MMMeeja

I spend most of my time sat at my ancient Apple ibook. It's old and slow, but set up just how I like it, however sometimes I need to get at my Ubuntu server's desktop - to check a design renders OK in Konquerer or tweak some setting that's easier to do with a mouse than the command line.

Happily it's really easy to use any OS X machine as an X-Windows client. Just a couple of steps will get you on your way...

Allow Remote Logins On Ubuntu

If you have a screen, keyboard and mouse attached to your Ubuntu machine, this is a piece of cake. Login and go to the "System" menu, then "Administration" and "Login Screen".

Use the combo-box to allow remote logins, like this:

Using a remote terminal to enable remote logins is a bit trickier - but not much. Use SSH to connect to your Ubuntu machine and change directory to /etc/gdm.

Look for a file called gdm.conf-custom. If it does not exist, you need to create it.

Edit the file and add the following lines:

[xdmcp]
Enabled=true

Save the file and restart your X server:

sudo gdm-safe-restart

Connecting From OS X

To connect to your Ubuntu box from your mac, you'll need to have X-Windows installed. It's one of the optional packages on your installation CD/DVD. Just put the media in your drive and scroll down to find it.

Once X11 is available, open a terminal and type:

/usr/X11R6/bin/X -query <your_ubuntu_host>

After a few seconds, you should see a login screen.

Caveats

Don't use this technique over an unsecured network. It's possible to set up SSH port forwarding (port 177, TCP fans) for this, but unless you have a very fast connection I wouldn't recommend it.

MMMeeja offer intranet design services and as I've been busy setting up our own over the past couple of days, I thought I'd post an item on the technologies we chose for our office server.

As we're a development company our needs are quite technical (and therefore well served by free software) but there should be some items here that apply to most businesses.

Document Management

We use Subversion for all our document management. Not just source code, we have all of our accounting spreadsheets, contracts, memos - EVERYTHING is under Subversion control.

The Subversion server is complemented by a web interface (WebSvn) that allows easy browsing of each document's history so we can very quickly spot exactly when an expense occured or a contract was agreed.

Issue Tracking

It's important to keep your customers' concerns, bug reports and enhancement requests easy to find, and that's why we use Trac for issue tracking.

Trac integrates beautifully with Subversion, in a relatively unstructured way. This means that simple tasks (such as changing a font) are managed in a similar manner to whole projects and the file changes involved are found easily.

Trac uses a Wiki just like Wikipedia, which means that anyone can update any issue with a minimum of fuss and zero beaureaucracy.

Wiki

Trac's Wiki editing features can be used for much more than issue tracking - and we certainly use them. The ease of posting fact filled pages means that our intranet is the first port of call for information on:

• Travelling to client sites
• New projects
• Marketing drives
• Technologies we use

Nobody asks permission to add anything to the Wiki, they just do it and the information is available to all.

RSS

Both WebSvn and Trac provide RSS feeds of any changes (new issues, pages edited, files updated etc.) and everybody subscribes to the feeds they are interested in to keep on top of the latest developments in their areas of responsibility.

This engenders face-to-face communication, partly because we're a small team and partly because we're all nosey and want to know what's going on.

Not On Our Intranet

It's also interesting to note what isn't needed on our intranet. We don't bother with a calendar - Google Calendar does a better job.

We also don't require logins - the intranet is not available outside the office and we're a small enough team to still trust everyone. That's not to say that edits aren't tracked.

We certainly don't have our corporate identity all over our intranet. Whilst Trac and WebSvn can be customised to suit our design, it's just unnecessary for us.

An intranet that serves the business and it's stakeholders is an incredibly useful tool and one that's easy to mold to your requirements, giving you a great competitive edge.

What tools do you think we've missed off our intranet? Leave a comment below.