Archive for the ‘Linux’ Category

HOWTO reconfigure timezone on ubuntu

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

MBR problem solved

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

I’ve got one machine with a totally screwed MBR.

Booted into Ubuntu LiveCD, mounted main partition. Reinstalled grub. Working. Phew.


mount /dev/sda7 /media/maverick
grub-install --root-directory=/media/maverick /dev/sda
reboot

rpm: which package provides that file?

Monday, October 18th, 2010

rpm -q –whatprovides /full/path/to/file

“host not found” on nxclient connect to nxserver

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Cause: my user couldn’t read /etc/hosts

2 essential rescue CDs…

Monday, December 17th, 2007

For when you need to resize the partition you usually work in

GParted LiveCD

And for when you’ve muffed up your grub installation, and can’t work out how to use grub-install

Super Grub Disk

Minimal Ubuntu install

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

From http ://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=207847,

$ sudo aptitude install x-window-system-core gnome-core gdm firefox synaptic xubuntu-system-tools gnome-app-install

Q: Why can’t I open a window on another Linux machine?

Thursday, October 27th, 2005

… even though the firewall is configured correctly…

A: Ubuntu/Gnome sets TCP off by default in gdm.conf. So if its a new installation, or you’ve upgraded without saving the changes you made previously, edit gdm.conf…

CoLinux for Ubuntu

Thursday, July 28th, 2005

To install from scratch, follow instructions for installing Debian Sid here

Now upgrade Debian Sid to Ubuntu Hoary

  1. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list, comment out Debian references, insert Hoary ones
  2. apt-get update
  3. apt-get dist-upgrade

Alternatively, if you already have Ubuntu installed on a separate partition, then you can follow the the instructions for running a dual-boot CoLinux setup

Installing CoLinux on WindowsXP

Thursday, July 28th, 2005

This assumes that you don’t already have a Linux installation on a dual-boot machine that you want to use, and are going to install Linux from scratch. If you do already have a working Linux setup, then you can use it. The CoLinux FAQ explains how to configure coLinux on a dual-boot machine

  1. Get a 2nd IP address assigned that you can use on your Windows machine for the colinux interface (assuming you’ve already got one assigned to the main interface)
  2. Download colinux-0.6.2.exe from sourceforge onto the Windows machine.
  3. Run colinux-0.6.2.exe on the Windows machine
  4. By default, this will install into c:\Program Files\coLinux. I prefer it to be in c:\coLinux.
  5. The setup program claims it needs 7.6MB for a complete install including root filesystem.
  6. You’ll be offered a choice of distributions – choose Debian
  7. Decompress the Debian filesystem. You’ll need bunzip2, I used the version from cygwin, but you can, I think, also use the Tugzip Windows program
  8. Edit the default.config.xml, and change root_fs to be your unzipped debian filesystem. (If you don’t do this, you’ll get “Device index not specified” when you try to start colinux.
  9. I also increase “memory size”.
  10. You should now be able to run “colinux-daemon -c default.config.xml” and get a live colinux process.
  11. Login as root and change the default root password from “root”
  12. Edit /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf to set the interface’s IP address, router and default nameserver.
  13. Halt colinux
  14. Setup networking. I used a bridge network between my ethernet and the TAP interface created at the time of colinux install, using the native Windows bridging. (You can also use the WinPCAP option)
  15. Look for new interface in Control Panel. Mine was called “Local Area Connection”, since I’d renamed the original Ethernet to “Ethernet LAN”.
  16. Bridge between this and the external interface
  17. Bring up colinux and login as root.
  18. Once you know it works, install it as a service.

So now you’ve got a running CoLinux installation running Debian Woody.

Now upgrade Debian Woody to Debian Sid

  1. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change stable to unstable
  2. apt-get update
  3. apt-get dist-upgrade

Printing to Windows XP printer from Ubuntu

Tuesday, May 24th, 2005

Enable “Print Services for Unix” on Windows XP machine and share printer. (I’m not actually sure that this is necessary, it might be a red herring…)

When you add the printer in Ubuntu,

  1. Choose “Network Printer” and “Windows Printer (SMB)”
  2. put your Workgroup in the Host field
  3. Put “guest@<host>/<printer>” in the Printer field (replacing <host> and <printer> with your host & printer names)

So, for example, if your Windows machine was called “Dozer” and your printer was called “LaserPrinter”, you would put “guest@Dozer/LaserPrinter”.

You should not need a name and password for the Windows machine for this to work.

Note: please note that case-sensitivity is important.. e.g. If you think your machine name is “DOMINO”, it should be “Domino” in the config above.