Fresh Ubuntu

Download Episode 15

Well, the release of Edgy Eft has come and gone and frankly I am not happy with the results. I have not personally installed it on my computer just yet. And, I don't anticipate installing it until I hear some better news. So far I have read one report from a blog that had some troubles installing it via a dist-upgrade (the link is below), and on of my listeners has had a, how shouldI say this, "not so fun time installing on a laptop. FOR THE TIME BEING STICK WITH DAPPER UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!!!

News

Item 1 Canonical Launches New Ubuntu Release for Desktops and Servers

Item 2 Edgy Release Notes

Item 3 More about ORCA

Item 4 Upgrade Woes

Some good new! Matt Taylor of Distrowatch.com reviewed my podcast and will plug it on his podcast either this week or next. I have a link to this podcast below.

Matt Taylor of distro watch weekly podcast

A new friend has started a blog for Ubuntu SysAdmins, check it out and show him some love!!
Ubuntu Server Admin blog - by Ted Streit

Also, Check out Peter N. Blog that might shed some light on his installation of EdgyEft.
at - http://blog.nikolaidis.com/

So you want to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows XP but you aren't sure whereto start. I have made up a preliminary list of some things that you ought to do before you install. In the coming week, I will be doing the same thing and preparing my own hard drive, gulp, to eventually dual boot Windows and Ubuntu. Get the podcast below by pressing on the link, or subscribe for free by clicking on the links at the bottom of my sidebar. Keep your fingers crossed! Oh yeah, and don't forget, Edgy Eft Ubuntu 6.10 is due out October 26!!!

Download Fresh Ubuntu Episode 14.


News Item #1: See screencasts of Ubuntu tips and howtos

News Item #2: RC for edgy eft is out as of 10/19


Main segment

1 Run a scandisk on your hdd
2 Run defrag
3 Back up MS Office documents
4 Back up media (videos, music, photos)
5 Back up emails
6 Back up contacts
7 Back up downloaded software and plugins
8 Make sure you have copies of programs that you installed from CDs handy
9 Write downs settings for various programs or export your configurations
10 Make sure you have a copy of XP in case the install is botched

email or leave a comment with more at freshubuntu@gmail.com or leave a comment at freshubuntu.blogspot.com

Command line command of the week - locate

syntax - locate [options] pattern

Search database(s) of filenames and print matches. Matches include all files that contain pattern unless pattern includes metacharacters, in which case locate requires an exact match. *, ?, [, and ] are treated specially; / and . are not. Searches are conducted against a database of system contents that is updated periodically. To update the database, use the updatedb command.

Options

-d path, --database=path

Search databases in path. path must be a colon-separated list.

-h, --help

Print a help message and then exit.

--version

Print version information and then exit.

ADDENDUM

I have given out some erroneous information in the last podcast. Shred will not work in ubuntu since it uses Ext3 filesystem and the shred man page clearly says it wont work on this type of file system. But, I think you can still use this command by popping in a live cd of another distro or even ubuntu live cd and mount the partition that you want to shred then issue the command using the live cd terminal. Warning: This command is useful in only a few instances where extreme privacy is concerned and should not be usued as your daily delete function.

This week I took printing to another level! Well...ok, maybe not another level, more like a side level. Oh alright, its not a whole level, its more like a side step. Whatever it is I thought it was useful. I setup a PDF printer on my Ubuntu laptop without using Adobe Acrobat and I let you in on the whole thing on my podcast. You can download the episode below:

Freshubuntu Episode 13


But first the news items:

1. Possible Artwork reversal On Edgy

2. Portland project

Installing Cups-pdf printer method #1

a. Install cups-pdf by running sudo apt-get install cups-pdf
b. Edit the configuration file by running sudo gedit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
c. Change "RunAsUser Yes" to "RunAsUser No"
d. restart cups by running sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
e. Goto the menu System>>Administration>>Printing and add a printer
f. Select the detected printer "PDF Printer"
g. Select the Generic, Postscript Color Printer (Rev 3b)
h. Give it a name, like PDF Printer
i. Right click on the newly created printer, and select Properties
j. Click "Print a Test Page"
k. The file should be in your Home folder, under the PDF folder

