Moblin got me curios and I wanted to test it out:

Moblin is an open source project focused on building a Linux-based platform optimized for the next generation of mobile devices including Netbooks, Mobile Internet Devices, and In-vehicle infotainment systems.

Cause I don’t own (yet!) a netbook, I installed it under VirtualBox (VB from now on). The image is 666 MB big and it comes not in an .iso, but in a .img format. But, VB, a really awesome software, had no troubles booting from it. As with the majority of Linux distros nowadays, Moblin image is also a Live CD, which means you can run it, without installing it.

Installing Moblin

The preinstall process is made up from 6-7 steps: choosing the language, the keyboard layout, the timezone and, of course, the partitioning. Basically, it’s just another boring “Next-Next” process. The installation itself took around 6 minutes to finish. When it’s done, it asks for a username and a password.

The first boot went pretty quickly, considering that booting under VB takes longer than booting under regular installations. The thing about VB is that it needs, the so called “Guest Additions” installed on the guest machine, so that the guest machine can be used normally. In this case, I failed to install it: Moblin comes with one version of the Linux kernel and the additions are for another version of the kernel. This prevented me in my quest to test Moblin fully. Anyway, I’ve managed to take a few screenshots of it, all are uploaded to my Picasa profile.

The m_zone

There was one thing that was strange. It has a “Status panel”, from which you can update your profiles on social networks. A really useful stuff. I just opened it up and updated my Twitter profile. Almost. I wasn’t logged in to Twitter from it and Moblin didn’t say a word about it. It just happily said that my status is updated. Once I found the “Web services” panel I logged in and this time I was really updating my Twitter stream.

I really was hoping to test it normally and write a detailed review of it, but this guest additions thingy thought otherwise. Moblin is a great distro, even in this beta stage I believe it’s useful. What do you think? Did you test it already, saw it in action?

One thing’s for sure: when I’ll get myself a netbook, it’ll run on Moblin.

Cheers!

P.S.: Check out the Moblin intro, too!

Today I was messing around with Trac, installing it and doing some basic configuration. While my dev machine gets updated, I want to share my process of installing Trac.

What is Trac?

As said on the Trac homepage:

Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects.

It’s free, it’s open source, it comes under the BSD license and it’s really awesome. You can write a wiki with it, have a ticket system, connect it with SVN, so you can browse the sources from the browser and see all the commit messages, when was something changed, added… It can support one project, it can support multiple projects. It can be viewable/editable by anyone, or you can close it down for your little team…

Trac is big. It has lots of plug-ins, so you can extend and customize your Trac. I haven’t played with them yet, but as soon as I will, you’ll get notified ;)

It’s written in Python. It can run on it’s own server, or it can run under Apache (where there are also several options). It can use SQlite, PostrgeSQL or MySQL databases. Currently it can connect only to SVN.

I’ll show you how to setup a basic Trac 0.11-dot-something-dot-something. It will run under Apache with mod_wsgi, use a SQlite database, connect to the SVN repository and require user authentication.

Continue reading this post…

I just found this site, Ubuntu Administrator, a nice place full of articles, how-tos, tips & tricks about Ubuntu in general, and things like networking or security on Ubuntu systems. A great place for all geeks 8)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my console is waiting! Happy hacking!

This post is more of a note to myself, ’cause I keep forgetting all these Linux commands, and spend hours setting up stuff right…

I’m installing Ubuntu 8.04 on VirtualBox, with windows xp as the host machine. I must do it this way, because my wireless card is having some problems with Linux, something with the drivers. The possible solution includes kernel compiling — thanks, but no thanks.

Anyway… The installation itself is no trouble, so I’ll skip that. I always keep the apt-cache from previous installations, sparing hours of updating the system… On the host I have a folder that I share between the host OS and the client OS and first I need to reach that folder, to get from it the apt-cache.

First, need to install the Guest Additions. In Virtualbox go to Devices —> Install Guest Additions. In the console run:

sudo /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

After it’s finished, we need to mount the shared folder:

sudo mount -t vboxsf name_of_the_sharing_folder /path/to/mount_point

Now, for me, this command shows some error. Here’s what I have to do:

sudo modprobe vboxfs
sudo mount -t vboxsf name_of_the_sharing_folder /path/to/mount_point

Something with some modules not being loaded into the kernel, not bothered with it really… Now I can copy the apt-cache to where it needs to be:

sudo cp -r /path/to/mount_point/apt-cache /var/cache/apt/archives

Now do the system update. If the system update includes a kernel update, you’ll have to install Guest Additions once more…

Next installing the LAMP:

sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

That should do it. But hey! mod_rewrite still doesn’t work!

sudo gvim /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

And change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All.

There. I have a basic LAMP on Ubuntu under VirtualBox. I made a few snapshots of the VirtualBox image, in case I trash it (which probably will happen soon), so I don’t need to reinstall over again.

Now, I’m of to setup SVN…