Tag: Ubuntu

CategoriesUncategorized

Ubuntuforums: In a month..

Posted on December 16, 2009by admin

The ubuntuforums have grown to be one of the largest linux forums on the internet today with over 970,000 users. I thought it might be interesting to show some other statistics that were generated between 11/15/2009 and 12/15/2009.

Compare these to the numbers I posted in March 2007.

10,901,893 Visits
24,291,004 Pageviews
46.18% % New Visits
6,138,414 Absolute Unique Visitors
Returning Visitor 53.77%
New Visitor 46.23%

Firefox 69.97%
Internet Explorer 10.61%
Chrome 8.33%
Opera 3.80%
Safari 3.09%

Linux 58.11%
Windows 36.44%
Macintosh 4.70%

CategoriesUncategorized

Authenticate on Ubuntuforums with your Launchpad credentials!

Posted on June 15, 2009by admin

The title says it all! Thanks to Anthony Lenton, one of Canonicals developers, users on ubuntuforums.org now have the option to authenticate on the forums using their Launchpad/OpenID credentials. The current requirement is you have an active forum account to accomplish this. In the future we’ll look at other options for tighter integration but this is a huge step forward.

Enjoy!

CategoriesUncategorized

Installing Ubuntu 9.04 in Virtualbox 2.2.0

Posted on April 23, 2009by admin

Ubuntu 9.04 hit the streets today, so I decided to take a look at the process of installing Ubuntu 9.04 in VirtualBox a open-source virtualization application.

Installing VirtualBox is pretty easy, download the latest version of the application which is 2.2.0. It supports Windows XP, Linux 32bit/64bit, OS X, Solaris and OpenSolaris as the host operating system and then follow the on screen instructions to complete the installation. It’s pretty simple!

I used the OS X version of VirtualBox because my Mac was handy at the time. However, the screenshots are similar regardless of the operating system you have VirtualBox installed on. 🙂

The goal of this article is to show novice users a step by step installation of installing an Ubuntu Desktop inside of VirtualBox without having to mutli-boot their computer. I am going to assume you have VirtualBox installed and have either downloaded the Ubuntu ISO image or have an Ubuntu CDROM handy.

Image figures are at the bottom of the post.

Creating the Ubuntu virtual machine

  • Open VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine and click the “New” Icon (Figure 1). A new wizard window will appear as shown in (Figure 2), click “next”.
  • Enter the name of your new virtual machine perhaps “Ubuntu904Desktop” and then select “Linux” from the drop down Operating System menu, Ubuntu 32bit will highlight by default, click “Next” (Figure 3)
  • Select the amount of RAM you wish to dedicated to your Ubuntu Desktop, the default is 256MB however, 512MB would give you better performance if you have the available RAM, click “Next“. (Figure 4)
  • Next, you will be presented with the option to create a new hard disk or use an existing hard disk, select create a new hard disk (Figure 5). Click the “Next” button and another window will appear (Figure 6), click “Next“, you are presented with an option to for “Dynamic” or “Fixed” storage. Dynamic storage will grow the virtual disk as you require more space (saving space on the hard drive) whereas Fixed storage will pre-allocate the space. I’ve selected “Dyanmic” for this installation (Figure 7), click “Next“.
  • Enter the name of the virtual machine and select the amount of space you wish to give your Ubuntu Dekstop, I’ve opted to use the default of 8GB. (Figure 8, Figure 9) Click, “Next” and finally “Finish” to complete the creation of the virtual disk for the Ubuntu Desktop.
  • You will be dropped back to the virtual disk screen and  you will notice the new virtual disk, click “Next” to continue. (Figure 10)
  • Finally, the last screen will give you a general overview of the virtual machine, click “Finish” to complete. (Figure 11)

