755 to make it executable. I could only run this as root, so be sure to chown the boot.bin back to you.

8. Write the iso with mkisofs -b boot.bin -hide boot.bin -hide boot.catalog -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -iso-level 4 -relaxed-filenames -D -V VRMPVOL_EN_SP3 -o /home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN_SP3.iso ./home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN_SP3/
9. Burn iso to CD and test! I prefer K3b; just works.

So there you have your newly update XP CD with SP3 already installed. I tested and only created one coaster with a botched boot loader. This one boots and has a clean SP3.

… you must take the view that instead of following your heart, you are choosing to lead it. The world says to follow your heart, but if you are not leading it, then someone or something else is. The Bible says that “the heart is more deceitful than all else” (Jeremiah 17:9), and it will always pursue that which feels right at the moment.

My wife and I are taking the dare… The Love Dare. It will be a challenge I am reading, but I think it will be well worth enduring. I encourage you to do the same in your marriage.

The other class I started last night is Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. This is based on the book of the same title by Peter Scazzero. I have only read the first chapter before the class started. I know there will be a lot of things to learn. So far some things are: understanding my emotions have played a big part of how I was spiritually. Peter says you can’t be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.. Looking ahead to chapter 8: Discovering the Rhythms of the Daily Office and Sabbath. This caught my eye as it has to do with Stopping to Breathe the Air of Eternity. If we could only imagine, get a glimpse, taste the air of Heaven, then perhaps we would slow down and truly change our priorities

Many things have happened in the past couple years since my writing. Mainly just a few job changes, trip to Germany, various counselings, ah… closer relationship to God, and back to martial arts. Shocking eh? Well perhaps I shall talk about some of these past things in the future, but I don’t want to waste time right now on the past.

Part of what I want to change about my blogging is going to be more spiritual. After compiling all my past blog posts from two sites, I have found much of my ramblings about the IT Crowd. Plan on seeing more from the SOAP category.

Naturally there isn’t much they can do to help but offer suggestions on how to recover the damage before it spread to your other machines. One such suggestion that I have used in the past is to rename a backup copy of your bookmarks to the current. Firefox does this automagically so you don’t have to. This time I chose another route saving myself from lost synchronizations by firing up Firefox in my Linux VM image and immediately uploading my current bookmarks before it downloaded others. Simply put this worked great.

Question now is what the heck happened?! The personal bookmarks were gone but there were some other bookmarks there under the normal Bookmark pulldown menu that were non default. They were my bookmarks, just some very dated ones; possibly an ancient backup version I had on disk. I would assume this was a result of a botched sync attempt or previous session close.

I still suggest using Foxmarks if you use more than one install/machine. It does work well and offers secure login/transmissions. They also offer you to use your own server. It requires either FTP or WebDAV. They suggest using WebDAV as they say it’s faster and offers more features they support. For me… I don’t know a thing about WebDAV yet so I continue to just use them.

Late last year I had run into problems with my system dieing for various reasons and I had suspected Firefox. I knelt down and installed the RPM leaving the tarball version in place and changing my app links to point to the correct bin. Soon to follow was Thunderbird as well.

Well today I discovered I had been starting Firefox in a variety of ways. I noticed that Firefox was upgrading to 2.0.0.12 but failed due to incompatible extensions I guess. Then I started wondering why the RPM would allow me to be upgrading in this fashion anyway. I looked at my processes and noticed Firefox running from /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin which is where I put my tarball installation.

I double checked my link to Firefox and it says it is linked to /usr/bin/firefox which is actually /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.10/firefox-bin. So how the heck was the old (newer) Firefox getting started?

In process list I noticed it also had some reference to a website I had clicked on from an email and from there I remembered I launched Firefox via Thunderbird.

I proceeded to remove the /usr/lib/firefox directory. Then from Thunderbird I hit a link form email. Nothing happened. Ugh! Well I have experienced this before but never really fixed it. Mainly just dragged the link into Firefox to get around it. This time I looked around and read many different offers to the problem but only tired one. I believe this fix works the same way depending on your packagers file names; either user.js or prefs.js in your Thunderbird profile directory. Add these lines to the .js file:

user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.http”, “/usr/bin/firefox”);
user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.https”, “/usr/bin/firefox”);
user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.ftp”, “/usr/bin/firefox”);

Now, one trick to this… and be advised… don’t make edits while Thunderbird is still open. Once you close TB, your changes are flushed back to the current TB session. Edit your .js file after you close TB.

Evidently hotplug has been pretty much replaced by udev in modern Linux distros now. Up to now I only heard the term udev but had no idea old or new it was nor what it did. Once upon a time Linux used a static list of devices under /dev. Today everyone is connecting and disconnecting devices with USB, Firewire, and Bluetooth and static /dev alone just doesn’t cut it anymore. Dynamic udev to the rescue!

Wikipedia excerpt:

udev is the device manager for the Linux 2.6 kernel series. Its primary function is managing device nodes in /dev. It is the successor of devfs and hotplug, which means that it handles the /dev directory and all user space actions when adding/removing devices, including firmware load.

The latest versions of udev depends on the latest version of the uevent interface of the Linux kernel which has been updated or introduced with Linux kernel 2.6.13. A system using a new version of udev will not boot with kernels older than 2.6.13 unless udev is disabled with bootparam noudev and a traditional /dev directory is used for device access.

My problem wasn’t this wonderful idea of udev, but with the rules file that sets my camera up to begin with. It appears to recognize it and mount it just fine but as a normal user trying to browse the images, it would freak out saying it didn’t have control of the USB device.

With the help of my friend ‘psymin’, he suggested I look at permissions and testing as root. Low and behold, it was fully browseable. Next I confirmed testing by changing ownership of the USB id as my normal user. This was obviously the only problem I was having.

