Ubuntu Tutorials

For those that have been having problems with commenting on the blog I am aware of the problem (its b0rken WP2.3!).  I have deactivated a few plugins and commenting worked in my testing.  If you try again and continue to have problems please email me with the error output.  Thank You.

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So I keep hearing all these great improvements coming down the pipe for KDE and v4.0.  I know much of it is available in the repositories and while considered beta at this stage when have I been afraid of a little bleeding edge?  I’ve been running Ubuntu 7.10 since the second alpha release.  I’m a sucker for punishment and like to help squash the bugs before they get to the rest of the world.

Some of you might remember my Week with KDE a while back.  I gave it a try and the community response was really overwhelming.  Submitting tips and programs to look into.  How to deal with changes one environment to the next.  I did appreciate all that help.

For the term of Ubuntu 7.10 I am considering running KDE.  I am thinking about this for a few reasons:

1. Few (if any) of my tutorials directly address the KDE crowd.  I feel like I may be leaving out part of the user-base while just focusing on one.
2. This will really force me to use KDE instead of just looking for the light at the end of the tunnel in a week-long stint.
3. Perhaps I can help improve KDE with continued bug submissions.

I haven’t completely decided to make this move.. I guess right now I’m just thinking aloud.  If anyone has any suggestions, words of wisdom, links to “learning KDE”, etc I would appreciate it.  Also if anyone has pointers to installing the KDE 4.0 stuff I would be interested in looking into that. With the final release of Ubuntu 7.10 coming in just a few short weeks I don’t have a lot of time to sit on this decision.

What are your thoughts on me (and this blog) switching to using and documenting KDE until Ubuntu 8.04?

I realize I haven’t posted a Vim Tip of the Week for the past few weeks. I’ve been out on the road for work running ragged and just trying to keep up. Now that I’m home for the weekend I thought I would try to catch up a bit.

My suggestion this week for all of you that really want to get comfortable and master the art of Vi/Vim is to pick up this title from O’Reilly. VI Editor Pocket Reference.

This book is really handy for quick reminders during the initial learning curve and is small enough to actually fit in your pocket. Yeah, it peeks out just a bit, but definitely not something difficult to bring around in your back pocket or bookbag.

While the more advanced user may not find this terribly helpful (as you’ve probably already mastered most shortcuts) this is definitely a great reference for new users. It also covers the vi relatives / forks like nvi, elvis and vile.

All in all I recommend this book for new users as it covers most of the basics in a quick reference guide style. It doesn’t go into a lot of deep detail though, so if you’ve been using vi/vim for a while now you probably wont learn much more from it.

Please consider downloading the latest version of folding instead.

After quite a bit more work and some very helpful contributions from members of the community I am releasing folding-0.5 “delta”, the folding @ home automated installer and network deployment project. There are some nice upgrades in this release and the code is much cleaner (thanks goes to Jeff Schroeder for that contribution).

Changes in this release:

• folding.sh now supports long and short options for local installation, network deployment, removal or help. (-i|–install, -d|–deploy, -r|–remove, -h|–help respectively).
• uninstaller (-r|–remove) now included.
• auto-creation of proper configuration files vs inclusion in the archive.

Items on the pending TODO:

• menu-based machine selection for network-based deployment.
• more defensive checks for client.cfg existence, perhaps md5um.
• compatibility with *BSD families and Darwin/MacOSX.
• project logo / artwork creation (volunteers?)

Folding is now on Launchpad!

• future beta builds will be available via bzr.
• bug reports should be submitted to launchpad.

Download:

• folding-0.5.tar.gz
• folding-0.5.tar.bz2
• folding-0.5.zip

As usual, if you have a spare machine (it doesn’t matter the speed!) please consider donating unused cpu cycles to medical research. This project will utilize unused cpu cycles on your machine for medical research, yet transparently step aside when you need those cycles again. Best used on servers or desktops, generally not preferred for laptop machines. If you are already running the folding @ home client there is no need to upgrade with this release. folding-0.5 is only needed for new deployments.

