Opinions, Expertise, Passion.

So I managed to find all dependencies after some trial and error for compiling VirtualBox 1.6.4 under Ubuntu 8.0.4, then finding the Linux build instructions to confirm.

It was not successful however in building, throwing the following error:

kBuild: Compiling dyngen - dyngen.c
kBuild: Linking dyngen
kmk[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/VirtualBox-1.6.4/src/recompiler’
kmk[2]: Entering directory `/usr/local/VirtualBox-1.6.4/src/apps’
kmk[2]: pass_bldprogs: No such file or directory
kmk[2]: *** No rule to make target `pass_bldprogs’. Stop.
kmk[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/VirtualBox-1.6.4/src/apps’
kmk[1]: *** [pass_bldprogs_before] Error 2
kmk[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/Virtu

More searching, I needed to add two more files manually. Read More Here.

A long wait, compiling for 20+ minutes, and a necessary reboot as upgraded images threw another error, I got 1.6.4 running, and able to boot Fedora Core 9 image created under 1.5.6

But the real test, and the need for this version was to install Intrepid.

This also failed with a Kernel panic during boot. More info to see this reported as a Ubuntu Bug and Virtual Box Bug.

More work still needed.

To change the Hostname under Mac OS/X 10.5

$ sudo scutil --set HostName servername.example.com

$ lsof -p [pid]

I found a good reference page for Debian package management commands apt-??? and dpkg.

Check out http://diablo.ucsc.edu/~wgscott/debian/apt-dpkg-ref.html

A fresh install of my laptop with Ubuntu 7.10 after stuff just didn’t work causes pains sometimes of the installed programs. Skype being one of them.

Goto Skype for Linux and get the Ubuntu installer.

I needed some dependencies.

$ su -
$ apt-get install libqt4-gui libqt4-core
$ dpkg -i skype-debian_1.4.0.118-1_i386.deb
$ exit
$ skype

Voila, all my old preferences (from ~) work just nicely. I see it’s also a newer version.

ctrl-alt-l - Lock Screen
ctrl-alt-d - Desktop

# Multi Cut-Paste History
apt-get install glipper

Add to System|Preferences|Sessions|Startup Programs

Thanks Yves

perl_modules.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

use ExtUtils::Installed;
my $instmod = ExtUtils::Installed->new();
foreach my $module ($instmod->modules()) {
my $version = $instmod->version($module) || "???";
       print "$module -- $version\n";
}

remove_perl_module.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use ExtUtils::Packlist;
use ExtUtils::Installed;

$ARGV[0] or die “Usage: $0 Module::Name\n”;

my $mod = $ARGV[0];

my $inst = ExtUtils::Installed->new();

    foreach my $item (sort($inst->files($mod))) {
             print “removing $item\n”;
             unlink $item;
          }

     my $packfile = $inst->packlist($mod)->packlist_file();
          print “removing $packfile\n”;
          unlink $packfile;

http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html

I upgraded my work laptop to Ubuntu 7.04 Fiesty. The process was not as smooth as I expected. First it complained about not enough space on /var, so I cleaned up sufficient space. It continued to complain about 3 times.

The install itself I was hoping would have been automated, so when starting at night I wake up, and it’s done, however there were a number of installation errors, and prompts to keep or override configuration files, which I had to do manually at least 10 times. This of course made my laptop unavailable for a number of hours.

Today I’ve found the first real problem. My Open Office has lost all it’s fonts that I’ve loaded on in the past. Arial for example is no longer available. Of course searching on the web for installing fonts gives you several links, do you think any of these worked?

I found in reviewing my backup that the directory /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/ had been removed. Re-instating this gave me back my fonts.

As part of my job, I spend a lot of time assisting people when they are driving. But sometimes is can be trying.

• People that type commands, make a mistake, then backspace over typed text (like 10-20 characters), only to have to retype the text again. Using bash for example, you can just arrow back, change then goto end of line, saving all that re-typing. And it’s so painful when they are slow typer’s.
• People that have to use copy/paste (ie, mouse). But when they scroll up several pages to find a command, copy, then scroll down to paste when up arrow a few times in command history gives you the command you want. Even, simply removing the scrolling down (it’s not needed to paste) would save 1 of 4 operations.
• Using copy/paste in vi, where your not in insert mode(so it doesn’t work properly, so they have to exit insert mode, copy, enter insert mode, paste, just to do it again)! People need to learn the power of Yank (Y or yy)

From within vi, which is normally vim these days.

