Blog is (not) a Tutorial

Ubuntu Tutorial: How To Redesign Your Desktop The ‘WOW’ Way

2009-02-22T18:02:00.000+07:00

I love Ubuntu as it is simply the best operating system that I have come across. If there is one thing that I dislike about Ubuntu, it has to be the desktop. Don’t get me wrong, it is not GNOME that I dislike, but the default color and theme that Ubuntu use for their distribution. I just can’t stand the brown color and theme.

In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to redesign your desktop and transform it to a nice eyecandy that makes people ‘wow’. The distro I am using is Ubuntu Gutsy.

Changing of theme

The first step to redesign your desktop is to change the desktop theme. Go to http://www.gnome-look.org where you can find great themes that you can download for free. Gnome desktop theme can be found under the GTK 2.x section. Select the “most downloads” tab to see the most popular theme in the library. The theme that I am using is Clearlooks, a simple but elegant theme.

Still in the same website, go to the Wallpaper section and select your favorite wallpaper. Omit this step if you already have a wallpaper.

Next, proceed on the icon theme section and select a theme that you like. The theme I am using is Glass Icon.

The themes are in tar file. After downloaded, DO NOT UNTAR THEM. Leave them as it is.

Now, go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance.

At the theme tab, click on the install button. This will bring up a window. Navigate to the folder where you download the theme. Select the desktop theme (the tar file that you have downloaded) and click ‘Open’. It will automatically install. When prompted, select “Apply New Theme”. You can now see changes to your desktop. Repeat the same step to install your icon theme.

Next, proceed on to the Background tab, this is where you add your wallpaper. Click the ‘Add’ button and select the wallpaper that you have downloaded.

You should now have a nice desktop, but it haven’t finish yet.

Changing the bottom panel

The next thing that I am going to do is to convert the ugly panel at the bottom of the desktop to a Mac-style dock. This is just the imitation; there won’t be any animation of the icon. To achieve the Mac dock effect, you may want to try Cairo-dock.

Remove the window list

Launch any application. You should see the window list on the bottom panel. Toward the left of the window list, there is a bar where you can drag the window list around. Right click on the drag bar and select “Remove from panel“.

Resize the panel

Right click on the panel and select ‘Properties‘. On the General tab,

set the size to 50 (This will change your icon size. Depending on your screen resolution, you might want to vary this. I am using 1280×800 and a size of 50 suits me well).
Uncheck Expand.
Check Autohide.

On the Background tab, select ‘Solid color‘. Under the style, drag the slider all the way to the left that says Transparent. This will make the background of the panel transparent. Click ‘Close’.

You will now see the panel shrink to a mini dock on the bottom of the screen. Move your mouse over the panel and it will unhide itself. The workspace switcher does not blend in well with the panel, so right click and “Remove from panel”. At this moment, your panel should have only “Show Desktop” and ‘Trash‘ icons. Right click on the panel again and this time, select “Add to panel“. Add the icon of the applications that you frequently use to the panel.

Everything seems fine with the dock except for one problem: it is not responsive enough to mouse movement. The default timing for the panel to unhide is 500ms. We need to change it to 100ms for better response. This can be solved easily. Open up a terminal. Type in

gconf-editor

This will open up the configuration editor. On the left, navigate to apps -> panel -> toplevels -> bottom_panel_screen0. On the right, scroll down to find the row with unhide_delay. Change the value to 100. Exit the editor. Your panel is now responsive to your mouse.

Changing the top panel

We are done with the bottom panel. Now we will deal with the top panel.

For a better uniform effect, it is a good idea to remove the Firefox and Evolution icons from the top panel and add them to the bottom panel. Right click on the Firefox icon and uncheck ‘lock to panel‘. Right click again and select “Remove from panel“. Do the same for the Evolution icon.

Right click on the panel and select ‘Properties‘. Go to the Background tab. Select “Solid Color” and under the style, drag the bar to the center (half way between the transparent and opaque). This will give a translucent appearance to the panel.

Remember just now we removed the window list from the bottom panel? Now we need to replace it back to the top panel. Right click on the top panel and select “Add to panel“. Scroll down till you find the Window list icon. Click “Add“.

If the window list is not align to the left, you can drag the bar on the left all the way to the left.

Done. You have just redesigned your desktop.

PS: For added effect, you might want to add screenlets widget on your desktop. If your video card supports compiz, you can even have a Mac-style dashboard.

HOWTO CASify Zimbra

2008-12-16T13:24:00.000+07:00

Zimbra is web suite for email, calendaring, and document collaboration. This guide makes it possible to use both the built-in authentication of Zimbra, and also provide a custom URL that allows access to Zimbra using your site's CAS implementation.

1. Configure SSL

The first requirement is that your Zimbra server's java keystore contain the appropriate SSL certificates for you CAS server. If you are using an SSL certificate on your CAS server that requires a "chaining certificate," such as ipsCA, you'll need to import the CA, the chain cert, and finally the cert for you CAS server.

