Biff Project Manager Launched
Another project of mine has been launched - Biff Project Manager. Biff Project Manager is a project management system that I am building to replace my by-hand method of project management. The first SVN commit has been made and you can check out a fresh copy from Google Code.
What does it do?
Right now not a whole lot. You can add projects and tasks to those projects. Thanks to the beauty of jQuery and AJAX you can edit the tasks right there in the table without having to go to any special pages so updating your tasks is as simple as using a spreadsheet. It is great for simply noting down what you need to do but in the coming weeks it will be expanded to do much more. Time spent on each task is recorded as well as who completed the task.
Installation
Installation is fairly easy. Check out a copy from SVN and put it up on your web host. You will need to edit the ‘public/.htaccess’ file’s rewrite rule to the path that you unpacked it to. Once that is done run the SQL setup script in ‘data/db/base.sql’ to set up a basic database. That’s all there is!
Install Webmin on Ubuntu 8.04
I installed Ubuntu on a second machine earlier this week as a small file server as I’m gearing up to format and reinstall my main computer. As normal with my Linux servers it will run headless with just a power cord and a network cable attached.
One thing I cheat with on my headless machines (at home, never on a production server) is installing Webmin. It is great if you know what you are doing since Webmin gives you an incredible amount of power. I SSHed into the box and fired off the aptitude command to install Webmin.
There is no Webmin package in the Ubuntu repositories. I have no idea why, but it is not there. So, who do you get it installed?
Managing your bandwidth - iftop
Coming off a series of articles on installing and configuring IPCop (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), my attention now turns to actually monitoring and managing the network. One of the issues that will come up is ‘Where did all my bandwidth go?’ IPCop, as well as other *nix distros, include a program called iftop, which displays the bandwidth being used on an interface. While on individual machines this can be useful, it really shines on a router or gateway machine.
Where Did All My Space Go?
Just about anyone who uses a computer has come across one inevitable question - where did all my hard drive space go to? Sure, applications (especially games) get larger every day, but what accounts for all the missing space after you clear out programs you no longer use. What about when you’re not installing anything, but the space is still getting gobbled up? What if you’re on Windows and bereft of Disk Usage Analyzer? Read on for the answer.
Install Bugzilla The Easy Way
With more and more complex code coming along at work, one thing I wanted to get set up early was a bug-tracking software. Initially I tried to install Bugzilla on a few boxes, but always ran into issues trying to get it up and running. If it wasn’t perl modules not being found in CPAN for some odd reason, it was something else.
I ran across a virtual machine prebuilt with Bugzilla installed called Virtual Bugzilla Server, from ALM Works. Just download, extract, and run in VMWare Player or Workstation. If you are running ESX server 3.0 at work, the Virtual Bugzilla Server can be run through VMWare Converter and runs fine on ESX 3.0