Useful Ubuntu

Install Komodo Edit 6 on Natty

2011-03-11T21:58:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to give a quick update on how to install the latest Komodo Edit on the latest Ubuntu. Its been a while since I posted the last article about Komodo Edit and it needed a quick refresh.

The packages for Linux can be found here. Download the appropriate package for whether you have 32-bit or 64-bit.
Use either the GUI to extract the contents or

tar -xvzf Komodo-version-platform.tar.gz

In your terminal, or open a terminal if you haven't already, change to the new directory

cd Komodo-version-platform

Run the install script. I had to use sudo before the script to get it to install.

sudo ./install.sh

Go through and answer all of the installer prompts
Once the installer finishes you will need to add Komodo Edit to your PATH. Personally I like the symlink method, but it does require root/sudo access.

ln -s /bin/komodo /usr/bin/komodo

Two caveats that I have found is that you probably should not install to the default because it will only work for root or if you sudo. I went ahead and installed to /opt/komodo, but you could install wherever you like to install your non-package maintained software. Second, the installer actually tells you to make the symbolic link in /usr/local/bin but I have found that is not in the default PATH of the users (though it could be added). Other than that it is pretty straight forward. Let me know if you all find any other pain points.

Replace Unity Interface

2011-03-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

I know I am not alone when I say that I don't like the new unity interface. I am using the Ubuntu Netbook Edition on my Asus EEEpc and my biggest complaint is that it is too slow. I like the idea of a better interface, but they have a long way to go to make it usable. Until then I will be sticking with the standard GNOME interface which is still included to use. I am going to show you how to change the default session to be the regular desktop session.

Open the Login Screen Settings dialog box.
Change the bottom dropdown box to be Ubuntu Desktop Edition as the default session (you can see I already have mine changed). You may need to press the Unlock button and supply your password to be able to change this setting.

You should just be able to log out and back in and then you will get the familiar GNOME desktop.

This will not actually remove Unity from your installation so at what time you think you might want to use it again you could. I've read a few posts that take you through the steps to remove it, but I don't see it necessary since it can be easily disabled through the login screen.

Install Cherokee from PPA

2010-06-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been researching different options for web servers and I've been keeping my eye on Cherokee. I've been watching it for some time and have seen that the project is very active, but so far I haven't tried it out. After checking that the Ubuntu repositories did not contain the latest version Cherokee I decided to look for a PPA. Thankfully there is an up to date PPA with packages for all the latest distributions of Ubuntu. Here are the steps that got me set up on Ubuntu 10.04:

Add the PPA to our sources.list. If you are running 9.10 and above you can run this command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cherokee-werbserver/ppa

But if you are running 9.04 or lower you will need to add them manually:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/cherokee-webserver/ppa/ubuntu UBUNTU_VERSION main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/cherokee-webserver/ppa/ubuntu UBUNTU_VERSION main

Now update sources and install Cherokee. It is only necessary to install cherokee. The other two packages are for SSL and server statistics respectively.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cherokee libcherokee-mod-libssl libcherokee-mod-rrd

Once apt-get finishes you should have a fully functioning Cherokee web server. If you fire up your browser and head over to http://IP_ADDRESS_OF_MACHINE/ (e.g. http://localhost/ if you you are using the same machine that you installed on). You should be greeted with the Cherokee default page which is slightly more informative than Apache's "It Works."

Now you are of course wondering how to configure Cherokee right? Well apparently you really shouldn't have to edit configuration files by hand (see picture last paragraph). There is a very well put together web application distributed with Cherokee called cherokee-admin. This webapp can be deployed by opening a terminal and launching this command:

sudo cherokee-admin &

This will launch the webapp and give you the username, password, and URL with which you can access it. It is meant to be launched only when you need it for security and performance reasons. That was as far as I got with my install of Cherokee, but I will be trying out Drupal, Wordpress, and other CMS systems with it to see how well it performs.

Eclipse Install with Lucid

2010-06-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

I am merely posting this to give a quick update to the process for installing Eclipse with Lucid. It seems that the Ubuntu repositories have finally caught up with the latest release of Eclipse so there is no need to download the package off of the Eclipse website. Just a few terminal commands will do it:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install eclipse

This should work quite well and it will install Eclipse SDK 3.5.2. You can then proceed as usual with your normal set-up and install of plugins with Eclipse. Enjoy!

