Back to 9.04

Since installing 9.04 on my Toshiba laptop, I have been enjoying Ubuntu more and more. This was the first version that was able to detect Wifi networks without any additional work done on my part.
When 9.10 was released I was eagerly waiting for time to install it. On this laptop I have always ran Windows and installed Ubuntu as a dual boot using the Wubi program that is included on the iso. The install went well, I liked the new look and some of the new additions, but there was trouble brewing without me even knowing it.
The problem started when I ran the software updates, the update itself ran without any issue, until I rebooted the laptop the next day.
The error I got occurred after selecting Ubuntu to load was from the grub and it wasn’t so much as an error since it dropped me to a shell showing this:

sh:grub>

Unfortunately, no commands would work so I had to boot into Windows and start googling the problem. What I found was a known bug, more information
here. The forums also showed a number of users having this error who used Wubi to install Ubuntu.

Basically, the is issue is the grub update causes it to fail to load Ubuntu on the next boot due to a config file it seems to have errors with.

This is an unfortunate bug since I imagine there are a number of users, who like me, install the newest version of Ubuntu on some machine to try it out and like the ease of Wubi to do so. Wubi is also very easy for the first timers who want to try a new operating system. Let’s hope that someone can fix this asap and it not continue into the upcoming LTS release in April.

So it’s back to 9.04 and it still works well with my laptop, I will end up keeping this until April when I can expect to replace all my Ubuntu installs with the LTS release.

Installing Drupal 6 on Ubuntu 9.04 server

Per the Drupal discussion boards:

In the last year the Drupal package was not in Debian/Ubuntu, now it is back. So after a fresh install of Jaunty, just type:

sudo apt-get install drupal6

and then you have to restart the webserver:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

And you will see the Drupal install pages here:

http://localhost/drupal6/install.php

Linux Mint 7 — Review

Having used a variety of different distributions for Linux on the desktop, I was looking forward to giving Mint 7 a try. Mint 7 is based on Ubuntu, which in turn is based on Debian. I have used both as a desktop extensively.

The installation is very standard, it asks some basic questions such as how you want it installed, regional and user information. Then it installs the default system and software, very much like the Ubuntu installations. If you are used to Red Hat or OpenSuse, you should have no problems with the installation. If you are a complete beginner, I strongly recommend installing this on a computer that you an use the entire disk and let the installation do the work for you. The install CD works as a Live CD as well to take it for a test drive before making any permanent changes.
After booting it for the first time I was pleasantly surprised at how the desktop does not look similar to the Ubuntu gnome default, but has its own look and feel which looks more like OpenSuse did. I am not a fan of brown as a colour for my system, not sure why probably since I grew up using Windows and its bluish themes. The default green and larger icons are pleasing to the eye and a nice change from some of the other distributions.

The menu system is a little different that the normal gnome desktops, this was designed with beginners in mind. From the screen shot below, the menu is divided into three main sections; Places, System and Applications.

The Places section allows easy access to your file systems, the Systems area gives you shortcuts to various system programs including shutting down and rebooting the computer.
The Application section shows a list of recently used applications and favorites. You can designate a favorite by opening the entire application menu when you click the “All Application” icon and right clicking a shortcut that you wish to have on the favorites section.

Mint 7 installs the normal applications you would get with most standard gnome desktop installs.
There are a few additional “mint” applications like mintBackup, which is a simple backup application.
No games were installed by default which I found interesting, but you can easily add games and other applications by using the mintInstall program.

I have been using Mint for just over a week and having used Linux on the desktop for a number of years, I had no problems adapting to this distribution. Overall I found Mint 7 a nice and eye pleasing operating system. I would definitely recommend this to a beginner looking to try Linux for the first time. I may even keep using this as my default since I have become a fan of the green theme and application menu.

Centos…again

Here is a nice description of CentOS from another experienced Linux veteran:

“CentOS is not your everyday Linux. It’s a server distribution, meant to be used in production environment where users do not care about what applications they have installed. It’s a distro that you will most likely run without any GUI, reboot once every other year or so, if that, and upgrade only when you really must, since the inclusion of even simplest binaries could be dreadfully risky for your setup.

CentOS is a distribution that deals in long-term stability and security. Branched off as a free version of the vastly popular RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS is everything the most important server distribution is, except the expensive, official support from the vendor. Speaking of support, CentOS 5.x versions, which are all based on RHEL5.x versions, are going to be supported until 2014, a total of seven years since the major release launch in 2007.

