What to Install

We need to add the HP Support Software repository to every system.

Add the following line

deb http://downloads.linux.hp.com/SDR/downloads/MCP/ubuntu precise current/non-free

to a new file under aptitude sources directory

$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hp-proliant-support-pack.list

Please do a sudo apt-get update

Then install all these packages.

$ sudo apt-get install hpsmh hp-snmp-agents hp-smh-templates hponcfg hp-health hpacucli

Depending on what you already have installed apt may install other packages or tell you some suggestions.

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  binutils libperl5.14 libsensors4 libsnmp-base libsnmp15 libssl0.9.8 libxslt1.1 snmpd
  xsltproc
Suggested packages:
  binutils-doc lm-sensors snmp-mibs-downloader
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  binutils hp-health hp-smh-templates hp-snmp-agents hpacucli hponcfg hpsmh libperl5.14
  libsensors4 libsnmp-base libsnmp15 libssl0.9.8 libxslt1.1 snmpd xsltproc
0 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 33.3 MB of archives.
After this operation, 106 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? 
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
  hp-health hp-snmp-agents hpsmh hp-smh-templates hpacucli hponcfg
Install these packages without verification [y/N]?

If you are using snmpd you may like to read a previous note from me.

Final configurations

Along the installation of those packages you may have been warned:

WARNING:hp-snmp-agents is not configured.
You must type '/sbin/hpsnmpconfig' as 'root' user to configure agents.

It’s time to running it now.

Opening your browser with http://servername:2381/ let’s you see the HP System Management Homepage

Please edit /opt/hp/hpsmh/conf/smhpd.xml and restart hpsmhd so you control whom can access.

$ sudo service hpsmhd restart

Finally

Well, now browse through each package man pages to learn features and configuration tweaks. Don’t forget HP maintains a web presence to Ubuntu support

A traditional setup is having Nginx as a frontend and then running Apache through reverse proxy. The Apache logs become full of just a single IP address, the accesses from the Nginx server – usually 127.0.0.1 if you are running both on the same server.

No more GeoIP decisions on the backend or any other feature by remote address.

But we know that Nginx passes along the original client IP address on a HTTP header named X-Forwarded-For to the backend server. It would be awesome if Apache could deal with that,

Have no fear, Reverse Proxy Add Forward is here!

Fortunately there is already a module that injects the IP on a special header to the HTTP request to Apache: mod_rpaf

The installation couldn’t be more simple than

$ sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-rpaf

It will enabled it automatically

/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rpaf.conf
/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rpaf.load

In Nginx I usually include /etc/nginx/proxy.conf in my configuration. It already has these lines to help that everything works easily

proxy_set_header    Host            $host;
proxy_set_header    X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

Just restart the Apache server

$ sudo service apache2 restart

But there’s a problem

Unfortunately it won’t work if you are using Ubuntu 12.04.

mod_rpaf is not working on Precise !

There is a bug with the package that is known to Canonical since last December as you can see in the bug track. Being a LTS version I don’t understand this attitude from them.

$ cat /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rpaf.conf 
<IfModule mod_rpaf.c>
RPAFenable On
RPAFsethostname On
RPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1 ::1
</IfModule>

And the problem is that it is originally named mod_rpaf-2.0.c.

$ strings /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_rpaf.so | grep mod_rpaf
mod_rpaf.so
mod_rpaf-2.0.c
Enable mod_rpaf
Let mod_rpaf set the hostname from X-Host header and update vhosts

Just edit the first line of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rpaf.conf and change it to

<IfModule rpaf_module>

Restart again the Apache2 server and you will start to get all those remote IPs on your log files.

Conclusion

If it was not for the known bug this post could have been just one line to install mod_rpaf

:-)

biafra@vm:~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rwky/redis
[sudo] password for biafra: 
sudo: add-apt-repository: command not found

So, you are using the latest stable and supported LTS server distribution from Ubuntu. And it doesn’t install the package to simplify the management of PPA repositories (Personal Package Archives). The de facto Ubuntu repository for all people.

They even state that in the help text:

“Read about installing”

But don’t despair! They could already had installed it with one of the upgrades but… They forgot it. add-apt-repository comes with package python-software-properties

$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

And now at last:

biafra@vm:~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rwky/redis
You are about to add the following PPA to your system:
 Redis is a in memory persistent datastore. This is package kept up
to date with the latest stable version from http://redis.io it uses
an upstart script instead of an init script which fits nicely with
the newer ubuntu distributions.
 
For support email admin {at} rwky {dot} net
 
For support in other distributions please contact me at the above
address and I'll consider other builds if there is demand.
 
If you like this package please consider flattring me
http://flattr.com/thing/360264/Redis-package-for-Ubuntu
 
Sponsored by @Food_Nation http://www.food-nation.co.uk/
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~rwky/+archive/redis
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it
 
gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp48ytqX/secring.gpg' created
gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp48ytqX/pubring.gpg' created
gpg: requesting key 5862E31D from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: /tmp/tmp48ytqX/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key 5862E31D: public key "Launchpad PPA for Rowan" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1  (RSA: 1)
OK

I hope this will help you like it helped me!

