Technology Facts

Webmin is a web based interface for system administration for Linux. It is very convenient for system administration of commonly used services like Apache, DNS , SMTP, file sharing etc. Webmin consists of simple webserver and a number of CGI programs written in perl language. Hence before installing Webmin we have to prepare Ubuntu by installing perl and its associated libraries. To install the required perl packages, type the following command in the terminal,

sudo apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl

after installing required perl packages download Webmin package with following command,

wget -c http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.441_all.deb

Next install this downloaded package of Webmin with following command,

sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.441_all.deb

Now you can start using Webmin by typing a following URL in your web browser,

https://localhost:10000

Ejecter is a very nice and useful utility to safely, easily remove external media connected to your computer. There is just a small and simple applet whose menu sits in the system notification area on your Ubuntu Desktop, providing you a quick and easy way to unmount external devices such as usb pendrives, cd/dvd, external hard disks, digital cameras etc.

To download Ejecter please click on this link.

After downloading the .deb package for Ejecter just double click on the downloaded file to install the Ejecter. After installation find the Ejecter applet in system notification area on your Ubuntu desktop.

It's already new years morn and here I am wishing you all a Happy and Prosperous New Year. Hopefully 2009 will bring better opportunities and bright future for everyone.

Yesterday I was testing a script which can automatically generate websites. If you have not heard about it, it is called YACG short for Yet Another Content Generator. You have to install this script on your webserver by uploading.  You also have to supply your list of keywords in a file called keywords.txt. Then based on the keywords the YACG script generates web pages by scrapping content from various article sites.

As I have installed apache web server and PHP with curl support on my Ubuntu desktop, I was able to test YACG on my Ubuntu desktop. I must admit that the website generated by YACG is quite impressive. Now before porting it to my domain, I want to change the default template. Hence I am on the look out for templates for YACG.

You can obtain more information by joining YACG forum at http://forums.getyacg.com. Here at the forum you will also find the links to download YACG. Good luck.

Many times we come across web applications which are written in PHP and require curl extension. PHP curl functions can used through use of libcurl. The libcurl was create by Daniel Sternberg. With the help of libcurl you can connect and communicate with webserver using different protocols. To install curl library on your Ubuntu computer, you need to have LAMP (Linux apache mysql php) set up ready. Once you have Lamp setup ready just type in following command in terminal to install curl library,

sudo apt-get install curl libcurl3 libcurl3-dev php5-curl

After installing libcurl you should  restart the web server with following command,

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

If you don't have LAMP functionality already installed, then please click on the following link to find out how install LAMP on Ubuntu Linux,

http://buzznol.blogspot.com/2008/11/install-apache-mysql-php-in-ubuntu.html

For last few days I have been busy with my new blogs. I am using WordPress platform on a rented domain. With couple of WordPress plugins I turned these blogs into autoblogs. The installed autoblog plugins post content to my blogs automatically. While preparing these autoblogs for operation I came across an interesting utility for Mozilla Firefox.

This utility is called FireFTP and it is a Mozilla Firefox addon. You just install this addon and after customization of  toolbar you get a nice small button for a FireFTP on the toolbar in Firefox. When you click on this button FireFTP client opens into a new tab. You can create new FTP account in this FireFTP client and get connected to FTP server at just a click of a button. Another good thing about this addon is that it works on all different platforms be it Windows or Linux.I found this addon very useful and hope that you'll find it too!

To go to the download page of FireFTP just click on this link.

I downloaded OpenSuse 11.1 KDE version from the net. Burned the boot image on the CD. But when I tried to install it on my laptop, I ran into difficulties. I have already installed Ubuntu Linux on my laptop on one of the partitions. When I ran OpenSuse installer, I reached up to the partition manager. Then partition manager notified me that Ubuntu partition needs to be deleted. I played around and tried to get over this hurdle, but I couldn't. Partition manager was still showing that Ubuntu partition being selected for deletion. Hence I aborted the installation of OpenSuse 11.1 for time being. Later on I will try to install it on my USB pen drive.

Sometime blogger likes to remove the Navbar from the blogger blog. But if you are not using FTP to post to the blog it is actually against TOS of blogger.com. So make sure that you are not violating TOS before removing the NAvbar. To remove the Navbar, log on to your blogger account. Next select Layout from the dashboard and Edit HTML tab. Now add following code to your blogger template,

#navbar-iframe {
display: none !important;
}

The newly added code to the blogger template is shown in a RED font. After modifying the template code do not forget to save the template. Now next time when you will view your blog, you will not see the Navbar.

On a dual or multi boot system when you install Windows XP again it overwrites Grub boot loader with its own boot loader. To restore Grub follow the steps as described below,

1. Start your computer and boot with Ubuntu Live CD. Once Ubuntu Linux is loaded, open terminal and type sudo grub at the prompt.
2. Now prompt will change to grub>
3. Next type find /boot/grub/stage1 at the grub> prompt and press enter.
4. The location of grub on different partitions will be shown as a result of find /boot/grub/stage1 command.
5. Select the partition on which your Grub is located e.g. my grub loader for Ubuntu on first hard disk on partition 2 was shown as (hd0,1).
6. Next choose this partition as root partition by typing root (hdd, partition No.), e.g. in my case I typed root(hd0,2) at the command prompt.
7. Now to restore Master Boot Record type setup (hdd) at the command prompt e.g. in my case I typed setup (hd0).
8. Once the MBR is installed on the hard disk, you can exit grub> prompt by typing quit and pressing enter.

Next reboot the computer without Ubuntu Live CD and you will get your usual Grub Menu.