Before actually figuring out which rule was being enforced I had come across a custom fix (When digiKam Failed to Connect) that created a new rule. I only modified the group as I have a shared group already:

/usr/lib/libgphoto2/print-camera-list udev-rules-0.98 group camera mode 0660
> /etc/udev/rules.d/90-libgphoto2.rules

A small snip of the file:

# udev rules file for libgphoto2 devices (udev >= 0.98 )
#
SUBSYSTEM!=”usb*”, GOTO=”libgphoto2_rules_end”
ACTION!=”add”, GOTO=”libgphoto2_rules_end”

ATTRS{idVendor}==”0553″, ATTRS{idProduct}==”0202″, MODE=”0660″, GROUP=”camera”
ATTRS{idVendor}==”06bd”, ATTRS{idProduct}==”0403″, MODE=”0660″, GROUP=”camera”
…
ATTRS{idVendor}==”04a9″, ATTRS{idProduct}==”30f0″, MODE=”0660″, GROUP=”camera”

Thank you Kelson!

So if the system previously mounted without this new rule, why don’t I just fix it? Because when they do any updates my changes would be wiped out in the event the update didn’t address the permission issue. This new custom rule worked without a hitch and won’t be overwritten so when they do fix it I won’t know any better.

Update: My wife discovered she wasn’t able to print at all yesterday. After I wrestled with it for about an hour I decided to put some logic to it. What was the last think I did since printing last worked? So I renamed the new rule so it wasn’t .rules and restart udev-post (assuming that is the service), reset the printer and viola, it started working again. So I just trimmed out the above custom rule including only my camera in the bold and all is well.

So I ordered him his OEM CDs next day on a Friday in 2006. Naturally he doesn’t get them until Monday. All must have been well since; I don’t recall to be honest. He says he was able to get the box back to where it was without using the CD’s. A year later he has the same problem but the CD’s fail on the last CD. I suspect it is damaged, but he cannot continue. I call HP and ask for a new set to replace the defective CD’s.

An afternoon in Hell is what I spent on the phone trying to get to the right department. After countless pass-offs and a couple dropped calls, I finally get a native English speaking gal thinking I’m gonna get this one real soon now. But no she can’t find my original order of which I had the emails for still. Evidently they decided to just dump all previous orders from an older database without cross-referencing to the new.

At any rate I was refused because of their inability to produce their own reference and besides that they only warranty the CD’s for like 90 days. 90 days!? He didn’t need them by the time he got them. Was he supposed to hose his system by using them anyway just to see if they were in good running condition? That was what I wanted her to rationalize. Plus I wanted leniency for the trouble their call centers put me through all afternoon.

But no amount of budging was coming from her. I did all I could to refrain from displaying my anger. I did however mention that I would be contacting the Better Business Bureau and using good ol’ fashion grass roots word of mouth and blogging to warn others. I did refrain from blogging until now as my case was still pending. So here is what I sent to the BBB:

Purchased recovery CDs online 6/27/2006 due to PC problems. Problems resolved without CDs. New problem just a few days ago 7/23/2007. Attempt to use recovery CDs and find one of last CDs is defective. HP says they only have 90 day warranty. I explain there is no way to test without actually using this sort of media. I also experienced various difficulties trying to get to their technical support lines. All from feign language barrier, poor connection causing tin can/twangy voice, dropped line, passing the buck over and over. I expected a little satisfaction due to this horrible experience but they were hard nosed about not bending the rules. So now I have an HP desktop without an operating system. Service not rendered!

HP did prove to be responsive to BBB, but not without playing some games first. August 20, 2007:

Hello X:

The Executive Office has received your BBB Complaint. We were unable to locate a phone number to contact you. We apologize for the problems you experienced. In order to assist you further, we will need the following information that was not included in your message:

1. Product Number

2. Product Serial Number

3. Date of Purchase

4. Daytime telephone number

Best Regards,
Annette Acosta
Hewlett Packard Company
Executive Customer Relations
3000 Hanover St.
M/S 1247
Palo Alto, Ca 94304
1-650-857-8270

I replied August 20, 2007:

Greetings Annette,

The information is included in-line. This CD kit has been re-ordered again end of July 2007. I do not have any order number or confirmations except for the charge to my credit card as I did not receive any emails this time. So at this point I am no longer seeking replacement CDs as per my re-order. I would like to be reimbursed
$12.08 for the purchase of the first kit that was defective.

On 8/20/07, Acosta, Annette wrote:
> Hello X:
>
> The Executive Office has received your BBB Complaint. We were unable to
> locate a phone number to contact you. We apologize for the problems you
> experienced. In order to assist you further, we will need the following
> information that was not included in your message:
>
> 1. Product Number

The product purchased was Part Number – 5069-6299 Recovery CD-ROM -
Pavilion, North America, Home Edition (34NAHEBLU)
HP Order Number: HPPS-060627-00975

>
> 2. Product Serial Number

NA

>
> 3. Date of Purchase
>
06/26/2006

> 4. Daytime telephone number
>
xxx.xxx.xxxx

> Please either reply to this message or call our office at 800-756-0608
> option #7. Our office hours are 8am-5pm Pacific time, Monday through
> Friday. Any agent answering the phone will be able to assist you.
>
>
>
> Best Regards,
> Annette Acosta
> Hewlett Packard Company
> Executive Customer Relations
> 3000 Hanover St.
> M/S 1247
> Palo Alto, Ca 94304
> 1-650-857-8270
>

–
X

Then again on October 4, 2007 I get the exact same email from Annette and I replied on October 4, 2007:

FYI, I am re-sending this same information to you for the second time.

Forwarding the same email above.

Then on December 6, 2007 the BBB emails me updates to the case. They say:

Hewlett-Packard Executive sent Mr. X two emails asking for more information. Such as a telephone number, make, model, serial number of computer. First email was sent on August 20th 2007 and 2nd email was sent on October 4th 2007. Since customer has yet to respond to either email request. Closing the case.

My response was:

Closing my case is unacceptable!

