Linux and Open Source Blog

Monthly Archives: January 2008

3 Ways To Access Linux Partitions (ext2/ext3) From Windows On Dual-Boot Systems

Posted on by Posted in guides, how to .

Three Ways To Access Linux Partitions (ext2/ext3) From Windows On Dual-Boot Systems

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 12/20/2007

If you have a dual-boot Windows/Linux system, you probably know this problem: you can access files from your Windows installation while you are in Linux, but not the other way round. This tutorial shows three ways how you can access your Linux partitions (with ext2 or ext3 filesystem) from within Windows: Explore2fs, DiskInternals Linux Reader, and the Ext2 Installable File System For Windows. While the first two provide read-only access, the Ext2 Installable File System For Windows can be used for read and write operations.

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Install Ruby On Rails and getting started

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, development, guides, how to .

Getting Started With Ruby On Rails

Installing Ruby on Rails (RoR) on windows, OSX and Linux. Generally there are 3 installations: OSX, Windows and Linux, and Linux install is the most easy one.

Windows:

Go to http://www.rubyonrails.org/, and download the package containing gems (windows installer).

Install the package.

Update the gem system via:

gem update –system

Update installed gems via:

gem update

When this is done install the relevant gems. I would suggest the following as a minimum:
*rails (for the framework)
Please note, that rails 2.02 is the newest version, you can install an older version via

gem install v1.2.6 rails

*mysql (for database assess)
*mongrel (webserver better when webrick)

When asked for the version you want to use, choose the newst version, that has win32 in the option.

OSX 10.4 and 10.5

Go to http://www.macports.org/ and download the correct version of the file (tiger/leopard).

Read through the installation guide: http://www.macports.org/install.php

Quick guide:
Install the correct xcode for your system.
Install the macports program (this can take a little while)
When done, do:

sudo port install ruby
sudo port install rb-gems (enabling gems under ruby)
sudo gem install rails (framework)
sudo port install rb-mysql (mysql for use under RoR)
sudo gem install mongrel (webserver)
sudo port install subversion (for easy install for remote plugins)

Linux (Ubuntu like / Debian based)

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade (getting newst list, and updateing software before continuing).
sudo apt-get install ruby subversion mysql libmysql-ruby1.8

sudo gem install rails
sudo gem install mongrel

And you should be set to go.

IDE for use with RoR:
Textmate (OSX), has very poor subversion integration, but good RoR integration
Not free
Eclipse (good integration, via plugins)
http://www.eclipse.org/ download plugins via Aptana website, for RoR support.
Free

Aptana (good integration via plugins) http://www.aptana.com/
complete IDE, eclipse based. Free
IDEA (good integration via plugins)
Complete IDE suite, with great integration of subversion, mysql and even jira for bugtracking.
Professional, but expensive.

Remeber to point your IDE to where your RoR / rails is installed for best integration:
Windows most often: c:\ruby\bin
OSX: /opt/local/
Linux: /usr/bin/ruby

Errors:

Linux:

sudo gem update –system

Which introduced this error:

/usr/bin/gem:23: uninitialized constant Gem::GemRunner(NameError)

whenever I tried to run rubygems. On the rails forum, I found a fix for it!. Simply add the line to the file /usr/bin/gem (may be different on a mac):

require 'rubygems/gem_runner'

after

require 'rubygems'

Source: http://www.nickpeters.net/2007/12/31/fix-for-uninitialized-constant-gemgemrunner-nameerror/

This error when installing gems:

extconf.rb:1:in `require’: no such file to load—mkmf (LoadError)

from extconf.rb:1.

Do:

sudo apt-get install ruby1.8-dev

Best Practices when using SSH

Posted on by Posted in guides, tutorials .

Author: Ryan M.
Original Website: linuxsecurity.com

Introduction

Are you using SSH in the best way possible? Have you configured it to be as limited and secure as possible? The goal of this document is to kick in the new year with some best practices for SSH: why you should use them, how to set them up, and how to verify that they are in place.

All of the examples below assume that you are using EnGarde Secure Linux but any modern Linux distribution will do just fine since, as far as I know, everybody ships OpenSSH.

SSHv2 vs. SSHv1

There are numerous benefits to using the latest version of the SSH protocol, version 2, over it’s older counterpart, version 1 and I’m not going into a lot of details on those benefits here – if you’re interested, see the URL in the reference below or Google around. That being said if you don’t have an explicit reason to use the older version 1, you should always be using version 2.

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Optimize nVidia Video Cards for KDE 4

Posted on by Posted in guides, hardware, tips .

KWin, the standard KDE window manager in KDE4.0, ships with the first version of built-in support for compositing, making it also to compositing manager. This allows KWin to provide advanced graphical effects, similar to Compiz, while also providing all the features from previous KDE releases. Unlike Compiz, KWin still functions even when not system support for compositing is available, with only the compositing features being unavailable. KWin in KDE4.0 is also relatively new tails and has not been extensively optimized yet, therefore its performance may not be in loads areas comparable with performance of other compositing managers. In such cases performance should be improved with newer versions.Smoothness of KWin rendering can be improved by setting the env.variable KWIN_NVIDIA_HACK to 1. This sets ‘ _ _ GL_YIELD=NOTHING’ for KWin, letting KWin use more CPU Time for OpenGL operations, however at the expense of affecting performance of other applications. Therefore, this is disabled by default. This setting may be removed in the future if the negative impact becomes insignificant.

