Category: Linux

Active Directory authentication on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) »

Just in time for the feature freeze, likewise-open was uploaded to hardy’s universe repository.

likewise-open is a software which will allow users to join Active Directory domains easily, just a few click and all is set up.

I followed this new feature with great interest ’cause I’m working on an important linux-switch, thus I did some tests on the new packages (actually before it was uploaded to universe :-)).

I found a few bugs and I has some notes so I wrote everything using the likewise-open lauchpad bugs page. Please do some test if you can so we can confirm these bugs and help developers finding a solution.

How to install PHP PDO_OCI on Ubuntu Gutsy »

1) prerequisites

First of all we’ll install the php5-dev package which contains some utilities we’ll need for the build process:

sudo apt-get install php5-dev

then you’ve to find out your ORACLE_HOME environment variable, try executing:

env | grep ORACLE_HOME=

If this command outputs something like:

ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server

then you can jump to section “2) Getting and compiling PDO_OCI” otherwise go on thru this section.

If this guide we’ll just see how to find out which is your ORACLE_HOME directory if you’ve installed the oracle-xe server package. If you’ve installed instantclient or anything else please refer to the product documentation. So you’ve an installed and configured oracle-xe instance on your machine, now type:

cat /etc/init.d/oracle-xe |grep ORACLE_HOME=

the command should print something like:

ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server

now we’ve to export this variable to the current terminal session, we’ll do that with this command:

export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server

and the environment variable will be configured.

2) Getting and compiling PDO_OCI

Just cut and paste these simple commands to download PDO_OCI from the web and prepare it for the build phase:

cd /tmp
pecl download pdo_oci
tar xvfz PDO_OCI-1.0.tgz
cd PDO_OCI-1.0
phpize
mkdir include
ln -s /usr/include/php5/ include/php

now everything should be setup and we can build the driver and install it with:

make && make install

If everything is fine you can continue

3) Configuring PHP and Apache

if everything is fine you can go on editing your php.ini file and adding this line:

extension=pdo_oci.so

now create a phpinfo.php file under your apache’s document root, containing this line:

<?php phpinfo();

point your browser to:

http://localhost/phpinfo.php

and search for the “environment” section, it should look like the one in the next screenshot:
environment variables
if you see the ORACLE_HOME line everything it’s ok, jump to the “4) Closure” section otherwise edit /etc/apache2/envvars file and add the ORACLE_HOME configuration, it will be something like this (on a single line):

export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server

4) Closure

Restart your apache and you’re done:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

The importance of delivering localized Linux »

Situation 1:

You go to the supermarket and buy a new PC, you’ll find that the installed copy of Windows is perfectly localized in your language by default.

Situation 2:

You go to the Apple store and buy a new MAC, you’ll find that the installed copy of MAC OS is perfectly localized in your language by default.

Situation 3:

You download a copy of Ubuntu, burn it and boot it, select your language and… find that half of the system is in English and only a few things are in your language (this happens for Italian, maybe things can be worst with other languages).

What I want to say it’s quite obvious, if Linux vendors want to penetrate the newbies market, they must provide fully localized ISO images, there are no excuses. This is my point of view.

A lot of time ago, when I entered the UCK team, I wanted to build an ISO localization team, to build and deliver a full set of Ubuntu localized images. That part of the UCK project never came to life because of some problems but I still believe in its importance. Ubuntu team seemed to be quite regardless of this problem and our solution.

We (CreaLabs) continue to build and deliver the Ubuntu Italian ISO and I know there are a few other similar projects around the world but the point is that these kind of initiatives should become more officially endorsed by Ubuntu (or any other distro, problem is the same).

I talked a few time with the Ubuntu Italian Community but in all these years no page of the site links to our ISO image. Well… I’ve to say I’m a bit sad about that ’cause this seems to mean something like “we don’t care about that”.

Now, critics apart what can/should we do? If you agree with my point of view contact your distro (many of them have localized communities) and make them read this post, we just need to talk about the problem and we’ll find how to solve it. Having a fully localized Linux delivering infrastructure can only bring more users to our beloved OS.

