Sunday, June 14, 2009

[Jaunty] Configure program at system boot up

The tpb services can be started from the command line as follows

/etc/init.d/tpd start

This allowed the interaction with some of the Thinkpad laptop special function keys. Now, how can I get this activated automatically during bootup?

Previously, KDE provided KControl where I can choose the various programs available to start or not during system boot. In Jaunty and KDE 4.2, its gone! Here I list 2 alternative ways to manage this. Both require users to have a basic knowledge of the runlevels.

METHOD 1: Back to old debian school!
Step 1. Install the sysv-rc-conf from a terminal

sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf

Step 2. Run the program, choose what you want activated at each Runlevel.


To select the next page press Control+n or p. Other than that just use the cursor arrows to move to different services.

METHOD 2: Use Gnome Bum. Better to also understand scripts priority that begin with "K" means to shutdown, "S" to start up.
Step 1: Install the Bum with the terminal.

sudo apt-get install bum

Step 2: Start the Bum.
From the KMenu ->Application ->System ->Bootup Manager

Since its menu driven, should be easier to figure out.

Friday, June 5, 2009

[Jaunty] Managing sound device

The recent Kubuntu 9.04 Linux uses the Pulseaudio to manage its sounds device selection. To enable all sound devices to use the Pulseaudio sound server, open a terminal and type

asoundconf set-pulseaudio

Any application that need to access the audio, including the ALSA will be sent to the Pulseaudio server. The settings can be configured at

/usr/share/alsa/pulse-alsa.conf

Open or play a movie or sound and test if it works. If this does not work, reset back to use the default ALSA system with the command;

asoundconf reset-default-card

I am still trying to figure out the significant benefit of using Pulseaudio.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

[Jaunty] Firefox can use apt://

Some URLs accessed by Firefox is used to install packages for Linux. For example the URL to add the canonical cloud client.

apt://ubuntuone-client?refresh=yes

I get the following message.

Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (apt) isn't associated with any program.

Solution.

I started synaptic and added the package apturl, searched for Ubufox extension for Firefox. Restarted Firefox and now I can access the URL.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Reset MySQL 5 password

I am running a Joomla training this week. One of the main items is getting the password assignment for root and database user. As a reference here is to resetting root password and assigning user to have full access to a database.

Reset root password
Step 1: Restart the MySQL server without using the user restrictions and access to the network.

#/etc/init.d/mysql stop
#mysqld --skip-grant-tables --skip-networking&

Step 2: Open another terminal and reset your password

# mysql mysql -u root
mysql> UPDATE user SET password=PASSWORD('NewPassword') WHERE user="root";
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
# /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Assigning user access to database
Step 1: Login a root to mysql


Step 2: Assign the user joe to use from localhost the database somedatabase.
mysql> GRANT ALL privileges ON somedatabse.* TO joe@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'SomePassword';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Friday, May 22, 2009

Backup Thunderbird2

Just after installing the Kubuntu Jaunty 9.04 Linux, its time to restore some of my stuff. Firstly, I need communications and this is via my Thunderbird.

Backup:
I found it necessary to disable some of the extensions to allow the new Thunderbird to run properly.
Copy the Thunderbird directory profile (usually it goes with some crazy name followed by your profile name to the backup device. Example

cp ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/izwvasdx.default /media/backupdisk

Restore:
Step 1:
Copy the directory profile back to the new system

Step 2:
In the terminal create an email profile that uses the old directory, type

thunderbird -profilemanager


Ref: Mozilla

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Install Moodle on CentOS 5

Following are steps to install Moodle 1.9 on CentOS 5.

Step 1
Install mysql-server-5.0.45, mysql-5.0.45 and php-5.1.6

Install other PHP library php-mbstring-5.1.6, php-xmlrpc-5.1.6

Step 2
Add the user name "user1" and database "mymoodle" to MySQL with the correct privilege.

Step 3
Download the moodle and extract to /var/www/html/moodle
Create and assign the permission of the webserver to the data directory at /var/www/moodledata

Step 4
In a start the moodle installation via web browser, use the location
http://localhost/moodle

Copy the script into a file named config.php within the root directory of Moodle.

Follow the rest of the instruction to complete.

Step 5
Install lynx to activate the cron. Edit the crontab to run every 30 minutes.

$ crontab -e
*/30 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null http://localhost/moodle/admin/cron.php



See http://docs.moodle.org/en/Installing_Moodle
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Administration_FAQ

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

I am a registered Linux user #490593

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