How-To: Setting up a DNS zone with Bind9

Bind is a well known Unix name server, it is a powerfull piece of software which is used by the majority of nameservers.

This article will go though setting up a local area network that can be used at home or inside a small company.

In this article, we suppose that we are going to set a DNS zone for the domain: debuntu.foo, this is a fictionnal zone which is going to be used as a local network domain such as an intranet.

How-To: Apache web server basic security measures

While running a HTTP server such as Apache, there is a few step an administrator have to take in order not to get easily hacked. The very basic one is to hide from the outside which software version and operting system version are running.

Subtitleeditor-0.9.1 is out, new features, new .deb

Subtitleeditor 0.9.1has been released. This subtitle editor I already told about in previous articles continue its evolution.
Among the new features, we can point out the addition of new subtitle format and the correction of some bugs.
Yeah, a new shot of subtitleeditor has been released. This software keeps on evolving.
As usual, I carry the deb [...]

How To: Optimize MySQL response time

High loaded website can get slow to respond when a lot of different visitors visit sites querying the same mysql database server, making it slow to respond.
There is many ways you can improve mysql server response time: by modifying the cache size, stopping dns resolution ….
Let’s see how to do that.

I remember, once at work, [...]

nload, a network traffic analyser

nload is a ncurse based network traffic analyser. Being a ncurse based tools, you do not need to start X in order to use that software which is necessary when administering machines remotely … and even locally actually.


nload allow a system administrator to easily monitor the traffic going on its network. It provide both a [...]

How To: Screen the Ultimate admin tool

Screen is a must known GNU console tool, this small piece of software comes really handy when you are working on a console or sending long processes on a remote host.
When you start screen, you simply get a terminal prompt, but then, many features are given to you. Most users don’t even know about it, [...]

sudoers file: syntax error

I lately updated my dapper box to edgy eft. As edgy eft is unstable and had just been started up, it happens to get surprise.
Today, update-manager stopped to work. When I was clicking on the icon, the update-manager never showed up… due to sudo. Here is how I sorted my way out.
Well, on ubuntu [...]

Fuse-2.5.3 for Ubuntu Dapper

Fuse (Filesytem in Userspace) allow programmers to implement a fully functionnal filesystem in userspace. This way, user can mount a remote filesystem shared through SSH, mount an audio CD through libparanoia…
In its testing release, Debian uses fuse-2.5.3. I synched it to Ubuntu Dapper.
The last fuse deb I shared was fuse-2.4.2. Among the changes brought to [...]

How To: Disabling your Touchpad while typing

In a previous article, I showed how to configure your laptop touchpad in such a way that you could use every neats features by using the synaptics package and configuring properly your xorg.conf.
Well, that is really enjoyable, but It can get really annoying when you type on your keyboard and still have your touchpad active [...]

gaim-libnotify-0.10 deb package for ubuntu dapper

Gaim-libnotify 0.10 has been released, it fixes some bug:
The debian package is now available from debuntu deb’s repository.
This upstream updates fixes 2 bugs:

Fix crasher with some icons
Workaround/bug fix: message weren’t updates

Get the deb package from debuntu deb’s repository.

deb packagedeb package

How To: Setting up Touchpad on a Laptop - A Complete Guide

Every laptop comes with a usefull thing when you don’t want to carry your mouse around: a Touchpad, most of the time, touchpads do work out of the box but not all the goodies are activated by default.
On a basic setup, you can use the touchpad to move your mouse around as well as the [...]

How To: Enable apache modules under Debian based system

Apache is usually suitable out of the box for most common used. The apache structure under debian based systems is actually really well made as it is really easy to activate or deactivate module.
This how-to will show how to activate or deactivate available modules under a debian system running apache2.

1. How it works:
There is 2 [...]

gaim-2.0.0beta3 with RendezVous and Meanwhile support

I’ve recompiled gaim-2.0.0beta3 in order to support rendezvous (aka bonjour) and meanwhile (aka sametime) protocols.
Gaim-meanwhile used to be an extension to gaim and is now part of gaim’s core. Bonjour/RendezVous was developped during he summer of code and is now part of gaim since version 2.0.0.
Well, since debuntu now has its own debs repository, [...]

Monitor your computer with saidar

saidar is a curses-based tool using libstatgrab library in order to gather information about your system state.
Among the displayed information, you will find networking interfaces state, mount points disk usage, disk read/write access, memory and swap usage as well as cpu and processes information.
saidar has been developped by the i-scream group, which also developped the [...]

How To: DPKG guide

This tutorial will bring you through dpkg, the debian package manager. As I introduce apt, I will now introduce dpkg and show how to search which files are installed by a package, which packages are installed on your system ….

Search packages containing a file:
It happens quite often that you use binaries and want to know [...]

How To: use encrypted directories with ENCFS and FUSE

There is many options out there to encrypt datas on a hard drive. You could either encrypt a whole partition using kernel filesystem or simply encrypt specifics directories on your hard disk.
encfs along with fuse can accomplish this.
This how-to will show how you can easily encrypt a directory on your filesystem.
the tools we are [...]

How To: Burn DVD’s from the command line

Burning DVD’s from the command line can seem quite geeky, but it happens to be really usefull mainly when you want to back up datas or simply don’t want to bother launching CD/DVD burning interfaces such as k3b or gcombust …
As usual, before being able to use any tools, we need to have such [...]

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS released

Since the 1st of June, Ubuntu Dapper Drake has been officially released. Ubuntu Dapper Drake brings a lot of new facilities for users and system administrators.
LTS stands for Long Term Support as the Ubuntu team
This release is going to be supported for 5 years. Server Edition includes a unique mechanism to set up a certified [...]

Subtitleeditor-0.8.0 stable, a Linux subtitles editor

A new release of subtitleeditor, a GTK+2 subtitle editor for linux, is out. Bug fixes from alpha versions, new features…
subtitleeditor 0.8 bring a bunch of new features to make editing subtitles much easier.
In this version, the timing system has been remade and bugs have been fixed. New features include:

Open/Save waveform (a real time saver [...]

How-To smbfs: smbmnt must be installed suid root

Quite often, when using program such as smb4k, I encountered the following error:
smbmnt must be installed suid root for direct user mounts
This happens because some linux distribution does not configure smbfs properly such as a normal user can mount samba files.
This how-to will show how to simply resolve this issue.
smb4k, a QT base [...]

Ubuntu Live Chat Support

As a user friendly Linux Distribution, the Ubuntu developper are working on an easy access to the ubuntu support channels on freenode.
Ubuntu Live Chat Support is basically a new application that will ask you for a username as well as a password to log into irc.freenode.net. In case you do not have a freenode irc [...]

How To: subversion SVN with Apache2 and DAV

Subversion is an application used for version control, it is meant to become a replacement of CVS Concurrent Versions System. Subversion is also known as svn.
This how-to will show how to setup svn repositories accessible throught http by using apache2 and the DAV module.

This tutorial is splitted in 4 parts: install neccessary packages, [...]

How To: Exim4 Virtual Host on Debian Etch

Well, since I reinstalled a Debian, I decided to make an article on Exim4, as a complement to Postfix and Virtual Host.
Exim4 is the default MTA (Mail Transport Agent) shipped with Debian. It offers really ecellent macros which help a lot in configuring a wide system by automatizing task the administrator would have to [...]

Ubuntu Census Survey

Today Andreas Lloyd sent a email to the ubuntu-devel and ubuntu-users ubuntu mailing lists in order to gather information on the Ubuntu Linux Community and know a bit more about who is using, contributing…

Here is the mail, I would recommend to everybody using Ubuntu to go and fill the survey, this can be quite usefull.

-----BEGIN [...]

How To: Installing Debian Etch From a running Debian based system

This How To will show how you can install Debian Etch and basically any Debian based distribution from a chroot environment. This way you don’t need to download the (net)install CD, neither to burn it.
This is as well a good training in order to understand how a debian system works.

1.Introduction
It’s a long time since I [...]

How To: APT guide

Apt is the debian tool to install, remove and search packages. It is a front-end to the dpkg package manager and offer easy searching, installing …, by using apt-get and apt-cache.
This Howto will give you the basic commands you need to know for installing, removing, searching package and so on.

1. Searching for packages apt-cache
Let say, [...]

How To: Xgl and Compiz on Ubuntu Dapper

Xgl along with compiz offer new features to the Unix Desktop Environment.
Xgl is a new Xserver on top of OpenGL and compiz the window manager using Xgl enhancements.
This How to will go through the installation process and the way to configure it in Gnome.

Since early 2006, Xgl has joinned the open source community and is [...]

Debian-Ubuntu weakness to filesystem corruption recovery

I really love Debian based distribution, namely, Debian itself and Ubuntu, but there is something wrong… The weakest part is located in /var/lib/dpkg/.
Well, yesterday my /var partition got corrupted and because of that I had to reinstall my whole system. This could (and should) have been avoided. But I had no choice left.
Let’s read more [...]

Ubuntu Dapper Repository

Hi,
I’m pleased to announce that I’ve setted up an Ubuntu Dapper .deb Repository available at debuntu.org.
The repository is hosted on http://repository.debuntu.org/.

In order to easily download the available packages from debuntu.org, you might want to add the repository information into your /etc/apt/sources.list.
Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add this:
deb http://repository.debuntu.org/ dapper multiverse
If you alors want to access the source [...]

How-To: Postfix and Virtual Hosts

Postfix comes as the default mail server under ubuntu. By default, it is set such as it can basically send system notice mail to the user you predefined during install.
During this how-to, I’m going to explain how you can set virtual domains that will forward your mail back to another email adress of yours.
This [...]

Google Summer of Code 2006

Like in 2005, Google renew the summer of code. During the summer of code, google sponsors students to get involved in Open Source software development.

Google gets again involve in the Open Source community by renewing the Google’s Summer of Code.
Summary of the Summer of Code Program
The Summer of Code is a program in which Google [...]

gaim-libnotify-0.9 deb package for ubuntu dapper

This plugin adds a libnotify interface to gaim, enabling popups much like guifications. It has some configuration options, to show popups when a buddy signs on, on new messages and on new conversations only.
libnotify and notify-daemon aren’t stable yet, so it’s all very experimental.

Here is the the gaim-libnotify plugin for gaim. This plugin is compatible [...]

Mounting a fuse Filesystem from /etc/fstab

Earlier on, I showed how-to mount a remote filesystem with fuse, using a remote partition accessible by SSH. Since version version 2.4.0, it is possible to use fstab to mount those kind of partition.
The current version installed on ubuntu dapper is fuse-utils-2.4.2. Unfortunately, /sbin/mount.fuse is not included in the package. I’ve recompiled it, submitted to [...]

Subtitleeditor-0.8-alpha1 is out

Subtitleeditor-0.8-alpha1 is out . As its release name says, it is still to be in development and might be unstale by time. Great features have been added to this excellent software. Let’s review it.
I’ve already made some articles on how to edit subtitles and how to synchronize subtitles with subtitleeditor. By now, a [...]

Charting the future of Kubuntu

Today, Mark Shuttleworth sent an e-mail on ubuntu-announce, kubuntu-devel and ubuntu-devel mailing list where he is inviting the Kubuntu and KDE community to join Ubuntu at LinuxTag on 6 May in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt to chart the future course of Kubuntu.

This is an invitation for the Kubuntu and KDE community to join us at
LinuxTag on [...]

Ubuntu Default Root Password or the sudo way

The first time I installed Ubuntu on a computer, I was rather used to debian and went through the whole install process easily.
When I rebooted my system and open a text-console, my first action was to su - in order to gain root’s grants. What a surprise when I was promted for a password. Damn, [...]

How To: Setting up awstats with apache 2 on debian-ubuntu

Awstats is a great web log analyser. It gives really usefull statistics about traffic on your web sites.
Installing awstats in debian/ubuntu still needs so tweaking to produce neat statistics.
In this articles, I’m going to show you what needs to be done.

What we are going to do here, is to configure awstats such as you will [...]

gaim-2.0.0beta3 .deb package for ubuntu dapper

Gaim-2.0 is not yet stable, but beta versions are out . Since March 29th, 2006, the beta version has been released.
It doesn’t seem that gaim-2.0 is going to make it into Ubuntu Dapper.
I’ve created a .deb for gaim-2.0. People who want to try it out are welcome .