Note - in some cases this method will not work because as soon as you try to add aprinter it has not detected a pdf printer. Also, when I tried to edit the configuration file there was not a line that referenced RunAsUser so I eventually added that line but it still did not work. In come the Ubuntu forums to the rescue! I got further instructions and they are outlined below:

a. Install the cups-pdf package (I used version 2.2.0-1)
b. Go to System -> Administration -> Printing
c. Doubleclick "New Pinter"
d. Notice that there is no mention of a CUPS PDF printer
e. Open a terminal and tpe "sudo nautilus" and then your password
f. Go to Filesystem -> usr -> lib -> cups -> backend
g. Rightclick "cups-pdf" and select Properties
h. Go to the Permissions tab and click the "Set user ID" special flag
i. Again try to add a new printer
j. There is now a "PDF Printer" detected, select it
k. Select the Generic, Postscript Color Printer (Rev 3b)
l. Give it a name, like PDF Printer
m. Right click on the newly created printer, and select Properties
n. Click "Print a Test Page"
o. The file should be in your Home folder, under the PDF folder

This got the printer to show up and working;) Yes!



CLCOTW - Command line command of the week: shred
shred - delete a file securely, first overwriting it to hide its contents

SYNOPSIS
shred [OPTIONS] FILE [...]

DESCRIPTION
Overwrite the specified FILE(s) repeatedly, in order to make it harder for even very expensive hardware probing to recover the data. Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-f, --force
change permissions to allow writing if necessary

-n, --iterations=N
Overwrite N times instead of the default (25)

-s, --size=N
shred this many bytes (suffixes like K, M, G accepted)

-u, --remove
truncate and remove file after overwriting

-v, --verbose
show progress

-x, --exact
do not round file sizes up to the next full block

-z, --zero
add a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding

Here is the out put of my experiment with shred when I executed the command

shred -fvu freshubuntu.txt

harlem@freshubuntu:~/Desktop$ shred -fvu freshubuntu.txt
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 1/25 (random)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 2/25 (999999)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 3/25 (924924)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 4/25 (ffffff)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 5/25 (dddddd)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 6/25 (555555)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 7/25 (bbbbbb)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 8/25 (888888)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 9/25 (444444)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 10/25 (492492)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 11/25 (aaaaaa)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 12/25 (db6db6)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 13/25 (random)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 14/25 (6db6db)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 15/25 (000000)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 16/25 (222222)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 17/25 (333333)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 18/25 (b6db6d)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 19/25 (cccccc)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 20/25 (111111)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 21/25 (eeeeee)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 22/25 (666666)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 23/25 (777777)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 24/25 (249249)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 25/25 (random)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: removing
shred: freshubuntu.txt: renamed to 000000000000000
shred: 000000000000000: renamed to 00000000000000
shred: 00000000000000: renamed to 0000000000000
shred: 0000000000000: renamed to 000000000000
shred: 000000000000: renamed to 00000000000
shred: 00000000000: renamed to 0000000000
shred: 0000000000: renamed to 000000000
shred: 000000000: renamed to 00000000
shred: 00000000: renamed to 0000000
shred: 0000000: renamed to 000000
shred: 000000: renamed to 00000
shred: 00000: renamed to 0000
shred: 0000: renamed to 000
shred: 000: renamed to 00
shred: 00: renamed to 0
shred: freshubuntu.txt: removed

See you next week.

Welcome - Welcome back, thanks for joining me this week. If you are new to Fresh Ubuntu, this podcast is for people who are moving to the Ubuntu OS from Windows for the first time. More aimed towards new users of linux based operating systems but not necessarily so.

Download the new episode: Fresh Ubuntu #12

Here are the links to the news items:

1. 7 Distro's fight for one old laptop by Rick Lehrbaum

2. Canonical seeks profit from free Ubuntu By Stephen Shankland

3. Firefox Set Free in IceWeasel By Sean Michael Kerner

4. HOWTO: Install IceWeasel 1.5.0.4 in Ubuntu


Main Segment: Install and configure WINE; Install Quicken 2003

a. Sudo apt-get install wine, note, it may be helpful to install 'winetools' as well from source

b. Then run winecfg by pressing alt+f2 and typing in winecfg. Here is a screenshot. Just click on the picture to enlarge it.



