Category Archives: How To

LightScribe On Linux and AMD64

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Here we go with more work on my Alienware box where I ripped out Windows Vista and installed Ubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron).  I haven’t looked back since … ok, I do miss some games that don’t like Cedega or Crossover, but it’s a small price to pay for all of the other benefits I get from running Linux, and especially Ubuntu which is based on Debian.

One of the things that I got with this box was a LightScribe compaible DVD-R/CD-R.  This is great, except I didn’t have any clue how to get it to work in Linux.  After some digging on the net and reading all around, I got it working and boiled the steps down to a concice recipe.

These steps are listed below.  Please note that these *should* work for 32 or 64 bit distros, but specifically I am running AMD64, so part of this was to get over that hump.  Details are below with the commands.

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Installing a LAMP Stack on Ubuntu

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I am using Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) as my primary desktop OS, and I wanted to install some tools for doing development work. At the same time, I thought I might run through the steps and post them for anyone else that might be looking to do the same thing. I’ll walk you through what I am doing, it’s your typical Linux Apache MySQL PHP (LAMP) stack.

First off, you can use sudo to run these install commands as your own local user, by putting sudo before each command, but I find it easier and more concise to simply use sudo to become root and install that way. I will write this article from that perspective, so if you don’t want to do this as root, simply put sudo before each command here.

You can become root by using this command from a terminal session:

sudo su -

Now that we are root, let us install MySQL which will be our database server:

apt-get install mysql-server

Next, let’s install Apache for our web server:

apt-get install apache2

In my case, I am developing in PHP, so we need to install PHP for Apache:

apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

Last but not least, if you want a nice database manager, get phpMyAdmin:

apt-get install phpmyadmin

If this is not a box that you have KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) access to, and you will be connecting remotely, you will need to install the OpenSSH server so you can ssh into the server. Do this like so:

apt-get install openssh-server

Once installed, you should be able to log into the server with your user account. Please note that by default, you cannot log in as root via ssh. There you have it, now start writing some cool code!

Rsync R Your Friend

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Need to sync some files? Locally or remotely? How about re-thinking an old friend, rsync?

You may be like I was, and have discounted rsync for a long time due to the security risk imposed by running the “r” daemon on your servers. Guess what? You can not only use rsync to sync up local directories on the same server (this can be real handy for backups), but you can also sync from one server to another via SSH rather than the rsync daemon. This would be much like scp, only you can sync whole directory trees.

So. Let’s say you want to sync two local directories, how would you do that? Well, if we are syncing /export/datadir to /export/backupdir it would look something like this:

rsync -aruv /export/datadir/ /export/backupdir/

It’s just that easy. Now, those command line switches, what do they do? Check it out:

a = archive
r = recursive
u = skip files that are newer on the receiving end
v = verbose, tell me what's going on

There is another one that is good when syncing between two separate servers, and that is the “z” switch. This tells rsync to use compression during the file transfer thus saving bandwidth. Let’s see what the above would look like from one server to another, as if you are running the command from the server you are syncing to:

rsync -aruvhz --progress server1:/export/datadir/ /export/backupdir/

There are a couple other options there, did you notice? I have added the “h” which tells rsync to output information in human readable format (GB, MB, K, etc), and the –progress which tells rsync to report exactly that, the progress of each transfer. You can use these with local transfers too, mix and match as you see fit.

Ubuntu Desktop Tricks

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Anyone that saw how cool Beryl was on older Ubuntu releases will appreciate this.  It appears that Beryl has merged with Compiz and thus isn’t available for Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) like you might be used to. That’s because it’s actually enabled by default!  If your system has an Nvidia card, and you have the “Restricted drivers” in use, you can right click on the desktop and choose “Change Desktop Backround”.  On the “Visual Effects” tab, you can enable the “Extra” settings.  This gives you some great effects for your windows and desktop by default, but what if you are like me and want more, especially to dig in and tweak it just the way you want it?  Glad you asked …

Pull up a command prompt and install the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings manager, after making sure you are fully up to date:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Once complete, this should add the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings icon to the System -> Preferences menu.  Click that puppy and go crazy!  You can setup all kinds on nifty stuff now, enjoy.

Installing Skype on Ubuntu 64 bit AMD

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Here is a tip for anyone like me that is running 64 bit Ubuntu on AMD processors and wanting to install Skype.  This is what I ran into recently and I found a solution so I wanted to share.  This is a one liner that will take care of it for you, or at least it did with me on 8.04 Hardy Heron.

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32asound2 libasound2-plugins;
wget -O skype-install.deb http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu;
sudo dpkg -i --force-all skype-install.deb;

See? That’s all there is to it! This installs some supporting libraries as well as Skype itself. I broke this into multiple lines at the semicolons so it would display properly, but you can run it all as one big command or seperately. Enjoy!

Linux and ISO images

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For any of you out there that work with Linux and ISO images, here is a nifty trick for mounting your ISO images directly without having to burn them to CD’s first. Basically, pick your mount point (/mnt/iso in this example) and your ISO image (/tmp/myimage.iso in this example) and go. Check out this command:

mount /tmp/myimage.iso /mnt/iso/ -t iso9660 -o loop=/dev/loop0

And there you have it, the ISO file is now accessible at /mnt/iso, it’s just that easy!