Archive for category Linux Stuff

Increasing the size of tmpDSK and /tmp in a CPanel Environment

Posted by Randy in Internet, Linux Stuff, Operating Systems, Server Stuff, Web Development on March 9, 2012

I recently ran into an issue in cPanel after recompiling Apache with some new settings. I enabled the eAccelerator extension in my EasyApache configuration for PHP. Now cPanel uses a default size for its /tmp mount of 512mb. I found out rather quickly that this isn't enough for eAccelerator. I actually ended up resetting this value to 4096mb (4GB). As a reminder to myself and so anyone else looking for the solution to this problem, I will outline what needs to be done below.

First, ssh into your server and login as root or su - root after logging in as a regular user. Now use the power of the command line. Don't panic!

Stop Apache, MySQL, and cPanel

1
2
3

service httpd stop
service mysql stop
service cpanel stop

Next unmount the existing /tmp

1

umount -l /tmp

Remove /usr/tmpDSK

1

rm -rf /usr/tmpDSK

Next, use your favorite editor (Vim in this example) to change the config file for the tmpDSK

1

vim /scripts/securetmp

Search the file for "tmpdsksize" (in Vim type /tmpdsksize and hit enter). The line should look like this by default:

1

my $tmpdsksize     = 512000;    # Must be larger than 250000

Change the 512000 to a higher number in Kilobytes. For my 4GB, I changed it to 4096000.
Save the file (vim :wq enter).
Run the script...

1

/scripts/securetmp

Answer y to the two questions it asks.
Finally start your services back up.

1
2
3

service httpd start
service mysql start
service cpanel start

That should have you set with more /tmp space.

, , , ,

No Comments

Linux Desktop UI Options

Posted by Randy in Linux Stuff, Operating Systems, technology on February 14, 2012

I'm detest the current path of the Linux desktop. There are reasons that the desktop environment programmers and the distribution makers have taken the path they are on, but I disagree with those reasons. Their reasoning involves unifying the user interface for desktops, laptops, tablets, and other mobile devices.

The main problem I see with that reasoning is that they are hurting the desktop environment in the process, and the desktop/laptop is the only place their products have a future. There's no need for a revamping of the desktop interface to make it more like a mobile device's interface. The tablet/phone interfaces are designed for multi-touch interaction from the user. THE ADVANTAGE of a DESKTOP is having a good keyboard and mouse. The desktop UI is designed for superior input methods. Mult-touch is cool and all, but it is designed to give mobile devices an interface to mimic what you can already do on the desktop and laptop with the keyboard and mouse. Multi-touch on a desktop is cool, but it has only been implemented on OS X on Macs, and they didn't change the actual interface itself to accomplish this. They just added multi-touch capability to the UI that was already there.

I could see good reason to make this change to the default Linux user interface if the distributions were going to be used primarily on mobile devices. BUT they aren't. The mobile market has two very strong operating systems. Those are iOS and Android. Android is Linux itself, but its user interface is perfect for a mobile device. It also has the convenience of the Google marketplace. It is the defacto Linux distro for mobile devices. There's no demand for Ubuntu on a mobile device like a tablet or phone. Android does everything you could want to do on those devices, and it does those things well.

So, what is the point to unify the user interface on the Linux distribution, if the only real use you're going to see for these distributions is in the desktop and laptop markets? There's absolutely no reason to do this.

The new unified user interface, namely Unity and Gnome 3, are clunky at best in a desktop environment. They are a downgrade from the previous user interfaces that were popular, especially Gnome 2.

For this reason, I see a shift in the primary desktop environment used by most Linux users. I think most users will switch to XFCE4 or one of the other DEs which were similar to Gnome 2. I would be willing to wager that within a year or two, most distributions will be using XFCE4 as a default desktop environment by popular demand from their userbase. Either that will happen, or the desktop environment creators will see the error of their ways and change back to the old desktop standard.

BRING BACK XORG and just improve it!

»crosslinked«

, ,

No Comments

Removing Old eth devices from Debian

Posted by Randy in Linux Stuff, Networking, Operating Systems, technology on January 19, 2012

I have a Virtualbox VM which, over time, has been opened on 9 different host operating systems. I reinstall my main OS move than the average person without a doubt. Every time the guest VM is opened from a new host, it adds a new device. So I ended up with 9 ethernet devices. Every time I opened the VM on a new machine I'd also have to reconfigure my static IP. Removing these devices isn't as difficult as you may think. It's simply a matter of editing the /etc/udev/rules.d/??-persistent-net.rules file and committing out all the lines that begin with SUBSYSTEM. Then reboot and you should have a fresh eth0.

