My Favorite Ubuntu

gOS install

2007-11-02T17:41:00.000+09:00

gOS is the operating system installed on $199 PC called "Everex Green gPC TC2502" from everex.
It's based on Ubuntu and designed for Google services' user like GMail, Google calendar, Google Maps and so on.

Now I boot with gOS CDROM image and install into VMware.

This is default screen. It has menu like MAC's Dock under the screen, Google search bar on the top and icons of netoworking and clock on the right side.

You can see complete list of Dock with clicking the leaf and selecting [Favorite Application].

By default, the list has following services and applications. If the service needs Web browser(e.g. GMail), Firefox will be launched.

Blogger
Facebook
Firefox Web Browser
GMail
Google Calendar
Google Docs and Spreadsheet
Google Maps
Google News
Meebo
Rhythmbox Music Player
Tech Support
Wikipedia
Xine Movie Player
YouTube

Now I double click [Install] to begin installation process.

Select system language.

Next, select time zone.

Next, keyboard layout. I choose Japanese keyboard.

Partitioning. I use entire disk.

Enter username and machine name.

Ready?

Click [Install] and installation will be begun.

After installation, you can use gOS with your language.

In gOS, it's little bit messy to switch window because it doesn't have anything like task bar.

I couldn't find any appealing from gOS enough to change my OS from Ubuntu. In the part of Dock, most services is Web-base so bookmark is enough to me. At the same time, it has no mailer locally.

But it's great if everyone can buy computer with gOS costing only $199. He can use e-mail, Web, OpenOffice, multimedia player without doing anything.

I'm interested who the target of this machine for WAL MART is.
Does american people want to use it in your home? Or is it designed for school?

Using wheel mouse on Ubuntu on VMware

2007-10-18T16:42:00.000+09:00

By default, you cannot use wheel of mouse on Ubuntu on VMware.
You should configure /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

First, check your mouse setting in /proc/bus/input/devices.

$ more /proc/bus/input/devices
.
.
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0005 Version=0000
N: Name="ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/class/input/input3
H: Handlers=mouse1 event3 ts1
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=103

Change your mouse "Driver" and "Device" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Original:

$ sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
.
.
Section "InputDevice"
       Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
       Driver          "mouse"
       Option          "CorePointer"
       Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/mice"
       Option          "Protocol"              "ps/2"
       Option          "ZAxisMapping"          "4 5"
       Option          "Emulate3Buttons"       "true"
EndSection

Change it like:

Section "InputDevice"
       Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
       Driver          "evdev"
       Option          "CorePointer"
       Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/event3"
       Option          "Protocol"              "ps/2"
       Option          "ZAxisMapping"          "4 5"
       Option          "Emulate3Buttons"       "true"
EndSection

Restart gdm and you can use wheel.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

LAMP on Feisty Fawn

2007-10-09T16:14:00.000+09:00

LAMP is: Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
I've escaped from database in the past but now I can't.

Actually the document Installing LAMP On Ubuntu For Newbies is good enough to make LAMP correctly.
In addition to my process of setup a LAMP referencing the document, I write how to configure MySQL and phpMyAdmin, application to administrate MySQL remotely.

You need install following pack

Apache
- apache2
PHP
- php5
- libapache2-mod-php5
MySQL
- mysql-server

Instead of Synaptic, I use command line as the document.

First, install apache.

$ sudo apt-get install apache2

Next, PHP.

$ sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

Restart Apache.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Test PHP.

Write on /var/www/testphp.php following line

<? php phpinfo(); ?>

Access http://[server's IP address]/testphp.php with your browser to ensure that it shows PHP information.

Next, MySQL.

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Now I start MySQL setting.

If you want to allow other computer to connect to your SQL server, you need to change [Bind Address] in /etc/mysql/my.cnf from 127.0.0.1 to your IP address.

$ sudo vi /etc/mysql/my.cnf
from
bind-address            = 127.0.0.1
to
bind-address            = [server's IP address]

Create password for MySQL root.

$ mysql -u root
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 8
Server version: 5.0.38-Ubuntu_0ubuntu1-log Ubuntu 7.04 distribution

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('[パスワード]');
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> quit

Install PHPMyAdmin.

$ sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin

To give a permission to administrate MySQL from PHP, configure /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini.

$ sudo vi /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
;extension=mysql.so
remove ";".
extension=mysql.so

Restart Apache.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now you can login PHPMyAdmin by accessing http://[server's IP address]/phpmyadmin/.

Celena Linux Mint Beta 021 Installation

2007-10-01T09:44:00.000+09:00

Linux Mint is one of Linux distribution for desktop user based on Ubuntu.
It has much more support for multimedia than Ubuntu.

I believe the installation process is completely same as Ubuntu.
I installed Linun Mint Celena BETA021 to VMWare.

Boot PC with CD.

It's cool isn't is?
Select [Start Linux Mint].

Running...

Booted up completely.

Double click [Install] for beginning installation process.

First, you need to select locale.
I wanted to use Japanese for installation but I cannot read Japanese yet.

Select time zone.

Keyboard layout.

Partitioning. I use entire disk.
[Manual] shows partition dialog like GPart.

Merge the configuretions of Windows user in the machine to Linux. I don't have any other OSs so there's nothing to see.

Create user.

Ready?

Click [Install] then is's started installation. It's so easy...

Mounting Linux partition on Windows with Explore2fs

2007-09-14T11:09:00.000+09:00

I think Explore2fs is a program much simpler than Ext2Fsd.

Although it doesn't have many fanction like Ext2Fsd(in Explere2fs you cannot copy/paste with shortcut-key in the window), I prefer Explore2fs because it's not resident in memory.

Installation is very simple.
Download Explore2fs from the Web site, unzip it and dobleclick explore2fs.exe.
Explore2fs mounts Linux partition automatically, and now you can edit your Linux partition.

Mounting Linux partition on Windows with Ext2Fsd

2007-09-06T14:57:00.000+09:00

You may find that you need mount Linux partition on Windows when you use dual boot PC.
I introduce utility "Ext2Fsd", enabling mount a partition on Windows.

First, you need to assign drive letter to Linux partition.

Hmmm I can't... saying, "Healthy but unknown partition".

I tried to command line utility "mount.exe" to assign drive letter.
You can get it here.

In console, execute:

c:\> mount 0 3 h:

Now the drive letter of Linux partition is "H:".

View the drive letter in Ext2 Volume Manager.

Now you can access Linux partition from Explorer. Copy and paste are available as well.

You cannot access to the garbled name directory or file is garbled.

IP address is 169.254.. even though it's addressed statically

2007-08-26T13:20:00.000+09:00

In my office, I connect to the network 192.168.50.32/27.

Even though I set my IP address statically, when I execute ifconfig:

$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:08:02:D6:FA:FA
       inet addr:169.254.147.105  Bcast:169.254.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0
       inet6 addr: fe80::208:2ff:fed6:fafa/64 Scope:Link
       UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
       RX packets:4287 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
       TX packets:4414 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
       collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
       RX bytes:3240523 (3.0 MiB)  TX bytes:805926 (787.0 KiB)
       Interrupt:10 Base address:0x800

That address is a temporary one for when the device cannot get IP address from DHCP server, no?

However, my /etc/network/interfaces has static address...

$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.50.39
netmask 255.255.255.224
gateway 192.168.50.33

And in this situation, I CAN connect to internet.