Open ~/.profile file and the following line:

export KWIN_NVIDIA_HACK=1

For more on this check COMPOSITE_HOWTO. Now see the difference.

Tip: In loads cases, overall smoothness may be increased by turning off direct rendering in advanced options in the Desktop Effects configuration module (Alt+F3->Configure Window Behavior).

No optimastion or tweaks for ATI video cards that I have noticed so far. If you know, let us know.

Yahoo Joins OpenID movement

Posted on by Posted in news .

OpenID is an open, decentralized and free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID takes advantage of existing Internet technologies like URI, HTTP, SSL, and Diffie-Hellman. Well, now Yahoo! has announced their support for the OpenID 2.0 single sign-on framework. As of today, there are a total of about 120 million OpenID accounts spread across services such as myopenid, WordPress.com, AOL and others. Yahoo! triples that number today by becoming an OpenID provider and adding approximately 250 new OpenID enabled accounts. According to Yahoo’s announcement, this new option will be available in public beta starting on January 30th – less than two weeks away. A user’s Yahoo OpenID identifiers will be accessible from me.yahoo.com, or he or she can type in www.yahoo.com or www.flickr.com on sites that support the framework. Alternatively, those sites will be able to easily add a button saying “Log in with your Yahoo ID.”

This means users will be able to log into more than 9,000 OpenID enabled sites with their Yahoo! username and password. Speaking to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Raj Patel, Yahoo’s director of membership and registration said, “This is just the first step in working with OpenID.”

You can read more about Yahoo’s plans on this front and see a demo at openid.yahoo.com.

Your OS X style couch

Install and Configure TrueCrypt With GUI On Ubuntu 7.10

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, debian/ubuntu based, guides, how to, howtoforge, security .

Version 1.0
Author: Oliver Meyer <o [dot] meyer [at] projektfarm [dot] de>
Last edited 12/18/2007

This document describes how to set up TrueCrypt with GUI on Ubuntu 7.10. TrueCrypt is a free open-source encryption software for desktop usage.

This howto is a practical guide without any warranty – it doesn’t cover the theoretical backgrounds. There are many ways to set up such a system – this is the way I chose.

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Clarifications on KDE4 and KDE 4.0 and Little More

Posted on by Posted in desktop environments, kde, quotes & thoughts .

As one of bloggers from kdedevelopers.org site mentioned correctly, KDE4 and KDE 4.0 are not the same. When people are reviewing and discussing the KDE’s latest release, i.e. 4, they are at times messing up the two terms.

  • KDE 4.0 is not KDE4 but only the first (4.0.0 even non-bugfix) release in a years-long KDE4 series to come.
  • KDE 4.0 is known to have missing parts or temporary implementations (eg printing, PIM, Plasma).
  • Most changes happened under the surface and cannot be discovered in a “30 minutes usage”-review anyway.
  • User interfaces being unchanged in 4.0 compared to 3.5 may be still changed/improved during KDE4 life time.
  • KDE 4.0 will not be the fastest KDE4 release, like for KDE2 most speed optimizations will happen later during KDE4.
  • Most applications (many are not even fully ported yet) will take advantage of new features which the new Qt/KDE libraries offer only later.
  • Don’t measure portability success (eg MS Windows) by current availability of application releases, they will come.
  • KDE 4.0 is only expected to be used by early adopters, not every KDE 3.5 user (and IMHO KDE 4.0 shouldn’t be pushed onto other user types like planned for Kubuntu ShipIt [btw said to have only 6 months support for its packages]).
  • KDE 4.1 development will not require the same amount of time as the big technology jump 4.0, expect 4.1 later this year.

BTW, do you know that KDE 4.0 can be installed on Windows as well; while using a Windows machine you can take a dive into the ocean of powerful applications, awesome user experience and the freedom Richard M Stallman talks about. An advanced user can compile KDE 4.0 for Windows through the toolkit available, but an ordinary ‘click-next’ user will have to wait for a while for the Windows-ready-to-install KDE version.

So, there you go. Enjoy KDE4 and the current 4.0.0 release :-p

Related: And here are few more latest reviews on KDE 4:

Hacking Archos 605 Wifi – Linux Hack On Archos 605 WiFi

Posted on by Posted in audio/video/pics, cool stuff, gadgets & mobiles, guides, hardware, random stuff, tips .

Some industrious programmers have found a way to hack the Archos 605 WiFi portable video player to run the Qtopia Linux platform. By the looks of it, the Qtopia hack doesn’t add much in the way of extra media features (the Archos does pretty well as-is), but it opens the door to developing the Archos 605 WiFi as a more generally useful and configurable tablet PC. The Qtopia hack appears to work on older models of the Archos players as well, although the Archos fifth-generation players seem to be easier to configure.

KDE 4 vs KDE 3.5: KMix – Volume Control

Posted on by Posted in desktop environments, kde .

Somehow KMix is not launched by default when KDE 4 starts, and people who are not aware that it can be launched by simply typing kmix, are lost how they can control volume within KDE 4. So now that you know how to get it there in your system tray, I wanted to show the sheer number of KMix channels offered with KDE 4, that of compared with KDE 3.5 … wow … I am quite sure I wont be needing all of them … perhaps professional musicians will find it usefull. When I launched it the first time, only the first 6 channles were enabled, but then I decided to see how many were there available. All this is with my Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card.

+ (as it all doesn’t fit in one screen)

compared to the one with KDE 3.5:

i.e, 45 (not including separate channels) vs 37. And finally the system tray options for both versions: