I’ve found that loading a Flash applet in Firefox will cause Firefox to lock my whole system’s audio playback. Audio and video in Totem don’t even start to play when this happens. Until Firefox is closed, the only application that can play audio is Flash.

The libflashsupport package will fix this by forcing Flash to work properly with PulseAudio, which is new to Ubuntu 8.04. However, this package not installed by default because it has been know to cause stability problems.

Installing libflashsupport makes things work as expected; I can play Flash and audio from other applications at the same time. I haven’t had any stability problems so far, but your mileage may vary.

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

You’ll need to restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

I’ve files a bug at freedesktop: #15877

“Oh really? How speciall…”

It’s indeed a bit more special than a not working device. I suggested to move to Launchpad. Why? Because I think Launchpad is much better than Bugzilla. One of the main reasons is Launchpads(or actually Malones) Bug Watches. A project like freedesktop.org is used in almost every Linux distro and beyond. There are a lot of different bug reports in a lot of different bug trackers filed against packages maintained by this wonderful(yes, it’s an amazing project). Launchpad is capable of keeping track of all those reports. And I’ve always found that Bugzilla isn’t a very good set out bug tracker. It’s just not very clear and you press very easily the wrong button. Anyway, I’ve explained myself detailed enough in the bug report.

One thing I did find that Launchpad misses is the option to add different programs and versions to the bug tracker, something Bugzilla does have. So I submitted an idea to Brainstorm:
. Please vote for it.

And yes, maybe I am lazy. I just find it much easier if I can just add a freedesktop task to a bugreport instead of filing it upstream. But I also think that Freedesktop and its users can profite a lot from moving to Launchpad. So I really hope they’ll do it.

(Forgive the use of the ‘ubuntu’ tag. I know it doesn’t have much to do with Ubuntu, but I just wanted to reach the readers of Planet Ubuntu Users. ;) It can have a lot of positive effects on Ubuntu, so it will surely affect it.)

After being called out on their deviousness at the FCC hearings, you’d think Comcast would try to keep a low profile. Blocking torrent traffic and challenging the idea of net neutrality is definitely a big issue, but we didn’t hear an outcry from the general public. Geeks and freedom lovers were generally leading the charge.

With the recent news of Comcast talking about download caps and overage charges, I wonder if more people will be paying attention or if they’ll only realize too late. Comcast looks to be playing it sneaky yet again here. By proposing a cap at 250GB per month, most of us say, “Who cares? Most people never use that much.” To this, I reply, “…yet.”

In all the years of the internet, you don’t ever hear about people’s bandwidth usage decreasing. While better compression helps, we just manage to push more stuff along this pipe. We’re buying VoIP phones. We download audio and video. We stream audio and even HD video. We “apt-get” in loads every 6 months! You give us more bandwidth and we find ways to utilize that bandwidth! Heck, even our mobile phones can use wifi and voip. All this is wonderful. It is what we’ve all imagined and created the internet to be. Download caps, however high, threaten the great things that the internet becomes. Do no fear clogging the series of tubes. It’s ok if you’ve been fooled by big media. Even South Park was fooled by the fear of the mythical exaflood and I always find them clever.

So as we use all this wonderful bandwidth for more and more utility, that 250GB download cap seems easily within reach. Do you think a corporate entity, such as Comcast, will feel compelled to raise that bar as we all get closer and closer to using that 250GB/month?

If this download cap happens, switch ISPs. Switch in droves. Send a message. I realize many people don’t have an option with such little competition in high speed internet and a 250gb cap is better than dial up, but this is all the more reason that we should switch if we can.

OpenOffice 3 Beta has been released. Some of the new features that caught my eye include: support for new features in the ODF file format, support for opening (but not saving) Microsoft’s new Office file formats, charting enhancements, a cool-looking start center, improved notes in writer, and better picture cropping. Mac users will be glad to hear that OpenOffice now has a native UI on the Mac.

The final version should be out in September, in time for Ubuntu 8.10.

You can try out the Beta in Ubuntu 8.04 without disturbing your existing version of OpenOffice. There are a lot of packages to install, so the easiest way is using the terminal. Here are the instructions:

1. Head to the download page and select the Linux (deb) download. (I’d provide a command to do this from the terminal, but OpenOffice’s page will automatically select the fastest server for you.) The rest of these commands will assume the download is on your desktop.
2. Extract the tar.gz archive:
   tar xzf ~/Desktop/OOo_3.0.0beta_20080429_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz -C ~/Desktop/
3. Install all of the packages in the DEBS subdirectory:
   sudo dpkg -i ~/Desktop/BEA300_m2_native_packed-2_en-US.9301/DEBS/*.deb
4. Clean up the downloaded files:
   rm -r ~/Desktop/BEA300_m2_native_packed-2_en-US.9301/rm -r ~/Desktop/OOo_3.0.0beta_20080429_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz

OpenOffice 3 doesn’t add any menu items to the Applications menu. You can create one yourself using the menu editor (System->Preferences->Main Menu). Launch OpenOffice with this command:
/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice

The first time it’s launched, OpenOffice will ask you to register. Clicking Cancel will exit the application, so you’ll need to go through the steps. You’ll be greeted by the new welcome area:

Inside the writing component, it looks and works much like 2.4, in this screenshot I am testing the new notes feature:

I wouldn’t yet do any serious work with this beta release, but I haven’t had any issues with it so far. OpenOffice 3 is looking good!

