May 4th, 2010 admin
Just to remind myself as much as anything, as I’ve been through this a few times. ClamAV was complaining loudly in the logfiles about not having the most up to date ClamAV. I searched around and was pointed to the Debian Unstable repository to /etc/apt/sources.list (Read the whole article before you add this one …there is a better one)
After that, on running apt-get update, you get a message like this:
W: GPG error: http://volatile.debian.org etch/volatile Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY DFD993306D849617
So, take the pubkey number off the end and do this with it.
sudo gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys DFD993306D849617
sudo gpg --armor --export DFD993306D849617 > new.key
sudo apt-key add new.key
I then got a message saying “The following packages have been kept back: clamav clamav-daemon clamav-freshclam”
By using
sudo aptitude dist-upgrade
(NB aptitude rather than apt-get) the new packages are downloaded. However they’re still not up to the level that ClamAV is telling me to upgrade to.
So, more searching. It turns out the most up to date Ubuntu Repositories are from this page … https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-clamav/+archive/ppa. In my case the solution was to add these lines to my /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-clamav/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-clamav/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
And then run through the pubkey process above, with the different pubkey id number. Later distros might get away with the add-apt-key command, but I was running hardy (8.04) on this particular server.
Posted in General IT, Linux, Security | No Comments »
November 5th, 2009 admin
I’ve learnt my lesson on this a few times: things break when you upgrade Ubuntu on laptops. I can understand why. There is a huge variety of hardware for laptops, particularly BIOSes, sound chips and wireless chips, and every manufacturer likes to tweak them a bit. The Linux kernel has the unenviable task of having to support ALL of them immediately, whereas in Windows the hardware component manufacturer supplies drivers which you have to install to get your machine working correctly.
Anyway, for example, last time I upgraded my two laptops from 8.10 to 9.04, a lot of things broke, and I was hurting for a long time. In fact one of the laptops never really got straight. This was irritating for me, but as I had another laptop to use for my main work, it wasn’t a major annoyance. But I can imagine if you only have one machine and the sound doesn’t work on it, for example, it would leave a nasty taste in your mouth.
So this time, I started with the Thinkpad R51e, which is my spare laptop. I have the /home directory mounted on a separate partition, which makes things really easy. Basically you just blow away the main OS partition, and then remount the your data partition at /home, preserving all your data. (OK its a little more complicated than that, but I’m not blogging about that right now). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT | No Comments »
April 23rd, 2009 admin
Have you ever noticed that when you type a search term into the search box in the top right of your Firefox browser, that a load of junk gets added to the search term. For example, you search for ‘banana’ and you get something like this:
http://www.google.com.ph/search?q=banana&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a
Well what you’re effectively doing is giving Google a lot of information for free. Which irritates me. All I really need is this,
http://www.google.com.ph/search?q=banana
and if they really want to know more about me, then they’re welcome to go digging through their logs.
OK its a minor irritation, but one that we can fix! I understand that Ubuntu does it as part of a deal with Google, but there’s no reason why we can’t take matters into our own hands and change the defaults.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Linux | No Comments »
November 14th, 2008 admin
A lot of commentators in the blogosphere have shown disappointment at the fact that little seems to have changed with Ubuntu 8.10. My answer to them is that in fact a lot has changed, but not much of it is visible. To my mind a lot of these under-the-hood changes have addressed fundamental issues which needed to be fixed as a priority, so that normal users could just get on with the business of using Linux, rather than scrabbling around in config files.
Also, Ubuntu has an aggressive schedule, which means release are made every 6 months. I believe the purpose of the April (.04) releases is to introduce new features, and the October (.10) release is to refine them and fix any breaks. Compare this approach to Windows or Macintosh, where releases are made around every three years, and you can appreciate that releasing little and often means that changes are more diffuse and less apparent. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Linux | 1 Comment »
November 11th, 2008 admin
I keep hearing how Ubuntu has finally nailed the dual head hassles of the past, and now you can just plug in an external monitor and go. Alas I’ve never had that experience, either with this Dell Vostro 1400 or either of the two IBM Thinkpads I’ve run Ubuntu on.The IBMs were both 1024×768 resolution, as is my external monitor. The Dell is a less standard 1280×800 resolution. I also, on occasion plug it into my LCD TV, but that’s another story.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Linux | No Comments »
November 10th, 2008 admin
I’ve been getting irritated with the touchpad on this new Dell Vostro 1400. I type for a while, and then my palm touches the touchpad, sending the pointer skimming into the line above, or clicking on buttons I don’t want to click on. So, I looked around and figured out a solution. Over the past two years, I’ve had to update this post for every single new version of Ubuntu, which has been a pain, so look for the heading below which corresponds to your version of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Hardy 8.04
First of all, you need to edit your /etc/xorg.conf file, for which you’ll need root privileges – use sudo.You just need to add one line in the input device section, which is the one in bold below. (Intrepid 8.10, see below)
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
Option "SHMConfig"
EndSection Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Linux | 3 Comments »
October 9th, 2008 admin
Step back a few years … I’ve often thought when I’m under a desk somewhere jiggling wires, is that some kind of audio feedback on ping would be useful: your server isn’t responding, but when you re-seat the ethernet connector it comes back online; you have a messy, unlabeled switch to work through, so you unplug wires until the audio feedback stops, and you’ve located your machine. That kind of thing.
I’ve occasionally looked around the internet for such a tool and uncovered a couple of scripts and tools which don’t quite work. I’ve even thought of writing my own script, but never quite got around to it. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Linux | No Comments »
August 19th, 2008 admin
As I noted in a previous post I was recently the victim of a Random Kernel Upgrade Hell (RKUH). Maybe I should trademark that acronym, although its not particularly prounounceable like SNAFU, or PEBCAK. Anyway … the fact was that I was spending several hours trying to fix various problems with wifi drivers, VMware server, truecrypt and the sound in Skype, when it suddenly occured to me that a re-install was probably quicker. The double edged sword of Linux: quick to reinstall, but then again why should you need to do it so often? Well I guess in my case I push the OS pretty hard with some esoteric applications, but even so …
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Linux | No Comments »
August 19th, 2008 admin
I always forget this one when I’m setting up a new Ubuntu machine, so this is as much for my benefit as anyone else’s …
I’ve used a lot of OSes and have always found the chkconfig command on Redhat / Centos very useful for changing runlevels of services. The equivalent on Ubuntu is the fabulously unmemorably named sysv-rc-conf. (UPDATE – Ignore most of this post and read Ernest’s comment below) … Here’s how to get it on your system.
sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf
and to run it requires
sudo ..uh what was its name again sysrc something? Dammit.
So what I normally do is a quick symlink:
sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/sysv-rc-conf /usr/sbin/chkconfig
and then I can use chkconfig as if it was really available for Ubuntu. Don’t know why they couldn’t just stick to the same name. Bah.
Posted in Linux | 4 Comments »
June 13th, 2008 admin
My girlfriend turned up this morning with her scanner, a Trust Flat Scan USB 19200. Its an old model from around 5-6 years ago, and she’d lost the driver disk. This was clearly a challenge for Linux …
I plugged the thing in (its a USB scanner, which pulls all its power from the USB bus) and the light went on. However the scanner application which comes with both PCLinuxOS and Ubuntu wouldn’t start up. Time for some investigation. I got a root terminal shell and tried poking around
lsusb showed that the scanner was recognised. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Linux | 2 Comments »
