Matt Woodward’s posterous

Matt Woodward’s posterous

Matthew Woodward  //  * CFML, Grails, and Java Developer
* Principal IT Specialist, US Senate
* Open BlueDragon Steering Committee Member
* All-Around Geek

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Jun 11 / 8:03am

Slashdot Linux Story | Adobe (Temporarily?) Kills 64-Bit Flash For Linux

by Matthew Woodward
"It seems that with the release of the 10.1 security patches, Adobe has, at least temporarily, killed 64-bit Flash for Linux. The statement says: 'The Flash Player 10.1 64-bit Linux beta is closed. We remain committed to delivering 64-bit support in a future release of Flash Player. No further information is available at this time. Please feel free to continue your discussions on the Flash Player 10.1 desktop forums.' The 64-bit forum has been set to read-only."
via linux.slashdot.org

Very forward-thinking Adobe. Just awesome! You did hear that Google recently announced that their employees can no longer use the one operating system Flash actually works well on, right? You think they'll be the only ones who do that?

Doesn't really matter since Flash is on a death march at this point anyway, but just highlights what nonsense Adobe's latest "one app, any device" marketing crap is.

So long, Flash. Can't say I'll miss you.

Filed under  //  Adobe   Flash   Linux  

Comments (1)

 
May 2 / 5:45pm

Restoring Tomboy Notes After Upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04

by Matthew Woodward
Quick tip since this took me a while to hunt down. If you format and do a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04, you'll of course back up your home directory first, in which case you'll have anything you had in Tomboy available to restore. What took me a bit of time to track down is where the Tomboy notes are stored since they are no longer in ~/.tomboy.

Turns out they're now in /home/YourUserName/.local/share/tomboy So after your upgrade, just shut down Tomboy and restore all the .note files from your backup to this directory and the notes you backed up will appear when you launch Tomboy. I actually had to launch Tomboy twice to get them to show up, but they're there now.

Filed under  //  Linux   Ubuntu  

Comments (1)

 
May 2 / 5:02pm

10 Applications You Must Install On Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

by Matthew Woodward
This time around Ubuntu 10.04 is touting some great UI and design changes. Moreover, this being an LTS release, there are all the more reasons to go with the fresh install route. So if you decide to do so, come the 29th, here are some of the Ubuntu applications that you might want to install on a fresh Lucid Lynx install.
via makeuseof.com

Nice list of stuff you'll want to install after doing a fresh installation of Ubuntu 10.04. If you haven't yet tried it, Chrome is REALLY nice on Linux (though Firefox is still my daily driver, it's nice to have an alternative browser particularly as a web developer), VLC is a must have, and if you weren't aware Ubuntu no longer ships with The GIMP pre-installed.

I could take or leave the Checkgmail but it's a nice example of what can be done with the new MeMenu in 10.04, but Gnome Do is great if you haven't tried it (I just learned about this one myself a couple of weeks ago), Beagle is a really nice Spotlight-like app, and hey, if you want your Linux box to look like a Mac, there's even a Dock app.

The only one not on this list that I think should be there is Back In Time (http://backintime.le-web.org/) which is very similar to Time Machine on the Mac. I have yet to try it on 10.04 but it was just set and forget on 9.10 so hopefully it works on 10.04.

Filed under  //  Linux   Ubuntu  

Comments (6)

 
May 2 / 10:03am

Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client on 64-Bit Ubuntu 10.04

by Matthew Woodward
I outlined much of this in a previous blog post, but since things are slightly different (or at least were for me) on Ubuntu 10.04, I figured I'd do a follow-up while it was fresh in my mind. Note that if you're on 32-bit Ubuntu AnyConnect works out of the box so you don't need to do any of these steps. The issue is that there is no native 64-bit AnyConnect client for Linux so you have to install some 32-bit libraries and point AnyConnect to some libraries from Firefox to get things working.

The basic procedure remains the same as in my previous post, but I had to install some additional libraries and do things in a slightly different order this time around.

  1. Download the AnyConnect installer from your VPN server or get a copy from your VPN administrator. (Why these clients aren't freely available I have no idea. You can only connect to something that someone paid Cisco for, so I'm not sure why the clients can't just be out in the wild. If you Scroogle around you may find some download links here and there but of course use at your own risk if you don't get the client from an authorized source.)
  2. Do a chmod +x on the installer (which for me was called vpnsetup.sh) and then run the installer using sudo. This will throw a couple of errors but they can safely be ignored.
  3. Install ia32-libs and lib32nss-mdns
    • sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32nss-mdns
  4. Download a fresh copy of Firefox, expand, and move to /usr/local
    • I downloaded to my Downloads directory, expanded there, and did sudo cp -R firefox /usr/local
  5. Do a cd into /usr/local/firefox and create symlinks for the Firefox libraries in /opt/cisco/vpn/lib as follows:
    • sudo ln -s libnss3.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/nss3.so
    • sudo ln -s libplc4.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/libplc4.so
    • sudo ln -s libnspr4.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/libnspr4.so
    • sudo ln -s libsmime3.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/libsmime3.so
    • sudo ln -s libsoftokn3.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/libsoftokn3.so
    • sudo ln -s libnssdbm3.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/libnssdbm3.so
    • sudo ln -s libfreebl3.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/libfreebl3.so
    • sudo ln -s libnssutil3.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/libnssutil3.so
    • sudo ln -s libplds4.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/libplds4.so
    • sudo ln -s libsqlite3.so /opt/cisco/vpn/lib/libsqlite3.so
  6. Start the VPN daemon: sudo /etc/init.d/vpnagentd_init start (If it doesn't start without errors, double-check all your symlinks.)
  7. Launch AnyConnect. You should have a launcher under Applications -> Internet, but If not you can launch it from /opt/cisco/vpn/bin/vpnui using your normal user account (i.e. not using sudo).
After AnyConnect launches you can enter your VPN server address, accept the certificate, and log in as per usual.
Filed under  //  64-bit   Cisco   Linux   Ubuntu   VPN  