Today, the Finnish Linux User Group[1] announced their yearly Linux Contributor Award. The Winner: Ubuntu Suomi! Translating from the press release (Finnish PDF).

The volunteer community has taken care of translations, arranged events around the country, promoted Linux and Free Software to legislators and, above all, provided user support through its web forum.

Mirv accepting the prize.
(Photo from the ubuntu-fi blog)

Congratulations to our most excellent LoCo Team!

Two honorable mentions were awarded as well. One was given to the Linux.fi wiki. The choice further emphasizes the great importance that peer-provided support and documentation has for the success of Free Software. The other one went to Monty Widenius, the founder of MySQL. Yes, in case you didn’t know, he is yet another Finn helping build the tools for our road to software freedom. :) Altough MySQL is not directly related to LInux, as one of the pillars of the near-ubiqutuous LAMP stack, its success is very much tied to that of Linux.

Cheers to these Honored Ones too!

[1] Yes, there is only one. It is a small country :)

For a few days I've been fighting with what appeared on the outside to be libc6 halting my ability to make a pbuilder build environment. The bug post is over at Debian (#479202). Turns out that something was wrong in perl and a patch has since been released. As of 12:08 yesterday (Ubuntu archive time) the beautiful 5.10.0-9.1 version has been released and synced into Ubuntu Intrepid repos. Mmmmmm, I can finally make Intrepid environments!

I wasn't initially able to create Intrepid environments once libc6 was working, I had to update to them from gutsy's. The fix to this is to use the hardy backported debootstrap package. There is a few ways you can do this yourself.

Method 1 (Easier): Download the package from your favorite archive and use dpkg to install it:

$ wget http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_...
$ sudo dpkg -i debootstrap_1.0.9~hardy1.deb

Method 2 (More involved): Enable the backports mirrors in your /etc/apt/sources.list file (optionally set up pinning). This method enables the entire backports repository and may not be preferred behavior.

Start by adding an entry to the backports repository at your favorite mirror and then update your package database

$ sudo su -c "echo 'deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-backports main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
$ sudo apt-get update

You should now see 1.0.9~hardy1 as a candidate when you run apt-cache policy debootstrap. As per usual sudo apt-get install debootstrap will bring it up to the latest and greatest version possible. And that's what we want -- it will install a pbuilder script into /usr/share/debootstrap/scripts which can then let you specify intrepid create targets from the command line.

$ sudo pbuilder --create --distribution intrepid

See the official Ubuntu Help Site for a more detailed description of backports and enabling pinning such that packages are installed from the main/universe/etc repository over the backports unless specified, or check out the official Ubuntu Wiki on pbuilder for a howto on building packages in a clean test environment.

Last Saturday I received a telephone call from the Ubuntu UK podcast team. We had a chat, it was fun. Parts of our conversation can be heard in their latest podcast, S01E05 - Everybody Come Aboard. I have just listened to the podcast myself and apart from the feature with me, it's another great show :)

I would like to say thank you to the guys for allowing me on the podcast. I can now place a tick next to the item, "Appear on a podcast" on my list of things to do before I die :) Oh, and thanks also for using a picture of Daisy, an unexpected, but pleasant bonus — Daisy will no doubt grin from ear to ear when I show it to her :)

URL: http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/2008/05/07/s01e05-everybody-come-aboard/

Tags: podcast, ubuntu

I was thinking the other day about Brainstorm and upstream interaction. The fact is, lots of ideas belongs to upstream projects, so how should we help them to use these ideas?

Adding a new “software” field, and making something like [project_name].brainstorm.ubuntu.com would not require too much effort, but we can’t expect upstream projects to use one distro’s brainstorm website as their idea tracker.

So I had a crazy idea. What about a decentralized Brainstorm?

A Brainstorm website would be able to “connect” to another: both would have to validate the “connection”. Once the “connection” is established, the Brainstorm website would regularly update a given subset of its data from the other. New ideas would be downloaded. New votes would be added. Globally, data is synchronized: a same idea will have the same nb of votes, comments, on all Brainstorms.

Example: Let’s say we have the Firefox project Brainstorm, the Ubuntu Brainstorm and the Red Hat Brainstorm. The Firefox Brainstorm have quite some success, but quite a lot of Firefox-related ideas are voted/discussed on the others Brainstorm. Also, the firefox folks want the input of both average users (Ubuntu) and enterprise user (Red hat). So the FF Brainstorm “connects” to the two others Brainstorm. The two distro Brainstorms download the current FF ideas, and display them. They get votes, comments. Then the FF Brainstorm regularly get the “results” from the distro Brainstorms and cumulate the results. The FF Brainstorm as well send its results to the others ones. In the end, the same idea on different Brainstorms are identical.

