Hello out there in admin land!

It is I, El Di Pablo here to bring you a quick Ubuntu tip for the week. I haven’t written on aTa in a while due to my hectic schedule, but I am sure you have seen me milling about the comments quite a bit.

Anyhoo, so there I am last night, screwing around on my Ubuntu laptop surfing porn doing homework when I noticed that all of my minimize and maximize buttons were missing from my windows. The only way to minimize and maximize my windows were to right click on the bottom task bar and select it from the menu. WTF?!?!?

Well, it turns out that those buttons aren’t completely controlled by Gnome. For those buttons, Gnome uses a windows manager call Metacity. To get those buttons back I had to open a terminal and run the following command:

Once I did that, my buttons came back, and I was able to minimize and maximize like a mofo! Do you have any good Ubuntu tips/tricks you want to share? Hit us up in the comments!

By El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power

After figuring out I could edit Blogger blog posts from my mobile I decided to see what I could do with my TiVo while I am away. I went online and did some research. I found this tid-bit from Dave Zatz (Sling Media) and gave it a shot.

Allow me to bring you kids up to speed. Essentially, TiVos are just nicely packaged Linux boxes with TV capture cards, hard drives, and a cutesy visual operating system that everyone has grown to love. It’s nice to know the open Linux spirit is in full swing at Tivo, because the developers at Tivo have happily included an already running, https, port 80 web server!

You heard me correctly, I did NOT stutter. As long as you enabled the transfer option from TiVo online you can access a web server built into your Tivo. To do this all you need to do is simply point your browser at your TiVo’s local IP address using https://…

The address bar would look like this:

https://192.168.0.3/

I simply entered this address into my browser and it prompted me for a username and password. The username to use is always tivo and the password is your Media Access Key.

Your media access key can be found via your tivo interface or on your TiVo.com account.

Now how can you use this information while you are away?

Point your router to forward port 80 and 443 to your TiVo, Now by typing in your routers external IP address from any where in the world you can download your .TIVO files.

I hear you all saying:

They are encrypted and all Admin what good is that? and How does this help me?

Well these .TIVO files are just MPEG2 files with a shiny restrictive layer of prohibitive crap. But, no worries lets get that file cracked open so you can burn it to DVD or move it around at your own will. TiVo to go lets you do some of this stuff but The Admin hates being restricted to, well, anything.

Lets get you Downloading, Stripping and Ripping… (This is for your own access we are not teaching you to be nor advocating piracy…)

Tune back in for part two of our TiVo – download, strip and rip series tomorrow.

_TheTiVoHappyAdmiN_

I would like to monitor event logs on multiple windows machines – maybe ping them every so often?

I used to use something called Emon but it seems pretty outdated. I looked at bigBrother but it seems too expensive.

Do you have a solution?

Have you heard of VMWare??

If you are game then keep on reading… It used to be restricted to linux boxes but now you can get your Virtualization on – Windows style as well.

I have played with a few of these in the past, but if you’re managing a decent sized infrastructure you might want to try them. These are VMWare virtual appliances, I will write something on them at a later date, but basically they work with VMWare’s free software(they have a player and a server product, both free).

You download these packaged virtual appliances, boot them up and they just go! Of course you want to follow the directions provided…

But lets be honest most IT people are guys, and what self respecting guy really reads directions anyway?!?

Here are a couple of the network monitoring appliances that I have tried at some point. They all have their strong points and weak points. They all take some time and effort to get your network configured in it. But the rewards are pretty nice!

Without further ado, here are some linky links:

• Unnoc
• Network Management Station
• Zabbix – I liked this one the best
• BaywatchOS – I always thought Nicole Eggert was better looking than Pam Anderson
• You Can Search Here for more virtual appliances…

Feel free to dig into these. Download them and the VMWare player and give them a go. Don’t be shy…one of the glorious things about the VMWare appliances is that you cannot mess up your PC/Laptop by using them as it is segregated from the OS and the hardware, but again…more on that at a later date.

Do you use VMWare? Or how about Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007? Let’s here it in the comments guys! Sound off.

I mentioned in a recent post that I recently aquired an older Pentium III laptop with only 384MB of RAM. It really isn’t fast enough to run Windows XP without trimming the fat.I originally was going to put Xubuntu on it, because Xubuntu is designed to be more light weight than regular Ubuntu, because it uses the more minimal XFCE interface. It turns out though that XFCE is still a little too beefy for even this computer. Sure it installed, and ran fine, just a little slower than I would like. I did try XP with the fat trimmed like I mentioned above, but that was still God awfully slow.

Not wanting to give up, or revert to an older version of Windows, I decided to keep poking around in the Linux world for a solution. There are a lot of them out there that will run just find on such a machine, but the trick it so get one that my wife won’t mind using when going to the Java Mama’s coffee shop with my little girl.

II found the perfect distro for my wife in Dream Linux! This is one of the many lightweight live CD distros out there that also have the ability to install to hard drive. The cool thing about Dream Linux that I like, and my wife likes especially since the popularity of MAC’s now days (Damn they have good marketing don’t they?) is that this is pretty much a MAC clone complete with the animated launcher bar at the bottom, and yes, that bar works well on the Pentium III without slowing it down!

If you have a relatively newer computer, it also supports Berly and AIGLX, which means sweet 3D desktop goodness!