For more information please see Folding @ Home at Stanford University.

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the beta release of Ubuntu 7.10 and its variants, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu.  Codenamed “Gutsy Gibbon”, 7.10 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

Ubuntu 7.10 on the desktop features a cutting-edge graphical experience with composited desktop effects, fully automated printer installation, and superior support for Firefox browser plugins.

Ubuntu 7.10 server edition brings enhanced security-in-depth with AppArmor and easy install-time options for multiple common server configurations.

Desktop highlights
——————

• Compiz Fusion: This innovative compositing window manager enables 3-D desktop effects that let users work with, and see, their desktops in completely new ways.
• Printer installation: In GNOME, printers are automatically configured for use as soon as they are connected.
• Free Flash support with Gnash: Ubuntu 7.10 leads the pack with a preview of this Flash browser plugin.  Although still actively in development and not yet fully supported by Ubuntu, Gnash gives a glimpse into the future of free Flash, bringing partial Flash support to 64-bit desktop systems.
• Automated Firefox plugin installation: Beyond the addition of Gnash, Firefox in Ubuntu now supports automatic installation of popular plugins through the standard Ubuntu package repositories, for a richer web-browsing experience with the integrated security support of the rest of the Ubuntu system.

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/gutsybeta for details.

Server highlights
—————–

• AppArmor: This easy-to-deploy kernel technology limits the resources an application is allowed to access and can be used to provide an added layer of protection against undiscovered security vulnerabilities in applications.
• Pre-configured installation options: Mail Server, Print Server, Database Server, and File Server options join existing LAMP and DNS options for pre-configured installations, easing the deployment of common server configurations.

Edubuntu highlights
——————-

• Faster thin clients: Thin clients have been sped up significantly through the use of compressed images.

Kubuntu highlights
——————
As well as the above desktop highlights, the following new features are specific to KDE users:

• Dolphin file manager: This updated file manager gives Ubuntu users a glimpse of the upcoming KDE 4.
• Strigi desktop search: Another pillar of KDE 4 available now in Kubuntu.
• Restricted-manager: Kubuntu 7.10 includes a KDE front-end for easy installation of proprietary drivers, complementing the existing GNOME front-end.

Please see https://wiki.kubuntu.org/GutsyGibbon/Beta/Kubuntu for details.

Other
—–

• On the Desktop: KDE 3.5.7, GNOME 2.20, OpenOffice.org 2.3.0rc1, X.org 7.2
• On the Server: Apache 2.2, PostgreSQL 8.2, PHP 5.2.3, LTSP 5.0
• “Under the hood”: GCC 4.1.2, glibc 2.6, Linux 2.6.22, Python 2.5

The full release notes can be found at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/gutsybeta

To Get Ubuntu 7.10 Beta
———————–
Download Ubuntu 7.10 Beta here (choose the mirror closest to you):

Europe:
http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Sweden)
http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (The Netherlands)
http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/linux/ubuntu-releases/7.10 (The Netherlands)
http://ie.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Ireland)
http://it.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Italy)
http://gb.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Great Britain)
http://de.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Germany)
http://fr.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (France)

Asia:
http://tw.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Taiwan)

Africa:
http://za.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (South Africa)

North America:
http://ca.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Canada)
http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (United States)

Rest of the world:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Great Britain)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible. To upgrade from Ubuntu 7.04 to Ubuntu 7.10 Beta, follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GutsyUpgrades

The final version of Ubuntu 7.10 is expected to be released in October 2007.

Feedback and Helping
——————–
If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help turn this Beta into the best release of Ubuntu ever.  Please report bugs through the Launchpad bug tracker:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/+bugs

UPDATE: This tutorial has been updated to half as many steps.  Please use the updated tutorial available:  Installing VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” : Updated.

UPDATE: For those running VMware Server 1.0.3 there is an updated version available.

As I mentioned a few posts ago (How to Install VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.04) I would be outlining how to install VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.10. These steps are a bit different from Ubuntu 7.04, as the canonical commercial repository is not up to date with the alpha releases of Ubuntu 7.10. There is a workaround however that can help you get VMware Sever installed.