On the security side, you would keep the control of your Brainstorm website: you would only connect to others Brainstorm instances you trust.

Quite crazy idea, I agree. Lots of changes needed, I agree. I wonder if it’s worth the work involved. Anyone would be interested by this?

At the moment, for an average user, it’s pretty hard to install third party software. Why?

• The software is not shipped with the distribution package format : E.g. the software is bundled in tar.gz archives with custom command line installation scripts (such as the very new VIA Linux drivers).
• When it is shipped with the distribution package format, it can still be unfriendly: When you are asked to enter cryptic commands in a console as root to add a repository, you know something is wrong.
• When it is shipped with the distribution package format as a direct package download, you don’t get updates like you do with repositories.

While we can’t do much for the first problem, I’ve seen several projects trying to fix the two last problems: AptURL, AptThirdParty and one-click-installer. (I will not talk here of PackageKit, which does not seem to specifically cover the third party install issue). Some people are against those projects, citing security concerns : but I don’t think the statu quo where users are asked to run commands they don’t understand as root is any better!

But first, let’s see this from a user point of view. What are the use cases involved here?

1. Patou see a great software on a website. He clicks on the “install now” button. The software was not installed: It gets installed.
2. Patou see a great software on a website. He clicks on the “install now” button. An old version of the software was installed: It gets upgraded.
3. Patou see a great software on a website. He clicks on the “install now” button. An newer version of the software was installed: It gets downgraded, after a warning.
4. Fred want to uninstall a software. He goes to the software manager and remove it.
5. An update of one of Bébert’s installed software is installed. Bébert gets notified and can launch the upgrade.

Abstracting from all the packaging system mechanisms, that’s the basic level of freedom I’d like to have as a user (5. is a plus).

1) and 2), and consequently 5) and 4) are the use cases trying to be solved by the above projects: optionally a repository gets transparently added, and the software is installed. Software updates are tracked, and it’s easy to uninstall the soft.

The 3) use case seems to be forgotten in all the above projects, and that bothers me. Please don’t put artificial constraints! The common dogme is that new versions are always better. That’s unfortunately not always true.

AptThirdParty seems the most promising project to me. Unfortunately there is no trace of its current status. Now let’s hope one of these projects get mature and cover all these use cases soon enough, for a much better third party software installation experience… (I know I am oversimplifying things, but I didn’t want to knock out with a long dissertation)

Randomly while browsing Firefox will stop responding for a few seconds and recover. This can happen a few times in a row while my hard drive works so furiously that other applications also slow down. I haven’t found a reliable way to reproduce the problem, but today I did get around to finding the bug report.

An update should be arriving soon that will fix this problem. In the meantime, if you’re affected you can try a workaround. [update] The update has arrived this morning.

In Firefox, click Edit->Preferences. In the Security section, uncheck the two boxes for attack site and forgery warnings. Close Firefox. Open your file browser to ~/.mozilla/firefox/[profile], where [profile] will be a short random string of characters. Delete any files with names starting with urlclassifier.

Be advised that this workaround will disable Firefox’s warnings for phishing and malicious websites. Re-enable the warnings when the update to the package xulrunner-1.9 arrives, which should fix the issue.

The problem is caused by Firefox’s urlclassifier database, which can get very large. Because the cache for this database is too small, there’s a lot of disk and CPU usage at certain times when accessing it.

I’ve done the workaround, but it’s hard to say whether it’s working because the problem comes and goes randomly.

[update] The update hasn’t fixed the problem for me. However, I’ve had only one brief random freeze, so maybe the issue has been minimized.

Some interesting thoughts about Launchpad by Martin F. Krafft. Martin is basically saying that Canonical got it wrong with Launchpad, not because of its closed source nature, but because they missed an opportunity to create a decentralised system:

What we need is something as slick as Launchpad, and thousands of instances thereof, which all peer with each other, automatically. The information would automatically be mirrored wherever it’s referenced, so the entire cloud would be highly-available and failure-proof.

I agree that this would be great, in theory, and I look forward to testing the system soon, not :) Seriously though, being a member of the Launchpad Beta Testers team and having used many of Launchpad's features, I am not sure that Martin's proposal is even remotely possible — is it possible to maintain a complex project such as Ubuntu without a centralised project management system?

Tags: launchpad, rants, ubuntu

The last few days I noticed a massive slowdown of Firefox 3.0b5 on Ubuntu Hardy. I even started using Opera, since I thought it might be bigger problem.

As it turns out, my history kept data from the last 90 days. Combined with Firefox' new history search feature, it was nearly impossible to use the browser at all. I'm unsure whether I did change this value, or if it's a default setting for Firefox on Ubuntu. Fortunately, this issue is really easy to solve.