Using Appcelerator Titanium with Ubuntu

2010-04-13T07:35:00.000-07:00

As anyone can tell by reading other posts in this blog, I am a programmer and I try and use various programming languages and methods all the time. I found Titanium a few months ago and started using it when it was only version 0.7. It has matured very quickly since then and it makes for an interesting platform to develop on. To describe it in a just a sentence it allows for crossplatform desktop application development using only HTML and Javascript. You can also use PHP, Python, and Ruby, but you don't have to. There is also a mobile development side that works quite well also. For a full desciption of what it can do head over to Appcelerator.com.

Follow these steps to install for Ubuntu 9.10:

Navigate to Appcelerator.com and click download Titanium.
Click on the link to download either 32-bit or 64-bit Linux. If you are unsure just use the 32-bit.
Extract the archive and put the extracted folder anywhere you want. Personally I have a folder where I keep any downloaded programs in my home folder.
There is an executable file called "Titanium Developer" inside of the extracted that you can then run and follow the directions to install it. I usually choose to install it into my home folder because I had problem with installing it anywhere else.
The last thing you may want to do is create a shortcut either on the desktop or in the menu so you can easily start Titanium Developer. This can be done with the alacarte program.

Go ahead and start creating your desktop programs, and relish in the fact that you did not have to use any other language besides the ones you already use for web development.

Testing Out Lucid Lynx

2010-03-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

If you head over to http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ you can get the most recent build of Lucid Lynx. I went ahead and created a Virtual Box VM since I didn't have time to reformat my hard drive. Seems pretty stable to me, but go ahead and try it out for yourselves.

Install Gnome Do from PPA in 9.10

2009-10-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

I always like to have the latest and greatest of Gnome Do. This can be achieved by installing from their PPA. These instructions are for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala so they may not work with older versions. Follow the steps below if you want to install Gnome Do from PPA.

Open System > Administration > Software Sources
Click Other Software tab and then click the Add button.
Add these two lines one by one.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

Click Close and then Reload. It will complain about a GPG error but we will fix that in the next steps.
Open up a terminal and input these commands.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 77558DD0
sudo apt-get update

Now you can install Gnome Do with this command.

sudo apt-get install gnome-do

Congratulations! You now will have the latest Gnome Do installed on your system. Now when the next release of Gnome Do happens you will get it right away instead of waiting for it to be put into mainstream.

Ubuntu Google Web Toolkit Setup

2009-08-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

It's easy to get started with the Google Web Toolkit and Ubuntu 9.04. There are a couple of steps you will want to take to ensure a proper setup.

First let me start by mentioning that the easiest way to do this is to use Eclipse. Eclipse is a full-featured Java IDE. Many complain that it is too slow, crashes, etc. Since Google developed a plugin for Eclipse and most likely their software engineers are using it, I think it would be best to use it as well. Now on to the actual steps.

Get Eclipse Installed and Working

Don't use synaptic to install Eclipse. If you already have it installed through synaptic that's okay, but you will have two versions of Eclipse on your computer.
Download the latest copy of Eclipse at http://www.eclipse.org/downloads. Don't worry about all the different versions. Just download the Eclipse Classic at the bottom of the list.
Extract to a directory on your hard drive. I happen to put all of my programs that I install manually in a folder, /home/username/Software. This helps me keep track of all my programs I've installed manually.
You should be able to start Eclipse either through the command line (after you change to the directory) or by double-clicking eclipse inside of the folder.

Install Google Web Toolkit Plugin

Start Eclipse if you haven't already.
Help > Install new software...
Click the add button. Put GWT Plugin for name and paste in for the url:

http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.5
Check the boxes labeled Plugin and SDKs.
Follow through the wizard. You will have to agree to the license.
Once you finish with that window you will want to restart Eclipse. After that you can begin working with GWT in Ubuntu.

This worked for me on 32bit and 64bit Ubuntu. Hopefully you will be able to start building your Google Web Toolkit applications in Ubuntu.

Upgrade Ubuntu Desktop from 8.10 to 9.04

2009-05-11T19:44:00.000-07:00

Doing a distribution upgrade always makes me feel uncertain. I used to use another flavour of Linux that was very poor at upgrading. In fact, every time I tried to upgrade between versions it broke. I ended up doing a clean install every time there was a new version. Since switching to Ubuntu I have not had that problem, but I must be scarred from my previous experiences because I still get uneasy about upgrading. I have even waited to make sure that other people can do successful upgrades.

