Ubuntu

Got old-buntu? Ubuntu EOL 9.10 to 10.04 Upgrade Mini HowTo

So several months ago, I like the rest of the world, was notified that end of life (EOL) for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala would happening. In the news blurb/mailing list, wherever I found it, I walked away thinking that security updates would cease to exist.

In preparation for the upgrade, I went ahead and cloned the 9.10 server and proceeded to upgrade the server to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. This went off without a hitch from what I could tell and I scheduled the upgrade of the production server with my last client running 9.10.

Without fail, life happens, clients have things come up, and the upgrade never happened. Fast forward to present day and time, and my client tried installing a package using apt-get and received a slew of errors. Looking into the issue a bit further and I found the repositories gone. Interestingly enough, when EOL occurs for an Ubuntu release, it really ends, and not just for the security patches.

So one is left wondering, “how can I sudo apt-get install update-manager-core & sudo do-release-upgrade when I can’t even do a simple sudo apt-get update?” Solution: EOL upgrade. There are several different ways to go about this, the best are detailed here. At the time of this writing, the link is a little unclear about how to get 9.10 to 10.04 so here is the quick and easy way:

1. Backup your current sources.list:
sudo mv /etc/apt/sources.list ~/sources.list

2. Create a new sources.list:
sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list

3. Add/paste in archive release repositories substituting CODENAME for release jaunty, karmic, etc:

## EOL upgrade sources.list
# Required
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ CODENAME main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ CODENAME-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ CODENAME-security main restricted universe multiverse

# Optional
#deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ CODENAME-backports main restricted universe multiverse

4. Update repositories and install update manager
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install update-manager-core

5. Initiate the upgrade
sudo do-release-upgrade

6. Enjoy!

–Himuraken

Alternatives to MS Windows (desktop)

I have worked with and supported just about every version of MS desktop operating systems. That is life in the corporate environment. No matter your opinion of Microsoft OS, it gets the job done for the business user. However, there are many less than desirable “features”, such as licensing costs, hardware requirements, resources used by the OS, and the list goes on…

Some of my early experience was as a sys admin for a SCO UNIX network. I was impressed with the stability and reliability of the system. If I remember correctly the server had 128MB RAM to support 100-plus users. The serial network certainly had no bells and whistles, but it was easy to maintain. Server uptimes were measured in months instead of days for a typical Windows server. Adding a NIC and TCP/IP made the server very versatile and improved performance. As is common in the corporate environment, after a few years, new software required Windows servers and the UNIX box was retired. I pretty much lost touch with *nix in general.

Fast forward five years…

At some point I began loading various Linux distros on older laptops to check it out. Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE and all the other usual suspects were checked out. CentOS seemed to be one of the more popular distros supported. Along the way I met some more-serious Linux users and began loading Ubuntu starting with the 8 series releases. By now I had converted a personal laptop and the main home computer to Ubuntu. Stayed involved and moved along with updates until 10.04 LTS. Was very pleased with how it all worked. The variety of supported hardware is excellent (except maybe audio) and the stability was always very good.

Fast forward to Thursday June 16…

My Lenovo laptop with an XP install was finally experiencing some OS corruption and general performance degradation. Time for a reload with Linux. Off to Ubuntu.com to download 11.04 ISO. I loaded it up and the process was the same simple install I had come to expect with Ubuntu. Rebooted and logged in. I immediately noted the new UI. Complete crap was my first thought. I poked around for the rest of the day and my opinion got worse. It was not intuitive at all. Played around a couple more hours and tossed it in the bag for the night.

Fast forward to the next day…

Thoroughly disappointed with Ubuntu 11.04 I looked up Debian and did a little research. Seemed pretty solid and why use a derivative when you can get the original? A couple answers later (thank you himuraken!) I was installing Debian 6. (look for a future post on using ISO files and a USB drive)
Knowing that Ubuntu is based on Debian, I expected it to be familiar and it was. Two days later and I am very happy with the decision to replace Ubuntu 11.04. I look forward to using it daily.

I strongly encourage anyone interested in Linux to check out Debian. You will not be disappointed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_GNU/Linux

– habanero_joe

Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 Netbook Performance Issues

Being that it is my job and my nature to keep systems running, I generally don’t upgrade OS’ quickly. Doing so introduces change which in turn breaks things. After performing an install of the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 I found the performance to quite poor. After a quick Google search I found that I was far from the only one with the issue. You can follow more on that here. It is worth mentioning that I had this installed on an HP Mini 311 which is one of the faster netbooks available at the time of this writing. I went back to 10.04 and it is now a useful system again.

–Himuraken

Calling all Ubuntu fans

This week I joined the Ubuntu LoCo Florida Team and participated in last night’s team meeting (via IRC).  Seems like a great group of people AND an excellent way to get more involved with Ubuntu (and really any Linux).

In addition to the IRC meetings, there are scheduled meetups to perform various activities such as installing networks for youth homes/schools, bug testing, documentation writing, and just plain fun. Anyone out there enjoy bar-b-que and beer???

I look forward to greater involvement!

If you have no idea what IRC is and need a Linux client to get started, I recommend xchat (sudo apt-get install xchat)

For more information and to join:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeams
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=225
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FloridaTeam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat

– habanero_joe

MySQL errors after installing FOG

Recently, I converted a decently spec’d terminal server into an ESXi server after doing a P2V on the TS. After that, it was time to play. I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 9.04 server and then installed FOG. If you don’t know what FOG is, you may want to read FOG’s overview here. Once I got it all installed I kept getting an error when connecting to the web-based management interface. I have pasted in the error and resolution below, including credit on the source of the resolution.

–Himuraken

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’ (using password: NO) in /var/www/fog/management/index.php on line 34
Unable to connect to Database

I am not sure what else to tell you from here, I am at a standstill. Thanks for any help you can offer up.

RE: Problem with mySQL database after install
By: microleaks (microleaksProject AdminAccepting Donations) – 2008-02-06 15:52
All you need to do is go to /var/www/html/fog/commons/config.php and change the mysql password in that file you match whatever you set it as.

Openfiler iSCSI Share For CPS – Update

Original Post: Open Source Technology As Business Solutions: Openfiler – Symantec CPS Destination

We quickly noticed an issue with the iSCSI connector not automatically re-connecting the drive mapping when either the Openfiler server or the CPS server was rebooted. After some troubleshooting and most testing failed to resolve this issue, this project was scrapped in favor of using an Ubuntu NFS share as a backup2disk target.

Next step will be to test an NFS share as a CPS target.

Linux Administration Tool – webmin

For anyone that is not a Linux command-line expert (myself included!) webmin is an invaluable tool. A very quick install of this allows advanced administration from any web browser that can access the IP address of the server. Version 1.480 is the current release. Check it out and you will be pleasently surprised…

Instructions provided here are specifically for Ubuntu but can be adapted for any distro. (thanks to Himuraken for the proper syntax)

1.sudo apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl
2.wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.480_all.deb
3.sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.480_all.deb
4: open web browser, point to IP address of server on port 10000

For more info: Webmin