Installing Ubuntu

  • Now that the virtual machine template has been created we can begin the installation of Ubuntu. The first thing we need to do is attach the Ubuntu ISO image or CDROM to our virtual machine. Click the CD/DVD-ROM link, its blue,  a new window will appear as shown in (Figure 12).
  • Check the “Mount CD/DVD” button and then select either “Host CD/DVD” if you have the CDROM or “ISO Image file” if you have the ISO image. I’ve used the ISO image in this example, click “Ok” to complete. (Figure 13, Figure 14)
  • Select the virtual machine from the left menu in VirtualBox and click the green start arrow to turn on your virtual machine.
  • NOTE: Once you click in the virtual machine window your keyboard and mouse are locked in.
  • Your virtual machine will now restart and the Ubuntu installation will begin (Figure 15), select the appropriate language and press “enter“.
  • Next, you will be presented with a menu (Figure 16) using the arrow keys select the “Install Ubuntu” option and press “enter“. Installation will begin as shown in (Figures 17). Once the installer has loaded a new window will be presented starting the actual installation (Figure 18) the language you selected in the previous screen should already be highlighted. Click “Forward“.
  • On the next screen select your timezone and click “Forward” (Figure 19), select your keyboard language layout (Figure 20), click “Forward“.
  • Next, you are presented with the disk partitioner. We are going to use the defaults here which is “Use the entire disk“, click “Forward” to continue the installation.(Figure 21)
  • Next, you will be presented with a series of questions pertaining to setup of your user account. Fill in the fields with the acceptable information and click “Forward“. (Figure 22)
  • At this point installation is ready to begin, look over the proposed settings and click “Install” when you are ready. This will take a few minutes to complete. (Figure 23)
  • Figure 24 and 25 is an example of what you can expect along the way during installation.
  • When the installation is completed you will be prompted with a windows requiring you to restart the computer. (Figure 26) Things got kind of weird at this point, since the CDROM is attached to the virtual machine un-mounting it by going to the “Devices > Unmount CD/DVD-ROM” would do no good since the virtual machine would reboot off the CDROM again. I couldn’t find a decent way to remove the CDROM from the virtual machine unless I powered it off. So, hit enter to restart the virtual machine and then power it off by click the “X” on the window. You will be presented with three options select “Power off the machine” and click “Ok“.
  • Select the virtual machine and click the green “start” button again.
  • Once your machine has rebooted you will be prompted with a login screen as shown in (Figure 27, 28) enter the username and password you specified during installation to log into Ubuntu. You will now see your desktop (Figure 29).

Installing the guest additions

  • Now, that our Ubuntu operating system is installed we need to install the “Guest Additions” these are similar to the VMware Tools that VMware provides.
  • From the VirtualBox menu select “Devices > Install Guest Additions” a CDROM will appear on your desktop and give you a warning just click “Cancel” it’s trying to auto-run as if it was in Windows. Navigate to “Applications > Accessories > Terminal“.
  • Enter the following command to switch to the CDROM directory “cd /cdrom“. Invoke the installer by running the following command “sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run” if you have a 32bit platform or “sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-amd64.run” if you have a 64bit platform.
  • Once the Guest Additions are installed, reboot and you will be presented with a window telling you the benefits of them. Click “Ok” to dismiss the window.

Enjoy Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope!

CategoriesUncategorized

Ubuntuforums.org maintenance today

Posted on February 16, 2009by admin

We decided to do a little maintenance today which will result in the forums being offline for a few hours.

The maintenance includes the following items:

  • Upgrade to the latest forum software 3.8.1
  • Remove old archives and closed sections of the forums that are years old. (this will affect some peoples post counts)

Also, we have a Forum Council meeting today at 21:00 UTC for those interested in joining us via IRC on freenode in #ubuntu-meeting

CategoriesUncategorized

New Book: Ubuntu Pocket Guide & Reference

Posted on January 27, 2009by admin

Keir Thomas has published a new book titled “Ubuntu Pocket Reference and Guide” which can be purchased on Amazon for $9.94 or download for free in PDF format from his website. Keir has a long history in writing quality Ubuntu books and I highly suggest checking this one out! 🙂

A quick excerpt from his website..

At just 5.25 x 8 inches and 164 pages, Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference is a compact yet comprehensive guide to everyday Ubuntu use.

It’s ideal for those who need vital information on all aspects of using Ubuntu, but who don’t have time to wade through thick documentation.

Each chapter of Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference tackles an aspect of Ubuntu.

First, you learn about installation—getting Ubuntu onto your computer—after which you learn how to configure your computer’s hardware.

Following this, you’re introduced to the Ubuntu desktop, and the tricks and techniques of efficient day-to-day usage. The book then describes the highways of the Ubuntu filesystem, and gives a full run-down of Ubuntu’s file manager.

Next, the command-line is tackled in-depth, after which software management is explained. Finally, system security is described—configuring the firewall, installing antivirus, and encrypting sensitive data. Appendixes provide a glossary of terms, and a guide to understanding technical documentation.

Written for anybody switching to Ubuntu, particularly former Windows users, Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference assumes zero Linux knowledge. It provides the wisdom of the expert user and concisely conveys core competencies.

CategoriesUncategorized

Recent Ubuntuforums Downtime

Posted on January 14, 2009by admin

I just wanted to take a few minutes and comment on some of the recent issues we’ve had over at the UbuntuForums. Last week Thursday around 4pm EST, our main database server went into a “crashed” state. The result of this state was over 2000 queries that were lingering without completion for over 8000 seconds which resulted in resource issues, this caused the mysqld process to go into an unresponsive state and would not shutdown effectively. After the crash it was realized we had some inconsistent data in the database and a check/repair was ran to potentially correct the issues.

On Sunday evening around 11:30pm EST the forums were down again but this time with table corruption on our largest tables which is our post table (it has around 6.5 million rows) and the thread table (over 1 million rows). I’m assuming everything “wasn’t” ok, after the crash on Thursday even though the checks said they were. Monday was spent cleaning up the tables, fixing corruption issues etc. Unfortunately, because of the massive size of our tables a check and repair takes upwards of 4-5 hours per check and repair until the issues were mostly resolved, this had to be completed a few times. We’ll be monitoring the data integrity over the next couple days to ensure everything stays consistent.

When the forums were ready to come online last night around 7pm EST, we ran into issues with the amount of traffic the site was getting (benefits of being popular eh?). To help ease the pressure on our main database server we have utilized the “slave” feature in vbulletin which will send queries to a slave server to help reduce load on the master. So far this has been working pretty well except for a few hiccups which were easily corrected by changing mySQL variables.

James Troup from Canonical was a great help making sure the proxies were stable last night and will be getting us additional hardware to help with our explosive growth as we have outgrown our current servers. James, thank you for your help, it is appreciated.

Until things stable out we have disabled a couple of popular features on the forums namely the “Thank you” and the “Solved Post” features. We hope to re-enable them again soon. I expect we’ll have a some rough patches ahead of us until the new hardware is in place and we look forward to getting things more stable in the near future. We’ll also be implementing a better method of communication to our users when the forums are offline, expect an announcement on the forums in the near future about that. We appreciate everyones patience during this time.

Ubuntu-geek

I also posted this on the forums here.

CategoriesUncategorized

Installing Ubuntu 8.10 in VirtualBox

Posted on January 5, 2009by admin

I mentioned a couple days ago in a quick write up on installing Ubuntu 8.10 in VMware Fusion that I would take a look at the process of installing Ubuntu 8.10 in VirtualBox. VirtualBox, unlike other desktop virtualization products is free for personal use and is opensource. It allows users to install a wide variety of operating systems without having the overhead of physical hardware.

Installing VirtualBox is pretty easy, download the application which supports Windows XP, Linux 32bit/64bit, OS X, Solaris and OpenSolaris as the host operating system and then follow the on screen instructions to complete the installation.

In this article I’ve used the OS X version of VirtualBox because my Mac was handy at the time. However, the screenshots are similar regardless of the operating system you have VirtualBox installed on.

The goal of this article is to show novice users a step by step installation of installing an Ubuntu Desktop inside of VirtualBox without having to mutli-boot their computer. I am going to assume you have VirtualBox installed and have either downloaded the Ubuntu ISO image or have an Ubuntu CDROM handy.

Creating the Ubuntu virtual machine

  • Open VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine and click the “New” Icon. A new wizard window will appear as shown in (Figure 1), click “next”.
  • Enter the name of your new virtual machine perhaps “Ubuntu810Desktop” and then select “Linux” from the drop down Operating System menu, Ubuntu 32bit will highlight by default, click “Next” (Figure 2)
  • Select the amount of RAM you wish to dedicated to your Ubuntu Desktop, the default is 256MB however, 512MB would give you better performance if you have the available RAM, click “Next“. (Figure 3)
  • Next, you will be presented with the option to create a new virtual Disk. Click the “New” button and another window will appear (Figure 4), click “Next“, you are presented with an option to for “Dynamic” or “Fixed” storage. Dynamic storage will grow the virtual disk as you require more space (saving space on the hard drive) whereas Fixed storage will pre-allocate the space. I’ve selected “Dyanmic” for this installation (Figure 5), click “Next“.
  • Enter the name of the virtual machine and select the amount of space you wish to give your Ubuntu Dekstop, I’ve opted to use the default of 8GB. (Figure 6, Figure 7) Click, “Next” and finally “Finish” to complete the creation of the virtual disk for the Ubuntu Desktop.
  • You will be dropped back to the virtual disk screen and  you will notice the new virtual disk, click “Next” to continue. (Figure 8 )
  • Finally, the last screen will give you a general overview of the virtual machine, click “Finish” to complete. (Figure 9 )

Installing Ubuntu

  • Now that the virtual machine template has been created we can begin the installation of Ubuntu. The first thing we need to do is attach the Ubuntu ISO image or CDROM to our virtual machine. Click the CD/DVD-ROM link, its blue (Figure 10 ) a new window will appear as shown in (Figure 11).
  • Check the “Mount CD/DVD” button and then select either “Host CD/DVD” if you have the CDROM or “ISO Image file” if you have the ISO image. I’ve used the ISO image in this example, click “Ok” to complete. (Figure 11, Figure 12)
  • Select the virtual machine from the left menu in VirtualBox and click the green start arrow to turn on your virtual machine. You will be presented with a new window and a warning (Figure 13) click “Ok” to dismiss this.
  • NOTE: Once you click in the virtual machine window your keyboard and mouse are locked in.
  • Your virtual machine will now restart and the Ubuntu installation will begin (Figure 14), select the appropriate language and press “enter“. You will be presented with another window telling you how to exit the screen (Figure 14a), click “Ok“
  • Next, you will be presented with a menu (Figure 15) using the arrow keys select the “Install Ubuntu” option and press “enter“. Installation will begin as shown in (Figures 16). Once the installer has loaded a new window will be presented starting the actual installation (Figure 17 ) the language you selected in the previous screen should already be highlighted. Click “Forward“.
  • On the next screen select your timezone and click “Forward” (Figure 18), select your keyboard language layout (Figure 19), click “Forward“.
  • Next, you are presented with the disk partitioner. We are going to use the defaults here which is “Guided – use entire disk“, click “Forward” to continue the installation.(Figure 20)
  • Next, you will be presented with a series of questions pertaining to setup of your user account. Fill in the fields with the acceptable information and click “Forward“. (Figure 21)
  • At this point installation is ready to begin, look over the proposed settings and click “Install” when you are ready. This will take a few minutes to complete. (Figure 22)
  • Figure 23 is an example of what you can expect along the way during installation.
  • When the installation is completed you will be prompted with a windows requiring you to restart the computer. (Figure 24) Things got kind of weird at this point, since the CDROM is attached to the virtual machine un-mounting it by going to the “Devices > Unmount CD/DVD-ROM” would do no good since the virtual machine would reboot off the CDROM again. I couldn’t find a decent way to remove the CDROM from the virtual machine unless I powered it off. So, hit enter to restart the virtual machine and then power it off by click the “X” on the window. You will be presented with three options select “Power off the machine” and click “Ok“.
  • Select the virtual machine and click the green “start” button again.
  • Once your machine has rebooted you will be prompted with a login screen as shown in (Figure 26) enter the username and password you specified during installation to log into Ubuntu. You will now see your desktop (Figure 27).

