Installing Apache on Ubuntu

A certain someone I know asked in a comment to the previous post how easy it is to get the Apache webserver running under the sublime Ubuntu. Turns out it’s pretty easy indeed. Here’s what I did:

1. Fired up Synaptic Package Manager, which is really “just” a lovely front-end for apt-get.


2. Marked “apache2” for installation.


3. Inserted Ubuntu install CD when prompted and clicked “OK.”


4. Done!
   

Check this screenshot for proof. Piece of cake!

In fact, it was a lot harder just uploading the screenshot to my iDisk under Linux. Well, okay, it wasn’t that hard. I just installed (again, using Synaptic…tasty) a utility called davfs2 that lets you mount a WebDAV server under your filesystem. Works like a charm…in fact, I think I like it even more than the lousy WinXP utility from Apple that serves the same purpose.

Allow me to reiterate: Ubuntu kicks ass. Thank you.

Ubuntu: Linux…for People

I’m sure everyone is waiting with baited breath to hear more of my computing adventures since the apocalypse a couple of weeks ago. What’s that? You weren’t? Tough. I’m going to tell you anyway.

As I said in an earlier comment, I installed CentOS on the advice of my dad, who is wise in the way of such things. It was nice – very polished, and it installed super-smoothly. However, I couldn’t get the drivers for my wireless network card, an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200, installed; I was never even able to successfully compile them from source. Then I tried to install a media player, and found myself wandering the excruciating labyrinthine halls of what Windows users refer to in hushed, frightened voices as “DLL Hell.” I can’t install this component without these six dynamically-linked libraries, which won’t install without six more libraries, and so on until you just don’t care anymore.

I whined about this to my old boss from work, Luke, who is one of the smartest sons of a gun I’ve ever known. He chastised me for not using Debian, whose package management system, he said, was the bee’s knees. All right, I made up the “bee’s knees” bit, but he did indeed speak very highly of it. So I burned a copy of the network install disk, and away I went.

It installed less smoothly than CentOS. It had a text-mode interface, rather than a nice X-based GUI like CentOS had, and I got confused at some point; it started asking questions about my “monitor,” which didn’t really apply to my laptop’s LCD screen, and I think it interpreted my attempts to go back a few steps in the install process as a desire to just go with the defaults, and so once the installation was complete, I couldn’t even start X up. Bleah.

OK, so then I thought I’d try Ubuntu like Ross and Scott suggested in their comments to my previous post. I went to their home page, and immediately started laughing. Don’t get me wrong – I love the site…I think it’s put together very well. But Ubuntu’s slogan, “Linux for Human Beings,” brought to my mind the fake charity fabricated by George Costanza in an episode of Seinfeld as a way of giving Christmas presents to his office coworkers without spending a dime. “A donation has been made in your name to The Human Fund. Money…for People.”

Anyway, enough tomfoolery. I burn the install disc and give it a whirl. It’s got a text-mode installer like Debian -- which, incidentally, Ubuntu appears to be based on, which means you still get the sexiness of apt-get -- but without all the questions. Let me tell you: it installed like a dream. Not only that, but it detected all my hardware and installed all the drivers without even asking me. Including the wireless adapter driver, which works, by the way, like a charm.

The aesthetics are nice, too. I like the default Gnome theme, with its earthy browns and simple composition, but I like the feel of kubuntu, Ubuntu’s customized KDE package, even better.

I also like the MacOS X-like approach to administration. Instead of su-ing your way up to root when you need super-user privileges, you just use sudo, and enter your normal account password to gain access. It’s part of the “root accounts are dangerous” meme, and I think it’s a good one. Also, fewer passwords to remember = good.

Anyway, it’s up and running and flat-out awesome. I haven’t tried to get my printer, a stupid, old Brother HL-1440, working yet, but I’m sure it’ll work out with a little elbow grease.

In conclusion, I’d like to send out a big “thank you” to my homeys for recommending Ubuntu, and I’d like to propagate that recommendation. Ubuntu kicks ass, and unlike The Human Fund, it exists. Use it.

Ubuntu. Linux…for People.