Import your CAS certificate into the Zimbra cacerts

/opt/zimbra/java/bin/keytool -import -file yourfile.cer -alias cas -trustcacerts -keystore /opt/zimbra/java/jre/lib/security/cacerts

When using ipsCA, I used ipsCA's guide for Tomcat to get the certs root_der.cer, chain_der.cer, mycasserver.example.com.cer on my CAS server, which I then copied to my Zimbra server securely, and installed with the following command:

/opt/zimbra/java/bin/keytool -import -trustcacerts -keystore /opt/zimbra/java/jre/lib/security/cacerts -alias root -file root_der.cer
/opt/zimbra/java/bin/keytool -import -trustcacerts -keystore /opt/zimbra/java/jre/lib/security/cacerts -alias chain -file chain_der.cer
/opt/zimbra/java/bin/keytool -import -trustcacerts -keystore /opt/zimbra/java/jre/lib/security/cacerts -alias cas -file mycasserver.example.com.cer

2. Add jar files

You need to provide the necessary java libraries to your Zimbra server so it can use CAS. These can be downloaded from http://www.ibiblio.org/maven/cas/jars/. A version known to work with CAS 3.0 and Zimbra 4.5 is casclient-2.1.1.jar.

Copy the casclient.jar into /opt/zimbra/tomcat/common/lib

3. Modify web.xml

Add the following lines to /opt/zimbra/tomcat/conf/zimbra.web.xml.in (or /opt/zimbra/jetty/etc/zimbra.web.xml.in for Zimbra 5.0), substituting the appropriate server names, ports and URLs as necessary for your setup. For Zimbra 4.5 this is about line 108 (or line 158 for Zimbra 5.0), just after all the other and sections but before the first section:


CAS Filter
edu.yale.its.tp.cas.client.filter.CASFilter


   edu.yale.its.tp.cas.client.filter.loginUrl
   https://casserver.example.com:8443/cas/login


   edu.yale.its.tp.cas.client.filter.validateUrl
   https://casserver.example.com:8443/cas/proxyValidate


   edu.yale.its.tp.cas.client.filter.serverName
   zimbraserver.example.com:80




CAS Filter
/*

4. Run zmprov

zmprov gdpak yourmail.domain

This will create a preAuthKey: 359d722926fc3daebd0fee5d8b9dad9bbe1646e68041afa8ab662c6a9152e6b9

5. Configure preauth.jsp

Now you need to provide a new JSP page to Zimbra that authenticates your users using CAS instead of the built-in Zimbra auth.

Copy preauth.jsp (an attachment to this wiki page) to: /opt/zimbra/tomcat/webapps/zimbra for Zimbra 4.5, or /opt/zimbra/jetty/webapps/zimbra for Zimbra 5.0

Replace the DOMAIN_KEY with the key you generated with zmprov in step 4.

public static final String DOMAIN_KEY = "359d722926fc3daebd0fee5d8b9dad9bbe1646e68041afa8ab662c6a9152e6b9";

Add/Modify the following lines in the JSP page (around line 111), substituting in your zimbra server hostname for "yourdomain":

           String user = (String)request.getSession().getAttribute("edu.yale.its.tp.cas.client.filter.user");
         String redirect = generateRedirect(request, user + "@yourdomain");
         response.sendRedirect(redirect);

6. Restart Zimbra

Zimbra needs to be restarted to recognize the new jars and config files:

zmcontrol stop
zmcontrol start

I've found that it is necessary to restart the zimbra service as the root user to be sure everything comes up and uses the right ports.

/etc/init.d/zimbra restart

7. Test

Now, you should be able to point customers at the JSP preauth page you installed on the server and this will redirect to your CAS server for authentication, after which you will gain access to the Zimbra web software. An example URL would be (again, insert the hostname of your zimbra server):

http://zimbraserver.example.com/zimbra/preauth.jsp

How to install zimbra

2008-11-21T11:45:00.000+07:00

This guide shows how to install the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) on Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) and 6.06 (Dapper Drake) server systems. Zimbra is a full-featured, open source collaboration suite - email, group calendaring, contacts, and web document management and authoring. It has a feature-rich AJAX web interface and is compatible with clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, and Novell Evolution so that mail, contacts, and calendar items can be synchronised from these to the ZCS server. It can also be synchronized to many mobile devices. ZCS makes use of many existing open source projects such as Postfix, MySQL, and OpenLDAP.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

Please download the Ubuntu 6.10 or 6.06 server CD from http://www.ubuntu.com/download and install a basic Ubuntu system with it. Don't install/enable any services (e.g. like LAMP or DNS) - if you do, you'll have to disable them later on as they might interfere with Zimbra!

After the installation of the base system, we'll do some additional configuration, e.g. enable the root account, install an SSH daemon, apply a static IP address and a hostname to the system.

I will use the hostname mail.example.com in this tutorial together with the IP address 192.168.0.110. Adjust this to your needs, but make sure that mail.example.com has a valid MX record in DNS (Zimbra needs this!). I assume you want to create email accounts for example.com instead of mail.example.com, so you should have an MX record for example.com as well.

