Install LinuxMint 9 on VirtualBox

This is both a screen-shot tour and guest addition installation in Mint 9, GNOME edition. Installing Mint 9 (Isadora) is very easy. Easier than Windows 7 and please don't talk about installing Windows XP. Installing patches in Windows XP takes forever. Anyway, head to Mint 9 download site to grab Live CD (with GNOME DE).

Create a VirtualBox guest machine for Linux Mint 9, see below for my configuration:

General
 Name: mint9
 OS Type: Ubuntu
 
System
 Base Memory: 512 MB
 Processor(s): 1
 Boot Order: CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk
 VT-x/AMD-V: Enabled
 Nested Paging: Enabled

Display 
 Video Memory: 64 MB
 3D Acceleration: Disabled
 2D Video Acceleration: Disabled
 Remote Display Server: Disabled

Storage
 Storage Controller
  IDE Secondary Master (CD/DVD):
   Empty
  Storage Controller 1
   SATA Port 0: mint9.vdi (Normal, 80.00 GB)
Audio
 Host Driver: Windows DirectSound
 Controller: ICH AC97

Network
 Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (Bridged adapter, Microsoft Loopback Adapter)
 
Serial Ports
 Disabled

USB
 Device Filters: 0 (0 active)

Now power up VirtualBox guest machine and mount Linux Mint 9 ISO.

Figure 1. Mint 9 LiveCD, double click on "Install Linux Mint" icon located on the desktop to start installation.

Figure 2. Select appropriate language.

Figure 3. Select correct time zone.

Figure 4. Select keyboard layout. You can take the suggested layout or let the installer guess the keymap or you manually select it.

Figure 5. Since this is a virtual machine, I personally feel like partition layout is not a big deal so I would continue with the default values.

Figure 6. In this screen, supply user account information. Note that you can also configure this user to automatically login to the desktop environment.

Figure 7. Now we are ready to rock n roll. Click on install.

Figure 8. Install complete!!! That was easy.

Figure 9. Here is how the login looks like.

Figure 10. Welcome to Mint 9!!!

Figure 11. And here is the much talked about Mint Menu.

Next would be install VirtualBox guest additions to make it to run faster, dynamically resize guest window, shared folders, etc.

From VirtualBox GUI, select Devices | Install Guest Additions... This will virtually insert the ISO into the CD/DVD. To mount it the GUI way in Mint, do hit on Menu | Computer. Then double click on the CD/DVD. Then drop to GNOME Terminal (Menu | Terminal ) and follow the following instructions.

$ cd /media
$ cd VBOXADDITIONS_3.2.0_61806/
$ sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
$ sudo eject
$ sudo reboot

There you go!!! Enjoy...

~ts

Installing PCLinuxOS 2010 KDE on VirtualBox

This is a screen capture sequence installing PC Linux OS 2010 KDE in VirtualBox 3.2.0.

Figure 1. Boot screen

Figure 2. Keyboard Layout selection. In most cases the detected layout is appropriate.

Figure 3. Click on the highlighted icon to install PCLinuxOS 2010 KDE Edition.

Figure 4. Install root password, this should be root.

Figure 5. GRUB options. Default should do just fine here, in my case, changed boot delay to 2 seconds.

Figure 6. Default Linux image to boot machine. You should still be able to select fail safe or no frame buffer (nonfb).

Figure 7. Installation is done!!! Reboot machine to configure root password and a user.

Figure 8. This will be your machines password.

Figure 9. Add a user here, this will be your workhorse username.

Figure 10. Login to your new PCLinuxOS machine.

Figure 11. Welcome to PCLinuxOS 2010 KDE Edition!!!

Enjoy.

~ts

Install GNOME 2 in FreeBSD 8

This is a quick guide to install GNOME in FreeBSD 8.0.

Create a minimal install of FreeBSD, see this post.

As of 5/21/2010, this will install GNOME 2.26.3

As a root user add the following packages.

pkg_add -r xorg
pkg_add -r gnome2

Edit /etc/rc.conf and add the following if not there yet.

gdm_enable="YES"
gnome_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"

That's it...reboot the machine and enjoy!!!

~ts

Install Opera 10.10 in CentOS 5.5

How to install Opera in CentOS 5.5

Step 1: Head to Opera's website.
Step 2: In "Select distribution and vendor", choose "CentOS". Leave the rest using the default values.
Step 3: Hit on Download Opera, and save it to ~/soft. Or any other convenient location.
Step 4: After download is done, do:

[timus@localhost ~]$ cd ~/soft
[timus@localhost soft]$ su
[root@localhost soft]# rpm -i opera-10.10.gcc4.shared.qt3.i386.rpm 

Enjoy using Opera!!!

