Svn seemed to be lacking, it was slow and clumsy at times and I wanted something quicker and more manageable with granular control over access should I ever choose to open the server to the Internet for collaboration. I need something fast, decentralised to prevent data loss, cross platform for both the server and the clients and most importantly I need to keep better backups.

I have been hearing good things about Github and decided to check it out. While it is an awesome place to store your open source code for free, I needed a place to store my private code. Github charges for private repositories and I do not want to spend any money on this. As I quite like to have my code on my own servers I chose to use Git. Git satisfies all of my needs except granular security control, which is covered by an external package that will add the security functions I want/need.

The best part about Git is that it is decentralised, meaning that each working copy of code is actually a full-fledged repository with its own revision control and tracking, allowing you work literally anywhere and your code is fully tracked. I will use a central server to act as a central repository for others to clone from and most importantly as a backup should the worst happen.

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to get your own Git server set up and make sure all of your clients can connect with password-less logins using SSH public keys. This will be a very in-depth tutorial so go grab yourself a cuppa . I will cover each step in great, yet simple detail, so you can understand the process and gain some insight into the workings of a server rather than copying and pasting code and not knowing what you are doing it for.

As this tutorial is Debian specific you will need to translate the commands to your flavour of Linux.

Tools you will need: (I suggest downloading them all now so they are ready)

Server (I run mine through vmware)

• Ubuntu 11.04 32bit or 64bit

Linux (no need to download these, we will install them as we go)

• git-core – Essential core files for Git
• openssh – SSH Client
• openssh-server – SSH Server

Windows

• Putty – Implementation of telnet/SSH for windows
• Puttygen – Used to convert SSH keys to ppk files for Putty and TortoiseGit
• Msysgit – This is Git, for windows
• Tortoisegit – Integrates into windows explorer context menu
• WinSCP – For copying files to your server (it’s much easier with a gui)

Optional, but highly recommended

• A cup of tea.
• Several biscuits. No custard creams though.

Building the Server in 22 Simple steps and about 20 minutes The first thing you need to do is set up our base server to install Git onto. You will be using the Ubuntu Server addition. I have been a fan of Ubuntu for a long time and their server addition is excellent. This tutorial will work for any Debian OS but you will need to translate the commands to your own flavour of Linux if you decide to go with something different. If you already have your server up and running then you can skip this section and move onto Installing Git on the server.

Step 1

• Boot up your pc/server/virtual machine with the ISO file you downloaded earlier. I will not be covering how to burn the image to disc or flash drive. Make sure you have told the BIOS to boot from CD or USB. Now boot up your machine.

Step 2

• As soon as the disc boots up you will have to choose the language for the installer. Go ahead and select the language you want.

Step 3

• You will be presented with a few options but the one you need is Install Ubuntu Server. Go ahead and hit enter.

Step 4

• Choose your main language

Step 5

• Choose your region

Step 6

• Select No for Detect keyboard layout. You can choose yes and follow the on screen instructions to automatically detect your keyboard layout. If you do this then skip ahead to step 9.

Step 7

• Choose keyboard layout

Step 8

• Choose local keyboard layout

Step 9

• Enter the hostname for this server – A hostname is a name assigned to a device on a network and is used to identify it in various forms, like DNS for example. This will save you having to use the IP address all the time.

Step 10

• Select yes if the time zone is correct.

Step 11

• I choose to use the entire disk, but if you know what you are doing with Logical Volume Management and Encryption then carry on.

Step 12

• Select the hard disk you wish to format. You may have multiple drives if using a physical machine so make sure you select the correct drive.

Step 13

• Confirm and write the changes to disk. be warned, this is the actual part where the drive gets formatted so make sure you chose the right disk in the previous step. If not, then just go back and check.

Step 14

• Now sit back for a few minutes while the disk is formatted and the base system gets installed.

Step 15

• Enter your full name – I usually use a nickname here but you can type your full name in if you wish.

Step 16

• Enter your password twice to confirm it.

Step 18

• Choose whether you want to encrypt your home folders. For security it is usually a good idea.

Step 19

• Set up your proxy information. Usually you will not be behind a proxy so just hit enter without putting any information in. If you are behind a proxy then make sure you enter the correct details. The system will configure apt and install the software.

Step 20

• I choose to install all security updates automatically, saves me having to remember

Step 21

• In the initial software selection you only need SSH at the moment. Press the spacebar to tick the box next to OpenSSH Server, then press tab to jump down to continue and hit enter. The boot loader will now install. When asked, choose yes to install GRUB into the master boot record.

Step 22

• The Grub boot loader will continue to install and when it is finished you are all done. If you are on a physical machine then remember to take out the CD or flash drive and hit enter to reboot. VM’s need not take the drive out, the VM will sort it out for you.

Once the server reboots and you have logged back in you will need to update it so you have the current versions of all the installed software.

• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

This command will update the system then grab all the available updates and install them. The -y tag just tells the terminal to say yes when asked if it is OK to go ahead and install the updates.

It is likely that the update came with a new kernel image so you will have to reboot and log back in.

• sudo reboot

Now you are logged back in you need to enable the root account. Once you are finished with the root account you will disable it again. Type the following to enable to root account and give it a password.