While searching for the reason of this behavior, I found a really good entry in Mozilla's knowledgebase. If you experience similar slowdowns, just have a look at this page.

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Get your feeds via Jabber, Ubuntu ones, at least.

USAGE

First of all, add it to your contact list: bot@ubuntuweblogs.org

From this point on, you're an anonymous user, with the following available commands:

rss-list - lists all available feeds
rss-additem - here you can add links (to the original post) on your notifications
rss-delitem - deletes the link from the notifications
rss-start - starts 'watching' the feed you specify for updates
rss-stop - do you really need a descripion?

Example:

After adding the bot, you want to monitor UbuntuWeblogs.org, and receive links on all notifications.

rss-list, this gives you the name of the feed you want
rss-start ubuntuweblogs.org, starts 'watching' the Planet
rss-additem ubuntuweblogs.org link, receive the notifications with links

The bot will check for updates every 10 minutes.

Available Feeds:

To get a complete list of available feeds: rss-list

SOFTWARE

The bot is powered by Gozerbot.org; a great piece of software with excellent people developing it. Thanks dunk_ and Knorrie!

With the Fonty Python font manager, you can organize your fonts into groups (called “pogs”), and install and uninstall these groups when you need them. When a pog is not installed, you won’t have the fonts it contains filling up your menus.

I’ve written previously on installing fonts in Ubuntu.

The latest version of Fonty Python is available in Ubuntu 8.04. Install it from the package fontypython (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install fontypython

First, you’ll need some font files to test out. There’s a list of sources on this page, and I also like dafont.com. Store your font files in any directory, but keep them in one place so Fonty Python can find them. Don’t install the fonts, the application will take care of that for you.

Start Fonty Python from Applications->Graphics->Fonty Python. I get an error message starting the program, but it seems to work fine.

On the rightmost pane of the window, you can select font sources. Under the Folders tab, select the folder you put your fonts in. The fonts found in the selected folder should be listed in the center.

On the leftmost pane, click New Pog, give your first pog a name, and select it. Click on fonts to select them, and click the Put fonts into [pog name] button to add them to the selected pog. Click Install Pog when you are finished, and the fonts should show up in applications after they are restarted. You’ll need to uninstall a pog to edit it.

Wondering how Fonty Python works? If you look in your ~/.fonts directory, which is used for loading fonts for the current user, you’ll see that links are put there pointing to your installed fonts.

Hello everybody! This will be my first post syndicated on Planet Ubuntu and I thought I should take this opportunity and use it to introduce myself.

My name is Tim Bielawa (though to most I'm just 'Shaggy'), I'm a student at West Virginia University (seriously, it is a state, I promise!) and I'm majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. My day job is working for the Computer Science Department as a Systems administrator (amongst other things) supporting our workstations and ever growing infrastructure. Oh, by the way, all of which (servers included) runs Ubuntu :). We're in the process of migrating all the workstations to Hardy now and by July first (mark that date to come and party in Morgantown, WVU for our release party!) rolling out with Hardy on the entire infrastructure.

I started with Slackware (9 through 11), and jumped between Debian (briefly), and Gentoo up until last Fall/Winter 2007 when I started this new job. Using Ubuntu everyday got me hooked, I rather like it :). I must admit, it took a while to get over my guilt issues of not having to ./configure && make && make install anymore -- it felt like cheating -- as if Linux was suddenly too easy and no longer a challenge to use.

I wonder how many new Ubuntu Linux users even know what that means (./configure && make && make install), or even better -- will ever roll their own kernels by hand? The less the better I think, because it means we're doing a good job of making Ubuntu the most user friendly community driven Linux distro out there.

Getting into this new position, working towards being a MOTU, has put the challenge and joy back into my Linux experience. Instead of compiling software for my box I'll be packaging it so it can work on anyones box, which if you ask me, is far more stimulating and most of all -- rewarding.

Before my introduction post gets too long I'll finish up. My goal for a job outside of college is to develop modeling software and/or graphics rendering engines. Basically if I don't turn into another John Carmack I'll be making a better MATLAB or Mathematica. To facilitate this goal I thought that joining the MOTU Science Team (though I wouldn't dare call myself a MOTU yet) would be the most logical decision. This way I'll be focusing around the kind of software I'll be writing one day.

I put this blog together to document my steps towards being a full fledged official MOTU and to maybe even help encourage others pursuing the same goal. I've got a patch submitted already for slocate (#155061) which has gotten great comments so far (Thanks to James Calver for his kind words. I'm glad my efforts helped you figure out bug fixing better!) and a new package (Bibus) up on REVU for inclusion in Intrepid.

