Ubuntu Weblogs

Aanjhan Ranganathan: Ubuntu Global Bug Jam - India is taking part!!!

2008-08-07T19:17:33+00:00

Its just hardly 24 hours to the first ever Ubuntu Global Bug Jam (August 9th and 10th) and Ubuntu-India team is taking part. If you are in the great Silicon valley of India, Bangalore contact Parthan. If you are in Chennai, contact me. Mumbai is getting its act together and I am sure they will come out with something solid. If you are in any other part of this massive country and want to take part, you are welcome at #ubuntu-in IRC channel @ irc.freenode.net.

The bug list is getting ready… The GBJ wiki page is taking shape and is growing.. The whole community is excited about it… Lets make it a big success!!!

Get your Ubuntu Bug Jam Cheat Sheet here.. Interested in setting up a Bug Jamming session, then read this page

See you all this weekend!!! Happy Bug Squashing!!!

Tom Dryer: Create an Encrypted Private Directory with eCryptfs

2008-08-07T17:00:52+00:00

eCryptfs is a kernel-native crypographic filesystem. It’s also a stacked filesystem, eCryptfs must work on top of another filesystem such as Ext3. This means that you don’t need to allocate space for eCryptfs, it will grow and shrink as you add files to it.

eCryptfs will be used in Ubuntu 8.10 to provide an encrypted private directory for every user. I set up my own private directory in Ubuntu 8.04. It’s not a user friendly solution like it will be in the next version of Ubuntu, but it’s not too difficult to simplify mounting and unmounting with some launchers.

Install eCryptfs from the package ecryptfs-utils (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils

Create a new directory to encrypt. I used a directory called Private in my home folder:
mkdir ~/Private

You don’t want other users on your system snooping on your Private directory, change its permissions to deny anyone but your user access:
chmod 700 ~/Private

Mount a new eCryptfs filesystem in your new folder:
sudo mount -t ecryptfs ~/Private ~/Private

You’ll be asked some questions by eCryptfs. I selected to use a passphrase, the default AES encryption, and 16-byte key length. Notice the defaults, indicated in square brackets, if you’re not sure about an option. (If you’re wondering about the “plaintext passthrough” option like I was, it allows non-encrypted files to be used inside the mount. I selected to turn this off.) eCryptfs will notice that this is the first time you have used your passphrase, and will ask if it can save a hash so it doesn’t have to warn you every time.

Once the mount finishes, try and add some files to your encrypted folder. Unmount the encrypted folder to secure it:
sudo umount ~/Private

If you open the Private directory now, you’ll still see all the filenames. But opening a file will reveal that its contents are encrypted. I examined my test plain text file in a hex editor, and it certainly looks encrypted:

Remounting the Private directory can be done with the same mount command we used before. However, you’ll still be asked for the key type, your passphrase, the cipher, and the key length. Who wants to remember all of that and enter it every time?

You can avoid this by providing some options with the mount command. This mount command specifies enough options that you should only be prompted for your passphrase:
sudo mount -t ecryptfs ~/Private ~/Private -o key=passphrase,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_passthrough=n

Want to streamline mounting and unmounting the your private directory? In Ubuntu 8.10 all of this will be done automatically when you log in and out. For until then, I just created two simple launchers in GNOME, one for mounting and one for unmounting my private directory.

Create a new launcher by right-clicking on your desktop and selecting Create Launcher. Change the type to Application in Terminal. Paste in the command you’re using to either mount or unmount. If you’re using a tilda (~) character in your commands to refer to your home directory, you need to specify the whole path instead if you’re using sudo. (It seems that using a GNOME launcher with sudo will cause a tilda to point to root’s home. In a normal terminal it would point to your own home.)

These launchers should open a terminal, take any input needed, close the terminal, and perform the eCryptfs mount/unmount.

I’ve also written previously about simple file encryption with OpenSSL.

Don Marti: It's like Click 'N Run Warehouse, but with applications

2008-08-07T15:40:50+00:00

You can tell when someone who dropped his or her legacy OS for Linux is not moving back. It's when he or she gets the way of the package manager. Mark Pilgrim explains the difference between what most OSs make you do and the ease of installing everything from the package manager.

Instead of conflicting installers that scribble on each other's files, a well-designed system has a policy that keeps each application in its place. A Debian system can run for five years with frequent installs and uninstalls of key parts of the system: not just browsers and word processors, but the C library and other fundamental infrastructure. Everything upgrades in place, usually without even a reboot, and you can, after using the machine for a while, end up with not one bit of software the same but never having reinstalled.

But the happy friendly place of the package manager (read Mark Pilgrim's piece if you aren't convinced you want to be there) breaks down as soon as you bring in a proprietary application. When something isn't packaged for your distribution, you're back to wrangling installers, which claws back some of your precious productivity gain.

On that problem hangs a business model. Get in touch with the proprietary ISVs, package their applications, and offer a repository. Lindows, now Linspire, did it first, and now Ubuntu is doing it with an ISV partner program that actually does something.

Malcolm Yates, ISV alliance manager for Canonical, says that the company is launching a "partner" repository (a special-purpose web site that provides ready-to-install packages for the package manager to download) to give users easy access to the ISVs' applications through the package manager. Using the same System → Administration → menu as you would use to install OpenOffice or Firefox, you'll be able to get Zimbra, Alfresco, or Unison.

IBM, with Lotus Notes and Symphony, is even getting involved: IBM, Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell, Red Hat to Deliver Microsoft-Free Desktops Worldwide. Compare picking a checkbox from a software menu to the old way of installing, and will you want to go back?

Many of the partners are making trial installs available through the package manager, then selling a key that will activate the trial version to a full version. Parallels Workstation is installable as a 15-day trial, then upgradeable, Yates says.

Canonical is offering technical help to make the packages comply with policy, he says. "There are very few ISVs out there with the skill to package a .deb that meets our specifications." With Canonical's help to move from an installer model to a package model, easy install and integration might not be an automatic open source advantage any more.

More info: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols on Ubuntu Goes Enterprise.

Bastian Kennel: sudo !!

2008-08-07T11:23:44+00:00

A friend of mine just told me this cool gadget:

How often do you type a command and realize you should have put sudo in front of that? I cannot count how often this has happened to me. But the next time I will be gratefull, because then I can just hammer sudo !! after the system told me that I do not have permission, and it will do. In slow motion:

sudo apt-get install foo

is the same as typing

apt-get install foo sudo !!

(assuming you are not root…).

This is one more step towards “Do what I mean, not what I say!”

[Update] This keeps getting cooler. Thanks to bdam I know now that !$ references the last location, and !! references the last command. So the use of !! is not limited to sudo. Use it with rm oder cd …

Stefano Forenza: A new blog theme for me

2008-08-06T23:10:44+00:00

Having a few issues with the previous theme, I just adapted the “Andrea” from Lucian Marin to fit my needs. I am still far from being done with it, but the resulting theme is good enough to be published.

Since the original theme was released under the GPL, I am able to release my changes as well under the same license. In the case you’re interested in my changes you can find the theme source here:

https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~tacone/+junk/andreahuman

Comments and suggestions are welcome, but keep in mind it’s still work in progress.

Bastian Kennel: How to get a clean install of Kubuntu with KDE 4.1

2008-08-06T17:55:02+00:00

With the 4.1 release of the K Desktop Environment, the development team has taken KDE 4 to the level where it is suitable for the end user. Of course it still has his flaws, but the new technology is really neat.

When I wanted to test the new release, I did an installation roughly the same as outlined in this post by tombuntu. However one thing keeps bugging me:

The resulting system is kinda mixed up with KDE and Gnome. This is a problem with all dual installations. You either end up using many Gnome programs on KDE or vice versa. The alternative is to install many programs, which I am also not a big fan of. Everybody tries to keep his/her system as clean as possible.

I overcame this problem by installing KDE 4.1 from a fresh Ubuntu 8.04 Server installation. If you have your home directory on a seperate partition (which I would strongly advise), this is really simple. If you do not have this, there are many tutorials on how to do this on the net (Example).

Clean up your home partition. This step helps ensure that you don’t carry around unnecessary data and application settings from previous installs, while on the other hand maintaining the application settings you want to keep (like firefox profiles, pidgin accounts, ssh keys …). To do so, log out of your session, switch to the console and create a temporary directory (eg. ~/backup). Then, go to your home directory
cd
and type
cd . When you now hit tab multiple times you get a list of items in your home directory starting with a “.”. Identify the items you want to keep and move/copy them to your backup folder
mv .mozilla backup/. Repeat this step until the backup folder contains only the personal settings that you want to keep. When you are done, remove everything starting with a dot from your home directory (remember to be logged out and do not login after this until you did your install)

rm -r .*

You can add the -f switch if you are really sure what you are doing. You don’t have to worry about . or .., those will not be affected, but rm -rf is a dangerous command. Now that your home is wiped clean, copy the backup and optionally remove it.
cd backup
mv .* ../
cd ..
rm -r backup

Now to the real stuff. Donwload and burn the 8.04 LTS Server image from here. Insert the CD and boot. When partitioning during the install, be sure to set your old home partition as the new one without installing the file system. Further reading on partitions could start here (beware, german).

After finishing the install, boot, login, update and upgrade your system to the latest patchlevel. You probably don’t want to keep the server kernel, so install linux-image-generic or any kernel of your choice. Remeber to edit the menu.lst to set your default booting kernel. It is important that you reboot, update and upgrade again when you installed the new kernel.

Now we are ready to bring the bling. Add
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu hardy main

to your sources.list with sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.Install the following packages

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-kde4-desktop gtk-qt-engine-kde4

and after the next reboot you should be greeted by a clean, fresh KDE 4.1 login screen.

Tom Dryer: Upgrading VirtualBox and Virtualizing the Ubuntu 8.10 Alphas

2008-08-06T17:00:29+00:00

If you’re upgrading from the version of VirtualBox you get from Ubuntu 8.04’s repository to the latest version from Sun, there are a few issues that could trip you up. I was doing this recently in order to run the latest Ubuntu alpha releases in a virtual machine, more on that in the second half of this post.

VirtualBox 1.6 adds seamless windowing for Linux guests, virtual SATA hard disks, PAE support (lets you boot Ubuntu server kernels), and better support for newer guests OSs.

Since Sun Microsystems purchased the company behind VirtualBox, they are now providing packages for Ubuntu 8.04 through their website. If you have an older VirtualBox installed from the Ubuntu repositories, installing Sun’s package will fail.

The first problem is that because Ubuntu’s package has a different name, virtualbox-ose instead of virtualbox, APT doesn’t know to replace the older package with the new one. APT is smart enough to see that there is a conflict and will give a virtualbox-ose conflicts with virtualbox error.

Removing the virtualbox-ose package will fix this:
sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-ose

The second problem is that Ubuntu provides some other VirtualBox packages that will also conflict. You may see an error similar to this:
trying to overwrite `/lib/modules/2.6.24-18-generic/misc/vboxdrv.ko', which is also in package virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.24-18-generic

This can be solved by removing all of the VirtualBox modules packages. If you’ve had VirtualBox installed for awhile, you’ll have one of these packages for each kernel update you’ve received. This command will remove them all:
sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.24-*

Now try and install Sun’s package:
sudo dpkg -i virtualbox_1.6.4-33808_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb

Hopefully the install was successful that time!

The next time you start VirtualBox it will ask you before upgrading your VM settings files for the new version.

If you’ve installed KVM, you may run into another issue when trying to run a VM. I got the VirtualBox can’t operate in VMX root mode. error until I uninstalled the package kvm. My guess is that KVM is running in the background with the kernel and is doing things with my CPU’s hardware virtualization support that conflicts with VirtualBox 1.6.

The reason I upgraded to the latest version of VirtualBox is that I’ve been wanting to virtualize the Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha releases, none of which I have been able to boot due to a kernel panic.