• sudo passwd root

You will be asked for your sudo password (that’s the password for your user account), then you will enter the new root password twice.

Now for the network, you are going to give the server a static IP address so it is easier to log into via SSH and Git later on.

• sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

Enter your password if it asks. The interfaces file will look similar to this:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

The main network adapter is eth0, so that is the only one we be configuring. You need to make this file look like the following. Make sure you remember to use your own network information in place of what I have written.

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.100.1.4
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 10.100.1.0
broadcast 10.100.1.255
gateway 10.100.1.254

To save the file once you are finished press ctrl-x, type the letter y and hit enter. That basically tells nano that you want to quit and yes, save the changes. Networking will now need to be restarted for the changes to take effect.

• sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Once the network has restarted issue this command to check that the changes have taken effect. This is similar to ipconfig on a windows machine. It shows you the details for each network interface on your machine.

• ifconfig eth0

The 2nd line of the output should be something similar to the following:

• inet addr:10.100.1.10 Bcast:10.100.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

I have highlighted the information you need to check. Once you are satisfied with the result it is time to move on.

Installing Git on the Server

Now that your server is up and running you can install Git.

Type the following command to install Git

• sudo apt-get install git-core

That is it, Git is now installed, but you do need to get everything set up for use though, the repositories will be created a little later on.

I like to use a single user account on the server to access my repositories and authenticate each person/workstation using SSH keys. This way you have one account and multiple users who are all verified by their SSH public key.

Private and Public key pairs can sound a bit daunting at first but it is relatively simple to understand. Two keys will be generated, your public key and your private key. As you would imagine the public key is the one that gets put onto the server, the data is then encrypted with your public key and the only key that can decrypt it is your private key. Lets look at a simple example.

Bob and Alice need a way of sending data to each other that no one can decrypt even if the data is intercepted. Bob and Alice both have their own public and private keys, so they decide to share public keys with each other. Bob encrypts some data with Alice’s public key so that when she receives it she uses her private key to decrypt the message. Once she has her reply ready she will use Bob’s public key to encrypt it and send it on. Bob will then use his private key to decrypt it.

That is a simple example of public/private key pairs. What you will be using them for is password-less logins. You will generate your public/private keys and give the server your public key. The connection to the server is established and the server will present you with a list of public keys, if your private key matches one of the public keys on file then the connection between your computer and the server is allowed. This all happens extremely quickly and requires no input from you once you have your keys set up. I will go over this in detail to make it simple. Linux users will have it very easy, Windows users however have a little more work to do.

So lets get the user account created.

• sudo adduser –system –shell /bin/sh –gecos ‘GIT Version Control –group –disabled-password –home /git_repos git

Here you tell the server to add a new system user called git, with the /bin/sh shell, a description of GIT Version Control User with a group that will have the same name as the new user, a disabled password and the home folder will be /git_repos.

Now you need to get the foundations of SSH access sorted.

• sudo mkdir /git_repos/.ssh && touch authorized_keys

First you make a folder called .ssh, then create a file call authorized_keys (yup, American English). As you did this as a different user, you now need to correct the permissions on the files.

• sudo chown -R git:git /git_repos/.ssh
• sudo chmod 600 /git_repos/.ssh/*

What you did was change ownership of the .ssh folder and all sub folders back to the git user then changed the file permissions of the authorized_keys file to read-only, so no one can add keys to that file accept for you. You will need to add a key for each of the desktops/laptops you want to allow access to the Git repos.

Installing Git & Generate your SSH keys on your client machines.

Linux

Generating your SSH keys on Linux is simple. Just enter the following command

• ssh-keygen -t rsa

If this fails, you will need to install openssh.

• sudo apt-get install openssh && ssh-keygen -t rsa

Your keys will be stored in your home folder, inside a hidden folder called .ssh. Your public key will be in id_rsa.pub and your private key is in id_rsa.

Now install Git with the following command

• sudo apt-get install git-core

Could not have been simpler than that for Linux machines. You need to set up the global config for Git, namely your name and email address. This is used to sign off your commits.

• git config –global user.name “Your Name Here”
• git config –global user.email “you@youremail.com”

Windows

This involves a little more work to get your SSH keys as Windows does not come with SSH in any shape or form and you can’t just apt-get install it. You will have to install msysgit to get the command line interface you need to generate the keys. The advantage of doing it with msysgit is that it will also install Git. You should have downloaded this package already so lets get started.

Double click the .exe file called Git–1.7.*-preview********.exe and click run (if you get the security info box) and click next when the installer starts.

• Accept the license agreement.
• Select next to choose the default install location.
• Before clicking next you should tick the 2 unchecked boxes under Windows Explorer integration > Context menu entries so that these options are added to your right click menu should you decide to use them in the future.
• Now click next.
• Click next again.
• Keep the selection on Use Git Bash only and click next.
• Keep the selection on Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings.
• Msysgit will now install, un-tick the View ReleaseNotes.rtf box (unless you want to read them) and click finish.

You will now have an icon on your desktop called Git Bash. Run the application and you get a Linux style terminal window. Enter the following command and follow the instructions.

