noel alanguilan

some issues came up with my web development setup when i did a clean install of ubuntu 9.10 (karmic koala) and migrated my data from backups.

i have a web/php server running off my workstation on localhost being used to test html and php pages i develop. i have apache serving up name-based virtual hosts–one for each client website. accessing http://client1 would give me the local index page of client1, accessing http://client2 would give me the local index page of client2 and so on. this little webdev symphony got messed up when i performed a clean install of ubuntu 9.10. all i could get was a “403 forbidden” error message which i eventually attributed to a permission problem rather than to my server setup.

click to enlarge

the not-so-elegant solution i found is to move all of my development files inside the public folder in my home directory, edit the httpd-vhosts.conf file to reflect the move and changed the base directory in bluefish. i also propagated the permissions from the public folder to all the files and folders it contains by right-clicking on the public folder, click on properties, choose the permissions tab, and clicking on the “apply permission to enclosed files”.

and you’re done. hopefully. i consider this a temporary solution and it worked for me. it may not work for you. your mileage might vary. don’t do this without a proper backup.

painful. not a lot but painful nonetheless. it was mostly because if grub–ubuntu’s boot loader. after going through the install process and restarting my workstation grub had other plans and didn’t load up the filesystem and therefore could not start linux and most of everything else. its apparently an issue with karmic koala as i found out from the forums. this ubuntu version is painful.

on first boot after the install, i got a message from the bootloader saying it couldn’t load … something named after a bunch of numbers with dashes in between. restart. on second boot it gave me the grub menu with the option of editing the boot commands before booting. i took the opportunity and tried editing the commands. after some why-the-heck-not deliberations i took out the line that started with the word “search” and proceeded to boot. and it did! now, i wanted to see if the settings stuck so i restarted the computer. i was presented with the grub menu again which means the initialization file (menu.lst) of grub is messed up or non-existent (it was the latter ). after a couple of hours of axious searching in the ubuntu forums i was able to reinstall grub and had a proper menu.lst file.

the rest of the installation went fine. restoring my settings from backup was easier.

admitedly, there are really nice changes to the system but it is not the best ubuntu released mostly because the grub bootloader gave a lot of people headaches, me included. i later found out that the bootloader is a beta version that was included in the final release. bad idea. and then i get an occasional “pause”—application windows start to dim as if in deep thought and couldn’t be disturbed and after a few seconds wakes up again. i still have to find out what causes that. but at the moment i’m just glad my workstation is up and running again.

i’m actually a bit excited about the windows 7. after the publicity, the waiting and attention its getting one can’t help but be a little excited.

and then a few days after windows 7 launches comes ubuntu 9.10—karmic koala. i’m excited about that too.

for me, what will likely happen is that i will upgrade to karmic koala as soon as its out and i’ll wait for the ideal time to get windows 7. when is the ideal time?, you ask. and my answer is, when i get the extra money (which is so not now). or when someone gives me a license (like that’s going to happen).

now, if i want to run windows 7 on my computer i would be compelled to upgrade the memory and the graphics card or maybe even, heaven forbid, purchase a new computer altogether. and then i’d have to buy a license. that’s a double whammy right there. as it is, my current workstation barely clears the minimum system requirements of windows 7 but its already okay at running windows xp. i suspect that with the upgrades it would run xp even better than it would running windows 7. ibm and canonical even suggests that running ubuntu on the old hardware is a better (and economical) option. i would agree. as things stand, most of the computers i take care of need more memory or need to be replaced altogether just to run windows 7. and that’s a more money out of the coffers.

still, windows 7 is ‘new’ and i get interested with new things. its like a grown up toy. i try to learn about it, see how it works and, eventually, get to know how to break or hack into it. ha! i do that with almost everything technologically related. curiosity is a habit of mine. i will eventually get to play with windows 7. and ubuntu 9.10. my curiosity will be quenched for the moment until something new comes about again.

but at the end of the day, it all comes down to economics. its cheaper to deploy linux. there’s no going around it. free is free. still, there are people—and companies—willing to shell out the money for staying in their comfort zones. to each his/her own.

ubuntu 9.10 aka karmic koala is set to be released sometime end of october 2009 (hence the 9.10 version number).

notable changes–at least for me–are:

• linux kernel 2.6.31 which is supposedly a little speedier than the current kernel (2.6.28-15-generic).
• gnome 2.27.xx as opposed to the current 2.26.1. i do not know yet if there will be any big changes. emphathy replaces pidgin as the default internet messanging program.
• ext4 filesystem will be used on a clean install of 9.10. i suppose they have ironed out the kinks in that system. note that if you’re upgrading, the existing filesystems will not be upgraded to ext4. i’m not 100% into ext4 yet but i haven’t heard (or read) anything bad about it either so i may give it a run in 9.10. the mission critical server systems will stay in ext3 for now.
• new intel video driver architecture. this will hopefully solve the intel driver’s performance problems in 9.04.

more changes may be added as weeks pass but so far i think its worth upgrading to those changes.

update: kernel 2.6.31 includes support for usb 3.0.
update: if you want an extensive and explained list of changes look here.

i was just thinking the other day the things that using free and open source software (foss) affords me. i decided to list them down:

no viruses. windows viruses cannot run on linux systems. so i don’t have to worry much if my workstation will get infected with conficker or any other ficker for that matter. i actually tried running a windows virus in my system.  my usb stick got infected by something from a shop where i had a document printed off the stick. when i got home i tried double-clicking the virus program just to run it and it wouldn’t. i forget what virus it was but i knew it was a pretty useless one.

