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Linux Install Fest (Poster)

January 21, 2008 – 2:03 pm

Linux Users Group

Manipal

presents

Linux Install Fest

 

  • LUG Manipal is holding an Install fest on 23rd and 24th January to guide people in installing Linux on their systems. Complete basic guidance will be provided.

  • On pre-install fest, people will be guided about the installation, uses of Linux and more queries which they have.

  • On the second day installation will be done.

  • Students who missed out the first LUG meet are specially invited in this pre-install fest day.

     

NOTE : Please bring your Laptop on both days.

Please bring a BLANK DVD on Pre-install fest meet i.e. 23 Jan, Wed.

 

Venue: NLH 303

Date: Pre-Install Fest on 23rd January(Wed)

Install Fest on 24th January (Thurs)

Time: 5:30PM

Charge: FREE

Website: www.lugmanipal.co.nr

 

Contact:

Ankur Shrivastava: 9901726825 queries.lugmanipal@gmail.com

Manish Sinha: 9844411705

Ayush Pranshu: 9448984741

Shubhendra | Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Linux Software Installation: Myths and the Truth

January 1, 2008 – 4:16 am

THE MYTHS
The first problem which people face while switching over to Linux is the “unavailability of softwares” as they claim. They just try to run their windows installer/setup file and end up with frustration saying “Linux is so incompatible!” Is it really so? Linux is not a clone of Windows. Then how come you expect your softwares built specifically built for windows to run on Linux. Linux has its own OS architecture, filesystem, binary file format and many more.

GETTING LINUX ALTERNATIVES OF YOUR SOFTWARE
So if you really want to switch to Linux, try to get accustomed to Linux alternatives of your software. If you were using Winamp, the alternative is XMMS or Audacious. The replacement of Internet Explorer is Firefox and IceWeasel though Firefox is also available for Windows. It would be better if you spend a week or two using softwares which are available for both Windows and Linux. Some of the examples are:
Firefox- an award winning and largely loved Web Browser
Thunderbird- a portable Mail client
VLC- a highly portable and excellent Media Player
Pidgin - Multi protocol Instant Messenger
Abiword - a lightweight Word processor
OpenOffice - An office suite, installed by default on most Linux distributions
FileZilla - an Open Source FTP client like CuteFTP etc

THE EASE OF INSTALLING SOFTWARES
Installing softwares on windows is claimed to be very simple. You just need to Click on Next and Next and Next. Why click Next so many times if you can install a software with just 2-3 clicks? That even when on windows you have to google desperately on the net to download your software? People usually think that installing software on Linux means compiling from source. I claim this to be a big myth! A really big one! That’s not the case. You also get pre-compiled software packages to just double-click and start, and the better thing is that you wont have to click Next a hundred times.

SOFTWARE PACKAGES
In Linux softwares come as packages. They are not installers in real sense, they contains data which is taken up by the packages installer and now its the packages installer which takes care of the further task. This prevents the package from harming the system if it has some malicious code. It is the work of Package installer to check that malicious code is stopped from executing. Probably the biggest drawback for windows method of installation is the executable installation method, viruses and other malwares may attach themselves to setup files which get executed when you try to install them.

In Ubuntu we have a package manager called APT which is an abbreviation for Advanced Packaging Technology. This utility takes care of all the packages listed on your system. There is another term called repository known as repo in short. Repositories are actually sources of packages, call it as a storehouse. When you add a repository to your package manager and update the list, it fetches the index/list of the softwares present on that repo. It now shows up on the Package manager. Now if you select to install that package it will be fetched from that repository and installed on your system.
A repository can be available anywhere. It can be on a CD, on a website, or a folder on your hard disk.The official Ubuntu repository is very large containing more than 20,000 packages, so one point is very clear “Most of the packages you need will be in the official repo”. This means you wont have to compile any software from source.