:syn off

That’s bugged me at times and I never knew how to turn it off.

Linux has a cool command called dirtree that gives a more visual representation of your directory structure. If you have the misfortune of working on a Unix variant that doesn’t have it, checkout this cool one liner.

ls -R . | grep ":$" | sed -e 's/:$//' -e 's/[^-][^\/]*\\//–/g’ -e ’s/^/   /’ -e ’s/-/|/’

Thanks for the command Tom.

I found this cool command called glxgears that you can run under X.

$ glxgears
10524 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2104.650 FPS
10003 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2000.501 FPS
8417 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1683.340 FPS    * Moved the window from left to right
10538 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2107.443 FPS
5639 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1120.850 FPS   * Moved the window around constantly
X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

$ glxgears --help
Warrning: unknown parameter: --help

Note the spelling error in “Warrning”.

Don’t try this at home unless you understand what it’s going to do.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1

For some reason my vqadmin failed to create a new mail domain?? I know I had some /home permissions problems, but that was quite some time ago, perhaps I haven’t added a domain for mail in that time. Anyway, time to refresh my skills and software.

vqadmin

Home Page

cd /src
wget http://www.inter7.com/vqadmin/vqadmin-2.3.2.tar.gz
tar xvfz vqadmin-2.3.2.tar.gz
cd vqadmin-2.3.2
./configure --enable-cgibindir=/home/vqadmin/cgi-bin --enable-htmldir=/home/vqadmin/www
make && make install-strip

vi /opt/httpd/conf/httpd.include

        deny from all
        Options ExecCGI
        AllowOverride AuthConfig
        Order deny,allow

vi /home/vqadmin/cgi-bin/vqadmin/.htaccess
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /home/vqadmin/.passwd
AuthName vQadmin
require valid-user
satisfy any

chown nobody /home/vqadmin/cgi-bin/vqadmin/.htaccess
chmod 644 /home/vqadmin/cgi-bin/vqadmin/.htaccess
htpasswd -bc /home/vqadmin/.passwd admin admin_password
chmod 644 /home/vqadmin/.passwd
apachectl stop
apachectl start

All fixed. For a step by step guide to all Qmail software I recommend http://qmailrocks.org

Let’s say you created a file in your home directory but can’t work out which directory you put it in.


$ find ~ -name somefile.txt


You can replace ~ (tilda) with a directory e.g. / (slash) for search all locations on your system.

Let’s say you want to find all the JPEG’s you have.

$ find ~ -name "*.jpg"


Now to improve on this, I know I put a JPEG somewhere in the past few days, give me just the files from the past 3 days.

$ find . -name "*.jpg" -mtime -3


And what if you only wanted files greater then 2MB

$ find . -name "*.jpg" -mtime -3 -size +2M


If you want to look at a more detailed listing of the files found, like the format you are familar with using ls, try this.

$ find . -name "*.jpg" -mtime -3 -exec ls -l {} \;


You can find more then files, lets find all the directories you have.

$ find ~ -type d


I haven’t added it, but historically you needed to add -print on the end to print the results, seems nowadays this is optional.

I briefly used the -exec option above, I used it for various purposes. Here are a few.

$ find /backup-location -name "backup.*.tar.gz" -mtime +3 -print -exec rm -f {} \;
$ find . -name CVS -exec rm -rf {} \;


The first I run against my backup directory, that removes the online backups older then 3 days. Of course I’ve also got offline backups.
The second is when I checkout stuff from CVS and I want to prune all the CVS information. NOTE: Using the rm -rf command is very dangerous, you should only use this when you know your stuff. Used in the wrong way you delete everything, if you don’t have backups, there ain’t any UNDO in Linux. Also if you do it as root, you can effectively kill your installation in a split second.

There are other commands that perform various level of finding (e.g. commands via path) and other various stuff. A topic for another time, but to entice you.


$ which find
$ whereis find
$ locate find