Linux and Open Source Blog

Reduce Apache Load With lighttpd On Debian Etch Linux

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

Lighttpd, sometimes pronounced “Lighty”, is a lightweight HTTP server that can help alleviate Apache’s load by serving static content. Since Lighttpd uses less resources per request than Apache, it generally serves most static content faster than Apache. This tutorial shows how to install Lighttpd behind Apache via Apache´s proxy module.

No guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Requirements

To install such a system you will need the following:

2 Setting up lighttpd

Once Lighttpd is installed, you’ll have to modify the configuration file to use it

vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

#bind to port (Default: 80)
server.port = 81

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Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Fedora 8

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

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 01/11/2008

Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can install Lighttpd on a Fedora 8 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

2 Installing MySQL 5.0

First we install MySQL 5.0 like this:

yum install mysql mysql-server

Then we create the system startup links for MySQL (so that MySQL starts automatically whenever the system boots) and start the MySQL server:

chkconfig –levels 235 mysqld on
/etc/init.d/mysqld start

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Install Apple Safari Browser On Ubuntu Linux 7.10 With PlayOnLinux

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, browsers, debian/ubuntu based, guides, how to, mac/osx .

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 01/18/2008

This guide explains how you can install Apple’s Safari browser on Ubuntu 7.10. As there is no Linux version of Safari, we will run it under Wine. We will use a tool called PlayOnLinux to install Safari under Wine. With PlayOnLinux you can install lots of Windows games and some Windows applications (such as Office 2003, IE6, MS Money, etc.) on Linux. Installing Safari on Linux is good for people such as web designers who have switched to Linux but still need to test their web sites in other browsers.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Installing PlayOnLinux

Open Firefox and go to http://www.playonlinux.com/en/download.html. Click on the link reading Click here for the .deb package:

In the Firefox download dialogue, select Open with GDebi Package Installer (default):

Click to enlarge

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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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