Ubuntu Tutorials

I was searching this morning for an option or plugin that would allow Evolution to be minimized to the tray. I want to keep it open & get notifications of email, but don’t want to clutter up my panel.

In my search I found a small sourceforge project called “AllTray“.

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 could find this useful for many of the common apps that I use. I think it can still use a little work, but it is still very useable. Go ahead, check it out. (repos for Ubuntu, Debian SID & SuSE)

Well I tried to upgrade my Linksys WRT54G wireless router using the DD-WRT firmware. I downloaded the firmware, upgraded & got a ‘upgrade successful message’ but after that all it seems to be is a brick.

I can’t access it via the web and I can’t get a DHCP assignment. It doesn’t really seem to be doing anything..

Anyone who’s had some experience with this give me some ideas?

I’ve been playing for a while with backup & recovery options for my webserver. For a while now I’ve been using a homegrown bash script that I created, which worked fine, but did have its limitations. Today I found something that I hope will give me everything I need.

Mondo Rescue looks like it should give me the fullblown machine image that I’m looking for. The only thing I haven’t found just yet (mainly due to lack of searching) is the option to automate the process. I want to make a daily complete image of the entire machine. Mondo will do that & pack it all into a nice .iso which also doubles as a bootable restore CD.

If anyone has experience with mondo or automating the process please let me know. Otherwise, my work here is done… for now.

UPDATE: I have just sucessfully run a homemade bash script that automates all of my backup needs.? As soon as I add the entry into cron I will have nightly mondo images, mysqldumps and rync’d results to a remote machine.? If anyone is interested just drop me a line for the script.

The Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Edubuntu teams are proud to present a second Beta release of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu 6.06 LTS, codenamed “Dapper Drake”. This release corrects some serious flaws in the installer present on the Desktop CD in the first Beta release. Although thetext-mode install CD also forms part of this release, it has not been modified since Beta 1.

An updated Xubuntu release is also in preparation and will be announced shortly.

Downloads:
(Ubuntu)
   http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/6.06/ (Kubuntu)
   http://releases.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/6.06/ (Edubuntu)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 5.10 to Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Beta 2, follow these
instructions:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DapperUpgrades

The final version of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is expected to be released in June. At
that time, we will mail pressed Desktop CDs free of charge.

Changes from 6.06 LTS Beta 1
—————————-

 * If the Desktop CD installer crashes, a signal handling issue in Beta
   1 meant that it was possible for its subprocesses to run wild, which
   was reported to damage partition tables in some cases (#40464). This
   has been corrected.

 * A number of crashes in the Desktop CD installer have been fixed,
   including a keyboard selector crash when a country without a default
   keyboard was chosen (#40658), a Kubuntu crash on entering a
   non-ASCII name (#40666), a language selector crash when choosing
   certain languages (#41132), and a Kubuntu crash in partitioning for
   certain languages (#41621). If the installer still crashes, it will
   now try to provide useful information that we can use to fix the
   problem, so please use this release in preference to any earlier
   one.

 * Atheros wireless network cards are now usable after installation
“,1] ); //–>http://releases.ubuntu.com/6.06/ (Ubuntu)
http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/6.06/ (Kubuntu)
http://releases.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/6.06/ (Edubuntu)

The final version of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is expected to be released in June. At that time, we will mail pressed Desktop CDs free of charge.

If anyone is sharing the .torrents remember to update to this release.

So I didn’t get to bed until past 1:00am last nite but I did get wireless working in Dapper Beta 2.

I finally used the bcm43xx-fwcutter package and used the included script found at: /usr/share/bcm43xx-fwcutter/install_bcm43xx_firmware.sh.

I also added a little script to handle some of the oddities included in the new setup.  Note: I do not use WPA/WEP on my network.

