Using sudo without a password

One of the most noticeable features of ubuntu is the common use of sudo in order to perform ‘root’ level tasks.  By default the ‘root’ user is disabled leaving sudo as the most used method of running administrator level commands and tasks.

A intial setup of sudo requires the user to type in the password everytime the command is used.  Although the autorization is maintained for a few minutes after the password is first used it can become quite tedious to constantly be prompted for a password on commonly used commands.

I have set up my own ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala system to allow the aptitude command to be run without having to type my password.  This lets me cron a very small script to keep my system up-to-date without being prompted for a password.

Here’s how I set it up:

$ sudo visudo

Below the line “%admin ALL

Things to do after installing Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid

Previously (in 2008) I wrote about “Things to do after installing openSUSE 11.0“. Well I felt like it was time to start this up again, but this time I’ll be expanding the “Things to do” to more distributions, including this one for Ubuntu.

So here I’ll assume that you’ve installed Ubuntu using whatever means necessary and you’re booting up for the first time. Here are some things that I typically do, when I build up a new Ubuntu box for personal use. I am also targeting this for people who are not comfortable or like to use the command line tools.

Wireless Configuration
The first thing I do is set up my wireless, so I have internet connectivity without being strapped down to a leash. My machine I’m installing on is a Dell Latitude D620. You can setup the wireless by going to the wireless icon in the top panel, and clicking on it to list available networks available.

Disable Nepomuk (Desktop Search) on KDE 4.4.2 Kubuntu Lucid 10.04

With the recent release of Kubuntu 10.04 KDE 4.4.2 will reach the masses. Unfortunately in KDE 4.4.2, Nepomuk the KDE Desktop Search tool is enabled by default.

I say unfortunate because many of you may experience times when your system is slow due to high CPU utilization caused by Nepomuk’s indexing mechanism (I experienced this on Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid RC while doing some testing)

Fortunately you can disable this feature quite easily using systemsettings (System Settings in the KMenu).

To do this open system settings, click on the Advanced tab and click on Desktop Search:

Visually Seeing Your Boot Speed With Bootchart Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Have you ever wanted to know what your computer did while it booted? Are you new to linux, and want to understand what actually went wrong? Are you frustrated with the speed of your boot?

Well look no further. There is an awesome software called bootchart which is available via repositories for most major Linux Distributions. This software will visually chart out, what is taking the resources while booting, gives you a nice bench mark of how long it took to boot, and if you’re having slow boots, it’ll help you track down where your problem process is.

The installation on the newly released Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 is quite simple.

You can install using:
sudo apt-get install bootchart

The above will also install the required package: pybootchartgui.

Now all you have to do is reboot your machine. This can be done via the terminal with:
sudo init 6
Note: The above switches you to runlvl 6, which indicates a restart.

Once your machine has booted back up, all you have to do is check out the .png file that was saved for you in /var/log/bootchart.

You can open the said picture, and be greeted with a great graph of your boot-up process.

xorg-server 1.8.1 Released

The first stable release of the 1.8 series is now available. Only two
changes over RC2 (Julien’s EXTRA_DIST patch and Adam’s VNC patch), so you
get the full changelog to 1.8.0 to make this email look more interesting.

If you are upgrading from 1.8.0, please beware that the xorg.conf.d
configuration has changed slightly, the server now supports
$datadir/X11/xorg.conf.d and $sysconfdir/X11/xorg.conf.d for configuration
files. While this should not interfere with your local configuration on an
install from the tarball, distributors should take care of this new
behavior.

You can check out the full release announcement, and list of changes in the mailing list announcement.

            

KDE 4.5 Beta 2 Released

From the announcement

KDE Software Compilation 4.5 Beta2 Released: Codename Cake

KDE Community Ships First Beta Release of the
4.5 Free Desktop, Applications and Development Platform

June 9th, 2010. Today, KDE has released the second beta version of what is to
become KDE SC 4.5.0 in August 2010. KDE SC 4.5 Beta2 is targeted at testers
and those that would like to have an early look at what’s coming to their
desktops and netbooks this summer. KDE is now firmly in beta mode, meaning
that the primary focus is on fixing bugs and preparing the stable release of
the software compilation this summer. Over the last two weeks, roughly since
the first beta, 1459 new bugs have been reported, and 1643 bugs have been
closed, so we’re witnessing a lot of stabilization activity right now. More
testing is in place, however, while the restless developers continue to create
a rock-stable 4.5.0.

