Archive for category Ubuntu
Ubuntu – Prevent a package from being updated
Posted by clamasters in Ubuntu, blog on June 22nd, 2008
The original post for this is from the Ubuntu Geek website but I learned something new from it so I thought I would share my new favorite way to keep a package from being updated in Ubuntu. This goes for pretty much any of the newer releases of Ubuntu. I used to use dpkg to do this but now I like aptitude much better. It’s easier for me.
To put a package on hold use this command.
sudo aptitude hold snort-mysql
To remove the hold use this command.
sudo aptitude unhold snort-mysql
To keep your entire system (I think) from being updated simply use this command.
sudo aptitude hold
And to remove the hold use this command.
sudo aptitude unhold
Very easy isn’t it. Yep, that’s what I thought. I’ll be able to deploy appliances in the field now without worrying if an update is going to break something before I get a chance to fix the issue.
Getting Ubuntu Ready for “REAL” use…
Posted by clamasters in Linux, Ubuntu on May 30th, 2008
I love Ubuntu…it’s undubitably the best free OS on the planet. However, there is one thing that I absolutely hate about Ubuntu.. My inability to SSH into the system from anywhere. I know it is this way by design and that it’s a “security” feature but it still annoys me. So the following commands are what I use to get the system ready for use after a fresh install.
apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client
That’s it. If you want to play around a little more you can configure Ubuntu’s firewall in just a few simple steps as well. In my example I will enable tcp/80, tcp/443, tcp/22 and udp/53 inbound.
ufw disable
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow udp/53
ufw enable
And then you can validate what you have entered with:
ufw status
The output will be similar to this:
Firewall loaded
To Action From
– —— —-
80:tcp ALLOW Anywhere
443:tcp ALLOW Anywhere
22:tcp ALLOW Anywhere
53:udp ALLOW Anywhere
And that’s really all I do…it’s definately not much but it will be enough to get you started connecting remotely.
Windows / Linux Software Equivalents
Windows is definitely the big player in the game still, however Linux usage is gaining some steam. This post is going to concentrate on what programs you can use to make the switch to Linux. This process is not going to be entirely pain free if you are an avid user of all things computer related, however, if you are just a basic office user/worker or only need to check your email and play a few basic online games, Linux might be for you. There are literally thousands of choices for most applications out there so I’m only going to name the ones that I like or use and also only ones that work on Ubuntu. If you have any additions, please let me know.
Windows vs. Linux (Ubuntu)
Internet Browsing
W – Internet Explorer
U – Firefox
Email Clients
W – Outlook, Outlook Express
U – Thunderbird, Evolution
Chat Clients
W – MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, AIM, mIRC
U- Gaim / Pigdin, xChat, BitchX
Com Port Communications
W – Hyperterminal
U – MiniCom
FTP Client
W – Filezilla FTP Client
U – Filezilla FTP Client
Remote Access Servers
W – Terminal Server, RealVNC, TightVNC, WinVNC
U – FreeNX, RealVNC, TightVNC
P2P Filesharing
W – Limewire, Bearshare, Bittorrent
U – Limewire, Azureus
VoIP Clients
W – Skype, X-Lite
U – Skype, Linphone, Twinkle
Drawing / Photo Editing
W – Paint.net, Photoshop, MSPaint
U – GIMP
3D Annimation / Rendering
W – 3D Studio MAX, Blender
U – Blender, Maya
DVD Players
W – Windows Media Player, PowerDVD
U – MPlayer, Kaffine, VLC
MP3 / Music Players
W – Winamp, iTunes
U – RhymeBox, K3b
Office Productivity
W – Microsoft Office
U – OpenOffice.org
Network / Relation Mapping
W – Microsoft Visio
U – Dia
Accounting / Financial
W – Quicken, Microsoft Money
U – GnuCash
Desktop Publishing
W – Microsoft Publisher, Quark
U – Scribus
PDF Editing
W – Adobe Acrobat Professional
U – PDFEdit, pdftk
Imaging
W – Norton Ghost
U – G4u, dd
Partition Resizing
W – Norton Partition Magic
U – GParted
Backup Software
W – Symantec Backup Exec
U – BackupPC, Amanda
Web Servers
W – Microsoft IIS
U – Apache
File Servers
W – Microsoft File Services
U – Samba
Email Servers
W – Microsoft Exchange
U – Postfix, Sendmail
AntiVirus Software
W – Symantec AV, Mcafee
U – ClamAV, AVG
For more of these “like” software lists, please visit what I believe to be the most complete list on the internet, Table of Equivalents.
