Category Archives: Linux

The Linux Category actually encompasses *BSD, RH, Fedora, Ubuntu, and the like.

Linux

Webmin Install Ubuntu 8.04 Server

Leave a comment

1.) Log into your server. You can use SSH or your TTY.
2.) wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.340_all.deb
3.) sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.340_all.deb
4.) If you get errors, just type sudo apt-get install -f (this will install all the required pre-reqs)

EDIT: I had this as 8.06 server, when in fact it’s 8.04. My mistake. And since I always seem to install this right after installing the server, it’s a good idea to apt-get update, then apt-get upgrade

EDIT PT 2: The newest package is webmin_1.430_all.deb

EDIT PT3: if you’re installing on a CENTOS 5 box (like I am right now), you’ll need to wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.430-1.noarch.rpm
and then rpm -i webmin-1.430-1.noarch.rpm

EDIT PT4: Newest package is webmin_1.470_all.deb (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.470_all.deb)

EDIT PT 5: Newest is webmin_1.490_all.deb (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.490_all.deb)

Linux

CentOS and VMWare Server 1.0.6/2.0.0

Leave a comment

It was a toss up between a 64bit Ubuntu Server (8.04) and a 64bit CentOS Server (5.1). I couldn’t decide between the two, except for the fact that more people have installed VMWare server on CentOS than Ubuntu. And most of those people have been successful. Yay!

The server is a Dell PowerEdge 2850, 2X 3.0GHz Intel Xeon Processors (800FSB), 12GB RAM, 6X 300GB SCSI HD in RAID10 (1+0). It’s a beast. Why didn’t I go with a 32 bit OS? Because of the 2 to 4GB limitations imposed upon single processes. Take MySQL for example:
64Bit OS MySQL will use up as much RAM as you have (actually it uses up roughly 8 out of 12GB in another server)
32Bit OS MySQL will use up to 2GB RAM in the same spec server.

So I want to use VMWare to it’s full potential.
Install CentOS with most of the defaults. I didn’t choose to install support for virtualization.

First thing is first: UPDATE your server. yum update
Next we have to install GCC. yum install gcc
Then install the developer kernel yum install kernel-devel
Reboot your system. This will make the new kernel active.
Download VMWare Server from vmware.com
tar xvfz vmware*.tar.gz
cd vmware
/etc/init.d/xinetd start
./vmware_install.pl

If you ever update the kernel you will need to run the vmware configuration again /usr/bin/vmware_config.pl

Getting Samba to work was a whole different matter. Issues… Issues… Issues.

************************************************

2.0.0 is the same, but I made the mistake of installing the xen kernel on the development machine. VMWare will not work with the xen kernel – you will get an error:
You cannot install VMware Server on a system running a xen kernel

So then you must:

yum install kernel
yum remove xen kernel-xen
nano /boot/grub/grub.conf

and then make sure that in the grub.conf menu that it’s trying to load the kernel and not the xen kernel. It probably does this automatically, but a few seconds here fixes issues down the road.

Linux, Microsoft, Miscellaneous

Forgotten Passwords

Leave a comment

I can’t tell you the number of people that come up to me and ask if I can retrieve their password. For certain devices I can either reset the password or I can figure out a way to reset the password. Several websites give options to reset your password. Several Instant Messaging programs give the option to reset your password. I’m really just trying to see how many times I can type “reset your password”.

So here’s the lowdown on what can be reset, and a mostly “how-to” do it:

Mac OS 6.* – 8.5: If you set up a password you’re a fool. The OS doesn’t support native passwords and is a single user OS. You set one? Reformat and start from scratch. Or just live with it.
Mac OS 8.6 – 9.*: Read above. The OS was meant to be a single user Operating System, but somewhere along the line someone decided it would be a good idea to include basic password login protection. Usually a reboot will yield an “auto login” situation where you can change the preferences of a screen saver password. Otherwise you’ll have to reformat once again.
Mac OS X.*: Here’s the really easy part – Apple has included the utility to reset the password for you. It’s on the Apple Installation Disc. Don’t have the disc? You’ll have to download or buy one then. Have the disc? Boot off of it (press and hold C while turning on the computer), and then when you see a menu at the top of the screen click on Utilities. You’ll now see a “reset password” option. You can get the rest from there.

Windows 95/98: Press ESC instead of trying to login.
Windows ME: Burn your computer and that crappy Operating System and buy a new one.
Windows 2000/NT/XP/2003/Vista: Find a linux boot disc (knoppix should work) that can edit SAM files and reset administrator passwords.

