The World of a Penguin

If you read this before you upgrade Ubuntu to 10.10. Remove/inactivate all your binary drivers before you upgrade. If you read this after you upgrade Ubuntu to 10.10 and get a messy screen so you do not see anything and can't login. Reboot your computer in failsafe mode. Select to become root and do: apt-get install fglrx I also remembered that I got in the last installation phase at the upgrade a complaint about problem removing fglrx. Why do I suggest to install fglrx when we actually have a problem to remove it? Well it is easy. Since it was half installed and I could not remove it, then I tried to install it again. I saw it installed dkms and compiled a new version of the driver for my kernel. I will now try to run the open source variant instead. I hate closed source, it is only problems.

I use the web to find solutions of my problems, as most people do today. I have noted a huge difference between two communities I am using, the Java and the Linux community. With the Linux community I mean it in a broad sense like Linux distributions and common software running on Linux like Postgres, Apache, Evolution, F-spot, Python etc. I.e classic open source software. When I search on a problem in the Linux area I most of the time get good hits with people having the same problem and good answers from people who knows how to solve it. The hits are on mailing lists, forums, and blogs. On the other hand when searching on problems around Java I most of the time find people who have the same problem, but no answers. I know this is a very big generalization but are anybody else experience the same? Why are people in classic open source more willing to help than in the Java world?

Not me but my mail server has moved to France or to be more correct is now hosted by the French hosting provider Gandi.net . According to GeoIP it is in Paris. I rent a small virtual machine from them to host my web and mail server. This makes me less dependent of my broad band connection and I skip the problem that my IP-address may change without notice. At Gandi I have an Ubuntu 9.04 Linux machine with 256kb of memory and 8GB of disk. This is more than enough for me to hosting private mail and web. The mailsever is postfix and dovecot. I have my own CA-authority to handle secure connections from my mail clients.

Some people have complained on the Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix release. I installed it on my Asus EeePC 900 last night at the Ubuntu Release party . It fits my needs on the EeePC perfectly. I do not want it on my normal desktop PC but on a a smal device is it very good.

Ubuntu 9.04 is here. I have already downloaded the netbookremix image. It is soon time to take Remy, my EeePC, to the release party at The Champ here in Linköping.

Have you tried to access an subversion-server using SSL in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid)? I guess you get complains about certificate even if they are correct. It looks like this: svn list https://www.linuxalert.org/svn Error validating server certificate for 'https://www.linuxalert.org:443': - The certificate is not issued by a trusted authority. Use the fingerprint to validate the certificate manually! Certificate information: - Hostname: www.linuxalert.org - Valid: from Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:30:25 GMT until Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:30:25 GMT - Issuer: Linux alert, Linkoping, SE - Fingerprint: e4:8f:b9:1b:f3:6c:f4:83:2a:1f:c6:9c:6d:cf:6a:4b:99:9e:22:1d (R)eject, accept (t)emporarily or accept (p)ermanently? I have my certificate installed. The solution was to install subversion and libsvn1 from backports in 8.04 (Hardy) . $ sudo dpkg -i subversion_1.5.1dfsg1-1ubuntu2~hardy2_amd64.deb libsvn1_1.5.1dfsg1-1ubuntu2~hardy2_amd64.deb (Reading database ... 226839 files and directories cu...

Here is a story about two weeks of frustration installing a new server. I have never had that much problem installing a computer in my life and I have installed hundreds of them. A few weeks before I left Sweden for a three week trip in southern Africa I noted that I was out of disk on my server. I decided to wait by more disk until I got back home. Therefore I moved some data temporary to my workstation. When I got home a few weeks ago I ordered a new motherboard and hard drive. I decided to go for the brand new Intel mini-ITX atom based motherboard D945GCLF2 with 2GB memory and a Western Digital Green Power 1TB S-ATA drive . This made the new computer cheap and green. Misco delivered the stuff fast. When I had assembled the stuff it did not boot, the screen was black and I couldn't enter the BIOS-setup. I Removed all cables, including the hard drive. The mother board worked fine. Tested with another old S-ATA drive and it worked fine. It was with Western Digitals Green Power t...

Adobe has finally released a 64-bit version of the flash player. Still alpha but a step forward. Looking forward to see this in next Ubuntu. This will definitely make my workstation work better.

Ubuntu 8.10 is released and I have already installed it on my desktop. My server have to wait since I plan to upgrade the hardware so it becomes a 64-bit system and give it SATA-disks. The upgrading went smoothly.

I installed Ubuntu, Eee-edition, on my Eee 900. One strange thing happened when I booted from my USB-memory to start the installation. The bootprocess halted. I removed the splasch to see what happened. Same thing again and I didn't get any clue. I removed the USB-stick and put it in another USB-port. Then suddenly the boot continued. The rest of the installation get smootly thanks to the instructions at Ubuntu-eee project site . I love that I now have the same environment on my Eee as on my desktop.

I have finally got an Eee 900. I am happy. The question is: Install Ubuntu or keep preinstalled Lin ux?

The 64-bit saga continues . Todays discovery is that Sun does not provide a webstart-plugin for 64-bit Linux environment, in my case Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). My plan was to poke around the 1.0.0 release of OpenDS for a few minutes and see what you get when running their 60 seconds installation from You Tube.

I have used 64-Ubuntu for a few month now. I seriously thought about using a 64-bit Linux one and a half year ago. Back then one needed to fix a lot of things to get it work nice, i.e. fixing flash. Have things been better? Yes. Are they good? Definitely no. On a modern Ubuntu version you can get flash work with no trix. Its still not 64-bit., which I have written about earlier . Most codecs in the video-players works as well. But there are several other problems. I have also written about Google Web Toolkit and 64-bit Linux, which was a bit of a hassle. We also have several binary drivers that is 32-bit only. Today I want to install Google Gears . Guess what? It does not support 64-bit, except if you use the ugly ndiswrapper solution. All new processors from AMD and Intel are 64-bit, except Intels new Atom processor. This must mean that most of the computers used today supports 64-bit. So why doesn't we get 64-bit support in our software?

I have observed that I haven't written in this blog for nearly a month. Not much has happened in the area of this blog. Some more colleges has start using Linux on their desktop. Currently I am developing an "failsafe" system for emergency handling in Java/JEE/Spring. I am now working on the second generation. I have updated a lot of crypto keys as a follow up to the nasty openssl-bug in Debian/Ubuntu. Today I listened to a talk by Martin Fowler and Jim Webber about middleware and Enterprise Service Buses (ESB). A talk well worth listen to if you are working in or close to the SOA world.

Adobe has today released a beta of version 10 of their Flash-player. As opposite to earlier flash version, the Linux player is released at the same time as for the other operating systems. That is good news. But I still miss a 64-bit version of the Flash-player for Linux. Adobe, give us a 64-bit flash-player for Linux Now. Worth mention is that Adobe is listing Ubuntu as supported Linux.

We have a public holiday here in Sweden today. I have celebrated that by upgrading my server to Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), the last of the computers I take care of. Of all five computers I have upgraded to Hardy this was the only one I got some problems with. The server runs, among other things, a ldap-server to authorize users. During the upgrade I noticed that the ldap-server were turned off and I got time out when looking up some accounts. The upgrade took therefore very long time. I edited my /etc/nsswitch.conf and removed all lookups to ldap. When the upgrade was finished I added it again and everything seems working perfect again.

I have started to take a closer look at Google Web Toolkit (GWT). It looks very nice giving me the possibility to debug AJAX-clients and removing the need for quirks for different browser (read MS IE). Unfortunatly GWT is only shiped as 32-bit and I am running a 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04. The SVN-repository of GWT include some pre-compiled libraries which are compiled for 32-bit Linux. The easy way is to download and install a 32-bit Java from Sun. Following the GWT getting started got me up and running. But I wanted to use my usual Eclipse in 64-bit version. So I started Eclipse and imported my lab project according to the instructions. Then it was time for some settings. First, add the 32-bit Java as an JRE to Eclipse: Open the Window menu and select Preferences. Select Java and then Installed JREs in the tree menu to the left. Select add and pointed out where you installed your 32-bit Java and closed all the dialogs. Now its time to connect the GWT-project to the 32-bit Java. Right click...

We visited my mother in law this weekend. The main reason was to attending a party in Stockholm, but since Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) was released on Thursday I took the chance to upgrade her computer. I have actually nothing to write about it since there were no problems and no surprises. Worth mention is that here Computer is a 1GHz Celeron with 256MB memory.

Congratulation to us and nice work! I have been running Hardy Heron (the beta) on one computer at home for a while.I upgraded my workstation at work before I left for the day. So I have tree computers to go before all is on latest and greatest. How much have you seen about XP SP3 compared to all articles about Ubuntu 8.04?

Each time we get close to a new Ubuntu release I notice an increasing number of articles in non Open Source media. This time I found an interview with Mark on BBC . Mark mention deployment of 50 000 Ubuntu desktops at the French police and 500 000 Ubuntu desktops in the Spanish education system.