The only workaround at the moment is to run the VM with the latest versions of VirtualBox and with VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration enabled. This requires that you have a supported CPU, and that this support is enabled in your BIOS (it was turned off by default on my PC). If running this command produces output, you’re ready to go:
egrep '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo

Open the settings for your VM and select the Advanced tab. Select the Enable VT-x/AMD-V option. Be careful, there are actually three states for that check box. If the check appears gray, click it again to make it black.

This should allow you to boot the Ubuntu 8.10 Alphas and use them without further trouble. This worked for me with the Alpha 3 desktop CD, I was able to complete the installation and the installed system also works fine.

Peng Hardin: Peng’s links for Wednesday, 6 August and a Gmail tip

2008-08-06T14:19:14+00:00

I discovered something in Gmail yesterday that I meant to mention that some of you will say, “Well duh, Peng. I’ve been known about that for a while.” I’ll give you a gold star, but if I just found it yesterday than I bet others don’t know you can do it either. First let’s get today’s links out of the way.

Ubuntu Productivity: Better backup, syncing, and sharing. Windows and Mac users know about the Dropbox service but Linux users have been left out in the cold. There’s a Linux version currently in alpha testing, but you can request an invite. The author lets you know why that’s such a big deal, and after reading his post and checking it out I’ve requested an invite myself.
Asa Dotzler: consumer reports: stop using safari, get firefox. This isn’t just Asa being a Mozilla evangelist (his job), this is a major consumer testing organization saying that safari shouldn’t be used. At all, alt least for now.
Steven Rose: Ultamatix - Ubuntu NL warns against. The Ubunteros in the Netherlands (and Flanders) have looked at the Automatix replacement and don’t just say “Danger, Will Robinson!”, they tell you why you should avoid it.
Scott Ritchie: Wine sucks and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The WINE maintainer (it really is supposed to be in all caps since it’s a recursive acronym) for Ubuntu has some major beefs with our favorite Windows programming layer for Linux. Luckily tomorrow he’ll post his plan for fixing the issues, which I’ll post, but I wanted to post this link today to give you reasons to watch for tomorrow’s link.

A Gmail Tip

Like many of you I have filters set up on my Gmail account to help store my email in a way that I can hopefully find it again later. But I don’t save all of my email in Gmail, since I download all of it into Evolution at least once a day. So I end up having to select Unread messages, then deselect the news emails since they get deleted once I read them, and start reading my new emails. But it turns out I don’t have to select then deselect. Instead, since messages are already labeled thanks to my Gmail filters, once I read them I simply click the X box beside the Inbox label.Voila! The message has been archived without dumping you to your inbox.

Do you use Google Translate to translate web pages in a foreign language? There are bookmarklets available to give you one click translations of web pages. I only wish I had found those sooner. It would have saved me a ton of time even sooner.

/me checks his email and RSS feeds one more time

Yep, that’s a lid. I’ll post if I find anything that just won’t wait until tomorrow. Enjoy your Hump Day.

Paul Mellors: Ubuntu - DVD from MPEG

2008-08-06T11:38:05+00:00

I've been creating DVD's recently from my DV camcorder, it turns out it's quite easy, but on my laptop [due to it not having much processing power] takes ages. So here are the steps.

1, i'm port your video into kino, export it to MPEG [8 DVD]
2, make sure you have dvdauthor and mkisofs installed on your pc, a simple apt-get install will do it for you
3, run the following commands from the folder where the MPEG is
1, dvdauthor -o dvd -t
2, dvdauthor -o dvd -T
3, mkisofs -dvd-video -o dvd/
4, burn off your ISO using your fave burning app [i use k3b]

Watch and Enjoy

Paul Mellors: Picasa - Ubuntu

2008-08-06T09:16:11+00:00

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your computer. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized.

Download it here - http://picasa.google.com/linux/download.html

I downloaded the 32bit deb for Ubuntu and it works a treat

Steven Rose: Ultamatix - Ubuntu NL warns against

2008-08-06T08:48:18+00:00

There is more and more doubt creeping in about the reborn Automatix, and it seems a lot of the things about it being recoded and completely safe to use are rubbish:

http://forum.ubuntu-nl.org/topic/30085 (It is in Dutch)

Ultamatix is billed as making installing often used applications and codecs in Ubuntu easier. However, it does this in a dangerous way that can harm your system. The reasons, given by pjotr123 over at Ubuntu NL are the following:

1. It installs things in a manner that does not work correctly. This can destabilise your system.
2. It adds unknown package repositories. You never know what you’ll get.
3. It installs unstable development versions (nightly builds).
4. If you’ve used the script, we can’t help you at Ubuntu NL. A clean install is the only option.
5. Ultamatix is unnecessary. Everything it does can be done with Ubuntu too on a much safer way.

Another user at Ubuntu NL, Johanvd, also gave these reasons to prove it further:

-The code seems the same as Automatix’. They’ve just consequently replaced Automatix with Ultimatix, although they’ve forgotten some variables like AXHOME.

-The script still talks about gutsy(although the code could be adapted correctly).

-They’re still using –force-yes.

-There is no error handling.

-Sources.list is temporally adopted to download e.g. one package for Medibuntu. Afterwards those entries are removed, which means that you won’t get updates.

-They’re using weird code. E.g. sudo echo “deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/project-neon/ubuntu hardy main” >> /etc/apt/sources.list. This kind of code doesn’t work, unless it is executed in root mode. Sudo only executes echo in the root mode, but the pipe appending redirection(thanks, DarrenR114(was own mistake))(>>) isn’t. Thus either you won’t have the right permissions or the sudo command doesn’t make sense. Although this isn’t harmful, it does show that the authors have poor understanding of the shell.

As I stated previously Ultamatix is not at all neccessary, ALL the applications it makes avaialble can be obtained, in stable forms, with a little work, people on the forums are more likely to be willing to aid you, rather than you harming your system with unstable packages, that may not update at all. If you have used it, the only option to make entirely sure all remains of Ultamatix and any underlying issues it has caused are gone, is a clean install.