You have your Ubuntu Desktop running smooth. Thunderbird is connecting to the corporate Exchange server through IMAP. However you can’t deal with all those appointments and meeting requests.

Add-ons you will need

You will need two Add-ons:

• Lightning
• Exchange 2007/2010 Calendar and Tasks Provider

Lightning is a calendar and task extension.

Open Thunderbird and go to your menu Tools / Add-ons. Select Get Add-ons.
If “Lightning” appears right away just click on it and added it. If not you have to use the search box. Keep in mind that you are looking just for “Lightning”. It will show up many add-ons with similar names. Continue to the next search page if there’s no add-on named just “Lightning”.

And now you think you could do the same for the second add-on. Wrong!
You must go here and download the Development Version 3.1.x.

Now you have the second add-on in a file named exchangecalendar-3.1.x.xpi

How do I install a .xpi add-on in Thunderbird ?

Well, you won’t find a menu option to do that. Go again to Tools / Add-ons / Get Add-ons. Now just click on the tools icon and select Install Add-on From File....

Conclusion

There’s now one less argument for the Management to go against Linux on the Desktop. And this is a really important one on the Corporation world. Unfortunately you can’t continue to not attend meetings with the excuse you were not invited or that it was not on your calendar :-)

One thing that was always great with Linux desktop X11 (and continued with Ubuntu 12.10) was copying text with a mouse selection and just pasting it with the middle button. That’s why I became horrified when it started to not work with Vim!

I was evaluating a Perl Module and when I copy/pasted a block of an example code this happened

It has to be a way to have a clean copy/paste again!

The Solution

Fortunately Vim has the notion of paste and so has a mode to activate it and ignore indentations and other features. You just activate it with :set paste

Change to insert mode

and now just paste the text the way it was supposed.

Hurray! Now press Esc and get back to our helpful indentations with :set nopaste.

Less typing, may I ?

Of course there’s a pragmatic way of doing all these. We can define a keyboard key to just make the copy/paste a safe operation. I’m using key F12.

:set pastetoggle=<F12>

In insert mode you can toggle the paste mode so you don’t despair with the wrong indentation. Add it to your .vimrc

Another way it’s to just paste what you want into the line you are at in visual mode.

map <F12> :r! xsel<CR><Esc>

xsel is a command line X11 tool to manipulate its “clipboard”.
This mapping reads into Vim the output of xsel which is the clipboard copy buffer. I’m using this one.

You may need to install it but it’s simple

$ sudo apt-get install xsel

Conclusion

Vim customization and plugins broke a plain simple copy/paste. However we got a no brain and fast solution with our F12 key.

I went from Mac OS X Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. I read that this affects Lion too. After the upgrade my mount point on the Linux machine stop working. I couldn’t copy anything to my Mac Mini that way.

You now need to use additional security options: nounix,sec=ntlmssp. Like this:

$ mount.cifs //192.168.1.xxx/osxshare /mnt/mymac/ \
  -o user=******,password=******,nounix,sec=ntlmssp

Or if you mount it automatically through fstab like I do:

$ tail -1 /etc/fstab
//mac-mini.local.lan/linux.backup /home/biafra/Mounts/mac-mini/ cifs
credential=/etc/samba/auth,uid=biafra,gid=biafra,nounix,sec=ntlmssp 0 0

Hope it will help you.

I’m used to Markdown to write down some documentation and procedures at work.

It would be awesome to continue using it for quick presentations, when you want to introduce the team to new concepts or fast learning sessions. Therefore I can write them in plain text wherever I am, even with a mobile, instead of opening Impress.

Fortunately there are tools to make you do that.

What do I need then ?

Using Perl for most of our tools I’m very used to TIMTOWTDI. So, this is just one way of implementing what I want.

So, I’ll choose Markdown Presenter to display the presentation. It’s a javascript and CSS combination to simply show your file in a browser. You then use left and right keys to turn forth or back. You separate your slides in the .md file using exclamation marks bordered by single lines.

The Presentation 
================
 
> My first slide
 
!
 
Second slide title
------------------
 
* Item 1
* Item 2
 
!
 
Another slide just to repeat
my self without any doubt.

You may put these all in a site of your own. However as most often I need to have it locally due to network restrictions, I’ll install a small and simple local web server that’s already bundle with Ubuntu: webfsd.

Last but not the least, we should have a nice way to edit markdown files in vim.

Let’s just build stuff ok ?

This is a quick way and I haven’t installed anything you may say :-)

$ sudo apt-get install git webfsd

Yes, yes, *please* install git if you haven’t done so yet ;-)

After installed the web server create a zone for your presentations and get Markdown Presenter

$ mkdir ~/Documents/MyPresentations/
$ cd ~/Documents/MyPresentations/
$ git clone https://github.com/chrishulbert/MarkdownPresenter.git

Now, let’s start the web server on port 8888 with root ~/Documents/MyPresentations/MarkdownPresenter/ defaulting its index page to MP page.

