Ubuntu Tutorials

I just finished atteding the latest Ubuntu Community Council meeting in #ubuntu-meeting and want to report on the latest success we’ve had within the LoCo project here in the US.

Four teams were up for approval and all four of them absolutely did a fantastic job. Recently approved are Georgia, New Jersey, New Mexico and Michigan. This puts us up to twelve teams within the US now approved by the Ubuntu Community Council. I want to congratulate those team members that have worked hard toward that approval. Great work!

Everyone in our “yellow” states are also doing great work as well. If you live in one of the grey states please contact me about participating in this project. We’d love to have you on board!

Just three days after releasing 0.5.2 I’m repenting and reverting a bit with a 0.5.2.1 patch. This removes the renaming prompt at the main installer. Based on a bit more testing and user feedback I realize adding that feature at that point was not the best idea. In the future, installing as normal and then running the -r, –rename function will handle updating the user information.

This is a minor update, but is recommended for new installations. If you’ve already installed folding using this script updating won’t really give you anything you don’t have.

Downloads available here:

folding-0.5.2.1.tar.gz

folding-0.5.2.1.tar.bz2

folding-0.5.2.1.zip

You can also pull the latest development branch from bzr via:

 bzr branch http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~christer.edwards/folding/main

Enjoy

As usual, please send feedback in the form of bugs to https://bugs.launchpad.net/folding

Recently I’ve seen a good bit of discussion regarding 32bit vs 64bit installations of Ubuntu. We’ve even had long conversations at the office on the matter as well. For a long time I’ve simply installed 32bit on my Core2Duo machine, even though it supports the 64bit installation. I just didn’t see a lot of reason to make the step forward. Well, I thought I’d type up some of my thoughts on the matter and get some of the community thoughts…

32bit Ubuntu

The 32bit Ubuntu definitely get’s the most attention as it applies to the wider user base. There are more packages available for 32bit than there are for 64bit, but that gap is quickly closing. 32bit seems to run well enough on most machines, and a lot of people don’t really see the point for desktop use. I do hear a lot of arguments for 64bit on a server, but for a desktop most people just look the other way.

64bit Ubuntu

The 64bit Ubuntu install base seems to be slowly growing. I am one of the recent “converts” to 64bit Ubuntu. While I don’t immediately see any performance benefit I do see some benefit on principle. In the same way that more attention to an application improves the application, more attention to 64bit improves that platform as well. Basically, I think I’m in the 64bit camp right now simply because I believe it’ll never get “awesome” if nobody uses it, reports issues and resolves those issues.

So far I have not had any show stoppers with my 64bit installation. Everything seems to work the same way it did with 32bit. Again, I don’t think I see much of a performance increase, but on the principle of improving the platform I’ll continue to run it. Issues that were previous show stoppers such as flash not being available are now resolved. While Adobe still does not have a 64bit native flashplayer, Ubuntu 7.10 will auto-wrap the 32bit player for you in 64bit when it is needed for installation. So far I have not run into any missing packages for 64bit, although I’m sure they are out there someplace. Perhaps the more users we got on the 64bit platform the more quickly we’ll find the missing packages. Also, if you have 4G of RAM or more you’ll want the 64bit as it handles that amount of memory better.

Many of the Dell Laptop deals now include notebooks/netbooks that come pre-installed with Ubuntu 32-bit, but 64-bit redistributables are available for their higher end machines.

I suppose in the end it’ll come down to what the user is the most comfortable with but, again, if you’re already comfortable with potential issues with Ubuntu and feel like you can help improve the platform, why not run 64bit Ubuntu? It’ll only get better if you help us make it better..

Any other thoughts from the community on the topic? Any concerns you’ve run into? Any other pros and cons you might outline? The comment box is down ’bout two inches

Update: I wrote this quite a while ago and never posted it pending more testing.  I figure it can be helpful in its current state to more users than just myself.  So, in the spirit of release early, release often here are steps that I took for configuring extended display on my MacBook. 

Based on the flood of feedback yesterday with suggestions on getting the extended display setup I’m going to attempt to blog what I have figured out. I’m still not 100% on the steps yet but hopefully this’ll help people get started and perhaps work some of the kinks out of the setup. I would like to get a better proper tutorial, but for now I want to get this written down while its fresh in my memory.

