Ubuntu Tutorials

So there were mixed reviews on my post last week outlining how to install and use the Deskbar Applet + Beagle on your Ubuntu system. I have continued to use it without a noticed increase in CPU usage but apparently others have. I guess we’ll just have to see how things develop in future releases.

In any event, the one thing that I found really lacking from the Deskbar Applet was integration with Google Search. I did some searching, found instructions here, and wanted to pass them on to you. To add Google integration with the Deskbar Applet simply use the instructions below (two steps):

The first thing you need is a Google API key. For those of you that already have one, simply move to the next step. For the rest of you I suggest trying one of these links to register for a Google API key. (note: it appears Google is suggesting use of the new AJAX API. I do not know if this will work for these instructions.)

After you’ve earned yourself an API key you’ll need to enter it into a new file. Try to paste the new key using the step below:

gedit ~/.gnome2/deskbar-applet/Google.key

After you’ve entered your key you have one more step. Use the next command to download the GoogleSearch.wsdl file, which is the last needed piece of this puzzle.

cd ~/.gnome2/deskbar-applet ; wget http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl

At this point you may need to remove and re-add your Deskbar Applet (I did before the Google Search would appear) and you should have real-time Google Search function right on your Gnome desktop! I’m loving it! If you missed the previous post on adding Beagle and the Deskbar Applet you can refer back to it at: Searching your world with Beagle!

Technorati Tags: google, deskbar, beagle, API

Today I have a question that I was hoping the general public could help answer. I’ve been looking for a solution for this off and on for a few weeks and so far I am not finding anything. The question involves backing up a hard drive to multiple DVDs without the need to manually select files and check for remaining space.

I have a drive holding roughly 60G of media files (.ogg audio & assorted video). I use this as my central storage for media on my local network (see Setting up Gnump3d for one of the ways I access it).

I have not backed up this data in quite some time and I would like to archive the data to DVD but I don’t want to manually sift through each file and folder to try and squeeze just enough onto each DVD.

Is there a method, whether via the command line or GUI, that will check the current archive, calculate the required DVDs needed to backup and copy the media files to most effectively use the DVD space? I remember, back in the days of floppy disks, that WinZip would allow to save an archive over the span of multiple disks. I would assume this would be an option via another modern backup solution, but it seems to be avoiding me pretty well.

I appreciate the help. I’d like to get this backed up before the inevitable happens.

Technorati Tags: backup, archive, ubuntu, DVD

I’ve been meaning to upgrade one of my non-production machines to Feisty this last week and finally found some time to do it over the weekend. It’s actually upgrading now as I write this. I wanted to share one tip that I found in trying to upgrade, which could be simply due to my own hardware but it may affect others.

The Herd 1 or daily build CD would not boot on two of my less-than-production machines. Hopefully that’ll be fixed by final release (which I’m sure it will be). In the meantime I thought I would just manually update my repositories to upgrade to Feisty and see how that route worked for me. What I wanted to avoid though was having to download the entire mess of files again considering I already had the nightly build CD!

There are two ways you can do this:

1. You can navigate your way to System > Admin > Software Sources, select Third Party and then “Add Cdrom”. This should prompt you to insert your Cdrom and it will add that as a new repository source for you.
2. The second way to do this (the way I had to do it) was manually. For whatever reason option one wouldn’t work. To add a cd repository manually you can run the following command:

sudo apt-cdrom add

This should also prompt you to insert the CD (or proceed as expected if its already inserted) and add your new CD source to the sources.list file.

For those of you who want to help troubleshoot Feisty during these early stages in development and have an extra (NON-PRODUCTION) machine to work on why not go grab a CD and install it. If you have a similar issue in not recognizing the CD after boot perhaps try one of the methods above and upgrade from Edgy.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, feisty, edgy, upgrade, cd

Over the holidays I was visiting my parents and helping my brother with his Ubuntu system. One of the biggest drawbacks of heading up that way for a visit is leaving the fiber-optic comforts of home and heading up to DSL villa. I swear its like rewinding a decade and hearing the hellish dial-up noises all over again!

In any event, I was helping my brother update his Ubuntu machine and was getting tired of seeing the estimated download time hover around 18hrs! It was about that time that I got to thinking… “my laptop is up to date. There should be a way for him to simply download the updates from my machine over the LAN.” After some Google magic I came across Apt-Cacher and a cure was found!

“Apt-cacher performs caching of .deb packages which have been downloaded by local users. When a package is requested, the cache checks whether it already has the latest version, in which case it sends the package to the user immediately. If not, it downloads the package while streaming it to the user at the same time. A local copy is then kept for use by other users.”