What about gnomescan? »

The new beautiful interface for scanning media? Think gnome should add it by default and hemmmm… ubuntu? can someone please drop xscan? ok xscan works but it’s 2007, think we deserve a better interface…

just a thought

Remastering an “Ubuntu alternate” ISO with Ubuntu Customization Kit - the complete guide »

You have an Ubuntu alternate ISO and you want to customize it, to do things with ease you choose to do that with Ubuntu Customization Kit which will handle most of the tasks for you.

Preamble

This guide is written with the SVN version of Ubuntu Customization Kit, thus somethings (actually only minor things such as log messages) could be different from the ones you’ll get with your copy of UCK.

Prerequisites

To remaster an Ubuntu alternate ISO you need to:

  • be running an Ubuntu based distro on your host system in order to install and run UCK successfully
  • have UCK installed in your Ubuntu box. In order to install it go to the UCK’s website, click download and select the debian package. After downloading the package install it with the usual tools (dpkg or gdebi or whatever).
  • have an Ubuntu alternate ISO downloaded somewhere in your hard disks.

First step: extract the ISO

An ISO image is a single file, you can’t modify it in any way keeping it “as is”, thus you’ll use UCK to extract its contents to a directory with this command:

fabrizio@fabrizio-laptop:~$ sudo uck-remaster-unpack-iso ubuntu-7.10-server-i386.iso
Mounting ISO image…
Unpacking ISO image…
Unmounting ISO image…

Ok all went perfectly, now you’ll find the contents of your ISO in the “~/tmp/remaster-iso” directory

Second step: prepare the remastering environment

This step creates a new package repository inside your remastering directory (~/tmp/remaster-iso/pool/extras), in that repository you can now put all the packages you want to be added to the new ISO.

fabrizio@fabrizio-laptop:~$ sudo uck-remaster-prepare-alternate
now you can copy your packages in /home/fabrizio/tmp/remaster-iso/pool/extras, customize preseed files or do other customizations

Third step: adding new software

Alternate ISO system only manages deb packages thus you need to have deb packages for all the software you need to add to your new ISO.
There’s only one thing you have to do, copy the deb packages to the ~/tmp/remaster-iso/pool/extras directory, that’s all.

IMPORTANT: Added packages are not automatically installed by the Ubuntu installer on my target system

If you add software to the extras pool you can have two reasons:

  • you want those packages to be automatically installed into your target system
  • you want those packages to be available on cd/dvd to be optionally installed into your target system after a choice of the user (Ubuntu text installer handle this within “tasksel”)

If your option is the first then adding the deb packages to the extras directory won’t be enough, you’ll have to modify the preesed file, what is a preseed file? It’s a file which tells the Ubuntu installer what to do, it’s a way to script it.

Preseed files have their own syntax but for the purpose of this small guide I suggest you to take a deep read of the “modify installer behaviour using a preseed file” guide.

The “install cd customization” guide is really big but you don’t need to study it all, you can read only the “modify installer behaviour using a preseed file” section just because UCK covers all other sections for you.

Forth step: modify software that already was in the original ISO

Sometimes you could want to modify default configurations of software which is bundled with the default ISO, in order to do that you’ve to:

  • locate the original deb package within the remaster-iso/pool tree
  • delete it
  • create a new deb package for the software, with all your customizations inside it
  • copy your new deb package to the position where the original one was (eg: ~/tmp/remaster-iso/pool/main/a/apache2)

You need to delete the original package to avoid possible conflicts.

Fifth step: finalize the remastering environment

Ubuntu alternate ISO system works with signed Ubuntu repository thus you’ll have to regenerate all the metadata files for your updated/new repositories and than sign it with GPG. If one of these conditions are not met the installer will hang telling that your ISO is corrupted.

When I was writing alternate support for UCK this was one of the most difficult part to code and this would be difficult for you too if you were not using UCK :)

If you don’t have it, create a personal GPG key before going ahead. Remember also to write down the ID of GPG key, it should be printed by the key generation process or you can read it with the gpg --list-keys command.

Now simply let UCK do the work for you with:

fabrizio@fabrizio-laptop:~$ sudo uck-remaster-finalize-alternate 691D19E1

UCK will then do a lot of things, download files from the Internet and do all the tasks we were talking before, the operation could last a few minutes and you’ll see a lot of log lines. You’ll be asked to type the password for your GPG key, this should happed 3 times.