In this example the Zimbra server is in a local network (192.168.0.110 is a private IP address) behind a router, so make sure you use the router's public IP address (1.2.3.4 in this example) in the DNS records - of course this IP address should be static. If you have a dynamic IP address, you could use a service such as DynDNS.org, but keep in mind that most public IP addresses are blacklisted nowadays.

So if you use BIND on the authoritative name server for example.com, you should have something like this in example.com's zone file:

[...]
mail.example.com.        A    1.2.3.4
mail.example.com.        MX 0 mail.example.com.
example.com.             MX 0 mail.example.com.
[...]

If your Ubuntu server is behind router, make sure that you forward at least port 25 from your router to your Ubuntu server.

If your Ubuntu server is in a data center, it most likely has a static public IP address and a hostname, so you can skip chapter 1.3, but still you must make sure that this hostname has a valid MX record.

1.1 Enable The root Account

To enable the root account, run

sudo passwd root

and specify a password for root.

Afterwards, become root by running

All following commands in this tutorial are executed as root (unless something else is written)!

1.2 Install The SSH Daemon

Just run

apt-get install ssh openssh-server

to install the SSH daemon.

1.3 Apply A Static IP Address And Hostname

Edit /etc/network/interfaces and adjust it to your needs (in this example setup I will use the IP address 192.168.0.110):

vi /etc/network/interfaces

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
       address 192.168.0.110
       netmask 255.255.255.0
       network 192.168.0.0
       broadcast 192.168.0.255
       gateway 192.168.0.1

Then restart your network:

/etc/init.d/networking restart

Then edit /etc/hosts. Make it look like this:

vi /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain    localhost
192.168.0.110   mail.example.com      mail

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

Now run

echo mail.example.com > /etc/hostname

and reboot the system:

shutdown -r now

Afterwards, run

hostname
hostname -f

Both should show mail.example.com.

From now on you can use an SSH client such as PuTTY and connect from your workstation to your Ubuntu server and follow the remaining steps from this tutorial.

1.4 Disable The Ubuntu CD In /etc/apt/sources.list

I like to install all packages over the internet instead of from the Ubuntu CD, therefore I disable the Ubuntu CD in /etc/apt/sources.list now:

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

On Ubuntu 6.10 ("Edgy Eft"), comment out this line:

[...]
#deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 6.10 _Edgy Eft_ - Release i386 (20061025.1)]/ edgy main restricted
[...]

On Ubuntu 6.06 ("Dapper Drake"), it's this line:

[...]
#deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 6.06 _Dapper Drake_ - Release i386 (20060531)]/ dapper main restricted
[...]

Then update the packages database by running

apt-get update

1.5 Disable Services

If this is no fresh system and you have some services already running (such as Postfix, Apache, OpenLDAP), you must disable them first before installing Zimbra. Otherwise Zimbra will fail to install.

For example, to disable Postfix on your system, run

/etc/init.d/postfix stop
update-rc.d -f postfix remove

The commands for the other services are similar.

2 Change The Default Shell (Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft Only)

If you are on Ubuntu Edgy Eft, most probably /bin/sh is a symlink to /bin/dash, however we need /bin/bash, not /bin/dash. Therefore we do this:

rm -f /bin/sh
ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh

If you don't do this, you will most likely get an error like this during the Zimbra installation:

Creating SSL certificate...Done
Initializing ldap...TLS: error:02001002:system library:fopen:No such file or directory bss_file.c:352
TLS: error:20074002:BIO routines:FILE_CTRL:system lib bss_file.c:354
TLS: error:140B0002:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_use_PrivateKey_file:system lib ssl_rsa.c:648
main: TLS init def ctx failed: -1
ERROR - failed to start slapd

FAILED (1)

On Ubuntu Dapper Drake, /bin/sh points to /bin/bash by default, so everything is ok.

3 Install Zimbra

First let's install some prerequisites for Zimbra:

apt-get install curl fetchmail libpcre3 libgmp3c2 libexpat1 libxml2 libtie-ixhash-perl

Afterwards, go to http://www.zimbra.com/community/downloads.html and download the Ubuntu 6 (.tgz) package to /usr/src, for example like this:

cd /usr/src
wget http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/zimbra/zcs-4.5.3_GA_733.UBUNTU6.tgz

(Replace the download URL with the one you get from SourceForge.)

Afterwards, unpack the Zimbra .tgz file and start the installer:

tar xvfz zcs-4.5.3_GA_733.UBUNTU6.tgz
cd zcs/
./install.sh

The installer will ask a few questions. Answer them like this:

Operations logged to /tmp/install.log.4416
Checking for existing installation...
zimbra-ldap...NOT FOUND
zimbra-logger...NOT FOUND
zimbra-mta...NOT FOUND
zimbra-snmp...NOT FOUND
zimbra-store...NOT FOUND
zimbra-apache...NOT FOUND
zimbra-spell...NOT FOUND
zimbra-core...NOT FOUND

PLEASE READ THIS AGREEMENT CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THE SOFTWARE.
ZIMBRA, INC. ("ZIMBRA") WILL ONLY LICENSE THIS SOFTWARE TO YOU IF YOU
FIRST ACCEPT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. BY DOWNLOADING OR INSTALLING
THE SOFTWARE, OR USING THE PRODUCT, YOU ARE CONSENTING TO BE BOUND BY
THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ALL OF THE TERMS OF THIS
AGREEMENT, THEN DO NOT DOWNLOAD, INSTALL OR USE THE PRODUCT.