After I read the post about the release of VirtualBox 1.6.0 I suddenly combined it with my desire to test Ubuntu’s upcoming release(already in Octobre!): Interpid Ibex. If I would install it in VirtualBox I could test it without screwing up anything at my system, for which I was afraid because I remembered a bug report a while ago about a pre-aplha release screwing the partition table. So I installed virtualbox-ose and the kernel modules which are in the repositories of hardy, restarted and tried to install 7.10, which I wanted to use as a start system from which I could update to intrepid. But I got an error message that it couldn’t find /dev/vboxdrv. I didn’t know what had caused that, since I did install the module and even restarted(which shouldn’t be necessary, actually).
After searching for the solution for a while, including several failed tries to compile the kernel module from the source provided by the repositories I found out that it was caused by a difference in kernel version. The kernel I was using was version 2.6.24-17, but the VirtualBox modules were 2.6.24-16. Confused I asked at #ubuntu-kernel @ freenode why they didn’t update the VB modules, because this could cause a lot of trouble for business users. I was asked if I had enabled ubuntu-proposed, which I have to test new versions early, and was told that that was the problem. It turned out that the modules were in the building queu at Launchpad and should be available within a few hours.
So I’m going to check tomorrow and tell you about my first impressions of intrepid! :P

Well, if I have time. I shouldn’t forget that I’m turning 15 tomorrow. It would be a bit sad for the guests if I’d sit behind my computer all the time. ;)

Maybe you’ve already seen three Brainstorm buttons in the sidebar at the left, but maybe not, when you’re reading my blog using another tool. They’re from my three latest ideas I placed at Brainstorm and I thought that they deserved a little bit more attention. Here they come:

idea #7931: Merge configuration tools

When you open the System menu from your GNOME panel you’ll see a lot of configuration utilities. There are two subcategories: Preferences and Manage. The first one is mainly for settings a user can do and the second is mainly for settings that require root permissions. A lot of those applications are tiny, don’t provide a lot of options and cover the same subject as other configuration utilities do, but of course provide other options. This can be confusing for new users and it can be tricky to find the right program.
What I suggest is to merge all tools that cover the same thing into one application, like they did with Appearance. And since GNOME 2.22 introduced the Unlock buttons it doesn’t matter if the options require root permissions or not, they can all be put together.

idea #7930: Graphical driver selection

In the previous release of Ubuntu there was a nice tool called displayconfig-gtk. It still exists, but isn’t in the menus anymore, since a lot of its functionality is only needed for people whose monitor isn’t recognized good or have other problems with their screen. One of the functions was a tab where you could select the display driver.
I suggest to execute this idea with the previous idea and include in the program that manages the Screen an option to select the right driver. Drivers that are recommended will be marked e.g. green, drivers that will work too marked e.g. yellow and drivers that don’t work e.g. red. When you choose a driver the things that are required to be executed(config file changes, commands needed to be run, modules needed to be enabled, drivers needed to be installed) to use that driver will be automatically done.

idea #8113: Overview of all teams

When you want to help with Ubuntu you’ll probably start at the Get Involved page at www.ubuntu.com. There you can find an overview of different sections in Ubuntu. But it doesn’t show how complex and large the Ubuntu Community actually is. There are a lot of teams working on producing a great release twice a year and supporting users. It’s hard to find a good overview of what teams exist. To make it easier for new people to see I suggest to create a page where all teams(LoCo teams, dev teams, support teams, maintaining teams, Ubuntu Members/Council/Technical Board, etc) are listed with their task and joining requirements(if you can join at all). This way people can understand the community much better and look for something they like to do.

I hope all of these ideas will be implemented of course, but I would also be happy if only one would be used. I ask you to vote at them in order to make my dreams come true! But provide also feedback!

(Aren’t you a bit pathetic when your dreams consist of three ideas for an OS? :P)

One of the major new features for OpenOffice 2.4 on Linux is the 3D capabilities for Impress, the presentation component. The new transitions are not part of the default install, but as an extension. If you’re an Impress user, you may be interested in installing it.

The 3D transitions extension is available in the Ubuntu 8.04 repositories. Click this link to install openoffice.org-ogltrans, or run the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install openoffice.org-ogltrans

The package will add 14 new 3D transitions to OpenOffice Impress. The two I find the most impressive are Rochade and Turn around, which both look like something out of Compiz Fusion.

Other than Ubuntu, Puppy Linux is probably the only Linux distribution I follow. I have been a Puppy fanboy [yeah, I do not mind admitting it!] for a long time, so I was thrilled to read about the latest release, version 4.00. From the release notes:

Finally it has happened! The last 'official' release of Puppy was version 3.01, released October 15, 2007. Version 4.00 is happening 6 months later, which is an incredibly long time considering the previous frenetic schedule of releases. Anyway, here it is: the live-CD file is 'puppy-4.00-k2.6.21.7-seamonkey.iso' and is just 87.1MB. Download from http://puppylinux.com/download/.

Also from the release notes, and something that I am particularly pleased with:

GTK1 and Tcl/Tk abandoned. The decision was made to go for a totally GTK2-based system. This meant that there could be a consistent user-interface throughout and further reduced the size.

I am downloading the live-CD as I type. I will give the system a run tomorrow night, and if I get time, I will post with my initial thoughts/feedback.