Visit the WINE HQ website for lots of helpfull information!

Command Line command of the week

Whereis and which

Results of whereis search using 'ssh'

harlem@freshubuntu:~$whereis ssh

ssh: /usr/bin/ssh - this is where the binary file is
/etc/ssh /usr/bin/X11/ssh - this is where the man page is
/usr/share/man/man1/ssh.1.gz - this is where the source file is

Results of which search using 'ssh'

harlem@freshubuntu:~$which ssh

/usr/bin/ssh - this is just the binary file

Remember, you might need to know this information the next time you need to customize a launcher or menu item.

Hi everyone, welcome back and thanks for joining me this week. For those of you who are new to freshubuntu, this is a podcast that aims to help new users migrate specifically from the windows environment to Ubuntu OS. I have a lot of things planned for us today. I have a few newsworthy items that happened in the past week and then I have a whole bunch of tips to help make life a little easier. Then I will tell you about a great little program called wget. So lets get on with this weeks news items. I got a voice message to ask if I was going to do a podcast about uprading to Edgy Eft and I will undoubtably be doing one. Not only that but I will most likely go through a fresh cd installation of Edgy on my desktop. This future episode will air most likely a week after releas of the stable version of Edgy. But, for now I posted instructions from the ubuntu forums on how to upgrade to the beta version.

Download mp3 here: 011freshubuntu01Oct06.mp3

NEWS

Item #1: Leo at the Podcast Expo -

Item #2: Screenshots of Ubuntu Edgy Eft Beta

Item #3: Bill Clinton wants you to have more Ubuntu!

TIPS GALORE

Ubuntu Tips at the unofficial ubuntu wiki

1. How to restart GNOME without rebooting computer
Press 'Ctrl + Alt + Backspace'
or
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

2. How to run programs on startup when login into GNOME
* System -> Preferences -> Sessions
* Sessions
Startup Programs Tab -> Add/Edit/Delete

3. Run a terminal command without first opening the terminal
Press 'Alt+F2" and the run application dialog box will pop up; just type in the command you want to run and check mark the box that says wun in terminal. this will open the terminal command and execute the command you issued. This is also helpful for opening other files without starting the application first.

4. Update to Edgy eft Beta
Caution - edgy is not completely stable yet so dont use this as you primary computer or install on a computer that contains high value information.

gksudo "update-manager -c -d"

The "-d" switch instructs Update Manager to consider pre-release versions, including this Beta release. Without this switch, only official, final releases will be considered. The "-c" switch tells it to look for upgrades at all. By default the 6.06 LTS release will not offer that automatically because of its long support cycle and high stability.

If you have a working network connection, it should then inform you about a new release and offer to upgrade your system.

COMMAND LINE COMMAND OF THE WEEK - WGET

Description
GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from the Web. It supports HTTP , HTTPS , and FTP protocols, as well as retrieval through HTTP proxies.

Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background, while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval and disconnect from the system, letting Wget finish the work. By contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user’s presence, which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.

Wget can follow links in HTML pages and create local versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the directory structure of the original site. This is sometimes referred to as ‘‘recursive downloading.’’ While doing that, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion Standard (/robots.txt). Wget can be instructed to convert the links in downloaded HTML files to the local files for offline viewing.

Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the download from where it left off.

Simple Usage

Say you want to download a URL . Just type:

wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/

But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy? The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved, more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to insure that the whole file will arrive safely:

wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg

Now let’s leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress to log file log. It is tiring to type --tries, so we shall use -t.

wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &

The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the background. To unlimit the number of retries, use -t inf.

The usage of FTP is as simple. Wget will take care of login and password.

wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg

If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing, parse it and convert it to HTML . Try:

wget ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/links index.html

Reformatted the shownotes and added a couple of features

1. Odeo send me a voicemail message.
2. flash player from odeo that plays old episodes of freshubuntu
3. Remember to visit the website freshubuntu.blogspot.com and leave me a comment.
4. Or you can send an email to freshubuntu@gmail.com
5. Remember to vote for me on podcastalley for the month of october I appreciate those who already have.

Bye.