Installing APF firewall from source on Ubuntu 12.04 Server is possible, but you still have to tweak it somehow to allow it to start on boot and to work correctly with Ubuntu 12.04 server. Luckily, Ubuntu 12.04 does come with aptitude package manager, and we can use this package manger to install APF firewall easily. Unfortunately, you still need to do some tweaking before APF firewall can work smoothly. Nonetheless, it’s like choosing which poison you want to down with, because either choice is going to be cumbersome. There is one more disadvantage of using aptitude package manager to install APF firewall is that the package manager aptitude might not carry the latest version of APF firewall. Nonetheless, when updating APF firewall with aptitude package manager, it’s much easier such as doing aptitude update and aptitude safe-upgrade. Anyhow, let us assume that you pick the poison of installing APF firewall with aptitude package manager, then this video might just be the remedy for you. Enjoy!!!
I use Ubuntu 12.04 from time to time, but I often forget that Ubuntu 12.04 does have a really cool feature known as Search Videos. Search Videos feature actually resides within Ubuntu Dash Home. Recently, I often toy around with this particular feature, and I think it’s a really cool feature for Ubuntu. Cool enough that I had made a video to ramble on about it.
In my opinion, Google as a current leader in web search business has a lot to worry about Ubuntu Dash Home’s Search Videos feature, because this particular feature on Ubuntu can actually be a model for other operating systems to implement unique search implementations. When more operating systems begin to implement unique search implementations, Google web search dominance might not be so dominant if people begin to see that unique search implementations can actually yield better unique search results right on the desktop. For an example, within Ubuntu Dash Home, when Linux users use Search Videos feature, they don’t really have to be bothered by irrelevant search results of other implementation types such as article search implementation type. To put this in another way, we can say that Linux users won’t have to worry about clicking on links that will lead them to anything else (e.g., articles, websites, etc…) but just video/movie web links when they’re using unique search implementations on a desktop.
In addition to yielding results of web links, Ubuntu Dash Home’s Search Videos feature implements the implementation of allowing Linux users to search for videos and movies that reside locally (i.e., videos and movies that can be found within the computer itself). Web search engines such as Google cannot do the same in this regard. With that being said, major search companies such as Google can totally roll out desktop app that allows computer users to use unique search implementations.
At the moment, it seems there is a drawback of using Ubuntu 12.04 Dash Home’s Search Videos feature. The drawback I’m talking about is how you can’t actually add your own video sources. This limits the amount of videos that can be presented within the Search Videos feature’s result at any one time. Nonetheless, I guess this limitation can also be a good thing, because reckless Linux users won’t be able to add malicious video sources to their desktop. It will be a nightmare for desktop security and computer security in general if malicious video sources spread viruses and malware. So, I guess in the end, it’s still about the choosing of security over usability or vice versa. Anyhow, if you’re curious about Ubuntu Dash Home’s Search Videos implementation, why not check out the video that I had made about Ubuntu Dash Home’s Search Videos feature right after the break. Enjoy!!!
Official Ubuntu circle with wordmark. Replace File:Former Ubuntu logo.svg. Español: logo de Ubuntu + marca denominativa Français : Logo officiel d’Ubuntu. Remplace File:Former Ubuntu logo.svg. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Hi guys. Some people prefer to not have to intervene at all with the update and upgrade processes of their Ubuntu system, because they rather have the system to be automatically updated and upgraded itself and just logged the progresses to a log file, in silence. Of course, there are other people who prefer to have Ubuntu asks them for permission to upgrade through graphical user interface, and this is fine too. Nonetheless, I like the former idea better. Therefore, if you want to have Ubuntu automatically updates and upgrades itself without making a single fuss, then you should watch this video. For your information, in this video, I will use aptitude command line instead of apt-get command line to allow Ubuntu system to be up to date. How come? Well, let just say I prefer aptitude package manager over apt-get package manager. Nonetheless, you can just switch out the aptitude commands for apt-get commands, and you will still be able to achieve the same goal. Enjoy this educational video!!!
Sometimes, conveniency is the problem. So, the question is how do I disable automatic login for Linux Mint 13? When I tried to disable automatic login for Linux Mint 13 through graphical user interface and it failed to do just that. I scratched my head. Looked around the web and some Linux users suggested that I could totally edit the mdm.conf file. This was what I did and it worked. Here is how:
Open up a terminal
Do [sudo -i] and type in your sudo password (i.e., a user who has the authorization to become administrator through sudo command). By the way, do not use the square brackets in your command line as they’re there for clarity only.
Type in the command [cp -p -a /etc/mdm/mdm.conf /etc/mdm/mdm.conf-old]. What this command does is to create a copy of the file you about to edit. By doing this, you can recover the file when you completely mess up the original file. It’s a security measure that all Linux users should practice when editing an important file.
Type in the command [vim.tiny /etc/mdm/mdm.conf].
Hit letter [i] on the keyboard to enter editing mode.
Find the line which says AutomaticLoginEnable=true, and change the true part to false. It should look like this AutomaticLoginEnable=false. Make sure you know how to use vim.tiny OK? If not, try to edit the mdm.conf file with nano editor instead.
Also, find the line which says TimedLoginEnable=true, and change the true part to false. It should look like this afterward, TimedLoginEnable=false.
As you’re using vim.tiny editor, to save the new change of mdm.conf file, you must hit [Esc] key first, type in a colon second (i.e., [:]), type in [wq] right after the colon, and then hit enter key to save and exit the mdm.conf file. It should look like this [:wq].
Type [exit] and hit enter key in the terminal to exit root.
Type [exit] and hit the enter key again to exit the terminal altogether.
You can totally share directories or files on Windows 7 easily, but what if you want to share such data that reside on Windows to Mac or Linux? When you have more than one Windows machines, sharing data between them can also get uglier, because you might have to worry about the reliability of the share data on each machine. Since the data reside on each Windows machine are obviously under the mercy of each Windows machine, therefore if something is happening to a Windows machine such share data can be lost. Sure, you can always do backup for each Windows machine, but if you forgot to schedule the backups for one of these Windows machines — the data on this particular Windows machine is in danger of disappearing in the wind. So, data management can get uglier if one does care about making sure the share data among Windows machines stay healthy. Sometimes, having too many different share repositories can also encourage data duplication, and yet this sort of data duplication isn’t exactly properly managed so it would turn out to be of something as data redundancy. Data redundancy is only possible if the data management procedure gets simpler, otherwise (sometimes) data can just disappear within the wind.
Centralizing Windows share data in a single server is definitely a solution toward the problems I had described. By centralizing share data, it’s easier to manage who has access to what data. When a data is accidentally delete by someone, centralization of share data allows the administrator to easily figure out who had done it since there are log files that would resolve what had happened. If Windows share data reside in a scatter manner (i.e., on different Windows machines), it would be a lot harder to figure out what data had gone missing since all Windows machines must be turned on and their log files must be opened for analysis, assuming that Windows 7 does actually produce such log files in the first place. Furthermore, when Windows share data are reside on a machine that is optimized to just serve share data, perhaps the transfers of data can be facilitate in term of speed and security. For an instance, perhaps not all of your Windows machines are always idle, because these Windows machines might run some intensive jobs — plus there might be plethora of third party software that run behind the scene that might somewhat slow down a Windows machine and in the process slow down the Windows machine performance in everything. Some Windows machine might not be up to date in term of updating Windows itself and not having proper security settings, therefore if the share data are supposedly to be kept away from unwanted users might not be able to do so.
Sure, there are several ways you can tackle Windows sharing, but I personally recommend FreeNAS since the software itself is an open source and free of charge. FreeNAS definitely allows you to centralize the sharing of data for so many platforms, but if you want to particularly centralize the sharing of Windows data, you can use CIFS service within FreeNAS. Albeit, to have a proper FreeNAS machine can somewhat be daunting since you have to make sure you got a reliable spare machine with enough disk drives that would give amble storage space, this way the share data won’t be stored on just any machine that would fail easily or else the data will be gone with the wind. Luckily, I think you can easily buy a reliable desktop under or around $300 nowadays that has enough horse power to power FreeNAS easily. After all, FreeNAS server doesn’t require a good graphic card as it’s not a gaming machine. Nonetheless, make sure your FreeNAS machine at least has around 4 GB of RAM, but I do recommend to get the more RAM the better. Installing FreeNAS is very easy! You just need to find a howto install FreeNAS video on YouTube and watch it, and it is probably going to take you around 15 minutes or just a tad more to have FreeNAS installed. Afterward, the question is how to set up CIFS on FreeNAS so FreeNAS machine of yours can begin to let your Windows computer to use Windows share, but luckily this is too can be done easily. If you want to know how to set up CIFS on FreeNAS, check out the video I had made on this very topic right after the break. Enjoy!!!
