Ubuntu Linux

[grey_moon]

Most of the important files are in home, etc and var. I did a full re-install as I am anal that way. I have these directories as seperate partitions so a rebuild is quite quick for me, the only thing I have to worry about is making sure I am not using a older conf which doesn't have all the right settings so this time i copied them off and diffed all the important files (ie samba)

The sexy thing is one-click install. I clicked on a link on the suse help page and it started to setup my nvidia drivers automatically. I am loving it! <- as u might notice I should be sleeping right now, but I am too excited

OMG they have fixed the package manager, no longer am i required to read War and Peace when launching it.

Yay they have finally removed ssh protocol 1 from the conf file (about time too)

Has novell been reading my hate list? You can just tick a few boxes to add all of the community repos instead of having to type them all in *sniffle* I am so happy. Just go yast and community sources....

[WanderingKnight]

Hey, I just came back and noticed that something weird is going on with my Ubuntu boot sequence... the system works and boots perfectly, but before booting it makes a safety fallback to a root console (like I pointed out in my last post)... however, I only need to press control+d and the boot continues into a graphical mode. Besides, like I already mentioned in the last post, it seems like there's a lot of functionality missing in that root shell login. I know, I know, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", but I still think it's pretty weird.

*snip* Nevermind, found the damn Ubuntu default fonts (Deja Vu Sans)

[grey_moon]

Danger, Will Robinson!
Danger, Will Robinson!
Danger, Will Robinson!

Just found out that Azureus 2 and 3 keeps crashing with OpenSuSE 10.3. I suspect it could be the version of Java that comes with it. Not a big issue for me as my bt client runs as a virtual machine, but if you do use it then be wary. Of course this could be just a problem specfic to me....

@WK - Could you test to see if it crashes for you please?

[SeijiSensei]

Install the Sun JRE. azureus will find it in /usr/java/latest and use it. Works fine for me on top of Fedora that also has all the gcj java stuff.

[WanderingKnight]

@WK - Could you test to see if it crashes for you please?

Not for me, however, I use the precompiled binary I had in my Ubuntu installation.

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

Not for me, however, I use the precompiled binary I had in my Ubuntu installation.

hmmm must be something specific to me then. I guess we would be using the same jre, so i think the biggest suspect is gnome as 3 different versions of azureus fails for me.... On well I'll look into it when I have more time.

[WanderingKnight]

Oh, I did have trouble with the Azureus version from the Ubuntu (GNOME) repos (crashing on startup). I just grabbed the precompiled binary from the Azureus homepage and it worked like a charm. However, that was so long ago I didn't remember it

[grey_moon]

I've been going though all the conf files on my newly updated server and I am embarrassed to say I have no idea how I set up some of the stuff. For example I pop my mail off it using pops, and it is all configured nicely, but when I look at my conf file I can't remember how I set it up. I really must document my own stuff like I do at work.

*EDIT*
I've been playing with OpenSuSE for the better part of the day and I've got to give it a big thumbs up. So many improvements:

Easy to add additional software sources (finally caught ubuntu up here)
Easy to install apps from a web page because of the ymp links (you just click on them and everything is done for you), still secure as you need to import keys of the repos which is really easy to confirm.
Boot time is a lot faster then 10.2, can't compare to any other distro as this box has only ever had SuSE on it.
Installation was very smooth and easy.
Gnome looks very shiny and compiz works out of the box for me.
Security is still high on the list with a comprehensive firewall and apparmor (before anyone throws selinux in my face, I'd like to point that u need to be black belt level 99 geek to set selinux up properly)
Finally the update agent has been fixed.

Things that didn't impress me too much where:

Early adopter disease, I had to compile my own Gnomad, but I guess one will get released really quickly. But not too bad as I was only missing one application (much better then a OS from MS )
The default music player automatically launches when I plug in my zen without asking me what I want to do. Luckily it wasn't too hard to find out how to disable it.
They stole the interface for installing apps from Ubuntu (maybe someone else, but I've only had experience of Ubuntu's one). I hate how it tries to start searching as soon as u start typing something in. What happened to the good old hit return button. What a bleeping waste of resources.
Still trying shove beagle down my throat, I disabled that straight away.

Can't wait till Ubuntu comes out and I'll redo my laptop with that. I'll also give Fedora a whirl as I am pretty impressed with the write up with Redhat Directory Service. Good to see another DS on the scene and openldap just doesn't cut it for replication. But anything to replace NIS is a good thing.