#!/bin/bash
###########
interface=wlan0
broadcast=havana
sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo modprobe bcm43xx

# setting wireless device parameters
sudo ifconfig $interface up
sudo iwconfig $interface essid $broadcast
sudo iwconfig $interface mode managed
sudo iwconfig $interface key off
sudo dhclient $interface

(yes, I changed my /dev to wlan0 from eth1 in /etc/iftab)

Continuing from a previous entry I’m trying to decide what to do with my driveless (is that a term?) notebook.  Its a decent machine (HP Pavillion ze1210) but the HDD recently crashed.  I’ve been running DSL 2.2b on it, but haven’t used it too much yet.  I’m not sure what the best use for it would be.

What suggestions does the wide world have?  Live-CD based router?  Firewall?  Email/Web console?  I hate to just let it sit here but I’m not sure what to use it for

Speaking of which I still need to put Orphan and Mini-Me to work as well.  Yes, I named the two new boxes..  I’d like something a little more exciting than a backup machine.  I’ve got two of those already.

After adding one of the two new machines to my network I am faced with the issue of the best way to expand my network. I would love feedback from some of you network admins or those more familiar with the services I’m looking at. Below is my current network setup + ideas for expansion:

Currently I run my hosting via a single machine, server1. It handles apache, php, mysql, etc + email via postfix. server2 is basically a mirror of server1 receiving a nightly rsync & mysqldump to keep the web end of things up to date incase of a crash, etc. It also has postfix configured to take over if needed but doesn’t & hasn’t handled any live traffic.

I was thinking of setting up one of these two new machines as a DNS server. From what I understand this would be the best way for me to expand my web servers (ie; serve sites from multiple machines as need grows). I would also like to transfer email service to a dedicated machine to help spread out the load. I suppose this could be handled via DNS or basic port-forwarding, I’m not much worried about that.

My concern lies in user management. Lets say I setup server1 & server2 to be strictly web servers. If I create a user on server1 or server2 and they go to server3 for email, how are these user accounts going to be universal? Is this thru LDAP/NIS? If so would I, perhaps, dedicate a machine to DNS + LDAP/NIS? Also, do the users need to be created on the LDAP server or would the server reflect changes on each client as well?

Looks like I’m moving into some new territory with this but that’s how we all learn I guess. What suggestions does everyone have for expansion?

I know it has been a few days since the official release but I realized I hadn’t made any mention of it. Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Beta is now available for download. Some major updates are available in this new version of Ubuntu. If you’re able to help with continued testing please upgrade and help make it the best it can be. Also, if you can spare the bandwidth please help share the .torrents so everyone is able to get a copy. Below are some key updates.

• New Installation Menu
• New Live-CD and Live-CD Installer
• Faster Boot Time and Optional Persistance
• UI Improvements and New Artwork
• Graphical .deb Installer
• Gstreamer .10
• Window Server X.org 7
• Worry Free Networking – Network Manager
• Kernel Image 2.6.15
• Graphical Shutdown

For more Information checkout this link. (additional links & screenshots included)

To download via .torrent click here.

So my sister brought over her notebook today and told me it had stopped working.? She said it just gave some error about grub and that’s it.

Well, I’ve been messing with it all day and have come to the conclusion that the HDD is officially hosed.? I could not access it via DSL.? I couldn’t restore grub via Ubuntu + restore / live.? I used SpinRite, which found the disk, but also found a grip of errors.? I’ll admit it didn’t look good from the beginning but it turned out worse than I thought.? Normally I’m able to find a fix, but not in this case.
On the bright side she doesn’t want a broken laptop anymore and this thing runs great on DSL!? I may have just aquired a new laptop..? I’ll, of course, have to use DSL and a USB drive to do anything.? That’s fine.

What would be a good use for this machine?? Firewall? Router?

While I was at work and should have been working I found another cool program. This is in response to yesterdays post about Ampache. I installed it and indexed my collection overnight. I then realized the state of my id3 tags. What a mess! Some of them were empty. Others had incorrect or lacking information.

So, today I found MusicBrainz which scans, identifies and tags your collection for you. Of course it doesn’t always identify everything but it has found & tagged the majority of my collection. The remaining I can handle.

The only downside is its windows-based software (with Linux on the way). I know most of you have access (or closet access) to windows anyway. You’ll figure it out.