WarpConduit Computing

Installing Metadot on Ubuntu Server 9.04

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Installing Ubuntu 9.04 on Virtual PC

Note: If not installing to Virtual PC, ignore any steps that have to do with GRUB, menu.lst and modifying the boot command line.

1. Boot to installation CD

2. Choose a language (English)

3. Press F6 and then ESC

4. Add “vga=791 noreplace-paravirt” before “quiet” in the boot command line and press ENTER

5. Choose a language (English)

6. Choose a country (United States)

7. Detect keyboard layout (No)

8. Origin of keyboard (USA)

9. Keyboard layout (USA)

10. Choose hostname (metadot6)

11. Choose time zone (Central)

12. Choose partition method (Guided – use entire disk and setup LVM)

13. Choose hard drive to partition (SCSI1 (0,0,0) – (sda))

14. Write the changes to disk and setup LVM (Yes)

15. Choose amount of volume group to use for guided partitioning (max)

16. Write the changes to disk (Yes)

17. Enter Full Name for new account

18. Enter Username for account

19. Enter Password for account

20. Encrypt your home directory (No)

21. Choose proxy (leave blank)

22. Choose upgrade management (Install security updates automatically)

23. Choose software to install (LAMP, OpenSSH, Samba)

24. Enter MYSQL root password

25. Installation is complete, continue to reboot automatically. IMPORTANT: Read next three steps before continuing

26. During boot, when GRUB menu shows, press ESC, E, and E again to edit the boot line

27. Add “vga=791 noreplace-paravirt” before “quiet” in the boot command line

28. Press ENTER and B to boot

29. Login with your admin account

30. Run: sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

31. Find normal kernel boot command line in bottom part of file and add “vga=791 noreplace-paravirt” before “quiet”

32. Ctrl+O, ENTER and Ctrl+X to save and exit

33. Run: sudo reboot

 

Configure a Static IPv4 Network Address

1. Login with your admin account

2. Run: sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

3. Remove the “iface eth0 inet dhcp” configuration line under the “# The primary network interface” section

4. Replace with the following:

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.10
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1

5. Ctrl+O, ENTER and Ctrl+X to save and exit

6. Run: sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

7. Test pinging 192.168.1.10 from another PC

 

Install Latest Ubuntu Updates

1. Login with your admin account

2. Run: sudo apt-get update

3. Run: sudo apt-get upgrade

4. Run: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

5. What to do with menu.lst (keep the local version)

6. Run: sudo reboot

 

Configure MySQL Server

1. Login with your admin account

2. Run: sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

3. Comment out the lines “skip-external-locking” and “bind-address = 127.0.0.1”

4. Ctrl+O and Ctrl+X to save and exit

5. Run: mysql -uroot -p mysql

6. Enter MySQL password

7. Run the following SQL commands:

update user set Host='%' where Host='127.0.0.1' and User='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit

8. Run: sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

9. Test connecting with HeidiSQL

 

Install Metadot6

1. Connect to the server with an SSH client and then login with your admin account

2. Run: sudo apt-get clean

3. Run: sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-speedycgi speedy-cgi-perl libwww-perl libdbi-perl libapache2-mod-perl2 libapache-dbi-perl libxml-rss-perl libnet-ldap-perl liblog-agent-perl libmail-pop3client-perl libio-stringy-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl libunicode-string-perl libspreadsheet-writeexcel-perl libdate-calc-perl libappconfig-perl libimage-size-perl libtemplate-perl liblingua-en-nameparse-perl libnumber-format-perl libxml-simple-perl libtext-csv-xs-perl libarchive-zip-perl libdate-manip-perl libxml-dumper-perl libhtml-tree-perl libhtml-format-perl

4. Run: sudo apache2ctl restart

5. Run: sudo -i

6. Run: useradd -m metadot

7. Run: passwd metadot

8. Enter password (metadot)

9. Run: chsh -s /bin/false metadot

10. Run: cd /home/metadot

11. Run: wget http://download.metadot.com/v6/Metadot6.4.5.4.tar.gz

12. Run: tar -zxvf Metadot6.4.5.4.tar.gz

13. Run: chown -R www-data.www-data metadot

14. Run: find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

15. Run: find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

16. Run: chmod -R o+w /home/metadot/metadot/sitedata

17. Run: chmod -R o+w /home/metadot/metadot/html

18. Run: chmod 640 /home/metadot/metadot/etc/metadot.conf

19. Run: exit

20. Run: sudo mysql -uroot -p mysql

21. Enter MySQL password

22. Run the following SQL commands:

INSERT INTO 'user' VALUES ('localhost','metadot',password('metadot'),'Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','N','N','N','N','N','Y','Y','Y','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','','','','','0','0','0','0');
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
CREATE DATABASE 'metadotdb';
use metadotdb;
SOURCE /home/metadot/metadot/default_data/sampledata.sql;
quit