Essentially, CentOS will be your virtualization server, your mail server, your DNS, FTP, LDAP, and who knows what else. It will probably never play any music or videos or interface with Windows machines. No fancy Flash, camera support or anything of that kind.”

Source

I feel I must speak out on Centos

I read an article this morning about running Centos on a netbook  (link here), my first thought was why you would want to run a server based distribution on a netbook. The writer then proceeds to say that she would not even run it as a desktop or even on a server.

This has me baffled, considering she bills herself as a Linux/Unix consultant and even writes for Oreilly ( here is another article). She does not give any real evidence or explanation as to why she would not use it as a server product. I am sorry but listing a late update to firefox is not valid, you really should not be browsing from a server and may I even go as far to say that most production servers should not even run a desktop (but I will save that argument for a later date).

First of all Centos is based on Red Hat Enterprise source, which is a server distribution. There is no reason to run it as a desktop. The only way I feel it should be run on the desktop is in a virtual environment for testing purposes, which I do on my main work desktop.
If you want to run a desktop version of Linux there are many great one’s out there; Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, and many others.

Secondly, you may have heard about some commotion over the developers of Centos, do a search on Slashdot.org, this was way overboard and had nothing to do with the actual product or its subsequent releases.

Bottom line is Centos is still a good, solid distribtuion for servers, I have used Slackware and Debian and can vouch that Centos can hold its own.

Add an external drive to Linux

I recently bought a Simpledrive 500GB to do some rsyncing backups for my servers. Since it was formatted in the ntfs file system, none of my servers could recognize it.
Below are instructions, using Ubuntu desktop, on how to reformat the drive in a file system that Linux systems will recognize.

First thing is to install gparted, if not already installed, open up terminal and enter the following command:

sudo apt-get install gparted

After it’s installed, you can run the program under System — Administration — Partition Editor. The program will look something like the screenshot below:

As you can see from the next screenshot, the external drive has a ntfs file system:

Now making sure that you have the correct drive selected, mine was /dev/sdb, as shown above, click on the partition and then click the delete button.  After it is deleted, your screen should look something like this:

Now select the partition and click new, I am leaving the defaults as is since it will be running on another Linux system. You can change the file system to whichever you think will suit you best. Click add and then apply twice to start. This takes a bit of time.

After the operation is complete, you will now be able to mount the external drive. I needed to power the drive down and back on again for it to show up properly in the program.

Using Dropbox

For those of you who need access to more than one pc, this small piece of software will replace your usb drive in your near future.

The premise is simple, download and install the software from dropbox.com, and add files and folders to the dropbox folder. When you access the next pc and install the software, those files will appear after a short time, as well, changes to those files will update them on your other pc’s as well.
You can also log on to dropbox’s website to view more information about the files, such as access time, deletion information (there is even a feature to recover your deleted files if need be).

This can also be used as an offsite backup service, providing redundancy for various files on a number of computers.

The basic 2GB account is free, which should be good enough for most users who need access to office documents. The next levels are 50GB and 100GB for 9.99 and 19.99 per month, respectively.

There are versions for Windows Linux and Mac, the version for Linux has not been tested by myself and according to various forums, there may be some issues and further tweaking needed.

I have been using the free version for a week now, and need access to four different computers, and now I can’t live without it.

Essential Apps Used on Ubuntu

Since I have just finished reinstalling Ubuntu, to 9.04. I thought it good to list the applications I use on a regular basis. I plan to update this post from time to time as I find newer better ways of getting things done.
I run three computers, a laptop, home desktop, and a work desktop. I also have various servers running different distro’s, but that topic is outside the scope of this post.
Here are the details:

Home – just upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04/dual boot into Windows XP

Work – Ubuntu 8.04/dual boot into Windows XP

Laptop – Ubuntu 7.10-the only version that will run wireless, it’s old, but it works!

Office & email
I live in the cloud when it comes to creating docs and doing emails, Google’s cloud that it. I have stopped using openoffice for a few months now and really using Google docs as my main editor for word and excel files. Since I do not do much in the way of complex formulas or documents, I do not really need an overblown or expensive editor.
Same thing with emails, I use Gmail. I stopped using Thunderbird to download my emails for the web version of the Gmail service. I admit I was not a big fan of it when it first came out, but now I am used to it and prefer it.
I am currently in the process of using Google’s calendar service as well. There is only one problem with this, you need a reliable Internet connection, if my home one goes down for a long period, it will be a nuisance to find a public wifi spot to do most of my work.