Installing the guest additions

  • Now, that our Ubuntu operating system is installed we need to install the “Guest Additions” these are similar to the VMware Tools that VMware provides.
  • From the VirtualBox menu select “Devices > Install Guest Additions” a CDROM will appear on your desktop and give you a warning just click “Cancel” it’s trying to auto-run as if it was in Windows. Navigate to “Applications > Accessories > Terminal“.
  • Enter the following command to switch to the CDROM directory “cd /cdrom“. Invoke the installer by running the following command “sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run” if you have a 32bit platform or “sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-amd64.run” if you have a 64bit platform. (Figure 28)
  • Once the Guest Additions are installed, reboot and you will be presented with a window telling you the benefits of them. Click “Ok” to dismiss the window. (Figure 29)

Enjoy Ubuntu. 🙂

Edit: Andreas pointed out in a comment below of an issue with keyboard layouts using Ubuntu 8.10 and Windows XP SP3. You can find more information here.

CategoriesUncategorized

Installing Ubuntu 8.10 in Fusion

Posted on January 2, 2009by admin

If you have a Mac and Fusion this article will get you started with a safe way to install Ubuntu without having to mutli-boot your Mac. In this article we’ll be discussing installation of Ubuntu using a commercial virtualization product from VMware called Fusion, in the coming days we’ll also look at Virtual Box an opensource project similar to VMware Fusion.

VMware Fusion is the OS X equivalent to VMware Workstation or VMware Server (free), which runs on Linux and Windows. These products allow you to virtualize operating systems without having to format your main desktop or laptop hard drive. We are going to look at a the installation of Ubuntu 8.10 inside of VMware Fusion and discuss some caveots you may encounter along the way. Before we begin we’ll assume you have the Ubuntu 8.10 ISO image downloaded and you have the latest version of VMware Fusion installed.

Like most virtualization desktop products VMware Fusion uses a very simple GUI wizard to guide the user through the installation allowing them advanced installation options if they wish. Throughout the article, I will reference (Figure X) to correspond with the correct images which are displayed at the end of the article.

Virtual Machine Creation

  • Open Fusion and create a new virtual machine by navigating to File > New from here a new window will appear (Figure 1).
  • Next, select “Continue without disk“, this will bring you to another window (Figure 2) allowing you to select the installation media. Select “Use Operating system installation disk image file ” select the Ubuntu ISO image, then click “Continue“.
  • Next, select the operating system and distribution type (this will default to Linux, Ubuntu 32bit) and click “Continue” as shown in (Figure 3).
  • Finally, You will be presented with a finalization window displaying the current settings of your virtual machine. If you wish to make further advanced customizations to the memory, cpu, disk and so you can select the “Customize settings” button. You can also have the virtual machine automatically start when Fusion is opening by putting a check in the “Always open this virtual machine when VMware Fusion starts” option. (Figure 4)
  • Once you are satisfied with your settings click, “Finish” to build the virtual machine and continue with the Ubuntu installation. You will be prompted to enter a name for the virtual machine once you finalize your settings.

Ubuntu Installation

  • NOTE: Once you click in the virtual machine window your keyboard and mouse are locked in, press Control-Command to release it.
  • Your virtual machine will now restart and the Ubuntu installation will begin (Figure 5), select the appropriate language and press “enter“.
  • Next, you will be presented with a menu (Figure 6) using the arrow keys select the “Install Ubuntu” option and press “enter“. Installation will begin as shown in (Figures 6 and 7). Once the installer has loaded a new window will be presented starting the actual installation (Figure 8 ) the language you selected in the previous screen should already be highlighted. Click “Forward“.
  • On the next screen select your timezone and click “Forward” (Figure 9), select your keyboard language layout (Figure 10), click “Forward“.
  • Next, you are presented with the disk partitioner. We are going to use the defaults here which is “Guided – use entire disk“, click “Forward” to continue the installation.(Figure 11)
  • Next, you will be presented with a series of questions pertaining to setup of your user account. Fill in the fields with the acceptable information and click “Forward“. (Figure 12)
  • At this point installation is ready to begin, look over the proposed settings and click “Install” when you are ready. This will take a few minutes to complete. (Figure 13)
  • Figures 14, 15, 16 , 17 , 18 and 19 are examples of what you can expect along the way during installation.
  • When the installation is completed you will be prompted with a windows requiring you to restart the computer. Before doing this click the “Settings” button on the Fusion menu, navigate to the CDROM and disconnect it by un-checking the box, you will be given a warning select “Yes“. Once the CDROM is disabled, click “Restart now” to finalize and reboot (Figure 20).
  • Once your machine has rebooted you will be prompted with a login screen as shown in (Figure 21) enter the username and password you specified during installation to log into Ubuntu.