Tags: linux, puppy, ubuntu

Sun finally released VirtualBox 1.6.0, the first major relase, since Sun acquired Innotek.

The most outstanding changes are:
+ support for Mac as host platform
+ support for Solaris as host platform
+ Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) is now officially supported
+ Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests
- Sun obviously discontinued Debian and Ubuntu repositories (you won't find that in the release notes)

Since I was really keen to see the seamless mode in action, I installed a Debian Lenny (5.0) snapshot into VirtualBox.

I installed the VirtualBox Guest-Additions on both systems. It seems Debian Lenny has some problem loading the Virtualbox device drivers:

Fortunately, there's an easy workaround: Just switch to a terminal and start vboxadd by hand.

/etc/init.d/vboxadd start
/etc/init.d/gdm restart


After starting Debian Lenny with the Guest-Additions, I tried the seamless mode. Unfortunately, Lenny's panels exactly cover Ubuntu's panels:

When testing seamless mode with Windows, this did not happen. The Windows task bar always stays above the bottom panel. I tried to attenuate this behavior by replacing Lenny's panels with one very small panel with an enclosed menu and application switcher.

While this basically works quite well, there's a huge drawback: You can't move or delete your desktop icons any longer while running a seamless guest system. At least for me, this is a serious showstopper. Without being able to organize my desktop, I don't need any "seamless" integration at all. In fact, "seamless" is quite exaggerated. Besides clipboard compatibility, there's no integration at all. You just don't see the background image of your guest system.

Besides that, VirtualBox is a nice alternative to VMWare's free server, although I wished Sun would partner up with Canonical and get the "non-Open Source Edition" VirtualBox into Ubuntu's partner repository. Or even better: Just release the rest of the code as open source.

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I spent quite some time yesterday trying to build a package “just for fun” and realize that it is way over my n00b-packager head, but I do feel like I learned quite a bit in the process.  I feel like it has been a bit like jumping into the deep end of the pool and figuring it out as you go.  Granted I won’t die if I don’t figure it out, but you learn a lot very quickly when you’re in over your head.

What I was trying to do was build a .deb for VirtualBox 1.6 that was released just a few days ago.  I downloaded it to tinker with, assuming I would have to just compile the source, but I noticed it had a debian/ directory.  I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try, so I tried building it.  I wanted to outline what I tried to do (so all of the real packagers out there can correct me), but I will say that I am still stuck on getting it built in pbuilder.  I do have it built and running on my local machine, but when I build it in pbuilder something dies.

What I tried (please comment with tips / corrections)

The first thing I did was download the VirtualBox 1.6 OSE from Sun (Yes, if you hadn’t heard, Innotek was recently bought by Sun).  From this I ended up with a VirtualBox-1.6.0-OSE.tar.bz2.

I unpacked this, which created a VirtualBox-1.6.0_OSE directory to work in.

Now, to try and appease the source-package-gods I re-packed that directory into a .orig.tar.gz and created a .orig/ directory as well.

QUESTION: Why does the source need to be in a .tar.gz format?

The .orig.tar.gz that I created used the naming convention virtualbox_ose_1.6.0.orig.tar.gz.

The .orig/ directory also had the naming convention virtualbox_ose_1.6.0.orig/.

QUESTION: I understand the naming convention should be <packagename>-<version>.  How is this handled when <packagename> is two words?

I first tried to build the package with the default debian/ directory that came with the download.  I quickly found that this had some things wrong with it.

1. The debian/changelog latest revision referred to 1.5.51~svn-1.
2. There were missing Build-Depends on my machine (libxml2-dev, libxslt-dev, libpng-dev,…)

I then used dch -v 1.6 to create a new changelog version (This is 1.6 after all, not 1.5.51~svn), and added the details of my changes:

• Corrected changelog version reference
• Added required build-depends (libxml2-dev, libxslt-dev, libpng-dev,…)

QUESTION: Is this the proper way to document what I needed to change to build 1.6?

At this point the package did build using dpkg-buildpackage and it installed properly on my machine.  I did not yet run lintian, as I’m sure there are still plenty of things that are broken.

I tried to take this one step further and build it in pbuilder.  This is where things really got stuck.  I get into the build process and then it dies on finding Xlibs.  It is frustrating because it will build on my machine, but not in pbuilder, and I can’t figure out what package provides what it is looking for.

Here is a snippet of the build and the error.  I would appreciate any tips on how to figure out what package is needed to resolve this.