Ubuntu makes it dead simple to perform a distribution upgrade. All one really needs to do is to run update-manager. Generally this runs each time after you start up to check for upgrades but you may have disabled that. Once the program finds that there is a new distribution there is a button that can be pressed to perform a distribution upgrade. Even though the upgrade is seamless I suggest making a backup before you perform the upgrade. You should see some similar screens on your computer that I have posted here. You pretty much let it work and at the end it will want you to reboot.

If you have a successful reboot then the upgrade went fine. If you had some issues then you may want to check out the Ubuntu forums or try to google it.

9.04 Ubuntu Netbook Remix

2009-05-10T12:44:00.000-07:00

So I just got an Asus 1000HA and I just had to put the netbook version of Jaunty on it. This was actually very easy to do by way of this tutorial. Having such a portable computer has never been better.

Of course the default install is lacking as far as applications goes. Once I have all of the applications that I use installed, I'll give a run down of what I did after the installation. For now, I'm just happy that it installed just fine without having to do anything special.

Just 2 days left for Ubuntu 9.04

2009-04-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

I have been pleasantly surprised with the improvements to Ubuntu. I have been using the Beta since its release on my computer at work. I have only experienced a couple of issues related to printing, but printing is not a huge issue for me. What have been your experiences with Ubuntu 9.04? What do you like, or not like? Leave a comment below.

Passwordless SSH

2009-03-26T19:15:00.001-07:00

So you have a bunch of Ubuntu servers and you use SSH to do administrative tasks on the machines. It is beginning to be a pain to always type the password each time you login to a server. You want a way where you can log straight in without having to type a password. That is where key authentication comes in. You can use a program to generate a public and private key for your computer. You can then distribute your public key to each of your servers and then your authentication will come from the keys and not from a password. Please read through these steps carefully and you can have these useful passwordless SSH logins.

Install OpenSSH on your computer and all of the servers (You probably have done this already).
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
Generate your public and private keys. When it asks for a passphrase leave it empty.
ssh-keygen -t rsa
You now need to distribute your public key (~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) to each servers .ssh/authorized_keys file. This can be done in several ways.
If you have not made the authorized_keys file on the server you can do this:
scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@servername:.ssh/authorized_keys
If you have other entires in the authorized_keys folder then you can use cut and paste between two text editors. Open ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub in the text editor of your choice on your computer. Open a normal SSH session on the server and open the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys in nano, vi, or any other terminal text editor. Copy the text straight from the text editor on your computer to the terminal window. Make sure that it ends up as one line in the authorized_keys file.

WARNING: Not setting a password on your keys can pose a security risk. IF someone were to get your private key they could pose as YOUR computer and access the servers just like you do. Guard your private key with your life.

You can even set this for other users on the server as well as the root user. It is considered a bad practice to log in as root unless you are doing serious administrative tasks. If you run into problems after copying your public key onto your server, just simply move your keys out of your .ssh folder and then you can login to the server using your password to fix the issue. In that case make sure that your public key was all on one line.

Installing Komodo Edit 5

2009-03-15T23:01:00.000-07:00

Here is another useful tip for having a good development environment. Since there are many Integrated Development Environments on the market I have been going through each one to see what I like and don't like. I have tested many different IDEs available for PHP programming and I have come to like Komodo-Edit. This is the light (free) version of the Komodo IDE 5 program. Since this is not available via a repository let me show you how to install this into your Ubuntu system.

Download the latest release for Linux by visiting this link (click the link that says download now).
If you are using the gnome desktop you can right-click and select extract here or you can extract using the tar command.
tar zxvf Komodo-Edit-5.0.3-2767-linux-libcpp6-x86.tar.gz
Open up a terminal and move to that directory using cd. Mine is on my desktop so the command looks like this:
cd Desktop/Komodo-Edit-5.0.3-2767-linux-libcpp6-x86/
Now run:
sh install.sh
When you are asked where you would like to install it go ahead and type the directory to where it should be installed. Personally I put all custom installs into a folder called Software in my home directory:
/home/myuser/Software/Komodo-Edit-5
Once it finishes you still have one more step, inserting the executable into your PATH variable. This can be done with a simple command:
sudo ln -s "/home/myuser/Software/Komodo-Edit-5/bin/komodo" /usr/local/bin/komodo

I have tested Komodo Edit on both x86 and x86_64 and it works fine even on the 64 bit system. If you get frustrated with other IDE setups go ahead and check out Komodo Edit, it may be your next best editor. By the way you can also edit Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, Javascript, CSS, XHTML, and some template languages besides PHP.