Apt-Cacher will allow you to centrally cache any updates or installed packages on a central machine and help you save bandwidth. No matter if you have two Ubuntu machines or twenty, as far as your bandwidth is concerned your ISP will only think you have one! Below are steps for setting up Apt-Cacher.

First, of course, we’ll need to install it (it only needs to be installed on one central machine).

sudo aptitude install apt-cacher

To test that it is installed correctly you can try visiting the address below:

http://[localhost]:3142/ or http://[LOCAL.IP]:3142/

If you see the Apt-Cacher page the server end of things are setup. There are a few other things you can tweak, and you’ll probably want to take a look at a few configuration options such as allowed_hosts and denied_hosts. You can edit these settings in the /etc/apt-cacher/apt-cacher.conf

allowed_hosts=192.168.0.0/24 (to allow all local machines)

denied_hosts=

You also need to configure Apt-Cacher to “go live” so you’ll need to change one more option in another file. Simply change the AUTOSTART within /etc/default/apt-cacher from 0 to 1.

sudo vim /etc/default/apt-cacher

AUTOSTART=0

to

AUTOSTART=1

And one last option to run on the server machine is to import any existing .deb packages on that machine into the Apt-Cache database. Use the following command to import your current cache:

sudo /usr/share/apt-cacher/apt-cacher-import.pl /var/cache/apt/archives

After you’ve made any of these changes to the apt-cacher.conf file you’ll need to restart Apt-Cacher by using:

sudo /etc/init.d/apt-cacher restart

The next thing to do is simply point your other local machines to this central machine instead of the central repositories. You’ll want to first backup your original sources.list using the command:

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list-backup

And then simply edit your the file to look something more like:

deb http://[LOCAL.IP]:3142/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted
deb http://[LOCAL.IP]:3142/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe multiverse
deb http://[LOCAL.IP]:3142/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates main restricted
deb http://[LOCAL.IP]:3142/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates universe multiverse
deb http://[LOCAL.IP]:3142/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-security main restricted
deb http://[LOCAL.IP]:3142/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-security universe multiverse
You’ll notice that I’ve simply prefixed archive.ubuntu.com with the local network address of the machine running Apt-Cacher and specified the default port. This is a broken down version of a sources.list for the sake of space. From there on everything should run the same as normal.

Now you can give things a spin by checking for updates as normal.

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude upgrade

Everything should appear as normal. Remember you can also continue to use this to install individual packages on each machine. Not all the machines need to carry the same either. Whatever is requested from any machine will be checked on the Apt-Cacher server and retrieved if it isn’t yet available.

For more information on using Apt-Cacher you might be interested in these pages:

How to setup a repository cache with Apt-Cacher

Nick Andrew’s Apt-Cacher Page

Debian Universe Apt-Cacher Information

I realize that my earlier post was a bit short. There are those days that I try to put out a tutorial (based on my daily goal) and end up not having a lot of time. I apologize for the short post, but I’ve got the rest of the details.

After you’ve installed Firestarter you’ll need to initially run it and configure it. Since Firestarter is a security application it will need to be run as an administrator. After installation run the following:

ALT-F2: gksudo firestarter

You will be prompted for your admin password and then firestarter will begin the initial Firewall Wizard. As this wizard mentions, if you are unsure about any of the settings it is generally safe to assume the defaults.

Step 1: Welcome to Firestarter

Step 2: Select your network device.

Step 3: Do you need to share this device with another machine?

Step 4: You’re ready to start creating rules.

As you can see from this last screenshot the interface is fairly simple. You can see the current status (Active) which can be turned off using the “Stop Firewall” button to the top.

You may need to turn on / off the firewall as you create rules. In some cases your firewall will block needed traffic. In this case you can troubleshoot things by turning off the firewall while you get used to creating rules.

If there have been any events (firewall notifications) you can see those listed in the events tab. This is where you can see if anyone is trying to access your machine, where they are coming from and what port they are trying to connect to. As you watch this you’ll be able to create custom policies.

To create a policy simply select the policy and create in incoming or outgoing network policy. A simple explanation of these are:

incoming: what do you want to allow in to your machine.

outgoing: where do you want to be able to go out of your machine. outgoing policies can be used to filter traffic or websites (ie; parental filters, blocking microsoft.com, etc)

outgoing policies can be set using whitelisting or blacklisting policies. of course, whitelisting is permissive by default and blacklist is restrictive. Try a few things and test out your firewall. Firestarter is very easy to use. It generally takes a minute or two to know where to create your rules, but after that you can lock down your machine to your comfort.