Also due to my shenanigans today, I noticed that my bittorrent virtual machine is running off a 40GB drive, but it's virtual drive is 80GB, hee hee I've been a bit lucky that nothing bad has happened to that

[grey_moon]

*Edit* Sorry for the double post, I didn't realise I could have edited the last message until I posted this one.

I just noticed that Ubuntu 7.10 has gone for AppArmor instead of SELinux! Hoo hoo it seems that AA is starting to get a foot hold. Nothing against SELinux, but I don't have enough black belt grandmaster geek levels to set it up properly.

On a sad note looks like my favourite Thunderbird* has lost another core developer

http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2007/10/d...rd-in-trouble/

*Even though this is my favourite email client, I can't help but want to type Thunderturd...

[WanderingKnight]

I just noticed that Ubuntu 7.10 has gone for AppArmor instead of SELinux! Hoo hoo it seems that AA is starting to get a foot hold. Nothing against SELinux, but I don't have enough black belt grandmaster geek levels to set it up properly.

Something I really really liked about OpenSUSE was the easiness of the firewall configuration. I know purists like to open ports via iptables, but I'll take a GUI for networking stuff any time. I'd love to have such a feature on Ubuntu enabled by default :/

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

Something I really really liked about OpenSUSE was the easiness of the firewall configuration. I know purists like to open ports via iptables, but I'll take a GUI for networking stuff any time. I'd love to have such a feature on Ubuntu enabled by default :/

You should see the one I implemented at work, it is an iptables script. The documentation is 5 times as big as the script itself. I recall I based it on an article from Paranoid Penguin years ago. It denies everything by default and u have to insert rules to allow anything in or out. It is designed to work with PSAD so has real time blocking and semi real time warnings.

iptables rules the roost then it comes to OS firewalls, beats anything that windows can offer.

Ubuntu's POV is that they actually don't have any services exposed by default to protect, but personally if I am running email on my laptop then I will be hotway-ing my hotmail off, which means I need xinet.d running, which means I do have services running (sniffle). I'm not too sure how Ubuntu considers the defence of localhost services..... Anyways when I take my laptop out I enable iptables via firestarter.

[WanderingKnight]

Okay, now I'm trying to solve this kind of booting issue I have with Ubuntu. I get a filesystem check error during boot, only with Ubuntu, never with openSUSE. All my partitions seem perfectly fine, none of the hard drives are acting up, and openSUSE is not acting up, so I think it's some configuration issue.

Here's the log saved in /var/log/fsck/checkfs:

Log of fsck -C -R -A -a 
Mon Oct  8 00:22:33 2007

fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
/dev/sda4: clean, 125194/7536640 files, 12023972/15052905 blocks
fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve 'UUID=a3a19e0b-ed11-48ce-a867-b96fed8336af' 
fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve 'UUID=f573768a-dbc2-4ee1-ae76-875883861f5d' 
fsck died with exit status 8

Mon Oct  8 00:22:33 2007
----------------

Any ideas? sda4 is my Ubuntu home partition.

EDIT: In case you may need it, here's my Ubuntu fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#  -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config -- 
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda3 :
UUID=aaaca8c8-fe5c-49ff-964d-4f3dbe8fe829 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sda4 :
UUID=3aa85bab-f8de-4576-8aa1-6c11b314d7fc /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=a3a19e0b-ed11-48ce-a867-b96fed8336af /media/sda1 ext3 defaults 0 2
# Entry for /dev/sdb5 :
UUID=6084A08684A06070 /media/sdb5 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sdb6 :
UUID=f573768a-dbc2-4ee1-ae76-875883861f5d /media/sdb6 ext3 defaults 0 2
# Entry for /dev/sda2 :
UUID=462e1a8a-cf6a-4d38-8d54-2b575999d3cd none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

FURTHER EDIT:

After looking at my fstab, I think I finally got the issue here. Ubuntu's acting up because the UUIDs assigned to the partitions on which I've installed openSUSE have been formatted in the process. Both UUIDs failing the check are sda1 and sdb6, which happen to be the partitions where I installed openSUSE. Damn, I could've pondered on it for a bit before posting this. Well, at least I learned something new about how the fstab and fsck work. So editing the fstab with another, more classic format should do the trick, right?

I wonder why Ubuntu uses this kind of fstab set up, it's almost overly aggressive towards any type of partition formatting.