Before I bought a Laptop I was using a desktop computer with two harddisk drives. One was Samsung 40 GB and the other Samsung 80 GB. But the desktop computer developed a fault on its main board and it was beyond repair. Therefore I had to to scrap the desktop computer.

The laptop I use has 40 GB internal Hard disk. Now with all the downloads and all I needed more hard disk space. There fore I decided to buy external hard drive.

But then suddenly I got an idea. I just removed two old hard disk drives from my old computer and went to the computer shop. The sales person at the computer shop told me that it was very much possible to connect old hard disk drives. All I had to do was to buy a IDE to USB convertor for each hardisk. Now with these IDE to USB connector I can still use my old hard disk drives without any problem. These new external drives were immediately recognized by BIOS, Windows and Ubuntu. I could delete old partitions, create new partitions and format these from windows and Ubuntu. I even installed Ubuntu Linux on my new usb external drive made from old hard disk drive.

By just using old hard disk drives and IDE to USB connector I was able to save many $$$s.

Rachel King writes:-

After the tech bubble burst, E*Trade's (NYSE: ET) technology chief, Lee Thompson, needed to find a way to do more with less. In 2001 and 2002, the online stock trading company shrank its tech budget by one-third. "We had to go through and figure out every penny that we were spending and make alternatives to reduce those costs," says Thompson, vice-president and chief technologist of E*Trade. So he began using software that can be downloaded at no cost via the Internet. By the end of 2002, he was saving US$13 million a year thanks to use of these freely available applications known as open source software.

Read more here.......

With increase in popularity of Linux based operating systems like Fedora, Ubuntu, Open Suse etc. many people have started using multi boot computers. Multi boot computers have more than one operating system installed on them. In a typical multi boot computer, one operating system is Windows and other some distribution based on Linux or UNIX. User then can boot the particular operating system of their choice and selection. Boot manager programs like GRUB offer convenience of booting the operating system of your choice and selection. Besides Linux there are few other operating systems available, which can be installed on multi boot computers e.g. Solaris, Open Solaris, BSD UNIX, QNX etc. Also with availability of hard disks of large capacities it is now possible to install full distribution of other operating systems beside Windows. In future perhaps a software specially developed for multi boot operating system may become available e.g Linux based file defragmentation utility for Windows file system or a Linux based anti-virus software which is capable of scanning and destroying the viruses on windows installation. With multi boot computers you get best of multiple operating system technologies.

Yesterday I downloaded the Fedora 10 live cd. I am using the kde version of live CD. The live CD booted without any problem. After loading the desktop, Using installation wizard, I installed Fedora 10 on the hard disk and rebooted. It was fun watching Fedora 10 booting from hard disk. The graphical boot system is simply out of the world.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that my Vimicro 301 Neptune webcam was detected by Fedora 10 as soon as I plugged it in and loaded its Kernel based v4l webcam linux driver. In Fedora 10 webcam support is available right from the kernel.

Although the webcam was properly detected and got configured automatically, I was dissapointed to find that the available version Skype doesnot work on Fedora 10. Till we get version update from Skype, I will have to use Skype from windows and Ubuntu.

When your are on vacation or away from the computers & Internet and not checking and answering your emails, you can let the people know you are away by setting an auto responder in Gmail. It is a very convenient feature to use. It is basically like putting Not At Home sign on your door when you are away from home. Vacation responder feature sends automated reply to incoming mail.

To use this facility log on to your Gmail account. Then click on Settings. Under Settings tab select General tab. Locate Vacation responder on the General tab.

Once you have located Vacation responder on the general tab, to activate vacation responder feature select the option Vacation responder on using the radio button. Now type the subject and message in the text boxes provided. You can also reply to only those people who are in your address book and avoid replying to news letters by checking the check box Only send a response to people in my contact. That's all. Now whenever you will get a mail, automatic reply will be sent. To switch off vacation responder facility simply select the option Vacation Responder off using the radio button under Settings->General->Vacation responder.

I have a dual boot computer with Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. Sometimes I work in Windows XP and sometimes in Ubuntu. When I am working in Ubuntu I can easily access the windows partition from Ubuntu. In contrast to working in Ubuntu when I used to work in Windows XP I was not able to access my ext3 based Ubuntu Linux partitions which caused a lot of inconvenience. Then I came to know about the utility called EXT2FSD which allows you to mount ext3 partitions.  I downloaded the latest version of this utility and installed it under Windows XP.  The version of EXT2FSD I am using is 0.46a. Although the support for journalizing file system is still under development, in this version of Ext2FSD ext3 journal check and replay is implemented. 

EXT2FSD works as a windows driver for ext3 based Linux partitions. Using this utility you can easily mount ext2/ext3 based Linux  partitions under Windows. Ext2FSD also allows to allocate drive letters to the mounted ext2/ext3 based partitions. When these Linux partitions are mounted under Windows you can access these partitions from My Computer as any other drive. You can read as well as write to these partitions.

To go to the download page of EXT2FSD click on this link.

Konqueror is not only a web browser but it is also a very good file manager. It is designed as a core part of KDesktop Environment (KDE).If you are used to KDE and now you are migrating to Ubuntu Linux you will surely miss Konqueror in Ubuntu.  Here is a good news for you Konqueror  can run on various Linux systems including Ubuntu Linux. All you need to to install Konqueror is to give following command (assuming you are connected to the Internet) in the terminal,

sudo apt-get install konqueror

As you are using sudo command you will be asked for your user account password. Just type the passwords and apt-get install command will install Konqueror on your Ubuntu Linux. Happy browsing!!