lstierneyltd » linux

Reset Gnome desktop the easy way

lawrence — Sun, 16 May 2010 10:17:04 +0000

I recently upgraded Ubuntu on one of machines from 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). In the old version I had installed a lot of widgets, messed up the fonts, buttons – loads of things. I needed an easy way to restore/reset the Gnome desktop back to the default look and feel.

I could of course have used the gui’s to undo all the changes I made but why bother? This is Linux after all!

# cd
# [sudo] rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity

Ubuntu Server Minimal Install

lawrence — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:02:54 +0000

This is the install I like to use for an Ubuntu Server, usually run headless, with a *very* basic desktop and some other bits and bobs I like.

First of all install the basic Ubuntu Server edition

Then run the following script……….

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt-get -y install gnome-core gdm network-manager-gnome
human-theme x11-xserver-utils tangerine-icon-theme
gnome-themes-ubuntu ubuntu-artwork jockey-gtk
gnome-screensaver gnome-utils

# Extras.....
sudo apt-get install -y tsclient system-config-samba
gnome-disk-utility

How to Quickly Setup Subversion Server on Linux (Ubuntu)

lawrence — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:55:35 +0000

Installation

First of all you’ll need to see if you’ve got Subversion installed. Check this article on how to query installed packages or just try executing:

% svn help

If you haven’t got Subversion installed then:

% apt-get install subversion

Users and Groups

% addgroup subversion
% usermod -a -G subversion yourUser

Create Repository

% svnadmin create /path/to/repository

Configure Repository

% chgrp -R subversion /path/to/repository
% chmod -R g+rws /path/to/repository
% vi /path/to/repository/conf/svnserve.conf

Edit/uncomment the following lines:

anon-access = none
auth-access = write
password-db = passwd

% vi /path/to/repository/conf/passwd

Add the following line:

yourUser = yourSecretPassword

Start Subversion Server as Daemon

svnserve -d

Troubleshooting

You will need sudo or root access (unless you want to see a lot of permission denied errors!)
If you see this error (when using Windows SVN client):

Can’t move
‘..\..\.svn\entries’ to ‘..\..\.svn\entries’:
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

Then try excluding the local directory from the Windows Indexer.

Show and search list of installed packages (Ubuntu)

lawrence — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:39:56 +0000

To show the complete list:

dpkg --get-selections

To filter the list

dpkg --get-selections | grep XXX

Eclipse PDT or Webtools missing perspectives on Linux (Ubuntu)

lawrence — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:38:07 +0000

This post is an aide-mémoire and hopefully helps anyone who has the same issue I had; namely that Eclipse PDT or Eclipse Webtools Project running on Linux (in this case Ubuntu) was not making all installed perspectives available.

The symptoms were that Eclipse would start but only in “vanilla” mode: only three basic perspectives showing. If like me you installed the Eclipse binary as root into some directory then that’s your problem right there. In order for the other perspectives to become available, when running Eclipse as a non-root user, you need to ensure that the user you are trying to run Eclipse as has read/write/exe permission on the Eclipse directory. I’m sure they don’t need all permissions on all the sub-directories but I wasn’t about to start messing around to find out exactly what was required.

In short – check the permissions on the Eclipse directory!