My two responses in FULL are as below:

and I included with full headers of both emails my responses back to them sparing you redundancy.

This morning December 10, 2007 I got an actual phone call from HP! This gentleman confirmed a little about the case and simply asked if I owned an HP printer to which they would send me a set of color and black ink cartridge for my troubles in place of the $12 bucks I was asking for. He apologized, I accepted and believe… hopefully the case is closed. On December 10, 2007 from the BBB:

Hewlett-Packard Executive Office called Mr. X. Hewlett-Packard offered to send Mr. X two ink cartridges in lieu of sending him a check for $12.08. Mr. X accepted Hewlett-Packard Executive Office offer. Closing the case.

I will say they do have nice printers/plotters and servers but beware of their PC’s and good luck ever getting service on it. Hopefully they handle their enterprise market far better. That I have no experience with.

[root@soyo clamav]# freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Wed Nov 14 09:14:50 2007
main.inc is up to date (version: 44, sigs: 133163, f-level: 20, builder: sven)
daily.inc is up to date (version: 4783, sigs: 35144, f-level: 21, builder: ccordes)
LibClamAV Error: Database Directory: /usr/local/share/clamav not locked

Not a lot of info on what exactly the not locked means, but if you suspect permissions you are probably right. Lets see:

[root@soyo clamav]# ls -lha
total 24K
drwxrwxr-x 4 clamav clamav 4.0K Nov 14 08:48 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4.0K Jul 2 10:31 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 clamav clamav 4.0K Nov 14 08:48 daily.inc
-rwxrwxr– 1 root root 0 Nov 14 09:22 .dbLock
drwxr-xr-x 2 clamav clamav 4.0K Nov 14 08:23 main.inc
-rw——- 1 clamav clamav 1.4K Nov 14 09:14 mirrors.dat

Okay so .dblock is the culprit.

[root@soyo clamav]# cd ..
[root@soyo share]# chown -R clamav.clamav clamav/
[root@soyo share]# freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Wed Nov 14 09:23:19 2007
main.inc is up to date (version: 44, sigs: 133163, f-level: 20, builder: sven)
daily.inc is up to date (version: 4783, sigs: 35144, f-level: 21, builder: ccordes)

Voilà!

My wife discovered her card games and much more. The kids have yet to discover any of the installed games; they just played on their Webkinz site. I finally sat down as well to look at a few of the bazillion games. I first got a little gitty when I saw Doom and how well it performed. It brought back memories of college days. I knew instantly how much better it is now compared to the 386/486 machines we originally played it on. Looking forward to Heritic the same way. I wonder if Decent is available?

I have a 3D graphics card but have yet to install the closed source driver. I need some pointers… Scott, you know what card I have… give me some tips! Will be sweet when I get Beryl going with this too!

I also took a peek at an emulator. Don’t recall the name, but apparently it only works with a select few games and providing you have the data files/CD. More for some older role playing games. Still interested in using wine or other suggested emulator.

Prior to allowing kids to play on the computer my wife had been using Linux with our first Dell. Then she just stuck with XP instead of having to keep rebooting for the kids. They had acquired many educational and gaming CD’s over the years.

Recently I have inherited two higher end machines yet only one is complete and another just a cpu and motherboard. I have plans to use one for the family and the other for a server. Problem is I don’t care to shell out for a new XP license. I got by with the second Dell we inherited because we simply just plopped in our drive from the first Dell and kept on going. These new machines are not Dells.

So I now evaluate how we will fare on the current Dell using Linux. I spent the weekend merging data from the XP side into my wife’s old account. I first started with a new KDE setup and simply used the same background as set in XP and using the default Fedora 7 KDE theme. I fired up Firefox which creates her profile. Copy important character setting files from the XP side into the new Linux profile. On first launch and all her themes and extensions work great! Oddly enough even some Windows-only extensions worked but didn’t need them. (I had installed a auto copy on highlight for Windows use.) Thunderbird on the XP side is in a ‘Thunderbird’ directory and needed to be ‘.thunderbird’ on the Linux side, but worked flawless as well. Pidgin also came in fine but still working out some kinks with sound. Seems gstreamer can’t find its way out of the speakers but perhaps because I have two sound cards.

The kids are very much used to having tons of icons on the desktop for finding their favorite gaming websites. Problem is they don’t work the same on the KDE desktop. For this I simply bookmarked them into a personal toolbar folder and showed my wife where this was. The kids have not had the chance to check it out yet but it did not go unnoticed. They thought daddy erased all their games. In their mind they think this is still XP. I had to keep reassuring my wife that Windows is still there (I just set Linux as the Grub default) for when they want to play CD games. Change so far is not faring well as I was not prepared for this initial squabble over missing icons. This all said before they have actually even sat down and tried anything.

Soon they will discover a whole new world of card/board games, arcade and shoot ‘em up games galore I have installed. Eventually I will be testing their CD games in wine or other emulators; any suggestions here are welcome.

We’re also testing out the auto-login feature that should kick in after 5 seconds or they can just hit enter as I set my wife’s account to be the default selected and not require password. Physical access is king anyway right?

I want my wife to know how to use Gnucash too. For this I created a new group both of our users are members of. I moved our Gnucash files out of my home user and into the common home directory where we can both access. Set the group id for the directory to this new group. This way any modification to the files will allow either of us to make changes even if she or I are the owner.

Will soon see how Day One goes next.

The DVD burning continued and we had no trouble keeping up with the demand… however we did end up burning all of the spool of 50. By the end of the show we only had about 5 left.

The videographer from one of the Bay area LUGs continued his rounds as well. He got to our booth and simply asked if he had interviewed our booth yet. He told us how he would conduct the interview and said he would be right back as he did day 2. This time however he did come back. I was with an exhibitor at the time but managed to escape to grab my camera. The LUGer wanted to interview more than just Kir so others volunteered to be subjects including Scott who also was video taping this. So Scott was first up and the cameras were dueling away. I recorded this from my camera and paused as he reset to make his approach to the main booth area. However when he came in to the booth, my fat finger failed to hit record and as a result I ended up hitting it on when I meant to stop. Such is life. Scott did get this as well as other interviews he tagged along with.