RAID 1 and Ubuntu Server 8.10

2009-03-03T19:09:00.001-08:00

Since I have recently acquired another 80 GB drive I decided to put it to good use in one of my older computers. It already had an 80 GB drive and what better way to use two equal size hard drives than to set up a RAID 1 array. For some reason when I used to hear the word RAID I assumed that in order to set that up one would need to know a lot. In all reality, setting up a RAID 1 array was quite easy. Since this computer will be a back-up server to my other computers it is nice to know that even if one drive fails I won't lose my data.

I will assume that the reader knows the basics of installing the Ubuntu Server. First of all you will need to download the Server ISO and burn it to disk. Once you have that, the only other item you will need is a computer to test it out on that is ready to have a RAID 1 array put on it. In order for it to be ready it will need to have at least 2 drives of equal size. If you don't happen to have a physical computer you could set up a virtual host will two small drives of equal size. Either way you will need a system that you can do a fresh install of Ubuntu Server 8.10. The screenshots you will see will be from a virtual machine.

Initial Set-up and the /boot partition

Proceed as normal through the installation steps until you get to the part where you need to partition your drive.
Choose Manual
We want to create these partitions: 100 MB for /boot; 256 MB for swap; the rest for /;
Select the first hard drive.
If it asks you to create an empty partition table choose "Yes."
Repeat four and five for the other drive as well and now you should have something like this.
Now we are going to make the partitions on each drive. Select the first drive to partition it's free space.
Choose create a new partition.
Enter 100 MB for its size.
Choose Primary.
Choose Beginning.
Now select the Use as: option and change it to "physical volume for RAID." Also turn the bootable flag on. (This is going to be the /boot partition remember).
Then choose "Done setting up the partition."
Repeat 8 through 13 for the other drive as well.

Setting up the Swap partition

Now we need to set up the swap partition. Select the "FREE SPACE" on the first drive.
Choose Create a new Partition.
Enter 256 MB for the size.
Choose Primary.
Choose Beginning.
Select the Use as: option but this time choose "swap area."
Select "Done setting up the partition"
Repeat steps 2 through 7 for the other drive.

Setting up the / Partition

You should have a similiar set-up as the screenshot below. We could break our root partition down into /home, /usr, /var, etc. I want this to be simple and easy to do. Once you can do this basic set-up you will know how to do the more elaborate.
Choose the "FREE SPACE" on the first hard disk.
Choose Create a new partition.
Use the default value that is already supplied. In my case it is 8.2 GB. This will use the rest of the disk for the root partition.
Choose primary.
Now select the Use as: option and change it to "physical volume for RAID."
Select "Done setting up the partition."
Repeat steps 2 through 7 for other drive.
You should have a similar screen as below. Go ahead and choose "Configure software RAID." (It's at the top)

Configuring Software RAID

Your next screen will ask you if you are really sure about your partitioning. Choose "Yes."
Now select "Create MD device."
Choose "RAID1"
Now it will ask you how many active devices for the RAID1 array. Since we only have two drives we will leave it at 2 and continue.
Now it asks about spares. We don't have any so we will leave it at 0 and continue.
Now we need to choose the two partitions that are going to mirror each other. In my example it will be /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1. Choose both using the space bar to select/deselect and then continue.
That's it. You've created the MD device for the /boot partition. Repeat steps 2 through 6 but choose /dev/sda3 and /dev/sdb3 in the last step.
Once you have created both MD devices you can select "Finish."

Last but not Least

We still have to give those RAID1 devices a mount point and filesystem. Follow the steps below to do it.
Select the partition under RAID1 device #0. Mine says "#1 98.6 MB"
Select the Use as: option and choose Ext3 (or whichever one you want).
Change the Mount point: to /boot
Then you can select "Done setting up the partition."
Now repeat steps 3 through 5 for RAID1 device #1, the 8.2 GB partition. This partition will be mounted to /, which is root.
Once you have these partitions made you can select "Finish partitioning and write changes to disk"
Before it makes the changes it gives a nice warning about destroying data. Choose "Yes" to write the changes to disk.
You may get another screen warning about the kernel not being able to access the RAID devices. Just continue and the base system will install as normal.