1. I had some odd issues if both displays were connected at login prior to configuration. Login to your desktop without the external monitor connected. Connect the monitor after you’ve completely logged in.
2. Connect the external monitor and generate a new default xorg.conf (sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg).
3. Figure out the highest resolution you want between the two screens (1440×900+1280×800 = 2720×1700). Calculate based on what you have. In my case my external does 1440×900. I add that to the 1280×800 of the macbook and get my total.
4. Edit your xorg.conf file and add the line to the Section “Screen” > SubSection “Display” area. Add Virtual 2720 1700 (your resolution).
5. Log out after saving the xorg.conf file (unplug the external monitor until after you’ve logged back in successfully)
6. xrandr –output VGA –auto
7. xrandr –output VGA –above LVDS

In further testing I no longer have the issue in step 1, 5 above, but I leave it there as others may have similar problems.  In regards to my hardware I am using a MacBook with an onboard intel video card.  Card information via lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

I now use extended desktop quite a bit and the only “issue” is that compiz-fusion is disabled if the resolution goes this high.  Not a big issue, but something to be aware of.  I hope this helps some more of you get extended display working.  It’s very nice

Update: 0.5.2.1 has been released to fix a small regression in this version.  Please consider downloading the latest version of folding instead. 

I’ve been very happy with all the recent feedback I’ve had on the folding project. I’ve been getting a lot of emails regarding use and feedback, and I really appreciate it. Based on much of this feedback I’m release version 0.5.2, which has some updates that I hope you’ll enjoy. I am still surprised at how popular this little application has become. I began this as a tutorial on this site months ago and its continued to improve and expand beyond what I ever expected. Thanks again for all the feedback and if you’re not currently running the folding @ home client consider giving this project a try.

Folding 0.5.2 Updates

• -r, –rename function now allows the user to change the username and team information post installation.
• -i, –install now asks to update username and team information at install time.
• installation path updated to conform to standards. now installs to /var/lib/folding
• installation now builds an optional system cron job which stops the service at 8:00am and restarts at 5:00pm. This may be useful for those that only want folding to run “after hours”. (I would appreciate feedback on this new feature. More information available in the README file.)

As usual, if you are already running the folding client there is no real need to update. If you are interested in the renaming function and the optional system cron usage you may want to update. I don’t forsee any issues with upgrading to add this functionality, but if you do run into any bugs please report them on launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/folding)

Known Issues

• the long options (–function) all work as expected but some of the short options (-i,d,e,r,h) do not work. I’m aware of the bug, just haven’t been able to find the fix yet RESOLVED.

Downloads

Downloads are as follows, available in .tar.gz, tar.bz2 and .zip format for your convenience.

folding-0.5.2.tar.gz

folding-0.5.2.tar.bz2

folding-0.5.2.zip

With the busy holiday week I’ve had I have not been able to sit down and announce some of the plans that we’ve made recently concerning US Teams participating in Ubuntu bug work.  At our last meeting we discussed some of the ideas from the recent Ubuntu Developer Summit, part of which being trying to leverage the great people we have in the local community projects to improve Ubuntu from within.  I’m really excited to announce our first US Teams Education Week, which will be in regards to bug submission, improvement and patching.

If you’re interested in helping out with the Ubuntu bug system, whether it be in learning how to properly submit the bugs that you find or maybe you would like to help organize the piles of existing bugs already reported, please join us for our education sprint.  Beginning Monday, Nov 26th at , 5:00pm PST, 6:00pm MST, 8:00pm EST, etc we’ll meet in #ubuntu-us for some instruction on how we can better participate in the bug system for Ubuntu.

The presentation, including some Q&A with the Ubuntu bug-team, will only go about an hour.  After that we’d like everyone to take what they’ve learned and dive right in!  Additional training, including improving and triaging existing bugs will take place at the same time on Wednesday, and finally patching bugs and working with upstream will take place on Friday.

I’m sure this first event will have a few hiccups but we plan to have these regularly and educate the Ubuntu community (mainly, in my focus, the US Teams community) on improving Ubuntu from within.  I’m sure as we hold a few of these events that the “bugs” will get worked out and it’ll become a regular scheduled project.  Future planned education sprints including packaging with MOTU, Ubuntu documentation and more.

In any event, if you’re interested at all in knowing how the bug system works or would like to participate in some way to the Ubuntu project please join us in irc on Monday, Nov 26th at the times above.  See you there!

I’ve been troubleshooting some oddities on my machine this afternoon and one thing I’ve done to try and find some conflicts is remove some often unneeded kernel modules.  I thought I would outline quickly how to disable and permanently remove the bluetooth module for those that don’t use it.  I realize I don’t think I’ve used the bluetooth system on my machine for months, so I may as well just disable the module permanently.