There are many package managers available, others being Red Hat Package Manager which is used by Red Hat and its derived distros. Ubuntu is derived from its father distro called Debian which was one of the pioneers in the development of Linux.

METHOD OF INSTALLING
There are two ways of installing any package - Command line way and Graphical way! Its upto you to choose between the two. Each have their own plus and minus points. Graphical method is recommended for a beginner but everyone should have atleast a basic knowledge of command line to deal and cope up with disastrous situations. This is not windows and you wont be reinstalling Linux even in worst situations.

The plus point with graphical method is that its really easy for a beginner to start using and installing any software package. The minus point is that we have to click on search, enter the package name, click on OK, when list comes, select the package, click on Apply and then again OK. It may take time and if you are a bit comfortable with Linux and want to do all these stuff quickly you may prefer command line.
Using command line you may have to just type one command and the software installation starts. You dont need to search,OK, Apply and all those headache. The biggest drawback with this method is that it is a bit tough for a beginner who has never even seen the world of commands on windows.
A Point to note: In future in life you may get stuck up anywhere and may ask help from an expert. Dont expect him to give solutions in graphical mode, rather you will get the solution in commands. The reason is quite obvious - “Why would he type so much like “Click System”, then Package Manager, then enter password and all those long long methods”. You may even get stuck somewhere and say that you didnt find that option. To get over this problem too commands come to rescue. Just copy-paste the command to your terminal, no hassles even, if he tells to give the output, just copy-paste back the output. Its so simple, a single command did all that was required even though you might have found that command very absurd and unusual to look at.

SOFTWARE UPDATES
In windows you had needed to update each application separately, this is not the case in Linux. Here updates arrive via the central “Update Manager” just like “Windows Update”. Unlike windows software updates, kernel updates, security patches and software patches, all comes via this method. If you had installed a software say “ABC” from a official repository “XYZ”, then when an update arrives on that repo, the Update Manager fetches the index of the updates and notifies you. This is an excellent way rather than checking and updating each software manually

Manish | Install, Problems | Comments (0)

3D effects on ubuntu 7.10 on ati 1250

December 28, 2007 – 3:24 pm

Well after going through a large number of guides like this i finally thought about giving guide at cchtml a try, well the hings mentioned are really great but not all steps are needed so here is a simplified version

Here i assume that you have not done any of this step before and are doing it for the first time but if that is not the case then this might not work for you.
Ok so first step installation of drivers, there are two steps for this as mentioned in the cchtml wiki one automatic and other manual, for automatic you need to enable the restricted repositories by going to System>>Administration>>Software Sources, and the typing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-generic restricted-manager
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
which will install the drivers by downloading them from net, if you dont have the bandwidth to download that much you can go for the manual install where we will build those file, here i assumed that you have copy of the ati drivers .run file which if your Ubuntu is installed by me could be found at “/”, to build we need to install certain packages
sudo apt-get install module-assistant build-essential fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 linux-headers-generic dkms
to build the packages type
sudo bash ati-driver-installer-8.443.1-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/gutsy
in the directory where you have the ati-driver-installer-8.443.1-x86.x86_64.run file, this is the latest file at the time of writing but you might have a different file this will work with any driver after 8.38, as they have AIGLX support anyway now we need to install the packages made type
sudo dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_8.443.1-1*.deb fglrx-kernel-source_8.443.1-1*.deb fglrx-amdcccle_8.443.1-1*.deb
when you do that you might be asked
Configuration file `/etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager'
==> Deleted (by you or by a script) since installation.
==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
What would you like to do about it ? Your options are:
Y or I : install the package maintainer’s version
N or O : keep your currently-installed version
D : show the differences between the versions
Z : background this process to examine the situation
The default action is to keep your current version.
*** compiz-manager (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ?
just answer Y to the question and proceed, once this is done you now need to edit the xorg.conf file type
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
and replace
Section "Device"
Identifier “Generic Video Card”
Driver “vesa”
BusID “PCI:1:5:0″
EndSection
WITH
Section "Device"
Identifier “Generic Video Card”
#Driver “vesa”
BusID “PCI:1:5:0″
Option “VideoOverlay” “on”
Option “OpenGLOverlay” “off”
EndSection now just restart the X server but pressing Ctrl + ALT + Backspace, all done this will give you the Basic 3D effects but who is satisfied with that we need more so we will go for installing Compiz settings manager, for this type
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager gcompizthemer subversion
svn ls https://svn.generation.no/emerald-themes
now accept the certificate and fetch the themes by going to System>>Preferances>>Emerald Themes Manager,
to enable 3D effects go to System>>Preferances>>Appearance then Visual Effects select Custom and edit your settings by Preferances
now you are all set to blow everyone up with your Linux box’s 3D effects enjoy

Ankur | General, Install, Problems | Comments (10)

Linux Directory Structure

December 24, 2007 – 12:59 pm

Well most people migrating from Windows to Linux have a very big problem, and that problem is understanding where there files are or where there drives is so here i have the basic information about the Directory Structure so that it will help you understand more about Linux and be comfortable with it, so here it goes

/ - Root directory that forms the base of the file system. All files and directories are logically contained inside the root directory regardless of their physical locations.

/bin - Contains the executable programs that are part of the Linux operating system. Many Linux commands, such as cat, cp, ls, more, and tar, are locate in /bin

/boot - Contains the Linux kernel and other files needed by LILO and GRUB boot managers.

/dev - Contains all device files. Linux treats each device as a special file. All such files are located in /dev.

/etc - Contains most system configuration files and the initialisation scripts in /etc/rc.d subdirectory.

/home - Home directory is the parent to the home directories of users.

/lib - Contains library files, including loadable driver modules needed to boot the system.

/lost+found - Directory for lost files. Every disk partition has a lost+found directory.

/media - Directory for mounting files systems on removable media like CD-ROM drives, floppy disks, and Zip drives.

/mnt - A directory for temporarily mounted filesystems.

/opt - Optional software packages copy/install files here.

/proc - A special directory in a virtual filesystem. It contains the information about various aspects of a Linux system.

/root - Home directory of the root user.

/sbin - Contains administrative binary files. Commands such as mount, shutdown, umount, reside here.

/srv - Contains data for services (HTTP, FTP, etc.) offered by the system.

/sys - A special directory that contains information about the devices, as seen by the Linux kernel.

/tmp - Temporary directory which can be used as a scratch directory (storage for temporary files). The contents of this directory are cleared each time the system boots.

/usr - Contains subdirectories for many programs such as the X Window System.

/usr/bin - Contains executable files for many Linux commands. It is not part of the core Linux operating system.

/usr/include - Contains header files for C and C++ programming languages

/usr/lib - Contains libraries for C and C++ programming languages.

/usr/local - Contains local files. It has a similar directories as /usr contains.

/usr/sbin - Contains administrative commands.

/usr/share - Contains files that are shared, like, default configuration files, images, documentation, etc.

/usr/src - Contains the source code for the Linux kernel.

/var - Contains various system files such as log, mail directories, print spool, etc. which tend to change in numbers and size over time.

/var/cache - Storage area for cached data for applications.

/var/lib - Contains information relating to the current state of applications. Programs modify this when they run.

/var/lock - Contains lock files which are checked by applications so that a resource can be used by one application only.

/var/log - Contains log files for differenct applications.

/var/mail - Contains users’ emails.

/var/opt - Contains variable data for packages stored in /opt directory.

/var/run - Contains data describing the system since it was booted.

/var/spool - Contains data that is waiting for some kind of processing.

/var/tmp - Contains temporary files preserved between system reboots.