• ssh-keygen -t rsa

Leave the default file save location and hit enter, then hit enter again 2 more times to save the public key without a pass-phrase. You can choose to use a pass-phrase if you wish, but this will no longer be password-less logins.

Your public and private keys will now be saved in C:/Users//.ssh if you are on Windows 7. Windows XP will be similar but your profile lives in Documents and Settings rather than Users.

Your public key is in a file called id_rsa.pub Your private key is in a file called is_rsa

Now that you have your private and public keys you will need to put the public key onto the server.

Install your SSH keys on the server

Linux

• scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub root@10.100.1.10:/git_repos/.ssh/authorized_keys

You have to do this as root because you cannot use the git account until your SSH key is on the server.

Windows

Windows does not come with SCP, so you need a third party application to handle this for us. Luckily WinSCP is a GUI based explorer that will connect to the server similar to a FTP application.

Install WinSCP from the downloaded file you grabbed earlier and accept all the default options. Keep the Launch WinSCP box ticked and click finish. Once it opens you will have this window in front of you. The hostname will be the IP address of the server or the friendly name you gave the server earlier on, and use the root account for user and password. Now click on Login. Once you are logged in you will need to navigate to the /git_repos/.ssh folder in the right hand pane. Right click on the authorized_keys file and select Edit.

Find the public key you generated earlier and copy and paste the text as is into the authorized_keys file. Save the file and close it, WinSCP will automatically upload the changed file onto the server. Close the connection.

You are done with the root account on the server so you can now disable it. On the server type the following:

• sudo passwd -l root

Creating repositories on the server and your local machines.

You now need to create your repositories on the server. I find it best to section off the repositories I use. For example, any work I do for Soddengecko.com will reside in a folder called soddengecko.com etc etc and the repositories will be stored here.

• soddengecko.com
• — themes
• —— blank_theme.git “master”.

The Commit dialogue box will open. At the top is the box for your commit message. Describe what you have done, for example, added README file then click on the Sign button. This will sign your commit with the username and email address you set earlier. Make sure you have files that have been altered (no alterations and the commit will not allow you to OK it) and click the OK button at the bottom. Your first commit has now been done, now to push to the remote server.

Right click again and select Git push from the menu. The Push dialogue box is now open and you need to set a remote machine first. Click on Manage about half way down on the right hand side. Type in a name for this remote, I suggest using origin again as this is where you will keep the original working copy. Type in the URL like this

• ssh://git@10.100.1.10/git_repos/projects/myproject.git

You now need to load in your putty key (it is your private key in putty format) but your private key is not readable by TortoiseGit yet. Find and run the PuttyGen download you grabbed earlier on and run it. It is a self executing file so nothing is installed and the app should open right up. At the top click on Conversions then Import key. Navigate to your .ssh folder in your user folder and load the id_rsa file, your private key. In the Key comment line add something that will remind you which key this is, I chose to go with Gecko Desktop so I know it is myself and it was done on my desktop computer. Click on the Save private key button and save the file in your .shh folder. Name the file private_key.ppk

Go back to the TortoiseGit window and click the browse button next to Putty Key and find the file you just created. Click the Add/Save button and click OK at the bottom.

You should now be back to the Push dialogue and Origin will be selected in the box to the left of Manage. make sure the option Autoload Putty Key is selected and click the OK button. TortoiseGit will now push the files/folders/changes to the server. Click Close to dismiss the TortoiseGit box.

That is it for getting set up and committing your first project. I have shown you how to:

• Build your own Ubuntu server.
• Install Git as a central repository.
• Create repositories on the server.
• Install Git on your client machines.
• Initialise your project folder, add files and commit them.
• Push your project to the server.

Cloning (downloading) an existing repository

Let’s say you have set up a new laptop to code on and you do not have any projects on there. You are going to want to clone a repository so you can continue work on your project. Cloning a Git repository downloads all the project files to your designated folder. Cloning an existing project will also automatically add the remote server so you do not have to add it when you decide to push your code back to the server.

Linux

Open up your terminal and navigate to your projects folder (or another suitable folder). Make sure you know the URL of your remote repository and type

• git clone ssh://git@10.100.1.10/git_repos/projects/myprojct.git

Git will now connect to the server and download (clone) that repository onto your shiny new laptop.

GitHub, for example, has plenty of open source projects you could clone and work on. When on GitHub’s website you would grab the repository URL and clone that like you did above.

Windows

Right click in your projects folder and select the option Git Clone… and the Clone dialogue box will open. In the URL box you type

• ssh://git@10.100.1.10/git_repos/projects/myprojct.git

Now select the location you would like to download the project too. This will be filled in already but you can choose a different location for it. Make sure the Load Putty Key box is ticked and browse to your .ssh folder and load the private_key.ppk file you created earlier. Now just click on the OK button.

Cloning from GitHub and the rest of the web is the same as the above, just get the URL to the repository and clone it.

In the next tutorial I will go over the other Git commands that you will find handy. Stay tuned.

SDBillins Airprint on Ubuntu

Ubuntu Install Screenshots.zip

Ubuntu Install Screenshots.zip

But you, like me, did not know this when you first installed Ubuntu, and have not created a new partition for “/home” when you first installed Ubuntu. Despair not, it is really simple to move “/home” to its own partition.

