Friday, November 28, 2008
I’ve resisted too long. Finally I was coerced into it. After having spent a lot of time on a different project, I’ve tried to spend a little more time in KDE 4, and then Konqueror stopped working. It would give me a fatal error every time i tried opening. I found someone else reporting the error and it had been suggested to go ahead and upgrade KDE. I checked for new packages in Hardy Heron, but none were available. The upgrade from the run prompt using
kdesudo “adept_manager –dist-upgrade”
After a successful install on the machine that has the most packages, I chose to repeat on the other machines. Yay, I’m able to use Konqueror again.
I’ve also been very happy with some of the other improvements. While I was disappointed to see that KDE3 is missing, KDE4 now supports saving sessions and locking the terminal. Both were my biggest complaints aside from crashes.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
I recently learned of a font that other users highly recommend for your terminal application. Being a demanding Konsole user, it sounded beneficial so I thought I should try it. I have, and I think I am happy with it. You should try it out. Here are the instructions on how to install it in KDE 3.5. It is called the Terminus font, and I found a TrueType Font format file at this site. To install it in Kubuntu Hardy, I went to Kmenu -> System Settings ->
Appearance ->
Font Installer ->
Add Fonts.
I then selected the files I downloaded from the previous site. Then, from inside of Konsole I went to
Settings -> Font -> Select and chose the Terminus font.
And now here is what my terminal looks like:
Please share your thoughts and any suggestions!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
I discovered the best way for me to mount my ssh shares via sshfs automatically when I log in. I add shares and folders from time to time, and I also wanted this technology to automatically be backed up for me, so I wanted the solution to lie inside my home folder. I did some research and learned that KDE has an Autostart folder. For KDE 3.x this is currently at ~/.kde/Autostart, and for KDE4 it is ~/.kde4 (which will eventually drop the 4). I’m already hosting my scripts in ~/bin, so I created a script in that folder to execute sshfs and create the mounts. I then created a link by right-dragging the icon in Konqueror from the ~/bin/ folder to ~/.kde/Autostart. This will work for any executable or script. Now my sshfs mounts automatically at login.
Monday, September 15, 2008
I started encountering an error when using kdesu via SSH after Hardy Heron was installed. I’ve since upgraded to 8.04.1 as well and still am running into this bug.
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
kate: cannot connect to X server localhost:10.0
I know I’m not the only Kubuntu user, and there is proof I am not the only user encountering this error. I’ve been getting around it by using gksu which has no problems with my authentication. I suppose I could just alias kdesu and kdesudo (i tried it with no luck too!) to gksu, but I’d like to see an update fix this in the upcoming months. The nice fade effect of gksu is a welcome change sometimes.
I recently had to reinstall one of my servers. It was a pain. I didn’t have the partitions correct, so I lost my web install, and I hate how Ubuntu does not let us put /etc on a separate partition because of init. I struggled for a while with being forced to enter a password when using ssh connections to the re-installed. The output of ssh -vvv user@host indicated the keys were found and authorized, so I was stumped. I asked the North Texas Linux Users Group for some assistance and the first reply pointed me in the right direction. It turns out it was caused by incorrect permissions on my ssh files. To resolve, I used
cd ~
chmod go-w .ssh .ssh/authorized_key*
I have admittedly put it off for way too long. The recent OpenSSL Vulnerability with weak keys prompted me to change that on one of my systems. I was forced to use dist-upgrade when OpenSSL would not update, leaving me to continuously recreating weak keys. While I normally update packages using the command line, I was hesitant of using the GUI for Adept Manager. My previous attempts with dist-upgrade have all been failures (From Edgy to Feisty to Gutsy…) so I was not really expecting a smoothe transition. I used the GUI Adept Manager because it was the recommended method per the Kubuntu Hardy Heron upgrade documentation. Adept immediately gave me an error and closed the first time I tried. I rebooted and tried again with the same error. I kept trying, and it finally decided it would do it…and it did it well. I rebooted and I was almost unable to tell any difference. I did notice I had the new wallpaper available, but otherwise, OpenSSL let me create new, uncompromised keys… and that was what was important to me. It was so painless, I felt brave and tried it on another server. This time, no error message, and it upgraded just as easily. I still have one workstation remaining on Gutsy, a laptop that I don’t have any pressing need to update. The slow server took about two hours to update, and the faster one took about one hour.
I recently established my network to use SSH connections. My three Ubuntu systems I discovered were using weak keys that had been generated using the flawed packages. If you haven’t been paying attention, Canonical issued USN-612-1 on 5/13/2008. If you’re using keys that have been generated since September 2006, it’s likely that you need to regenerate all keys. If you have any doubts, I encourage you to regenerate all keys. It will affect any key used that was generated on a compromised system. The biggest trouble for me was getting OpenSSL and OpenSSH-server packages to update. I used the ssh-copy-id command to make it the process easy for me.
I have been struggling for some time with finding a way of properly managing my network, from a easy to use, fast interface. I’m pretty much set in stone that a web solution was what I was looking for. I found it in a tool called Webmin. You can download it from http://www.webmin.com. It’s built on PHP and allows the user to completely administer a system from remote. It has user-programmable modules, so it can be used to configure anything. I especially appreciate the Custom Commands, because it allows me to establish custom buttons that edit specific files. I’m able to use it to manage packages, shares, users, mail, files, apache, mysql, samba, and a whole lot more. To me, the best part of it is I can configure everything in a comfortable interface, from an application that suits my environment, my web browser. The list of available modules is massive! Practically one for every purpose.
Having been a long time user of 4DOS in my pre-win95 days, I had developed some batch files and/or aliases that I were quite handy in that environment. Switching to another operating system that’s more flexible with the command line, I’ve re-implemented some of those batch files and aliases. Here’s one of my favorites, and while it’s pretty simple, I use it all the time. It switches to a folder using the pushd command, executes your chosen command, and then uses popd to switch back to the original folder. It has no error checking of it’s own and it has no instructions. I did it in this fashion to keep it as light and quick as possible.
#!/bin/bash
## In Folder script by Joshua Kersey
## http://www.forwardyouth.com/ubuntu
pushd "$1"
"$2"
popd
Let me know if you’ve got any suggestions for improvement.
