Sri Lankan Ubuntu Users

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 Released

2009-06-24T23:09:00.001+05:30

Befor every thing we should let everyone know that Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), due for release in late October this year, will not have that professional theme everyone was expecting, as stated by Mark Shuttleworth himself in the Ubuntu Open Week Q & A:

"It has taken a long, long time to pull together a design team. I had hoped to have that team in place six months ago, but it's still forming. I think we will make good progress in the next cycle, you can already see a few things that have borne fruit from that team: notifications, time zone selector in installer, etc, but it's fragmentary. I'm pretty darn confident we'll have a new look for 10.04 but I think only pieces of that will emerge for 9.10."

Let's get back to our article, we proudly announce that the second alpha release of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) was uploaded a few weeks ago on the official mirrors. As usual, we've downloaded a copy of it, and we intend to keep you up to date with the latest changes in the Ubuntu 9.10 development.

What's new in Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2?
The development team prepared a Live CD for this second alpha version of Ubuntu 9.10, which means everyone will be able to download and test it. As you can see from the screen shots below, there's nothing new on the surface... the same wallpaper and theme as in Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope).

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Alpha 2

The hot news on koala is that GRUB 2 is now the default boot loader and it finally replaced the prehistoric GRUB Legacy and EXT4 is now the default filesystem for new installations, something we saw with a lot of the new GNU/linux OS's like Fedora 11. Last but not least, the kernel packages are at version 2.6.30-8, based on the all new Linux kernel 2.6.30 RC8, and GCC 4.4 is the default compiler.

GRUB 2 in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Daily Build 20090609

A lot of the GNOME packages, including Nautilus, Brasero, Gedit and Totem Movie Player, has been updated to the 2.27.1 and 2.27.2 versions. Also Pidgin was updated to version 2.5.6.

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Alpha 2 showcasing Pidgin 2.5.6

What's new in Kubuntu and Xubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2?
The news is that Kubuntu is built on top of the KDE 4.3 Beta 2 desktop environment and Xubuntu is using Xfce 4.6.1.

On October 29th, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) will be released and this is the eleventh release of the Ubuntu operating system. Till then we have to have fun with the next best thing, Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). Looking forword for July 23rd, for the third Alpha release of the upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).

Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Alpha 2

Xubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Alpha 2

The Karmic Koala Release Schedule:

May 14th, 2009 - Alpha 1 release
June 11th, 2009 - Alpha 2 release
July 23rd, 2009 - Alpha 3 release
August 13th, 2009 - Alpha 4 release
September 3rd, 2009 - Alpha 5 release
September 17th, 2009 - Alpha 6 release
October 1st, 2009 - Beta release
October 22nd, 2009 - Release Candidate
October 29th, 2009 - Final release of Ubuntu 9.10

Download Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 (Karmic Koala) (Desktop / Server / Ntbookremix)
Download Kubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 (Karmic Koala)
Download Xubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 (Karmic Koala)

Guys this is a alpha ver sion so download it try it and most importently report bugs.

What is FOSS

2009-06-07T15:09:00.005+05:30

Really good discussion with BUD & Anuruddha by Dr.Ajantha

RMS essay collection

2009-05-29T13:44:00.005+05:30

Check out these outstanding essay collection by RMS

USB powered ADSL modems in Ubuntu

2009-05-22T01:22:00.000+05:30

There is a problem with usb powered modems in ubuntu that will requirer a additional software to work.most modems you get from SLT net have this problem.

Click to download UBUDSL software.
Check here for installation instructions.

But in the version 9.04 there is a daemon issue with UBUDSL so its better to use 8.10 for now if you are using this kind of modems. This is because the version 9.04 was released on the 23rd of April 2009 so capability issue are not resolved yet. and will be soon and will notify you when this is resolved.

Chick here if you want to know if your modem supports ubuntu by default.

