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Damn you, Google!

Posted by on 2 April 2012, 10:05 pm

First post in a long time – Don’t worry, I haven’t been abducted by aliens from Omicron Persei 8

So today, Felicia Day launched her new personal show called the The Flog. Since I enjoyed this first episode immensely I decided it was time to extend my use of Youtube and subscribe to the channel (user?) Geek & Sundry.

To the *sshats at Google: Why, oh why, do you punish me for using Google Apps?

What’s the problem, you ask? Well, the problem wasn’t like it used to be (where I simply couldn’t log on to Youtube, unlike other services it didn’t give me the opportunity to switch to my non-apps Google account. So I had to log out from Apps account. Log in to my Google account, do whatever on Youtube and the log back into my Apps account – After logging of the Google Account, otherwise Google services would choose that as default).

One does not simply log in to Youtube

No, I was presented with a message telling, Youtube access hadn’t been enabled by my administrator. Easy peasy. I would just go to the domain control panel in Google Apps and enable. Right?

Wrong.

After remembering where the services are (that’s “Organization & Users” -> “Services” for future reference) I couldn’t find any Youtube. Turns out, I’m in the wrong country.

This is the fix:

  • On the Dashboard, select “Try Google Apps for Business Free”
  • On the next page, select “Country/Region: United States” and click “Begin Free Trial”
  • Now, a checkout window appear. Simply close it
  • Go to “Organization & Users” -> “Services” in your Apps control panel
  • Enable Youtube services
  • Wait five minutes
  • Log on to Youtube using your Google Apps account

In the end, it all worked out. And who can stay mad after watching @feliciaday in “The Flog”; @wilw and @grantimihara battle for (Small) World domination in “Table Top” – And last but least, a new video from @TheGuild called “I’m The One That’s Cool”. Oh, and this tweet.

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May you have a fortuitous New Year

Posted by on 30 December 2011, 9:29 am

May you survive a new year

It’s A New Year, Baby!

Live long and prosper!

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Installing Cisco VPN Client on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)

Posted by on 22 October 2011, 2:58 pm

As always with a new Ubuntu release comes the problem of getting Cisco’s VPN client to install (and no, using vpnc instead is not really an option since the VPN concentrator doesn’t play nice and drops the connection from time to time)

The problem this time is the kernel version of Ubuntu 11.10 – The new 3.0 series kernel.

I’ve made a patch which will make the kernel module compile and install on the 3.0 kernel.

If you have the vanilla Linux client, you still need the patches here – If the installation/compile fails, make sure you have installed all relevant patches as will as the packages needed to install (ia32-libs build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`).

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Running Symantec Veritas Cluster Manager on Ubuntu

Posted by on 17 October 2011, 10:58 am

At some point Veritas has release the Cluster Manager (Java Console) for Linux. Of course, Linux means Red Hat (and other RPM based flavours). Luckily it isn’t too hard making it work on Ubuntu (and friends).

First, get the software – This requires a SymAccount. And no, I will not send you the software

Now, prepare your Ubuntu box

$ sudo apt-get install alien fakeroot

And finally convert and install the package

$ fakeroot alien -c VCS_Cluster_Manager_Java_Console_5.1_for_Linux.rpm
$ sudo dpkg -i vrtscscm_5.1.00.20-1_all.deb

Now, from a terminal or otherwise (ALT-F2 in various Ubuntus) run

$ /opt/VRTSvcs/bin/hagui

Or create a desktop entry for the Cluster Manager to put it in the menu

Create the file ~/.local/share/applications/hagui.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Veritas Cluster Manager
GenericName=Veritas Cluster Manager
Comment=Manage Veritas clusters
Exec=/opt/VRTSvcs/bin/hagui
Terminal=false
Icon=ClusterManager
Type=Application
Categories=System

Copy ClusterManager.png to ~/.icons

Filed under Linux, Ubuntu. Tagged , ,
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Ubuntu Natty: Fixing ‘unknown locale’ in Python

Posted by on 27 June 2011, 10:20 am

The fix itself is the same as for Python 2.5 – only the line numbers have changed.