At 4pm the show ended with a sudden demolition of booths that took several hours to set up. The walls came down almost faster than we could remove our signage. We didn’t have much to remove but it took some time to untie.

We had dinner plans with Kir and Kostya so we helped bring the booth supplies to their hotel sharing a cab. They stayed at a rather interesting hotel that was renovated as European style. The rooms were so small they barely fit a bed in them. The patrons shared common showers and restrooms outside their rooms.

We ate at a restaurant next to their hotel called Zuni. Not sure if it was Italian, but seemed to be pretty up-scale. There was like three items to choose from which was 1/3rd of the menu… the remainder (2/3rd) was drinks. My salmon was very very tasty but as usual in these upscale places the portions are smaller than you would expect. Good thing we shared two loaves of bread prior to dinner arriving.

Overall the show was a great experience. I learned a lot about OpenVZ just from listening to the developers and doing some homework after the first day. Something I would love to do again some day. Maybe as part of a vacation to Germany! Who knows… I never plan these things… they just fall into my lap.

Bellingham, WA, April 4, 2007 — The eighth annual Linuxfest Northwest takes place from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., April 28 and 29, 2007 at Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, WA. Exhibits, presentations, and parking are free. All ages are welcome.

Linuxfest Northwest provides a range of educational and networking opportunities for techies, business users, and novices—anyone who wants to know more about the advantages of open source software. The Fest is an informative, low-key way for people to explore Linux and other open source products. LFNW features internationally recognized speakers from leading companies and well-known open source projects, as well as exhibits and demonstrations for a wide range of interests and technical abilities.

Previous Fests have included presentations by leading open source experts such as Jon “maddog” Hall (international Linux evangelist), Rasmus Lerdorf (of PHP fame), and Brian “Krow” Aker (MySQL, Slashdot). This year’s attractions include:

One Laptop Per Child — exciting technology that could change the world

Oracle, Google

Crispin Cowan of Novell

Second Life

Free Software Foundation

Hands-on test drives

Dee-Ann LeBlanc (author and open source expert)

Zonker Brockmeier (Slashdot, Linux.com)

RoboExpo — turning serious technology learning into fun

Again this year, Linuxfest Northwest will feature the LFNW World Famous Raffle of valuable computer products, services, books, vendorwear, and assorted keen stuff.. Proceeds from the raffle help to pay Fest expenses.

On Saturday night Linux Festivities will continue in downtown Bellingham. Events include April Brews Day, a benefit for the Max Higbee Foundation, which provides community-based recreation programs for adults with developmental disabilities. Linuxfest Northwest is proud to be a sponsor. Several Linuxfest exhibitors will be giving away tickets.

Open source is a collaborative approach for developing high-quality software. Open source software solutions are available for most computing needs at little or no cost. They are comparable to and compatible with most common computer applications. Two of the best known open source projects are the Linux operating system and the Apache web server. Other examples include:

Office applications – wordprocessing, spreadsheets and presentations

Email, calendar, contacts and other personal information management functions

Accounting, bookkeeping, personal finances

Games

Educational software

Desktop publishing

Database management

Collaboration; document sharing

Web browsers

Image editors

3D graphics

Digital camera imaging

Programming tools, tutorials and courses

For more information, please visit the Linuxfest Northwest website at http://linuxfestnorthwest.org/

So I prefer/suggest using swat to configure SAMBA. Starting with a clean slate, I removed the homes share and printers. Prior to all this I added my user via the terminal console: ‘smbpasswd -a johndoe’. This is very similar to adding a new system user. Also I used the same user as my existing system user; not sure why but it doesn’t like non system users being added, go figure.

Some non SAMBA defaults from the stock FC5 samba RPM I am using are depicted in my smb.conf file below:

# Samba config file created using SWAT
# from 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1)
# Date: 2007/03/02 13:56:48

[global]
        workgroup = WD
        netbios name = USB
        server string =
        username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
        log level = 1
        server signing = auto
        preferred master = No
        domain master = No
        ldap ssl = no

[USB2]
        path = /home/warren/software/Xfer
        read only = No

Also I am not using the same workgroup as my windows xp pro domain host is using. In xp, I browse the network neighborhood and into my WD workgroup I find the USB share and browsing to it pops up the authentication window. I choose not to save password. I also don’t map to this share. What I do is create a shortcut to the \\WD\USB\usb2 share and have it on my Desktop or quick links toolbar. In the morning I click it and it asks for authentication and am set for the day. No worries about IP address or XP home or XP pro here at work or at home; it all just works.

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 08:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 MST isdst=0 gmtoff=-25200
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 09:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 MDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-21600
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 MDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-21600
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 MST isdst=0 gmtoff=-25200

If you are seeing this then you probably need to fix it some year:

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
/etc/localtime Sun Apr 1 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Apr 1 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
/etc/localtime Sun Apr 1 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Apr 1 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Oct 28 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Oct 28 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600

At first when I found this tidbit I thought I would be just fine since I run my NTP service to keep good time. Well this technically doesn’t correct your computers time. The kernel clock uses UTC time not DST. Your computer only translates the DST from UTC time by the TZ database as shown above. So NTP only changes local time not system time.

Some other background into understanding what I have been struggling with first. I had been using a couple other yum repositories known not to be compatible with others out there. I used them because the current Fedora repositories were not supplying what I needed for mplayer. So lots of newer development libraries were installed on my system. More and more I had been running into conflicts so last week I decided to find the packages I installed and uninstalled/re-installed the Fedora versions after taking the mentioned alternate repositories out. That project went rather well.

After starting to compile Gaim, I found a few more problems with newer existing libs that prevented other needed libs. I had to uninstall those and simply yum install them again.