Permanently disable the Bluetooth module

To disable the bluetooth module from being loaded at boot time we’ll need to add it to the system module blacklist.  Basically your system keeps a list of modules that need to be blacklisted for various reasons, often those that cause problems, and we’ll add this to that list.

sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

append this line to the end of the file:

blacklist hci_usb

You also may want to turn off the bluetooth services within the desktop as well.  Granted they shouldn’t be able to do anything if the module support is not loaded underneath, but it doesn’t hurt.

Disable the bluetooth services

System > Preferences > Sessions should have a listing for the bluetooth service. You may want to uncheck this box or even remove the listing altogether.

System > Administration > Services also contains a listing for starting up the bluetooth system at boot time.  You may also want to uncheck this box.

Between blacklisting the module and removing the services from starting up this should disable the bluetooth system on Ubuntu.  If you don’t use it, don’t load it.  It is just going to take up a bit more of your resources and, for those with laptops, will save power as will if you often go unplugged.

This is an attempt to document the steps I needed to take to install VMware Server 2.0 beta now available for download. Please note that this is beta software from VMware and this should also be considered a beta tutorial. I have not tested these steps to any great degree, but its my hope that this will be a good starting point for those interested and any improvements can be left in comments for future improment.

I should mention first off that the VMware Server interface has completely changed in this release. It is now accessible via a web interface vs the application interface. This took a little bit of searching for me to find initially. To access your VMware Server you’ll need to do so via Firefox (I can’t get the remote console to work in Epiphany).

How to install VMware Server 2.0 Beta in Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”

1. Download VMware Server 2.0 Beta available from the VMware website. Write down the serial number it generates for you at registration.
2. Unpack this archive to a location on your machine (perhaps /tmp).
3. Before you configure and compile VMware Server we need to disable ipv6 support in Ubuntu as it is not currently compatible.
4. sudo aptitude install build-essential xinetd
5. cd /tmp/vmware-server-distrib ; sudo ./vmware-install.pl
6. Answer the questions presented during the installation. The defaults should be safe in most cases.
7. Because Ubuntu does not use the root user account we also need to setup access for your main user. Replace root with your username on line 10 of: /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml (ACEDataUser).
8. At this point I had to restart my machine to put the changes in place. I did try restarting the service(s) after changing the config, but it still didn’t allow access.
9. Access your VMware Server via http://localhost:8222 or https://localhost:8333
10. Accessing the remote console tab to view your virtual machine will also require an extension installed to Firefox. This also requires a browser restart after the extension is installed.

The web interface took a bit of getting used to for me. I had to spend a few minutes in there poking around to find everything. I see some advantages in moving in this direction, but for those more familiar with VMware Server 1.x it is quite a change. All the rebooting and restarting seems a bit “Windows” to me, but maybe this can be improved in the future. Again, at this point the software (and this tutorial) are beta so you get to run it at your own risk and help fix bugs.

I found a really quick fix today for disabling ipv6 completely on Ubuntu 7.10 (not yet tested on previous versions). This might be of interest to some of you that have had networking problems, as I’ve heard disabling ipv6 at least within the browser has been a help here. This tutorial will disable ipv6 completely on the machine. At this point activating or disabling ipv6 probably wont make much of a difference as very few people actually implement or use ipv6. Unless you know you have a reason to need (or not need) this, you can probably safely leave it where it is.

Disabling ipv6 on Ubuntu 7.10

We’ll simply need to change a line in one of the configuration files that loads the ipv6 module to the kernel. As of yet I have not figured out a way to update this change outside of restarting the machine. If anyone has any suggestions on removing ipv6 “live” I would appreciate it.

Change the line is /etc/modprobe.d/aliases from:

alias net-pf-10 ipv6

to

alias net-pf-10 off

Again, at this point you’ll need to restart your machine for the change to take place. If anyone knows of a way to avoid the reboot I would appreciate it.

Please consider downloading the latest version of folding instead.

I spent a few hours this evening wrapping up a few fixes for folding. Based on user feedback I have made the script a bit smarter regarding testing for required components. It also adds an option to change the username and team at installation. Previously this was just part of the deployment function. Ohh, and as this has expanded far beyond what I ever expected it no longer defaults to my username and the Team Ubuntu. It’s now Anonymous and the default team unless changed by the user. I do have plans to get this packaged for inclusion with Ubuntu 8.04 for those that are interested in a packaged version.

If you’d like to join the folding program and donate unused cpu cycles to medical research take a minute and install folding. Download locations available below:

folding-0.5.1.tar.gz

folding-0.5.1.tar.bz2

folding-0.5.1.zip

To install simply extract, enter the destination folder and run:

sudo ./folding.sh – -install

Other options available within the README file.