Yet another Tech Blog » Linux

Passwordless SSH Login

Martin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:47:14 +0000

Note: This will only work on UNIX hosts.

1. Create your private/public key pair, which will create a private key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa a public one in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub:
# ssh-keygen -t rsa

2. Now copy your public key over to the remote host:
# scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@remote-host.com:~
# ssh username@remote-host.com
# cat ~/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

3. You’re done! You can now access the remote host with the same SSH command like before, but won’t be prompted to enter a password anymore!

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Upgrading to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10

Martin — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:56:38 +0000

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 was released today. Here’s a few pictures of the upgrade process.

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Change current user on Ubuntu

Martin — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:27:24 +0000

Since the command “su” won’t work on Ubuntu, unless you change the configuration, you can use “sudo -s -u” to change the current user to the one specified in.

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How to install any package in Ubuntu

Martin — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:57:04 +0000

standard packages found in the repository (you can also use apt-get for this):

sudo aptitude search ABC (apt-cache search ABC)
sudo aptitude install ABC (sudo apt-get install ABC)
sudo aptitude remove ABC (sudo apt-get remove ABC)

.deb (watch out for unresolved dependencies!)

sudo dpkg -i ABC.deb

.rpm (use .deb packages preferably though)

sudo alien -i *.rpm

.tar.gz (requires sudo aptitude install checkinstall)

tar xzvf ABC.tar.gz
cd ABC
./configure
make
sudo checkinstall

.package, .sh, .bin (just download and execute)

chmod +x ABC
./ABC

.exe (requires you to have wine installed)

wine ABC.exe

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Cleaning up your Ubuntu Installation

Martin — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 18:31:45 +0000

After upgrading my Ubuntu 6.10 installation to the newest 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) over a thousand packages were upgraded. So it’s obvious that there were left some dependencies which are not needed anymore. Sure everything still works, but I like to clean up things on Operating Systems I use productively. That’s why I wrote a script to clean up those dependencies with a single command. Here’s what you should do if you want to clean up your Ubuntu Installation (no matter which version) as well:

Download and install the deborphan package. This is the application that finds unnecessary dependencies: “sudo apt-get install deborphan”
Execute this command until there are no more dependencies: “apt-get remove $(deborphan)”

Alternatively, you can also put that command into a script, if you don’t want to remember that line:

Download the script here: del_orph_pkgs.txt
Change the filename from “del_orph_pkgs.txt” to “del_orph_pkgs.sh” and do a “chmod +x del_orph_pkgs.sh” so we can execute it.
Execute the script with “sudo del_orph_pkgs.sh” multiple times until it won’t find anymore dependencies. This is necessary, because those libraries, which are not needed anymore, might have dependencies them self, which become obsolete. So another execution cycle will eliminate those as well.

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How to get VMWare to work under Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

Martin — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 12:57:40 +0000

As many other ubuntu users I quickly upgraded my boxes to Ubuntu Feisty. But I soon realized, that VMWare did not work anymore, even though I tried to recompile its modules for the new kernel that came with feisty. After surfing the web and trying multiple solutions, I came up with this one, which seems to work the best for VMWare Workstation and VMWare Server (although I haven’t tried it myself with the Server edition):

Install Linux header for your current kernel: sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`
Download these two files: vmmon.tar & vmnet.tar
Move them to VMWare’s module folder: sudo mv vmmon.tar vmnet.tar /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/
It’s also a good idea to change the owner of those files to root.root: sudo chown root.root /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/*tar
Last but not least, rerun VMWare’s config file: sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl

If the above mentioned solution should not work for you, please post a comment and I will see how I can help you.

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KDevelop won’t compile project

Martin — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:30:42 +0000

KDevelop is a nice C++ IDE on Linux. As I installed it on my new Ubuntu box and wanted to run it, everything seemed fine, until I tried to compile a project.
If the following error message appears while trying to compile a KDevelop project:
make: aclocal: Command not found
make: *** [all] Error 127
*** Exited with status: 2 ***

Install the following: “sudo apt-get install g++ gcc make automake1.9 libtool” and restart KDevelop. You should now be able to compile your projects without that error.

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Unable to configure VMWare on Ubuntu

Martin — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:39:05 +0000

While trying to install and configure VMWare Workstation on my new Ubuntu Desktop, i received the following error message:

“None of the pre-built vmmon modules for VMware Workstation is suitable for your running kernel. Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)?”

It seemed like I didn’t have the headers for my current kernel installed. A short “ sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)” quickly did the trick and I was able to successfully complete the configuration.

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Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

Martin — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:10:14 +0000

Since I have completely switched from Gentoo to Ubuntu, (I was no longer able to mess around with my Gentoo installation, Ubuntu is just so much more stable right out of the box), I am eager to get my hands on the final release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04). Ubuntu gets user-friendlier and more stable with every release, no wonder it’s the world’s favorite Linux distribution. Feisty Fawn has not been released as final yet, only as BETA. But after reading a critical look at ubuntu feisty beta on an hp nc8430 laptop, I’m sure, it will improve on the Ubuntu experience even more and will introduce features like automatic codec detection even unknown to users of Mac OS X and Windows Vista.

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lightweight alternative to PHPMyAdmin

Martin — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:27:13 +0000

PHPMiniAdmin is an extremely small alternative to the big, heavy and sometimes slow PHPMyAdmin.
PHPMiniAdmin seems to incorporate only the most basic features, so it might not appeal to everyone. But certainly to those, who are feeling comfortable with SQL and who prefer speed over functionality.

Check out the screenshot below:

The projects homepage can be found here: http://phpminiadmin.sourceforge.net

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