Conclusion
That's really all it takes to set up a RAID1 array with two hard disks of the same size. Now you can know that if one of your drives were to fail you would still have all of the data because of the RAID1 array. Back-ups must still be made in the case of the failure of both of the drives. That's why I will use rsync and an external drive. Hope this is useful for everyone!

#!CrunchBang Linux

2009-02-24T23:05:00.000-08:00

I have always loved to take different flavors of Ubuntu for a spin and recently I set up Crunchbang Linux on my Laptop. I'll post a screen shot of my desktop at the end. Aside from being based on Ubuntu the main thing with Crunchbang is that it is heavily based on using lightweight applications. Its main window manager is Openbox, but it also has gtk in there too. Since my laptop is getting older (nearly five years old now) it needs the lightweight applications.

Crunchbang was very easy to set-up. I had zero problems with the install. It is as simple as putting the CD into the drive and letting it boot up to a live environment. Once you are the live environment you can play around with it to see if you like it. If you want to install it you can use the right-click menu to install Crunchbang to your hard drive. I had just installed Windows XP Pro (needed for games/work) on my 60 GB drive. So then I installed Crunchbang after that and it easy dual boots between both. You can find Crunchbang here. The most recent edition is 8.10.2 and it is also the edition that I installed.

If you want something that is not heavy on your system resources or maybe you have an older laptop like mine give Crunchbang a try.

(Desktop photo from interfacelift.com)

Create a Static IP from the Command Line

2009-01-21T00:22:00.001-08:00

Creating a static IP from the command line is a very short task. All you need to edit is one configuration file and restart the networking service. You will need to know the settings for your network to do this. I will show how to set a static IP of 192.168.0.101 on a network with a gateway of 192.168.0.1.

Open the configuration file in your favorite editor (mine is nano)
sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces
Comment out the section where dhcp is being used (put the # in front of the line):
```
#auto eth1
#iface eth1 inet dhcp
```

Add a section like this example:

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.0.101
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.1

Close and save the file
Reload the network service:
sudo /etc/network restart
Check to make sure you can access other computers/internet by using ping:
ping www.google.com
If you don't get a response then you may have set your network information incorrectly. Just go back and repeat this process at step 3.

Make sure you have entered the correct information for YOUR network. Once you have the static IP set up properly you can then have your other computers access that computer through it's IP address.

Add extra storage on the fly with LVM2

2009-01-20T23:41:00.000-08:00

Currently I am in the process of creating a file/print server for my home network. It's an older computer but I wanted to experiment with various set-ups and configurations. Two of my requirements were that I must be able to add extra storage on the fly and I must be able to see the two hard drives as one logical unit. The only way (at least that I know of) is to use LVM. I have used it in the past, but I never really needed so I usually did not pick it during the install. In fact my current Ubuntu desktop does not have LVM on it.

During my internet searches I came across this great article, A Beginners Guide to LVM. Read this all the way through and you should get a good grasp of the main commands of LVM. Since that article did not really explain how to what I wanted I had to adapt it to my needs. Here are the steps I used to get my 80GB Maxtor(sda) and 60GB Western Digital(sdb) to work together as one logical unit. I am also using ext3 as my filesystem because it supports on-line resizing.

Fresh install of Ubuntu Server 8.10
Run updates:
sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
Reboot because of kernel upgrade
Figure out what the extra hard drive is (mine is sdb):
sudo fdisk -l
Partition the hard drive as Linux LVM:
sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
Initialize partition for use by LVM (on my system sdb1 is swap):
sudo pvcreate /dev/sdb2
Display attributes of volume groups to find your group name (mine is ubuntu-server):
sudo vgdisplay
Add my physical volume to my volume group:
sudo vgextend ubuntu-server /dev/sdb2
Now extend the logical volume root to include the new physical volume:
sudo lvextend -L128G /dev/ubuntu-server/root
Lastly, resize the filesystem to include the new free space:
sudo resize2fs /dev/ubuntu-server/root

After reading the beginners guide posted above I was able to go through these steps and add extra storage without unmounting the root parition. This is one of the features of ext3, but I do not know whether you can do that with other filesystems. Now I am able to use both drives to the fullest extent and when I want to add another drive it will be quite easy.