[bb10]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

After looking at my fstab, I think I finally got the issue here. Ubuntu's acting up because the UUIDs assigned to the partitions on which I've installed openSUSE have been formatted in the process. Both UUIDs failing the check are sda1 and sdb6, which happen to be the partitions where I installed openSUSE. Damn, I could've pondered on it for a bit before posting this. Well, at least I learned something new about how the fstab and fsck work. So editing the fstab with another, more classic format should do the trick, right?

I wonder why Ubuntu uses this kind of fstab set up, it's almost overly aggressive towards any type of partition formatting.

Check the UUIDs: blkid
Edit fstab with the correct UUIDs: sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Hope it helps

[WanderingKnight]

Big news

Looks like Ballmer & co. haven't given up on their "Lunix violatezzz our patentzzz!!" scheme:

Users of the Red Hat Linux distribution will have to pay Microsoft for its intellectual property, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has cautioned.

"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said at a company event discussing online services in the UK last week. A video report of Ballmer's speech was posted online over the weekend.

Full article and Groklaw's analysis (it won't let me direct-link it--you'll have to find the article yourselves ).

Also, a couple of interesting comments I found in Slashdot:

The non-presumptive laches defense applies specifically to this circumstance.

http://www.converium.com/2103.asp [converium.com] Because the Open Invention Network and others have repeatedly requested that Microsoft identity the infringing code, the laches defence becomes non-presumptive much earlier.

MOD PARENT UP! If you're not understanding what he's saying, due to all the legalese, it's this:

If Microsoft fails to sue a patent infringer, even though they have demonstrated that they know the infringement exists, then tries to file suit later, the doctrine of laches kicks in -- Microsoft failed to mitigate their own damages by bringing a suit as early as possible in order to get the infringer to stop. What this means is that, with the laches defense, Microsoft would lose standing to sue -- because if they were getting damaged by the 'patent infringers', they should have sued in a timely fashion.

The bottom line is this: Microsoft's claims of patent infringement are spurious, slanderous, and, since they invoked the name of Red Hat, a violation of the Lanham Act.

So here's what I say: after the SCO case gets dismissed, Red Hat, your next target should be Microsoft.

I'll be damn happy if Microsoft ends up as SCO

[grey_moon]

I wonder what the IT landscape would look like if by some one in a bazillion chance MS went down?

[SeijiSensei]

I know it's fashionable to think that Ballmer is off-the-wall here, but the reality of software patents is a lot more complicated than most Slashdot readers appear to comprehend. Here's a comment I posted in the same thread this morning:

The various posters here who say "show us the patents, we'll code around them," obviously don't understand the situation as well as you [parent poster] do.

Let's take a hypothetical (and false) case as an example. Suppose the original coders of the NCSA Mosaic browser (the predecessor of Netscape and essentially all graphical web browsers) decided to patent the back and forward navigation arrows as a "device to permit navigation of network-delivered content" or some such patentese. The only way to avoid infringing this patent is not to use navigation arrows, not to write a different block of code to implement navigation arrows. It's like the trash can issue mentioned in another posting in this thread. Patents don't cover the code itself but the process the code implements. Even if Microsoft showed us the patents, it could be quite difficult to avoid infringing some of these.

As a real example, take the case of the patent Microsoft holds on a procedure to update Powerpoint shows online. (I read this a while ago and don't want to spend the time to look it up at the USPTO again.) The patent covers a procedure whereby an application checks online to see whether there's a newer version of the file it is about to open. If so, it automatically downloads the update and opens it instead. Obviously this was targeted at people making presentations so that the staff back in the home office could make last-minute corrections, and the presenter would never need to download the updated file herself. The patents for processes like these often contain sweeping declarations of what's covered in the patent, so even updating systems that don't precisely match the specific one described might be deemed infringing. Suppose, for instance, that Azureus checked to see if a new Java version were available when launched and downloaded and installed the new version automatically. Infringement?

The solution for problems like these is the abolition of software and "business process" patents (like Amazon's "one-click" patent). Or, if we think that such patents are acceptable, then we need to establish low- or no-cost procedures for challenging the patents based on prior art. The problem today is that it costs little to patent an obvious process, but it can cost millions to challenge that patent in court.

[grey_moon]

YAY!!! Sub 200 GBP Linux laptop finally has an official release date!

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10...ches_minibook/

I getting one of these babies so I can browse porn when I am on the toilet! I mean so I can work on the move without lugging my really heavy laptop....