Open the file /usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py and find the line containing en_gb (line 921) and add these lines (this works for Danish locales):

    'en_dk':                                'en_DK.ISO8859-1',
    'en_dk.iso88591':                       'en_DK.ISO8859-1',
    'en_dk@euro':                           'en_DK.ISO8859-15',

In order to avoid this change getting overwritten by packages updates, I use dpkg-divert:

$ sudo dpkg-divert --add --rename --divert /usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py.real /usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py
$ sudo cp /usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py.real /usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py

If you wish to remove the diversion (if the package is fixed to support you locale at some point) simply run

$ sudo dpkg-divert --rename --remove /usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py
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Ubuntu: Installing and running a Lodge-it pastebin

Posted by on 20 June 2011, 10:53 am

When I switched from Apache2 to nginx, the software used to run my pastebin needed to be changed (I used Perl NoPaste, which is CGI based and I didn’t feel like messing with FastCGI wrappers). Instead I chose LodgeIt.

LodgeIt is not just another pastebin, it features a clean user interface, different color schemes for sourcecode, reply to pastes, support for all languages Pygments supports, and XMLRPC support

LodgeIt spawns it’s own webserver, which I placed behind nginx.

  1. Install required packages
    sudo apt-get install python-imaging python-sqlalchemy python-jinja2 python-pybabel python-werkzeug python-simplejson mercurial python-pygments
  2. Go to the directory where you want LodgeIt to live and check out the Mercurial repository
    hg clone http://dev.pocoo.org/hg/lodgeit-main
  3. cd into lodgeit-main, open manage.py and change the lines
    dburi
    SECRET_KEY
  4. Download the init script and place it in /etc/init.d and change the lines
    APP_PATH
    DAEMON_OPTS
    RUN_AS
  5. Configure autostart
    sudo update-rc.d lodgeit defaults
  6. Start the program
    sudo service lodgeit start

The init-script is also available for viewing

The nginx configuration is pretty easy – the only caveat is the fact that nginx does not support IPv6 for upstream servers, which is why lodgeit is configured to explicitly to listen on 127.0.0.1 (and not localhost which on a IPv6-enabled host is ::1).

server {
                listen [::]:80;
                server_name my.server;

                access_log /var/log/nginx/my.server-access.log;
                error_log /var/log/nginx/my.server-error.log;

                location / {
                                proxy_pass http://localhost:20000/;
                }
}
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Switched to nginx

Posted by on 19 June 2011, 8:37 am

Nowhere.dk has been moved to nginx (with php5-fpm) and most things seem to be working.

There is one problem though.

It seem that some of the older articles are indexed as /articles/-title-/index.php (which is sort of wrong) and accessing that type of URI results in a blank page.

The problem seem to be that I’ve configured nginx to serve file in this order:

location / {
                        try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrites;
}

In theory it should then be a matter of defining the right rewrite

location @rewrites {
       rewrite ^/articles/(.*)/index.php$ /articles/$1 permanent;
       rewrite ^ /index.php last;
}

but – There’s also a location definition for all php “files” (locations ending in .php, not files mind you) and I believe that the .php locations are handed over to php5-fpm withouth nginx actually testing to see if it’s there.

Perhaps I can solve this – but it is a minor problem.

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Android: ASCII Android – splash1 image

Posted by on 17 June 2011, 8:00 am

The image itself was taken from the Android bios boot animation – I haven’t been able to find
the name of the author but all credits go to him (or her)

Ascii Android

Use fastboot to install the image

$ fastboot flash splash1 splash1.img
sending 'splash1' (750 KB)... OKAY
writing 'splash1'... OKAY
$ fastboot reboot

Get the file

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Tip: Change the Chrome proxy settings when running Xubuntu (Xfce)

Posted by on 13 June 2011, 7:55 pm

For a long time, in the olden days, I ran Xubuntu – mainly because I loved the simplicity of the desktop (and also because it was a lot lighter on my machine, a Thinkpad T40, than GNOME. And I just have no love for KDE). Then some changes were made to the menu system (or the way to edit it) which annoyed the hell out of me – that combined with a new, more powerful machine, I decided to switch to GNOME, which I’ve been running for a couple of years.

