Ubuntu Tutorials

I wish I was announcing the release of Folding 0.6 today but I made a mistake with some of the revisions I had and lost them.  Looks like I’ll be starting over on those additions.  Those are (for those that are curious), a local backup and restore utility and also a remote backup and restore.  The remote is going to take a bit more work, but I’m looking forward to that one the most.

In any event, 0.5.2.2 has a few really minor changes.  Some code cleanup (organizing a few more items into functions) and fixing a pending bug on Launchpad.

If you are currently using 0.5.2.1 you’ll want to update.

HTTP Downloads

folding-0.5.2.2.tar.bz2

folding-0.5.2.2.tar.gz

BZR

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

I installed Fedora 8 on my macbook the other day just to tinker and see how the other side live and I wanted to make sure I got a few things written down concerning the installation. I had to dig & dig to get it to work, so here’s to hoping others will not have the same problem. (Anyone else notice there seems to be much more Ubuntu documentation than there is for Fedora and other distributions?)

Installation

The first issue I had was that the installer would begin, load the kernel from the CD and then just freeze and hang. The fix I found for this was using two kernel parameters:

nohz=off nolapic

Once getting past that I then had a really annoying key press repeat error. Anything I pressed on the keyboard was inputted twice. To get rid of that I also used:

irqpoll

In the end, to get the installer to work on my Macbook (C2D, second gen) I hit esc at the installer initial prompt and entered the following:

linux askmethod irqpoll nohz=off nolapic

After installation everything seems to work well enough. I’ve found a few annoyances like the touchpad not having the features it does out-of-the-box like Ubuntu (scrolling, right-click, etc). Also my wireless will work after building from source (also something needed on Ubuntu), but it won’t actually connect to anything. If anyone has any tips in that regard it is a:

02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5418 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

update: the above restriction only applies to NetworkManager 0.7.  If I configure it manually it’ll work fine..

Sound seems to work ok. Resolution and graphics are fine as well. Volume and brightness hotkeys don’t work as they do in Ubuntu, but that isn’t a huge deal. Probably something that can be fixed with a couple quick bug reports. Over all, not too shabby… other than the initial trouble of actually getting it to work!

Suppressing Login Messages

I do a lot of remote remote maintenance via ssh on my machines and one thing that I’ve long wondered about is the message outputted when you login.  You know, the system information output plus the notice concerning the warranty, etc.  Here is the output I’m referring to when connecting to my Sun Sparc Ultra 10 server via ssh:

Linux sparc 2.6.15-51-sparc64 #1 Tue Oct 23 21:46:00 UTC 2007 sparc64 GNU/Linux

The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software; the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Sun Dec  9 12:50:43 2007 from 192.168.0.6

Now, that information is not ultra annoying by any means, but sometimes after repeated connections I just really don’t want to see it.  So, I finally found way that the information above can be suppressed.  All you need to do is create an empty file in your home folder and those login messages will be suppressed.

touch .hushlogin

Run that command, which just “touches” a file into creation with no contents.  If the login system finds that file it’ll suppress the login message above.  Note: if you want login messages suppressed on remote machines you need to create this file on the remote end.

Enabling Login Messages

The login message above actually comes from a file on the machine at /etc/motd.  If you’d like to change the message on your machine you can simply edit that file.

sudo vim /etc/motd

If you’d like to enable a different login message, which can often be used to pass messages to anyone logging into the system, this might be a good place to do it.

I picked up an old Sun UltraSparc 10 this last week and I set it up yesterday with Ubuntu 6.06 Server. I think I’ll have it run my irssi/bitlbee server, and I was also thinking it could be my local DNS/DHCP server.. but this is where I get into unknown territory for my network. As long as I’ve had high-speed I’ve set a hardware router in place and have not had to deal with this. As the title suggests I’m thinking outloud with this post, mainly just looking for some feedback to make sense of how to put this together. Here is my current network setup.

Current Network Setup

I have DSL which comes in the DSL Modem which is configured with PPPoE transparency (I believe) so that the current router can submit the PPPoE login information. The current router (Netgear Wireless + switch) has the PPPoE information and acts as the DHCP/DNS. This then uses an out-port from the Wireless Router back to a Netgear 8 port 10/100/1000 switch, also daisy-chained to another identical switch which all the machines in the house are connected to. (No I don’t have 16 machines in my house, but I have LAN ports in each room for mobility).

DSL -> Wireless Router (DHCP/DNS/FIREWALL) -> Switch 1 & 2 -> machines

Attempted Network Setup

What I would like to do is remove the Wireless Router as the DNS/DHCP and simply use it as an access point. I would like to use one of my servers as the DNS/DHCP server and I suppose that would end up being the firewall as well. This new setup would then be something like:

DSL -> Sparc (DHCP/DNS/FIREWALL) -> Switch 1 & 2 -> Wireless Access Point & Machines

I have done a bit of reading regarding pppoeconf on Ubuntu and I have been able to set that up on the server. The problem was then that the Sparc machine could get out but nobody else could. I understand I’ll need to activate ip_forwarding on that machine and probably put together an iptables MASQUERADE rule, but what else do I need here?

ifconfig shows the PPP connection and WAN IP. I then have eth0 and eth1 (although I’m assuming PPP is using one of those as well?) So we make eth1 the external, PPP connected device, and give eth0 a static IP such as 192.168.0.1? For this machine to allow network traffic to the internal network does it *need* a named server going or would it work if the clients had external DNS configurations (like the ISP or opendns.org?) At this point do I need DHCP server going as well? There are reasons why I would want this (initially the reason for this whole spagetti mess), but for initial connection testing is it *required*? Can the clients just configure static networking on the same subnet?

I guess I’m wondering, at the minimal level, what needs to be wired to what & what services are *required* to allow connection from all the machines? The details on configuring DHCP and DNS I can take care of, I just want to make sure everything is wired properly. Any thoughts?

Late last nite I downloaded the Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 1 release iso and will begin testing soon. I encourage anyone that is apt for adventure, has spare VM space, or otherwise wants to help out to download the image as well. For more information on this release I’ve included the release announcement email below.  Download links included for all major variants, including Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Gobuntu, Ubuntu Studio and jeOS.:

—–

Why long should I linger
In moment’s swift passing
When laughter’s brief banquet
Would lessen life’s burdens
On parchment with pens
In memories sweet stains
There would I sojourn
On wings of the Egret

– Richard Lloyd Cederberg, “On Wings Of The Egret”

Welcome to Hardy Heron Alpha-1, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.04.

Pre-releases of Hardy are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even
frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 1 is the first in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Hardy development cycle. The Alpha images are known
to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Hardy. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-1/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-1/ (Edubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/hardy/alpha-1/ (Ubuntu JeOS)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-1/ (Xubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/gobuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-1/ (Gobuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/hardy/alpha-1/ (UbuntuStudio)

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

The primary changes from Gutsy have been the re-merging of changes from Debian and the upgrade to Xorg 7.3.

Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/alpha1 for information on changes in Ubuntu and https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/Alpha1/Kubuntu
for changes in Kubuntu.

This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a list of known bugs (that you don’t need to report if you encounter), please
see: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/alpha1

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop Hardy, have a look at the hardy-changes mailing list:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/hardy-changes

We also suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list if you’re interested in following Ubuntu development. This is a
low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other
interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu