Recently I ran into a situation where a Perl CPAN module I needed was not available in the Ubuntu repositories. Someone on IRC kindly showed me a slick Ubuntu package which is able to quickly produce Ubuntu .deb packages out of Perl CPAN modules! Here is what you need to know:

Using a developer computer (aka "play box") add the following packages:

Next use dh-make-perl to package the needed CPAN module:

Today's blog post explains how to get this very useful component of the TinyDNS project to work with Ubuntu Server. You may fetch down the Michael Stella's original version of his code, and then note my adjustments to get it to work on the Ubuntu Server (9.04 through 10.04).

http://www.thismetalsky.org/projects/dhcp_dns

Unpack the file, then make the following adjustments:

Patching up djb_update.pl

When I first went looking for HOW-TO docs concerning installing Daniel J. Bernstein's djbdns on Ubuntu, I could not find such. What I did find was plenty of docs on how to download and compile Mr. Bernstein's djbdns code from source, however Ubuntu has very kindly created packages of everything you need for installing djbdns.

I offered a presentation at the 2010 ICCM conference about replacing a couple of servers during this past year. The arrived at configuration was very much a middle point between a normal server configuration at one end and a firmware / USB HDD server at the other end of the spectrum. I was able to deliver a very compact configuration that has low power consumption, yet runs standard Ubuntu Server Linux and has a 3ware RAID card to facilitate drive mirroring.

I discovered that the usual Ubuntu boot CD menu still exists in 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). The way to make it come up is to be pressing the Left Control (Ctrl) key as the computer starts to boot from the CD.

So, Ubuntu installation CD's may still be used to test memory with the MemTest86+. Use the above method to get to the boot menu, and the memory testing program will show up on the list of boot options.

Though not widely talked about, I desired to access files on the Home$ share of a Samba server from my Linux workstation. I had never come up with the syntax to do so.

Using mount.cifs to do the mount, it turned out to be simply //server/userid and no trailing $ or anything special.

Obviously I made sure that userid was the same user that was authenticating to the PDC in the first place. I did not try accessing bar's Home$ share using the ID foo, for example.

Today I needed to take a quick peek inside a Windows .cab file. Ubuntu at least recognized the extension as an archive file as it came up with the appropriate icon. However, it had no program associated with the extension, and Archive Manager would not open it.

I did a quick search and located cabextract which was available in the Ubuntu repository, and quickly got me inside the .cab file.

Thus noting it on my suggested list.

I have presented Samba at several technical conferences over the years. Following are links to the slides and also supplemental zip file containing files used within the presentation.

The overall posture of the environment being prototyped within the presentation is of a workgroup having a Linux based server and Windows based workstations. Little needs to change in order to support Linux clients in the mix, though such details do not appear in this presentation.

Presentation in PDF format

When my previous display started getting fuzzy, I plugged in another display and got a much clearer view until I rebooted. After the reboot, the display came up as 1280 x 1024 resolution instead of my usual 1600 x 1200. I went searching and found references to capturing the EDID from the display and correcting the EDID information. Using the Nvidia X Server Settings applet I captured the EDID, but the Phoenix editor was unable to open the file.

Copying my bug against ubuntu-docs here, Bug #440150:

I was researching how to connect a HP 6100C scanner to Ubuntu 9.04, and encountered these docs:

ScanningHowTo
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ScanningHowTo

Scanning
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/printing/C/scanning.html