Happy 100 Page Views!

Granted, most of them were me. I think somebody should buy me a present anyway.

Deja vu

No luck. Found a few viruses and spyware "programs," but I'm still having wonderful problems with the Windows svchost.exe process consuming 100% of my CPU resources. Also, Firefox keeps opening random webpages. Bugger.

To hell with it -- I'm backing up my documents over the LAN and wiping the hard drive. My poor, immaculate laptop has been defiled; time to make it a born-again virgin. This time, with a nice, healthy Linux partition for me to dwell in while I'm not playing games or developing Windows software.

I feel so dirty.

It all started, as so many things do, with geekery.

It’s been some time since I’ve played with Linux. I had a good time with various versions of Red Hat back in the day, but I left her for Mac OS X and Windows XP some time ago. I’m not sure what makes me miss that flagship open-source operating system, but miss it I do.

So, after confirming that my laptop—a Dell XPS Gen 2—would run Linux, I headed straight to fedora.redhat.com to pick up ISO images of the Fedora Core OS. A night of BitTorrent and an hour of CD burning later, and I’m ready to roll.

First things first: repartition the hard drive. I rummaged through my older desktop PC’s harddrive, on which I knew I had stored a copy of Partition Magic 8.0. I’ve always liked—and used—Partition Magic, so I confidently copied the zipped program archive onto my USB flash drive and then from the flash drive to the lappy. It installed without a hitch.

Running it, however, would not be so easy. As I start up the program, it kindly informs me that it will run in “demo mode” until I “activate” the program. I dimly remember being e-mailed a serial number for the product when I bought it from PowerQuest online. A quick search through my Yahoo! e-mail account turned up the message and the serial…

...which fails to activate the program. Hmm. And this is where things turn ugly. If you have a weak stomach, you may wish to leave the website. Put your children to bed before continuing.

I followed the program’s instructions for manually activating the program, which first involves a trip to PowerQuest’s website. Turns out, Symantec acquired PowerQuest some time ago, and PQ’s old activation website is now defunct. I spent a while searching Symantec’s site, trying to figure out how to activate this lousy program (which is, supposedly, still sold and supported by Symantec). After several minutes, I got bored, and decided to just crack the damn thing.

I admit it: I’ve used cracks—or should I say crackz—before. In the vast majority of cases, it was only to remove some irritating “feature” from a product I’d legitimately acquired, like the part of most computer games that requires you to have the CD in the drive while playing, even though every bit on that stupid disc has been copied to the hard drive by the installer. Anyway, I never had any problem with that in the past, and I considered this to be in the same vein.

I’m sorry—please give me a moment. This is hard for me. I generally consider myself to be a smart guy, and wise in the ways of tech, which makes all the more surprising—even to myself—what I did next. I Googled for “partitionmagic 8.02 crackz” and soon found a site that claimed to have a cracking program for exactly that product. I download the file and give her a double-click.

Then all hell broke loose.

A tool tip popup popped up in my system tray, informing me that Windows had become infected with spyware! Oh, no! Fortunately, all I had to do to fix things was to click on the tool tip. This initiated the download and execution of a program called SpySheriff, which purports to seek out spyware and remove it. What it really does, however, is pretend to search your computer for spyware, all the while making everything go haywire. Which it did. Rogue processes were running all over the place with my CPU clock cycles. Other processes started crashing violently. Browser windows popped up and loaded seemingly random commercial webpages. It was just plain weird.

Then I realized something odd about the tool tip warning that Windows had given me—and was continuing to give me, over and over again. An uncharacteristic grammatical flaw in the text—something along the lines of “Check as much options as you can.” Say what you will about Microsoft, but you know as well as I do that they speak better English than that.

Google again, this time for “SpySheriff.” Here is where I learn that it does more or less the opposite of what it claims to. Further Googling—this time in Google Groups—turns up some Usenet posts about how to get rid of the parasite. A kind fellow named David H. Lipman recommends the use of a little program called SmitFraud to clean infected systems, and I found others who vouched for its efficacy as well. Granted, it’s just some guys on the Intarweb, so who knows?