VMware Tools Installation

Now that our Ubuntu desktop installation is complete we need to install some additional tools in order to maximize productivity. VMware provides a utility called VMware Tools, which allows you to share folders, the keyboard and mouse between the virtual machine and the host operating system, in this case OS X and Ubuntu.

  • Once you are logged into the Ubuntu Desktop, you will want to install all the latest updates for Ubuntu to ensure the VMware tools install correctly. To do this, goto System > Administrator > Update Manager, click the “Check” button and enter your password if required.  Updates will be displayed, finally click “Install Updates“. This may take awhile depending on your Internet connection speed and the amount of updates required. Once completed, reboot your Ubuntu Desktop.
  • Once rebooted, Click the “Virtual Machine” menu bar while in Fusion. From here select the “Install VMware Tools” option. You will notice a CDROM being mounted on your Ubuntu desktop, drag the file to your desktop and double click it and drag the contents to the desktop. (Figures 22 and 23)
  • Next, we need to drop to a terminal and install a couple pieces of software. Navigate to Applications > Accessories > Terminal at the command prompted enter the following “cd ~Desktop/vmware-tools-distrib” and  “sudo apt-get install build-essential” to install the compilers needed for the VMware tools installation. If prompted enter your password, a confirmation dialogue will appear enter “y” and press enter. (Figure 25)
  • Once complete, run the following command to begin the VMware tools installer “sudo ./vmware-install.pl“. To save room I did not include the output from the installer, however, you can select the defaults throughout by pressing “enter” for each question.
  • Reboot once the VMware tools installation has completed, log in to your Ubuntu Desktop and then maximize the screen. VMware tools should automatically resize your desktop to fix your screen and your mouse should flow from Ubuntu to OS X without issue.
  • Enjoy Ubuntu 🙂

Below are the images referenced during installation.

CategoriesUncategorized

JeOSVMBuilder and VMware ESX

Posted on December 31, 2008by admin

Virtualization is one thing that really gets me motivated, I primaly work with VMware’s ESX products however, I’ve recently been looking at alternative solutions such as Xen and Virtualbox to broaden my knowledge further. Earlier this year I co-wrote an article with Matthew Helmke on Ubuntu Jeos for Linux+ magazine. The other day I was looking at some Jeos information on the Ubuntu website and stumbled upon the vmbuilder application. 

The vmbuilder application will let you quickly build a virtual machine for a variety of virtualization products Xen, VMware Workstation, VMware Server, kvm and so on. Vmbuilder is very slick, after a couple software installations and I was building a VMware Server image on my Ubuntu desktop without any hassles. I then used VMware converter to import and convert the virtual machine to a VMware ESX compatible format. For those who might not know, VMware Server can use IDE based disks where as ESXi/ESX requires SCSI based disks.

I was curious as to why the vmbuilder application didn’t have support for the VMware ESX and noticed salf.dk submitted a patch to the vmbuilder application which extends the features allowing for ESXi/ESX vmdk creation. I promptly decided to test this patch and it worked well, however I noticed that the template for ESXi was setting the maximum CPU’s to “2”. Normally, in a ESXi/ESX environment you don’t need to pre-allocate multiple cpu’s to your virtual machine upfront because of the way ESXi/ESX handles resources.

So, I submitted a change based off the patch from salf.dk,  to allow a new CPU variable to be set during the build stage of a virtual machine.

I hope the maintainer of the vmbuilder project will merge the ESXi patches provided, this will be a nice alternative for mass producing test Ubuntu servers running ESXi/ESX environments.