Developing with NetBeans IDE

2009-01-15T23:26:00.000-08:00

Programming is a hobby of mine and in recent days I have been testing out various IDEs (Integrated Development Environments). One such that I have really enjoyed using is the NetBeans IDE. One of the greatest features (at least in my opinion) is that no matter what OS I am using I can still be editing my programs with Netbeans. In my daily routines I will end up using Windows, Mac, and Linux so cross platform applications will always get a plus in my book. I also find that one of my greatest frustrations about programming is that most developers only create programs for a specific OS. Now, I understand why they do this (majority), but for people like me (minority) it is always a drawback to an application that only works in one OS. Enough ranting though lets get the latest NetBeans installed in your Ubuntu computer.

Go to http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/index.html to download the version you want. Personally I chose the Java version but if you want Ruby, C++, or PHP you will want the All version. At the time of this writing the current version is 6.5 and my download was 208 MB.
Wait for download to complete...
Open a terminal and cd to the directory you saved it in. For me I saved it to my desktop so I typed in: cd Desktop/
Now type: ./netbeans-6.5-ml-java-linux.sh (or whatever your version happens to be, use tab to autocomplete).
If that doesn't work then it is possible that it needs the permission to execute. You could right-click>properties. Then under permissions check the box that says "Allow executing file as program" or you could type into command line: chmod +x ./

You should see a screen much like the one above. Just follow the prompts and you will have NetBeans installed in no time.

Below is a screenshot of NetBeans right after opening it for the first time. Now all that needs to be done is some programming projects. Hope this is useful!

Repairing a corrupted XFS file system

2008-12-18T19:40:00.000-08:00

I have been testing out the XFS file system. When 8.10 came out I did a fresh install with XFS as the partition for the root directory. Everything was working fine until one day I was having trouble running programs like Firefox and mplayer. Nothing seemed to be working very well. Programs would load but then all of the sudden they would quit. Finally I tried to log out but all I got was a whitescreen and the computer would not shut off. I did the unthinkable and pressed the power button until it turned off.

Two days later I tried to start up my laptop only to be greeted with an error message about the root filesystem not being able to load. I tried the alternate kernel, but that would not load either. It seemed like the drive had not mechanically failed because the bootloader would come up and it would try to mount the root file system. I tried putting in the install CD and using rescue mode but that was not any help. All it did was tell me that it could not load the root filesystem. After doing a few searches I found that running xfs_repair was my best option but the only way to do that was to take the drive out and connect it to my desktop computer through a USB to ATA-66 adapter.

Once connected to my desktop all that was needed was to figure out which /dev/??? it was. A quick check in dmesg showed it to be /dev/sdb3. I then ran:

xfs_repair -L /dev/sdb3

When that finished I was able to mount the drive and get any files I wanted off of it.

I put the drive back in the laptop and it was able to boot, but it was still having problems with some programs. Right now it is getting a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10! (but this time I am sticking with ext3)

Installing LiVES

2008-12-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

Another good video editor out there is called LiVES. I wanted to test out the latest version so I went to GetDeb for the download. The website getdeb.net is maintained by a volunteer group that makes fresh .deb packages featuring some of the most used software in Ubuntu. Sometimes the Ubuntu repos can get behind and not have the latest and greatest, so this website is a great companion when you need or want to have the latest version of certain software. So here are the steps:

Download the .deb file from getdeb.net.
Double-click on the file to start up the GDebi package installer.
First it will tell you that you should install the one in the official channel. Nevermind the message because you are installing the latest.
The package installer will most likely tell you that it needs to download some other packages for dependencies.
Click on Install package and when the installer finishes you can find LiVES under Applications>Sound & Video

Installing Cinelerra

2008-12-02T23:49:00.000-08:00

Recently I have needed to do some video editing and wanted to check out some of the best video editors for Linux. It looked like Cinelerra had the best options but it was not clear how to install it easily. I did not want to install from source so after some careful searching around I found the easy way. You can also view these instructions here (I made some additions as they did not work for me as they were written).

Install a repository using this link. After you download the package make sure you install it with the GDebi package installer.
Open a terminal and type this command: sudo apt-get update
Now decide which package you need; cinelerra (x86 and x86_64 without opengl 2.0 video card) cinelerra-generic (x86 and x86_64 with opengl 2.0 video card). You can see the other versions on the page I mentioned earlier under the installation instructions for Hardy
Install your package using apt-get: sudo apt-get install cinelerra-generic
Once installation completes you should be able to find Cinelerra under Applications>Sound & Video.