Recently two things have happened

  • Ubuntu decided to switch to Unity as the default graphical environment
  • GNOME released 3.0 and announced that GNOME 2.x will no longer be actively developed (bug fixes only)

While both Unity and gnome-shell look nice and definitely have their place (I’m guessing they will both appeal much more to new users than GNOME2 ever did as well as work a lot better on netbooks and tablets) they both felt like they were hindering me in actually using my computer. Enter Xubuntu. Xfce felt like home :)

Now that I’m done rambling, let’ get down to business.

Google Chrome does not support Xfce, in the sense that it normally uses the proxy settings from GNOME or KDE; when running neither the proxy settings are simply not available. There are some hacks available to utilize the GNOME preferences infrastructure, but it seems cumbersome.

Chrome also support configuring proxy settings on the command line, in a rather neat way actually

  • –proxy-server=”foopy:99″
    Use the HTTP proxy “foopy:99″ to load all URLs.
  • –proxy-server=”https=proxy1:80;http=socks4://baz:1080″
    Load https://* URLs using the HTTP proxy “proxy1:80″. And load http://* URLs using the SOCKS v4 proxy baz:1080″.

neat indeed, but not very efficient if you have a lot of rules – Normally one could use Proxy Switchy! but since it relies on the proxy configuration in Chrome it also does not work in Xfce. Proxy Auto Config to the rescue.

A PAC file, in essence, is a Javascript which returns what proxy to use for a given URL or IP (if any).

An example

function FindProxyForURL(url,host)
{

        var resolved_ip = dnsResolve(host);

        if (isPlainHostName(host))
        return "DIRECT";
        else if (host == "server1.my.corp" ||
                host == "server2.my.corp")
        return "PROXY proxy.my.corp:8080";
        else if (isInNet(resolved_ip, "192.168.1.0", "255.255.255.0") ||
                        isInNet(resolved_ip, "192.168.4.0", "255.255.255.0")
                        )
        return "DIRECT";
        else
        return "PROXY localhost:18080";
}

I use Dropbox to keep the proxy config in sync between machines.

To use the proxy pac, I created a copy of the Chrome launcher

$ cp /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop ~/.local/share/applications

Now, locate all lines containing

Exec=/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome

and change it to

Exec=/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --proxy-pac-url=file:///path/to/proxy.pac %U

or

Exec=/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --proxy-server="https=proxy1:80;http=socks4://baz:1080 %U

That’s it. The next time you launch Google Chrome, it will use the proxy settings configured in the application shortcut.

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Ubuntu: Install Percona XtraBackup

Posted by on 13 June 2011, 3:51 pm

Percona XtraBackup is an open-source hot backup utility for MySQL that doesn’t lock your database during the backup. It can back up data from InnoDB, XtraDB, and MyISAM tables on MySQL 5.0 and newer servers, and it has many advanced features. Commercial support contracts are available. For a high-level overview of the features, including a feature comparison, please see the XtraBackup homepage.

Luckily installing XtraBackup is pretty easy

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 1C4CBDCDCD2EFD2A
$ echo "deb http://repo.percona.com/apt maverick main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install xtrabackup

I wrapped the backup program in a small shell script

#!/bin/bash
BDIR="/home/backup/mysql"

# Run backup
/usr/bin/innobackupex-1.5.1 --stream=tar --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/my.cnf ./ | gzip -c -9 > $BDIR/backup.`date +%m%d%Y%H%M%S`.tar.gz

# Remove backups older than 7 days
find $BDIR -name backup.\* -ctime +7 -exec rm {} \;

I prefer to have the the username and password for MySQL in my.cnf (add these lines under [client])

user           = root
password    = Secreeet

Finally, add the script to root’s crontab (you know, sudo crontab -e)

0 2 * * * bash /usr/local/bin/mysql_backup.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
Filed under Computer, Linux, Ubuntu.
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