Posts Tagged ‘ubuntu’

Proxying all Linux Traffic – set web access for Ubuntu behind a proxy


2010
10.22

So that it’s documented… I’m using port 8080 as the default port as the likelyhood of your upstream proxy being on 8080 is high – else, typical proxy ports are, of course, 80, 800 (transpartent), 8000, 3128 (squid)

To force your server to force web traffic via a proxy, just two quick things to set – in /etc/environment, export one (or two) variables: (more…)

End of life for Ubuntu versions


2010
07.12

In the story relating to release upgrades for Ubuntu, below the end-of-life table for the Ubutu Releases from the Ubuntu Wiki – just to have it all in one place; I’m only including the LTS (long-term support) editions, as these should be the only ones deployed on live production systems. In the meantime, Maverick Meerkat is due in October 2010, supported for 2 years. (more…)

[SOLVED] phpSysInfo – failed to open stream on Ubuntu 10.04?


2010
06.15

phpsysinfo eval : 2 Message : parse_ini_file(/usr/share/phpsysinfo/data/distros.ini): failed to open stream: No such file or directory File

There is a simple fix for this in version 3.0.5:
(more…)

[SOLVED] mysql-server5.1.5.141-3ubuntu12.1 hangs on upgrade


2010
06.15

There are a lot of words about the MySQL upgrade on Ubuntu 10.04 (64 bit specifically, perhaps the 32bit version too?) — it just hangs:

You get the hopeful message:

Preparing to replace mysql-server-5.1 5.1.41-3ubuntu12.1

but then nothing happens and everything just hangs. (more…)

Maverick Meerkat Alpha 1 (Ubuntu 10.10) is out


2010
06.04

Quick note – Ubuntu 10.10 – Maverick Meerkat is out. Mark Shuttleworth had already given a vision for it back in April 2010.

Let the “light”ning commence! :)

“Maverick Meerkat” is the code name for Ubuntu 10.10, scheduled for release on 10 October 2010. See the Maverick release schedule. A quick sketch-up roadmap is over here.

Symlinks (symbolic links) in Samba Ubuntu for Windows


2010
06.04

To enable symlinks in Samba for filesharing across platforms inWindows, modify

/etc/smb/samba.conf

and add in the [global] section:

follow symlinks = yes
unix extensions = no

There has been some discussion about

wide symlinks = yes

However, due to the attack vector on Samba servers from Windows allowing file traversion, back in February 2010, you may want to force-set wide symlinks to no– it works without that declaration and is set to no by default.

Samba cheat sheet – Ubuntu


2010
06.02

Samba. Whopping goodness. Here are a few notes that help in the setup – from user creation, to directory settings etc

This blog post contains a few lessons learnt and thus by extension a migration plan from a Windows file server to a Samba-based one running on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I look at users, system vs smbpasswd user creation and linking (set that up in Webmin before you start, as well as for groups), share setups, general permissions and some very basic troubleshooting (as there weren’t many troubles, just headaches.) (more…)

Upgrade your Ubuntu Distro from the Command Line – Server or Desktop


2010
06.01

What release / version are you running?

cat /etc/lsb-release

or

cat /etc/issue

But you knew that already — to upgrade the version of the Ubuntu installation you have is quite simple – just storing it so that I have it somewhere :) (more…)

Install Webmin on Ubuntu


2010
05.31

Just a quick note (as I keep forgetting, and a cut-and-paste solution is a quicker time to market) – but you knew that already. Installing Webmin is quite simple (download directly, or from the mirrors). Currently, 1.510-2 is the latest version – check on www.webmin.com for further details. As an aside, the book Webmin Kompakt – by Holger Reibold – is available for download!

So here’s a simple step-by-step: (more…)

Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04) LTS is out


2010
04.29

They’ve passed their RC status and have moved into full Long-Term Release for Ubuntu Lucid Lynx — local mirrors are still showing the RC version, but it’s out!

What’s new?

  • F-Spot replaces the GIMP
  • PiTiVi video editor added
  • GNOME 2.30
  • New themes: Ambiance and Radiance
  • New wallpaper
  • Linux kernel 2.6.32
  • New nVidia hardware driver
  • Gwibber social media application
  • Faster boot time, with a different look and feel on the bootsplash screen
  • Ubuntu One adds contacts and bookmark sharing
  • Ubuntu One music store integrated into Ryhthmbox
  • Ubuntu Software Center 2.0

I’ve only played with the 10.04 Server edition so far, and the faster boot time is definately a big win (though some regressive network driver support still needed to be ironed out – hopefully sorted for the final release…)

Yay!!! Well done, guys!! Thanks for a new, even more sparkly LTS!

OpenSSL v1 released after 11 years of development


2010
03.30

After a long, hard struggle of 11 years, which started with these two entries:

23-Dec-1998:Released OpenSSL 0.9.1c
23-Dec-1998:Official start of the OpenSSL project

we are now at the point of “a major release” with v1.0.0 being made available. Fighting tooth and nail not to be a 1.0.0, we’ve seen iterations such as 0.9.8d to 0.9.8n (taking a page out of Google’s book of running pre-release?), though, to be fair, they started at 0.9.1c.

Go on, then — go and get it!

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS now in beta


2010
03.20

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (beta) now out...

Ubuntu 10.04 went beta yesterday afternoon, with downloads at http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.04/, otherwise from the download mirrorsLucid Lynx, as it’s called, enjoys LTS support (ie 5 years out the box).

