Solr on Ubuntu Hardy Heron

As I previously mentioned here: (”Debian packages for solr in testing“)– apache-solr is now in the main Ubuntu / Debian repositories. Once you’ve upgraded to Hardy Heron (good how-to here) you can install solr with the following command:
apt-get install solr-tomcat5.5
Note, I’ve already noticed one bug with the get-properties link in the solr admin and [...]

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Ubuntu Wall of Shame

Ubuntu Wall of Shame

Apache on Ubuntu leaves a legacy (init.d broken)
trac on 64bit Gusty Broken
Flash on 64bit Ubuntu broken

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Ubuntu Wall of Shame

Think Ubuntu is ready for the enterprise?
FAIL
If Hardy Heron isn’t any better I’m going to go back to Debian w/custom compiled debs for my server needs — though I’ll probably stick with Ubuntu on the Desktop –
Ubuntu Wall of Shame

Apache on Ubuntu leaves a legacy (init.d broken)
trac on 64bit Gusty Broken
Flash [...]

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Apache on ubuntu leaves a legacy

Not a good legacy. The default init script (/etc/init.d/apache2) that is put in place when you install apache2 via the usual apt-get doesn’t actually work if your apache instance is listening on more than one port. For example if you’ve enable ssl with a2enmod ssl and are listening on both port 80 for http and [...]

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trac install broken on 64bit ubuntu

Users accustomed to 32bit Ubuntu systems are used to the seamless “apt-get install trac python-clearsilver” for installing their favorite wiki/defect tracker / source code browser — however the clearsilver component is broken on 64bit systems — and has been for several months. Thus when you browse to your trac setup you get a python stack-trace [...]

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lighthttpd the right tool for some jobs

Fans of any thing, any sports team, product, or software package tend to over exagerate the greatness the object of their affection may or may not exhibit.
lighthttpd and its fans are no different. There is an interesting thread in the wikipedia mailing list inquiring about the “advertised” use of lighthttpd — pronounced “lighty” — on [...]

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Ubuntu to package parallels virtualization

Desktop Linux is reporting Ubuntu will deploy the commercial virtualization product by parallels, “parallels workstation” to its apt repositories allowing for easy installs…
Ok, this comes not long after my gripes about desktop virtualization on linux. This won’t fix it either. The problem is not that parallels is hard to install — it’s really not (dpkg [...]

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jps the java process tool

All UNIX-like systems come with a ‘ps’ utility which displays the processes running — however any java application will just show up as the ‘java’ process since everything runes in the java vm.
If you are looking for insight into the processes inside a java virtual machine try: “jps” — which will print a list of [...]

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How to configure Java on Ubuntu

I’ve got a few Ubuntu systems lying around, and I’ve recently started playing around with Apache Hadoop.
I had several versions of the jdk installed including the one I wanted “sun-java6-jdk” however the gcj one was the default system.
There are two steps required to change the default JVM.
1) Edit /etc/jvm, and make sure the desired JVM [...]

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visudo: sudoers file busy, try again later

Quick note on how to un-lock yourself from a failed visudo session.
f you’ve accidentally locked yourself out either via an accidental crtl-c or system restart and you were in the middle of editing /etc/sudoers via visudo there are two steps to take to restore it to a normal state (aka un-lock yourself)
I’ve done the following [...]

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Desktop Virtualization on Linux Sucks

Desktop Virtualization on Linux sucks, especially compared to the options available to Mac OS X users who have both Parallels and VMWare fusion.
VMWare Desktop is slow, even on my q6600 quad core with 4gigs of ram. The integration blows, it’s only good for syncing my ipod at best. iTunes will play sound just fine, but [...]

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Ubuntu 6 LTS, Second release

The ubuntu team has posted the second release of their LTS (Long Term Support) 6.06 release.
This new iso-spin includes many patches so users who use this new install cd won’t have to download approximately 600 MBs of patches (it’s been out for a while now).
The mailing list has more here:  https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2008-January/000107.html

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Firefox flash plugin on Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon 64bit?

I recently did a fresh install of the amd64 gusty gibbon release only to find the flash plugin was no longer working.
The problem is that Adobe has released a new version of the plugin, however the ubuntu team has still not updated the deb package to contain the updated md5sum checksum, so after apt-get dutifully [...]

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Debian packages for Solr in testing…

Ah! I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon the package page for solr in the “testing” branch.  Although I’m not sure how practical it will be unless the urses based installer prompts your for the docBase and web-app name you want to use to create the correct Context xml snippet and place it in Catalina/localhost [...]

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Personal Package Archvives

Osnews.com is covering an interesting announcement from Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. Canonical is releasing a new service called “Personal Package Archive” which allows anyone to upload up to 1gb of open source software and the service will automatically compile it and create and apt repository for the user.
This is a big deal in my [...]

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VMWare running native XP on SATA disk, part 2

Last week I started writing the introductory article: “VMWare running native XP on SATA disk” — I promised to have the follow up the next day. It has been more than week. What can I say, busy week at work.
We left of having configuring the Windows side of the equation, having set up a separate [...]

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VMWare running native XP on SATA disk

There have been a few attempts at documenting the process of running a windows install directly from the hard disk via VMWare running on a GNU/Linux host. The most publicized attempt was made “digg famous” here: Running a Windows Partition in VWware — they all fall flat in various ways. The previous example could [...]

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Blocking bots with mod security

mod_security is an awesome apache module to have in your security arsenal — but besides the extra security it gives you it can also be used to protect the content on your blog or website.
There are a few risks and reasons to block certain bots 1) If you use apache as a proxy spammers may [...]

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VMware Server on Gusty Gibbon Just Works

On previous versions of Ubuntu you had to patch the free VMware server to get it to compile (as mentioned in this techrepublic article: How do I… Install VMware Server 1.04 onto an Ubuntu Linux System?

However on Gusty Gibbon amd64, which I’m running on my dell laptop, the vmware-install.pl script ran to completion without any [...]

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Ubuntu vpn howto

I’ve been playing around with Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon amd64 on my laptop, and as usual each release brings addition polish, and makes forward progress towards the goal of “Linux on the Desktop”.
sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp
You may, or may not need to restart dbus for the plugin to be loaded. If you click on the network [...]

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