Computer Tips -Tech Info

Category: Ubuntu

  • Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Netbook Remix on an Acer Aspire One ZG5 trackpad issues

    Recently I had the opportunity to work on an Acer Aspire One netbook. It’s rare that I get the chance to work on a linux desktop system for a client. Most of my desktop users that I support run Windows (although I primarily run linux on my machines.) I get to do a fair amount of server level work with linux variants, but this one, being a desktop install, intrigued me.

    The issue was that the buttons on the trackpad didn’t work. She also indicated that she had tried a usb mouse and those buttons didn’t work either. As I looked at it, I had already spent some time browsing through bug reports getting ideas on what might be the issue. It behaved exactly as she described and so then the real fun began.

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  • Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex released today | ubuntu not yet profitable

    The newest release in the Ubuntu Linux series has escaped into the wild today. If you recall the last Ubuntu release was a long term support release and this one is intended to be a bit more “edgy” or in this case “intrepid”. Download from Ubuntu, or read a review from linux format. It has, of course, the newest releases of the major desktop packages as well as improved networking support. They are trying to focus on making mobile connectivity even better in this release. There is new artwork as well. There is a new mobile USB install option which is a download image that can be written to a USB drive for installing on the netbook class of machines. Judging from Linux Format’s review it’s looking like a solid release.

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  • Ubuntu Linux Software Raid – Replacing a Failing Drive

    Sometime back I setup my home server running Ubuntu Linux (6.06 – Dapper Drake LTS). I used two pairs of drives to do raid cloning. Two IDE drives were for the main system structure and two SATA drives for Audio/Video storage as well as CDimages and other large file sharing on the local network. Well… I noticed the hard drive light was on solid and sure enough one of the two SATA drives had failed. (I didn’t get my status email because I’d done a network structure change and didn’t update my local mail setup…) Anyway… replacing it was a pain in the neck only for the physical access to the box. Everything else worked as it should.

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  • Clonezilla/DRBL on Ubuntu

    I’ve talked about Clonezilla as a remarkably good an fast disk cloning utility previously, but there’s more to the clonezilla project than just rescue imaging of drives. There’s also a thin-boot server as well…. (diskless remote boot loader?) Anyway, This tutorial talks about how to setup clonezilla/drbl on a recent ubuntu install.

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  • Remastering Ubuntu’s live disk

    Many times I’ve used Ubuntu’s livecd to test out an ailing system, but more than once I’ve wanted to add a utility, yes you can apt-get install from the live cd, but that assumes the system has a working internet connection, it’s sometimes better to just build the cd yourself with the tools YOU want. Using the tips in this forum thread and this page, with help from this google search, I remastered my own custom version of ubuntu (with smartmontools among other things.) I consider the ability to make your own custom tools priceless when it comes to tech support.

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  • Metapackages in Ubuntu for new system provisioning

    In ubuntu/debian linux software installs, there are such things as “metapackages” which is a package that just describes what OTHER packages it “needs”. For instance in ubuntu, the kubuntu-desktop package is just such a package – when choosing it, it installs everything necessary for the kubuntu desktop/customizations to install. So, I was hit with an idea while I was apt-getting 30-40 odd packages…. everytime I “provision” a new ubuntu system I have a list of packages that I want to make sure are installed, why don’t I just create a single metapackage and be done with it to make life simpler…. But how could I do this?

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  • Opengroupware install on Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake

    One recent task was install opengroupware on a dapper drake 6.06 install in a virtual machine. I followed the instructions found here and ran into a slight problem. The default install from Ubuntu does not have apache in the enabled repositories. (Apache2)… following the intsructions given I first added opengroupware’s (debian sarge) repository (more…)

  • Vmware server install on Ubuntu Dapper

    I thought I had already posted this, but I looked the other day and didn’t find the article, so I’m posting it now… if it’s a duplicate, sorry… I’m still using Ubuntu’s Dapper Drake 6.06(.1) as a base install for many things… the Long term support idea fo rthe server “stuff” is somewhat reassuring and I don’t want to be chasing minor revision upgrades every 6 months. But, there is another reason, a lot of the installs I’ve done have been a base for VMWare server and there are some very good (and clear) how-to’s in that arena….howtoforge has a good walkthrough that I’ve used as a starting point….

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  • Big Ubuntu Linux news

    This is something that really looks interesting. Recently Linspire announced their intent to open source the CNR (Click N Run) concept for installing software, launching a wiki based web site that would allow supported linux distributions to install software (open source or commercial) with as easy a process as possible (visit web site, browse, click). Well, today Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) and Linspire have announced how some of this will look and then some. For starters, Freespire and Linspire are going to be based upon Ubuntu in the future (instead of directly based on debian linux.) That is a fair enough shift. The other part of the news is that as of the release of Fiesty Fawn (The Ubuntu Linux release due in April), Ubuntu users will be able to access Click N Run. So what does this mean?

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  • Caching downloaded deb files with apt-cacher

    It seems silly with multiple machines to download the same file multiple times. At some level it’s not THAT inconvenient. It really depends on your connection speed and the size of the files in question. For Ubuntu and other systems based on the .deb package format and apt-get there is a nice option for setting up proxy’ing to allow a single download of deb files for install on multiple machines. That option is called apt-cacher. There’s a good wrietup here on the setup of this cache -ing software.