When you are performing an:

sudo apt-get update

You are prompted for the Ubuntu CD:

Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Media change: please insert the disc labeled
‘Ubuntu-Server 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ – Release i386 (20071016)’
in the drive ‘/cdrom/’ and press enter

To get around this, go into your sources list:

sudo joe /etc/apt/sources.list

and look for the line at the top:

deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071016)]/ gutsy main restricted

and comment this out:

#deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071016)]/ gutsy main restricted

Rerunning:

sudo apt-get update

will now download the sources, instead of trying to get them from a CD.

The very first thing that you want to do is to go to the No-IP website and create an account. I’m assuming that for the purposes of this document you all know how to do that. The important bits of information that you will need from this process is to know:

1. Account Name (typically this is your email address)
2. Password for No-IP
3. Host Name configured in No-IP

Once you have setup an account and created your unique host name, open up Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and start punching in the following:

sudo apt-get install no-ip

When the package is downloaded, you will want to create the configuration directory:

sudo mkdir /var/lib/noip2

Once the configuration directory is created, you’ll need to create a configuration file:

sudo joe /var/lib/noip2/noip2.conf

and when Joe opens, just enter in a space and save and exit. That will create the dummy file and you’ll be then able to run:

sudo noip2 -C

which will run the configuration for NoIP2.

First you will be prompted to enter in the interface that has an external connection. In my case, since I’m running noip from my Ubuntu router it has two interfaces, my external connection is on eth1.

You will be prompted to first enter in your Account Name. Remember this is your email address. Then you will be prompted to enter in your password and finally it will register your host that is registered to your no-ip account.

Once the wizard is complete you should be dropped back to your Terminal prompt. Now the question is how do you know that it’s running? For this you will want to check your logs. Run the following:

cat daemon.log | grep noip

You should see something like the following:

george@otani:/var/log$ cat daemon.log | grep noip
May 11 09:42:38 otani noip2[11343]: v2.1.7 daemon started with NAT enabled
May 11 09:42:38 otani noip2[11343]: ****.servehttp.com was already set to xx.xx.xx.xxx.

The “****.servehttp.com’ will be replaced with whatever you specified as your own host within the configuration wizard and the xx.xx.xx.xxx will be the IP address that should be your external WAN IP address. You can confirm this by opening your router administration and comparing what you see in the logs to what’s listed there as your WAN address. Or you can visit a webpage that will tell you what your external IP address is.

The first thing that you will want to do is to setup LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on your image. I’m doing this on a fresh Ubuntu Desktop 32bit 8.04 installation so that I can use X11. A great guide exists here, but I’ll post the steps here as well (sometimes those pesky links die).

Installing Apache2

1. Open up the Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal).

2. Copy/Paste the following line of code into Terminal and then press enter:

sudo apt-get install apache2

3. The Terminal will then ask you for you’re password, type it and then press enter.

Testing Apache2

To make sure everything installed correctly we will now test Apache to ensure it is working properly.

1. Open up any web browser and then enter the following into the web address:

http://localhost/

You should see a folder entitled apache2-default/. Open it and you will see a message saying “It works!” , congrats to you!

Installing PHP5

In this part we will install PHP 5.

Step 1. Again open up the Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal).

Step 2. Copy/Paste the following line into Terminal and press enter:

sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

Step 3. In order for PHP to work and be compatible with Apache we must restart it. Type the following code in Terminal to do this:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Testing PHP5

To ensure there are no issues with PHP let’s give it a quick test run.

Step 1. In the terminal copy/paste the following line:

sudo gedit /var/www/testphp.php

This will open up a file called phptest.php.

Step 2. Create a phpinfo page to test PHP and verify that it’s functioning. I have a copy here that you can use. Right click on the link and go to Save As to save the test page. You’ll want to then upload that saved file to your FTP site. Or if you are on your Ubuntu machine, you can run the below. Make sure that you’re in the DocumentRoot directory (see your Apache conf for the DocumentRoot path).

wget http://evolutioncreations.com/download/phptest.php

Step 3. Save and close the file.

Step 4. Now open you’re web browser and type the following into the web address:

http://localhost/testphp.php

Congrats you have now installed both Apache and PHP!

Installing MySQL5

To finish this guide up we will install MySQL. (Note – Out of Apache and PHP, MySQL is the most difficult to set up. I will provide some great resources for anyone having trouble at the end of this guide.)

Step 1. Once again open up the amazing Terminal and then copy/paste this line:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Step 3. This is where things may start to get tricky. Begin by typing the following into Terminal:

mysql -u root -p

Enter in the password that you setup during the apt-get install process.

Step 4. We are now going to install a program called phpMyAdmin which is an easy tool to edit your databases. Copy/paste the following line into Terminal:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin

After that is installed our next task is to get PHP to work with MySQL. To do this we will need to open a file entitled php.ini. To open it type the following:

gksudo gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Step 5. Once the text editor opens the php.ini file, go to the bottom of the file and add in the following line:

extension=mysql.so

This will allow you to use MySQL within your PHP scripts.

Now just restart Apache and you are all set!