Compiling Gaim is rather straight forward and was satisfied. Gaim-encryption was another story. After getting all the devel libs all straightened out, I was faced with this:

checking for GAIM… configure: error: Package requirements (gaim) were not met:

No package ‘gaim’ found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables GAIM_CFLAGS
and GAIM_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.

I tried a few different things to help it find Gaim but got my best tip from the Ubuntu forums folks. Find the gaim.pc file and set the path to it as in:

./configure PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

The Ubuntu folks had stated it as:

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/gaim-2.0.0beta3/lib/pkgconfig ./configure –prefix=/opt

I’m sure this would work in this order too.

fdisk /dev/hda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4982.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 40.9 GB, 40982151168 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4982 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 523 4096575 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 524 778 2048287+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 779 4982 33768630 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 779 909 1052226 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 910 4982 32716341 8e Linux LVM

I would do this for all drives, or if I didn’t know what device, I could run through the alphabet. Most recently I was searching for a USB thumb drive I just plugged in. So here is my time saver tip just learned today:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.9 GB, 40982151168 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4982 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 523 4096575 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 524 778 2048287+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 779 4982 33768630 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 779 909 1052226 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 910 4982 32716341 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdb: 30.0 GB, 30000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3647 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 3647 29294496 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdc: 20.4 GB, 20409532416 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 39546 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 39546 19931152+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdd: 22.5 GB, 22527590400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2738 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 * 1 2738 21992953+ 8e Linux LVM

Looky looky, all my drives that make up my boxtop backup server. Will have to post the pic of that here soon.

download > extract > cd into extracted dir
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

I remember there was an easier way that went out and fulfilled all dependencies but I could never remember because I just followed the README file. Today I read a post where at least a couple folks gave the same instructions I recalled using:

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install modulename

Much easier!

UPDATE:
Another poster made another good suggestion of keeping with RPMs. Once you have exhausted your means to find an RPM of the module by using existing repositories either stock for most popular or repos like dag for other minor modules. If you then didn’t find your module there and want to continue with RPM you could use cpanflute2 to convert from the CPAN tar files into RPMs. It’s in the perl-RPM-Specfile package, which you should be able to install via yum.. However I have not used this and rarely find myself insisting on RPM’s in every situation. The only service I see this providing is a quick clean removal if necessary.

The move to a new firewall means a different nic/mac address to my ISP therefore I get a different dynamic IP address. My personal domain is hosted by another ISP but I have full control of setting it up for email and web services. I use it as my default SMTP but have to use a different port than the normal SMTP 25 as my ISP filters them to keep people from abusing and being abused by spammers.

My current email server runs Postfix, SpamAssassin, and MailScanner with ClamAV. (I’m lazy, forgive me for not linking all those.) I have tuned my MailScanner setting to check for spammers against SORBS-DNSBL, SBL+XBL, and ORDB-RBL lists. Lately I have tightened the grip by calling email spam if the sender is listed on even one of these lists. Low graded spam is forwarded to me and high spam gets dumped into another account I use for Bayesian filter training in Thunderbird. Missed spam can also get tagged and a cron-job picks it back up later in the day to train SpamAssassin’s Bayesian filter.

I installed the firewall last weekend and all is running well and smooth. Then on Monday my wife emails several people and I get a copy assuming I was one of the recipients not thinking much of it. Then on Thursday she emails directly to someone and I notice it tagged as Spam. My first thought is that I caused this by over training with some of the latest ‘pump-n-dump’ spam designed to poison Bayes filters. So I quickly retrain SpamAssassin and have her try again but it comes to me again as spam.

So what could it be? The only thing I did was change the firewall. I later discovered the current IP I was assigned was listed on SORBS and possibly other RBL lists. I assumed my previous IP was listed too so this wasn’t my initial conclusion of being the problem but the old IP was not listed. My initial thought for fixing this was to re-write the headers in order to get mail out but I needed to step one square back and understand that it was my server rejecting even tho I use SMTPAUTH to avoid relay rejection. To fix this problem I had to add my IP to the spam.whitelist.rules that MailScanner reads.

In conclusion: My email server started rejecting my own email due to the change of my connecting IP address which is listed in the SORBS database. This was resolved by adding my IP to the MailScanner whitelist.

So in short after having my bare bones install here is my quick and dirty easy to follow steps from Scott’s article:

1. cd /etc/yum.repos.d
2. wget http://download.openvz.org/openvz.repo
3. yum install ovzkernel
4. nano -w /etc/sysctl.conf with these changes:

# On Hardware Node we generally need
# packet forwarding enabled and proxy arp disabled
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
net.ipv4.conf.default.proxy_arp = 0
# Enables source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1
# Enables the magic-sysrq key
kernel.sysrq = 1
# TCP Explict Congestion Notification
# net.ipv4.tcp_ecn = 0
# we do not want all our interfaces to send redirects
net.ipv4.conf.default.send_redirects = 1
net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0

5. Set the default kernel in grub to the new one
6. Reboot using the new kernel
7. yum install vzctl vzquota
8. service vz start
9. yum install vzpkg vzyum vzrpm43-python vzrpm44-python
10. yum install vztmpl-centos-4
11. nano -w /vz/template/centos/4/i386/config/default.list appending this:

yum
mc
links
system-config-date
nano

12. vzpkgcache -f centos-4
13. vzctl create 101 –ostemplate centos-4 –config vps.basic
14. vzctl set 101 –ipadd 192.168.0.101 –save
15. vzctl set 101 –hostname vps101 –save
16. vzctl set 101 –nameserver 192.168.0.1 –nameserver 192.168.0.2 –save
17. vzctl set 101 –userpasswd root:areallycoolpassword
18. vzctl set 101 –onboot yes –save
19. vzctl start 101
20. vzctl enter 101

Okay so that is it in a nutshell. Then this is where I start getting into trouble with my wild ideas. I mentioned wanting to make this my backup server and I normally use Dirvish, but this time I want to try out BackupPC. Now I also have a nice 300GB drive I have used for my backups and I planned on just mounting it inside this new VPS. Problem is I couldn’t figure out how to give it enough diskspace quota. The most it would give was from my 40GB drive and that was a 34GB quota. So I called Scott and pretty much just decided to do LVM (logical volume management) and merge the drives together to make it look like one big drive. This however entailed starting from scratch again as I’m pretty lazy when it comes to trying to figure out installing something like this after the fact.