Everyday Free Tools – Tech Stuff
Each and every day I use a set of tools, mostly free or open source ones that help me get through the day. I though I would list of a few of them for you so that you can give them a shot as well.
Home Computer
I have a Panasonic Toughbook laptop running Ubuntu 7.04 that I really haven’t modified too awful much because I like the look and feel of the OS as it is. Here’s a list of things that I use everyday or every so often to accomplish a task without spending any money.
Operating System – Ubuntu 7.04 – Stable, clean, easy to install, based on GNOME and very well supported by the community. I would say that the forums for Ubuntu are better than most and for some reason, the users of Ubuntu are much nicer than that of Red Hat and others.
Blogging – Blogger.com attached to my Gmail account (I do my own hosting)
Firewall - pfSense – I mentioned this a few post’s ago. I absolutely love this firewall.
Document Management – Google Doc’s and Spreadsheets – This one is really neat, you can upload your Microsoft Office Word and Excel files as well as OpenOffice equivalent documents up to Google, edit them, and even save off as PDF documents if need be.
Music – Pandora.com – This site has been around for a little while now, It allows you to basically make your own radio station, and it dynamically learns what music you want to listen to. A side spawn of this project is Squeezebox which allows you to turn your music library into a radio station with streaming music.
Chat – Gaim – It’s easy to use, installed by default on Ubuntu, and supports multiple accounts. On Linux and Windows you can use Pidgin and for Mac OS X you can use Adium.
VoIP – Twinkle – So far this is the best SIP capable client for Linux I have found. You can installed it through apt-get or Synaptic on Ubuntu or download it here. On Windows and Mac OS X I use X-Lite from CounterPath. I would say X-Lite is the best of the two but the Linux version sucks in my opinion.
PBX – trixbox – I just started using this because I’m trying to get my company or rather the company I work for into a new market so that we can make some more money as a company which personally helps me through profit sharing. Though, if I didn’t get that last bit, I would still peruse doing phone VoIP systems because I think they are interesting. I have it installed on an old PIII 500 with 256Mb of ram and it suits the needs of my wife an I just fine. A larger scale deployment would need a better server though.
Email – Gmail and Evolution – I just started using Evolution about a month ago because Outlook Web Access on Microsoft Exchange 2003 sucks when viewed from Firefox. Damn Microsoft. 
Kidding. Evolution seemed to be a logical choice for me because well, it was already installed on my computer and quite frankly I needed a way to check my mail. Sounds like a match made in heaven. Gmail, as you all probably know, is free and has cool features like web sharable calendars, documents and photos. You will probably see a trend here for me liking everything Google.
I think that’s enough for now. I’ll make a part 2 to this one pretty soon with quite a few more added programs and services that I use everyday for free. Compute free or die.
Broadcom BCM4306 on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
In my last post I mentioned that I needed to install a non standard package to get my laptop wireless device working. Well, I decided that because it took me about 20-25 minutes to find the fix for this I would post it so I can save someone some unneeded grief.
To get the wireless hardware working with the OS most people recommend NDISWrappers but the easiest and most supported was is to use Synaptic (the package manager) to install bcm43xx-fwcutter which is nothing more than the firmware that the kernel needs to load during the boot process to make the Wireless NIC usable. After installation just reboot and the viola you have a working Broadcom wireless NIC which supports pretty much any encryption method available.