Checking for environment: Determined build machine: linux.x86, target machine: linux.x86, OK.
Checking for kBuild: found, OK.
Checking for gcc: found version 4.2.3, OK.
Checking for as86: found version 0.16.17, OK.
Checking for bcc: found version 0.16.17, OK.
Checking for iasl: found version 20061109, OK.
Checking for xslt: found, OK.
Checking for pthread: found, OK.
Checking for libxml2: found version 2.6.31, OK.
Checking for libxslt: found version 1.1.22, OK.
Checking for libIDL: found version 0.8.10, OK.
Checking for zlib: found version 1.2.3.3, OK.
Checking for libpng: found version 1.2.15beta5, OK.
Checking for SDL: found version 1.2.12, OK.
Checking for X libraries:
Xlibs not found at -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib64 -L/usr/local/lib -lXext -lX11 -I/usr/local/include or Xlibs headers not found

I have tried a few X packages but they don’t seem to do the trick.  I even peeked into the PUEL pre-packaged version available for download and added any missing depends they had that I didn’t.  At this point I’m stuck wondering how to figure out the issue.  Any tips?

UbuntuWeblogs.org continues to grow, and with that, the needs to run the website have changed. Currently, ~1GB is transfered per day, and we are getting ~20.000 unique hits/day.

With those numbers, I don't have a problem.

Problem

I do, however, have a problem, with the amount of RAM needed to run the software (Planet) every time cron launches it (every 15 minutes). Since this is hosted on a shared hosting environment, things can get complicated.

Solution

Things are easily being migrated to my newly bought Slice, at SliceHost.com. For now, the slice is generating index.html (the main page ubuntuweblogs.org serves) and after creation, it pushes this page to Dreamhost, placing it on /ubuntuweblogs.org/.

Help!

Unfortunately, I had to go with Advertisements on the site, something I don't like. Since running the Slice is not cheap, I'm trying to find a way of getting monetary help from the advertisement.

My last call for help (with donations) didn't work out as expected so I made things easier for you to help us out. Clicking on the advertisements doesn't cost you anything.

Sorry for 'complaining', but I'm just trying my best to keep this site running.

I've written about my issues with Zend Studio and how it's forced me to move on to try out Komodo as my full time editor/IDE. I did eventually (one week after submitting my support ticket) get an answer that was exactly what I posted in the ticket, which was recreate your profile. I never got any support or even mention of my request for some method of debugging the startup of ZS so I could figure out which files/part of my profile was corrupt, allowing me to salvage the rest of it. So I basically told Zend in the ticket, thanks for the editor since 2003, but I'm done. kthxbye

So I've been trying out Komodo since then, which has been a couple of weeks now and I think it's time to move on. There are a couple of big issues that I'm not happy with, but overall the editor is pretty nice. Definitely give it a try if you haven't.

The first big thing is autocomplete. We don't have namespaces in PHP yet, so I have a bunch of classes with lovely long names and I just live on autocomplete. Komodo does an ok job of autocompleting after some special character. In Python for instance, doing os. will get me a list of methods in the os module. However, typing out a constant I had defined at the top of my script would not autocomplete. I've checked the preference for "complete as you type", but it won't work. It also fails on inherited classes it seems. In my script I'm working on now I inherit from the CommandLineApp and Komodo fails to autocomplete any method in the base class there. It just means I have to go load up that class and look through all it's methods to find what I wanted. It wouldn't be so bad if I could have gotten the "Go To Definition" to load up the CommandLineApp code since I easy_installed it. No go on that front as well. I did add the path to the .egg to my Python path in Komodo, but I don't know if it can open eggs or not.

The next thing is a small one, but one that drives me nuts. I could not find any way to put the code tab, the one that lists the classes in currently open tabs and lists their methods for easy jumping around, to the right side of the editor. I like to have my project files on the left, editor center, and my function list on the right.

Finally, the third straw was using the project pane for doing any file manipulations. Creating new folders didn't seem to actually create them. Copy/paste a file and renaming it didn't work either. I ended up with a renamed original file. What was very strange was that I copied/pasted the file to a different folder. I did finally get a new folder to work by using "Add new live folder" whatever that means. Sorry, but while I love my command line, and I can do a cp && mv to get the desired result, it would be nicer/faster for me to be able to do it in the IDE. I'm sure I'm just missing something here. I mean, these simple tasks must work and the options are there to do them. Oh well.

So next up I think I'll try to get eclipse and use PDT with Pydev. See if that works for me. Pydev I liked so that part should be ok. I haven't tried PDT in a while though so we'll see.

I've been trying to pick up more Python and especially some Python web dev more recently. I picked up the Django book and finished it a couple of weeks ago. I tend to love books vs just online docs since I can go through the book, see what's possible, learn the terms, etc. Then when I get to coding I have a general idea of where to look for things.

Overall the book was pretty good. I liked that it had several "Here are some common ways/good practices to use the tools." So it was more than just a list of commands, it actually got into practical use cases which I often find lacking in my tech books. It's a pretty easy read overall and if you're new to Django I'd suggest it.

As far as Django goes, I like it so far. It's a pretty simple framework when you get down to it. There are very few files required to get a project started and things seem to have a decent home. I've never gotten to be a huge regex guy, but I definitely know they're powerful and they take full advantage of that power to handle url processing. I do like that it means I can name my various view methods whatever I want vs the frameworks that use that name to handle url processing. The ORM is pretty simple and easy to get into. I love seeing tools like that using the coolness of Python. I'd never see you defining properties within a class like they do in PHP.

