Tutorial of the Month – June 2010

June 2010 – Apparmor

What a subject.. We’ll step out of the T&T section this month to visit the Security Discussions area.
bodhi.zazen spends a lot of time in this section, educating and providing support.
apparmor (Application Armor) does what its name suggests, it helps protecting the system if an application gets compromised. apparmor works with specific application profiles that regulate and define the applications access in addition to the usual system permissions (which apparmor can only restrict).

By default, Ubuntu comes with apparmor profiles for CUPS, evince, dhclient3, firefox (which is not enabled) and the guest session.

The first thread to read is Introduction to AppArmor which is closed for posting. Two other threads are open for discussion:
Share your AppArmor Profiles and AppArmor Support Thread.

Enjoy the readings, test it out and report back in the threads!

References

UF ToM thread
Introduction to AppArmor
Share your AppArmor Profiles
AppArmor Support Thread

Known Lucid Lynx issues/bugs with workarounds : UF post

For every release, the ubuntuforums Staff pulls together a thread to keep all in one place most common upgrade bugs and workarounds.

For Lucid Lynx, here it is:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1469475

Thanks philinux!

You can also Share with the community your Lucid Lynx install/upgrade experience thanks to frodon :)

I had kept a Sony Vaio laptop (VGN-C2S series with intel everything) running on Hardy to test the upgrade to Lucid with update-manager. Worked fine, aside from a flashplugin-nonfree problem that broke apt-get/aptitude.
The workaround is listed at the top of the post, as it can be a real stopper for new users :

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/flashplugin-nonfree.prerm
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq flashplugin-nonfree
sudo dpkg --purge --force-remove-reinstreq flashplugin-nonfree

(found in an older bug report).
The bug will not prevent a reboot after the install and can be fixed later on.

Tutorial of the Month – May 2010

Long time no see..

I’ll revive this nice project as a monthly review of tutorials published in the Tutorials & Tips section on ubuntuforums.

For May 2010, we’ll highlight ibuclaw‘s “HowTO: Sudoers Configuration“. Permissions on Linux are sometimes difficult to understand by new users and this guide is a very good way to start. The subject has already been covered extensively by many forums, blogs and wikis, why point out at this particular one?

Well, first because it’s ibuclaw’s, formerly known as tinivole (you will always be tinivole to me, no matter what ;)).
Second, it’s built on user cases dedicated to walking new users through the sudoers file.
Third, it gets into some fine permissions and aliases, which make the sudoers file quite powerful.
Last but not least, even if the thread can be seen as a little old, tiniv.. ibuclaw will be happy to give you support.

Have fun reading, and please do not break anything :)

Reference

UF ToM thread
HowTO: Sudoers Configuration

UF Tutorial of the week – October 12, 2009. grub2 Tutorials

I’ll make an exception and place the subject of the Tutorials in the title, as upgrading to karmic could turn being a nightmare to some.

I’ve stepped out of the Tutorial & Tips section to visit two tutorials, one of them in T&T, the other one in the current Karmic Development section. Both threads will let you know everything you always wanted to know about grub2 (but were afraid to ask). Both are from drs305. grub2 is default with Karmic and can be installed on Jaunty.

The first one, “GRUB 2 Basics” will get you started with grub2, in particular with the /boot/grub/grub.cfg and /etc/default/grub files. The second one, “Grub 2 Title Tweaks Thread” will help you tweak grub2 titles to your desire. Before upgrading to Karmic, make sure you read both of them!

Special mention to ranch hand‘s “Grub2 Introduction” for links to documentation.

Reference

UF post
UWN

So, you made a mistake..

There was a recent incident that made the blogosphere go nuts, a slip during a talk (35 min through the talk).
As always, Matt Zimmerman had a very useful and thought through post.

Where to go from there ? Maybe read this (stole the article title for this blog post), or that and the ongoing discussion (thanks Jan).

So, Mark, why remain silent? Is commenting/apologising/moving on with it for the whole community not worth it? How many additional incidents will be needed for the Ubuntu community collective unconscious to take note that even under 3 % of the FLOSS population is not expandable ?

/me will patiently wait. Cheers :)

UF Tutorial of the Week – October 05, 2009.

Quite often, there is a delay between latest stable application version from an upstream project and updated version from the Ubuntu repositories. This gap is quite important with ALSA. Here is a tutorial from soundcheck that will help you install the latest official stable ALSA release: “ALSA Upgrade Script“. The script should be used with caution as it installs packages itself without going through official repositories. A restore option is provided to reinstall sensitive packages and get them back to their previous Ubuntu version. Many sound issues appear to be solved by this tutorial! Sound should be treated like video via restricted hardware..

Enjoy :)

Reference

UF post
soundcheck’s tutorial on UF
UWN

UF Tutorial of the Week – September 21, 2009.

DSDT (Differentiated System Description Table) is in the BIOS and this is where the OS looks for hardware and configuration info. It sometimes needs to be adjusted, in particular regarding ACPI. 67GTA has written a comprehensive tutorial for Ubuntu and Linux Mint: “HOWTO Fix A Buggy DSDT File” which currently works only up to Jaunty 9.04 release. I’m not sure I understand all the details, but reading through the thread, members seem to be able to fix a large range of ACPI related issues.

Credits to unutbu who suggested the tutorial. As unutbu puts it:

It is kind of amazing (at least to me) that fixing one file can solve such a variety of problems.

Reference

UF post

Marking Threads as Solved on the Ubuntu Forums

The feature had been deactivated due to database corruptions issues with the plugin. After the devs rewrote the code, ubuntu-geek made it available again. You’ll find it under the Thread Tools menu. You can only mark your own threads as solved. The action can be reverted and the thread marked as unsolved.

UF Tutorial of the Week – August 31, 2009.

This week we will explore some basic networking skills, and how to block IP lists from the GUI. uljanow has written a very popular “HOWTO: Graphical IP Blocker” which he’s been actively supporting for two years now. The thread is huge and uljanow made it easy for beginners. Please stop by!

References

Ubuntu Forums post
UWN #157

UF Tutorial of the Week – August 24, 2009.

Long time no see :)

This is the second ToW from master_kernel, a very popular and supported tutorial started in December 2006. Such dedication and popularity had to be recognized. Ever dreamed to compile your kernel? Check the “Master Kernel Thread” and dive! master_kernel will be there to give you a hand. Nice work, see you soon :)

Reference

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7827170&postcount=59