Content:
Today we talked about the eff
Click here for the full show notes

Vote for us at Podcast Alley

Email:
Hi Joe :)

nice to hear you again ! It seems like you got nice hollydays, you seem to talk more freely, good ! (my holyday will be in october.... I had no summer vacation this year).

As I told you in the forum, I started last july a linux podcast.. finally.. after long weeks of reflexion listening to your podcast, and other. I call it "Les Minutes Linux".. that of course is in French :) So am I, isn't it ? So thanks for having indirectly me pushed to make this podcast :p (http://minuteslinux.podmiel.info)

I think you got a little too fast in the istallation of a programm, from source. I don't know exactly the audience you have (average level of knowledge, etc..) All linux distros have one think in common : the all have repositories where users can pick and install programs easily. Using yum , yast, adept, synaptic. So did I on my introduction podcast.... Users don't need to crawled aroud the web to find anything, it's 90% sure in the repositorie of their distros.

Here.. I make a little intro also for your nexwt episode :) Enjoy

Olivier

Content:
Computer were supposed to make us more productive
most of the time they do
in the web 2.0 world there are plenty of online planning and organizational tools
one of the most popular are todo list managers
We have different online sites such as tada list and Remember The Milk
Also there are many different offline tools, such as iCal and Outlook
These are all good except they save files as a sort of portable format
you can export them to iCal format, but still some things don't import and export iCal
usually you are eith completely locked into a product, or you have to go through a kludge to get the file into another application
there is one universal format, that anyone can read, text
text is so simple that no matter what, you can read a text file
also reading a text file will be something that even in 10 or more years, you still we be able to read text
so we have to format down, now what is the best way to edit plain text
for me it involves the command line
Thankfully, I read a blog called LifeHacker
On that blog, Gina Tripathi had a similar love for the command line
Initially she just came up with the idea of keeping your taks in a plain text file
since Gina is a command line junkie like me, she came up with some little ways of editing the file effiecently using linux tools
mostly it was a lot of grepping and using cat to list the text file in the shell
then in another article, Gina posted a small script that would do many of these commands for you and you wouldn't have to remember much
this concept of a todo shell script was liked by a lot of people, and it spawned its own website
Now there are many different parts of the script
The most important is the todo.sh shell script
it is a shell script which means it will run in Linux and OS X natively
for windows you need a bash emulator such as cygwin to run the scriptt
there are other tools on the website such as a AIM and Jabber Bot
those allow you to access your todo list from AIM or Jabber
There are also many different additions and little hacks for it
First though, we are going to go over how to use and install the todo shell script
Installing the script on Linux and OS X is very easy
All you need to do is download the .zip file and extract it
to make it executable just run chmod 755 todo.sh
go edit the .todo file and put the location of where you want your todos and everything to be held
that is all, you are done installing the script
the main problem with this is that you need to put the entire path to the todo.sh to run it
what I do is I want to be able to simply type t to get to the todo.sh
to do this I simply created a symlink in my /bin directory that points at todo.sh
to do this change directory into your /bin directory
then we are going to create a link
to do this type ln -s /path/to/todo.sh t
make sure you do that in the /bin directory
also make sure you use the -s flag
so now you are ready to use todo.sh
type t list to test it all
as for windows you will need a bash emulator such as cygwin
cygwin is easy to install
simply download the installer and then run it
then it will create all the files you need and place a shortcut on the desktop
now simply download the .zip again
we are going to do the same thing you did for OS X and Linux
so now that it is installed, I use t as the way to get to the todo.sh
the most common thing you want to do with a todo list is to list them
so simply type t list
this will list all of your entries
if you want to search for a entry type t list <search term>
this will search your list for what you say
now lets add an entry to do this simply type t add <todo item>
now let me tell you about how todos can be categorized
there are three different ways, priority, project, context
the priority is a simple A,B,C,D and so on
to do that you will want to type (A) or whatever priority and then the todo
then we have project, which is a certain project that you want to add a todo to
for this we use p:Project name
last is context we do this through the @ symbol
so you type @phone to say this is something to deal with the phone
no that you can add and list todos lets show how to mark todos as done
to do that we type t do <number of todo>
that will put an x and the date in front of the todo
also you want to delete todos we do that with a t del <number of todo>
to remove those done entries, we type t archive
this will put all of the done entries into a done.txt file
those are the basics of todo.sh
you can do most things with these commands
I find that this is a very cool way to have your todo's listed in a very platform agnostic format
Now that we have the todo.sh done and natural for us there are other little tools that you might want to deal with
I find the best way to get to your todos outside of the command line is to simply use the aim bot
to use the aim bot you need perl with the OSCAR cpan module
generally perl and cpan are installed on Linux and OS X
as for windows, installing perl is outside of the scope of this podcast
once you have it all installed, just type perl todobot.pl with the correct aim user information
this will allow you to access your todo list from your phone if you can get to aim via your phone
also I programmed a php script that allows you to access your todo list via the web
these and much more is listed on the main site
that is all

Contact Details:
Email: questions@rootsmart.com
Voicemail: (206) 734-4825
Skype: rootsmart

Vote for us at Podcast Alley

We are Back!