,

No Comments

The Best Linux Distribution

Posted by Randy in Linux Stuff, Operating Systems, technology on January 13, 2012

This subject will raise a few eyebrows from the geek community. Everyone has their favorite Linux distribution. However, this post will be rather unbiased. I have my picks, but I will try to refrain from pushing them. So I'm ranking Linux distributions based on experience but not on personal preference (to an extent).

Choosing a Linux distribution is like choosing a programming language. You should pick the right tool for the job. I see three main uses of Linux as an operating system.

First of all, if you are going to be using Linux in an enterprise/business setting, you should probably learn the industrial standard distribution for enterprises. Chances are, if you are going to be a Linux admin at some big company, you'll want to learn Red Hat (RHEL). It's a commercial operating system, so if you want to practice using it, you'll probably want on of its clones. They are usually free and are basically repackaged versions of RHEL. The forerunner of these clones is CentOS. Honorable mentions go to ClearOS and Scientific Linux as alternatives to Red Hat. These clones offer most of the same features as RHEL and give you a nearly exact replica of the Red Hat environment.

Secondly, if you are going to run Linux as a desktop operating system, there are a few good choices. Linux Mint, Debian, and Ubuntu make great desktop operating systems. Of those, I prefer granddaddy Debian. Debian is the basis for which many of the popular desktop Linuxes derive. Ubuntu is an "improved" version of Debian, though really I don't care for many of the "improvements" and tend to stick with Debian. Linux Mint has two versions. One is derived from Ubuntu and the other is derived straight from Debian. Fedora also provides a good desktop experience and is based on Red Hat. So for you enterprise admins out there, Fedora will feel closer.

Finally, if you want a development server to run in a VM or another machine, I suggest Debian again. It's one of the quickest and easiest to set up.

If you are a Linux guru, I suggest ArchLinux, as it gives you more control over more aspects of the OS.

One distribution that I've never tried (but I should) is Slackware. Many people like it. I personally don't like being without a package manger.

No matter what you want to use Linux for, there's a distribution for you. Check out DistroWatch for direct ratings of Linux distributions.

,

No Comments

How to remove launchers from Gnome 3 Panel

Posted by Randy in Linux Stuff, Operating Systems on January 11, 2012

I'll cut to the chase on this post because this is a silly change to make between Gnome 2 and Gnome 3. If you add a shortcut launcher to the panel in Gnome 3 (classic mode), you will find that a simple right click doesn't show "remove".

If you want to remove a launcher from the panel in Gnome 3, you need to press the alt key and right click the launcher. You should then have the ability to move or remove the icon.

,

1 Comment

Netbean’s Menus Don’t work in Linux Mint 12

Posted by Randy in Linux Stuff, Open Source, Programming on January 11, 2012

Gnome3 has some issues. I really like the look and feel of Linux Mint's Gnome3 + Mate interface. However, looks aren't everything. Functionality is important as well. Almost everything works with it but Netbeans is an exception. The menus are completely unusable with it.

The quick solution is to select "Gnome Classic" when you login. I like the look of it as well, and at least everything works in it.

While I'm on the subject, why did Gnome decide to take the path it did with version 3. It's too much like Unity, and I hate Unity. Why are they moving to this type of desktop? Gnome 2 may not be the prettiest thing available, but it has been the most usable desktop environment for years. They should have just concentrated on improving the look of it, added a few new features, and worked on any bugs they had laying around. Most people don't like Unity or Gnome 3. This doesn't leave much of a choice other than KDE and XFCE4. Of those, I'd pick XFCE4, but if you have a large userbase like Gnome has, why screw that up by making your new version look like and act like the DE most people are wanting to avoid? I just don't get it.

, ,

No Comments

Codeigniter Controllers Give Server 404

Posted by Randy in Linux Stuff, Operating Systems, Programming, Web Development on January 11, 2012

I often take shortcuts when setting up my development servers. I recently installed Linux Mint 12 x64 on my main box and wanted to setup a web developing environment on it. To cut corners during package installation, I'll typically install phpmyadmin which grabs most of the dependencies I need to have a full LAMP dev stack, such as Apache2 and Mysql-server.

That's how I initially set up my stack in Linux Mint. I also enabled user directories in Apache so I could develop within the public_html directory inside my home directory. All was working well until I copied a CodeIgniter project over and tried it out. I couldn't access my controller functions from index.php. It worked well for the default controller because it was accessing it from index.php, but when I changed the URL to point to a controller like index.php/admin, it didn't know what to do with it and I would receiver a server 404 error.