So I find my single CentOS CD and attempt to boot it but my crappy old Dell has an abused CD-R drive. So I borrow the one out of another Dell and off we go. So when I get back to the point I was last, I run this:

vzctl set 101 –diskspace 315621376:315621376 –save

This gives me 301GB disk space to work with in my VPS. Problem is I was told by Scott there is an rpm for BackupPC but currently there are no rpm’s for CentOS. So this brings me to another task… create another VPS with a distribution that includes rpm package management for BackupPC. I found out the hard way that these guys are yet another that uses caps in their package name and caused me a bit of headache searching for it.

I picked FC-5 for the new VPS as it seems to be the latest to carry BackupPC. To do this I needed to build the template similar to building the CentOS template above.

yum install vztmpl-fedora-core-5

The rest was pretty much as stated above. Of course I forgot to edit the default.list and had to later go back and update the cache after already creating the VPS with FC5. So I needed yum installed on this to fill in the blanks and Scott to the rescue again; I could install this from the host with:

vzyum 102 install yum

This is it for now. I have yet to configure BackupPC. I will have to blog about it later.

So next the coworker produced a replacement drive. One dilemma though… he didn’t have his recovery CD’s since he just moved here and having a tough time finding anything really. So I thought I’d try using my home Dell PC. OEM CD’s tend to require you to use their own hardware to do the installs so my XP Home disk would have to be installed using my PC. Ordered a laptop to IDE converter from RadioShack online; as they don’t carry them in the stores. All is well. Got that installed and next I plopped it back in the Sony. No go. CRAP! It’s an AMD. I used an Intel PC not to mention possible disk parameter differences. Back to the drawing board.

Now the coworker produces the CD’s! Well actually he produced them before I put the drive back in the laptop, but I already had finished the install with all the updates and transferred his data in at that point. They would be handy I’m sure.

So I booted up with the Vaio System Recovery Utility CD and get some dll sys file error. Doing a little research on the exact code I find other related pointing at the RAM. Others had simply re-socketed it but that did not fix my problem. I have an old copy of W2KPro so I stuck that on in hopes to prove the drive was ok and the CD drive was working fine. I attempted to copy the Recovery CD’s to the drive and it failed to read. So the disk is bad? I put the laptop drive back in my Dell PC and boot with the Recovery CD and it read fine but soon failed with a “blue screen of death”. Most likely because it wasn’t Sony hardware. Back to the drawing board again.

So I have a faulty CD drive, Original Sony Recovery disks, and no way to get it going.

Next I used the Live Gparted CD and smacked it clean. I created a small 2GB FAT32 partition and the rest NTFS. Using my USB DVD drive I copied the Recovery disks to the FAT partition and set it with a boot flag. Tried to boot but it complains it can’t find a bootable OS. CRAP! Something I’m missing about the way CD’s are bootable I’m sure. BTW, this is new enough P4 but can’t boot from USB. I have since re-partitioned and re-formatted using Gparted and re-installed W2KPro and find that it fails to boot on the first reboot after installing to the Gparted NTFS. So make a mental note of this. BTW letting the installer do the format (which takes a good hour or two!) proves the Gparted NTFS is not perfect.

So what is next? Running out of options. I found a retail version (I believe) XP Home CD but doubt it’s English. I guess I need to call Sony to see what they have to offer.

The Match is Over

This afternoon I went in search of speaking to a Sony support tech. and found they have chat support. The first guy read my request and promptly forwarded it on to another. Then the java based chat seemed to wig out on me so I had to kill Firefox and try again. This time I got a third guy and I noticed the exact same canned greeting and responses. Even the reply to some questions seemed robotic. Saying “no I don’t have the laptop with me” prompted a “Sorry about that” response.

My goal in talking with them was to find out if there was an alternative to using the boot CD. Hoping maybe there was a floppy alternate. Also to find out if the non working CD required the hidden Sony partition or not. None of which I believe the techs understood. This is a bit goofy too: the hours are from 8am to 3am EST. Why not just be 24/7?

This evening I couldn’t help but to try booting the OEM disk again to no avail. I guess if anything just to record the exact error messages this time. One think the tech mentioned; and pissed me off about was his suggestion to “purchase” the CD’s. As if I didn’t already tell him I have the CD’s already. But this got me to think “maybe I’ll just recreate them”. Using Linux of course and ‘dd if=/dev/cdrom of=vaio-cd1.iso’. Then burn the iso to CD-R. BINGO! That did the trick but not without a last jab back at me. I didn’t have to create all CD’s; just the first one. After finishing the installation, the reboot fails to just a black screen and a blinking cursor. No error or drive activity. Then I remember there was an option to do it custom or more advanced options method. After peeking at the partitioning using Gparted, I noticed the same scheme I previously set possibly untouched. So the second install I chose the custom method which let me choose partition size control and this time I stuck it to the mat.

My coworker who does GIS work here is using a workstation formerly used by another former employee. This PC has seen its day I think. All the form boxes in applications and websites are out of proportion and sorta smooshed into other text. I took a stab at figuring out what it was to no avail. Okay that was short and sweet. Then recently a couple apps started popping up the Windows installer every time the Desktop was accessed. Thinking he must have some spyware or virus, I scanned his machine and ultimately uninstalling one of the two troubling apps to work with one at a time popping up. As administrator things seem to work fine after going through the install motions but only for that session and IT has these locked down so that users can’t do installs. So in one effort to fix that dang form box monitor resolution issue, I install a different video driver and viola! it is fixed. Install one of the pissy apps and wham it’s all crap again.

