ubuntu

Continuing my "avoid the console" series, I'm going to cover remotely managing partitions on a Linux server. Yes, this will involve a bit of console, but this will set you on a path to using GUI tools on your servers without having to install a complete windowing environment. Installing a complete desktop-like environment is a waste of resources for most servers, so keeping things to a minimum helps to streamline and allow your servers to do more things with less hardware.

A lot of new Linux users don't realize it, but a Linux desktop has both a "server" and a "client" for drawing things on the screen. This allows you to separate the program's interface from the machine it's running on and display it remotely.

The most powerful way to remotely manage Linux servers is using the SSH (Secure SHell.) It's like a DOS prompt for your server that you can use securely and remotely. The beauty is that if set up properly, it can tunnel a windowed program through that connection to display on your local desktop. Just don't get confused as to what is running where.

Why bother with a locked-in iPad if you're a true technohead, when you can install Ubuntu on the Archos 9 Internet Tablet? The Archos 9 has several flaws, mostly surrounding the installed software. People say it's slow, but really with something other than "Windows Starter" it's actually pretty peppy. The internal hard drive is a bit slow, so I replaced mine with an SSD so I don't have to worry about a physically spinning drive anymore in my hands, and I get better performance.

Installing Ubuntu on it isn't for the weak kneed, but it's not that tough either. Here's a step by step to get you up and running.

I stumbled on a little bug today while trying to use my Sennheiser USB headset adapter with my Sennheiser headphones. I plugged them in and got nothing...

The device would appear in System - Preferences - Sound, but on the available output tab it didn't show.

A bit more probing found that Alsa worked just fine with it.

Finally I determined that Pulseaudio wouldn't fully recognize the headset after it was plugged in until it was restarted. To do this you can either log out and log back in or type in the following commands at a console:

pulseaudio -k
pulseaudio --check

Be sure you don't have any software open that's using the speakers or mic at the time or that program will likely freeze up.

Well, it seems they still haven't made any progress at making the Compiz graphics effects work on a multi-GPU setup, but you can run two X screens each using two monitors and keep the Compiz effects. If you want to grab and drag windows across all four monitors, you lose the cool graphics effects.

Here's what it might look like though using four monitors of three different sizes using xinerama without Compiz on Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 with two nVidia cards, each driving two monitors:

If you've installed Ubuntu 10.04 you may have noticed that it boots amazingly fast, but on some installations the time after you login until the desktop is visible may take 5 to 10 seconds.

I found that there were several startup applications by default that I had no need for. Disabling those applications will cause your desktop to be available nearly instantly, meaning with the new improved boot times, I can actually turn on my computer and be sitting at a working desktop in about 7 seconds (not counting BIOS post time of 23 seconds.)

And that's not a resume - that's a fresh boot.

How do you do that last bit of speedup? After logging into Ubuntu, go to System - Preferences - Startup Applications.

Here's a list of what I disabled, your mileage may vary:

Bluetooth Manager (I don't have a bluetooth device in this PC)
Evolution Alarm Notifier (I run Thunderbird)
Personal File Sharing
Remote Desktop Server
Ubuntu One
Visual Assistance

In addition to doing that, I added in a few other programs such as Rhythmbox to start when I log in. Even with those extra apps added, it shaved several seconds off my login time.

I just upgraded first my desktop and then my primary domain / LDAP server to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

Everything went very smooth on the desktop, but I did it as a full install onto a new 64 GB SSD hard drive, with a HDD for the /home directory.

The server however broke phpldapadmin which was installed, and caused all my custom puppet scripts to fail due to bad design based on poor documentation. As usual, they moved my cheese. That's why I wait for the LTS upgrades for servers, which is what it's designed for anyway.

On the desktop though I must say - the reviews don't do it justice. I was reading the news on the net about what changed and thinking "well that's not much." Boy was I wrong! There's a lot of little attention to detail and just plain... smoothness to it that wasn't there before. It's truly a polished release. The only issue I had was related to using Thunderbird. They package Thunderbird, but they don't allow installation of Lightning from a package because there's no 64 bit version in the package system. I had to find the beta 64 bit version of Lightning and manually install it.

And as for all the hubub over switching to Yahoo as the default search engine - it apparently didn't happen. But the darn window buttons were annoying before I switched them back to what I'm used to.

You've heard of community developed software. What about community developed advertising?

I just did a normal upgrade of suggested security patches that included a kernel update. I typically run dual monitors using "Twinview" that allows me to drag windows from one monitor to another.

After the upgrade, the drivers refuse to recognize the second monitor. I've swapped cables and both monitors work, but even after swapping it defaults back to the right hand screen. The NVidia control panel swears that I only have one screen attached.

I've tried restoring my xorg.conf file from backup, blowing it away entirely and recreating it with the NVidia tool and manually editing it by hand all to no avail. Something seems to have broken twinview in the new updates.

Very frustrating...

Update...

Turns out the monitor cable was at fault - the cable fine after swapping to the other port, but it wouldn't detect that the monitor was there when things were started up. Weird that it didn't occur until a reboot.

Our receptionist PC motherboard was dying, so I threw together a new $400 PC from a barebones MSI box, an enterprise-grade HD, a Celeron 64 bit CPU and 4 GB of RAM. Simple and easy.

Restoring the PC to operational status was very easy because of the PXE boot setup, our Puppet installation, and the use of Duplicity for backups.

I simply booted the new hardware (note the lack of DVD, CD or floppy drive) from the network, picked to install Ubuntu 64 bit and gave it the same hostname as her old PC. Then I walked away. Literally only 10 minutes from unpacking until the PC was installing it's OS unattended.

I came back about 20 minutes later to a newly installed OS with all updates and patches already applied. Then I just ran a single duplicity command line to restore the home directory from the backups and voila!

Yeah, Linux network administration is awesome.

Today I was fed a series of updates for Karmic. At first things went wacko, but only because I'd installed a test version of the NVidia drivers on my system while trying to fix the problems myself. After I reinstalled the standard driver and logged back in things seem much better. My Compiz crashes appear gone.

More importantly, the flash click interactive bug is fixed - when Karmic first hit the streets, on 64 bit with Flash and advanced desktop effects you couldn't interact with most flash animations and videos with the mouse (without having to pull some tricks.) Thankfully that issue is gone.

Also, it appears they've fixed the flash performance issues - hulu.com works great in full screen now without having to increase my CPU speed to max manually.

Very nicely done, Canonical. Very nicely done indeed.