~ts

Google Chrome cannot be installed in CentOS 5.5 due to lsb requirements

Google Chrome Beta (5.0.375.29 beta) cannot be installed in CentOS 5.5 due to a dependency that cannot be meet. On a freshly installed CentOS, trying to install Chrome using rpm -i google-chrome-beta_current_i386.rpm spits out the following:

[root@localhost soft]# rpm -i google-chrome-beta_current_i386.rpm 
warning: google-chrome-beta_current_i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 7fac5991
error: Failed dependencies:
        lsb >= 3.2 is needed by google-chrome-beta-5.0.375.38-46659.i386
        xdg-utils is needed by google-chrome-beta-5.0.375.38-46659.i386

Unfortunately, the latest version of "lsb" that comes with CentOS 5.5 is redhat-lsb-3.1-12.3.EL.el5.centos.i386.

~ts :(

FreeBSD minimal install on Virtual Box

This is a screen capture documentation of FreeBSD 8.0 minimal install on VirtualBox.

Before we can start the install, we need to have:
a) Guest machine configuration for FreeBSD 8.0.
b) ISO installer, we will be using bootonly in this case.

As usual, create a guest machine configuration, below is my configuration:

General
Name: fbsd80
OS Type: FreeBSD
 
System
Base Memory: 512 MB
Processor(s): 1
Boot Order: CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk
VT-x/AMD-V: Enabled
Nested Paging: Enabled
 
Display 
Video Memory: 9 MB
3D Acceleration: Disabled
2D Video Acceleration: Disabled
Remote Display Server: Disabled
 
Storage
IDE Controller   
 IDE Primary Master: fbsd80.vdi (Normal, 80.00 GB)
 IDE Secondary Master (CD/DVD): Empty
Floppy Controller
 Floppy Device 0: Empty
 
Audio
Host Driver: Windows DirectSound
Controller: ICH AC97
 
Network
Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (Bridged adapter, Microsoft Loopback Adapter)
 
Serial Ports
Disabled

USB
Device Filters: 0 (0 active)
 
Shared Folders
None

With ISO now downloaded and VirtualBox configuration ready, start the FreeBSD 8.0 virtual machine. Below is a slideshow with the settings that I picked for my minimal FreBSD install.


Enjoy! ~ts

Changing ICS Sharing IP in Windows XP

ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) in Windows XP is quite useful in few occasions. Like if you have a laptop connected to a wired connection and you want to share your connection to other wireless devices, then it can be handy. Note that Windows XP works quite well as Wireless AP in adhoc mode.

There are cases where your wired connection IP range will be in 192.168.0.x, in this case ICS and adhoc sharing will not work, not at least without some tweaks.

To put this in perspective, here is my network.

[Cable Provider (network1)]--[Home Network (network2)]--[XP Machine with ICS (network3)]

My high speed internet connection from my cable company provides dynamic ip in the range 66.90.106/22, let me call this network1.

My second network (network2), is my home network. This is a wireless AP with wired capability. I was too lazy when I setup this network and used the default. So its network is 192.168.0/24. Well, this is the same network that ICS is using.

For my network3, of course using ICS, it is also 192.168.0/24 network. So this is where the issue starts.

There are various ways to fix this but I have two at hand. One option would be to change my wireless AP network address. Second option is to change ICS IP address.

Since I have some time today, I am exploring the ICS option.

To recap, ICS network are by default in the 192.168.0/24 form. Since this is used by my netowrk2, we will try to tweak this a little bit.

When we did the ICS, we shared it to an interface, let us call this "Local Area Connection". If you check "Local Area Connection", you will notice that it is assigned an IP address of 192.168.0.1. To get the devices connected to network3, we would change "Local Area Connection" to:

IP: 192.168.2.1 (or any private IP range)
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway : <blank>

Now, for devices connected to netowork3, we need to change IP manually to:

<device1>
IP: 192.168.2.10
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.2.1 <IP of "Local Area Connection">
Preferred DNS: 8.8.8.8 <Google Public DNS server>
Alternate DNS: 8.8.4.4 <Google Public DNS server>

That's it... your third network should now be able to connect to the internet. This solution is not perfect. In fact, I am having "Windows IP Conflict" every now and then which I am trying to chase down.

Update: (2010/05/15)
It seems like the Windows IP Conflict was caused by "AGN Filter Interface" or "AT&T Wi-Fi Support Driver".

~ts

Resolve Netbios name in Ubuntu

Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and modify the line that shows something about hosts:

hosts:          files wins mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 

Install winbind:

sudo aptitude install winbind

For system with more than one network and with WINS server up and running, edit /etc/samba/smb.conf, like:

wins server = [ip_of_wins_server_here]
name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast
wins proxy = yes

~ts

Chrome SELinux compatibility in Fedora 12

Chrome and SELinux does not play nice by default in Fedora 12, see below on how to fix this:

yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update selinux-policy-targeted

You should be running this command as root. See this link for more details.

~ts

Setting up rxvt in cygwin

Install the following packages
- xorg-server
- xinit
- xorg-docs
- X-start-menu-icons
- inetutils
- rxvt