Ankur | General | Comments (0)

What is a webserver? Clear your myths…

December 22, 2007 – 1:20 pm

Most of you must have heard about something called webserver. To most of the people it more of a mystery. Actually a webserver is nothing magical piece of software, but its really marvelous. There are many webservers available, many of them are frequently heard- Apache-the leading webserver which serves 70% of the website, Microsoft IIS-a competitor to Apache, lighttpd- a very light-weight webserver used in routers. The list goes on, but all of them have something in common. Let’s discuss on it.
A webserver is a piece of software which acts as a service and keeps listening on port 80 for any incoming connections. Whenever we try to open a website, our web browser tried to make a connection on port 80 on the server. This connection is accepted by the webserver and its now its duty to serve the client as per the needs. This is a classic example of client-server model.
The work of a webserver is not just accepting and serving data. It has also the task of executing the scripts, it acts as platform for all dynamic web page creation. If you are learning PHP or ASP/ASP.NET you might have used any webserver to run your scripts.

The quality of a webserver depends on how many connections it can handle at any time. Some sites like google and yahoo have millions of people accessing it at a specific instant. If the webserver cannot cope with so many connections and crashes, this situation is more commonly called as “Server Down”. A webserver should be robust so that it can take up all heavy traffic loads, it should even have minimum downtime or in other words- If you restart the server following some changes to its configurations, it should restart immediately otherwise many users may find their page time out after waiting for long.

Let us now have a look at the world’s most famous and reliable webserver- Apache. It is an Open Source and Free software. It is a flagship product of Apache Software Foundation (ASF). At the beginning Apache was started as a small web server, as it grew up it began taking more Open Source Projects. Since now the load has became so much Apache Serve Foundation was formed to coordinate the activities. Other famous softwares under ASF are Apache Tomcat (for running Java Servelets), Apache Ant (tool for automating software build) and Lenya (Content Management System). We shall now restrict ourself to Apache HTTP Server which is more commonly called Apache Webserver.

Apache’s latest version is 2.2.6 . At present 2.2.4 version is more widespread but installing the latest stable version is always recommended. If you want to test Apache you can get a development or Beta version, but for development work always use a stable version. You can get Apache from http://httpd.apache.org/ Installation on windows is a Next>Next> process. Installing on Linux is far easier, use you package manager to get the package. The package name is usually apache2 on most of the linux distros.

One more point! Bare installation of Apache wont open more than static HTML pages. If you want to use it properly, you need a proper dynamic programming language like PHP, Python, Ruby etc. These languages can be integrated with Apache closely. Speaking frankly, PHP delivers best performance on Apache.

There are many rivals of Apache like Microsoft’s IIS which is giving it a tough competition. Even under this scenario Apache does not hide its weakness if any. Bugs found if any are put up on the public bug tracker which everyone can check. This methodology instills a sense of confidence in people who use Apache for commercial and production purposes. Apache is a community project, its not only the core developers but even the volunteers who find bugs and fix them due to public bug tracker. Summing all, it is a great example of how people can cooperate to create the best technology and software.

Manish | Install, PHP, Web Programming | Comments (17)

LUG “Manipal” logo…

December 21, 2007 – 9:17 am

Hi Friends,

After trying my best to come up with a logo for LUG manipal, I have come up with the one below. Please suggest any changes or any effect you would like to add to it (if any). PLEASE COMMENT ON THE LOGO.

Hope you like it…cya :)

Click for a larger image

- Abhinit.

abhinit | General | Comments (7)

Installing any PHP based software over LAMP/WAMP

December 16, 2007 – 1:07 pm

Any PHP based software can be run over a web-server. The most famous of them is Apache-the webserver used in around 75% of the websites. For running most of these PHP applications you need a webserver and a database for storing the data. Database is not required in all the cases. Some softwares use flat files to store data, but such apps ae very few. The webserver we will be using will be Apache2 and database software will be MySQL5. You need a PHP translator for running PHP scripts. All these can be installed just by installing WAMP which stands for Windows-Apache-MySQL-PHP or LAMP which stands for Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP. The choice depends whether you are running Windows or Linux.