License Terms for the Zimbra Collaboration Suite:
http://www.zimbra.com/license/collaboration_suite_collective_license_1.0.html

Press Return to continue <--

Install zimbra-ldap [Y] <--

Install zimbra-logger [Y] <--

Install zimbra-mta [Y] <--

Install zimbra-snmp [Y] <--

Install zimbra-store [Y] <--

Install zimbra-spell [Y] <--

The system will be modified. Continue? [N] <-- y

Main menu

1) Hostname: mail.example.com
2) Ldap master host: mail.example.com
3) Ldap port: 389
4) Ldap password: set
5) zimbra-ldap: Enabled
6) zimbra-store: Enabled
+Create Admin User: yes
+Admin user to create: admin@mail.example.com
******* +Admin Password UNSET
+Enable automated spam training: yes
+Spam training user: spam.tukjrdnaco@mail.example.com
+Non-spam(Ham) training user: ham.rg8fvq6cd4@mail.example.com
+Global Documents Account: wiki@mail.example.com
+SMTP host: mail.example.com
+Web server HTTP port: 80
+Web server HTTPS port: 443
+Web server mode: http
+Enable POP/IMAP proxy: no
+IMAP server port: 143
+IMAP server SSL port: 993
+POP server port: 110
+POP server SSL port: 995
+Use spell check server: yes
+Spell server URL: http://mail.example.com:7780/aspell.php

7) zimbra-mta: Enabled
8) zimbra-snmp: Enabled
9) zimbra-logger: Enabled
10) zimbra-spell: Enabled
r) Start servers after configuration yes
s) Save config to file
x) Expand menu
q) Quit

Address unconfigured (**) items (? - help) <-- 6

Store configuration

1) Status: Enabled
2) Create Admin User: yes
3) Admin user to create: admin@mail.example.com
** 4) Admin Password UNSET
5) Enable automated spam training: yes
6) Spam training user: spam.tukjrdnaco@mail.example.com
7) Non-spam(Ham) training user: ham.rg8fvq6cd4@mail.example.com
8) Global Documents Account: wiki@mail.example.com
9) SMTP host: mail.example.com
10) Web server HTTP port: 80
11) Web server HTTPS port: 443
12) Web server mode: http
13) Enable POP/IMAP proxy: no
14) IMAP server port: 143
15) IMAP server SSL port: 993
16) POP server port: 110
17) POP server SSL port: 995
18) Use spell check server: yes
19) Spell server URL: http://mail.example.com:7780/aspell.php

Select, or 'r' for previous menu [r] <-- 4

Password for admin@mail.example.com (min 6 characters): [8BD.yZtFh] <-- [specify a password for the admin user, e.g. howtoforge]

Select, or 'r' for previous menu [r] <--

Main menu

1) Hostname: mail.example.com
2) Ldap master host: mail.example.com
3) Ldap port: 389
4) Ldap password: set
5) zimbra-ldap: Enabled
6) zimbra-store: Enabled
7) zimbra-mta: Enabled
8) zimbra-snmp: Enabled
9) zimbra-logger: Enabled
10) zimbra-spell: Enabled
r) Start servers after configuration yes
s) Save config to file
x) Expand menu
q) Quit

*** CONFIGURATION COMPLETE - press 'a' to apply
Select from menu, or press 'a' to apply config (? - help) <-- a
Save configuration data to a file? [Yes] <--
Save config in file: [/opt/zimbra/config.5762] <--
Saving config in /opt/zimbra/config.5762...Done
The system will be modified - continue? [No] <-- y

You have the option of notifying Zimbra of your installation.
This helps us to track the uptake of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite.
The only information that will be transmitted is:
The VERSION of zcs installed (4.5.3_GA_733_UBUNTU6)
The ADMIN EMAIL ADDRESS created (admin@mail.example.com)

Notify Zimbra of your installation? [Yes] <-- [if you want to notify Zimbra of your installation, type y, otherwise n]

Configuration complete - press return to exit <--

That's it already. To test if all Zimbra services are running, become the zimbra user:

su - zimbra

and run

zmcontrol status

The output should look like this:

zimbra@mail:~$ zmcontrol status
Host mail.example.com
antispam Running
antivirus Running
ldap Running
logger Running
mailbox Running
mta Running
snmp Running
spell Running

If not all services are started, run

zmcontrol start

Type

exit

to become root again.

4 The Zimbra Web Interface

Zimbra comes with a web interface for the administrator (https://mail.example.com:7071/zimbraAdmin) and normal users (http://mail.example.com). I'm going to show some basic screenshots here, but no help on how to use Zimbra. To learn how to use Zimbra, please refer to http://www.zimbra.com/community/documentation.html and http://wiki.zimbra.com.