Ubuntu: Press ESC at the grub prompt, Press E for edit, Select the line that begins with Kernel and press E, Go to the very end of the line and add “rw init=/bin/bash” without the quotes, Press enter and then B to reboot. This will give you full root shell access, so then type “passwd ” to reset that user’s password.

A lot of people work in corporations with Active Directory Microsoft Windows computers. Here’s a couple things that people should know:
1.) Administrators do NOT know your password for your login to the computer. We can reset it, but we can’t retrieve it (with normal means)
2.) Administrators do NOT know your password for your personal chatting application. We, like EVERY OTHER PERSON, can go to the provider’s website (ie yahoo.com/aim.com/msn.com) and have them send a reset password email to the registered email address.
3.) Administrators do NOT know the POP server or IMAP settings to your personal email. I actually block access to POP and IMAP so I don’t have to hear this one daily.

Linux

Eggdrop Bot Installation on Ubuntu

Leave a comment

Since I’m being lazy this post is mostly for me. Here’s a good starting place:
Egghelp.org
After you’ve downloaded the tar.gz file, uploaded it to your server, and pretty much gone to ./configure, then come back here.

If you can go to ./configure and everything runs peachy, you’re a better system setup guy than I am. Otherwise Eggdrop requires TCL to be installed and compiled (you should get some sort of compiler error saying it can’t create executables if not installed).

apt-get install gcc
apt-get install tcl8.4
apt-get install tcl8.4-dev

That’s it. Go and run that ./configure again.

Unless you’re on Ubuntu 14.04…
./configure --with-tclinc=/usr/include/tcl8.6/tcl.h --with-tcllib=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtcl8.6.so

Linux

Apt-Get not apt-getting

Leave a comment

I had just finished installing Ubuntu 7.10 on a virtual machine. This virtual machine had no active connection to the internet (which is why this actually happened).

After install, I tried to run the software update service. It said that there were no updates to install. I tried to apt-get install ssh and that failed too. So I tried apt-get update. No updates. Hmmm.

It turns out that if there is no active connection, Ubuntu will comment out all the sources for software in the sources.list file. You can find it here:
cd /etc/apt
nano sources.list
uncomment some of the repositories and save the file
apt-get update

Linux, Networking

Ubuntu Broadcom BCM4318 802.11g Laptop Wireless Driver

1 Comment

A fresh install of Ubuntu 7.04 or 7.10 will yield quite a few drivers built in. I’m actually impressed that most of the devices on my laptop work right out of the box (so to speak). Not complaining about Windows too much, but I’m constantly drawn towards Linux because of the support given via hundreds of thousands of individual peoples. Have an issue? Probably it’s been well documented and there are fixes available. If not, someone can most likely help you out. Want to make changes to your OS? Want free software and free support? Linux.

Now that the rant is over with, here’s an issue I came across while installing 7.04 AND 7.10 on my laptop (actually Windows had this issue too, but it’s much easier to find driver support on that side). The problem was my built-in Broadcom wireless 54G card (BCM4318 is the model). I didn’t want to use ndiswrapper to solve this one. I wanted a linux native driver.

BCM43xx Auto Install Driver

This is a debian package script that will install the Linux Native driver. Double click, install, reboot. If the wireless doesn’t work, you may have the wrong Broadcom card installed, or you will have to use ndiswrapper.

EDIT 08042008
Ubuntu 8.04 and beyond actually has built-in support for the Broadcom Card (not quite as good as the NDIS wrapper, but it will connect at 54mbps and has fairly decent range). You can go to System, Administration, Hardware Drivers. It should then be listed as one of the available to use.

Linux

Ubuntu Startup Screen Blank Issue

Leave a comment

That’s the best description I could come up with. Basically I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop (Compaq V5000 CTO). After a series of simple updates, I no longer had the booting Ubuntu screen with the progress loading bar. Basically the Grub boot menu will load, but then the screen goes blank for roughly 2 to 3 minutes. Then the login screen for Ubuntu will finally load. After a series of quick google searches, I finally came across the answer:

It’s a resolution issue.

Here’s the fix:
1.) Open up Terminal
2.) CD to /etc/
3.) Nano usplash.conf
4.) Change the resolutions to 1024×768
5.) Save the file
6.) sudo update-initramfs -u -k `uname -r`

It looks like this is an issue mostly found on ATI based computers. So if you have an nVidia based video card, you probably won’t be able to fix this using the above technique (correct me if I’m wrong). After the fix, the boot time went from 2 to 3 minutes down to less than 30 seconds. I’d say that’s a pretty good bug fix.

EDIT 08042008
I’m pretty sure since 804 came out this is no longer an issue.