In my work and play, I often end up setting up and configuring computers and software, and often I toil to get things right, only to promptly forget how I did it and next time round, have to go through the same process all over again. So here are a few tutorial and receipes for geeky technical stuff, for my edification as well as yours:
Configuring subversion and apache in Ubuntu Feisty 7.04
Configuring an openiscsi client on Ubuntu Server 7.04
There were some tech-help posts from the old blog that I thought I'd repost here just in case they were still useful to some poor people out there who end up with head trauma every time they try to configure linux servers. It's an occupational hazard, smacking one's head off the wall ... or the server.
I know; I have the scars to prove it.
the posts
I tried to boot up my old Ubuntu-powered iMac G4 a couple of days ago and discovered that when I tried to log in, Nautilus gave me an error (code 3) about being unable to register bonobo. This pretty much prevented me from logging into Gnome.
The problem? Well, whenever I boot the machine, Linux informs me during the boot that it cannot access the hardware clock. I also realised that I had inadvertently switched off my DSL modem and this caused the Nautilus failure. My best explanation of the problem is that Ubuntu automatically sets the clock from my internet connection on boot. The Bonobo problem seems to stem from an incorrect clock setting. As my hardware clock is unaccessible, I pretty much need a live net connection to boot successfully. I’ll experiment some more and see if I can further identify the exact problem.
...
Looks like someone else drew the same conclusions with regards to the clock problem: check it out < a href = "http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1341988">here.
root login in gnome with ubuntu
Here’s a quick guide to allow you to login as root in Gnome.
WARNING: This is a very risky thing to do, as it is easy to completely wreck both your data and Linux install while logged in as root. And it can open your system up to all sorts of malicious net attacks! You have been warned.
So why bother doing this at all? I do this only to copy files from an external harddrive where regular users do not have write permissions to the disk. I unhook the computer from the net and am incredibly careful about what I do.
So, here’s how to go about it:
- Open up Users and Groups from the Gnome System — Administration menu. Select Show all users and groups and select the root user. Then click on the Properties button and change the password to whatever you want. The current password is randomly generated, so you’ll have to change it.
- Next, open up Login Window from the System — Administration menu. Select the Security tab, and click the Allow local system administrator login box. You should also deactivate auto login if that is active.
- Log out of the current user by selecting Logout from the power down menu. You can also Switch User if you like.
- Log in with user root and your chosen password.
Be extremely cautious!
aac in ubuntu’s dapper drake
One of my pet peeves with Ubuntu is that although it ships with Rhythmbox, it does not provide many codecs with which to play your music, AAC being most obvious missing one. Well, peeves is a strong word, they probably have good reasons for excluding it (copyright, stability, etc). Anyway, as most of my music is iTunes encoded in AAC, it was a necessity for me.
The way to install the correct codecs it is very simple; it just took me a while to hunt down the solution. So here’s a quick guide to getting AAC to work in Dapper. I’ve done this on the PPC version of Ubuntu Desktop, I assume that it also works with x86. This works with non-DRM AAC files. I’m pretty sure it will not play DRM files, such as the ones purchased through the iTunes Store. But any CDs converted by iTunes should be fine.
Edit /etc/apt/sources.list
The sources.list file is a protected root file, so the easiest way to get write access to it is to open up a terminal and type:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Here is a listing of my sources.list file:
# Ubuntu 'Main' Repository deb
http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper main restricted
deb-src http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper main restricted
# Ubuntu 'Universe' Repository deb
http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe multiverse
deb-src http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe multiverse
# Ubuntu 'Backports' Repository deb
http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
# Ubuntu Bug Fix Updates deb http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-updates main restricted
deb-src http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-updates main restricted
# Ubuntu Security Updates
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe multiverse
# PLF - Collection of Non-Free Proprietary Codecs & Applications
deb http://packages.freecontrib.org/ubuntu/plf/ dapper free non-free
deb-src http://packages.freecontrib.org/ubuntu/plf/ dapper free non-free
# Skype - VoIP Software # deb
http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free
# Opera - Web Browser
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ etch non-free
The important change in here is the following line. Make sure that your sources.list mirrors this at least. The AAC codec lives in the multiverse section.
deb http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe multiverse
Install files using the package manager
Start the Synaptic Package Manager from the System > Administration menu. Hit the reload button to update the packages. Then do a search in the manager using gstreamer as the keyword. A whole bunch of files crop up. Mark the following for installation:
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
Some may already be installed, I can’t remember.
And hey presto! You should now be able to play AAC files in Rhythmbox, as well as a whole bunch of other encoded files.