I discourage anyone from using it, and offer my support in obtaining packages not in the current repositories if needs be. It has a very high risk of crippling your system and posing security issues. As proven by its methods of adding repositories alone, not to mention its use of nightly builds. By all means go ahead and use it, but you have been warned by numerous sources against it.

Bookmark:

Tim Bielawa: What happened, Sun?

2008-08-05T20:44:26+00:00

Came into my office today to find out that when rebuilding machines with net-installs it's failing miserably. We did a little sleuthing and discovered what was going on. The cause of our frustration was Virtual Box.

This seems to be a common theme. The kernel people and the VirtualBox MOTUs can never get things synced up. So today when a coworker was rebuilding a machine and it attempted to install virtualbox, virtualbox was depending on a kernel that's only available in the hardy-proposed repositories, linux-image-2.6.24-20-generic.

Do a quick google search for that term and you'll see the first few results are "Kernel Panic!". Why is something getting put into the universe that's trying to pull in from -proposed?

Aanjhan Ranganathan: GNUSim8085 1.3.4 Released!!

2008-08-05T19:10:25+00:00

Hello All,

We are pleased to inform you the next release of Gnusim8085. “1.3.4″ This release fixes two important instruction level bugs #1936852 and #1966993. Thanks to Marcelo Souza and Missouga Dongi for the patches.

Source tarball can be downloaded from here

Request all the Maintainers to update their packages in their respective distributions. Thanks in Advance.

Keep Simulating!!!
–
GNUSim8085 Team

Peng Hardin: Peng’s links for Tuesday, 5 August

2008-08-05T18:28:45+00:00

Jono Bacon: Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is born! Ubuntu comes with a package called example-content that shows off some of the kinds of content you can use in Ubuntu. But why not update the content and really show off what free culture artists are doing?
Frank Taylor/Google Earth Blog: New Street Views in Australia and Japan in Google Earth and Maps. Google has a bunch of new imagery for Street View in Australia, Japan, and 30 new US cities, including New Orleans. I’ll have to check out my old stomping grounds to see what the Big Easy is looking like almost 20 years after I moved to Boston as well as post-Katrina. The announcement of new Street View content suggests Easter egg-type surprises, and I have to wonder if this is part of what they have in mind. Or maybe it’s just an extra goody.
Adventures in Switching to Linux: My favorite useful Compiz features. As sharks said when he posted a link to this article to the Ubuntu Forums, “it isn’t just about looking cool”. I love the Enhanced Zoom Desktop and use it pretty often, especially when sharing a picture or video with my roomies. I love the Shift Switcher and Expo, too. In fact I used Expo to create this picture of my desktop for the August 2008 Desktop Thread on the Ubuntu Forums.
Barry Burbank/Beyond the Forecast: Perseid Meteor Shower. It’s that time of year again, and Barry has some info and a link for more info on the annual heavenly event.

Kevin DuBois: Hey Ubuntuweblogs.org!

2008-08-05T17:48:55+00:00

I’m happy to say that I recently got accepted to Ubuntuweblogs.org! Thanks to Tiago Faria, the maintainer of the site, for letting me aggregate my Ubuntu and Open Source articles here.

A brief introduction is probably in order. I’m a Computer Engineering student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA. I’m the vice president of my fraternity on campus, and I love to swim, and I work for a local startup.

I love flipping bits, and I love solving complex low level problems, so I tend to gravitate towards coding in C. Thats not to say I neglect scripting skills of course, and can do bash or python scripting. Areas of interest of mine are codec-level multimedia, 3d graphics, driver/kernel development, and mathematics software.

I’m a small contributor to Compiz Fusion, where I write/maintain/play with my branch of extra window animations. Check out some of my work here and here.
I also do work with VLC and am working on revamping some of the backend API’s VLC uses to handle audio filters.
I’m on the road to Ubuntu Membership. I know how to package debs (more or less ), and am avid to learn more, and help out where I can. I’m also a member of the Michigan Ubuntu Loco team.
I’m not just a software guy, I love working with low level stuff, like the drivers or microcontrollers, as well as designing physical circuits.

So once more, I hope you find my blog a useful source of information, and feel free to comment!

Tom Dryer: Interactive Physics Simulator for KDE 4

2008-08-05T17:00:15+00:00

Step is a physics simulator for KDE 4. It’s meant to be an educational tool, but I’ve found it to be fun just to play around with also. Step was written as a Google Summer of Code project for KDE by Vladimir Kuznetsov.

If you’ve installed KDE 4.1 as I did in this post, then Step will be available in the repository. Step is a part of the KDE project, so if you’ve installed KDE from another source it shouldn’t be difficult to find.

Install Step from the package step-kde4 (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install step-kde4

When you first start Step, you get a blank world with coordinates displayed in the center. On the left side of the world, you have the palette. The palette contains items that you can place in the world. On the right side there is: a list that lets you select any items from the world, a list of properties for the selected item, helpful documentation for the selected item, and an undo history.

I’d recommend checking out the examples to get an idea of what Step can do. Load an example from File->Examples->Open Example. Then, click the Simulate button on the top toolbar to run the simulation. When you’re finished, click the Stop button.

Now try creating your own simulation. One interesting thing to try is attaching a tracer to another item such as a box or disk and watching the paths you can create by applying different forces. Below, I’ve created a box object and given it some velocity. Then, I attached a linear motor to the box pushing a different direction. I attached four tracers to the box. This is the result I got from the tracers as the box started spinning:

If you’re like me, and enjoy applications like Step, then you should also check out Phun, which is a similar, but less education oriented, physics sandbox.

Aanjhan Ranganathan: mukt.in - a report

2008-08-05T07:19:12+00:00

On August 3rd, 2008 0900 hrs I landed up in Hyderabad, INDIA to attend mukt.in which was taking place at Osmania University. It was v2 for Mukt.in which was started by a bunch of enthusiastic guys in 2007. The event had started two days back (on August 1st, 2008) and from the talks that were going around, it seemed a good 2 days with over 150 participants attending the event. After meeting the SMC gang at the hotel and saying a “Hi! Bye!” to a couple of folks who were leaving that afternoon back, I reached the venue (Osmania University) by around 1100 hrs just in time to see the registration desk being setup. Met up with mbuf, Sup3rkiddo and loads of other ILUGC friends before heading to the hall where my talk on “Free Software Electronics Laboratory” was scheduled. The previous talk had started late, which means mine was half hour late too.