This box has seen its day! So after finding the resource CD’s I format/reinstall from custom corporate CD’s and install Firefox, Gimp and Google Earth. Then I logged it into our domain but can’t add the computer to the domain as I didn’t have permissions. So I call IT and give them the scoop and all hell breaks loose. At one point I had to stop him (the IT guy) and tell him to spare me the lecture as I just knew I should have called them from the start. Me knowing me and they not, I didn’t want to waste time sending the machine across the States. This issue has been looked at once before to no avail. Heck if I didn’t know what I was doing I wouldn’t have been so stupid to think I could just TRY and see if I could fix it. The best way to fix Windows has always been to format c:\ right?

Well after all that he logged in remotely and called back to ask what the hell some of those apps I installed were. He asked about Gimp and 7zip then said Firefox is not allowed and he proceeded to uninstall it. To shorten further; he couldn’t get the box to register with the domain and INSISTED I send the box overnight to them.

Before they got the PC in their hands I sent him an apology email saying I was sorry for not staying within my domain and on and on. I didn’t want them to hold a grudge over my coworker is spite of me.

About two weeks later the whole company gets an email:

Good Afternoon,

The IS Department has noticed several employees have installed browsers such as Firefox on company machines.

We ask that you do not install or use any browsers other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Version 6 (please do not upgrade to Version 7).

If you have installed any browser other than IE6, please remove them from your machine.

Thank you.

IS Support

My immediate response remains in my Drafts folder today in efforts to bite my lip.

Admittedly I was one of those who had Firefox installed and have since removed upon request stated below. However I would like to understand where the IS department is coming up with this decision. Before I state my opinion, I think it is necessary to give a brief background history of my usage.

I have been a Netscape user from the start before Internet Explorer ever made the scene. Remaining faithful to the line using the Mozilla suites into this day with Firefox. I have supported the online community in seeking bug fixes and support for users. This has always been the good nature of the Open Source community. I advocate Firefox as a far superior application to any other web browser.

To mention any of the shortcomings of Internet Explorer would be preaching to the choir assuming you know its history. I am not saying that Firefox is bug free either. One main difference is that bug fixes are applied within hours not days or even weeks that IE bugs go unfixed. The fact that IE 7 is not recommended yet by IT folks is the same you acknowledge. I understand that IS should disapprove IE 7 solely on the basis that it has not been tested with Webapps. Personally I use IE just for such purposes. Firefox does not work with sites requiring DirectX and luckily there are very few of those sites out there. But to assume that that should be the only use employees’ venture to the Internet is far from reality. I know this is where I should state why I could not live without Firefox when it comes to performing my job. I have thought long and hard about what answer to give, but no I truthfully don’t other than it has been a long time preference of mine. One of my previous careers as a Systems Administrator I converted the office to Mozilla for web and email. As an ISP business support, I advocated proper use of Firefox and helpful/powerful extensions available; suggesting to customers to use it as well in efforts to help keep spyware and other malice off their computers. Detection and removal tools alone should not be the sole method for fending from these attacks. Not placing the target (IE) on your back is the answer.

I hope you and the IS staff will do the homework and re-consider this decision. It’s a great tool full of productive and secure features by default.

Thanks for you time,

So anyway this is most not all of my relations with our company IT staff.

The progress bar got to the end and I half expected the “Reboot Later” button to become available but it didn’t and I started seeing the usual flickering of icons disappearing. Crap! I’m pissed! This wasn’t critical but could have been. So I decided to send IT a bitch email:

I just want to respond to whomever rolls out the workstation updates that I lost about a half hours work just now because I was unable to choose the “Reboot Later” button as it was disabled. Yes I briefly saw the message and assumed it was doing the installs and that the reboot later button would become available after the install. The lost work was not critical and can be redone quickly, but my point is that you need to loosen the grip and give us the chance to save. We are not all sitting at our desks to see these things just pop up out of the blue.

Thanks for your consideration,

Normally they are quick to respond but not this time. Will see what if any response they might have. IMO, they behave as if IT is what makes the company our primary business. I know company IT guys often get brushed off as not important, but in my position as a CAD guy, I generally look up to my superiors being scientists and engineers, not the IT guy. I’ll have to blog again to give a better insight as to why I have such a bitter stance with my own company’s IT guys later.

Today I was reminded of one of Jesus’ stories about what it takes to be welcomed into the kingdom of Heaven in Matthew and Luke. As I sat eating my lunch I was reminded of this because I saw this man there who I see there all the time. He wears a watch on both wrists and loves to clap his hands out of joy as he reaches over his head. To many he is a nuisance and move away; to others they ignore and still others watch as if at the zoo. But I thought that this man; like the classroom of children visiting there for lunch today, didn’t really care much about what others were thinking of him. To think what we could accomplish if we only were like a child who does not worry about what others think. As adults we tend to hold back answering a question in front of an audience for fear of screwing up. He seems so innocent as he should because he is in the eyes of God.

But the second part of the story is a warning to those who might cause one of these children to sin. They’d be better off at the bottom of the sea than to have caused their sin.

Well last year around Thanksgiving my email server secure certificates expired and so I dreaded having to re-learn how to do this. I figured renewing would be cake. I really couldn’t find much in howto’s for doing this. So last year I just created a new one and oddly with an expired CA to the best of my knowledge. At any rate I just did a one year since I figured I would/should have upgraded or moved on by this time now. Trust me I have been trying to but very slowly. So I found a howto for renewing your certs. First off I followed the directions and all was swell. Then trying to get Thunderbird (TB) to take/see the new certs didn’t fare as well. Then I found that my CA expired in like August of 2004! Then after creating new ca and certs TB still didn’t see the new one. Aha! Forgot about the flip side of SMTP… IMAP. I thought I would cheat and just do a symlink to the existing postfix cert but that didn’t go well. Then I found the makeimapcert script and used that to renew one more year.