*EDIT*
Disclaimer - This is a pure moan about Windows XP and non administrative user accounts.

Good lord how hard is it to run as non admin with Windows XP? For various reasons I have a Windows XP virtual machine doing windows stuff running on my main server, but due to an application I have to run on it, I had to increase the memory for it, which meant that it started to eat into my server resources far to much for me to be comfortable. So I decided to move the hog off onto one of these splendid Acer mini desktop jobbies (its a all in one with everything included) as they are sooooo cheap.

So I set everything up and then I think to myself, well I do have a Pentium 4 not being utilised, I know I'll set it up in such so my friends and family can log into it with a non admin account and do stuff with it whilst another account has all my stuff running on it. This is where the pain starts.... I've got lots of experience securing XP desktops in a student environment, but I forgotten how many holes I had to hammer into it just to get it working, and without a decent client enforcing the policies it is a nightmare to track.

Today I spent a good 3 hours just making sure the basic applications work and I had to go though and grant file rights to so many areas of the C drive.

I miss how easy it is to just enter in the password once and then YaST, or apt just does all the hard work for me. Several times I had to hack the registry because an installer failed because I tried to install it with run as administrator and it got confused. At one point I was this close to putting Linux on it, but then I had to take a deep breath and remind myself I need to run a XP machine sniffle

Don't know how well Vista handles non admin accounts, but tonight jumping through the hoops of locking down a XP desktop again reminded me how much I hate Windows.

Also not too impressed with Windows Media centre I mean WTF is with the lack of slidey bar, I know its designed to work with a remote but at least give it the function to work well with a mouse too!

I think I'll give MediaPortal a go as I liked the guide posted here

*EDIT*
WTF is up with Windows XP MCE.... I have it set up with the same apps as I had on my XP Pro virutal machine, but all its network shares failed. I had to do the hack to raise its ip connection resources... Arrrrgggghhhhh

[grey_moon]

Good news for Linux

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7034828.stm

I've spent the last 5 years trying to convince people that they should be teaching principles and not specifics, especially when you consider the average student leaves uni with at least 15k GBP debts, you can't suddenly expect them to fork out over hundreds of more pounds on a legal copy of Office and Photoshop etc.

And some more backing for Linux (well actually its more to do with not locking people into MS), lets just hope he isn't dissuaded by Ballmer waving a check book in his face.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10...ces_microsoft/


Shame the Treasury Minister doesn't actually know the meaning of open source or she wouldn't had said:

"Some open source projects cannot meet our needs for quality or security, and we are not prepared to compromise on those,"

Doesn't matter if the product is OSS or CSS, what counts is if you are allowed to and able to vet the software. Hence paranoid orgs like China gov demanding access to the back end code of MS or dropping it (I believe MS actually compromised on this)

[WanderingKnight]

I've found a strange problem in Ubuntu.

I think this started happening after I installed Enlightenment to give it a shot. What happens is that, while there are apps I have installed via apt/synaptic, the program won't run from a bash commands. I've had this problem with a couple of packages, like bsdgames-nonfree. As another example, the silly game fortune (which is default in the installation) doesn't run, either. Both are installed, however, when I try to run them, apt prompts me to install them from the repositories. But of course, when I try to install them, I get "These packages are already installed".

EDIT: Okay, using the binary in /usr/games/ seems to work. I guess it's missing a symbolic link to somewhere, but since my knowledge of Linux is still limited, I don't know where.

I tried asking in the Ubuntu general help forums but my thread got MIA in less than an hour...

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

I've found a strange problem in Ubuntu.

I think this started happening after I installed Enlightenment to give it a shot. What happens is that, while there are apps I have installed via apt/synaptic, the program won't run from a bash commands. I've had this problem with a couple of packages, like bsdgames-nonfree. As another example, the silly game fortune (which is default in the installation) doesn't run, either. Both are installed, however, when I try to run them, apt prompts me to install them from the repositories. But of course, when I try to install them, I get "These packages are already installed".

EDIT: Okay, using the binary in /usr/games/ seems to work. I guess it's missing a symbolic link to somewhere, but since my knowledge of Linux is still limited, I don't know where.

I tried asking in the Ubuntu general help forums but my thread got MIA in less than an hour...

/usr/games isn't in your profile path

the easiest solution is to create symlinks from the binaries to /bin

ln -s /usr/games/gamebinary /bin/linkname

Should do it