Archive for the 'Linux OS related' Category

Portable Operating Systems

Published on November 27, 2007 in Going Opensource, Linux OS related and Portable Computing. 0 Comments

Wouldn’t it be nice…

I travel a fair bit. Right now I am in Germany. I take a laptop with me when I can. Yet relatively often I find myself not able to easily access the Internet from my laptop. Sometimes I am staying at houses without Internet access. Sometimes I find myself visiting houses or places where these is Internet access yet I don’t have my laptop with me, such as visiting a friend. Internet is on hand, but my email checking system (a highly customised Thunderbird) and my web browsing system (a highly customised Firefox) are not on hand. Wouldn’t it be nice to carry all this around in my pocket?

These days it is possible to do just that — carry an entire operating system and a vast array of personalised applications in your pocket. This is in the form of a USB memory stick or a pocket hard drive. With some of these systems you can even boot up the OS and run all its applications from within an existing operating system on the host machine (virtualisation). Just plug in the USB device and start it up as a virtual machine. Here are the portable operating systems (all Linux based) I managed to find which looked worthy of my (and perhaps your) attention:

  • DSL (Dame Small Linux). This one can boot from within the Host Operating system. A big plus I think.
  • PenDriveLinux. This site provides a lot of info on running a wide range of Linux OSs from portable media, including how to run Linux within the host OS. They provide many great tutorials on how to get the most out of your portable OS experience. One example is how to run Ubuntu (v7.10) from a USB flash drive.
  • FaunOS. Needs close to 1GB of space (so somewhat on the big side). Does not support virtualisation (booting within the host OS). Can set up a boot CD to boot it on machines that don’t support booting from USB (most computers more than a few years old).
  • PuppyLinux. Appears to be about 60MB in size. "Overall, Puppy Linux is a superb, light-weight, fast and versatile Linux distribution with a great selection of applications, graphical system administration utilities and all sorts of unique features not readily available elsewhere. A great choice not only for older computers, but also for those who dislike the bloat of most modern distributions." - Distrowatch.com
    This is essentially a LiveCD distribution of Linux. It can, however, run from a USB drive. Does not appear to support virtualisation.
  • Moka5 (LivePCs). "Moka5 LivePCs contain everything needed to run a virtual computer — an operating system and a set of applications. You can use LivePCs on your desktop, or you can take them with you on a portable USB drive." This is a different concept from the others listed above. Once Moka5 is installed, you can then run a wide range of available LivePCs (or create your own) which can be run from a hard disk or portable USB drive. For now Moka5 is free, but it might not stay that way.
  • QUMU and QUMU Manager. Requires a little more technical knowledge, but the net result is the one gets a virtual machine of Linux running from a USB drive/key.

If you know of any others (particularly ones that natively support booting within the host OS) please let me know.

The Free Portable Privacy Machine

Published on January 25, 2007 in Freeware Applications, Linux OS related and Tips & Tricks. 0 Comments

Looking for a portable secure computer system that fits onto a USB key?

Look no further… take a look at the free solution from Metropipe (here)

Here the info on it…

 

Feature Overview

  • Carry your entire Internet communication system on a tiny USB drive.
  • Contains a complete virtual Linux machine with privacy-enabled Open Source Internet applications.
  • Carry your Internet applications, email, bookmarks, history, web cookies, download files in your pocket.
  • Perfect for travelers - nothing to be scanned, started, poked, or prodded at the airport.
  • Get English keyboard support no matter what computer you use.
  • No installation needed - just plug the drive into any Windows or Linux computer, and click on the Virtual Privacy Machine icon and you’re ready to go.
  • The VPM’s network connection will auto configure and run seamlessly on any machine with a working internet connection..
  • All Internet session data (cookies, history, downloads, etc.) are stored on the VPM, not the host computer.
  • Runs on any rewriteable media (USB drives, Flash Memory cards, Secure Digital devices, iPods, etc.)
  • This PR1-2 release runs on Windows and Linux - OS X support is also possible, details in the readme.txt.
  • Runs in full screen mode (CTRL-ALT to Exit Grab and CTRL-ALT f to Toggle Fullscreen)
  • Includes the Latest Firefox 1.5.0.2 Browser with MetroPipe Privacybar for Firefox and the NOSCRIPT Extension Pre-installed.
  • Includes Mozilla Thunderbird News/Email client (with Enigmail plugins for PGP email encryption)
  • Persistent Home directory, changes, bookmarks are saved to the PVPM and available on next reboot.
  • Created from 100% Open Source GPL code and binaries.