This version promises as a better (and faster) boot experience, new themes, version 2.6.32 as the Linux kernel, Firefox as default browser — with default browser page changed to Yahoo! (that’s new!) nVidia hardware support using open source drivers has improved, and a whack of new features for the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud have been included. (more…)

Postfix maximum individual mail size and mailbox size


2009
10.14

If you’re getting the "5.3.4 Messag exceeds fixed limit” error, check on the default vs set values in your /etc/postfix/main.cf using
postconf -d (for the default)
and
postconf -n (for the values you have set manually in the main.cf)
Default for message_size_limit (maximum size per mail) is 10240000 (bytes, ie approx 10MB)

Up this to your desired value, eg 30MB by setting
postconf -e "message_size_limit = 30720000"
specifiying the size in bytes.
You can reset the maximum mailbox size using the same method (below just resets to the default value)
postconf -e "virtual_mailbox_limit = 51200000"

But you knew that already!

Create a new certificate for Ubuntu the easy way (but you knew that already)


2009
06.14

For the self-signed certificate:

sudo a2enmod ssl

wget http://librarian.launchpad.net/7477840/apache2-ssl.tar.gz

tar -zxvf apache2-ssl.tar.gz

sudo cp apache2-ssl-certificate /usr/sbin/

sudo cp ssleay.cnf /usr/share/apache2/

sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl

cd /etc/apache2/ssl

sudo apache2-ssl-certificate -days 365

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ssl

Modify the ssl site-available:

NameVirtualHost *:443

<virtualhost *:443>

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

SSLEngine On

# the following lines are links to the certs

SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.pem

DocumentRoot /var/www/

Everything else stays the same.

Now all that remains is to restart your server:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

All done!

Found this online :)

USB Power Management


2008
08.15

This is quite useful – if your USB connector times out your device connected to the Ubuntu machine (from here) – determine the idea using either

lsusb

or

lspci

It’s pretty self-explanatory…

105		The user interface for dynamic PM
106		---------------------------------
107
108	The user interface for controlling dynamic PM is located in the power/
109	subdirectory of each USB device's sysfs directory, that is, in
110	/sys/bus/usb/devices/.../power/ where "..." is the device's ID.  The
111	relevant attribute files are: wakeup, level, and autosuspend.
112
113		power/wakeup
114
115			This file is empty if the device does not support
116			remote wakeup.  Otherwise the file contains either the
117			word "enabled" or the word "disabled", and you can
118			write those words to the file.  The setting determines
119			whether or not remote wakeup will be enabled when the
120			device is next suspended.  (If the setting is changed
121			while the device is suspended, the change won't take
122			effect until the following suspend.)
123
124		power/level
125
126			This file contains one of three words: "on", "auto",
127			or "suspend".  You can write those words to the file
128			to change the device's setting.
129
130			"on" means that the device should be resumed and
131			autosuspend is not allowed.  (Of course, system
132			suspends are still allowed.)
133
134			"auto" is the normal state in which the kernel is
135			allowed to autosuspend and autoresume the device.
136
137			"suspend" means that the device should remain
138			suspended, and autoresume is not allowed.  (But remote
139			wakeup may still be allowed, since it is controlled
140			separately by the power/wakeup attribute.)
141
142		power/autosuspend
143
144			This file contains an integer value, which is the
145			number of seconds the device should remain idle before
146			the kernel will autosuspend it (the idle-delay time).
147			The default is 2.  0 means to autosuspend as soon as
148			the device becomes idle, and -1 means never to
149			autosuspend.  You can write a number to the file to
150			change the autosuspend idle-delay time.
151
152	Writing "-1" to power/autosuspend and writing "on" to power/level do
153	essentially the same thing -- they both prevent the device from being
154	autosuspended.  Yes, this is a redundancy in the API.

Wine and MSI files (but you knew that already)


2008
08.11

So you’ve downloaded UltraEdit v14, arguably one of the best text-editing and code-editing environments in the Windows World (ok, so no IDE, but for that you’d use a Zend Studio offering), and you want to run it in Wine. Now, assuming you’re running Wine 1.0 (ideally 1.1.0 or later), this is not a problem on Ubuntu. Just the cursor keeps jumping… The ue_english.zip (or other language suffix) file contains the installer msi. How to run on Ubuntu? Quite a quick and simple process, just one line:

wine msiexec /i ue_english.msi

Hey presto, you’re done! Just follow the prompts. There will be one or two errors (downloading and installing UltraCompare – a practical, visual answer to diff throws some…) but it becomes sortof useable. Until UltraEdit for Linux (as per the forums) is released… Can’t wait!!

Ubuntu 8.04 Dual-screen


2008
07.22

From the bug-report there’s a simple solution to dual-screening on Hardy…

Users upgrading from Dapper Drake to Hardy Heron who have used Xinerama to support dual monitors now have to use a different method (xrandr I think). This isn’t mentioned in the release notes and the graphical tool for configuring dual monitors is under “Screen Resolution” in the System -> Preferences Menu. The point being that it is quite hard to find.

Users with multiple desktops appear to have add the following to the xorg.conf file “Screen” section:

SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Virtual 4000 2048
EndSubSection

Then the screen resolution tool works fine for me.

Me too! Just to complete this (it’s all out there…):

Unfortunately, for creating dual-screen layouts there is still one manual configuration step required, which is to add a Virtual framebuffer size. The size needs to be equal or greater than the maximum combined size of your displays. For example, if you have two 1920×1200 monitors you wish to put side-by-side, you would add a Virtual line like this:

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Default Screen"
        Device          "Configured Video Device"
        DefaultDepth    24
        SubSection "Display"
            Depth           24
            Virtual         3840 1200
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Note that setting Virtual to larger than 2048×2048 disables 3d acceleration (i.e., no Compiz).