sdm networks weblog » ubuntu http://sdm-net.org The web and other things Mon, 21 Jun 2010 08:20:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Ubuntu and OpenVPN at Klagenfurt University http://sdm-net.org/2008/01/ubuntu-and-openvpn-at-klagenfurt-university/ http://sdm-net.org/2008/01/ubuntu-and-openvpn-at-klagenfurt-university/#comments Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:27:49 +0000 René Samselnig http://sdm-net.org/2008/01/ubuntu-and-openvpn-at-klagenfurt-university/ Have you ever wondered if you could use network manager to connect to the Klagenfurt University network? You can, and this is a short description on how to do it. If you downloaded the script and executed it then you can easily use the network manager to connect/disconnect OpenVPN. You can put the following lines [...]

]]> Have you ever wondered if you could use network manager to connect to the Klagenfurt University network? You can, and this is a short description on how to do it.

If you downloaded the script and executed it then you can easily use the network manager to connect/disconnect OpenVPN. You can put the following lines in a separate file called uni-klu.pcf (put it anywhere you like – just remember the location, you will need it later on):

[openvpn]
description=uni-klu
connection-type=x509
remote=143.205.212.10
port=1194
dev=tun
proto=tcp-client
servercert-insecure=no
ca=/etc/openvpn/ca.crt
cert=/etc/openvpn/USERNAME.ocrt
key=/etc/openvpn/USERNAME.okey
comp-lzo=no
shared-key=
local-ip=
remote-ip=
username=
cipher=
ta=
ta_dir=
routes=

Substitute USERNAME with your uni-klu username. THIS IS IMPORTANT!

OpenVPN plugin for network manager

You will need to install the OpenVPN plugin for network manager:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-openvpn

Setting up the OpenVPN plugin

Then logout and login into Gnome. You will see the network manager icon in the notification area (usually on the top-right of your screen) – click on it and select VPN Connections – Configure VPN…. Choose to Add a new configuration, then Forward and Forward. Then choose Import Saved Configuration… and select the file you created earlier. Check the entered values and then Forward, Apply.

After that you can connect using the network manager icon – goto VPN Connections and select uni-klu. As simple as that.

]]> http://sdm-net.org/2008/01/ubuntu-and-openvpn-at-klagenfurt-university/feed/ 2 My MSI MegaBook S260 http://sdm-net.org/2007/01/my-msi-megabook-s260/ http://sdm-net.org/2007/01/my-msi-megabook-s260/#comments Wed, 17 Jan 2007 08:16:14 +0000 René Samselnig http://www.sdm-net.org/2007/01/my-msi-megabook-s260/ Last year I got myself a new laptop. Actually it is my very first laptop ever. Although I never really wanted to have a laptop I found it useful to have one for studying purpose and more. Of course I set it up with Ubuntu. Hardware This is the configuration I bought the laptop with. [...]

]]> Last year I got myself a new laptop. Actually it is my very first laptop ever. Although I never really wanted to have a laptop I found it useful to have one for studying purpose and more. Of course I set it up with Ubuntu.

Hardware

This is the configuration I bought the laptop with.

  • Intel centrino 1.73GHz
  • 1024MB RAM
  • DVD+RW/R DVD+RW/R DL Writer
  • 12″ Display 1280×800 WXGA Crystal Bright Display
  • 80GB harddisk
Software

Ubuntu 6.10 is about to be the operating system of my choice. After installation I had to add some more applications to fit my needs, but all in all the base installation gives you quite a lot you need.

Further Tweaking

If you like to have more recent mplayer versions then add the marillat source to the sources.list file. Remember to backup your sources.list before changing it!

echo “deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ sid main” >> /etc/apt/sources.list

Since we don’t have the public key of Christian Marillat we have to import it from the keyserver. You can do it like this:

gpg –recv-keys 07DC563D1F41B907 && gpg –export 07DC563D1F41B907 > marillat.sig sudo apt-key add marillat.sig

You might have to rerun the first line since gpg creates your personal config file when first running and doesn’t load it the first time. Just check the message given.

Suspending

All modes of suspending (to RAM, to Disk) are working now. At first Suspend to Disk didn’t work because my swap-disk wasn’t set up properly. I had a hell of a time figuring this out, but at last it works fine now. It takes some time to suspend (hibernate), but it’s worth the wait.

I’m not sure if one really needs the hibernate package, but here’s how to install it:

sudo apt-get install hibernate

Further Reading
]]> http://sdm-net.org/2007/01/my-msi-megabook-s260/feed/ 2 Bringing NetBeans to life on Ubuntu http://sdm-net.org/2006/01/bringing-netbeans-to-life-on-ubuntu/ http://sdm-net.org/2006/01/bringing-netbeans-to-life-on-ubuntu/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:43:59 +0000 René Samselnig http://www.sdm-net.org/2006/01/bringing-netbeans-to-life-on-ubuntu/ If you’re a developer and might want to use NetBeans as your favourite IDE – here’s how to do it. This is not a detailed description on what might go wrong – but it’s a start. And it’s how I brought it to life myself. Downloading Netbeans Go to the NetBeans Download Section. From the [...]