First, create a partition of sufficient size for your “/home” directory. You may have to use that new hard drive, or adjust/resize the existing partition on your current hard-drive to do this. Let me skip those details.

Next, create and mount the new partition:
$mkdir /mnt/newhome
$sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/hda5 /mnt/newhome

(You have to change the “hda5? in the above to the correct partition label for the new partition. Also, the above assumes that the new partition you created is formatted as an ext3 partition. Change the “ext3? to whatever filesystem the drive is formatted to.)

Now, Copy files over:
Since the “/home” directory will have hardlinks, softlinks, files and nested directories, a regular copy (cp) may not do the job completely. Therefore, we use something we learn from the Debian archiving guide:
$cd /home/
$find . -depth -print0 | cpio -null -sparse -pvd /mnt/newhome/

Make sure everything copied over correctly. You might have to do some tweaking and honing to make sure you get it all right, just in case.

Next, unmount the new partition:
$sudo umount /mnt/newhome

Make way for the new “home”
$sudo mv /home /old_home

Since we moved /home to /old_home, there is no longer a /home directory. So first we should recreate a new /home by:
sudo mkdir /home

Mount the new home:
$sudo mount /dev/hda5 /home

(Again, you have to change “hda5? to whatever the new partition’s label is.)

Verify that everything works right.

Now, you have to tell Ubuntu to mount your new home when you boot. Add a line to the “/etc/fstab” file that looks like the following:

/dev/hda5 /home ext3 nodev,nosuid 0 2

(Here, change the partition label “hda5? to the label of the new partition, and you may have to change “ext3? to whatever filesystem you chose for your new “home”)

Once all this is done, and everything works fine, you can delete the “/old_home” directory by using:
$sudo rm -r /old_home

Or you can keep the old one as a backup

</dev/urandom tr -dc A-Za-z0-9_ | head -c8

Note that the ‘tr’ strips out everything except characters in the ranges (alphanumeric, mixed case and underscores). This is a nice approach as piping to head means the minimum number of bytes required to generate a password of appropriate length are taken from /dev/urandom vs other methods which take more than you should need but still have a chance of not having obtained enough random data to generate a password of the required length. You can change the parameter to head to get passwords of any length.

NOTE: I have only run this command on Ubuntu, its possible it works on other Linux systems but I have not checked.

tar xvpzf filename.tgz -C /

the mkdir options are mandatory, and you will notice that they are the directories that are excluded from the backup. this is fine, but the folders do need to be replaced BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING AFTER THE RESTORE

mkdir proc
mkdir lost+found
mkdir mnt
mkdir sys
mkdir media
mkdir cdrom
mkdir home

now reboot

everything should now be cushdy

I had to rebuild the system. I saved off all my personal data and reinstalled everything.

Once I was back at my desktop, after configuring my dual screen setup on an Nvidia card and getting my email and browser back the way I like them I decided it was time to make some changes.

The /home folder needed to be moved from the OS drive, (that’s the next post) and I needed a way to back everything up, and I mean everything. Because of the way Linux structures its OS it is geniusly easy to backup the system. You cannot do this on windows without expensive software to ghost the drive.

What we are going to do here is use TAR to compress and zip up the entire root structure, with a few exclusions.

NOTE
I run the command as sudo from my own account. I am pretty sure it would be benneficial to quit all X sessions and drop to the command prompt rather than run from a live session. I have no evidence to suggest that doing this from the desktop will cause any problems. If you have a suggestion on this please comment below.

I will show you how I backed up my root directory and then I will supply a generic command that will suffice for most people. My command is slightly different as I moved my /home folder onto a seperate hard drive. I will cover my reasoning for this in my next post.

This is the command I use to backup my OS

sudo tar cvpzf /media/500/000_Backups/System/system_backup-$(date +%d-%m-%Y).tgz –exclude=/proc –exclude=lost+found –exclude=/mnt –exclude=/media –exclude=/cdrom –exclude=/home –exclude=/old_home /

As you can see I have excluded the /home directory in my backups as it is on a seperate partition. Now, lets break this down into its component parts so you can better understand how this works.

“tar” is obvious. this is the application we will be using to create the archived backup. Make sure you have tar installed. It should be by default but just incase you will need to run this command in the Terminal

sudo apt-get install tar

or, click <a href=”apt:tar”>here</a>

the tar parameters “cvpzf” are as follows.
c – this tells tar that we are creating an archive
v – verbose mode, this command outputs each file being archived into the terminal window
p – retain all file permissions as is
z – compress as gzip – use j for bzip2 but make sure you change the file extension to tar.bz2
f – filename follows this parameter.

system_backup-$(date +%d-%m-%Y).tgz – this is the filename followed by the date of the day the backup is made, in the format dd/mm/yyyy

I chose to date it as I will have incremental backups running via cron. This is a little out of the scope of this post, but happy to help those if you post a comment and ask.

–exclude=/ – we are going to exclude some folders that are not required in the backup. proc, lost+found and cdrom are not required in the backup, and if you do not want to backup any drives, dvds or cdroms that are mounted inside mnt or media, make sure you exclude those as well or the backup could become extremely large.

/ – this is the folder we are backing up. and as we are backing up the whole system we need to backup from the root directory which is /

Now we have our backup command explained you are ready to get down to running your own. Obvioulsy please dont use the one above as it is for my machine, below is the generic code that should suffice 99% of people.

NOTE
please change the “pathtofolder” to a location you would like to save the file once it is completed.
this will take a while once you execute the command, so don’t be tempted to cancel the operation.

sudo tar cvpzf /pathtofolder/system_backup-$(date +%d-%m-%Y).tgz –exclude=/proc –exclude=lost+found –exclude=/mnt –exclude=/media –exclude=/cdrom /

Now that you have your backup, you are going to need to restore it someday. Below are simple instructions on how to extract and restore your data

sudo tar xvpzf system_backup-dd-mm-yyy.tgz -C /

the mkdir options below are mandatory, and you will notice that they are the directories that are excluded from the backup. this is fine, but the folders do need to be replaced BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING AFTER THE RESTORE

mkdir proc
mkdir lost+found
mkdir mnt
mkdir media
mkdir cdrom

Now reboot your PC and your data will be restored. This includes all applications, mail and broswer settings, everything, except the folders you did not backup.

For example, I wanted to install a new pixel ruler (link courtesy of Borntwisted) called KRuler. If I was to install this directly from my web browser I would need to write the link in my HTML like so:

1. <a href=”apt:kruler”>Click here to install Kruler</a>

This would then give me the following link:

1. Click here to install Kruler

If you click the link (providing you are using Ubuntu as your Operating System) you will get the follwoing:

Once you click ok, and type in your admin password you will get the download screen as it downloads the package ready for installation

And then the obligatory install screen will be shown:

This is a perfect tool for bloggers, how to’ers and manual writers writing for Ubuntu installs etc. I know I will be using it in all my future blogs and how to’s in the future.

Go ahead, give it a shot

NOTE: This How To: is for Ubuntu Linux (all versions) but should work on any version of Linux that supports the ext3 filesystem and reiserfs filesystem. This How To: is offered as is and I cannot take responsibility for any problems you suffer as a result of modifying yoru core system files.

ext3 Filesystem

The ext3 or third extended filesystem is a journalled file system that is commonly used by the Linux operating system. It is the default file system for many popular Linux distributions

Features of ext3 File System

The ext3 file system is essentially an enhanced version of the ext2 file system. These improvements provide the following advantages

Availability

After an unexpected power failure or system crash, each mounted ext2 file system on the machine must be checked for consistency by the e2fsck program. This is a time-consuming process that can delay system boot time significantly, especially with large volumes containing a large number of files. During this time, any data on the volumes is unreachable.

The journaling provided by the ext3 file system means that this sort of file system check is no longer necessary after an unclean system shutdown. The only time a consistency check occurs using ext3 is in certain rare hardware failure cases, such as hard drive failures. The time to recover an ext3 file system after an unclean system shutdown does not depend on the size of the file system or the number of files; rather, it depends on the size of the journal used to maintain consistency. The default journal size takes about a second to recover, depending on the speed of the hardware.

Data Integrity

The ext3 file system provides stronger data integrity in the event that an unclean system shutdown occurs. The ext3 file system allows you to choose the type and level of protection that your data receives. By default, Most Linux Distributions configures ext3 volumes to keep a high level of data consistency with regard to the state of the file system.

Speed

Despite writing some data more than once, ext3 has a higher throughput in most cases than ext2 because ext3’s journaling optimizes hard drive head motion. You can choose from three journaling modes to optimize speed, but doing so means trade offs in regards to data integrity.

Easy Transition

It is easy to change from ext2 to ext3 and gain the benefits of a robust journaling file system without reformatting.

ReiserFS

ReiserFS is a general-purpose, journaled computer file system designed and implemented by a team at Namesys led by Hans Reiser.ReiserFS is currently supported on Linux and may be included in other operating systems in the future. Introduced in version 2.4.1 of the Linux kernel, it was the first journaling file system to be included in the standard kernel.

ReiserFS Features

ReiserFS has fast journaling, which means that you don’t spend your life waiting for fsck every time your laptop battery dies, or the UPS for your mission critical server gets its batteries disconnected accidentally by the UPS company’s service crew, or your kernel was not as ready for prime time as you hoped, or the silly thing decides you mounted it too many times today.

ReiserFS is based on fast balanced trees. Balanced trees are more robust in their performance, and are a more sophisticated algorithmic foundation for a file system. When we started our project, there was a consensus in the industry that balanced trees were too slow for file system usage patterns. We proved that if you just do them right they are better–take a look at the benchmarks. We have fewer worst case performance scenarios than other file systems and generally better overall performance. If you put 100,000 files in one directory, we think its fine; many other file systems try to tell you that you are wrong to want to do it.

ReiserFS is more space efficient. If you write 100 byte files, we pack many of them into one block. Other file systems put each of them into their own block. We don’t have fixed space allocation for inodes. That saves 6% of your disk.

Ext3 & ReiserFS has three kinds of journaling methods

1) Journal Data Writeback
2) Journal Data Ordered
3) Journal Data

By default the the 2nd method is used.To speed things up we will make it use method 1. The price to pay is that it may allow old data to appear in files after a crash and journal recovery.

How to make ext3 or reiserfs use journal data writeback

First you need to take a back up of the fstab file using the following command

1. sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.orig

Edit the /etc/fstab file using the following command

1. sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Add the thing marked in bold to your fstab root mount line.

1. /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid,nouser,data=writeback 0 1

Save that file and exit

You need to take a Grubmenu file backup using the following command

1. sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.orig

Now you need to edit the grub menu list file using the following command

1. sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

look for the following two lines

1. # defoptions=quiet splash
2. # altoptions=(recovery mode) single

change to

1. # defoptions=quiet splash rootflags=data=writeback
2. # altoptions=(recovery mode) single rootflags=data=writeback

Save that file and exit

Now you need to update the grub using the following command

1. sudo update-grub

the added flags will automatically be added to the kernel line and stay there in case of kernel update

Changes to Ext3 FileSystem Only

Note:- tune2fs only works for ext3. Reiserfs can’t change the journal method

Before rebooting change the filesystem manually to writeback using the following command

1. sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/hda1

Check that it is running or not using the following command

1. sudo tune2fs -l /dev/hda1

Remove update of access time for files

Having the modified time change you can understand but having the system updating the access time every time a file is accessed is not to my liking. According to the manual the only thing that might happen if you turn this off is that when compiling certain things the make might need that info.

To change this do the following

1. sudo vi /etc/fstab

add the following marked in bold

1. /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,noatime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid,nouser,data=writeback 0 1

Now reboot and enjoy a much faster system

This is the most secure method I could come up with, simply put, if your main machine is not logged on as you, then the shares cannot be accessed without the username and password. When you are logged on these details will be called from a file that is owned by the root user.

This tutorial will assume you have samba already installed on your media/web server. Without it, this will not work.

1. sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

I am using GEDIT here to make it easier for you to amend the file. I much prefer PICO, or you may wish to use VI, if your balls are bigger than King Kongs.

Make the following changes:

1. workgroup = “WORKGROUP”

Note: The name of the workgroup (in quotes) must be the same on your windows and/or your Ubuntu box. If you do not know the name or your workgroup, look under “My Network Places” on your windows box, select “Microsoft Windows Network” and you will see a list of your workgroups. Default workgroup on windows XP, home edition is MSHOME (not WORKGROUP).

underneath it, add

1. netbios name = name_of_your_server (no spaces)

For example

1. netbios name = my_new_smb_server

Make sure the “security” option is set to “user” before moving on.

Scroll down to the bottom of the file and add the following lines:

1. [Name_of_folder]
2. path = /path/to/file
3. browseable = yes
4. writable = yes
5. read only = no
6. guest ok = no
7. create mask = 0644
8. directory mask = 0755
9. force user = root
10. force group = root

Do not forget to change the name of the folder and the path to the folder. The name you give this folder will appear in the network folder on your Ubuntu box. ie. Music or Vids etc. and the PATH will be something like this path = /home/user/Music. You will get the jist of it.

Save the changes and close the file.

Restart the samba daemon

1. sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

Open a terminal session and type the following commands one by one, allowing each of them to finish before executing the next one.

1. sudo apt-get install samba
2. sudo apt-get install smbfs

Now that you have the core files installed we need to do some configuration.

All folders that you wish to have mounted go into a root level folder called /media. This is much nicer than previous and other version of linux where it was called /mnt. now most will know this means MOUNT but some may not. Anyway, lets get on with it.

Lets make that new directory. If you decided to call your share name “Music” in the part above, you would do this:

1. sudo mkdir /media/Music

Obviously, you name it how you want it. for example, I have many shares such as /media/Vids, /media/Music, /media/WWW etc etc.

Now type the following command

1. gksudo gedit /root/.smbcredentials

This will create a hidden file called .smbcredentials in your root folder. We will store your username and password in this file for ease of access later on

Insert the following lines into the file: (substituting “yourusername” and “yourpassword” for your ubuntu machine login details)

1. username=yourusername
2. password=yourpassword

Save and exit the file and issue these commands one by one:

1. sudo chmod 700 /root/.smbcredentials
2. sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_backup
3. gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

Now you should be presented with another file. In here we will make the mods that mount those folders on boot up so you don’t have to touch them again. Put the following line at the bottom of the file, making the changes to the location of your server machine. for example, mine is at 192.168.1.125 so I would do this

1. //path_to_server/folder_name /media/folder_name smbfs credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,dmask=777,fmask=777 0 0

Once you have added all your mount points and changed the names to correspnd with your details., save and exit the file.

Now issue this final command:

1. sudo mount -a

Your new mount points will appear as drive locations on your Desktop and in the Places menu

You have real time access to run your applications as fast as if you are in the office. It does not matter if you’re using a dialup modem, DSL, ISDN, or T1 to access citrix remotely. Connection speeds become even less of an issue with high speed broadband connections pretty much the norm around the world now.

Citrix was built for virtualisation in mind, and obvioulsy owing to the fact that Microsoft is pretty much everywhere these days the main applications are easy to install on a windows machine, I am not going to cover that in the slightest.

To install Citrix ICA presentation client on your Ubuntu PC then follow the steps below.