Update: per the comment left by Chris below it should be noted that whitelisting is more restrictive than blacklisting as it only allows the sites included in the whitelist. Blacklisting specifically denies only the sites listed in the blacklist.

Technorati Tags: firestarter, firewall, gnome, ubuntu, usage

Network security is an ever growing need these days. You never know what you’re going to find when you step out into the wild world of the internet. Luckily we’re all using Ubuntu so we’re much more protected than most of the world, but there still is reason to protect our computers and networks.

For those of you that are not behind a hardware router (if you don’t know this might be you) you definitely want to install a firewall for your system. Firewalls can be very simple or very complex, depending on your needs. Now this post will not go into the deepest detail of configuring, maintaining or watching a firewall but I wanted to give some quick suggestions for those of you that might need one.

The simplest desktop firewall that I’ve used on an Ubuntu system is Firestarter. It is very easy to set incoming and outgoing network policies based on port, IP, domain, etc. To install Firestarter you’ll want to do the following:

sudo aptitude install firestarter

Once this is installed you should be able to run the program by running the command firestarter or it should be located in:

Applications > Internet > Firestarter

This program should be fairly straight-forward to configure for your machine. The best policy on an unprotected machine is no-incoming policy. It’s always the safest route to be able to get out but not let anything in. Give it a try. If you run into any trouble leave a comment or check out the Ubuntu Forums for more detail.

Update:  See the second half of this tutorial at Using Firestarter.

One of you recently contacted me and wondered what some of my must-read pages are. There really are tons of great sites out there, probably too many to count. I do have a list of must-have resources for any Ubuntu user. This list consists of great places to find help, places to keep up on information, places to volunteer time and talents, etc. In the open source world there is always a job for everyone. I hope you’re doing your part!

Below is my top 10 must have Ubuntu resources for any user. If you aren’t familiar with any of these be sure to take a look. There is always more to learn or always more to contribute.

• Ubuntu Mailing Lists – from news to developers to teams, etc.
• Ubuntu Forums – find timely help on even the most difficult issues!
• Ubuntu Wiki – central collection of instructions from A – Z.
• Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter (RSS) – Keep up to date on the latest developments.
• Ubuntu IRC – a list of IRC channels to find the help you need (or help to offer).
• Ubuntu Launchpad – bug reports, tracking, triaging, etc.
• Ubuntu Rosetta (translation) – if you know a second language donate some time here!
• Ubuntu Local Community Teams – find a team near you and help spread the love!
• Ubuntu Planet – collection of Ubuntu Members and Developers blogs.
• Ubuntu Community Docs – Community documentation for every topic under the sun.

I hope this gives everyone something new to look at and learn. My biggest suggestion is to make sure to find a local team in your area and work with them or, if you’re up to it (it is a lot of work!) look into creating your own local team if none yet exist.

If you’re interested, drop by and say hello on our local team IRC channel, #ubuntu-utah.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, resources, wiki, mailing list, loco, rosetta, planet

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I realize, with everything else I’ve written, that I have never actually outlined how to upgrade your machine between releases. I know I’ve posted about how NOT to upgrade, or how to upgrade during beta but never complete steps to upgrading your machine. For those of you that aren’t familiar with these steps read on. For the rest of you, I hope you’re about ready to upgrade to Feisty in just a few short weeks!

You can upgrade your machine in just a few short steps.

First, you’ll want to make sure that your machine is completely up-to-date on your current release. To do this you can run the following: (note: see my previous posts about automagic upgrading.)

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude upgrade && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade && sudo aptitude autoclean

Once this is finished your machine should be completely up-to-date and you’re ready to upgrade. To start the upgrade process you can try one of the following methods:

ALT:F2 - gksudo "update-manager -c -d"

or you can do things manually by:

sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop (or kubuntu-desktop depending on your main GDM)

sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list

find/replace every instance of [current] (ie; dapper) with [future] (ie; edgy)

It might be helpful, if you missed it, to see my previous post on find/replace using Vim.

Once all instances of [current] are replaced with [future] (and remember you can only upgrade one version at a time) you can run the following:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude upgrade && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade && sudo aptitude autoclean

This will then check for the latest available versions, upgrade to them, upgrade to any additional packages and dependencies and then clean up after itself. This will take a while depending on your network connection!

Once these steps have finished you may also want to run the same command again, to make sure you haven’t missed anything. I have often found that I have needed to run the command 2x-3x after a reboot to get everything just the way it should be. Ooh, and as usual be safe and back your critical files up before you do something like this. You never know if you might run into trouble, and its a good idea to back things up anyway.