To install WAMP check this post. Click Here

To install LAMP check this post. Click Here

Apache is a webserver whose work is to accept connections and provide you the page which you intend to open. e.g. You want to open a page abc.php , then you ask the webserver to provide you this page. webserver fetches this page from the hard disk, executes it and returns the result to you. The concept is quite simple.

Next lets move on to PHP translator. Every high level language needs a translator to convert it to low level language which the computer can understand. The translator is a generic term. C has a translator which is called *compiler*. PHP does not have a compiler. Instead it has a interpreter. When the php pages are executed over apache the php interpreter is called into service.

Next and last is MySQL. This is the far and most simple system software. It work is just to fetch the data which has been requested when the php scripts are being executed. You need to connect to this software using a username and password to gain authorization. This method prevents misuse and theft of highly critical data. A database can have multiple users, each of them maybe assigned databases exclusively or shared.

Whenever you go to install any php software, you can be asked some server information. They can be:

Database Host: Enter localhost in this field. localhost is the hostname for the IP 127.0.0.1 . It means the database software is on the same computer on which apache is running.

Database User: The username which you need to connect to you database. You can create a new user. All database have a root user which is the super-administrator.

Database Password: Enter you password for the user you provided. The default installation of WAMP has a blank password for root user. Means a string of zero length which is equal to leaving the field blank. For LAMP, you have to set the root password at the time of installation.

Your email Id: Just enter the email id for your installation or admin user. This may not be useful for installation which have been done locally as you cannot send mails from your computer (you dont have an SMTP server running).

Most of the PHP apps coming these days are very simple to install, only place where people get stuck up are these infos.

You can try installing a few PHP apps like MediaWiki, phpBB 3, Wordpress. If you have any problems just comment and keep a check.

Manish | Install, PHP, Problems | Comments (0)

Fedora 8 on HP 6515b

December 4, 2007 – 1:49 pm

Well i have installed Fedora 8 now and well i was facing the usual problems, install proceeded well in text mode without any problems but on booting after the ATI driver install i was presented with a console login that is no xserver started and then started the problem with WiFi, ndiswrapper wont install it took me no time to find that the kernel version was different of the rpm package of ndiswrapper that i had, so i went about every were searching for it but was not able to find what i was looking for so finally i had to go for compiling of ndiswrapper from source.This done i was left with a text only system i mean i can always start xserver by typing startx after logging in but i wont boot on startup, so i was think a way to get gdm to start on system startup and there i was searching for the rc scripts i remember reading about them in Slack Book, after adding gdm to the rc.local file i was now happily using Laptop with Fedora

ok so lets come to the point how exactly did i solved these problems for installing ATI driver i have already explained it earlier here and here , so now moving to ndiswrapper
you need to download the source code (the .tar.gz file) from http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net well from any other computer if you have net access only by WiFi, after u have the tar.gz file copy it to any folder like your home folder ( /home/<username>/ ) now simply right click on it and select extract here, now you have a directory with all the files of source code but to compile the source you will need to install some more software from the DVD for this go to Add/Remove Software in the Applications menu, enter your root password when it will open it will give you error saying something like Repository could not be updated so go to repositories in that and let the tick be there only in front of Install Media remove that tick from every other option, here select Development then tick Development Tools (remove them after compiling if you wont use them), after that go to Search tab and select All packages, there search for ‘Kernel headers’ you will find a package with name of Kernel-headers - 2.6.23.1-42 select that, click apply it will ask you for the DVD insert it and packages will be installed, now you can happily compile your ndiswrapper source

For compiling open up a Terminal from Applications >> System Tools >> Terminal type ‘ su ‘ , enter your password now type cd /home/<username>/<name of ndiswrapper directory>/ now when in the ndiswraper directory type make uninstall to remove any previous non working installs of ndiswrapper, after that type make here you if you see a error then you probably dont have the correct/complete source or are missing a required package, if it proceeds without a error which it will then you just need to install ndiswrapper type make install your work is now over you just need to install the windows driver by the method which i have described here all done now let us proceed to the xserver problem