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Installing OpenFire 3.5.1

The first thing that we want to do in preparation to install OpenFire is to install Java. Since I’m doing this on a fresh install of Ubuntu Java isn’t installed. But if you do have it installed, make sure you hava version 6.

Step 1. To check your Java version you can run the command:

java -version

If nothing returns, or you get something that tells you that you need to install Java, proceed to step 2. If you do get something back and Java is version 6, then skip to step 3.

Step 2. To install Java, run the following command from Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal):

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin

Since you only have one version of Java installed on your system, you don’t need to go to step 2a. If you have multiple versions of Java installed, you will want to specify your Java version:

sudo update-alternatives –config java
select /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

Step 3. To create your MySQL user and database. Since your LAMP installation installs phpMyAdmin, first log into phpMyAdmin using root as your username and the password you configured during the installation process.

On the main page, locate Priviledges and scroll down to Add a new User.

Use the following on the New User screen:

Username = Enter a username, I used ‘openfire’
Host = From the drop down menu, select localhost
Password = Enter a password, retype your password

Under the Database for user section of that page, click on the radio button for Create database with same name and grant all priviledges.

At the bottom of the page, click on the Go button.

Step 4. Now that we have setup the database and user, we want to get the OpenFire package. First go to:

cd /opt

Then run:

sudo wget http://www.igniterealtime.org/downloadServlet?filename=openfire/openfire_3_5_1.tar.gz

Once the file downloads, run:

sudo mv downloadServlet\?filename\=openfire%2openfire_3_5_1.tar.gz openfire_3_5_1.tar.gz

then run:

sudo tar zxvf openfire_3_5_1.tar.gz

then create a a symlink:

ln -s /opt/openfire/bin/openfire /etc/init.d/

You know have to make your symlink executable:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/openfire

Now we have to fix an error that comes up when you try and restart the service. Go into the /opt directory:

cd /opt/openfire

and run:

nohup: appending output to `nohup.out’

Congraduations! You can now finish the configuration through the URL:

http://localhost:9090/

LAMP Installation Reference
OpenFire Installation Reference

So in setting up this new Ubuntu box, I ran into a problem that I couldn’t solve for the longest time, even though it is the simplest of problems–how do you setup DirectoryIndex in Apache2.2 without using a .htaccess file?

It turns out that this is VERY simple. Assuming that you are like me and just setting up Apache 2.2 on a home machine and that you are not using virtual hosting, it goes something like this.

First you want to find your default configuration. For me it was in the /etc/apache2 directory. Using your favorite text editor (mine is joe), open the file:

sudo joe /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

locate the following block:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all

then add the following line into the above directory block:

DirectoryIndex nameoffile.extension

For me, it looks like:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
DirectoryIndex login.php index.php home.html

It’s that easy!

Reference

To those who don’t know, Synergy is a way to share a keyboard, mouse, and monitor that is attached to one master computer (server), and many other slave computers (clients). It’s similar to a KVM, but uses standard TCP/IP protocols to control the machines.

On a Ubuntu machine, you will run the following:

sudo apt-get install synergy

and this will install Synergy onto the machine. At this point, this isn’t assuming that your Ubuntu machine is the server or client. In my configuration, the Ubuntu machine is a client, and my Windows machine is the server.

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Now comes the fun part, how do you configure synergy to startup during the boot process so that when you get to the username/password login screen, you can immediately use your server’s KVM to log yourself in. This is important, as I use to have to hook up a USB keyboard to the Ubuntu machine to type in the username and password. This is surprisingly simple to do as it requires two modifications to files.

The first is:

sudo gedit /etc/gdm/Init/Default

#Synergy – place this line somewhere before the “sysmodmap=/etc/X11/Xmodmap” line

/usr/bin/synergyc serverComputerHostname

The last is:

sudo gedit /etc/gdm/PreSession/Default

#Synergy – place this line somewhere before the “XSETROOT=`gdmwhich xsetroot`” line

/usr/bin/synergyc serverComputerHostname

Once you add the following lines into both files, you can log out of your session (or restart) and when you get to the login screen you will be able to use your server’s KVM.

There is one additional step that you may have to take, if you are reimaging the Ubuntu box and the server name changes, you will need to make sure to update the server name in the Synergy server’s configuration to ensure that it knows what machine is connecting and what orientation it has to your server (i.e. to the left of, to the right of, etc).

Mounting Linux Partitions in Ubuntu

If you plug in an external hard drive with a Linux filesystem, it will automount and show up on your desktop, just like any external media. But what if you have an internal hard drive or partition with a Linux filesystem? Well, that’s what this tutorial is about.

Warning: The tutorial on this page is for an internal drive that will serve as an extra data partition. If you would like to mount a separate drive or partition as /home instead, you want a different tutorial.

First you have to determine what the partition is called and what filesystem it is. One quick way to do it if you know what filesystem you formatted the drive as (Ext3, for example) is to just type the terminal command

Here’s how it could come out:

As you can see, I’m able to locate that /dev/hda5 is my Linux partition, but in System, I don’t find out if it’s Ext3 or Reiserfs or what it is. If I happen to know it’s Ext3, cool.

But let’s say I didn’t know. Well, one way to find out for sure is to install GParted and find out: