Tag Archives: Linux

Enable mod_perl on Debian, Ubuntu, & Other Linuxes.

To enable mod_perl with Apache2 on Debian & Ubuntu for all directories served up by Apache2, including user directories such as ~/public_html, add the following lines to /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

# enable mod_perl
    <Files ~ ".(pl|cgi)$">
           SetHandler perl-script
           PerlResponseHandler ModPerl::Registry
           Options +ExecCGI
           PerlSendHeader On
    </Files>

In a real production environment you probably don’t want to enable this for all directories that Apache2 serves up, but only from those directories you expect to run perl in.

Thanks to this thread on the Ubuntu Forums for the info.

Titled updated as per Ozkar’s suggestion.

Got a T400

I recently got an Lenovo T400 and this thing works great with the latest version of Ubuntu (Intrepid).

To install Ubuntu, you have to make sure you edit the BIOS settings and change the graphics to use one of the 2 build in graphics cards. If you want to save the Vista bootloader and access to Lenovo’s restore partition, you must not install grub on the MBR (Master Boot Record). Instead, install grub on the same partition as where the kernel resides. (This will be either /boot or / ) Then install EasyBCD¹ on Vista and add Ubuntu to Vista’s bootloader.

I was going to install Debian on the laptop, but I went w/ Ubuntu Intrepid instead as it has a 2.6.27 kernel which (supposedly) has better support for some the hardware on the T400 (and for my new Sony MP3 Walkman). I could have installed Debian and compiled my own 2.6.27 kernel, but these days I couldn’t be bothered spending ages compiling, testing, and debugging my own kernel.

¹For instructions on how to use EasyBCD see: http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Ubuntu

http://timony.com/mickzblog/2009/01/22/got-a-t400

Netbeans 6.5 on Debian

Doesn’t perform badly, I’ve been using it recently with Ruby code, and I like how it colourises the code to make editing code easier, and performs it auto-completion and method lookup (basically all the features you’d expect with a modern IDE).

It’s does’t startup as fast as using Emacs, or vi, but I find the features very handy and very convenient. It doesn’t look  bad either. It runs better on my PC at home running Debian Linux than it does on my PC at work running WinXP. This is probably because I’m using a 1.5 JVM on WinXP and a 1.6 JVM on Debian. Running on 1.6 JVM’s means that Netbeans will automatically use anti-aliased fonts if you have anti-aliased fonts enabled (much easier on the eyes if your using a LCD screen).

KDE4 and Debian

I figured it’s time for me to try and install kde4 again! Previously I had to remove KDE4 due to package conflicts. There are installation instructions at:

http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/experimental.html

So following the instructions there on what changes to make to your sources.list, and then run:

aptitude update

I’ve had some dependency issues, and installing the kde4 package (a meta-package that will install all of KDE4) would not install due to dependency issues with the kdegraphics package. The way around this is to install the kde4-minimal package and whichever of the other packages you want. So I installed everything, minus the kdegraphics package via the following:

aptitude install -t experimental kde4-minimal kdeplasma-addons kdegames kdemultimedia kdenetwork kdepim kdeutils kdeedu kdeadmin kdeartwork kdetoy

Be prepared for a lot of packages to be installed, for others to be removed, and to possibly break your existing kde3 installation (if you have one). See the first comment to see what I had to install and remove.

Firstly, KDE4 does not import any of your KDE3 settings, which is pretty annoying, as all of the applications start with the default settings, and is really annoying with applications like kmail … however some has created a tool to import the settings:

http://silentcoder.co.za/silentcoder/?page_id=330

My only complaint about the tool, is that it requires root to install it. I’d also like the option to be able to run the tool without first having to install it. Anyways, it seems to work pretty well and imported all of my mail into kmail, the only thing it didn’t do was import account settings into kmail.

This post is a work in progress, I’ll update it over the next day or so with any further instructions as I install, configure, and test KDE4.

Interview with Rasterman of Enlightenment Fame

An interview with Rasterman on OSnews, founder of Enlightenment, on E17:

http://www.osnews.com/story/19679

When will E17 be released?

… does Rasterman have any timeframe in mind for the release of the final version of E17? His reply was to be expected – “No comment.” Smiley face included. The big blocker right now is a lack of time, Rasterman said.

So feel free to chip in! 🙂

Update on Enlightenment E17 for Debian

Update: I’ve decided to use Falko’s packages, see my posting here:
http://timony.com/mickzblog/2008/04/24/e17-on-debian/

If you want to run E17 on Debian you have 4 choices (as of April 2008):

Wait for E17 packages to make it into Debian’s experimental repository:
http://sicherheitsschwankung.de/post/jan/2008-03-31/going-debconf-08

The Debian E17 team are in the process of loading packages into Debian experimental branch and they should be available in the near (or not so near) future.

Use the AlphafeMini repository for Debian Sid/Unstable, created by Falko Schmidt. See http://xsm.alphagemini.org/E17/repository/ for more details.

Maybe use Elive’s repositories to install E17 as Elive is based on Debian, but this may cause other problems as Elive might be based on a older version of Debian (anyone know?).

Compile your own see http://www1.get-e.org/EFL_User_Guide/English/_pages/2.2.html for more details. But, you will have to uninstall these if you ever want to install a pre-packaged version, plus you’ll have to manually update packages yourself.