Read more at: http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.5-beta2.php

            

KDE SC 4.4.5 Released

From the release notes:

KDE Software Compilation 4.4.5 Released: Codename “Ceilidh”

KDE Community Ships Fifth Translation and Service Release of the 4.4 Free
Desktop, Containing Numerous Bugfixes and Translation Updates

June 30th, 2010. Today, KDE has released a new version of the KDE Software
Compilation (KDE SC). This is expected to be the final bugfix and translation
update to KDE SC 4.4. KDE SC 4.4.5 is a recommended update for everyone
running KDE SC 4.4.4 or earlier versions. As the release only contains
bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for
everyone. Users around the world will appreciate that KDE SC 4.4.5 multi-
language support is more complete. KDE SC 4 is already translated into more
than 55 languages, with more to come.

KDE SC 4.4.5 brings a number of improvements:

Puppet 2.6.0 on SLES 11 SP1

Recently my orginization signed a contract with Novell to implement some SLES. With this I decided to start implementing puppet (learning it first) along with setting up SMT repositories and the such.

However, the puppet package that shipped with SLES 11 and eventually SLES 11 SP1 were the 0.24 branch, 0.24.8 to be exact. However, the said version didn’t include the zypper definition which is now in puppet 2.6.0, and if you upgraded to the 0.25.4 version in the system:management repository, you will have realized that it’s quite broken due to a few issues which I found.

I’ve since then modified the .spec, and modified the upstream server.init and client.init to work and build correctly on SLES 11 and openSUSE 11.x. I’ve also put upstream fixes to the puppet 2.6.0 branch to fix their upstream server.init, client.init, puppet.spec and to update the conf/suse directory to include the required default conf files. I’ve also created a Novell bug for the system:management repository to be fixed, but don’t imagine that will be fixed anytime soon (I haven’t been able to get a response from the maintainers).

With that said, the repository I’ve created in the buildservice can be found here:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/eclipseagent:/puppet/

            

Virtualbox Walkthrough: Ubuntu 10.04

This walkthrough takes you through creating a virtual machine on Virtualbox and installing Ubuntu 10.04 on it. This is a fairly thorough walkthrough, but by no means complete. When in doubt, consult the manual. It is assumed that you know the details of how to install Virtualbox, and Ubuntu as well. While neither of these are very difficult, both procedures exceed the scope of this text.

The host machine and OS is a Thinkpad T410 and Windows 7 64bit, respectively. The T410 (lovingly dubbed “Athena”) has an Intel Core i5-520M processor running at 2.40Ghz, integrated graphics and 4GB of RAM. However, these instructions should work on any machine capable of running Ubuntu and its host OS simultaneously. The version of Virtualbox used was the latest at the time–3.2.6.

When you open Virtualbox, you should see something like this:

Fluxbox on openSUSE 11.3

Are you sick of Gnome? KDE? or XFCE? Do you have a very old machine that you want to run Linux on, but the newer Desktop Environments are just too clunky? Well thanks to Linux, you have a choice of which Desktop Environment or Window Manager you want to use.

I personally use Fluxbox as my Window Manager, and have had a great experience with it on Fedora. So, I decided with the recent release of openSUSE 11.3, I’d give it a shot on the new distribution release.

I first started by installing openSUSE 11.3 onto my personal laptop, and opted for the minimal X install so that my machine wouldn’t be cluttered. After the installation I booted into the default Window Manager, TWM.

Next I added the Window Manager repository so that I’d have access to Fluxbox, and also added the X11:Utilities repository so I’d have access to feh, which is a great image viewer, and is also a application that will allow you to set your background while in various Window Managers.

How Microsoft wins against GNU/Linux in schools

microsoft, posted: 14-Jan-2009 07:09

Very interesting discussion on Slashdot here. The articles that are linked to and the discussion itself provide insights into the various strategies that Microsoft uses to ensure its presence in educational institutions and to prevent Linux from being used in schools instead. The biggest fear is to 'lose against Linux' and to give up on the for-free Microsoft training that tax-funded, public schools are unwittingly providing for Microsoft.

The discussion also mentions Microsoft's "Unl(read the entire post)...

Permalink to

11 reasons to switch to Linux

linux, posted: 4-Feb-2009 09:24

People like to publish top-10 lists of all sorts. And "reasons to switch to Linux" is no exception. Many of those have been published, and the latest entry is here. However, I think the author completely forgot a very important point. Also, some of the points he makes should be examined a bit more closely and critically. The comments on the original article reflect some valid and some unfounded criticism. Let me just run through those points (italics are quotes from the original 10-point list, m(read the entire post)...

Permalink to

A Linux distro for Cuba

linux, posted: 12-Feb-2009 11:35

Cuba has presented its own Linux distro, called Nova. Some of the argumentation laid out by the Cuban officials is very good:
...Nova was introduced at a Havana computer conference on "technological sovereignty" and is central to the Cuban government's desire to replace the Microsoft software running most of the island's computers....
Unlike Microsoft, Linux is free and has open access that allows users to modify its code to fit their needs. "Private software can have black holes and(read the entire post)...

Permalink to