I saw a bunch of students waiting outside the hall and started having a conversation with them. Pleasantly surprised to hear that they were waiting for the electronics talk (yes! my talk, and they didn’t have the slightest clue who the speaker was). Got some “real” feedback on the event which had both positives and negatives from this little conversation I had. Time had come for me to take the stage and these poor fellows were taken aback with surprise as well as shock!! I love to play such pranks! Well, the talk on the whole was attended by a pretty small crowd but the level of enthusiasm and eagerness to learn was high and evident from the interesting questions raised. I walked through the wide number of tools available for students to use right from getting to identify a resistor value (gResistor), simulating simple Digital and Analog circuits (qucs), PCB Design (pcb), learning microprocessors and controllers (gnusim8085) and took them well into the toolchain for coming up with your own chip (iverilog, Alliance toolset, gEDA toolset). The students liked the flow as it started with tools available for simple and basic electronics and ended up in coming out with your own Chip.

Quite a few Fedora Electronic Laboratory CDs were burnt and handed over to the students. Some Ubuntu CDs were also distributed. As it always happens, there was after talk discussions with the students and I had to excuse myself for lunch. Had nice time meeting the other fellow speakers and finally in the evening we had “Lightning talks” by all speakers. The idea impressed me as it gave an opportunity for all other speakers, volunteers, co-ordinators to listen to whatever they had missed in the last 3 days. It was fun reducing a 1 hr long presentation to under 3 minutes.

Time to head back home. Shared a taxi with Sebastien to HYD airport and had interesting discussions on “India - country of contrasts”. Hyderabad airport is freaking good and I had an uneventful, relaxed flight back home to MAA (Chennai). It would be unfair on my part to complete this post without a few big THANK YOUs!!!! Thanks Redhat! Thanks Sankarshan! Thanks FEL team! Thank you Free Software world.

Full Flickr Set here
Random thought: Nice event! Will be interesting to see how it develops in the coming few years.

Julian Saraceni: problem using okular

2008-08-05T07:05:11+00:00

Today, while using Okular I found something which really annoyed me. While not being a showstopper it is definitely something which isn’t working as it should be. For those of you who don’t know Okular. It’s KDEs document viewer, used to display pdf-files for example.

About the problem: Okular has a sidebar with the option to show all pages of a document in thumbnail view. This thumbnail view features a box which represents the field of view in the main area of the application and which you can drag around. Now here’s the problem, you can’t drag this box onto another page in the thumbnail view because every thumbnail has a border which acts as a barrier for you dragging pointer. These barriers however do not restrict the box itself in its movement. You can drag the box ‘into’ the barrier and grab it from the other side.

I made a short video and put it on Youtube in order to help illustrating the problem.

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

Random Posts

Peng Hardin: My history meme

2008-08-04T21:02:03+00:00

The guys over on Planet Ubuntu have a rather long running thread of people posting their top ten commands. Now that things are quieting down a skosh I wanted to chime in with mine, even though my posts are syndicated on Planet Ubuntu Users rather than on Planet Ubuntu itself.

$ history | awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’ | sort -rn | head

166 sudo
29 cd
27 evolution
20 locate
13 espeak
11 ssh-keygen
11 gpg
11 chmod
10 crontab
8 themeinfo

This list doesn’t show my daily running of Firefox for some reason, nor my use of Pidgin, let alone Google Gears or AWN. The eight runs of themeinfo was to try to get a screenshot for the August 2008 Desktop Thread over on the Ubuntu Forums.

Sense Hofstede: Ubuntu NL warns for Ultimatix

2008-08-04T18:55:12+00:00

As you can read in this topixc(I swear, it was by accident!), there is an official warning from Ubuntu NL against using Ultimatix, the successor to the discontinued Automatix. The program is meant to make installing often used program and codecs in Ubuntu easier. However, it does this on a dangerous way that can harm your system. The reasons, given by pjotr123, are these:

1. It installs things in a wrong way. This can destabilise your system.
2. It adds unknown package repositories. You never know what you’ll get.
3. It installs unstable development versions (nightly builds).
4. If you’ve used the script, we can’t help you at Ubuntu NL. A clean install is the only option.
5. Ultamatix is unnecessary. Everything it does can be done with Ubuntu too on a much safer way, with just a little bit of extra trouble.

A majority of the Ubuntu NL community agrees with this.

Some proves Johanvd found:

-The code seems the same as Automatix’. They’ve just consequently replaced Automatix with Ultimatix, although they’ve forgotten some variables like AXHOME.

-The script still talks about gutsy(although the code could be adapted correctly).

-They’re still using –force-yes.

-There is no error handling.

-Sources.list is temporally adopted to download e.g. one package for Medibuntu. Afterwards those entries are removed, which means that you won’t get updates.

-They’re using weird code. E.g. sudo echo “deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/project-neon/ubuntu hardy main” >> /etc/apt/sources.list. This kind of code doesn’t work, unless it is executed in root mode. Sudo only executes echo in the root mode, but the pipe appending redirection(thanks, DarrenR114(was own mistake))(>>) isn’t. Thus either you won’t have the right permissions or the sudo command doesn’t make sense. Although this isn’t harmful, it does show that the authors have poor understanding of the shell.

These programs cause a lot of trouble and are flooding the Ubuntu NL forums with help requests from users with weird symptons. We can’t and thus won’t help you with this. Like pjotr123 already said, the only option is a clean install; otherwise you can never be sure that every remaining of the damage that nasty program did is completely gone.

I’ve posted this warning in English at my blog because I think other people should also be warned. I don’t know the policy of the Ubuntuforums about this program, but I did see some people praising Automatix there. However, please discourage other people from using it. It might work out good, but there is a change that your system will become cripple.