In the Press

The Portable Virtual Privacy Machine was featured on:
Slashdot: PVPM: Secure, Portable, Virtual Privacy Machine
Wall Street Journal: (subscription required) WSJ.com and AWSJ.com by WSJ columnist Jeremy Wagstaff.
Also: A Directory Of Programs Designed For USB Drives written about in WSJ article.

Download

The Portable Virtual Privacy Machine may be downloaded from via the link below. Size: 82 MB Download (108 MB uncompressed)

DOWNLOAD VIA HTTP

Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor

Published on December 1, 2006 in Linux OS related, OS Tips & Tricks and Windows XP. 0 Comments

Windows Vista, for those who operate their computer with a Microsoft operating system, is the next big thing in the world of Microsoft Windows. Windows XP is the current release of the MS desktop operating system. Vista takes things to the next level in the evolution of this product line.

The thing is, Vista is such a leap forward that many computers may not cope with it or at least not with the fully unleashed version of the product. Will your PC handle the heavy demands of Vista or will an upgrade be necessary to experience the gloss and features Vista has to offer?

You can find out using the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. Click here to download and run it now.

If you find your PC can not handle Vista without costly upgrades or a complete replacement of your hardware, you may want to check out the free, feature rich, and less resource hungry alternatives such as Ubuntu or other Linux distribution.


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Ubuntu Dapper to Edgy upgrade issue

Published on October 29, 2006 in Linux OS related and Ubuntu. 0 Comments

There is an issue that appears to be more common than others when it comes to upgrading Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 up to Ubuntu Edgy 6.10. This error arises when the Upgrade Manager tries to calculate the packages and dependencies. The error displays this:

The error title is: “Could not calculate the upgrade”

The message is: “An unresolvable problem occured while calculating the upgrade. Please report this bug against the ‘update manager’ package and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bugreport.”

In my case the last few lines of the /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log file showed the following issue:

Starting

Starting 2

Investigating libgl1-mesa-dri

Package libgl1-mesa-dri has broken dep on libgl1-mesa

  Considering libgl1-mesa 8 as a solution to libgl1-mesa-dri 0

  Removing libgl1-mesa-dri rather than change libgl1-mesa

Investigating xorg

Package xorg has broken dep on libgl1-mesa-dri

  Considering libgl1-mesa-dri 0 as a solution to xorg 0

  Holding Back xorg rather than change libgl1-mesa-dri

Investigating ubuntu-desktop

Package ubuntu-desktop has broken dep on xorg

  Considering xorg 0 as a solution to ubuntu-desktop 10000

    Reinst Failed because of libgl1-mesa-dri

Done

The problem is being cased by a dependency issue with libgl1-mesa-dri. I found that libgl1-mesa-dri indicates that the package ubuntu-deskop is dependant on it, yet ubuntu-desktop does not indicate it has this dependency. The other package that is dependant on this one is x-window-system-core.

The solution that I and many other people have found works for this is the following:

1) Run “sudo dpkg -r –force-depends libgl1-mesa libgl1-dev libgl1-dri libglu1-mesa libglu1-mesa-dev mesa-common-dev mesa-utils” from the command prompt

2) Then run “sudo apt-get install -f” from the command prompt.