]]> If you’re a developer and might want to use NetBeans as your favourite IDE – here’s how to do it. This is not a detailed description on what might go wrong – but it’s a start. And it’s how I brought it to life myself.

Downloading Netbeans

Go to the NetBeans Download Section. From the dropdown list choose Linux. Then choose next.

Installing

You will have to have a Java SDK already installed to use (and at least install) Netbeans. David Coldrick has a blog at blogs.sun.com where he discusses the issue of installing Java under Ubuntu Linux.

Once you have Java up and running you can continue installing NetBeans. With a terminal go to the folder you’ve downloaded the NetBeans installation file to. Now export the JAVA_HOME variable to point to the Java home directory.

cd /path/to/downloaded/netbeans/installer/ export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun/

You’ll get a strange error if JAVA_HOME isn’t set to the right directory (The wizard cannot continue because of the following error: could not load wizard specified in /wizard.inf (104)). But nothing happens – don’t be afraid honey, it’s only an error message.

The next you’ll have to do is make the binary file executable. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do that – I’ll show you:

chmod +x nb-4_1-linux.bin

Change nb-4_1-linux.bin to the filename you just downloaded. Now you’re able to start the installer:

./nb-4_1-linux.bin

Once running it’s going to be easy to install NetBeans. Just follow the instructions given. The defaults are quite okay. The only thing I changed was the installation directory – I changed it to /home/sandman/software/netbeans-4.1/, it’s up to you.

Using NetBeans

Once installed you can open the NetBeans IDE by executing the following commands:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun/ /path/to/netbeans/bin/netbeans

If you don’t want to start NetBeans that way (and you really don’t want to start it that way all the time) then add the following lines at the end of your ~/.bashrc file:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun/ alias netbeans=’/path/to/netbeans/bin/netbeans’

Note: The ~/.bashrc file is included every time you start a terminal. This way the JAVA_HOME variable is always exported and an alias for netbeans is being set – now you only have to type netbeans to open up the IDE. No more hurt/broken fingers when starting netbeans!

Further Reading

Congratulations if you made it this far! I know this is no complete guide with error recovery and support hotline. But if you think you got stuck or if you’d like to have more detailed answers I’ll give you some hyperlinks to got to.

]]> http://sdm-net.org/2006/01/bringing-netbeans-to-life-on-ubuntu/feed/ 0 New hardware, new Ubuntu release, new wordpress plugin http://sdm-net.org/2005/10/new-hardware-new-ubuntu-release-new-wordpress-plugin/ http://sdm-net.org/2005/10/new-hardware-new-ubuntu-release-new-wordpress-plugin/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2005 19:59:03 +0000 René Samselnig http://www.sdm-net.org/2005/10/new-hardware-new-ubuntu-release-new-wordpress-plugin/ This week our server broke down. The harddrive made sounds like hammering their heads against the disc – which of course is not good. So we had to find another harddisk. Fortunately I had kind of a spare computer at home which has a lot more harddisk space available (60GB instead of the poor 30GB [...]

]]> This week our server broke down. The harddrive made sounds like hammering their heads against the disc – which of course is not good. So we had to find another harddisk. Fortunately I had kind of a spare computer at home which has a lot more harddisk space available (60GB instead of the poor 30GB drive we had). So we switched to this computer.

Setting up the beast

I think it was last week when Ubuntu 5.10 “The Breezy Badger” was released. Good enough to change. But we had to set up Linux from the beginning, no upgrading since the new computer was configured to be a desktop system, not a server. So installing breezy had to be done.

After the installation process was completed we discovered something strange. The installation disk was labeled “Ubuntu install disk”. But neither Christian nor I thought about it: maybe, just maybe, there’s still the old version on it. Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary. Damn it. Well, ok, at least we could apt-get dist-upgrade it with the new sources.list. But this is time consuming, I tell you.

Configuring

Christian did all the configuration and restoring needed to recreate our old system. He really did a good job, and the machine did a good job too, it is much faster than our old server. A lot of things had to be done: restoring home directories, reinstalling packages, setting up mail, web, mysql… We had a weekly backup and a daily incremental backup, so this was not too frustrating. But then it happened.

The Crash

You wouldn’t believe it. The beast crashed again. My all-so-good 60GB drive started with read errors, write errors and then refused to get mounted. When Christian restarted even the servers BIOS couldn’t find the drive! This is crazy, you know? Two harddisks going mad in three days.

At least I could find another hard drive at home. This is just a 15GB drive – I hope it lasts longer than the other one. Until we get new ones. I really hope it does.

Updates

We now use the new Ubuntu release 5.10 which is called “The Breezy Badger”. This release includes PHP5. There’s nothing wrong with PHP5 except my fotoalbum wordpress plugin doesn’t work with it anymore. The DOM XML extension was replaced with the DOM extension in PHP5. And this is bad because my fotoalbum plugin uses the DOM XML extension.

I rewrote it today for PHP5, so have a look. A lot of ISPs still use PHP4, so try out the fotoalbum wordpress plugin PHP4 version first. If you’re having trouble using it (ie. your site doesn’t load content and loads again when you deactivate my plugin) then your ISP has PHP5 running and you’ll have to use the fotoalbum wordpress plugin PHP5 version. Either way have fun with it!

Use the fotoalbum wordpress plugin page for more information on it.

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