So far I found the program quite useful and powerful. There are some good articles out there about using it to author DVDs if you do a quick search. One of the articles I read was on linux.com and it was quite helpful to give me a good start on using Cinelerra for editing video. You can find that article here.

Dual Monitors with Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT

2008-12-02T23:31:00.000-08:00

Once you install the restricted hardware drivers and you have your Nvidia card working you can then proceed to set up dual monitors. Open up System>Administration>Nvidia X Server Settings. This will open up a dialog box like so...
This nice GUI will allow us to set up our dual monitor interface. I will say that the program can be quite fickle at times and sometimes it will not work even though it should work. Just keep trying with the options until you get a working combination. I wanted my second monitor, which happens to be a regular 15" CRT, to simply be an extension of my desktop. This is done using the TwinView configuration option as seen in the next photo.

And the options for my second monitor...
Once you get the right settings made make sure you click the Save to X Configuration File. If you don't click that then next time you start up all of your custom settings will be gone and you will have to play around with it again.

Setting up the dual monitors was fairly quick for me. Took approx. 10 minutess of playing with various settings to get it to display just like I wanted it too. If you have an Nvidia card you should be able to set these up without too much hassle using similar options like I did. Of course if you want to do a separate X screen you could choose that as well instead of the TwinView.

How to install a minimal Ubuntu

2008-10-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you do not want to install anything more than a working command-line Ubuntu Linux system. Maybe you want to use another Desktop environment than GNOME, KDE, or XFCE. I have been trying out Openbox recently, but I wanted to get a completely fresh install of Ubuntu to work with. When I first started searching the net to find how to install a minimal Ubuntu system I came to dead ends. After digging deeper into search reults and forum posts I was able to find the answer. Here are the steps to get a minimal system from Ubuntu.

Download the Alternate install ISO.
Burn this to a disc and pop it into your computer to boot from it (unless you are doing this virtually, then you just need to make the virtual computer see the ISO).
When you get to the initial boot screen do not press enter right away. Instead press F4 to bring up a menu where you can select "Install a Command-Line System".
Now you press enter and follow the install process like normal.

Once you reboot you will be greeted by a friendly text prompt login. From here you can customize your system however you want it.

Installing VMware Tools in 8.10 Beta

2008-10-13T00:11:00.000-07:00

Following the advice of a couple of different posts I was able to install VMware Tools in Intrepid Ibex. Make sure you have the virtual machine up and running. Click on Install VMware Tools... in the VM menu. This will mount an iso that contains the VMware Tools package. Go ahead and close the Nautilus window that popped up and open a terminal. Execute the next lines of code to install VMware Tools on your 8.10 guest. Please note that the * is a placeholder for your version of VMware Tools.

sudo aptitude isntall build-essential linux-headers
cp -a /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-* /tmp/
cd /tmp/
tar -vxzf VMwareTools*
cd vmare-tools-distrib/
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Make sure you pick the resolution that you want the virtual machine to run in. When I ran these lines it did not compile the network and file sharing driver. When I am able to get those two parts of VMware tools working then I will edit this post with the method. At least for now I have a better display driver.

Test Driving Ubuntu 8.10 Beta

2008-10-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

There are many great features available in the next release of Ubuntu. Since I have been using 8.04 since its release I wanted to check out the next release. I chose to do this through the virtual interface of VMware. I know there other solutions available such as Virtualbox, Parallels, etc. I already had VMware Server installed and I didn't want to install another solution.

The features are listed on this page. I tested out the tabs feature and the eject button of nautilus. I also set up encrypted private directories which work very well. All of the features can be read on that page mentioned above. I can't wait for the release of Intrepid Ibex. I will certainly be downloading this release on the day that it is released.

The Beginning

2008-10-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

There is always a first time for everything. This is going to be the first post in a long series of posts about the Linux distribution Ubuntu. I personally have used many of the Linux distros, but I have recently switched to using Ubuntu. Obviously this website is in no way official documentation from Ubuntu. I will post different types of set-ups and various technologies that I will try out along the way. Hopefully someone will find this site useful in their dealings with Ubuntu.
I have found with my dealings of other distros that documentation and even web searches yield little results to help. My only purpose is to help every day users make the most out of Ubuntu. I want to contribute as much as I can back to the community that has helped me out as well.