And if everything worked good for you, your system is still unsecure. A lot of packages won’t recieve updates and others are untested and can harm your system and data. Be careful!

(Digital Fingerprint:
84f1fbc45bf0298666516cfd83159c26)

Tom Dryer: Replace the System Beep with a Compiz Effect

2008-08-04T17:00:14+00:00

Annoyed by the system beep from the speaker inside your computer’s case? You’ve probably noticed it when pressing backspace on the terminal prompt, or when Firefox’s find function can’t locate your query. Using Compiz, it’s possible to turn off the beep and replace it with a cool visual effect.

I’ve posted before on disabling the system beep by blacklisting the pcspkr module. For most people this post is a better solution because you’ll still have the beep when you might need it, such as in a virtual terminal.

You need to have CompizConfig Settings Manager installed to access all of Compiz’s settings.

Install CompizConfig Settings Manager from the package compizconfig-settings-manager (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Open it from System->Preferences->CompizConfig Settings Manager, or System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings depending on your version of Compiz. I’ve upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04’s version to 0.7.6.

To disable the system beep while running Compiz, click General Options, and deselect the Audible System Bell option.

Now you can find a system beep effect that you like and enable it, these options are identified by a music note icon. Here’s a list of all the ones I found:

Water effect->Title wave: A wave is emitted from the beeping window’s titlebar.
Blur Windows->Pulse: The window blurs out briefly.
Fading Windows->Visual Bell: The window, or optionally the whole screen, goes black and slowly becomes brighter again.
Wobbly Windows->Shiver: The window jiggles/shivers.

Remember that you need to have the relevant plugin enabled to get the effect.

If you’re not a Compiz user, or sometimes have to turn Compiz off, system beep preferences for GNOME’s default Metacity window manager can be found in System->Preferences->Sound->System Beep.

Peng Hardin: Peng’s links for Monday, 4 August

2008-08-04T16:13:56+00:00

Ubuntu Productivity: No! Wha…oooh…wow. Yes! Have you ever shown someone Linux? The writer of this blog is an OSX user who has decided to give Ubuntu a try after hearing so much about it. This post has some of the reactions he gets when people he does business with see he’s running Ubuntu. You should definitely check out his entire site. Thanks to Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #102 for bringing this site to my attention.
Robert O’Callahan: Why Ogg Matters. Firefox 3.1 will have support for Ogg Vorbis/Theora media files, but some people don’t quite get why this is even desired, let alone important. Robert has a mini-FAQ to show why Firefox 3 users need Ogg support.
LinuxDevices.com: LiMo touts new phones, members. The Linux Foundation has great news for people wanting smart phones based on Linux.

Some of us are taking kernel updates for Ubuntu and finding that the numeric keypads are borked (again). If this happens to you remember to disable allowing the keyboard to control the cursor. I spent a couple of days fighting with it until I remembered I dealt with this before. D’oh!

And if you need a smile to help improve the start of another week may I suggest my very first loldog?

Sense Hofstede: Ubuntu Wanted site is under discussion!

2008-08-04T14:43:32+00:00

Maybe you remember the two posts I made about the Ubuntu Wanted site. The idea now has got 83 votes and I’ve already created a blueprint. Now it is also being discussed at the ubuntu-website mailist. I’ve already got some responses, although I had hoped for more discussion. Here is a link to the archives: [ubuntu-web] Ubuntu Wanted site(blueprint) and continues here.

An interesting point was raised during the discussion that took place at the mailist; someone suggested to integrate the volunteer pool that was suggested earlier at Brainstorm in the Ubuntu Wanted site. This would give some great opportunities, e.g. the user could be notified when a role he’s interested in would be placed. This wasn’t the first time someone suggested it, but now I finally agreed with the suggestion. However, I don’t want to make such a radical change without asking other people first. Although I’ve offered to lead this project, I don’t want to be a dictator. I’ve send mails to Pasto, the person that suggestion the volunteer pool, and someone else that offered Pasto his help with coding.

I’ve brainstormed a bit about this site in one of the mails I sent to the ubuntu-website mailist. I’d also like to get some feedback from more people than just the people at the mailist — there are not many people subscribed — so I want to ask you to look at this passage I copied out of my email and tell me what you think of it and the whole idea of integrating the two ideas into one site. Feedback about the Ubuntu Wanted site itself is also very, very welcome.

(…)
I’m now
thinking out loud, so please say it when you don’t agree.
The user only ends up in the volunteer pool when (s)he creates/activates
his/her profile. Than a status can be set showing how eagerly the user
is looking for roles. At the profile are the tasks shown that the user
has fulfilled or is fulfilling within the Ubuntu Community and outside.
Experience and knowledge of software and programming languages should
also be visible.(Should the level of education and age also be visible?)
Other users can write testimonials about the user. However, how are we
going to display experience? Will it be (semi-)automated like Ohloh, by
checkboxes or by text? Should it contain links to other profiles? I
think there should be some automated forms for Ohloh and SourceForge
profiles(and more) profiles and a text area to tell about the current
and past roles. Programming languages can be done with checkboxes,
experience with drop-downboxes.
I think the profile should also have a text area where the user can
tell something about him-/herself.

Getting a volunteer pool would also have the advantage that with certain
tasks, the users that might be interested could get mailed when
something an interesting role would be posted. Especially if the user
could tell the system he’d be interested in a position in a certain team.
(…)

Leave a comment here, or mail me using the contact form. Participating in the discussion at the mailist or contacting me(qense) at #ubuntu-website @ freenode is also good, of course. In fact, I’d encourage you to contribute to the mailist when you’re interested to help, so people other than me can participate.

Thanks in advance.

(Digital Fingerprint:
84f1fbc45bf0298666516cfd83159c26)

Aanjhan Ranganathan: Day 2: Ubuntu Global Bug Jam Preparatory Session

2008-08-04T14:34:24+00:00

Didn’t I mention Day 1 was fantabulous???!!!!!! Day 2 was something much much bigger. It was beyond our expectations. It had more people, more relevant questions and a very high energy level throughout the session.