4.1 The Administration Console

You can now open a browser and open the Zimbra Administrator web interface. The URL is https://mail.example.com:7071/zimbraAdmin. Log in with the username admin and the password you specified during the Zimbra installation:

This is how the admin panel looks like:

You can find all pre-configured email addresses under Accounts:

If you want to add a new domain (e.g. example.com because you want email addresses of the form user@example.com instead of user@mail.example.com), click on Domains and then on New:

Create example.com:

Afterwards, example.com is listed in the domains list:

To create a new user, go to Accounts and click on New:

Follow the wizard to create a new email account. Take care that you select the right domain (example.com vs. mail.example.com):

Afterwards, mark the new account in the accounts list and click on Edit:

Specify a password for the new account on the General Information tab and click on Save:

4.2 The User Webinterface

Now that you've created a normal user account, you can log out of the admin panel and go to http://mail.example.com. Log in with the email address and the password of the new account:

This is how the user webinterface looks like. You have tabs to manage your emails, address book, calendar, documents, etc.

5 Uninstall Zimbra

If you want to uninstall Zimbra, do it like this:

Go the the Zimbra installation directory (I hope you didn't delete it):

cd /usr/src/zcs

Then run

./install.sh -u

and delete the Zimbra installation directory afterwards:

cd /usr/src
rm -rf zcs

Turn Ubuntu 8.04 ( Hardy ) into Mac OS X

2008-10-06T22:22:00.000+07:00

You can’t really turn a Linux system to a Mac, but you definitely can make your Ubuntu Hardy looks like a Mac OSX Leopard.

If you want to change this

into

, follow the steps below.

Before we start…

First, create a folder in your Home and name it Mac_files. Download the following files to the Mac_files folder.

Using Archive manager, extract the ~~three Mac4Lin zip files~~ Modified Mac4Lin theme and Mac4Lin wallpaper to the Mac_files folder.

Apply Mac OSX Leopard Theme

Go to System->Preferences->Appearance.

Select Install and select the Mac4Lin GTK theme (/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GTK Metacity Theme/Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4.tar.gz).

Next, click Install again and select the Mac4Lin icon theme. (~~/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_Icons_Part2_v0.4.tar.gz~~ /home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_Icons_modified.tar.gz). When prompted, select “Apply new themes“.

Click Install again and select the Mac4Lin mouse cursor theme. (/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GTK Cursor Theme/Mac4Lin_Cursors_v0.4.tar.gz). Select “Apply new themes” when prompted.

Click ‘customize’ and choose Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4. Go to the “Window border” tab, choose Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4. Click Close.

On the top, go to the Background tab. Click Add and select the Leopard wallpaper. (/home/username/Mac_files/Wallpapers/Leopard.jpg). Click Close to terminate the Appearance window

Install the Dock (Avant Window Navigator)

Open a terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) and type

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and add the following lines to the end of the file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main

Save and close the file. In your terminal, type

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk

Go to System->Preferences->AWN manager. On the left, click on the Theme. On the right, click Add and navigate to the Mac_files folder. Select the Elegant_glass.tgz file. Check the bullet beside the Elegant glass theme and click Apply.

Next on the left, click on the Applet icon. On the right, scroll down to the stack Applet. Highlight it, then click Activate. This will add the Mac Leopard stack to your dock.

Before you launch the AWN, remove the bottom panel from the desktop first. Right click on the bottom panel and select “delete this panel”. Open AWN via Applications->Accessories->Avant Window Navigator. Once it is activated, you can simply drag and drop the applications into the dock.

Install OSX Fonts

Open a terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

This will Install the Microsoft core fonts.

Next, copy the OSX fonts to the fonts folder

cd /usr/share/fonts
sudo tar xvzf /home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/Fonts/OSX_Fonts.tar.gz

Configure the fonts:

cd/
sudo tar xvjpf /home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/Fonts/fontconfig.tbz -C /etc/fonts

Open the Appearance window (System->Preferences->Appearance) and select Fonts tab. Select the following fonts according to the image below. Click Close.

Change the traffic light window control to the left

In the terminal, type

gconf-editor

This will bring up the gconf-editor window. Scroll down to App->Metacity->general. On the right, double click on the button_layout and change the content to ‘close,minimize,maximize:menu’ (without the quote). Click Ok and close the gconf-editor.

Change the menubar

Remove all the icon and applications on the left side of the top panel. Right-click on the icon and select ‘Remove from panel‘. You will left with something like this:

On the right of the top panel, remove the logout icon. Still on the right hand side of the top panel, right click and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Search for files‘. This will add the spotlight icon to the panel.

On the extreme left, right-click and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Main Menu‘. This will add the apple icon on the left. You can now log out and shut down from the Apple dropdown menu (same as Mac OSX).

Next, we are going to install globalmenu so as to display the menubar for each application. In your terminal,

cd Mac_files
wget http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/files/gnome-globalmenu-0.4-svn964.tar.gz
tar zxvf gnome-globalmenu-0.4-svn964.tar.gz
cd globalmenu
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

If you have any errors when installing the package, try

sudo dpkg -i –force-overwrite *.deb

If you are having some installation problems with the gnome-globalmenu-applet, try

sudo apt-get install -f

Once finished, right click on the top panel and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Global Menu Applet‘.

