Words of Encouragement October 18, 2005
Posted by Carthik in ubuntu.9 comments
Thank you, kind readers, for the multitude of mail you have sent me egging me on, and keeping me smiling. I really appreciate the emails you have sent me, including the one that said this blog is too “thin” for people with widescreens. My response in that case is that if this were not a wordpress.com blog, I would have used a relative-width theme 
I know this is a pathetic excuse for not having written anything in the past day. My goal was and is to write at least one post a day. I have done this so far except for 2, or maybe 3 breaks. Right now, life takes an upper hand but things will be back to normal soon enough.
I decided to start reading email “like a man” – that is – with postfix + fetchmail + procmail + spamassassin + mutt. Now that is a whole lot of things to chain together and tweak, and I am having a whale of a time. At the end of it all, I will be able to show email who’s boss. (Evolution was bossing me around till now – “no, you can’t do that” or “hey! that’s not how it is done, you have to tie your shoelaces this way!” and so on). Till that gets done, and till a rsync-over-ssh backup script of mine gets done, things will be just a little slow. Most of it is over.
Don’t you all just LOVE Breezy? I loved it so much I decided to reinstall everything from scratch, though it was not neccessary. I can do that without disrupting anything since my /home directory is on a different partition. Nothing is as exciting as setting up a computer exactly the way you want it! Forgive me if I indulge in the excitement of things that are new and shiny!
22x Faster Upgrade October 14, 2005
Posted by Carthik in administration, ubuntu.27 comments
Use a mirror in your /etc/apt/sources.list file for faster upgrades. I went from 28 kbps downloads to 600+kbps downloads by editing my /etc/apt/sources.list to use a mirror instead of the usual ubuntu.com repository. Why wait when you can upgrade faster, eh? Instead of taking hours to download the updated packages, it took me less than half an hour. It is better if the mirror is geographically close to you.
Choose from the list of mirrors (look under the mirror-mirrors section) and update your sources.list now!
Enabling cupsys Web Admin Interface October 13, 2005
Posted by Carthik in administration, ubuntu.31 comments
If you are trying to get your printing system going, and search for tips and docs on the web, you will find most of the documentation referring to http://localhost:631 as your cupsys administration interface. However, on Ubuntu, this browser-based administrative interface for cupsys is disabled by default. Here’s how to enable it:
Select “System”->”Administration”->”Users and Groups” from the main menu on your desktop.
Select “Show all users” and/or “Show all groups”.
Add the user “cupsys” to the group “shadow” in the “groups” tab.
Restart cupsys by issuing the command:
$sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
IMPORTANT: I don’t know why the web admin interface was disabled in the first place – so please know that it is best to reverse all that you did once by removing the user cupsys from the shadow group,a nd restarting cupsys, once your work with the interface is done. If anyone knows why the web-browser interface was disabled in Ubuntu, please let me know – a lot searching and reading changelogs led me nowhere
Breezy Badger (5.10) Ports and Versions Roundup October 13, 2005
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu.10 comments
Now that Breezy Badger (version 5.10) is out the door, there are too many things to go searching for, like, where and how to find Kubuntu, Edubuntu, the new architecture ports, the dvd images with both live and install options etc, so let us do a quick roundup of the available options, shall we? I have been reading the announcements and the updates, and every other announcement gets me thinking, “Oh cool, so there is a downloadable image for this too. So lest we lose track, and have trouble finding stuff, I am going to list all the available CD/DVD images and options related to Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu etc here. If you find an CD/DVD image link missing here, please leave a comment, and I will add it in.
What is new for 5.10 is that Ubuntu has been ported to three new architectures on an experimental basis. Also Edubuntu makes it’s debut. The developers have also put out a seperate cd image for Ubuntu server installation, which, I expect leaves out the snazzy gui stuff . There have also been releases of Kubuntu Images.
Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10:
What’s New
i386, PPC and AMD64
Download Ubuntu Live CDs and Install CDs
Download Ubuntu DVD image containing both Live and Install instances
HP PA-RISC and Intel IA64
Announcement
Download CD images here
SPARC
No CD images available:
Download boot.img for tftpboot and netinstall
Download Ubuntu mini.iso for CD boot and netinstall
Kubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger
What’s New
i386, PowerPC, AMD64
Download Live CD, Install CD and DVD images
Edubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10
Release Announcement
Download Edubuntu Live, Install CD
Download Edubuntu install DVD
Ubuntu-server
Download Install CD for Ubuntu-Server.
Matt’s Birthday Present October 13, 2005
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu.add a comment
The release of Breezy Badger coincided with Matt Zimmerman’s Birthday. Matt is one of the lead developers of Ubuntu, a Canonical employee, and a real big influence on Ubuntu in general.
What a way to celebrate one’s birthday!
Happy Birthday, mdz!
Breezy Badger is Out! October 13, 2005
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu.1 comment so far
The day we (well, at least I) have been waiting for is here! The next version (the third-ever release) of Ubuntu, version 5.10, codenamed Breezy Badger has been released. Download it, try out the live version, install it, pass the cds on, spread the luv!
I can already download the cd image, using a torrent. I suppose some of the slower mirrors wordlwide are still in the process of syncing, but for all practical reason, the badger is out the door!
Use a Mirror close to you for best speed.
Use a torrent, and keep the torrent running, if you will! It helps a little, and every little bit counts.