July 13th, 2008 was Day 2 (I know I am late in posting this entry. But still not too late) of the Bug Jam preparatory sessions which was being organised. A day which focussed more on the basics of Debian packaging. Onkar did a great job of guiding people through the session. He started with what packaging is all about, then went on to explain the various important files needed to package and the roles they play, gave a few tips on good packaging habits and mentioning some (read as important) of Debian packaging policies.

After the basic lecturing, it was time for the folks to try something hands-on. He (as would most of the packagers) started off with the “hello world” tar ball. All the needed files for packaging were manually created with the idea of introducing the debhelper scripts at a much later stage. Everybody had great fun though only a couple of guys could come out with a successful .deb (rest had some minor issues which got resolved later). Throughout the session the level of motivation was high given that the session went almost after midnight.

The 2 day workshop came to a close and we were convinced of more Ubuntu bug squashers and packager in the future. The logs can be found here.

PS: I think, I was never able to be complete this blog post for a reason. Today, we got news that my good friend, co- GNUSim8085 developer and the tutor of Day 2, became an Ubuntu Universe Contributing developer. And this post would have been incomplete without the mention of the same. Congrats Onkar! Wish you more progress!

Mathieu Trudel: RSA SecurID integration

matt — 2008-08-04T02:04:00+00:00

Short rant here... Why is it that GNOME or KDE don't support using SecurID (or OTP or anything like that that could potentially display a prompt other than "Password: ") ? To me, it is a fairly important requirement, if not for server applications, at least for the interfacing between servers and Ubuntu desktops.

We use RSA SecurID to control access to systems. If you try to use the new PAM module provided by RSA, and attempt to connect to a system using, for example, sFTP, you will notice that nautilus or dolphin will just hang there, waiting indefinitely for something, and eventually time out. This is annoying, I feel like it could be something relatively simple to fix, and I am certain it would help not only Ubuntu, but just about any distribution to see more interest from large corporations, only because the security they use is supported, and does not pose a usability problem.

Interestingly, Dolphin in KDE4.1 seems to respond a little better, and actually displays a "OpenSSH" window with a PASScode prompt... However, it then complains immediately that it cannot grb the keyboard, and even if you type something it will not be used... and the prompt will still reappear 5 times :)

I will probably take a second attempt at fixing the issue, or at least finding where the problem starts, at least in nautilus. Is there anyone who knows that could point me in the right direction?

Mathieu Trudel: Encrypting data in Hardy...

matt — 2008-08-03T21:12:00+00:00

Think of this post as a more or less of a response to David Thomas' post about how to encrypt data in Ubuntu... However, as a little warning, this has the potential to cause you issues depending on where you are travelling, what is the political climate like where you are going, or if your country has regulations about using encryption. I'm thinking France here, for example, where if I'm not mistaken you are not allowed to use specific encryption algorithms like 3DES or AES? If I'm mistaken, please let me know.

As for me, I'm only using it as a theft protection device, don't want people to have access to sensitive data that could be on my drive if I forgot my laptop somewhere or had it stolen.

Anyway, so you can encrypt your whole disk in Ubuntu. This feature has been available since Gutsy in the installer, where it will permit you to partition your whole disk using LVS and LUKS or some other system. You could also do the partitioning yourself, provided you remember to create the partition for "physical volume for encryption" first, and then use that as a "physical volume for LVS"... You'll also need to have /boot separate, unecrypted. Here's a nice overview of using the installer to encrypt the whole drive: http://learninginlinux.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/installing-ubuntu-804-with-full-disk-encryption/

Also, you can use another very nifty tool called TrueCrypt. Sadly, while some GUI (or so they seem, at first glance) tools exist in the repositories to interface with Truecrypt, the actual software still doesn't appear to be available. You can however get it here, on the official TrueCrypt website.

To setup a truecrypt drive, plug a USB key for example, run truecrypt, select the device and options and follow the directions. I've found that they are all pretty clear. I personally use this to secure my GPG key and lists of contacts... Oh, and my hackergotchi too :)

TrueCrypt happens to have this interesting feature where you can hide an encrypted volume inside another one, and thus benefit from "plausible deniability", since if only the outer volume was decrypted, the data contained (which would effectively be your inner encrypted volume) would not be distinguishable from random data -- still, I probably wouldn't let my life depend on people's lack of curiosity.

Anyway, using these two options, and strong passphrases, you would be able to deter most attempts at reading your personal, sensitive data, and you won't have to worry about the proprietary company information you were carrying to be viewed by your laptop's thief.

For now though, there's still nothing more secure than keeping sensitive data in your head only. Encryption can always, given enough resources thrown at it, be cracked, so this just one more thing to ... keep in mind.

Stefano Forenza: Ubuntu Gui coverage

2008-08-03T20:18:49+00:00

Some days ago I sent one letter to the ubuntu-devel mailing list. I’d like to post it here to, to further elaborate.

I am not sure I was in topic with the thread, by the way you can find the thread - “Disappointed with Ubuntu Server, could be used by such a wider audience” - here and here.

I am posting it here too, to get some comment from you and hopefully to further elaborate in the next posts. Let me know what you think.

(ps: bad grammar down there, beware! )

Scott Kitterman, on Thu Jul 31 17:38:30 BST 2008

> Generally you can do any server things from a desktop if you install the
> needed things. For easy Apache configurations there is:
>
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rapache
>
> There’s a pending request to have it backported to Hardy.
>
> What’s needed are people who understand the under the hood part of servers
> well enough to write such a thing and also care enough about the GUI
> experience to do it. Ubuntu Server is a young project and is headed toward
> being able to support such things, but it won’t happen overnight.
>
> What we lack isn’t ideas or understanding of the need, but people to do the
> actual work to provide it.
>
> Scott K

Hello, I am one of the developers of Rapache. I subscribed this ml
just to answer ScottK and drop my 2 cents on the topic. I am likely to
keep my subscription for the next week, if you like to reply.