When the process will be finished you’ll be ready to repack your ISO.

Sixth step: pack your new ISO

fabrizio@fabrizio-laptop:~$ sudo uck-remaster-pack-iso

A lot of log lines will be printed in this phase too, don’t worry about those if you don’t see any strange error message.
Ok that’s all, finally you did it, where’s your new ISO file? Here:

fabrizio@fabrizio-laptop:~$ ls -lah ~/tmp/remaster-new-files/
totale 501M
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4,0K 2007-11-27 11:49 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4,0K 2007-11-27 11:49 ..
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 500M 2007-11-27 11:49 livecd.iso

Now you’re free to burn it, test it with qemu/virtualbox/vmware or whatever ;-)

Closing notes

This guide should be pretty exhaustive, if you encounter errors, misspellings or have any suggestion, please feel free to drop a comment!

And… remember to DIGG this guide using the button here below :-)

Ubuntu Customization Kit 2.0.1 »

A small maintenance release to fix a few bugs, mainly focused on the “alternate” ISO remastering.
Here you have the complete changelog:

GUI:

  • version number shown in uck-gui was fixed

Backend:

  • when unpacking an “alternate” ISO now we don’t try to parse the filesystem manifest
    because it doesn’t exist
  • uck-remaster-finalize-alternate now can handle new releases of ubuntu-keyring package

Package:

  • fakeroot dependency was added

Links:
Download UCK 2.0.1
UCK’s official website

Minibuntu - the base for your distro, now add your ingredients »

A few days ago a guy on UCK forum told me that he would need a clean Ubuntu livecd without all the bells and whistles, without gnome and all the graphic releated software, a sort of minimum system to build on his new Ubuntu derivate, starting from a clean base.

I thought it was a really good idea to publish the minimal Ubuntu package set packed in a small bootable livecd ISO image.

This is minibuntu, the base Ubuntu system, ready for your ingredients to cook your own Ubuntu derivative.

Hope you like the idea, please let me know what you think about that.
Read more on minibuntu page.

Ubuntu Customization Kit 2.0 is finally out! »

It’s been a long journey, the new release is out after more than 6 months of work, adding features and fixing bugs thanks to the help of the community.

What’s the main goal of UCK 2.0? Becoming the de-facto standard base for Ubuntu remastering operations.
How this goal is achieved? Building a complete and stable API system.
Looking at the new UCK you’ll notice that we’ve splitted all the features in small scripts that could could simply include in batch processing or more advanced remastering software.

A deep look at the binaries:

uck-gui
uck-remaster

These are the 2 files you already had in previous releases, the first is the GUI system to easily access the most common functionalities and automatically build a custom Ubuntu ISO without dealing with CLI. The second one is the main backend point of access. This is called by uck-gui to script all the remastering steps. You can use it if you save the configuration files created by uck-gui for a re-processing.

But the most important thing, the API I was talking about is here:

uck-remaster-chroot-rootfs
uck-remaster-clean
uck-remaster-finalize-alternate
uck-remaster-pack-initrd
uck-remaster-pack-iso
uck-remaster-pack-rootfs
uck-remaster-prepare-alternate
uck-remaster-remove-win32-files
uck-remaster-unpack-initrd
uck-remaster-unpack-iso
uck-remaster-unpack-rootfs

Use this scripts to access to ALL the features of UCK, also minor ones that are not used by the GUI. If you want to take a quick look to the options check UCK API reference.

You can notice a small utility to quickly remove win32 related files and a set of scripts to work with alternate ISOs (one of the most difficult part of the game…).

Future?
As I already told I wish that we could join reconstructor to build THE solid Ubuntu remastering framework, much more helpful and optimized that the DELL’s DRU.

I think the core system is pretty complete now, we could add more “bling” features trying to automate tasks such as gfxboot/usplash customization and so on but… we still have to think a bit about that, stay tuned :-)

Download links:

no comment »

An open letter to Steve Ballmer from Mandriva’s blog.

UPDATE: maybe things are getting repaired.

Healthy critics about Ubuntu »

This is a great article:
Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) Pragmatic Visual Presentation Critique
I hope Ubuntu and Gnome developers will read and take care about those considerations.

Source: OSNews.