Of course, I wouldn’t even try using Berly on a Pentium III, but it does make a strong case to test it out! Another cool thing about it is the graphical front end to ndiswrapper, which lets you use Windows drivers for hardware that isn’t supported under Linux! Just open the GUI, point it to your driver inf file, and away you go! I did have to add the following line to my /etc/rc.local script to make some hardware work after boot up, but that is a minor tweak and hardly a deal breaker:

The best thing though is that it is Debian based, so apt-get is in full effect, which means that if something you use normally is missing, you can get it and install it easily! For me, network manager is essential for easy WPA configuration. It didn’t come pre-installed on Dream Linux, but a quick apt-get later and I was good to go!I’m not quite ready to name Dream Linux as a replacement distro of choice yet, for me my favorite is still Ubuntu, but it really is pretty great, and works well on older computers!

Have you tried it out? Do you have a favorite Distro for similar Situations?

Originally Posted on http://www.bauer-power.net

Little Lisa writes in from chicago that her boyfriend has been trying without any success to install Skype on her Ubuntu instalation. Can we help her out? I think we can! I just hope we dont imasculate her man when he comes home to see she has done it with out his help!

After some Google Magic here is your answer Lisa – Let us know how it goes!

How to install Skype on Ubuntu
Posted by mypapit on 23 Jun
2007 in GNU/Linux, Internet Stuff, Ubuntu/Debian

Skype is perhaps the most popular client to make
calls from your computer to any phone lines in the world. With SkypeIn subscription, you can
even get an international phone number for everybody to call you, a completely
neat way for your friend in overseas to call you with cheap rates. Although
Skype is a proprietary software which uses a non-open protocol, some people
would find it useful as it enables them to make international call with cheaper
rate via SkypeOut.

Installing Skype on Ubuntu (or Debian)This how to will show you how to
install a Skype client in Ubuntu & Debian base operating system.
First
of all you need to start up Synaptic Package manager. Go to System->Synaptic
Administration->Synaptic Package Manager,
From Synaptic, go to
Settings->Repositories. Click on Third Party Software Tab. Click Add, and put
on this line : deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free
Click Add Sources.
Click Close, and Click ‘Reload’ at the top of
Synaptic. Now you can search for Skype, and install it from Synaptic.

Hope that will help you to install Skype on your Linux operating system.
Alternatively, If you’re a fan of open source software and open standards, then
you might want to look into Ekiga (formerly
GnomeMeeting), cheerio!

For all you Linux gurus that detest the big bad Micro$oft and would never let any type of windows software on your machine, there is a way to easily preview your latest web creation as PC users will on Internet Explorer 7, IE6, and IE5. Just enter your URL and NetRenderer will spit back at you a screen shot of your requested versions view.

Its called NetRenderer I had to check my spelling on that one 3 times. It works great and has a ruler to boot!

A Snippet from their website about their web app:

This web rendering tool is ideally suited for web designers working on Apple iMac and Linux workstations. It allows [you] to verify web designs natively on all popular Internet Explorer versions, without the need to set aside several physical or virtual Microsoft Windows PCs just for that purpose.

I would also like to take this time to thank our new guest bloggers El Di Pablo, Justin and The Slothman. We are very happy to have you as part of our site. Keep up all the great work and I love the posts! You guys are great – I know there are end users out there everywhere loving you guys right about now!

Keep posting the questions and we will keep posting the answers!

Karl L. Gechlik
_TheAdmiN_
Netrenderer Homepage

Time for some technical blogging.

Today’s topic….Linux.

Some of you may have heard of Linux. Here’s what it is in a nutshell….An operating system for a computer, not unlike Windows of Mac. But there is a difference…it can be free!

There are a lot of fun things with Linux and a lot of distributions that are freely available out there. But there is one in particular that I’d like to talk about.

Ubuntu.

I’ve tried various flavors of Linux in search of an OS that I may potentially use to replace my home Winblows PC with. This is it. I’ve tried several Fedora distros, Red Hat, and a few other smaller, possibly defunct distributions. But Ubuntu is the real deal.

The installation is easy. Pretty simple GUI install for the n00b if you will. Pretty straight forward. And it will work on low end machines and most PCs that I’ve tried.

Now the problems with n00b linux installs is hardware compatibility and the learning curve of getting used to the new OS. Ubuntu really digs into it. I did have a problem with the previous version going on a laptop with an Intel video chip and full compatibility. But that is gone now.

The other thing that is tough for people is the learning curve. It takes a while to find applications you want to use and how to use them. Installation of an application can be tricky at time if you’re shy of digging on the net and tinkering around. As well as the applications you’ve grown accustomed to are simply not there.

However there are alternatives, and that is what Linux and the Open Source movement is all about. Use OpenOffice instead of MS Office, although you can use MS Office with WINE…long story…not for the faint of heart.

As far as email…you can use Thunderbird from Mozilla.com. Web browsing is best done through Firefox, also from Mozilla…and again, all free!

There are a lot of other gadgets and cool pieces of software within Ubuntu that need to be explored and tinkered with. Don’t be shy. Find an older PC, download it, burn it to a disc and give it a shot. Take the time to learn this OS as it can be a viable alternative for most home uses than getting put into the revolving door of Microsoft’s every couple years need to upgrade hardware and OS just to keep up.

Or if you have the means, Dell has just begun selling Ubuntu preloaded on laptops and desktops.