You might not see anything initially. Log out and log in again, you should now see the menubar for each application showing on the panel.

If your globalmenu is of a different shade of grey from the rest of the panel (as shown in the image below), right click on any empty space on the panel and select ‘Properties‘. Go to Background tab and select ‘Background image’. Under the selection, go to /home/username/.themes/Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4/gtk-2.0/Panel and select panel-bg.png. Click OK. (Updated: If you can’t find the .themes folder, right-click and select ‘show hidden files‘.)

Drag the globalmenu to the left just beside the Apple icon. Right click on the globalmenu and select ‘Preferences’. Tick the box beside ‘Display the title of the current application‘ and put maximum width 100. Select the font to be Lucida Grande Bold. Click Apply and OK. You should now have a desktop that resemble Mac Leopard.

Configuring the Login screen

Click on the Apple icon, go to System->Administration->Login Window. On the Local tab, click Add. Navigate to the path /filesystem/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GDM Theme and select the file Mac4Lin_GDM_v0.4.tar.gz. Check the box beside the newly installed theme to activate it.

Underneath, there is a color selection field, select it and key in the number E5E5E5 into the color code field.

Click Ok. Log out. You should see the login screen as the diagram below.

Configure usplash screen

usplash is the screen that you see when your computer is booting up. We are going to change it to show the white apple screen. In your terminal,

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

Go to System->Administration->Start-Up Manager Go to Appearance tab. Click on the ‘Manage bootloader theme‘. Click Add and navigate to the file /filesystem/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GRUB Splash/appleblack.xpm.gz. Check the box “Use background image for bootloader menu” and select ‘appleblack”.

Next, click “Manage usplash theme”. Click Add and add the file /filesystem/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/USplash Theme/osx-splash.so. Click OK. Select OSX-splash from the dropdown box.

Now reboot. You should see the following images:

Creating Dashboard effect

We will use a combination of screenlets and Compiz widget plugin to achieve the dashboard effect.

Install Screenlets

sudo apt-get install screenlets compizconfig-settings-manager

Go to System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effect Setting. On the Left, click on Desktop. On the right, put a check beside ‘Widget layer’

Go to Accessories->Screenlets. Activate the widgets that you want to display. Right click on the widget and select ‘Properties’. Go to Options tab and select ‘Treat as widget’. Do this for all the widgets that you have activated.

You can now see your dashboard in action by pressing F9.

Done. You have completed the transformation of your Ubuntu desktop to Mac OSX Leopard.

Some screenshots:

NFS Server and Client Configuration in Ubuntu

2008-09-10T16:30:00.000+07:00

NFS was developed at a time when we weren’t able to share our drives like we are able to today - in the Windows environment. It offers the ability to share the hard disk space of a big server with many smaller clients. Again, this is a client/server environment. While this seems like a standard service to offer, it was not always like this. In the past, clients and servers were unable to share their disk space.

Thin clients have no hard drives and thus need a “virtual” hard-disk. The NFS mount their hard disk from the server and, while the user thinks they are saving their documents to their local (thin client) disk, they are in fact saving them to the server. In a thin client environment, the root, usr and home partitions are all offered to the client from the server via NFS.

NFS Advantages

• Local workstations use less disk space because commonly used data can be stored on a single machine and still remain accessible to others over the network.

• There is no need for users to have separate home directories on every network machine. Home directories could be set up on the NFS server and made available throughout the network.

• Storage devices such as floppy disks, CDROM drives, and Zip® drives can be used by other machines on the network. This may reduce the number of removable media drives throughout the network.

Install NFS Server in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap

When configuring portmap do =not= bind loopback. If you do you can either edit /etc/default/portmap using the following

sudo vi /etc/default/portmap

or use the following command

sudo dpkg-reconfigure portmap

Restart Portmap using the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/portmap restart

NFS Server Configuration

NFS exports from a server are controlled by the file /etc/exports. Each line begins with the absolute path of a directory to be exported, followed by a space-seperated list of allowed clients.

You need to edit the exports file using the following command

sudo vi /etc/exports

Here are some quick examples of what you could add to your /etc/exports

For Full Read Write Permissions allowing any computer from 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.255

/files 192.168.1.1/24(rw,no_root_squash,async)

Or for Read Only from a single machine

/files 192.168.1.2 (ro,async)

save this file and exit

A client can be specified either by name or IP address. Wildcards (*) are allowed in names, as are netmasks (e.g. /24) following IP addresses, but should usually be avoided for security reasons.

A client specification may be followed by a set of options, in parenthesis. It is important not to leave any space between the last client specification character and the opening parenthesis, since spaces are intrepreted as client seperators.

Now you need to restart NFS server using the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

If you make changes to /etc/exports on a running NFS server, you can make these changes effective by issuing the command

sudo exportfs -a

Install NFS client support in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-common

This will install all the required packages for nfs client

Mounting manually

Example to mount server.mydomain.com:/files to /files. In this example server.mydomain.com is the name of the server containing the nfs share, and files is the name of the share on the nfs server

The mount point /files must first exist on the client machine.