Comments (6)

 
May 2 / 9:16am

Installing Ubunutu 10.04 On a System76 Machine

by Matthew Woodward

From Knowledge76

Jump to: navigation, search

Restoring Your System76 Computer

System76 Netbook Customers see Restoring Your Netbook. This How To is for System76 Laptops and Desktops

System76 computers use a standard Ubuntu installation disc and the System76 Driver to fully restore your system to factory settings. This action will reformat your hard drive and remove all data from the computer. Backup any personal files in your home directory before installing.

Directions

Download Ubuntu 10.04 LTS from www.ubuntu.com. You can also request free installation CD's from the Ubuntu website.

This action will reformat your hard drive and remove all data from the computer. Backup any personal files in your home directory before installing.

  • Insert the Ubuntu Installation CD
  • Boot from the CD by pressing either the Escape key, F8, F10, F11, or F12 (Depends on your system)
  • Complete the installation with your desired options
  • Log into your newly installed system
  • Connect to the internet (verify you're connected by going to a website)
  • Go to System > Administration > Update Manager
  • Click "Check" and then "Install Updates"
  • If you have nVidia or ATI graphics in your system go to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers to install nVidia's or ATI's proprietary driver
  • Reboot
  • Download the latest System76 Driver from this page (click the second link from the bottom)... 
http://planet76.com/repositories/
  • Double click on the downloaded package to install
  • Go to System > Administration > System76 Driver
  • Choose the Restore tab and click Restore. Restore will take a few minutes.

That's it - your system is fully restored!

System76 Driver Information

For detailed information about the System76 Driver click here

via knowledge76.com

If you have a System76 machine and want to do a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04, this outlines how to restore the System76 drivers. Quick and painless.

Filed under  //  Linux   System76   Ubuntu  

Comments (2)

 
May 1 / 8:58am

Adding Launcher to Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition

by Matthew Woodward
Quick tip for Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04--if you want to add a launcher to your menus, go to "System," then "Main Menu." Open that up and it should look familiar from there.

Also, UNE 10.04 doesn't seem to suffer from the native window bug that was present in 9.10, so you don't have to worry about doing this fix anymore.

Filed under  //  Linux   Ubuntu  

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Apr 30 / 7:34am

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS released

by Matthew Woodward
The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long-Term Support). This release incorporates the Desktop Edition and the Server Edition. The Server Edition can be used on physical servers, on Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), and on Amazon's EC2 public cloud. Codenamed "Lucid Lynx", 10.04 LTS continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.
via lists.ubuntu.com

Looks like it's a Friday night upgrade for me! (I know how to party.)

I've been using the beta on my old ThinkPad T60p and it's been working great, so my System76 Serval Pro will likely get the new hotness tonight.

Make sure and read the links in the full post on the mailing list to see all the new features. Congrats to the Ubuntu team for another fantastic release.

Filed under  //  Linux   Ubuntu  

Comments (3)

 
Mar 21 / 10:35am

Java Install Failing With install.sfx Error? You're Probably On the Wrong Architecture

by Matthew Woodward
I'm getting a RackSpace Cloud server set up for a side project, and when trying to install Java on Ubuntu Server and I was getting the following error:
./install.sfx.3763: not found

Since I'm not the one who ordered the cloud server I wasn't sure if it was 32- or 64-bit, but given the modest amount of RAM we're allocating I was guessing it was 32-bit.

Turns out I was wrong. I decided to try the 64-bit Java installer and it worked fine.

So if you get the mysterious install.sfx error when installing Java you're probably using the installer for the wrong architecture. Grab the "other" installer for your situation and it'll likely solve the problem.

I guess you could also ask the person who ordered the server whether it's 32- or 64-bit, but where's the adventure in that?

Filed under  //  Cloud Computing   Java   Linux   Ubuntu  

Comments (4)

 
Mar 19 / 2:14pm

SheevaPlug - Linux Computer in a Wall Socket

by Matthew Woodward
via openplug.org

Came across this in another article I'll blog about in a bit--amazingly cool.

Filed under  //  Hardware   Linux  

Comments (0)

 
Feb 21 / 7:21am

Changing the Host Name on CentOS

by Matthew Woodward
I'm working on a project that is leveraging a third-party Java library to handle payment processing. This library is a for-pay product and the license is tied to the machine name, so the original license was being used on a local development box but now that we want to move things to the production server, the license wouldn't be valid since the production server's host name isn't the same as the local development box.

Apparently the company who sells the payment processing library can update the license file, but it seemed even easier to simply change the host name of the production server to match what the license is expecting. This way we can move the payment processing functionality to a different machine as needed without having to wait for a new license key to be issued.

The production server in this case is CentOS, so to change the host name you simply update /etc/sysconfig/network with the new host name and reboot.

This is slightly different from Ubuntu, which stores the host name in /etc/hostname. On Ubuntu you can also use the hostname command to change the hostname temporarily, but it will revert back to the value in /etc/hostname when you reboot.

Filed under  //  CentOS   Linux   Ubuntu  

Comments (3)