Open a Terminal session

The three links below are using the new AptURL command which is installed by default on Ubuntu Gutsy and allows people like myself and any other tutorial writer to make it easier for you to install the packages you need. Just click the link and it will install the package for you. If this does not work, type the following command into the terminal window.

1. sudo apt-get install apturl

Now that is out of the way, continue on.

1. Click here to install libxaw6
2. Click here to install libmotif3
3. Click here to install alien (used to convert RPM to DEB packages)

You will now need to download the RPM file from Citrix. NOTE: It is version 10.6 (at time of writing) and is the second download icon (again, at time of writing). As the file names will change with new releases you will need to modify the tutorial to reflect this. You can however just grab the file from me.

Grab the file from here. I believe it is version 10.0 which is slightly out of date but works solidly so I recommend using it.

1. http://www.citrix.com/site/SS/downloads/details.asp?dID=2755&downloadID=3323#top

Save the file to your desktop (this tutorial assumes you save it to your desktop, if not please change commands accordingly)

In your terminal window you now need to change to the directory where you saved the file, then we will begin converting and installing.

1. cd Desktop

Now that you are on the desktop we now need to convert the file into a .Deb package that Ubuntu can handle.

1. sudo alien ICAClient-10.0-2.i386.rpm

Once the file is converted we now need to install it.

1. sudo dpkg -i icaclient_10.0-3_i386.deb

Now need to make this work through Firefox web-browser. We will create some symbolic links for Firefox so that it knows how to open the Citrix application file when you attempt to login.

1. sudo ln -s /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/npica.so
2. sudo ln -s /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/npica.so

Restart Firefox

Navigate to your Citrix server and login. Click on the application you want to launch. If it asks you to save/open with you will need to choose “open with” and navigate to the following folder:

1. /usr/lib/ICAClient

and choose to open with the following application.

1. wfica

You should now be good to go.

Edit

I am aware that some people get Font errors with the Citrix Client, it is safe to ignore but if you wish to fix them you can drop me a line in the comments and I will write up the fix.

In most Apache servers the mod_rewrite module is not activated by default. If you wish to have your URL’s changed on the fly and rewritten into nice, human readable format then you will need to enable this module. Follow the steps below to enable mod_rewrite.

Open a Terminal window and type:

1. sudo a2enmod

You will be presented with the following, but you can safely ignore what is in front of you and just follow the next steps.

1. Which module would you like to enable?
2. Your choices are: actions alias asis auth_basic auth_digest authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbd authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authnz_ldap authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cern_meta cgid cgi charset_lite dav_fs dav dav_lock dbd deflate dir disk_cache dump_io env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers ident imagemap include info ldap log_forensic mem_cache mime mime_magic mod_python negotiation php5 proxy_ajp proxy_balancer proxy_connect proxy_ftp proxy_http proxy rewrite setenvif speling ssl status suexec unique_id userdir usertrack version vhost_alias
3. Module name?

Enter the module name “rewrite” and press enter. Now you need to open the default file with sudo rights and change the “AllowOverride” option from “None” to “All” in the first 2 Blocks.

1. sudo pico /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

Below is what it should look like when you are finished.

1. <VirtualHost *>
2. ServerAdmin root@xpheas.com
3. DocumentRoot /var/www
6. <Directory />
7. Options FollowSymLinks
8. AllowOverride All
9. </Directory>
12. <Directory /var/www>
13. Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
14. AllowOverride All
15. Order allow,deny
16. allow from all
17. </Directory>

Restart the webserver.

1. sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Now the module is enabled, all that is left is to rewrite your .htaccess for URL changing.

Now that you have mod_rewrite enabled you are going to want to use it. In my next tutorial I will show you how to rewrite your .htaccess file to change ugly URLS into nice URLS. An exmaple of each is below so you can understand what I mean.

Ugly URL

1. http://example.com/blog/?p=17

Nice URL, which of course is more search engine friendly and will provide much better SEO.

1. http://example.com/blog/index.php/2007/09/17/dont-tase-me-bro/

I have ammended the tutorial to my needs and probably the needs of most and I have pointed out where it went wrong for me and how I solved it. It was not difficult to solve, but you will be required to be the ROOT user which is dangerous and destructive. Use at your own risk, I take NO responsibility for you damaging your system.

You will of course need to download the correct drivers for this, the Z600 driver. I have the correct link for the file as Lexmarks website is not the easiest to navigate around and find what you need.

The Z600 driver has been confirmed to work with the following printers:

Lexmark 5700 (black & white only)
Lexmark X1100
Lexmark X1110
Lexmark X1130
Lexmark X1140
Lexmark X1150
Lexmark X1180
Lexmark X1185
Lexmark Z513
Lexmark Z515
Lexmark Z715
Lexmark Z55
Lexmark Z615
Lexmark Z705
Lexmark Z605
Lexmark Z600
Lexmark Z25
Dell A920
Z65 (z65 driver)
Lexmark Z33 (z35 driver)
Lexmark Z33 (z35 driver)

First of all you need to download the correct driver to a folder of it’s own to save confusion.

Open a terminal window and type the following

sudo mkdir lexmark

This will create a folder called “lexmark” in your home directory.