Create files directory using the following command

sudo mkdir files

You need to mount the share using the following command

sudo mount server.mydomain.com:/files /files

Now you may need to restart services using the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/portmap restart

sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-common restart

Mounting at boot using /etc/fstab

If you want to mount using fstab file

sudo vi /etc/fstab

In this example my /etc/fstab was like this

server.mydomain.com:/files /files nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

Change “servername.mydomain.com:/files”, and “/files” to match your server name,share name, and the name of the mount point you created.

Firewall Ports for NFS

If you have a firewall you need to make sure ports 32771, 111 and 2049 are open
Testing Your Configuration

Use the following command in terminal to test

mount /files

the mount point /files will be mounted from the server.

Reference

http://czarism.com/easy-peasy-ubuntu-linux-nfs-file-sharing

cara remote MySQL

2008-09-10T16:03:00.000+07:00

Ada kalanya kita memerlukan untuk melakukan remote terhadap server mysql. Ini terjadi terutama apabila server aplikasi yang kita bangun terpisah dengan server database. Secara default mysql tidak mengijinkan komputer lain melakukan remote terhadap dirinya. Agar diijinkan untuk melakukan remot, maka lakukan langkah-langkah di bawah ini:

1. Berdo’alah dulu agar berhasil.
2. Edit file my.cnf

#vim /etc/mysql/my.cnf
Cari teks berikut
bind-address = 127.0.0.1

ubah menjadi
bind-address = ip_mysql_server

3. Minum kopi dulu kalau ada

4. membuat user pada mysql

#mysql -u root (enter)

Jika semua komputer diijinkan remote

mysql>create user ‘user’ identified by ‘password’;

mysql>grant all on *.* to ‘user’ identified by ‘password’;

Jika komputer dengan ip tertentu yang diijinkan remote

mysql>create user ‘user’@'ip_tertentu’ identified by ‘password’;

mysql>grant all on *.* to ‘user’@'ip_tertentu’ identified by ‘password’;

5. restartlah mysql server

#/etc/init.d/mysql restart (enter)

6. Coba lakukan remote dari mysql front atau aplikasi sejenis. (selamat mencoba)

Setting CAS with LDAP

2008-08-26T15:08:00.000+07:00

Preparation :
1.Apache Tomcat Server Installed + running
2.LDAP Server ( ex: OpenLDAP )

http://www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/

http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CASUM/Building+and+Deploying

http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CASUM/CAS+Quickly+%28LDAP%2C+Windows%2C+Apache+Directory+Server%29

http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CASUM/LDAP

Sample of deployerConfigContext.xml

How to install PHP mssql library in Ubuntu 8.04

2008-08-16T12:51:00.000+07:00

I recently set up an Ubuntu server that needed to access a MSSQL database. The php5-sybase package sort of worked (the queries appeared to work, but data was missing). So, I set out to build some .deb packages with MSSQL support built in.

First make sure you have the Debian package development tools:

apt-get install build-essential debhelper

(More tools might be needed depending on what you already have installed, but you will tend to get warnings about what is missing)

Then, download the PHP sources:

apt-get source php5

(The current version in the Ubuntu repositories at this time is php5-5.1.2, so adjust for version numbers in the future.)

And you will need all the dependencies for building PHP:

apt-get build-dep php5

Change into the debian build directory for PHP:

cd php5-5.1.2/debian

The first step is to edit the â€œmodulelistâ€? file. Insert a line above the one that says

mysql MySQL

with the contents:

mssql MSSQL

Next, edit the file “rules” and look for the section starting with “configure-apache2-stamp”. You will see a line similar to:

--with-mysql=shared,/usr

Open a line above this with the contents:

--with-mssql=shared,/usr

Make sure not to forget the backslash on the end.Now, we must edit the “control” file in the same directory. Add this to the end of the file:

Package: php5-mssql
Architecture: any
Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}, ${php:Depends}, php5-common (= ${Source-Version})
Description: MSSQL module for php5
This package provides a module for MSSQL using FreeTDS.
.
PHP5 is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed
from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown
in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write
dynamically generated pages quickly.

Move up a directory.

cd ..

Now, run:

dpkg-buildpackage

And go get something to eat. This will do the whole configure/compile for PHP and create debs in the parent directory. When this process is done, move up to the parent directory:

cd ..

And, you will see all of the PHP debs, including the new php5-mssql_[version].deb

Run a dpkg -i on the ones you need, and you should be all set to connect to MSSQL databases.

Installing Tomcat 6 Ubuntu 8.04

2008-08-13T16:42:00.000+07:00

If you are running Ubuntu and want to use the Tomcat servlet container, you should not use the version from the repositories as it just doesn't work correctly. Instead you'll need to use the manual installation process that I'm outlining here.

