Seeking recommendations on Auckland based gun-for-hire

[James Clark]

Looking for recommendations for someone (individual or organization) to support a small Linux site in Newmarket, Auckland.

The site runs:
- Debian + Xen
- MySQL
- OpenLDAP (for email, JBOSS, Samba)
- Apache
- JBoss (J2EE app server)
- Samba
- Cyrus + Sendmail

I have looked through the list of consultants on linux.net.nz and not yet approached any. I thought I'd ask here first in case anyone knows someone with the right technical chops who isn't swamped already and could take on one more customer. Individual or organisation does not matter.

It's a small site. 2-3 servers. They need help when things go wrong, new hardware, power cut crashes, upgrades, troubleshooting. etc. It seems Linux is more reliable than Auckland electricity supply. On average it might be a couple of days a month but has potential to be much more.

So... any ideas?

Also I'm curious: any ideas on how many small (non-IT) businesses are running Linux? Anecdotes?

-Jamie
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[Nevyn]

Post by James Clark
Also I'm curious: any ideas on how many small (non-IT) businesses are running Linux? Anecdotes?
-Jamie

I'd be curious about this also. The tie in to MS Office seems like a
hell of a barrier whereas I've had some success introducing some FLOSS
into small businesses


Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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[Nick Rout]

Post by Nevyn

Post by James Clark
Also I'm curious: any ideas on how many small (non-IT) businesses are running Linux? Anecdotes?
-Jamie

probably most of them run linux on their router :)

I run linux router, server, win7 desktops.

windows tie in is more to do with apps OTHER than word processing
IMHO. Trust Accounting and legal practice management, accessing
landonline.govt.nz, and few other key programs are my barriers.

Oh and openoffice, in a fairly concerted effort at trying it, wasn't
really on a par with word. Then again lawyers tend to have fairly
specific demands for word processing, maybe it is a learning curve
thing.

But I have pleanty of floss on my win7 box. Firefox, putty, pdf
creator, winscp, virtualbox ose (for those times I can't do without my
lin desktop), smplayer.

Post by Nevyn
I'd be curious about this also. The tie in to MS Office seems like a
hell of a barrier whereas I've had some success introducing some FLOSS
into small businesses
Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/
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[Robin Paulson]

Post by Nick Rout
windows tie in is more to do with apps OTHER than word processing
IMHO. Trust Accounting and legal practice management, accessing

yep, i'd agree there:
in our office, it's autocad; various vendor-specific fan/pump/aircon
selection systems for the engineers; accounting software; purchasing
software; and so on and so on

Post by Nick Rout

Post by Nevyn
I'd be curious about this also. The tie in to MS Office seems like a
hell of a barrier whereas I've had some success introducing some FLOSS
into small businesses

from my (draughting and engineering) experience, the use of ms office
in most offices is actually pretty trivial, in terms of cost of
license and complexity of work. there are a myriad of other niche,
windows-specific softwares developed over the past 30 years which
cause make the proposition of switching much more difficult

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[Nick Rout]

Post by Robin Paulson

Post by Nick Rout
windows tie in is more to do with apps OTHER than word processing
IMHO. Trust Accounting and legal practice management, accessing

in our office, it's autocad; various vendor-specific fan/pump/aircon
selection systems for the engineers; accounting software; purchasing
software; and so on and so on

Post by Nick Rout

Post by Nevyn
I'd be curious about this also. The tie in to MS Office seems like a
hell of a barrier whereas I've had some success introducing some FLOSS
into small businesses

from my (draughting and engineering) experience, the use of ms office
in most offices is actually pretty trivial, in terms of cost of
license and complexity of work. there are a myriad of other niche,
windows-specific softwares developed over the past 30 years which
cause make the proposition of switching much more difficult

Actually the tie in to MS Office may well in fact be a tie in to Outlook!

