Time to try Karmic Koala

Yay, time to try Karmic Koala (Beta).

List of release names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases

Trigger the uppgrade (from the official page):

Upgrading from Ubuntu 9.04

To upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 on a desktop system, press Alt+F2 and type in "update-manager -d" (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '9.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

Ubunty "registry"

Let me be clear about one thing: Among the various Linux distributions I've tried, Ubuntu is the one I like best (at the moment). I used to be a great fan of RedHat, as a simple, clean nice and well featured disto. At least the "simple" part went down the drain after 7.2. (One of the crappiest one was SuSe, which started out quite well. I liked the idea of having commercial forces supporting a free project, but unfortunately the distribution has become more and more awkward and the free/open support community more and more egg-headed.)

A few years ago I was thinking - if we're going for the "all GUI" approach anyway, why not Brunbuntu :) I've been mostly a happy-puppy with Brunbuntu since then, but only until something needs tweaking. Then it's not so damn funny anymore. One of the things I've been tearing my hair about lately is the network manager. If you think I'm just whining, try upgrading from Edgy to Jaunty Jackalope. Someone should be shot messing up such a vital thing as network management methinks. However, whence you've got it right its actually not that bad at all (I particularly like the concept of being able to assign different settings to the same wlan interface depending on which network you're logged into - really great!).

If you're actually stuck with this, look out for the article abot the Network Manager I'm about to write.

Some things in Debinan/Ubuntu repel me on a deeper level however. One of those is the the idea of mimicking the Windowze registry. How this common-point-of failure strategy found it's way into the Linux community is beyond my understanding.

Anywho, here comes a few hints if you're unlucky enough having to alter some Gnome application setting.

Instead of the usual Unix/Linux approach, Gnome aware programs store all their data in a sub directory called ~/.gconf

Another place to look is in /etc/xdg/, at least for the "autostart" part for some of the applets.

The "keys" are fortunately files which makes this at least somewhat bearable, if not understandable. The content of these "keys" are however in XML, which again is quite repulsive IMHO.

The program to use to manage the "keys" in this "registry" thingy is the Configuration Editor (gconf-editor), which is part of your distribution but which is not enabled in the menu. Run the Menu Editor (alacarte) from a shell and enable it and to make life a little bit easier.

Netbook mode - not playing nicely with Classic Desktop mode

I've been playing around with the netbook-remix package on various machines, aiming to have both netbook desktop management and normal desktop management on the same machine ant to be able to choose between them on demand. The netbook stuff is actually not bad if you hook up your laptop (or netbook for that matter) to your TV as a media-player/web-browser thingy. Especially if you remote control your mouse with a Bluetooth application from your phone, it's great to be able to see what application your starting from a distance.

In the case where a machine is installed from the Ubuntu Netbook distribution and where the switch-desktop package is installed on-top this works somewhat well. But if one starts the other way around with a normal Ubuntu Desktop disto and then install the netbook-remix and switch-desktop one ends up with a situation where all windows are always started maximized no matter which mode you switch to or even which VM you run.

I.e. no matter which desktop mode you select with the Switch Desktop Mode utility, or if you add your own ~/.xinitrc, the issue with the maximized windows remains (!).

Usually one can google around and find at least a couple of persons who's stumbled across the same problem that oneself has, but in this case - nothing.

Anyway, to keep a long story short, here's what I did to resolve this particular issue.

In the folder /etc/xdg/autostart/ there used to be two files:

maximus-autostart.desktop
netbook-launcher.desktop

I removed the first one and after restarting gdm everything works as usual. This leads me to believe that this is some sort of ugly-patch because the compiz maximumize in the CCMS was disabled and it does no difference if it's set or not.

I'm not an expert in either X, VM's, DM's or Gnome and I dare not say what the xdm structure is or what it's good for.

References

• http://xwinman.org/basics.php
• XDG Base Directory Specification
  

Default keyring nightmare

If forgotten or corrupt:

rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/default.keyring

References:


• http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2007/07/06/clearing-or-resetting-the-gnome-keyring/
• http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2007/07/12/automatically-unlocking-the-default-gnome-keyring-pam-keyring/

Monitoring nework activity

For instant monitoring the following tools are good:

• wireshark (ethereal)
• etherape
• tshark

For server monitoring:

• darkstat
• ntop

For either (CLI apps under screen):

• iptraf
  

Remember that promiscuous mode monitoring requires packages to actually pass your interface for the host to be able to pick them up. I.e. wired traffic can be difficult to pick up if a network switch is used in the central of a star network topology. Either replace it with a simple hub or you have to put the machine used for monitoring in the way between the router and the rest of the network (i.e. it has to be multi hosted running ip-chains or similar).

Note that darkstat has a config bug. For the -l option the format is:
-l aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd/nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn

and not:
-l aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd/N
(where N is the number of bits from the left. I.e. 1-32)

Installing VMWare tools under WMWare player

Normally, if you run a VM that was originally created with VMWare Workstation you can run this with VMWare player just as well. VMWare player is free as in free as in free beer and the idea is that you should be able to run VMs but just not be able to create them.

Fair enough, but with sites like EasyVMX you don't need a licensed VMWare Workstation. However, there's a catch:

VMWare tools are a set of utilities including drivers that will boost performance of your VM enormously. They're supposed to be run AFTER you've created your VM and installed your OS on it, and these do not come with VMWare player but only with VMWare Workstation.

So what to do? Of course you should purchase a VMWare Workstation license, but say you're only in it for creating on dang VM and that's all you ever need and you'll be fine forever with VMWare player?

Hmm, here's a way to do it (note, I have no idea if this is legal so before proceeding you should really check).

• Get a trial licence of VMWare Workstation. It's free of charge, but you have to register.
• Get it installed somewhere, preferably on another computer.
• Search for all *.iso files in the directory of the above installation and copy them into a directory of it's own. Those are your VMWare tools for various host OS:es.
  
• Copy that directory to your original mashine (or to each mashine you have VMWare player installed at), preferably where you store your VM's as a subdirectory called vmware_tools.
• Then make the following change in your .vmx file:

#######################################################
## Settings for physical CDROM drive
#ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
#ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
#ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
#ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
#######################################################
# Settings for VMWare tools
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "..\vmware_tools\windows.iso"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
#######################################################

Note that which device (ide1:0) is mapped to your CD might differ. Adapt the abouve to your own fit.

Now start up your VM and you will notice that instead of CD drive, you have the windows.iso running instead. Click on it and you should get a wizard letting you install the VMWare tools.

When you're done, shut down your VM and restore the vmx file (or swap the sections with remarks with the section without in the snippet above). Start it up again and you'll have VMWare player running your VM at full speed.

Get VMWare player to support USB2.0

If you run say Windows XP as host OS under the free (as in free beer) VMWare player and you find yourself getting BSOD or notifications saying "this device can operate faster" when you attach a USB device to a USB port, then there's a good chance whoever created the VM didn't know how to configure it for VMWare player to use USB2.0. Note that it doesn't matter that your real HW does support USB2.0, VMWare historically didn't.

As of today's writing EasyVMX will not create VMs that will work with USB 2.0 properly.

In such case, make sure the following lines are in your .vmx file (you can edit it while the VM is not running):

virtualHW.version = "7"
usb.generic.autoconnect = "TRUE"
ehci.present = "TRUE"

Start up your VM again, wait for a minute or so until you get a message from Windows saying that something about "drivers have been updated" , and voilá - you have USB2.0 support.