The main releases page has Breezy Badger Ubuntu v 5.10 too, which would be a round-robin setup, I suppose.
Once you install Breezy, be sure to spread the good will, and the word!
Tuning the Filesystem Check at Bootup October 12, 2005
Posted by Carthik in administration, applications, ubuntu.15 comments
Ubuntu forces drives to be checked once for every 30 times the filesystem is mounted. This means that on an average, once every 30 times you bootup your computer, the filesystem integrity is checked. This is very reasonable for a desktop, which is seldom rebooted. However, for a laptop, this means pain, since you may be planning on making a presentation, and Ubuntu may start a filesystem check just when you hook up your laptop to the projector and bootup! Today we will see how to disable (or force) the checking temporarily, and also how to adjust the period and frequency of the check.
To disable filesystem integrity check for the next bootup, create a file called /fastboot. So a
$sudo touch /fastboot
will disable filesystem check for the next time you bootup. Since the /fastboot file is removed during bootup, this will disable filesystem check only once – for the one time you bootup after you create the /fastboot file (which need not have anything in it — hence the touch, which only creates the file)
On the contrary to force a filesystem check the next time you bootup, create a file called /forcefsck by doing
$sudo touch forcefsck
Now, on to the more interesting business of how to change the number of bootups between filesystem checks, and modifying the period with which the filesystem is checked. The following applies to ext2 and ext3 filesystems.
tune2fs is an utility that you can use to change both the number of bootups between filesystem checks, and the number of days/weeks/months between filesystem checks.
For example to have the filesystem checked once every 60 bootups use
$sudo tune2fs -c 60
To have the filesystem check run periodically, say once a week, use
$sudo tune2fs -i 1w
changing the “w” to “d” or “m” will have the check run once daily and once monthly – you get the idea.
As always, you can read
$man tune2fs
for more detailed information and examples.
Ubuntu – OEM Mode October 11, 2005
Posted by Carthik in guides, news, ubuntu.16 comments
An OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) installation mode is now available for Ubuntu. This will help OEMs (like, say, hp, dell, or even your local computer store) to pre-install Ubuntu on a computer and sell it to you. Once you buy the computer, the first time you power up, you will be asked to set your time zone, create a new user and basically customize the computer for your use.
With the OEM installation mode, it is hoped that more and more vendors will pre-install Ubuntu on the computers they sell. As with everything else Ubuntu, the oem installation is free, and one can use a regular install disc to install in the OEM mode. Here’s how:
While the OEM mode is part of Ubuntu 5.10, it is not yet documented in full. Fortunately, the basic OEM mode install consists of only 7 steps:
1. Place the Ubuntu 5.10 Install CD in the CD-ROM Drive and power on the computer.
2.At boot:, type oem and press Enter.
3.The Ubuntu 5.10 installer will run. Follow the on-screen instructions to start the installation.
4.Once the installation is complete, you will be informed that Ubuntu 5.10 has been fully installed and the computer is ready for shipping.
5.You can also run a system test to check if the installation of Ubuntu 5.10 OEM mode went smoothly. The system test will run the Ubuntu Hardware Database and will check if the hardware is configured correctly.
6.Sell the Computer…Profit! =) (The next step is for the potential buyer…)
7. Power on your new Ubuntu-powered computer (or laptop!). You will be asked to select your language, keyboard layout, time zone configuration, and create your first user account. The first user account created has administrative rights via sudo. Since Ubuntu 5.10 is a multi-user system, you can create more user accounts as needed.
From Jerome.
For users like you and me, who are used to installing their own OS on their machines, this means little, but this might be good to promote the adoption of Ubuntu. Expect to see a lot more computers with Ubuntu pre-installed for sale on ebay, for one!
Xubuntu – XFCE + Ubuntu October 11, 2005
Posted by Carthik in news, ubuntu.44 comments
Recently the development of a new flavor of Ubuntu powered by the XFCE desktop environment, instead of gnome/metacity was announced.
For those of you who want to try out the new Xubuntu, read the wiki page on Xubuntu, and install the xubuntu-desktop package, only in breezy. If you are using Hoary now you will have to wait till Breezy is released and you upgrade. After installing xubuntu-desktop, you can use XFCE by selecting it when you login using the graphical login, from under “sessions”.
If you are interested in contributing to, or following, the development of Xubuntu, join the Xubuntu mailing list.
Again, Xubuntu is just like Kubuntu, plain old Ubuntu, with a different desktop environment. The objective behind making Kubuntu and Xubuntu available to make it a smoother process for those who want to use alternative desktop environs.
Watch outputs as they change October 10, 2005
Posted by Carthik in commands, snippets, ubuntu.5 comments
This is another “trick” that might seem trivial to the gurus out there, but is something I discovered recently.
Use the command watch to regularly update and refresh the output of some command. If you want to see the “running output” then watch is the program for you.
Using it is simple, by default it updates the output once every two seconds. So
$watch “your-command”
will update the output of “your-command” every two seconds.
To make it refresh more frequently, try
$watch -n1 “your-command”
and to make it highlight differences as and when they occur, try the -d option.
As an example, the command
$watch -d -n1 “netstat -t tcp”
will show you a list of the IP connections heading out from your computer, and update the output every second. It will also highlight new items/changes as they happen.
Another little gem from teh ubuntu-users mailing list archives!