So my first idea was to port over some of my sysadmin scripts I use to create/manage my MySQL based Apache Auth accounts, ftp accounts, and virtual mail accounts over to a Django front end. Hey, I could reuse a lot of the code, but turn it into a pretty GUI with a web front end. Yay!

That's then things started to go bad. (This is a long post, so I'll put the rest on the other side...)

Continue reading "Django Book, done. First impressions...good/bad"

Here's a classic example of a misguided dialog box. It's too much information in a square box presented in a series of convoluted noun-phrases.

Granted, it's a "More details" dialog, so you have to cut it some slack for giving more details. However, instead of giving useful details, this dialog just spits out a bunch of stuff in a huge block of text that pretty much stupidly covers four probable scenarios without giving any meaningful insight.

I suggest, instead, the "details" option offer just that: more details. What this dialog offers isn't more details, it's more words.

I came across it using a Hardy Heron live cd checking on a what I believe is a hard-disk failure that took an otherwise serviceable WinXP laptop down. I wrote this post using the same liveCD. Nice work, Ubuntu guys. The Heron is a great little linux. Even on a borked Lappy.

Running virtual servers may save you a bundle on server costs, but in the same time create a more secure environment by separating services into logical hosts. This guide will show you how to setup a XEN virtual server using Debian, but it may also be used on Ubuntu if that it preferred.

Installation

The first task is to install all required software packages. Installing the virtual xen package will in turn install all required programs like a new libc6, kernel with virtual support and the xen hypervisor. Installing xen-tools makes it very easy to create new virtual servers.

# aptitude install xen-linux-system-2.6.18-6-xen-vserver-686 xen-tools

After installing the new kernel and libs, you will need to reboot the computer to use it.

Configuration

The virtual hosts need some way to access the network, so we have to create a network bridge for them to use. Open the file /etc/network/interfaces and create a section like the following. Be sure to change the network settings to reflect your own network.

iface xenbr0 inet static
address 10.10.10.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 10.10.10.0
broadcast 10.10.10.255
gateway 10.10.10.1
bridge_ports eth0

Open up the xen configuration file /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp in your favorite editor and make the following changes.

(network-script network-bridge)
(vif-script vif-bridge)
(dom0-min-mem 196)
(dom0-cpus 0)

The configuration file contains lots of comments, so I will not go into detail about every change.

The last configuration is for the xen-tools package /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf, which we will use to create the virtual machines. Be sure to change the network settings and home directory to match your envionment.

dir = /home/xen
dist   = etch
gateway   = 10.10.10.1
netmask   = 255.255.255.0
cache = no
passwd = 1
mirror = http://ftp.se.debian.org/debian/

The rest of the values can probably be left alone, but do take a look at them to see if you need to custmize anything.

Now to create a new virtual host, just write the following and debootstrap should start installing a fresh Debian system.

xen-create-image –ip=10.10.10.101 –hostname=host1.chadda.se

When the installation part is finished, just start the host (or create in xen speak), using the following command.

xm create /home/xen/domains/host1.chadda.se/host1.chadda.se.cfg

If you add the -c option, you will attach to the virtual console and you will see all output from the guest.

Enjoy

Now enjoy your new virtualized server!

You probably all know the Planet Ubuntu. At that website all feeds from Ubuntu Members(and members of memberteams). Unfortunately I’m not an Ubuntu Member (yet ;) ).
I like reading blogs and when I was surfing the internet I found the Planet Ubuntu Users. This Planet can be found at http://www.ubuntuweblogs.org/. All people who blog about Ubuntu and are not aggregated on the Planet Ubuntu can request to join. I liked the website and really wanted to be on that blog too. So I sent the submission form and  within 24 hours I got a nice reply from Tiago Faria, the webmaster. Now I’m visible on that website! All posts tagged ‘ubuntu‘ will be visible at that website. I’m told the website has ~611.190 visitors per month, so I hope my host can handle it. ;)
Now I just should get back to Planet Ubuntu NL. I think the problems are over now so I’m going to mail Seveas that my blog is ready.

This morning, I found an email from Karol in my inbox, telling me about a promotional Ubuntu website he designed. It is slick!

The site is a place for Ubuntu users to share their story. Why do you use Ubuntu? Tell your story about security, stability, desktop sexiness and all the other reasons to choose our favorite Linux distribution for your daily business and pleasure use!

I’m hunting for a new laptop bag and to be honest my current bag is ok but I want something associated with Ubuntu.

Canonical Shop has two nice bags but I’m still not sure which one to go with

Both seems to be good and I’m not sure which one to pick, I wonder if anyone have any of them and can give feedback about the quality and feel.

On the other side of the news, Why Canonical Shop is so expensive ? is it because it’s a UK based? if so how about shifting into to Canada.

Tags: laptop, bag, ubuntu, canonical, shop, store, purchase, merchandise

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