Posts tagged ubuntu
HOWTO install etherpad on ubuntu 9.10
Mar 2nd
Etherpad was opensourced by google, and has some generic installation instructions. Here’s the translation for Ubuntu Karmic Koala (release 9.10):
How to fix the wifi on a HP Mini 110 Netbook running Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)
Feb 1st
Installing Karmic Koala from a USB drive proved to be a bit less than effortless. First off the http and ftp servers for the netbook-reloaded ISO images were really slow, and for some odd reason there aren’t any bittorrent links for the netbook-reloaded image. You need to go to http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ to find the .torrent link (which is here).
The installation instructions need some editing, too, but the jist is if you’ve got a linux box, use usb-creator — and don’t panic when the usb-creator main window disappears (and doesn’t get replaced with a progress window for several minutes).
So the main glitch was wireless — it didn’t work out of the box on my HP 110 netbook.
How to fix your ubuntu 9.10 console
Nov 28th
OpenDNS updater for linux/ubuntu
Nov 15th
The OpenDNS service is great — it provides anti-phishing and the ability to filter out some of the less desirable detritus from the internets.
OpenDNS needs to be periodically notified about what your IP address is, and I don’t have a windows or macintosh box that’s always on. I do have an ubuntu box, though, but there weren’t any instructions on OpenDNS’ site to do this properly.
Installing Trac on Ubuntu
Aug 27th
Here’s the condensed version, using the installation guide for help:
Installing CrashPlan on Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition
May 19th
Although rsnapshot is super for linux-to-linux backups, I’ve found CrashPlan to work very well as a backup solution for my family’s windows and mac boxes.
The CrashPlan installation works pretty well on ubuntu desktop edition, as all the necessary packages are already there. The server edition fails quietly, though.
Run these steps before you install CrashPlan, and everything should be smooth:
More >
Samba problems with Ubuntu 9.04
May 18th
I was trying to set up samba with a new Ubuntu 9.04 (“Jaunty Jackalope”) box, and was frustrated when windows failed to connect to the [homes] share I had enabled.
It turns out that even if you comment out all the printer configuration in /etc/samba/smb.conf, smbd will still try to connect to CUPS, and quietly die.
After setting smb.conf to log to syslog, I saw:
smbd[30539]: printing/print_cups.c:cups_connect(103) smbd[30539]: Unable to connect to CUPS server localhost:631 - Connection refused
The solution? Add this to the [global] section:
load printers = no
and pick up the new setting by running
/etc/init.d/samba restart
Installing Ubuntu from a USB Drive
May 7th
I just bought a new green server (25-30 watts at full load!) and wanted a brand-new Jaunty experience.
The MSI Wind Nettop doesn’t come with an optical disk drive, nor does it come with IDE support, so my old CDROM drives wouldn’t work — I needed to boot from an old 1gb USB drive.
I found usb-creator was already available on my to-be-decommissioned Ubuntu Gutsy box, but it won’t work unless you clear off enough free space beforehand. I ended up repartitioning my USB drive with cfdisk, then running mkfs against the new partition, then restarting usb-creator.
The actual installation was quite smooth and quick. Thanks to the development team!
Preventing an external hard drive from idling on ubuntu
Jun 9th
I got a Seagate FreeAgent Pro external hard drive for backups (JWZ has a very straightforward article about this). It happily reformatted to ext3, and I kicked off an rsync of /home.
Because rsync figures out what files need copying before it copies them, and there are hundreds of thousands of files in my /home, there was more than a couple minutes of grinding on the local hard drive building a list of files to copy over. While this happened, the external drive idled into a “sleep” mode that ubuntu can’t seem to awaken it from.
This was slashdotted with an sdparm hack, but I believe this solution is better. Copy this new udev rule into /etc/udev/rules.d/50-local.rules (this is a new file that you will be creating):
# Seagate FreeAgent allow_restart fix (i/o errors)
SUBSYSTEMS=="scsi",DRIVERS=="sd",ATTRS{vendor}=="Seagate*",ATTRS{model}=="FreeAgent*",RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/class/scsi_disk/%k/allow_restart'"
Secure VNC with ssh port forwarding
Apr 24th
Need to help out a damsel in distress (username “damsel”) sitting on a remote debian/ubuntu box (“remotehost”)? Have you set up ssh on a non-standard port (port 12345) already? Great. Keep reading.
Step 1: Install x11vnc on the remote machine:
ssh remotehost sudo apt-get install x11vnc
Step 2: Spin up x11vnc on the remote host:
ssh remotehost sudo -u damsel x11vnc -noxdamage -speeds dsl -solid -display :0 -passwd SECRET
Keep this ssh running. -speeds dsl -solid makes vnc more responsive.
Step 3: Forward the remotehost’s vnc port, 5900, to your local host using ssh:
ssh -p 12345 -L 5900:127.0.0.1:5900 remotehost
Step 4: Start up your VNC viewer application, pointing to localhost.
Tightvnc is a great vncviewer and is installable through macports:
sudo port install tightvnc
Then run:
vncviewer localhost