Media
VLC – for movie playing, I hear the Mplayer is better so I may switch someday. For now it does the job. This app is not installed on Ubuntu by default, but the VLC’s website has a good explanation of how to install it here.

Audacity – this is a great music editor I like to use to create my own ring tones! Link

Internet
Firefox – do I really need to explain this?

Filezilla – I have basic FTP needs and this open source program does it all for me, link.

Deluge – for torrent downloads, this is available to install using “Add/Remove..”

Coding

Gedit – I still do some hand coding for php and other web development as well as I try to work on my bash scripting. I use this program most of the time, which is installed by default on Ubuntu. For text editing, I prefer nano….

Games
I admit I still prefer Windows to play my games, one of the only reason I still dual boot. I do enjoy some of the games that are installed or available via the repositories. My favorite at the time is Chromium.

That’s about all I use, when you think about it, it’s not much. And I need to give credit where it’s due, I was inspired to write this post from this article on Linux Journal.

Quick and dirty Samba setup – reprint

Since Linux.com’s website has been taken over by the Linux Foundation, I am going to reprint my articles I wrote for them starting with the one I feel is still relevant. I wrote this article on Samba after setting it up for the hundredth time for some clients. Originally was written for Slackware, but I have modified it to suit Ubuntu Servers.

Samba is an open source project that allows Windows users to connect to a Linux server from which to share data. If you are looking for a simple, affordable home file server, or need more disk space on your office network, a Linux server with Samba is the way to go. Linux along with Samba offers a stable, secure environment that is available at no cost, along with features such as remote administration, immunity to Windows viruses, and the ability to run on low-end machines. Here’s how you can set up a simple Samba server on Slackware for SOHO use.

Most current Linux distributions, including Ubuntu Server edition, have Samba already installed and running after the system boots. This article assumes that Samba has been installed. The commands work for Ubuntu Server 8.04, and likely many other Linux distros.

If you do not have Samba installed and the server is already up and running, use this command to install it:
sudo aptitude install samba

The first step is to create a share folder on your hard drive; for instance, /disk2/data. After that, you need to edit the smb.conf file, found in /etc/samba, and make it look something like this:

# Global parameters
[global]
       workgroup = HOME
       netbios name = SAMBA
       server string = Samba Server %v
       map to guest = Bad User
       log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
       max log size = 50
       socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
       preferred master = No
       local master = No
       dns proxy = No
       security = User

# Share
[Data]
       path = /disk2/data
       valid users = jonabyte

       read only = No
       create mask = 0777
       directory mask = 0777

You can copy and paste this into your conf file or make changes to your existing one.

The workgroup name needs to be the workgroup of your Windows computers, or your domain name. The netbios name is what will appear when you access the Linux computer from Windows. I am currently running a Windows domain with this setup, so I have the preferred master and local master set to no to avoid both servers from attempting to be the
master browser. This will eliminate network conflicts on your Windows computers that can cause network-related outages.

For the share details, specify the valid users, or set them up later. In that section you can allow users to create their own folder and files for all to access.

The next step is to add users by the following command:

# useradd -c "Jonabyte" jonabyte
# smbpasswd -a joel
New SMB password: secret
Reenter SMB password: secret

Added user jonabyte

Next, run the
testparm
command to ensure that the conf file is valid. If it returns no errors, restart Samba with the command
/etc/init.d/samba restart (you can also use start and stop with this command)

If you would like to tidy up your smb.conf file, the following commands will back up the file, then remove all the comments for easier reading:

# cd /etc/samba
# cp -a smb.conf smb.conf.master
# testparm -s smb.conf.master > smb.conf

Now you’re ready to test Samba. On a Windows computer, you can either map a drive to the Samba server or access the drive using the Start-Run command and typing
\\Samba\data
"Samba" being the server name and "data" being the shared folder.

One disclaimer: this setup serves a small network or a home network. For a larger user base and more complex network configuration, you may want to use the documentation provided on the Samba Web site.

Protect your Windows PC…

In case you have not heard, there is a lot of activity surrounding a botnet that is to do something horrible tomorrow, April 1, 2009. Odds are it will not be as bad as it sounds, but if you are infected you should get it cleaned. Here are somethings to do to help prevent whatever might happen.

Install the patch Microsoft released last October, download it here.

Install the Autorun patch from Microsoft, released last month, download it here.

Go to windowsupdate.com and apply all the critical updates. (If you cannot get to this website, then you are actually infected and need to download the removal tool from another non-infected computer and run it on the infected computer).

Finally, make sure your antivirus software is up to date and running in the background.

Good luck.