Ok, again in your terminal window, type the following commands one after another, waiting for each command to execute first before starting the next one.

cd lexmark

wget http://www.downloaddelivery.com/srfilecache/CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz

tar -xvzf CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz

tail -n +143 z600cups-1.0-1.gz.sh > install.tar.gz

tar -xvzf install.tar.gz

sudo apt-get install alien

alien -t z600cups-1.0-1.i386.rpm

alien -t z600llpddk-2.0-1.i386.rpm

sudo tar xvzf z600llpddk-2.0.tgz -C /

sudo tar xvzf z600cups-1.0.tgz -C /

sudo ldconfig

cd /usr/share/cups/model

sudo gunzip Lexmark-Z600-lxz600cj-cups.ppd.gz

The driver is now installed. Restart the cups daemon:

sudo /etc/rc2.d/S19cupsys restart

Check to make sure the printer back-end works:

cd /usr/lib/cups/backend

./z600

The output of the above command should be similar to this:

direct z600:/dev/usb/lp0 “Lexmark Lexmark Z600 Series” “Lexmark Printer”

If you get no output, mount the usb filesystem. To do this type the following:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

and add the following code to the end of the file

#USB Lexmark Printer
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=14,devmode=0660 0 0

Save the file and close. Then just type the following in the terminal:

sudo mount usbfs

That should fix it.

Now simply set up your printer. Go to:

• System
• Administration
• Printing

Make sure you select the z600 driver, and you’re done. Print out a test page to make sure it all works.

I hope this has helped you.

Quoted from Apache Friends. Home of the Xampp project.

It took me some time to find the information I need to get Xampp to start when the computer boots up. Apache Friends has a small How To to get the process going everytime, but it failed to work for me. So Borntwisted and myself had a natter about it and decided to add the Xampp start command into the startup programs and voila, it works a treat.

If the Apache Friends info does not work for you, and you are using Ubuntu Dapper then follow these simple instructions.

• System
• Preferences
• Sessions
• Startup Programs (tab)
• Add

Enter the following command:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

When your computer reboots you should now have Xampp start as a process.

Please do try it if you have the manual install and hopefully it will work for you.

Open a new terminal window and type the following command:

sudo aptitude install alsa-oss

Once completed, enter the following command:

sudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc

Find and replace:

FIREFOX_DSP=”none”

With:

FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”

Close and restart Firefox. In some cases a full reboot is required.

unfortunatly I had no sound, although video quality was fantastic. So after some searching around I found a few fixes, this one worked for me.

Open your terminal window and edit this file in your favourite text editor (“gedit” for me) You will also need to substitute the RealPlayer version with the version you have.

1. sudo gedit /usr/lib/realplay-10.0.8/realplay

Find the line near the bottom of the file that says: (line 73 for me)

1. $REALPLAYBIN”$@”

Replace that line with the following:

1. aoss $REALPLAYBIN”$@”

EDIT

As Michael Olberg kindly pointed out (thank you) you may need to double check that you have the aoss package installed.

To check that it is installed, or to install it, just type the following into a terminal window.

1. sudo apt-get install alsa-oss
2. or you can just click this link (provoding you are viewing from an ubuntu machine)

gedit ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/openas-root

Now add this code to the file

#!/bin/sh ### openas-root: ### written by alexp ### nautilus script for opening the selected files as superuser (uid=0), ### utilizing the appropriate applications. for uri in $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS; do gksudo “gnome-open $uri” & done ### end of file.

Save and close this file.

Now enter this command into the terminal window:

chmod +x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/openas-root

Your all done. Right click any file or folder and under scripts you will find – openas-root

Enjoy.

90 odd percent of people out there use Internet Explorer, not through choice, they just do not know that a safer, more secure alternative exists. Which by the way is Firefox

So I followed the instructions I found on the web to install IE version 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 so that I may test my designs. I decided to put those instructions here for Ubuntu Dapper users to follow.

Check /etc/apt/sources.list – make sure you have access to the universe packages by uncommenting the following lines:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe

If you have just uncommented the lines, don’t forget to apply the changes:

sudo apt-get update

Step 1 Install wine:

sudo apt-get install wine

Step 2 Install cabextract:

sudo apt-get install cabextract

Step 3 Install IEs4Linux:

wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-2.0beta7.tar.gz tar -xzvf ies4linux-2.0beta7.tar.gz cd ies4linux-2.0beta7 ./ies4linux

That’s it. Follow the instructions and allow them to install. Once installed you will have 3 new shortcuts on your desktop.

hope you found this info useful.

A quick search through google and the nVidia forums and I fond the answer. The nVidia drivers are to blame, and the fix is simple, but temporary.

This does fix it so long as you don’t change the gamma settings back to Video Overlay or Desktop.

• Right-click on the desktop and select Properties.
• From the Display Properties select Settings.
• Click Advanced.
• Click on the GeForce tab (this will be your video card model… example.. GeForce 6800 Ultra)
• Click on Color Correction
• There should be a drop down menu top left with Desktop, Video Overlay, and All. Select All from the dropdown box this should set everything to driver default and click Apply. And your video overlay gamma should be fixed.

Please note: This is the only temporary fix that will work with everything and, depending on your system, you might find yourself adjusting it everytime you restart your computer.