Disclaimer

What follows may be a little delirious, but took me hours to put it
together, so I am sending it straight away.
I’ll post a more lucid rewrite on ubuntuweblogs when I get the time.
And maybe open a blueprint about this. I really don’t know if I am
allowed to post on this mailing list, so bear with me if I am out of
place.
In what follows, I’ll take Rapache as an example, but the point I’d
like to make is, of course, general.

I’d like to respectfully disagree with ScottK.
Linux in general (as well as Ubuntu) generally lacks the understanding
of the need of such desktop-to-server applications.
The proof is, more than the lacking of such applications, the fact
that Ubuntu lacks a related workgroup/team. Did I miss it ?

Resources are of course limited and all things have a priority. The
lack of a workgroup dedicated to ‘develop guis to configure server
things’ just show they don’t seem important enough at the moment.

Have you ever seen a comment like this ?
http://www.reddit.com/comments/6ncun/rapache_is_a_simple_apache_administration_tool_it/c04cxa1
I guess you have, and someone of you could even agree.

As Bud Roth points, the point raised by Scottk doesn’t seems really a
lacking of ubuntu-server group itself.

Let me elaborate: I had the pleasure to quickly present Rapache to the
ubuntu-server meeting. They were really kind to me but became evident
that a Gnome gui to configure Apache was not something inherently
related to the #ubuntu-server workgroup.
I then asked what was the right irc channel / workgroup to discuss
this kind of application.

The answer was Rapache seemed to be something in between ubuntu-server
and ubuntu-desktop.
Who’s going to care about taking care of this kind of applications in Ubuntu?

My experience

What do I agree with ScottK is the wider audience thing. I used to
work in a non-tech savy environment (a computer magazines publisher,
lol). Some facts about it:

1) I could get permission to use Ubuntu as local network
web-development server, as long as I provided to perform the actual
installation myself.
2) The only thing I got shouted about in the whole career there was..
daring to install ubuntu on my workstation.
3) Our (windows) sysadmin installed Ubuntu on a computer to be run
Vmware machines on it. It choose Ubuntu because
a) some colleague dropped some installation cd’s on our desks, one day.
b) I could help him with ubuntu related issues much better than with
fedora/suse/whatever related ones.
4) Sysadmin had to configure Samba shares to connect to a given domain
with certain permissions. He was shocked by the fact to not having a
gui to perform the operations. After a while he found some gui utility
in synaptic and felt quite happy with the result. He felt much more in
control with a gui than with command line thinkering.

Conclusions:

People do fear what they don’t know.

I got shouted because my coordinator never tried how good it feels
like to work on a ubuntu workstation (no more putty, nautilus ssh
integration etc). (a)

The sysadmin was actually happy to have guis to configure local
network things (4). It’s only complain is not having Gui for
*anything* like it happens on Windows 2000/NT.

People don’t know about linux, they won’t try it if it doesn’t allow
them to get their stuff done. What the reasons are for a sysadmin to
use (paid licensed) Windows instead of Linux ? GUI. And things they
feel in control on (when they don’t, point 2) happens)

Ignorance has reasons behind it

- people don’t want to learn. Bad, but we could get them as users
anyway. Why not ?
- people has stuff to get done, and no time to learn.
- people has to take responsibility on any choice they make. They
would like to switch but they have delivery-schedules. With a gui they
can do things easily and follow best practices at the very same time.
(i.e. Rapache detects if you have virtualhosts .conf present only in
sites-enabled and offers the user to normalize the situation). And
they will be able to learn more throughout the process.
- no one is guru by born. We need to lower the entry barrier.
- we shuold not discriminate, ever. Women from men, black from
white, beginners from gurus.

Why people hate command line (they do, yes they do)?
- they don’t feel in control enough.
- they are forced to use that.
- if they didn’t need it so often, when they really need it, they
will be happy to have such a powerful command line environment.

What are others doing ?

Redhat: Augeas websites reports augeas as “Redhat emerging
technology”. That could be for a reason.
Suse: they already have already a Yast Apache Configurator plugin (and
various other things i guess). They are not really Gnomish and they
presume prior knowledge.
- we should strive to make things easier and let the user to learn
while he’s doing.
Apple: my sysadmin came back from an Apple conference and kept talking
about the guis apple did for Macosx server. They were so nice, so
easy.
Microsoft: the only reason I can’t see to set up a WAMP stack is..
being able to configure IIS with a gui.

We need to lead this kind of momentum. If we lead, who will we steal
market from ? Microsoft and Apple, mostly. People that already use
linux could switch to ubuntu, but that’s much more unlikely.

What do we need ?

A group of people to spoof inadequacies and propose gui solutions.
Finding an existing, semi-obscure project and making sure it runs
properly on ubuntu would be fine. Upstream developers would feel
encouraged when they see Ubuntu people supports them.

Just as Apple don’t have good offers for medium-sized workstations we
don’t have any good offer for non-gurus who need to go further the
web-browse/mail/write-letter habits.
A good offer for that segment would boost either server and desktop
environment adoption.

We need gui coverage. It’s hard to do. But we do. And we *do* need to
aknowledge that we really need it. I encourage everyone of you who
don’t feel the same to say that, and discuss it.

A server with a Desktop Environment installed ?

Quite likely. Intranets do exists and small-medium businesses uses
them. That obviously falls off the gui + server debate but it’s
related and equally important. There’s noe good reasons for a small
business sysadmin to not install desktop environment on a intranet
server. He could start it, get stuff done, and stop it afterwards

In the long run (that’s involves rapache as well, btw) an SSH (best
practices approved) framework would be very handy. That would bring
the best of both worlds (desktop/business)

My Mom loves ubuntu !

Sure, she calls you to resolve issues just as much as she would do
with windows. Ask your 19 years old cousin. He would like to tweak the
system, but he can’t get past the gedit as root thing. The same
applies to not-fully-savy tech people into small businesses.

Well. Back to coding, thx for your time.

Stefano Forenza