Internet sharing with Ubuntu (NAT Gateway)

2009-05-22T01:13:00.000+05:30

The following are few basic steps that one has to do to turn any ubuntu installation into a basic gateway for other computers.
The Settings i am going to write down here are permanent ! so please remember this if you use a mobile device that it will always (!) act as a gateway for the configured network card.

In the following, i will refer to the network device that is connected to the internet as eth1. It is not compulsory that the internet device is called that - other possible names are: eth0, ath0, ppp0, ... and many more.
The computer/network with the clients is, in my case, connected to the network device eth0. This can also vary quite a lot, too.
Please make sure you know what device is which for you, and adjust all commands and configurations accordingly.

The basic scheme of what this setup looks like is:

PC-Client <---> PC-Gateway (ubuntu) <---> Internet

Prerequisites

Your ubuntu Computer has internet connection and you know which network device provides this functionality.

NOTE: how you are connected to the internet does not matter (ethernet, cable, wifi, dsl), as long as you have a second network device besides the one you are connection this should work.

Configuring the network card

the network card that serves the clients (eth0) needs a static ip address. This can be done outside of network manager and would be recommended that way, since you might need nm to still connect the gateway to the internet itself.
Note that this will result in network-manager to completely ignore the network card that you configured for the client network, thus rendering eth0 unavailable in nm.

edit the network configuration file and set eth0 to a static ip. to open the config use this command

Code:
gksu /etc/network/interfaces

now, to configure eth0, you will need add a few lines to the file. Also, this configuration ONLY works on ethernet cards, NOT on wireless. If you need a wireless card to be manually configures, there are a few sticky threads in this forum that will explain how to do it. I'll try to update this later and make sure i have an example for wireless cards ready aswell

add the following lines to the file

Code:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.8.16.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 10.8.16.0
network 10.8.16.0

This will set a static ip address for eth0 (10.8.16.1) and take the network card out of nm. these changes only take effect after rebooting. To temporarily use these settings, issue this command:

Code:
sudo ifconfig eth0 10.8.16.1

Enable IP forwarding

Port forwarding is turned off in ubuntu by default. But it is needed so that the Computer will forward pakets it receives. To enable port forwarding, issue the following command

Code:
gsku gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

and look for the following line

Code:
#net.ipv4.conf.default.for

warding=1

once that one is found, remove the # so that it reads to be

Code:
net.ipv4.conf.default.forwarding=1

These changes will take effect with the next reboot. if you want them to take effect right now, use these commands

Code:
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

[Update]
it has been reported multiple times that the sysctl.conf got ignored. You can check that issueing this command after a reboot:

Code:
sudo sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward

if the answer is still 0. you will need to add a line to /etc/rc.local. open it to edit with

Code:
sudo gedit /etc/rc.local

and add this line BEFORE the exit 0 in the file

Code:
sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

then reboot and check with the above command if it still returns 0. ONLY do this change if you have to, as this is an ugly hack to force setting...
[/Update]

Configuring iptables (paket filter)

In order to allow pakets to pass though the router, we need to add a couple of iptables rules to the filter so that everything may pass our machine. Also we need to rewrite the pakets so that they can find their way back to us.
open the file /etc/rc.local with

Code:
gksu gedit /etc/rc.local

and add the following lines

Code:
/sbin/iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables --table nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth1 -j MASQUERADE

Doing it this way is neither elegant nor very secure, but it is basic and it should work. If you are worried about security issues, i suggest you read up in iptables and how to confugure the rules more secure than simply letting anything pass through.
again, these changes only take effect after a reboot.
to make the changes take effect right now, use these commands

Code:
sudo iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
sudo iptables --table nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth1 -j MASQUERADE

Configuring the client

There are two ways to configure the client - one is a static, manual config. If you would like to do this, then give the client an ip-address in the network 10.8.16.0/24 (i.e. 10.8.16.2), the gateway 10.8.16.1 and a dns server from your computer (they can be found in the file /etc/resolv.conf)