no software licenses. i know of a company who spent weeks trying to pin down all of the licenses for the software they have been using for the past several years. unfortunately, they couldn’t find everything. with the threat of the anti-piracy people raiding their offices at any time looming over their heads, they are seriously considering switching to open-source software instead of buying another set of licenses.

keeping track of software licenses is easy if you only have less than three computers to look after. it gets more serious and tedious if you’re trying to keep tabs on 25 or more workstations. using foss, i do not  have to worry about these licensing issues. no ax over my neck.

system stability. and this is entirely from my experience (your own mileage may vary)–there were more times that i had to reset windows than linux due to the system itself becoming unresponsive or an application making the whole system unstable. i have several linux servers which has an uptime of more than 60 days.

more than affordable. its free. how can you worry about that? which affords me a decent pair of pants. or maybe three.

simply put, i worry less when i use linux.

i was able to upgrade my firefox 3.0.xx to 3.5 a couple weeks ago with the help of jun auza (thanks dude). i opted to follow his second option of installing ff 3.5 with one command. a few days ago i found out that firefox 3.5.2 was released. to upgrade to the latest i looked for the package for my distro from the mozilla releases page. then on the terminal i issued a slightly modified command from jun’s:

wget -O - http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.5.2/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-3.5.2.tar.bz2 | tar xj -C ~

this should work for future releases. just check the full url of the release first from mozilla and modify the command as needed.

important note: this worked for me. it may not work for you. the risk is yours.

Note (2009.08.16): someone decided to sue lenovo denmark because they refuse to refund the price for windows vista even though it was clearly stated in the lenovo dk’s website they will refund the amount. i wonder if this can be done here in the philippines…

i was at a mall a couple of days ago looking over prices of branded notebook computers for a friend. on a whim, i decided to ask if i could possibly purchase a laptop that i wanted with linux installed or, at the least, come without an operating system.

i found out that i could get a laptop that i did not want with linux installed; that i could get the laptop that i want with only a variant of windows vista installed and; that i could not get the laptop without an operating system installed.

but there is no point in spending for what you do not want, eh? it would simply be a waste of money. and, as far as the sales persons i talked to are concerned, they will not refund me the cost of windows vista even though microsoft’s vista end user license agreement specifically states:

By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, return it to the retailer for a refund or credit. If you cannot obtain a refund there, contact Microsoft or the Microsoft affiliate serving your country for information about Microsoft’s refund policies.

i tried contacting microsoft philippines via web/email but before i could reach any sort of contact form they first wanted me to agree to their help and support terms of agreement (yes they have that too) which i didn’t agree with. the forums weren’t much help on my particular issue either. so where does this leave me?

well, i was thinking of the option of just getting the laptop i wanted and then sell the windows vista license later on for an unforgivably low price–at least i’m sure i’ll get some money back.

linux won’t take over the desktop and windows will still be on top of the operating system heap. well, at least, in the near future–a few years, maybe a decade. don’t get me wrong. i like linux. i’ve been using ubuntu for about 20 months now and linux servers for longer and they do get the job done with minimal fuss. i’m just looking at it from the practical, realist view. from my practical and realist views. and the reality that i see is its surprisingly hard to pry off windows from users’ faces. put a linux desktop in front of them and they’ll take a quick look at it and then lend you an eye and ask, “what’s that?!?” they’re hesitant to try something new because they’re thinking it will just make their jobs harder and and take longer to finish. you can almost visualize the distance between them and 5:00 pm at the bundy clock suddenly zoom out.

old dog. new tricks. you get the idea.

so, i’ve learned to leave the users’ comfort zone reasonably untouched and instead i messed with what they do not see–the servers. and i have been incredibly successful at it. so far i have several linux boxes happily performing file serving duties and about three linux firewalls protecting the networks from the big, bad internet.

some of you might say that this is not really a “win” for linux but i argue that it is. linux is being used in both home and business. it is actually enjoying some serious use. years ago we didn’t have much of a choice. yes, i would agree that the numbers are quite small but taking over the world was not the intent when that chap made this free operating a several years ago. windows will always be there because some rich or well to do john will always buy it. but linux is here now and will continue to chip away at the mindset of users.

and i can guarantee that this free operating system will still be there in the next decade but please don’t go looking for world domination. there is no point.

ubuntu checks the file system every 38th boot (at least in my system) using fsck. it cannot perform this checking while the drive is in use (or mounted). to force ubuntu to check the file system the next time it boots up, at the terminal, issue:

sudo touch /forcefsck

i use sshfs (secure shell filesystem) to connect to a remote drive or directory over the internet. what’s so cool about this program is that it presents to the user the remote drive or directory as a folder in the local computer–like it was just another folder in the user’s computer. all communication between the local and remote computer is encrypted.

to mount a remote directory to the local computer:

sshfs user@host:remotedir mountpoint

example, to mount the root directory (/) of the remote host computer with an ip address of 192.168.20.25 as the user root issue the following command on the console:

sshfs root@192.168.20.25:/ /home/noel/localmountpoint

where:
localmountpoint: is an empty subdirectory under noel’s home folder in the local computer

you’d then see a folder named localmountpoint on your desktop containing the files and folders of the remote computer. expect access to be slow if your internet connection is slow.

to unmount the remote directory

fusermount -u localmountpoint

if you don’t have sshfs installed, you can easily (apt-)get it from the repositories:

sudo apt-get install sshfs

links:
secure shell (ssh)
fuse homepage

note: this post is an expansion of my previous post about sshfs