After restarting /etc/init.d/networking, the address turn to 192.168.50.39, the static address I set.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
Password:
* Reconfiguring network interfaces...                                   [ ok ]
jocv@jocv:~$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:08:02:D6:FA:FA
       inet addr:192.168.50.39  Bcast:192.168.50.63  Mask:255.255.255.224
       inet6 addr: fe80::208:2ff:fed6:fafa/64 Scope:Link
       UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
       RX packets:6978 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
       TX packets:7132 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
       collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
       RX bytes:5267012 (5.0 MiB)  TX bytes:1299465 (1.2 MiB)
       Interrupt:10 Base address:0x800

It's causally related to zeroconf.

nic gets apipa address instead of configured static

zeroconf is a tecnology that can let some device connect to network without configuration.
First, zeroconf request an IP address to DHCP server. If the server doesn't exist, zeroconf give an IP address of 169.254.0.0/16 automatically.

Academic Ubiquitous InfoDB - Zeroconf (Zero Configuration Networking)

I uninstalled zeroconf and now everything is fine.

At any rate, even though the result of ifconfig is 169.254.*.*, IP address is absolutely 192.168.50.* because it connected to network...why? I'm no longer able to believe ifconfig?

Wireless LAN with PCMCIA on Edgy

2007-08-25T23:41:00.000+09:00

Generally, there are 2 ways to activate a wireless LAN adapter with PCMCIA on Linux:

Installing its driver for Linux
Using ndiwrapper

However, if you brought an adaper that isn't supported by ndiwrapper, you have to throw it in the garbage bag?
No. If you execute "lspci" command and get a following answer:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)

You might be able to use it!

I bought an adaper "Wireless G Adapter PCMCIA(PM150NXT08)" by NEXXT.
Either There are no driver for Linux or support by ndiwrapper but I succeed activate it.

First, we need activate PCMCIA.
Edgy recognize PCMCIA by default.　But if your Ubuntu doesn't know PCMCIA is inserted into your PC, install "pcmciautils" for kernel version up to 2.6 or "pcmcia-cs" for other version with Synaptic.

Now we can install driver for Marvell Technology's adaper.
If you've installed ndiswrapper, you nees uninstall it(following packages) through Synaptic or apt-get.

ndiswrapper-common
ndiswrapper-utils
ndiswrapper-utils-1.1

Next, install build-essential and linux-headers of your kernel version through Synaptic or command line interface.

$ sudo apt-get build-essential
$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

Create symbolic link:

$ sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux-`uname -r` /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build

Download latest version on Nidswrapper and install it.

$ tar xvzf ndiswrapper-1.38.tar.gz
$ cd ndiswrapper-1.38
$ make distclean
$ make
$ sudo make install

Go to TRENDnet's web site and download a driver that can be alternative driver for your PCMCIA.

Decompress it and now install driver with ndiswrapper.

$ unzip TEW-421PC_b1\\Driver\\Utility_Driver_TEW-421PC_423PI_b1_2.00.zip
$ cd Drivers/Windows\ XP/
$  sudo ndiswrapper -i Mrv8000c.INF

Check install by command "ndiwsrapper -l"

$ ndiswrapper -l
mrv8000c : driver installed
   device (11AB:1FAA) present

Activate it!

$  sudo depmod -a
$  sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

Now turn on PWD LED!

Execute iwconfig in passing.

$ iwconfig
:
wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:off/any
     Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
     Bit Rate:1 Mb/s   Sensitivity=-200 dBm
     RTS thr:2346 B   Fragment thr:2346 B
     Power Management:off
     Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
     Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
     Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Add information into /etc/network/interfaces:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid [SSID]
wireless-key [WEP key]
auto wlan0

Restart /etc/init.d/networking.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Are you connected to internet now?

Lastly, configure your ndiswrapper for activate your PCMCIA everytime you boot your PC.

$ sudo ndiswrapper -m
adding "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper ...

Perfect!

Reference: TRENDnet TEW-421PC H/W:B1 PC Card Wireless Adapter using ndiswrapper Installation

Greeting...

2007-08-25T23:34:00.000+09:00

Hello everyone,
I'm a big fan of Ubuntu.

I have a blog about Ubuntu, Ubuntu日記 in Japanese, and now I try to translate it into English by little and little.