What the hell, I thought. What’s the worst this SmitFraud program can do? Break my computer?

It’s basically a zipped archive of a bunch of littler programs. It uses good old wget to download virus definition files, and another program to run a command-line version of McAffee Virus Scan, which it also downloads for you.

I rebooted into Safe Mode with Networking, and started it up. I am writing this from my desktop PC as it scans my laptop’s hard drive. It has, so far, found and removed five nasties, including the “StartPage IH trojan.” Currently it’s scouring my Cygwin directory, so this will probably have to run all night.

Ah, well. It’s nothing more than I deserve. And to think I call myself a geek…

A strong, almost overwhelming desire to abandon Windows altogether for Linux and/or Mac OS X is the only thing that assuages my guilt. Maybe I can keep my membership card after all.

I’ll let you know how the cleansing goes. Until then, I think I’ll sit and contemplate the irony of my situation: contracting a virus because PowerQuest was purchased by, of all companies, Symantec.

forever blowing bubbles all the way

I'm not ashamed to admit it: I want a bottle of this stuff. The bubbles are stunning, and the dye disappears with time and friction -- very cool.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. (I define "good" as "ate yourself retarded," for the record.)

"ummm...thanks mapquest"

The title of this post is a quote taken from my lovely girlfriend, Laura. I'm heading out to the quaint town of Galena, IL this weekend with her. Should be a nice relaxing time. One thing we weren't expecting, though, was for this trip to point out some glaring deficiencies in our beloved Mapquest. Have a look at the directions we were given:




Hopefully, you can read that. Now, I've had trouble with Mapquest in the past -- primarily when trying to get to my buddy Scott's parents' place -- but I've never seen this little gem before. As my dad said, "It might as well say, 'Drive 86 miles west, turn left where the barn used to be, then ask.'"

Oh, well. At least it'll be dark out, thus maximizing our chances of getting lost -- but minimizing the chances that anyone will see our shame!

On a completely different note, if you read Penny Arcade on a regular basis (and, forsooth, you should), you'll be familiar with Tycho's penchant for ending each post with a short phrase from whatever song he's listening to at the moment. I kind of like that, and thought I'd steal it for myself, nefarious evildoer that I am. So, here's my first: mouse over the text to get a tool tip explaining what song and artist the lyric is from. Enjoy!

send my love to you

Kids Make the Darnedest Crap -- In China

My good friend Beuk, who moved to China last month, notes in his blog something that I just had to make sure you guys saw:



Yes, that is a little kid preparing to take a dump in the middle of the sidewalk. This is evidently common over there, as is the split in the tyke's pants that permits such an undertaking. I guess Shenzhen is just too business-oriented; I spent two weeks there and didn't see a single toddler squat down and squeeze one out in front of God and country. Wow.

Su Doku Fever!

I, like so many of you, have finally succumbed to Su Doku Fever. This pandemic is the weird-looking numbers game originating from Japan that now appears in newspapers, books, and websites everywhere.

For those few of you who have not yet been exposed to this virus, the game works like this:

You are confronted with a grid of eighty-one squares, with a certain number of squares populated by a number ranging from one to nine. When the puzzle is solved, each row, column, and three-by-three section of the grid will contain the numbers one through nine, with no duplicates. The difficulty of each game varies with the number of numbers you're given to start with, and with the placement of those numbers. It's like Minesweeper with numbers.

That's it. I've wasted God knows how much time on this lousy game already, and I don't show signs of stopping. If you're ready to give it a try yourself, I recommend the following sites:

Web Sudoku
The Times Online

First Post!

And with this post, I christen this blog the dork's demesne. Here I shall post any manner of geekishness I see fit. Neither video games, nor anime, nor computers, nor Dungeons and Dragons shall be beyond the purview of this webspace. I may even venture off into other, non-geekish matters, such as work or relationships, if the whim strikes me. If it should come to pass that I have enough proclamations to make about various subjects, I may even choose to split this into a multitude of blogs, such is my power.

Cast your eyes upon me, and tremble; for I am Dork.