MAC OS is one of the OS which gives impresive graphical ability and interface. My friends where planning to buy an apple laptop only because of its graphics, I myself attracted to MAC OS. There are some hardware compatibility issues for running MAC OS on Intel Hardware. So well other alternative to using MAC OS is either to purchase MAC hardware(which would be naturally expensive) and run full fledged MAC OS or you could tweak and customize your Ubuntu desktop to look more like MAC OS X.

Installing Cursor, GTK and Icon Theme

To install cursor,gtk and icon theme first download the package from the link given below :

http://rapidshare.de/files/38210507/MyTheme.tar.gz.html

To install the theme package we have downloaded fro the above link, go to (System -> Preferences -> Appearance) and click Install and point to our newly downloaded Mytheme.tar.gz archive.

This should start installing the theme package (Cursors/Icons/Theme) once installation is completed . Chose Customize in theme and click on Customize.

In this window in Icons chose LeopardX , in Controls Mac4Lin_GTK_Aqua_v0.3 , in Window Border Mac4Lin_GTK_Aqua_v0.3 and in Pointers White Cursor .

If you have followed the steps properly the theme and icons should have been installed , and you should be able to see the new theme applied to your default desktop.

Enabling Compiz Graphic Effects and installing Mac$lin Theme

First Step is to install compiconf-settings-managerusing apt-get

shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Before customizing Compiz you have to change Appearance Preference to Extra ( System -> Preferences -> Appearence )

After completing above steps , you can customize compiz by going to System -> Preferences -> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings .

After this Install Emerald Theme Manager using apt-get

shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install emerald

After installation is over download MacOS X Emerald theme from this link : http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Mac4Lin+Leopard+Emerald+Theme?content=68409

Now open (System -> Preferences -> Emerald Theme Manager )

After Emerald theme manager opens click on import and point to the downloaded theme package from withing the Theme Manager , you will find Mac4Lin Theme listed select the theme , click on refresh and quit the application

Mav like Dock with Avant Navigator

After the above steps Install Avant Window Navigator.

Avant Windows Navigator is cool little tool that allows you to have a cute looking dock at the bottom of the screen . Even though AWN is still very buggy, still because it is so feature rich and cool looking you could install it .

To install AWN you need to add extra repositories, now adding any additional repository carries certain amount of risk of screwing up your system so follow these step at your own risk.

To add repository:

shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ echo "deb  http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

After issuing above command type the following command to update your repositories :

shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get update

and finally to install AWN issue the following command in the terminal window :

shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk

Now after completing above mentioned steps AWN should be properly installed , To Launch AWN go to (Applications -> Accessories -> Avant Window Navigator )
Now you could customize AWN by choosing to add more applets , configuring 3D effects for AWN etc by going to AWN Manager ( System -> Preferences -> Awn Manager )

Though the theme which AWN comes with preinstalled is also good , you might like to try this it’s cool and very Mac like
http://rapidshare.com/files/71511920/Transparent.tgz.html
you could install this theme through AWN Manager go to (System->Preferences->AWN manager) and go to themes there and click on “Add” and point it to the downloaded theme.

You will see a confirmation dialog box that theme has been added properly. Close AWN Manager and start it again and chose the theme just installed and press apply button to make this theme default theme of AWN.
This is how my AWN Dock looks(with the above theme installed) like : -

Introduction

Memcached is a high-performance, distributed caching system. It is often used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and objects in memory to reduce the number of times the database must be read.

Installing memcached

shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install memcached
shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install php5-memcache

After installing these two packages next step is to configure memcached.conf file. ( /etc/memcached.conf )Memcached.conf

After that edit the memecached.ini file. ( /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/memcache.ini )

A sample memcache.ini file

; uncomment the next line to enable the module
extension=memcache.so
[memcache]
memcache.dbpath="/var/lib/memcache"
memcache.maxreclevel=0
memcache.maxfiles=0
memcache.archivememlim=0
memcache.maxfilesize=0
memcache.maxratio=0
session.save_handler = memcache
session.save_path = "tcp://192.168.1.1:11211?weight=1,tcp://192.168.1.2:11211"