23. Run: sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

24. Run: sudo nano /home/metadot/metadot/etc/metadot.conf

25. Change “pass=changeme” to “pass=metadot”

26. CTRL+O, ENTER and CTRL+X to save and exit

27. Run: sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/metadot

28. Use the following configuration:



	ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
	
	DocumentRoot /home/metadot/metadot/html
	
	
	
		DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
		
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
		
		AllowOverride None
		
		Order allow,deny
		
		allow from all
	
	
	
	ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
	
	# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
	
	# alert, emerg.
	
	LogLevel warn
	
	CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
	
	Alias /images/ /home/metadot/metadot/html/images/
	
	Alias /js/ /home/metadot/metadot/html/js/
	
	Alias /metadot/ /home/metadot/metadot/metadot/
	
	Alias /public/ /home/metadot/metadot/sitedata/public/
	
	Alias /skins/ /home/metadot/metadot/sitedata/skins/
	
	# mod_perl2 goodness
	
	PerlOptions +Parent
	
	PerlOptions -ParseHeaders
	
	PerlSwitches -Mlib=/home/metadot/metadot/metadot
	
	
	
		use Cwd;
		
		chdir "/home/metadot/metadot/metadot/";
		
		1;
	
	
	
	
	
		DirectoryIndex index.pl
		
		SetHandler speedycgi-script
		
		PerlHandler ModPerl::Registry
		
		Options +ExecCGI

29. Run: sudo a2dissite default

30. Run: sudo a2ensite metadot

31. Run: sudo apache2ctl restart

32. Test going to http://192.168.1.10 with a browser on another PC

 

Additional Resources

Download metadot user and admin guide (PDF)
Skin cookbook (DOC)

Windows 7 RC Review

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After hearing many good things about Windows 7 I went ahead and downloaded the publicly available release candidate (Build 7100) from Microsoft. To do this you first go to the Windows 7 product page and download a 2+ GB ISO file, burn a DVD, and then make a decision to upgrade (Windows Vista only) or do a clean install (format and start fresh).  I just wanted to try it out so I upgraded my Dell XPS M1710 laptop from Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate.  You’ll lose your access to Windows Vista Ultimate Extras in 7, but there wasn’t that much great stuff in there anyways.  It also told me I had to uninstall Daemon Tools, which I use for mounting CD images. It uses a virtual hardware driver to function so I think there will need to be an updated Windows 7 driver before that works.  No issues were encountered during the upgrade, and it even fixed a problem with my audio popping and clicking that I was having with my external Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit USB sound card under Vista (worked fine in XP).

Background Image Personalization

Background Image Personalization

Anyways here is my take on it so far after using it for one day.

The interface has a few changes from Vista, the taskbar has been updated with an unmarked “Show/Hide Desktop” button after the time in the lower right corner, and each program just shows as a large icon now instead of a small icon and title.  This can be changed back if desired.  The quick launch has been replaced by a program pinning feature, when you open a pinned program the icon then functions as the taskbar button to switch to/minimize the program.

The media player is updated as well, though i don’t know what features have been added.

The personalization screen has new “theme” options, and i’ve found that simply changing a background requires a little more work than before because you now have the option of choosing multiple backgrounds and having Windows automatically flip between them every 30 minutes or whatever you specify.

As expected with any OS upgrade I did have a couple programs that didn’t cooperate fully.  ClamWin AV runs fine, but Windows 7 doesn’t recognize it as a anti-virus program and sends up a flag that I don’t have anti-virus protection.  After suppressing that message and the one about the firewall being disabled Windows 7 doesn’t report any issues.  Also the Dell Quickset utility that pops up a volume control when you press the laptop’s built-in volume up/down buttons doesn’t work anymore.  The Dell Quickset utility opens and functions fine, and the volume buttons work fine, but it just doesn’t show you what volume level you are at when pressing the buttons.  These are minor issues and I’m sure their developers are working on issues just like this.

So in general I am pleased with Windows 7 and plan on upgrading to it when it goes gold.