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[Robin Paulson]

Post by Nick Rout

Post by Robin Paulson
from my (draughting and engineering) experience, the use of ms office
in most offices is actually pretty trivial, in terms of cost of
license and complexity of work. there are a myriad of other niche,
windows-specific softwares developed over the past 30 years which
cause make the proposition of switching much more difficult

Actually the tie in to MS Office may well in fact be a tie in to Outlook!

i'd agree there - outlook is usually seen as being the most powerful
email/calendar/etc. client.

it generally doesn't get used to anywhere like its full potential
though, so it probably isn't the barrier that it is perceived as.

[Nick Rout]

Post by Robin Paulson

Post by Nick Rout

Post by Robin Paulson
from my (draughting and engineering) experience, the use of ms office
in most offices is actually pretty trivial, in terms of cost of
license and complexity of work. there are a myriad of other niche,
windows-specific softwares developed over the past 30 years which
cause make the proposition of switching much more difficult

Actually the tie in to MS Office may well in fact be a tie in to Outlook!

i'd agree there - outlook is usually seen as being the most powerful
email/calendar/etc. client.
it generally doesn't get used to anywhere like its full potential
though, so it probably isn't the barrier that it is perceived as.

integrated calendar, contacts, todos and email with the ability to
sync with a wide range of mobile devices.

hmm looks like I just decribed google apps! (which i am usung
successfully in my legal practice, syncing to a android phone on my
part and a nokia phone running symbian for my partner.)

Don't really make use of the online word processing or the like, and
videos are not useful for us, but the basic email, calendaring etc is
fine.

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[Robin Paulson]

Post by Nick Rout
integrated calendar, contacts, todos and email with the ability to
sync with a wide range of mobile devices.
hmm looks like I just decribed google apps! (which i am usung

i didn't know it was that powerful - sync and everything

Post by Nick Rout
successfully in my legal practice, syncing to a android phone on my
part and a nokia phone running symbian for my partner.)

from the few business-related people i've spoken to about google apps,
i get the feeling there is a (perceived - whether it's real or not is
somewhat moot) mistrust by businesses in google, because they have let
their data out of their control

[Mark Foster]

Google Calendar randomly trashed a whole week's worth of appointments (My
LCA2010 attendance schedule, against which I had been blogging etc). Pissed
me off big time and put me off relying on them.

I also quite like the fact that my email sits in my mail client, accessible
to me when the Internet isn't!

Google Apps is useful in some spaces but I wouldn't trust my business needs
to it. At least with the data in-house, it's available to me when my WAN
link fails and any issues I may have are fully within my sphere of
influence.

Btw Evolution talks to Exchange doesn't it? It's also available for Windows.
(I'm yet to try it).

I am (occaisionally) using Evolution on Ubuntu to talk to an exchange server
without drama, and it includes both local and remote calendaring.

Mark.

-----Original Message-----
From: nzlug-***@linux.net.nz [mailto:nzlug-***@linux.net.nz] On
Behalf Of Robin Paulson
Sent: Monday, 1 November 2010 10:41 a.m.
To: NZLUG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nzlug] Seeking recommendations on Auckland based gun-for-hire

Post by Nick Rout
integrated calendar, contacts, todos and email with the ability to
sync with a wide range of mobile devices.
hmm looks like I just decribed google apps! (which i am usung

i didn't know it was that powerful - sync and everything

Post by Nick Rout
successfully in my legal practice, syncing to a android phone on my
part and a nokia phone running symbian for my partner.)

from the few business-related people i've spoken to about google apps, i get
the feeling there is a (perceived - whether it's real or not is somewhat
moot) mistrust by businesses in google, because they have let their data out
of their control

--
robin

http://creativespace.org.nz/
http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/

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[Robin Paulson]

Post by Mark Foster
I also quite like the fact that my email sits in my mail client, accessible
to me when the Internet isn't!

yes. useful for people with laptops and no wireless broadband

Post by Mark Foster
Btw Evolution talks to Exchange doesn't it? It's also available for Windows.
(I'm yet to try it).

hmm, last i heard evolution on win was pretty flaky - but that was at
least a year ago

i'd be very interested to hear of anyone using it successfully in a
business situation