Trust me last year went much better but that was only because that was when I installed courier. So with this blog… maybe my documentation will help me get this figured out with less pain next year if I haven’t moved in to a new home by then.

So on my own I attempt to print to file and use DOS to copy the file to the device. Here I get “The system cannot write to the specified device.” This sounds like a write permissions problem. Just before I even got the email off to report this to them, I got a message back stating they changed the spool settings and reboot our server.

You see, even in Windows I try my best to avoid rebooting servers. Perhaps they didn’t know you can restart individual services in Windows. Ah well, guess we’re good to go for another couple weeks before needing to reboot.

Well with my history in dealing with IT issues in our corporate world IT team hasn’t been pleasant recently. So I decided not to dig too deep and called, left a message with them. I mentioned the error logs on the printer show different errors stating the stapler failed or the hole punch failed. Since this is a problem on at least three Windows boxes and two network printers I suspected the Windows server as the culprit. In my VMWare Player running Linux, I can print directly just fine.

So IT calls back and I luck out this time as he thinks it is probably the server too. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the confidence to dig into this issue and decides to pass the buck to another IT guy for tomorrow. Uh reboot?!

I think I first noticed I like chumber when I keep looking at cars of this color especially a nice glossy one.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:2

We don’t know what we will be in the end, only God knows. When we do see Jesus again, we will then know that we are like He is.

Father, today is a special day for Kassie and I. Help us to keep it Holy and pure. We celebrate our 18th year of being together. We look forward to many more. Help us be examples to others. In Jesus’ name, amen.

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ Philippians 3:20

We belong in Heaven. Our eternal future is in Heaven. We cannot go there by our own doing but by Christ Jesus. He shows us the way.

Lord, thank you for such a wonderful day. You keep us on our toes! Please give us plenty of rest as we all lay our heads down. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:16

Don’t be afraid to talk to God. Fearing the Lord in this matter is not a healthy fear. He wants to talk and wants us to bring our burdens to Him.

Father, thank you for revealing a plan for handling the finances you provide us with. Continue to give us strength to properly manage your money. In Jesus’ name, amen.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Hebrews 4:15

Jesus our Lord and Savior has strengthened our faith by His doing. Our faith in His is proven.

Lord, thank you for opening my wife’s eyes to some of the resources you have given. Her heart is no longer hardened! Let her growth flourish in your works. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5

God is always by our side. He may be silent at times of testing, but He still remains, always there.

Father, I continue praying for my mother and grandmother to reconcile their past. Help them heal this wound and prepare the future. In Jesus’ name, amen.

We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them. 1 John 5:18

If Christ is living within you, the evil one cannot also live there. Always keep the place for God to want to live there.

Lord, I have been blessed by you with many resources to learn more about you. father I ask that my wife may enjoy these with me, that we may be able to talk about them together. In Jesus’ name, amen.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:13

Simply because you believe everything in the Son of God, you will know by God, what He has in store for us in Heaven.

Father, this is the season we tend to focus on you more. Father, please help us to use these opportunities to turn more people to want and love you more. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you! Isaiah 49:15

As we are only human, we don’t have the power to remember but only through God. He remembers us not our sin.

Father, I sense round two of the colds are among us. Please help ease our suffering that we may continue to share your Word and learn as well. I ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Colossians 3:12

Because you are children of God, we must act like one. We must be compassionate, kind, humble, gentle and patient with others.

Father, your light continues to shine on me. May I have the same ability to reflect your light that they might see you? In Jesus’ name I ask, amen.

You are my friends if you do what I command. John 15:14

If you believe in Jesus, follow Him and do what He tells us to do.

Lord God, as I work on strengthening our relationship, I ask for your help to pick me up as I fall along the way. Thanks for always being there for me! In Jesus’ name, amen.

the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love. Psalm 147:11

God likes to see His children depending on Him and fear His abandonment in their lives.

Father, thank you so much for our safe travel. Thank you for burning your fire in us! Open the hearts and eyes of your families, that they may see your fire. In Jesus’ name, amen.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10

God has a purpose for us. He knew our purpose before the beginning! Through Jesus, we were enabled.

Lord, God, today we are traveling and I ask for our safety and of others. Father, protect us from evil influence and let your light beam out from us. We offer our thanks today, in Jesus’ name, amen.

But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:57

All our thanks and gratitude belong to God. Without Him we could do nothing; with Him we are victorious.

Father, today I ask in Jesus’ name, please ease our colds and ailments. Help us to come clean tonight before partaking communion. Let us be a healthy family to shine your light. In Jesus’ name, amen.

The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them;
he delivers them from all their troubles. Psalm 34:17

When you need help, call on the Lord through prayer. If the Lord sees your trouble beyond what you can bear, He will deliver you from it.

Father, thank you that you strengthen our faith daily by exercising our faith muscle! Lord, help us to remember. Amen

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? Hebrews 1:14

Sometimes God does choose to remove us from danger or death. His angels will come and guard you.

Father I thank you dearly for giving me the much needed strength last night! Today Lord I ask for your wisdom and guidance to wrap up the work week.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 1 Peter 2:9

Knowing from birth who would be His children, God pulls us out of the wreckage and into His arms.

Lord give me strength today. With Thursday’s come Satan’s battle to wear me down. Lift me back up onto your lap Father.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Ephesians 1:3

All our thanks belong to God for pouring out blessings to us on behalf of what Christ endured on the Cross.

Father, today I continue to ask for your help with my extended family. I know this must happen but I also don’t want to cause damage or hurt. Only the truth. Let them not kill the messenger. In Jesus’ name, amen.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

Nothing anyone, nor anything can be done to make God love us more or less. He loves us just the same as He loves Jesus.

Lord, thank you for the truth! Help us to live by these truths daily to help change the way to world has taught us to think.