Also, if you have an entry in your /etc/apt/sources.list file with “compiz” in it then comment out that entry (or entries) by putting # in front of them. One way to do this is by running “sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list” from the command prompt.

You may need to manually uninstall libgl1-dri in the Synaptic Package Manager. At least check that it is not installed before proceeding.

You should now be able to install the upgrade. The fastest way to do this is by downloading the Alternative Install ISO file, burning it to a CD-R and then running the command: gksu “sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade”

Of course if you have a really fast internet connection, and it is well past the release date of Edgy (October 26th) then you may wish to just upgrade online with the command: gksu “update-manager -c”

The upgrade procedure is outlined here: http://help.ubuntu.com/community/EdgyUpgrades 

Some information on the above fix is available at Launchpad.net Bug # 58424

Please let me know how you get on if the above information helps your upgrade issue.

Remote desktop XP to Ubuntu Linux

Published on August 16, 2006 in OS Tips & Tricks, Ubuntu and Windows XP. 6 Comments

It took me some time to figure this one out. I found many sites / blogs / wikis / forums giving very elaborate instructions on how to do this, but they all seemed much to complicated. What I wanted to do seemed like a simple “want” to me. How do I access my Ubuntu linux box remotely (over the LAN) from a windows xp machine? My linux machine runs Ubuntu. If you are trying to RD into another distro you will have to modify these instructions accordingly. So here is what I did:

  1. Activate XDMCP on Ubuntu - SYSTEM >> Preferences >> Remote Desktop - “Allow other users to view your desktop” - “Allow other users to control your desktop”
  2. Install Cygwin/X onto the Windows XP machine. - Download and run setup.exe from http://www.cygwin.com/ - Install the standard packages on Cycwin/X along with :

    - X11 –> X-Startup-scripts - X11 –> xorg-x11-base (this will set a lot of x11 dependencies to install also — you want to install these)

  3. Run Cycgwin
  4. In the Cgywim terminal enter the following command: $ XWin.exe :1.0 -unixkill -scrollbars -screen 0 1280 1024 -emulate3buttons -once -query (NAME / IP) & Put the name of the linux computer or its IP address
  5. You should then see the Ubuntu login page. Voila.

It’s possible I installed one or two other things on the Ubuntu system. I don’t recall just now as I tried so many other ways to get this functionality working I now forget exactly what was done for what. If you try the above and it does not work, let me know and I’ll figure out what else has to go onto the Ubuntu system. I know I installed freeNX although I am not sure if this was for the Cygwin connection or not. If you want to use SSH to Ubuntu via Cygwin there are some instructions here. I tried various SSH related ways of going about this. SSH from Windows directly and SSH via the Cygwin terminal. I kept getting the error that the port was not open. I tried port 177 (which XDCMP users) and 5901 and others, all to no avail. I am not sure how to make these ports available from Ubuntu. But the Xwin route works great.

A little extra info on this tip can be found here, along with links for further research 

Ubuntu: smb not a valid location error

Published on July 3, 2006 in Ubuntu. 12 Comments

I recently upgraded Ubuntu 5.10 to 6.06 (from Breezy release to Dapper release). The upgrade went well, once I ironed out a few issues. I have found, however, that I was unable to browse the windows xp computer on my network. When trying to browse the network I would get this error:

smb:/// is not a valid location

The odd thing is that I was able to print to shared printers on the WinXP machine. I was also able to browse the Samba shares on the Ubuntu machine from the WinXP machine. I was not able to browse the network from Ubuntu though.

I searched high and low on the internet for some answers and very little useful help was forthcoming. I eventually found one key tip that fixed this issue simply and without any further mucking around editing configuration files (which was all to no avail).

The trick the worked was to install the package called libgnomevfs2-extra

I installed that and voila, problemo solved. If you get the “smb:/// is not a valid location” error then try this out and let me know if it fixes it for you.

You can install this package using the built in Package Manager or using the apt-get command at the command prompt.

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