Post by Mark Foster
I am (occaisionally) using Evolution on Ubuntu to talk to an exchange server
without drama, and it includes both local and remote calendaring.

the question is this:
is evolution worth the pain of occasional fuck-ups? outlook is pretty
stable, and may be worth the nz$600 for that reliability. or at least
be perceived as worth it. amortise that $600 over 3 years, and it
becomes tiny in the average business context

[Patrick Connolly]

Somewhere about Mon, 01-Nov-2010 at 10:58AM +1300 (give or take),
Robin Paulson wrote:

[...]

|> hmm, last i heard evolution on win was pretty flaky - but that was at
|> least a year ago

Flakey, eh? That would make it "compatible" with Outlook. Last I
looked (i.e. today), moving email on Outlook to another folder results
in it vanishing from the system altogether. That would have been easy
enough if it went to the deleted items instead of the real
destination, but it didn't. It's completely gone and nobody can tell
me how to get it back. Never have that problem with mutt.

If that's the Office standard, it's easy to replicate. :-(
--
___ Patrick Connolly
{~._.~}
_( Y )_ Good judgment comes from experience
(:_~*~_:) Experience comes from bad judgment
(_)-(_)


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[Mark Foster]

Post by Patrick Connolly
Somewhere about Mon, 01-Nov-2010 at 10:58AM +1300 (give or take),
[...]
|> hmm, last i heard evolution on win was pretty flaky - but that was at
|> least a year ago
Flakey, eh? That would make it "compatible" with Outlook. Last I
looked (i.e. today), moving email on Outlook to another folder results
in it vanishing from the system altogether. That would have been easy
enough if it went to the deleted items instead of the real
destination, but it didn't. It's completely gone and nobody can tell
me how to get it back. Never have that problem with mutt.
If that's the Office standard, it's easy to replicate. :-(

I've been using MS Outlook + Exchange exclusively care of my employers
environments since 2003. I've not had that problem. In fact, most of the
problems I have had have stemmed from 'clever' solutions to other issues -
such as long term archiving of mail server-side.

I have to admit that Outlook is a well-worked Email and Calendaring tool.
But yes, you pay for it, and must run it on a compatible OS.

For those reasons you will still be obliged to make the most appropriate
choices as regards platform.

Mark.

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[James Clark]

Post by Robin Paulson
from the few business-related people i've spoken to about google apps,
i get the feeling there is a (perceived - whether it's real or not is
somewhat moot) mistrust by businesses in google, because they have let
their data out of their control

I get that feeling too, and have avoided google apps for the most part.

There is one cool thing about the google apps: working on a doc with multiple people at the same time. Especially useful when they are all
spread around the globe and everyone is dialed into a SIP conference bridge discussing their edits. Seeing the other participants cursors
in different colours with their name labeled above as they type is quite something.

But that's about the only reason I'd use google apps. The collaborative functionality. Move everything to a wiki when the real-time editing is over.
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[Robin Paulson]

Post by James Clark
There is one cool thing about the google apps: working on a doc with multiple people at the same time. Especially useful when they are all
spread around the globe and everyone is dialed into a SIP conference bridge discussing their edits. Seeing the other participants cursors
in different colours with their name labeled above as they type is quite something.

as part of the olpc testing, we used something like this - a hacked
version of abiword i believe. i tihnk that's only for local networks
though, i don't know how it would perform over the internet

there must be some floss applications out there that'll allow this
sort of collaboration without using the likes of the omnipresent
google?

Post by James Clark
But that's about the only reason I'd use google apps. The collaborative functionality. Move everything to a wiki when the real-time editing is over.

yes, i'd agree. wiki is only useful when there are few edits per day

[Ian Beardslee]

Post by Robin Paulson

Post by James Clark
There is one cool thing about the google apps: working on a doc with
multiple people at the same time. Especially useful when they are all
spread around the globe and everyone is dialed into a SIP conference
bridge discussing their edits. Seeing the other participants cursors
in different colours with their name labeled above as they type is quite something.

as part of the olpc testing, we used something like this - a hacked
version of abiword i believe. i tihnk that's only for local networks
though, i don't know how it would perform over the internet
there must be some floss applications out there that'll allow this
sort of collaboration without using the likes of the omnipresent
google?