Interestingly, Falko Schmidt is also a member of the team working on the E17 packages that are going into experimental, so using Falko’s packages might be the safest and easiest approach to get E17 on Debian. However, when packages are available in experimental (and eventually in Sid), you may need to purge Falko’s packages and install the Debian experimental ones.

I’m going to e-mail Falko to see if he has an opinion on this.

Look for my latest posting on E17 as this information could be out-of-date:

http://timony.com/mickzblog/category/e17/

This article originally posted at:

http://timony.com/mickzblog/2008/04/17/update-on-enlightenment-e17-for-debian/

e17 on Ubuntu Revisited

Ever since my original post on installing Enlightenment E17 on Debian and Ubuntu things have changed, such as the server that hosted the package repositories for both Debian & Ubuntu going off-line (supposedly temporarily but it’s been offline for almost 6 months).

Also, I’ve been having issues with E17 working correctly on my laptop running Ubuntu. This is probably because of conflicts between old and new packages, and because E17 is still beta code.

In this posting I’ll concentrate on installing or reinstalling E17 on Ubuntu 8.04 otherwise know as Hardy Heron. You should be able to use the same instructions to install E17 on other recent versions of Ubuntu. I’ll also try and the same for installing E17 on Debian at some point in the future.

First, remove all existing traces of any previous E17 installs.

sudo apt-get remove --purge e17 emodule* libevas* libefreet*

You’ll notice that I’ll use a mixture of apt-get and aptitude to remove and install packages. I’ve found that sometimes aptitude is a little too aggressive in removing packages, and sometime will remove package that I need. For instance when I started to remove E17, aptitude also wanted to remove xserver-xorg which would mean X wouldn’t work (no GUI).

Next, remove any old repositories for E17 from you sources.list. But, first make a back-up copy of the file:

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.bak

Then, remove or comment out any other E17 repositories from the file, by editing the file with your favourite text editor. I normally use emacs:

sudo emacs /etc/apt/sources.list

Or if you don’t have X running and are doing this from a console:

sudo emacs -nw /etc/apt/sources.list

You can use # to comment out lines. Remove any references to edevelop.org or soulmachine.net .

Then, add the dunnewinde.net repository, by adding the following lines:

# dunnewind e17 repository for Ubuntu Hardy
deb http://e17.dunnewind.net/ubuntu hardy e17

You can replace hardy with either gutsy or feisty if your running either of those versions of Ubuntu.

Now your ready to install/reinstall Enlightenment E17! 🙂

sudo aptitude install e17

Or if you also want to play with a media player based on E17 libraries install eclair also.

sudo aptitude install e17 eclair


Once the install is completed, logout. At the login screen (GDM) change your session to Enlightenment and login and you should see something that looks like the following:

Sorry that screenshot is missing. I deleted it as someone was leeching the image by linking directly to the image from their blog (using up my bandwidth instead of theirs). I’ll upload a new image in the near future.

No other themes are installed, I’ll write another post in the next few days showing how to get themes from get-e.org and install them. In the meantime here’s a screen-shot using the Darkness theme:

This posting originally at:

http://timony.com/mickzblog/2008/04/15/e17-on-ubuntu-revisitede17-on-ubuntu-revisited/

Today’s Links

Regularly drinking coffee may help prevent or reduce the symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7326839.stm

And binge drinking can affect memory recall (at least in young drinkers):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7328863.stm

Ubuntu Linux to be certifiied on some of Sun’s hardware:

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0236534620080402

A lot of Linux enthusiasts have taken to Ubuntu, and all of its versions are freely available. I think that this can only help them squeeze into the Enterprise space, as it’s helped them gain mindshare.

Red Hat, for example, is separated into their commerical offering, RHEL, which wasn’t cheap the last time I looked at their prices, and the freely available Fedora.

Fedora is free and open source like Ubuntu and is used by Red Hat as a testing ground for new features and technologies, but isn’t exactly the same as the “for fee” versions. I think this could hurt Red Hat in the long term; the enthusiasts helped bring Red Hat to where they are, but if they can’t easily (or cheaply or freely) get the enterprise products they won’t be using them nor introducing them into companies, instead they’ll be using Ubuntu or even Novell which offers a near complete version of their product for free.

And I’m surprised that VMWare’s market value has dropped by $30 billion, yes that’s billion dollars in six months supposedly due to competition that will arise products that Microsoft has in beta:

http://www.marketwatch.com

The market already seems to have voted. VMware’s stock, which debuted at $29 a share in August, soared past the $125 mark by late October. The shares then sharply reversed — no doubt helped by a general downturn in technology stocks — and have since sunk back below the $50 mark. The stock closed at $51 on the day of its IPO.

But, man I wish I’d gotten some of those share at $29 or $30 and sold and 125 bucks! However, work doesn’t allow us to invest in IPO’s. US financial companies have rules in place to prevent conflict of interests, and there are also Federal Laws in effect. However, it’s not like most of us Techies get any knowledge that would help us in the markets anyway, but I guess they pay us fairly well to make up for this.

OK, back to the point, maybe I should really be surprised that VMWare’s stock price increased so much, from $30 to $125 is a 400% increase. With all the other competitors in the market it would only be a matter of time before any market share they would gain, or gained, would be infringed on.

And with free offering, such as Xen on the server side, and Qemu for virtualisation on the Desktop, and a multitude of other competitors on the desktop side, it’d be hard to take and keep market share.

However, the VMWare folk are a smart bunch of lads and I’d expect some innovations from them in the future.