If you have multiple client, or do not want to configure something staticially, you might want to look at setting up a basic dhcp server which issues network configurations to clients.
to install the server, type the following

Code:
sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server

this should install the dhcp-server on your machine. The start will fail, but that is nothing to worry about.
before the dhcp server itself can be configured, we need one more little bit of information. We need to know what dns servers are used so we can push then to the clients that will be configured via this server. to find out the currently used dns server, use this command

Code:
cat /etc/resolv.conf

and note down the ip addresses that are written at the nameserver statement

The next step is to configure the dhcp-server so it knows what ip-addresses to dish out and what settings.
for that, edit the file /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf with this command

Code:
gksu gedit /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf

save the content in a different file (for later reference or if you want to do more with it later on), and then replace it with the following basic setup:

Code:
ddns-update-style none;
option domain-name "mynetwork";
option domain-name-servers Nameserver1, Nameserver2;
option routers 10.8.16.1;

default-lease-time 42300;
max-lease-time 84600;
authoritative;

log-facility local7;

subnet 10.8.16.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 10.8.16.50 10.8.16.150;
}

The Bold entries in the config file have to replaced by the nameserver ip addresses that you previously got. if you only have one, remove the second one.

the last thing to do before the server can be started is to tell it what interface to listen on. This can be configures in the file /etc/default/dhcp3-server.
open it with

Code:
gksu gedit /etc/default/dhcp3-server

and edit the line with the INTERFACES="" to read

Code:
INTERFACES="eth0"

the dhcp-server will be automaticially started upon reboot. to manually start it now use this command

Code:
sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server start

That is all you need for a basic setup of things.

Please be reminded that you need to always check the network devices in your computer aginst the ones in the config. If you configure blindly from this and your devices are swapped or named different, you can break you computers network entirely.

How To Convert CUE/BIN, NRG, IMG, MDF Files to ISO Files on Ubuntu Linux

2009-05-22T01:04:00.000+05:30

Step 1:

We need the software used on this article: bchunk (CUE/BIN to ISO), ccd2iso (IMG to ISO), mdf2iso (MDF to ISO) and nrg2iso (NRG to ISO), so open a terminal and type:

Code:
sudo apt-get install bchunk ccd2iso mdf2iso nrg2iso

Now you can proceed to the next step.

Step 2:

Here's what to do to convert from...

CUE/BIN to ISO: Open a terminal, go to the folder that the CUE/BIN file is located and type:

Code:
bchunk filename.bin filename.cue filename.iso

NRG to ISO: Open a terminal, go to the folder that the CUE/BIN file is located and type:

Code:
nrg2iso filename.nrg filename.iso

IMG to ISO: Open a terminal, go to the folder that the CUE/BIN file is located and type:

Code:
ccd2iso filename.img filename.iso

MDF to ISO: Open a terminal, go to the folder that the CUE/BIN file is located and type:

Code:
mdf2iso filename.mdf filename.iso

To install the default LAMP stack in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) and later

2009-05-22T01:01:00.000+05:30

Installing LAMP server

As of the 7.04 release, the Ubuntu base system includes Tasksel. You can install LAMP using tasksel.

Code:
sudo tasksel install lamp-server

Troubleshooting PHP 5

Does your browser ask if you want to download the php file instead of displaying it? If Apache is not actually parsing the php after you restarted it, install libapache2-mod-php5. It is installed when you install the php5 package, but may have been removed inadvertently by packages which need to run a different version of php.

Code:
apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

the path for the "localhost" is /var/www/ this is not normally a read only directory but you can change that by the below code.

Code:
sudo chown

ex: sudo chown chalana /var/www/

Please note that this can bee used any ware to change ownership of any directory or file.

Text editor

There are numerous text editors that you can use to write your codes. Here are some recommendations that i have tested and used personally

Vi
nano
Komodo

or else you can use the default text editor for ubuntu that is gedit but personally i prefer Komodo edit because it is more user friendly to you can download it here.

so now you have all that you need to start programming with PHP.