I've used Gobby for that. Although it is a plain text editor rather than
word processing or spreadsheet document.

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[Nevyn]

Post by Nick Rout

Post by Robin Paulson
from my (draughting and engineering) experience, the use of ms office
in most offices is actually pretty trivial, in terms of cost of
license and complexity of work. there are a myriad of other niche,
windows-specific softwares developed over the past 30 years which
cause make the proposition of switching much more difficult

Actually the tie in to MS Office may well in fact be a tie in to Outlook!

The tie in to MS Office is, from my experience not from a specific
need, but because that's what people have learnt to use. The majourity
of small businesses out there have an "information system" that is
highly dependant on their secretaries replicating the data into the
right spreadsheet (with the correct formatting etc.). It's not a
function of the software persay but the people and their experience.
This is very likely to type of people who use a double space after a
full stop not trusting the computer to be able to space sentences out
in a readable style. These are likely the sort of businesses that saw
far too much growth and no investment in handling the growth and would
crawl to a halt if that key figure were to disappear for anything
longer than 2 weeks.

Never mind the more specific needs of Outlook which is often
implemented badly at small businesses anyway (not adjusting to
daylight savings for example or having been set up once on a computer
in the corner of a hot office with no one around quite sure how to
administer the damn thing).

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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[James Clark]

Post by Nevyn
The tie in to MS Office is, from my experience not from a specific
need, but because that's what people have learnt to use.

That has been my experience too.

In one site where we got a little momentum behind OpenOffice the
enthusiasm eventually evaporated as the realities of dealing with
templates and documents in .doc or .docx formats became apparent. This
is unavoidable when sharing docs with third parties outside the OOO
world. The format conversion is less than perfect and is compounded when
working back and forth between the two.

The site I mentioned in the original post is only using Linux as a
server operating system. Mail / web server / app server / file server.
The desktops are mostly Macs and there's one or two Windows machines to
handle some desktop accounting suite.

One approach might be to move the Windows into an HVM guest and have the
clients run RDP to access them. Getting slightly off the original topic
here.

Oh, while we're off-topic, this site has m0n0wall on an ALIX for
VPN/Firewall. IPSEC/ESP for remote office and PPTP for individual
guests. [TODO: replace this with a simple OpenVPN solution].

-Jamie

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[Jan Bakuwel]

Post by James Clark

Post by Nevyn
The tie in to MS Office is, from my experience not from a specific
need, but because that's what people have learnt to use.

That has been my experience too.
In one site where we got a little momentum behind OpenOffice the
enthusiasm eventually evaporated as the realities of dealing with
templates and documents in .doc or .docx formats became apparent. This
is unavoidable when sharing docs with third parties outside the OOO
world. The format conversion is less than perfect and is compounded
when working back and forth between the two.

The solution I've created for one of my clients (using a Linux Terminal
Server for the desktops) is to tightly integrate a Windows Terminal
Server "exporting" Word and Excel only (although any Windows application
could be made available this way). When users double click on a
Microsoft office file on the Linux desktop, Word or Excel opens
automatically (using RDP in single application mode) and appears as just
another application on the Linux desktop. Both the Ubuntu LTSP server
and the Windows Terminal Server run as VMs on Debian Xen.

Jan


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[Graham Lauder]

Post by Nick Rout
windows tie in is more to do with apps OTHER than word processing
IMHO. Trust Accounting and legal practice management, accessing
landonline.govt.nz, and few other key programs are my barriers.
Oh and openoffice, in a fairly concerted effort at trying it, wasn't
really on a par with word. Then again lawyers tend to have fairly
specific demands for word processing, maybe it is a learning curve
thing.

Indeed, give me a call in the future I may be able to help.

Cheers
GL
--
Graham Lauder,
OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ
http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html

OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant.

INGOTs Assessor Trainer
(International Grades in Open Technologies)
www.theingots.org

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