There are some situations where you want to store instances of memcache on two servers. On this situaltion you want to set ’session.save_path’ as in the above example as comma separated.After that start memcached

shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ memcached -d   ==> Start memcache as a background process

shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ memcached -vv ==> Start memcached as a foreground process

For testing memcached you can start memcached using -vv option . If you start memcached using -vv option you can see stroing session on memcache on the terminal.

shahid@shahid-laptop:~$ memcached -vv
slab class   1: chunk size     96 perslab 10922
slab class   2: chunk size    120 perslab  8738
slab class   3: chunk size    152 perslab  6898
slab class   4: chunk size    192 perslab  5461
slab class   5: chunk size    240 perslab  4369
slab class   6: chunk size    304 perslab  3449
slab class   7: chunk size    384 perslab  2730
slab class   8: chunk size    480 perslab  2184
slab class   9: chunk size    600 perslab  1747
slab class  10: chunk size    752 perslab  1394
slab class  11: chunk size    944 perslab  1110
slab class  12: chunk size   1184 perslab   885
slab class  13: chunk size   1480 perslab   708
slab class  14: chunk size   1856 perslab   564
slab class  15: chunk size   2320 perslab   451
slab class  16: chunk size   2904 perslab   361
slab class  17: chunk size   3632 perslab   288
slab class  18: chunk size   4544 perslab   230
slab class  19: chunk size   5680 perslab   184
slab class  20: chunk size   7104 perslab   147
slab class  21: chunk size   8880 perslab   118
slab class  22: chunk size  11104 perslab    94
slab class  23: chunk size  13880 perslab    75
slab class  24: chunk size  17352 perslab    60
slab class  25: chunk size  21696 perslab    48
slab class  26: chunk size  27120 perslab    38
slab class  27: chunk size  33904 perslab    30
slab class  28: chunk size  42384 perslab    24
slab class  29: chunk size  52984 perslab    19
slab class  30: chunk size  66232 perslab    15
slab class  31: chunk size  82792 perslab    12
slab class  32: chunk size 103496 perslab    10
slab class  33: chunk size 129376 perslab     8
slab class  34: chunk size 161720 perslab     6
slab class  35: chunk size 202152 perslab     5
slab class  36: chunk size 252696 perslab     4
slab class  37: chunk size 315872 perslab     3
slab class  38: chunk size 394840 perslab     2
slab class  39: chunk size 493552 perslab     2
<3 server listening
<7 new client connection
<7 get 190c562b24186ff47914309b3ceaab95
>7 END
<7 set 190c562b24186ff47914309b3ceaab95 0 1440 0
>7 STORED
<7 connection closed.
<7 new client connection
<7 get 8c1f38e6f02939cea6a6563049e216c8
>7 END
<8 new client connection
<8 get 7925615c1ab9933cb33af0121881a82b
>8 END

Another method for checking whether memcached was enamble or not is to check the phpinfo() function. In the phpinfo page should contain memcache module.

First off, remember that fprint is not entirely stable, and may not work all the time. A list of supported devices is here, and the list of unsupported devices is here.

1. First thing to do is add the [third-party] fprint repository to your sources file ‘/etc/apt/sources.list'

# Fingerprint reader support (fprint)
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/madman2k/ubuntu hardy main restricted universe multiverse

2. Next, update your sources and install fprint:

$sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fprint-demo libfprint-dev libfprint0 libpam-fprint

3. Now you can enroll your fingers using either the terminal or a graphical user interface.
Terminal:

$ pam_fprint_enroll

GUI:

$ fprint_demo

4. Last thing to do is configure PAM so that the fingerprint reader can be useful. Open up your PAM authentication file and edit it:

$ sudo gedit /etc/pam.d/common-auth

5. Edit it to contain:

$ auth sufficient pam_fprint.so
$ auth required pam_unix.so nullok_secure

Enjoy your Fingerprint Reader Support

Steps 4 and 5 tell Ubuntu to check your fingerprint, and if that fails, then ask your password. This rule has some exceptions, one that I have encountered is on the login screen. I have to scan my fingerprint before typing my password. One thing I did notice is that when you use sudo in the terminal, it asks for your fingerprint, which I thought was pretty cool. One disadvantage is that anything using gksu does not seem to work properly, specifically because it does not tell you to scan your finger when needed.

Well, webcam started working on Ubuntu in my HP Pavilion dv2000 model.

Here is the details of what did to get the webcam running on using Ubuntu.

$ svn checkout http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/linux-uvc/
$ cd linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk/
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ modprobe uvcvideo

Tested with ‘ekiga ‘ and ‘xawtv’

The 404 or Not Found error message is an HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server but either the server could not find what was requested, or it was configured not to fulfill the request and not reveal the reason why. 404 errors should not be confused with “server not found” or similar errors, in which a connection to the destination server cannot be made at all.

If you request a non existent page on a server .It will not show up your normal Apache custom 404 page.

A trick to show a custom page ( eg: cferror.cfm ) when a non existant cfm page is accessed. This can be done with the .htaccess file. .htaccess is a regular text file that contains “scripts” that allow you to override certain things on your server - like creating a custom 404 error document that replaces the server’s default 404 document.

Method 1

To be able to create your own 404 error document, first you need to create the actual document (use your HTML editor of choice or hand code it if you like), upload the document to the root directory on your server, and finally include the following in your document root .htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/404.html

 Method 2

Add the following entry to the .htaccess file in your DocumentRoot

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) /cferror.cfm?%{REQUEST_URI}

All request to the non existent pages are passed to cferror.cfm page with the requested URL as argument.

Indroduction

VMWare is a Virtual Machine used for installing an Operating system inside another Operating System. After installing VMWare on any operating system, we can start VMWare which will act as a system. We can install operating systems in VMWare so that we can switch to other OS very easly,  we don’t need to restart our system, we can work oon both OS at the same time.

My Experience

The VMWare Virtual Machine is one of my favorite software, which I was used on Ubuntu 7.04 Gutsy. It is very easy to install VMWare on Ubuntu 7.04.

$ apt-get install vmware-server

But after installing Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy and other essintial libraries and importan packages in my system. When I seached the package ‘vmware-server’ using apt-cache search, there is no package like this. So I added the repository to sourcess.list which is used by Ubuntu 7.04 for installing VMWare. After that the package ‘vmware-server’ was listed. When I tried to install the pakage ‘vmware-server’ using ‘apt-get install’, it show some error regarding linux-kernal-module. After that I tried to install VMWare using source code, but it also produce the same error.

Then I searche the web for any help, luckily I got an helpful stuff. Then I successfully installed vmware-server on Ubuntu 8.04.

If you are facing the same issue, then here is the full guide to install VMware Server and get it working in Hardy Heron:
Installing VMWare Server on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy

Download VMware Server 1.0.5 to your home folder

Download the patch file vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz to your home folder.

Extract the Vmware-server-1.0.5-80187.tar.gz to your home folder (either via Archive manager or type tar zxf Vmware-server-1.0.5-80187.tar.gz in the terminal)

Extract the vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz to your home folder (either via Archive Manager or type tar zxf vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz in the terminal)

Install the necessary dependencies

$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential
$ sudo apt-get install xinetd gcc-3.4

If you are using 64 bits system, you have to install the additional files

$sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Run the VMware Server installer

$ cd vmware-server-distrib
$ sudo ./vmware-install.pl

You will be prompted to answer some questions. Press ‘Enter’ to select the default answer. When it reaches the point that requires you to run vmware-config.pl, type ‘No‘. The installer will exit.

Next, apply the patch

$ cd vmware-any-any-update116
$ sudo ./runme.pl

This time, press ‘Enter’ for all the questions and enter ‘Yes‘ to run the vmware-comfig.pl.

Once it has finished compiling, you should now see the VMware console in your Applications->System Tools. If not, you can start VMware Server by typing vmware in the terminal.

When you launch the application, it might generate an error message saying that it can’t find the cairo version. No worry, just copy the files over and it will work.