For this just login as root ( which i wont prefer but is best for this time ) and type ‘ startx ‘ at the prompt after logging in then go to /etc/ in the file browser there right click on ‘ inittab ‘ file and select open with “Text Editor” in the file there will be some thing written as
id:3:initdefault:
change that to
id:5:initdefault:
and save the file, reboot and you will be greeted by a nice Fedora Infinity Screen enjoy!!!!

Ankur | Install, Problems | Comments (3)

LUG Manipal Logo’s

December 3, 2007 – 12:24 am

Hey friends here are some LOGO’s that were made by one of our group member Abhinit Kumar Ambastha please leave your comments as to which will be best for further use as Logo of LUG Manipal

1.

2.

3.

Shubhendra | Uncategorized | Comments (12)

Installing WAMP on your Windows system

November 29, 2007 – 11:44 pm

WAMP (now known as WampServer) is like a AIO package that allows you to setup a web server on your local machine to simulate any project that you may run on a remote server.

WampServer 2.0 includes:

  • Apache 2.2.6
  • MySQL 5.0.45
  • PHP 5.2.5

Download it from here.

Installation is a piece of cake. There are no complexities involved. At one point it will ask for the SMTP server address and the e-mail address needed for the PHP mail() function. Do what you choose to do with them, or leave them at their default values. You can anyways change it later.

After installation is complete, choose Firefox( Internet Explorer FTL!) as the browser to be used with WampServer and then start the WampServer service. Windows Firewall will give a warning about blocking the apache HTTP server. You won’t be blocking it, otherwise you wouldn’t have been reading this dumb tutorial, so Unblock it.

Once the WampServer is started, check if all is correct by pointing to http://localhost in your browser. You’ll see lot of information about the version of apache and mysql installed. You’d be seeing something called phpMyAdmin. Actually it is a tool developed in PHP that allows the remote administration of MySQL databases through a browser. Click on it or visit http://localhost/phpmyadmin .

Now you would like to create a new user.

*NOTE* I found creating a new user a pain with phpMyAdmin (or maybe I have a personal grudge against the GUI). There are a lot of fields you will grow tired of clicking on or even better, become confused. I’ll explain it the command line way. Navigate to D:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql5.0.45\bin> assuming you have installed WAMP at D:\wamp. Now type in the command:

mysql -u root

You would be logged in as the root and you’d be at the mysql> prompt now. The very first thing you should do is specify a password for the root with the command:

SET PASSWORD FOR ‘root’@'localhost’ = PASSWORD(’yourpassword’);

Remember to end every command with a ‘;’ (semicolon if you didn’t know). Now create a new user with the following command:
CREATE USER user [IDENTIFIED BY [PASSWORD] ‘password’]

One thing to be kept in mind is that the [] brackets signify optional parameters, like you could skip the whole IDENTIFIED BY field to create an user account without password.

Now, you can specify the username as anomit or anomit@localhost, the former would allow ‘anomit’ to login from ay computer but the latter would allow ‘anomit’ to login from ‘localhost’ only. So the former isn’t exactly recommended from the viewpoint of security.

Here is an example:
CREATE USER anomit@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'passwd' ;

What i am going to do is create a user account that can only SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE for each database. Since you already have a root account, you don’t need another with the same escalated privileges. Anyways, its your wish to what you want.

So, I grant the privileges by:

GRANT SELECT,INSERT,DELETE,UPDATE ON *.* TO anomit@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'passwd';

Now, for logging into a password enabled user account, you should use the command:

mysql -u username -p

There you are done with a new user account. Use ‘help contents’ at the mysql prompt to know more about the commands. Have fun!

anomit | Install | Comments (6)