Nota: Before installing this version [...]

How To: synchronising subtitles with subtitleeditor

In a previous article I introduced subtitleeditor and explained how-to create a new subtitle from scratch. This article is going to explain how you can synchronise subtitles with subtitle editor. From changing the framerate to moving subtitles or scaling, here we go.
Subtitle editor make subtitle synchronisation real easy. There is three main reasons for [...]

How To: editing subtitles with subtitleeditor

In a previous article, I introduced gsubedit, a GNOME Subtitle Editor for linux using GTK. It was the best subtitles editor I’d ever found for linux.
Recently, I found a new project, that even it is quite young, has a lot to offer. Namely subtitleeditor. It supports any kind of subtitles format, allows you to move, [...]

SSH and Port Forwarding or How to get through a firewall

In this article I’m going to show you how you can use SSH Port Forwarding to access a service a firewall might be blocking.
As an example, I’m going to take the one from a campus blocking access to IRC servers usually running on port 6667, but letting the SSH port 22 unblocked.
The idea here [...]

wget, wput or how to easily download-upload over internet

Most unix administrator might know wget, a HTTP, HTTPS and FTP client developped by the GNU project. Using that tool, you can easily download HTTP page but also packages… Basically anything you can access through your web browser or ftp client.
Uploading something through Internet is, too me, quite annoying in text mode because you need [...]

Site Changed

I finally took some time looking around for a good blogging system and finally made my mind up for wordpress.
So here is a new layout and a lot of things to come.

How to: Dapper and Starting MLDonkey: mlnet file[s] not owned by user 113 or group 1001: /var/run — reown it first

Today, when I wanted to start my mldonkey-server from command line, the service reported

Starting MLDonkey: mlnet file[s] not owned by user 113 or group 1001: /var/run -- reown it first

I've submitted a bug report, but before it gets fixed, here is a workaround.

How To: Upgrading from Ubuntu Breezy to Ubuntu Dapper

Even though I'm a console fan, I like to have bleeding edge softwares install on my computer. In case I run into troubles, my knowledge of linux is enough to be able to fix common trouble.

So here I go, I'm going to upgrade my ubuntu system to Dapper, which should be out around June 2006.

How To: Mount a remote filesystem using SSH, SSHFS and FUSE

SSH is a protocol to securely connect to a remote host. In previous article we have seen how-to connect to a remote database through a secured tunnel.

It is possible to transfer files using ssh protocol by using the scp command, it would be neat to be able to mount a remote directory through a secure protocol, so this way, all the transferred data will be encrypted.

A combination of FUSE(a userspace filesystem framework) and SSHFS(SSH FileSystem) will do the job. FUSE is a

How To: Connect to a remote mysql server using mysqlcc and ssh tunneling part 2

In a previous article we saw how to connect to a remote mysql server running both ssh and mysql.
This time, we are going a bit further and will see howto connect to a remote server running ssh in order to be able to access a sql server on the remote LAN.

This system allow to hide the SQL server from the outside. Please, keep in mind that in this example, we are connecting to a MySQL server, but it could be any service running there.

How-To IPW2200: Getting Intel Pro Wireless 2200 BG to work on debian/ubuntu

A lot of laptop computers using Centrino processor use the Intel Pro Wireless 2200 BG wireless interface, also known as ipw2200.

This one is not supported by default (at the time of writing) on a linux computer.

Here is the way to get it run and enjoy wireless connection.

Web Hosting: Low Cost Web Hosting

Web site hosting hunt usually turn into a struggle. Finding appropriate cheap web hosting is not that easy. Either, they offer cheap hosting but there is no good support or no appropriate functionnality.

Depending on what are your needs, you could be off with an investment of less than 10$ a month.

Using Multiple network device to connect to the internet

It happens sometimes that you get more than one connection to the internet. Also it might not be usefull in most of the cases, there are few cases when it get really usefull to be able to use the first connection for accessing the Internet and the second connection to access some specific networks or hosts.

Here I'm going to explain how to achieve this setting.