$ webfsd -F -p 8888 \
-r ~/Documents/MyPresentations/MarkdownPresenter/ -f Presenter.html

If you go to http://localhost:8888/ on your web browser you will see a default presentation.

Now just copy your .md file to ~/Documents/MyPresentations/MarkdownPresenter/presentation.pm and reload the browser page. Voilà!

This is the simple and quick way. Adapt it the way you like better for your needs.

Last but not the… well

It maybe “least”. It’s not necessary but more of a visual aid.

Vim has a basic support for Markdown since version 7.3. As my .md files were identified as “modula2″ I just added this line to my .vimrc

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.md set filetype=markdown

If you need a more capable plugin install PlasticBoy‘s vim-markdown.

And as you already are using vim-pathogen (You are, aren’t you ?)

$ cd ~/.vim/bundle/
$ git clone http://github.com/plasticboy/vim-markdown

You must change the previous line I told you to add to .vimrc because this plugin uses a different identifier for markdown files:

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.md set filetype=mkd

I don’t like the way it highlights the 2 spaces at an end of line. I saw here how to change it for an underline which I prefer.

hi link mkdLineBreak Underlined

I must warn you there are no great markdown plugin for Vim. Even forks from plasticboy’s don’t highlight well block elements within other block elements (e.g. sub headers, sub blockquotes)

So, and now ?

Now ? Be productive! :-) You just have simple tools to quickly and simply produce that presentation you were in need for yesterday.

I’m in the middle of upgrading old servers but it was just only yesterday that I found Ubuntu 12.04 didn’t install the MIB files. Even if you install the SNMP applications. It was really strange to launch tkmib and just see a couple of nodes.

The explanation is simple. Just check the preamble of /etc/snmp/snmp.conf

#
# As the snmp packages come without MIB files due to license reasons, loading
# of MIBs is disabled by default. If you added the MIBs you can reenable
# loaging them by commenting out the following line.
mibs :

Sure, but how can I install them ?

Fortunately there is a package to deal with that.

$ sudo apt-get install snmp-mibs-downloader

It will download the IETF MIB files and install them under the usual /usr/share/mibs/

If for any reason you don’t see it happen force it with

 $ sudo download-mibs

You can repeat this command later to update any new MIB file.

Let’s rock’n'roll

Well, almost. At this time your tools still won’t work correctly. Just remember the text on /etc/snmp/snmp.conf. You have to comment out the mibs : line! Now everything is by the book. Enjoy!

Every time I upgrade the desktop for a new Ubuntu version it defaults it to a 2×2 layout.

I don’t have a monitor on top of another so why would I use vertical workspaces? It maybe has advantages for some else workflow. Not mine. I’m used to horizontal multi screens.

[update: I've just updated to 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) and at last it didn't change the layout! It remained 3x1!]

How can I define a new workspace layout ?

You can change several parameters with the Compiz Config Settings Manager. I found that some friends didn’t have it installed. So, just install it first.

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Call it pressing your keyboard Super key and typing compiz. When it appears click on it.

CompizConfig Settings Manager window shows up. Now just select General / General Options / Desktop Size

Several years ago I was used to a 4×1 layout but nowadays a 3×1 feels more productive.

So…

To change your workspace layout you just have to call CompizConfig Settings Manager and go to General Options / Desktop Size bar. Change the Horizontal and Vertical Virtual Size to suit your needs.

If you want to converte audio between Free Lossless Audio Codec and Apple Lossless Audio Codec it’s straightforward as

avconv -i audio.flac -acodec alac audio.m4a
avconv -i audio.m4a -acodec flac audio.flac

Where did this come from

This is the application from Libav which is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec – the leading audio/video codec library.

So, you are in good hands!

How to install avconv in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

You already know how to do it right ? Just use apt-get install avconv

$ sudo apt-get install avconv
[sudo] password for biafra:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package avconv
$

What ? This can’t be true!
But it is because avconv is just the new name of… ffmpeg.

At this time you still have to install it using the ffmpeg name

$ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
 
$ ffmpeg
ffmpeg version 0.8.1-4:0.8.1-0ubuntu1, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the Libav developers
built on Mar 22 2012 05:09:06 with gcc 4.6.3
<span style="color: #ff6600;">This program is not developed anymore and is only provided for compatibility. Use avconv instead (see Changelog for the list of incompatible changes).</span>
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...
 
Use -h to get full help or, even better, run 'man ffmpeg'
 
The warning is just to tell you to start to use avconv

$ avconv
avconv version 0.8.1-4:0.8.1-0ubuntu1, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the Libav developers
  built on Mar 22 2012 05:09:06 with gcc 4.6.3
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: avconv [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...
 
Use -h to get full help or, even better, run 'man avconv'

Conclusion

The simplicity of avconv is a must. Just use it to convert FLAC, ALAC and other codecs. Just a warning: mp3 is not supported. Check the available codecs with avconv -codecs.