$ sudo cp /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/
$ sudo cp /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/

For 64 bit users

$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib32 /usr/l32
$  sed -i -e ’s/usr\/lib/usr\/l32/g’ /usr/lib32/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/loader-files.d/libgtk2.0-0.loaders
$ sudo sed -i -e ’s/usr\/lib/usr\/l32/g’ /usr/lib32/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0.1200.9

That’s it. Your VMware Server should be working now.

$ vmware

Goto Applications ->  System Tools -> VMWare Server Console

The first Linux OS I used is Fedora and RedHat when I was doing my PG. Most of the machines in our college is running Fedora and after two three days I will be comfortable with the new OS. At the time of computer lab and free times I used to do some other things like installing some packages and other things. Almost two years I used Fedora. Because it is a community product it is not stable, there are many bugs. Even though I used Fedora I also tried Ubuntu. Ubuntu is much better than fedora and it is also free.

After I got the job as Server Administrator, the company server were running on Ubuntu Servers. So for the last 6 months I am using ubuntu. And there is not much differences in the file system. Only some differences in some command for example we use ‘yum’ command to install any thing in fedora and ‘apt-get, ‘aptitude’ command to install any thing in Ubuntu.I did’nt find any big difficulties in using Ubuntu, ofcource there are lots of help if we go online. Last two weeks back I installed Ubuntu 8.04 in my laptop, it is quite good.

Last week I got an iso image of OpenSolaris and I installed OpenSolaris in the VMWare virtual machine. Solaris is one of the best OSin the world and it is stable. First I installed apache, mysql and PHP in the Solaris machine. I used the command ‘pkg-get’ to install these packages. In Fedora and Ubuntu the configuration files of installed pakages where stored in the location /etc/. But for OpenSolaris the configuration files where stored in the location /opt/csf/etc.

What is Mono ?

Mono provides the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix. Sponsored by Novell (http://www.novell.com), the Mono open source project has an active and enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications.

Introduction

The ASP.NET development environment on Ubuntu Linux is called XSP. This is a simple webserver written in C# that can be used for either ASP.NET 1.0 or 2.0 applications. You can install both environments side by side if need be.

Requirements

Monodevelop is probably the best IDE for developing .NET applications on Linux. In order to install and use it for development, you will also need the Mono .NET runtime environment installed. Thankfully, installing monodevelop and mono are very simple on Ubuntu.

Run this command from a Terminal window:

$ sudo apt-get install mono mono-gmcs mono-gac mono-utils monodevelop monodoc-browser monodevelop-nunit monodevelop-versioncontrol
ASP.NET 1.0

$ sudo apt-get install mono-xsp mono-xsp-base

$ sudo apt-get install asp.net-examples

This will install the development environment along with some sample applications. To run the sample applications, you will launch the XSP process and point it at the samples. You’d simply modify the path to run an application that you’ve created.

$ xsp –root /usr/share/asp.net-demos/

Listening on port: 8080 (non-secure)
Listening on address: 0.0.0.0
Root directory: /usr/share/asp.net-demos
Hit Return to stop the server.

ASP.NET 2.0

$ sudo apt-get install mono-xsp2 mono-xsp2-base

$ sudo apt-get install asp.net2-examples

This will install the development environment along with some sample applications. To run the sample applications, you will launch the XSP process and point it at the samples. You’d simply modify the path to run an application that you’ve created.

$ xsp2 –root /usr/share/asp.net2-demos/

Listening on port: 8080 (non-secure)
Listening on address: 0.0.0.0
Root directory: /usr/share/asp.net-demos
Hit Return to stop the server.

At this point, you’d want to navigate in your browser to http://localhost:8080/ and you should see a page similar to this:

FUSE-based file system backed by Amazon S3

Amazon S3 Indroduction

Amazon s3 is a remote file storing system. It is totally different from Normal Servers like Apache, FTP server etc. If your site burns more bandwidth due to backups or multimedia contents such a video, image, audio etc, the maintenance cost will be very high. For a limited number of page views, local file saving mechanism is ok. Because the cost of bandwidth is comparatively low. But when the data transfer rate become higher, the bandwidth cost should be considered.

In such a case instead of saving files or images in local servers, You can use Amazon s3 server (S3 stands for Simple Storage Service). For this you have do two things

1) Register on http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261

2) Use api for uploading your files into s3 for web applications

3) Mount Amazon S3 bucket and use as a local file system for backups.

S3fs Indroduction

s3fs is a FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) filesystem that allows you to mount an Amazon S3 bucket as a local filesystem. It stores files natively and transparently in S3 (i.e., you can use other programs to access the same files). Maximum file size=5G.Its quite useful and stable, e.g., can be used to easily copy daily backup tarballs to s3

To use it:

1. get an amazon s3 account
2. download the source, s3fs-r130-source.tar.gz (I’ve used Ubuntu 7.10 ) and slap the binary in, say, /usr/bin/s3fs
   1. you’ll need at least fuse-2.6
   2. for fedora probably need to do: yum install fuse-devel
   3. for ubuntu probably need to do something like: sudo apt get fuse-libs
   4. I got one dependency libcurl-dev, libxml2-dev libfuse-dev ( sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libxml2-dev libfuse-dev )
3. Installation
   1. $ sudo tar -xzvf s3fs-r130-source.tar.gz
   2. $ cd s3fs
   3. $ sudo make
   4. $ sudo make install
4. Mounting Amazon S3 Bucket

$ sudo /usr/bin/s3fs mybucket -o accessKeyId=myaccessKeyId -o secretAccessKey=mysecretAccessKey /mnt

Now you can read / write files to your bucket using Linux commands.

List the contents in the Bucket mounted to /mnt/ directory

$ sudo ls /mnt

s3fs will retry s3 transactions on certain error conditions. The default retry count is 2, i.e., s3fs will make 2 retries per s3 transaction (for a total of 3 attempts: 1st attempt + 2 retries) before giving up. You can set the retry count by using the “retries” option, e.g., “-oretries=2″

Options

• accessKeyId
• secretAccessKey
• defailt_acl ( default=”private”)
  • the default canned acl to apply to all written S3 Onjects
  • any created files will have this canned acl
  • any updated files will also have this canned acl applied
• prefix (default=”") (comming soon!)
  • a prefix to append to all S3 objects
• retries (default=”2″)
  • number of times to retry a failed S3 transaction
• use_cache (default=”" which means disabled)
  • local folder to use for local files cache

Process Control Functions (PCNTL)

Introduction

Process Control support in PHP implements the Unix style of process creation, program execution, signal handling and process termination. Process Control should not be enabled within a web server environment and unexpected results may happen if any Process Control functions are used within a web server environment.

Requirements

No external libraries are needed to build this extension.

Installation

Process Control support in PHP is not enabled by default. You have to compile the CGI or CLI version of PHP with –enable-pcntl configuration option when compiling PHP to enable Process Control support.

Examples

This example forks off a daemon process with a signal handler.

#!/usr/local/bin/php -q //Include the file php

<’?php’
declare(ticks=1);
$cmd = ‘php’;
$file = array(’parse.php’);
$pid = pcntl_fork();
if ($pid == -1)
{
die(”could not fork”);
}
else if ($pid)
{
echo “parent”;
exit(); // we are the parent
}
else
{
echo “Child”;
exit(); // we are the child
}
// detatch from the controlling terminal
if (posix_setsid() == -1)
{
echo $pid;
echo “\n”;
die(”could not detach from terminal\n”);
}

// setup signal handlers
pcntl_signal(SIGTERM, “sig_handler”);
pcntl_signal(SIGHUP, “sig_handler”);

// loop forever performing tasks
while (1)
{
// do something interesting here
pcntl_exec(’php’,’file.php’); // executes ‘file.php’ in the back ground.
echo “”;
// exit;

}
function sig_handler($signo)
{

switch ($signo)
{
case SIGTERM:
// handle shutdown tasks
echo “\nShutdown”;
exit;
break;
case SIGHUP:
// handle restart tasks
echo “restart”;
break;
default:
// handle all other signals
}

}

‘?>’

For more details Click here