I am in the process of migrating from Subversion to Git for all of my projects and needed a way to install the latest version of Git in Ubuntu. There are many excellent resources that I have combined in this howto. I will be installing Git from Launchpad.

The first step in installing the latest version of Git is to tell apt where and how to get Git. These instructions are for Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS and will also work on later versions. Note that since Ubuntu 9.10 you can use the "sudo add-apt-repository" method to add the latest version of Git to Ubuntu. Create "/etc/apt/sources.list.d/git.ppa.list" and add the following lines (note that you can skip the deb-src if you do not need the Git source):

First you will need to install the following packages that Boxee needs to run, launch a terminal and run the following command:

To install Boxee on Ubuntu 9.10 first download Boxee from here (32-bit) or here (64-bit).

Configuring Exim to use Gmail as the outgoing SMTP server is simple. This HOWTO will walk you through installing, configuring and routing email thru Gmail for exim.

The first step is to install exim4. Launch terminal and:

Run the following command to configure exim4:

Set the following:

General type of mail configuration: mail sent by smarthost; no local mail 
System mail name: (default)

The Sierra Wireless USB 598 currently offered through Telus *almost* works on Ubuntu 9.04 out of the box. A Windows or Mac box is needed to install the "Watcher" program that allows for the automatic online configuration of the Sierra Wireless USB 598. Aside from the requirement of Windows/Mac the card was immediately picked up and ready to go.

I ran into an problem with sound on a Dell Inspiron 518 workstation running Ubuntu 8.04. I had paused Amarok and then viewed a Flash video on youtube. When I went to play Amarok again Amarok stalled and hung there. I had to kill the amarok process to shut it down. The syslog gave up:

I was getting OutOfMemoryErrors when running Eclipse with multiple projects open. To solve the problem I added the following arguments to my quicklaunch:

eclipse -vmargs -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -Xss2m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m

Reference

-Xms

Specify the initial size, in bytes, of the memory allocation pool. This value must be a multiple of 1024 greater than 1MB. Append the letter k or K to indicate kilobytes, or m or M to indicate megabytes. The default value is chosen at runtime based on system configuration.

-Xmx

The HOWTO will show how to automate the backup of your local MySQL server on a daily basis. The backup process uses a bash script and the local logrotate functionality to achieve an automated systems. The backup is processed daily via cron (see /etc/cron.daily/logrotate).

While this HOWTO is written for a local development environment it could easily by modified for remote multi-server environments.

Step1: Create the backup script

Create a file at /usr/local/sbin/backup_mysql.sh using your favorite text editor. I use joe:

I recently downloaded and installed the latest version of Eclipse (3.4.0 aka Ganymede) and ran into some issues when trying to get Subclipse (plugin for subversion) up and running.

Initially I was getting the following error message when accessing Windows->Preferences->Team->SVN->SVN Interface dropdown:

JavaHL (JNI) Not Available

When attempting to view a repository via the "SVN Repository Exploring" perspective I got a different error message:

Unable to load default SVN client

There are many times I have needed a secure SSL/TLS connection to access web resources but do not want to buy a SSL/TLS certificate. Creating a self-signed SSL/TLS certificate helps streamline the process of accessing the secure resource by removing the annoying security message on your browser. When you connect to a self-signed SSL/TLS connection you will be given to option to allow the certificate for all future sessions. Now when you connect to your secure resource there will be no extra steps to gain access.

To create a self-signed SSL/TLS certificate for secure HTTPS connections with Apache there are four steps:

1. download and install the SSL/TLS scripts
2. generate a SSL/TLS key
3. create a self-signed SSL/TLS certificate
4. configure Apache to use the SSL/TLS self-signed certificate

During an upgrade of Ubuntu my printing capability was suddenly cut short. A red sign appeared on my printer icon on my task bar and any printed documents would be queued but not printed.

The Symptoms

A quick look in /var/log/cupsd/error_log gave the following clue:

Filter "brightq-CPCA" for printer "print" not available: Permission denied