Installing VMWare Server on Ubuntu 7.10

1. Download VMware Server source from the VMware website.
2. Download this installer patch. (source reference)
3. Extract all the archives to some location on your system (tar -zxvf VMware-server* ; tar -zxvf vmware*)
4. Ensure that you have build-essential installed in order to compile these sources (sudo aptitude install build-essential)
5. Install the xinetd server (sudo aptitude install xinetd)
6. Run sudo ./vmware-install.pl located within the vmware-server-* unpacked archive.
7. Select all the default options *EXCEPT* do not compile the modules at this point. (Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for your system? NO)
8. Run sudo ./runme.pl located within the vmware-any* archive. This will launch step 8.
9. Select the default options and this time answer YES to compile the proper modules.
10. Run vmware-server using the command vmware or via your Applications Menu.

Basically, at this point, VMware Server needs to be installed manually from source until the canonical commercial repository catches up and Ubuntu 7.10 is final. Until then this should work for manually installing.

note: if you update your kernel you will need to re-run the scripts to regenerate and recompile VMware Server for your updated kernel. I’m guessing this close to beta and final releases that we wont have any more kernel updates.. but I’m sure that will soon prove me wrong. Just be aware.

UPDATE: This tutorial has been updated to half as many steps.  Please use the updated tutorial available:  Installing VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” : Updated.

For those that have been following the up & down of the blog today I finally was able to get rid of the errors… by basically completely wiping out everything I had and starting over.  You’ll notice the theme is default, minimal plugins are installed, etc.

I’m going to have to spend some time this evening updating back piece by piece.  Until then, the blog should work it just looks a bit different.  Hopefully I haven’t lost anything else critical!

Today’s post is a quickie, and more along the lines of a “package of the day”, but I thought it would be interesting to share.

The time command in Linux will offer you system resource summaries and total time taken to complete the job requested. Usage of the time command is very simple (although see man time for more information).

I used this command last to see how long it took to write psuedo-random data to a 6G USB disk:

time dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb bs=4096

(example output, not accurate for this command)
real 22m1.513s
user 0m0.076s
sys 0m0.016s

The time command can be a prefix to just about any command you run and want a timed output for.  Give it a try.

One of my friends let me in on a project he put together today that I think a lot of you would be interested in. Actually I think it would be a great addition to squeeze into the next Ubuntu release (can some of the higher-ups with a say on the freezes perhaps take a look?) It is a “human” themed gnome screensaver lock dialog. Very simple really, but I think it adds a bit more graphical unification to the Ubuntu desktop–makes the look feel a bit more global if you know what I mean.

Below are manual installation instructions (pending being merged into the official package *nudge-nudge*) and a few small screenshots to give you an idea of what it looks like.

screenshot #1

screenshot #2

screenshot #3

screenshot #4

To install:

Download “Human” themed screen-lock

1. Extract the contents of gnome-screensaver-human.tar.bz2 into /usr/share/gnome-screensaver.
2. Run ‘gconftool-2 -s – -type=string /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_dialog_theme human’

Reverting back to the default:

1. Run ‘gconftool-2 -s – -type=string /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_dialog_theme default’

If you have any problems with this please leave a comment. Or, more importantly, if you enjoy this theme and would like to see it included in the official packaging please leave a comment as sort of a “petition on inclusion”. Enjoy everyone.

This post is a request for information, tutorials, documentation, etc on using SELinux with Ubuntu or Debian.  I am very interested in deploying it and documenting it (as I tend to do here, of course) but I’m not finding much information.  If you have:

1. Been able to deploy it on Ubuntu / Debian
2. Can refer me to documentation on doing so
3. Can give me information on the any status of the possibility

please let me know.  I am perfectly aware that Apparmor has been chosen beginning with 7.10 but I would prefer not to use it.  If I’m going to use one I’d prefer to use SELinux.  If anyone can point me toward making this work I would very much appreciate it.