After digging around for a solution, I realized that when I installed my LAMP stack, apt had installed libapache2-mod-php5filter instead of libapache2-mod-php5. I'm not very familiar with this module or what benefits come from using it, but the quick fix was to:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

This removed the php5filter module and installed the plain php5 module. After that, I no longer have an issue with the controllers giving 404 errors.

, , , , ,

1 Comment

Couldn’t Load XPCOM

Posted by Randy in Applications, Linux Stuff, Open Source, Operating Systems, technology on November 4, 2011

If you are like me, you like to use the latest plugins for Firefox (when you use Firefox). Things like Firebug have become a staple for my web browser usage. I also love using Debian as my OS, and the stable version comes with a much older version of Firefox (sans logos and with the name iceweasel). Unless you download older version of plugins, most of the time you'll have trouble installing the plugins you want.

The simple solution is to download and install the latest version of Firefox directly from Mozilla. There's not much of an install process. Just download and uncompress the file. You'll get a firefox directory, which I moved over to my home directory and proceeded to create shortcuts for on my desktop and menus.

If you are using the 64 bit version of the OS, you will quickly run into the "Couldn't Load XPCOM" error. It's obvious that it is a library issue but the error doesn't give you a big clue as to how to fix it.

Good news, the fix is extremely easy. You are lacking some 32 bit libs that are required to run the program.
Fix is by running the following as root or with sudo:

apt-get install ia32-libs-gtk

After that, you should be able to run Firefox. Enjoy!

No Comments

Reddit’s Interview with Richard Stallman

Posted by Randy in Applications, Linux Stuff, Open Source, Operating Systems, Programming on July 30, 2010

Recently, Reddit users were given the opportunity to ask RMS (Richard M. Stallman) questions. The top 25 were answered by RMS here.

For anyone who doesn't know who RMS is, he is the founder of the GNU project. He wrote Emacs and the GCC compiler. Much of what makes up a "GNU/Linux" (don't ever let him hear you call it "Linux"), is the GNU tools. Linux itself is just the operating system kernel. Although the OS kernel is a very important part of the OS, a base GNU/Linux system has a ton of software from the GNU project as well. The OS doesn't work without the kernel, and it doesn't do much without the GNU tools.

RMS answered most of the questions as I would expect. The one question that stood out to me, although I haven't made it through the entire list yet, is number 7. The question relates to how the open source world can't create tax software and games that can compete with proprietary software. It's a very good question. RMS mentions that the Free Software Foundation in Latin America does have free tax software. He also says

I don't know whether our community will make a "high end video game"
which is free software, but I am sure that if you try, you can stretch
your taste for games so that you will enjoy the free games that we
have developed.

Now, this is the part that really made me think. I've always been an advocate of free software, but do I really want to rely on free software to produce video games that compete with some of the games I play on PS3? I truly wish that they could make them, because I'd love it, but I don't see it happening. Another major point to that comment is that games have always been the driving force in computer hardware improvements. The computer systems we have right now are only this good because of games.

That may be hard to believe, but for anyone that's been playing PC games for decades, it's common sense. Video games are it. That's what all of this technology was built on. You were either playing games or writing them. Sure, computers have many other useful features, but games are responsible for these beautiful user interfaces and awesome sound.

Games kept getting better. Hardware kept getting better. A huge majority of the research and design came from game sales. All of that wouldn't have happened without proprietary games.

RMS knows that, but RMS isn't worried about games at all. RMS is worried about software freedom and he has many good points. Those same points could be applied to many industries. To me is seems like the old communism vs. capitalism debate. Extremes on both sides suck. It's the happy medium we should strive for.

, , ,

No Comments

LXDE – The Light-weight Linux Desktop Environment

Posted by Randy in Linux Stuff, Open Source, Operating Systems, technology on July 21, 2010

I was reading a post over at the Linux Mint Blog and found that I'm a bit behind on my Linux news. I've never heard of LXDE. Now my desktop environment of choice is Gnome, usually. I also like XFCE, but Gnome has all the features and rarely lets me down. I like the variety in Linux so I was glad to see yet another desktop environment.

LXDE seems to be geared toward netbooks and other cloud-client computers. Linux has many light-weight desktop environments, and even though I like variety, sometimes I wish that they would all come together and work together.

This leads me to a pitfall of open source. It's also an advantage. Those are complete contradictions, but there's really no other way to explain it. I lean more toward the advantage side of things but sometimes I wonder if the different projects could be merged as much as they are split.

It seems that it's perfectly logical for developers to split from a project and create a fork, but rarely do two projects merge to form a super project. Perhaps open source in general needs more merging to balance out the massive amounts of forks....just a thought.

No Comments