Before you install Tomcat you'll want to make sure that you've installed Java. I would assume if you are trying to install Tomcat you've already installed java, but if you aren't sure you can check with the dpkg command like so:

dpkg –get-selections | grep sun-java

This should give you this output if you already installed java:

sun-java6-bin                                   install
sun-java6-jdk                                   install
sun-java6-jre                                   install

If that command has no results, you'll want to install the latest version with this command:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Installation

Now we'll download and extract Tomcat from the apache site. You should check to make sure there's not another version and adjust accordingly.

wget http://apache.hoxt.com/tomcat/tomcat-6/v6.0.14/bin/apache-tomcat-6.0.14.tar.gz

tar xvzf apache-tomcat-6.0.14.tar.gz

The best thing to do is move the tomcat folder to a permanent location. I chose /usr/local/tomcat, but you could move it somewhere else if you wanted to.

sudo mv apache-tomcat-6.0.14 /usr/local/tomcat

Tomcat requires setting the JAVA_HOME variable. The best way to do this is to set it in your .bashrc file. You could also edit your startup.sh file if you so chose.

The better method is editing your .bashrc file and adding the bolded line there. You'll have to logout of the shell for the change to take effect.

vi ~/.bashrc

Add the following line:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

At this point you can start tomcat by just executing the startup.sh script in the tomcat/bin folder.

Automatic Starting

To make tomcat automatically start when we boot up the computer, you can add a script to make it auto-start and shutdown.

sudo vi /etc/init.d/tomcat

Now paste in the following:

# Tomcat auto-start
#
# description: Auto-starts tomcat
# processname: tomcat
# pidfile: /var/run/tomcat.pid

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

case $1 in
start)
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
;;
stop)
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
;;
restart)
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
;;
esac
exit 0

You'll need to make the script executable by running the chmod command:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tomcat

The last step is actually linking this script to the startup folders with a symbolic link. Execute these two commands and we should be on our way.

sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/tomcat /etc/rc1.d/K99tomcat
sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/tomcat /etc/rc2.d/S99tomcat

Tomcat should now be fully installed and operational. Enjoy!

Setting FTP Server di Ubuntu 8.04

2008-08-13T11:52:00.000+07:00

I believe I finally have vsftp installed and working securely, but it took me one heck of a time to figure it out and find a reference. The reason I am posting this here is for 2 reasons: 1) to share my new found knowledge of vsftp and 2) for the experts in the forum to review my steps and make sure they are, in fact, as secure as they can be.

My goal with vsftp was to create an ftp user that was chrooted (jailed) in a directory in my apache http folder and all communication to go through port 21. This username and password should not have shell or any other access on the computer. So to start I installed the program:

Code:

sudo apt-get install vsftpd

This even launched the deamon for me. Immediately I wanted to change a few things on the config so stop the vsftp process and edit the config file:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd stop
sudo vi /etc/vsftpd.conf

I changed these lines:

Code:

# Turn off anonymous users
anonymous_enable=NO

# Turn on local users
local_enable=YES

# Users should be able to write
write_enable=YES

# I don't give access to port 20 so turn this off
connect_from_port_20=NO

# chroot everyone
chroot_local_user=YES

With this configuration anyone who is a local computer user can log into ftp. I don't even want to tempt my web developers with ssh access to login with ftp and send out all their information with clear text. I want a dedicated ftp user with a home directory in the httpdocs folder and no shell access and set his password.

Code:

sudo useradd -d /var/www/path/to/chrooted/home/dir -s /usr/sbin/nologin ftpuser
sudo passwd ftpuser

Remember to change the permissions of the home dir to allow ftpuser to read and write into it.

Code:

sudo chown /var/www/path/to/chrooted/home/dir -R ftpuser
sudo chmod 775 /var/www/path/to/chrooted/home/dir

I only want that user to be able to login into the ftp so I create the file vsftpd.userlist in the /etc/ folder:

Code:

sudo vi /etc/vsftpd.userlist

and add the user/users I want to give ftp access

Code:

ftpuser

save the file and open the vsftpd.conf file again:

Code:

sudo vi /etc/vsftpd.conf

and add these lines to the end of the file

Code:

# the list of users to give access
userlist_file=/etc/vsftpd.userlist
# this list is on
userlist_enable=YES
# It is not a list of users to deny ftp access
userlist_deny=NO

'man vsftpd.conf' can give you a better handle on the different options in vsftpd.conf.

Start up the vsftpd:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd start

So now vsftpd is configured and you try to login with ftpuser and wait you get a permission denied error. What the?

The problem is with the shell set to /usr/sbin/nologin isn't letting the user log in, but I still don't want this user to have shell access. The trick here, and I would love an explanation as to why this isn't already done, is to add the nologin shell to the /etc/shells file:

Code:

sudo vi /etc/shells

It should look something like

Code:

...
/bin/ksh
/usr/bin/rc
/usr/bin/tcsh
/bin/tcsh
/usr/bin/esh
/bin/dash
/bin/bash
/bin/rbash

add a new line for the nologin shell:

Code:

/usr/sbin/nologin

There it is that is it. You set up a ftp user without shell access chrooted into a folder.
To add to my organization I added the user to a group called ftpusers:

Code:

sudo addgroup ftpusers
sudo usermod -Gftpusers ftpuser

Hope that helps anyone with a similar problem as I had.