Afterthought: Although I made it sound that having FreeNAS machine can be cheap, but if you want to do it right it won’t be cheap. Luckily, it won’t be overly expensive either unless you want it to be so. What make a FreeNAS machine isn’t cheap at the moment is digital storage space. Perhaps, this won’t be the case in the future, but at the moment hard drives are still expensive when we’re talking about hard drives with disk space capacity around 2 TB or 3 TB. FreeNAS solution can be cheap if you have enough spare hard drives that lay around idle within your premise. Nonetheless, I don’t think you should go cheap on hard drives at all, because what you want to last most are the hard drives. With a failing hard drive or hard drives, your data will be lost!!! Yes, FreeNAS does allow you to configure RAIDs, but what if you go cheap on hard drives and more than one hard drives would fail? Even with a RAID, too many failing hard drives at any moment can either be a time waster or a really nightmare scenario since data could be lost if you fail to rebuild a RAID properly. So don’t go cheap on hard drives!
I was able to install Linux Mint 13 onto my MacBook Pro. I had to say it was riveting to see my MacBook Pro booted into Linux Mint 13 for the first time. How come? Probably it was that I never had tried to install any Linux distribution onto a Mac before! Anyhow, I thought it would be harder for me to install Linux Mint 13 than Windows onto a Mac, but it turned out I got it worked out perfectly the first time around. Of course, I had used the correct guide, otherwise I would not be able to install Linux Mint 13 onto Mac after just one try.
I followed the Install Linux Mint 12 (Lisa) on 13inch MacBook Air 4.2 (2011 model) tutorial on billsdon.com blog, but I did not follow this tutorial by the letter. I did not install and use rEFIt (i.e., preferring the use of the Mac’s option key on the keyboard to pick which operating system I want to boot into); I did not use GPT Fdisk to create 3 partitions for the hybrid MBR as I had only used it to create only 2 partitions — this prompted the warning about I had an extra partition that wasn’t used and GPT Fdisk asked about creating an extra partition in case I would be able to use this extra partition in the future for whatever purpose, but I refused to do so as I had read rodsbooks.com’s Hybrid MBRs: The Good, the Bad, and the So Ugly You’ll Tear Your Eyes Out article how it would be unwise to create an unrecognizable extra partition on Mac. It appeared that Apple Disk Utility might have a bug that would prevent it to manipulate unknown MBR type codes, and by being careful about this I decidedly it would be wise to not create extra partition. So, when GPT Fdisk asked me with this command prompt “Unused partition space(s) found. Use one to protect more partitions? (Y/N):,” I candidly replied N for no.
Here is the short version of how I had installed Linux Mint 13 onto Mac.
Use Boot Camp Assistant (come with Mac by default) to create a second partition
Download Linux Mint 13
Burn Linux Mint 13 into a DVD
Insert Linux Mint 13 into Mac’s DVD/CD tray
Reboot Mac (Mac OS X Lion in my case)
Hold down the option key (on the keyboard) right after hearing the chime (boot sound)
Choose the DVD to boot into Linux Mint 13 Live DVD (not the Boot Camp or Mac OS X Lion partition)
Wait for Linux 13 Live DVD to completely load into RAM (random access memory) and load itself up in a working stage
Double click on the DVD icon (I think it labels as installing onto hard drive or something of this sort) that allows the installing of Linux Mint 13 onto Mac
Follow the onscreen instruction to install Linux Mint 13, but I had to manually customize the partitions for Linux Mint 13 to make sure I that I would be able to pick the Linux Mint 13 partition (i.e., the root partition that represents by a backslash “/”) as a Bootloader, otherwise it would be a bad idea to install Linux Mint Bootloader into Mac’s main partition (i.e., you will not have a working Bootloader and won’t be able to boot into Linux Mint later as it would be installed into the wrong partition)
Reboot into Mac and install GPT Fdisk software from the Internet
GPT Fdisk software is dangerous as it can totally destroy how Mac would boot up and will destroy Mac partitions if use it in the wrong way (i.e., will have to reinstall Mac and all data will be lost) — research on GPT Fdisk and how to use it correctly
Use GPT Fdisk to create a hybrid MBR so when later I first boot into Linux Mint 13 on Mac, I won’t have to face the missing operating system warning
Reboot Mac and hold down the option key (on keyboard) after hearing the chime
