Ubuntu First Steps Part 1

First off I'd like to say I really like Ubuntu and Linux in general. My least favorite part of the Windows world is having to type in a license key for everything. I work doing networking / server / pc support for a small company and when the problem I have to solve and spend time on is one due to licensing issues, well, I get annoyed. (Computer Associates are you listening?)

Ubuntu is basically a fully usable desktop for most purposes, and since most applications are going to hopefully be web based in the future, the whole "cloud" and all, there is a possibility for more Linux on the desktop at home and in business.

I'll clarify when I say basically a usable desktop. I'm not a heavy peripheral component user, I don't have a fancy printer, and I don't know how well my iPod would work with it. I'm sure these are problems that some people would run into. Also, if your a big gamer, well your not going to be using Linux, or anything besides Windows for that matter.

My main problem with Linux right now, and I'm almost ready to give it another shot, is the spotty support for more than one monitor. I'm all for spending time getting something complicated to work. But not when its something that *should* be easy, such as my desktop display. But when Ubuntu 8.04 comes out I might throw in a spare hard drive and give it a whirl.

For the mean time my Ubuntu use is limited to virtual machines, which they work very well as. I've been able to get Ubuntu 6.06 and 7.10 installed with tools running and they perform very well under VMware Server. There are a few things that need to be done right off of the bat in my opinion to make it more usable.

The first, obviously is to install vmware-tools. More important if you are going to use GNOME or KDE, for command line administration I haven't seen a giant difference, but its probably best to install vmware-tools anyway. A previous blog post describes how to do this.

The next step I always take is to update the sources.list file. This is the same as if you enable or disable repositories through the System->Administration->Software Sources applet in GNOME.

I usually do the following, although depending on what packages you want to install your steps may vary ...

1. Comment out the CD-ROM as a source, put a '#' before deb cdrom ....

This avoids Ubuntu asking for the CD-ROM whenever you want to install something.

2. Uncomment other repositories as you see fit. I normally uncomment the universe repository, but note that if you do this you should also uncomment the corresponding security repository to reflect the universe option. You may also need to add the multiverse repository if you need certain packages, for example I think the Java-SDK under 6.06 . For example, my sources.list file for my LAMP server with Java installed looks like the following:

#
# deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 6.06.1 _Dapper Drake_ - Release i386 (20060807.1)]/ dapper main restricted


#deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 6.06.1 _Dapper Drake_ - Release i386 (20060807.1)]/ dapper main restricted

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper main restricted

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-updates main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-updates main restricted

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe multiverse


deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates universe multiverse

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe multiverse

You may want to leave the deb-src lines commented out.

Then run:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

The third thing that I will normally do to a new Ubuntu installation is to install OpenSSH, so that I can SSH to the box.

sudo apt-get install ssh

Will accomplish this task.

Hopefully soon I will follow up with some more. Within the next week I'll probably throw up another Ubuntu VM and remember some other things that need to be done.

VMware Server Console Fails to start on Linux

I recently setup VMware Server 1.x on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon which is running on my IBM T40 laptop. After installing the build-essentials and linux-headers the install went smoothly, however when I went to click on VMware Server Console it would start loading and then do nothing. Trying to start vmware from the terminal provided some more information:

vmware is installed, but it has not been (correctly) configured
for this system. To (re-)configure it, invoke the following command:
/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl.

So, I reran vmware-config.pl and tried to start VMware again, however I got the same message.

After doing some digging I found a solution. Delete the /etc/vmware/not_configured file. After deleting the file VMware Server Console started right up and I was able to create and run virtual machines.

However it does not seem to be the optimal solution, as after a reboot the next time I started Server Console I got the same message and had to delete the file again. I don't know if maybe it as an Ubuntu update that caused this, or something that happens when the service loads, but for now the temporary solution works.