This is another quick post tonite. I was reviewing some of the apps that I wanted to writeup tutorials for and came across one that I’ve been using for about as long as I can remember but, sadly, isn’t included in the default repositories. Not the universe or multiverse or any verse that we’re aware of. Each time I install I’ve got to add a third-party repo, install and then remove the third party (I’m not a big fan of using third-party repositories.) You can see my previous posts about it here and here.

So, if any of you MOTU guys would love to make my day and do me the biggest favor (and I’m sure a lot of other people would enjoy it as well) perhaps you could package up AllTray for Feisty (I hope my request isn’t too late for the freeze!)

From the website:

With AllTray you can dock any application with no native tray icon (like Evolution, Thunderbird, Terminals) into the system tray. A high-light feature is that a click on the "close" button will minimize back to system tray. It works well with Gnome,
KDE, XFCE 4, Fluxbox and WindowMaker.

I wouldn’t think it would be terribly difficult to add. It’s a pretty small app but really nice and helps me keep my panel clear by allowing me to minimize apps back to the notification area (yes, like you’re used to in XP or OSX).

Or, if one of you MOTU might be interested in taking a budding package developer under your wing I would be happy to try and take on the responsibility of ‘apprentice package maintainer’, or whatever you’d like to call it. I’ve tinkered a bit with debuild and put together a few custom packages on my own (see my previous work hack Tomboy 0.5.0 release).

If anyone is interested you can find my contact information on the sidebar. Thank You!

/me is crossing his fingers.

Technorati Tags: alltray, gnome, MOTU, kde, xfce, notification area

If you’ve read any of my previous posts you know they all take advantage of APT to install or upgrade packages. If you’ve spent more than a few hours using Ubuntu you’ve probably taken advantage of APT. Anytime you add, remove or upgrade part of your system you’re using APT. I thought I would take a minute today to explain a few more features of APT that you might not be familiar with.

First of all you might have noticed that all of my tutorials use the command aptitude instead of apt-get. The reason for this, from my understanding (and perhaps some of you can address this in a bit more detail) that aptitude handles dependencies better than apt-get. For example, if you install package X which also has dependencies Y and Z either of these (apt-get or aptitude) will bring in the dependencies, but only aptitude will remove those unneeded dependencies when you later decide to remove package X.

Outside of this difference between the two commands the options are almost all the same. I thought I would go over these in a little more detail for those of you that aren’t familiar.

update – this option used with aptitude or apt-get will retrieve the latest versions of packages from the update servers. You should check for updates periodically (normally your system should check automagically from time to time)

search [keyword] – this option will allow you to search for packages by name or description. Do you want to find a package that offers feature [keyword] or [keyword]? Simply use aptitude search [keyword] (or with apt-get use apt-cache search [keyword]) and a list of packages will be retrieved matching your search.

show [package] – this option will show you more detail about the package. File sizes, extended descriptions, dependencies and maintainer information. This is useful when you want to know more about your package. As above if you’re using apt-get the command would be apt-cache show [package].
install [package] – this option is pretty straight forward. If you want to install [package] use the command and your package will be retrieved and installed for you. If you’ve ever installed anything from the command line or used any of my previous tutorials you’ve definitely used this option.

remove / remove –purge [package] – this option will let you remove a package that you had previously installed. Using the remove option your system will uninstall whatever package you want (see above on using aptitude for dependency removal). Using the –purge option will also remove any configuration files that your program had included. If you know you are never using the program again and can safely purge any trace of it, you can use the –purge option. If you might be back (it happens) the config files might come in handy later.

upgrade - this option will allow you to upgrade your system. After running update (see above) using the upgrade command will get your system up to date on anything new waiting on the central package repositories. You should regularly run update and upgrade to keep your system up to date.

dist-upgrade – this option will do a complete upgrade of your system. Often a package will be updated but the new version also depends on additional packages. To make sure you are completely updated you’ll want to also include this in combination with upgrade. A complete set of upgrade steps would be to use update followed by upgrade and then dist-upgrade.

autoclean – this option cleans your system from previous upgrades. The APT system will download the latest package when it upgrades your system. If you have upgraded a package two or three times since originally installing you might then have three versions of that package in your system cache. Using autoclean tells your system to remove the previous, now unneeded packages. This is also a good idea after running upgrade and dist-upgrade.

These might seem like a lot to handle or remember. It really isn’t much once you’ve gone through the steps once or twice. You might be interested in seeing a previous post to automate the updating. One that will update, upgrade, dist-upgrade, and autoclean your system using one simple command.
Ooh, and for a little bit of fun try this: apt-get moo

technorati tags:apt, ubuntu, synaptic, package, debian