Content:
This will be the last podcast in our linux series
installing software on linux can be quite hard
it is generally the hardest part for windows users to get used to
over the years it has gotten much easier
we are going to go from hard to easy
to start we are going to compile
this is the way software has been installed on linux for quite a while
first we are going to need to download the source code
the source code is generally in what is called a "tarball"
these tarballs usually have a .tar.gz ending
the .tar section stands for Tape ARchive
it was from back in the days of tape backup
tar will bring a folder structure together into one file
the .gz part is GunZipped
tar might bring everything to together, but it doesn't compress anything
so the .gz part compresses the .tar part to make a compressed file
this made a ton of sense when on dial-up but it has now just become common practice
so we need to find the source code tarball
you can do this one of two ways
you can either go the projects main site
or you can do it how I do it and go to freshmeat.net
freshmeat is a search engine for linux projects
and on the project pages they have links to the source code as well as any other distribution methods
today we are going to use gaim as our example application
so head over to the gaim project page
Now we are going to download it through a command line utility
the command line utitlity is called wget
wget is a command line internet tool used to download files.
so you are going to need to get the url location of the tarball
this is pretty easy to do, you just have to go through one of sourceforge's mirrors
now the syntax for wget is wget url
so just type in wget and then the url of the tarball
now this will download the file to your current working directory
I usually try to download source code and other temporary things in my /tmp directory
that way it is all in one place
so now it will take a little time to download and you have this tarball
we need to extract the contents of this
initially you needed to use two different processes to extract tarball
gunzip would decompress the file, and then tar would actually extract it
since tarballs are so popular tar has the gunzip part built in
to extract an archive you are going to type tar xvzf tarball
replace tarball with the name of the .tar.gz file
you will see a long list of things
these are the files being extracted from the tarball
now you should have a folder in the directory called what the tarball was called without the .tar.gz
now you have the source code extracted
this is where it gets fun
so lets cd into that directory
most source code comes with a configure script
this does a lot of work for you
so lets assume that the configure script is there
if it isn't you will have to read through a lot of documentation to configure the make
so to run this configure script type ./configure
now a lot of things will happen
it checks many different things
the most important is it checks for gcc
gcc is the c compiler that is very popular
almost all of the distributions either have gcc already installed or a gcc package
make sure that you have gcc installed
when you do this configure script it might come up with an error
most of the time the errors from the configure script is a missing library
libraries are little pre done code samples that programmers use
to get those libraries you want to look through your package manager
if the library isn't in there, then you might have to download them and compile them
google will tell you your answers
so once you get a successful configure it will say that it is making some files
now you will notice that you have a new makefile in the directory
so now we need to do a make command
this make command will do the actual compiling
this will probably take the longest time to do
simply just type make
all kinds of these will go across your screen
when that is done everything is compiled
now that everything is compiled, you need to put it in the correct place
you don't need to do this manually
to move all of the correct files just type make install
this will move everything
now everything is installed
look through the documentation for the location of the executable
now you can remove the tarball and that source code folder
you know have that program installed from source
one of the biggest downfalls of compiling is trying to uninstall
there is no real good way to uninstall compiled applications
the only way to do it is to do a search for the application and then remove all of the files you find
the next way to install software is through a package manager
these days there are two main package managers
there is the Red Hat Package Manager and the Debian package manager
Red Hat Package Mangers are rpms and Debian packages are deb files
first we are going to look at rpms, then debs
operating systems such as fedora and suse use rpms
for package management they use there own tools
they still generally use the rpm program for command line tools that install a single package
there are two different ways to use the package mangers
one is to use a software such as yum for fedora
this will go out and look at a repository that someone maintains and then resolve any dependencies
then there is just single file install which is just using the rpm command
first download the rpm file
then you can install the file with a rpm -i file command
this will install, you can use the -u command if it is updating
now that will look for all of the dependencies it needs
if you don't have one it will alert you and it won't install
now the better way to do this is to use a tool like yum
yum is for fedora, yast is for suse
they generally have the same syntax
yum doesn't require you to download anything up front
you can use it by typing yum install app
it will then look at a repository that is managed by someone
it looks for the file and then if there are any dependencies that you don't have installed on your system, it will download those also
the deb system also has both a package manager and then a command line tool
to use the download command line tool download the .deb
then install it with dpkg -i package
that will install the file but not any dependencies
now I find they have the best repository manager called apt-get
apt-get works the same as yum
just type apt-get install package
this is the basics of installing

Donate

Vote for us at Podcast Alley

Email
Hi Joe,

I have one podcast (Sean Hannity) out of seven that won't download/update since 4/19/06 in itunes.

Any advice on how make it download?

Many Thanks,

Scott

Joe;

Maybe you can help me out with this. I need a decent bootloader program. I want to have three or four operating systems on the same computer. I have one entire drive dedicated to windows. I would like to have another drive with two or three partitions for Linux distros. Partitioning is no problem but getting the operating systems from stomping all over the bootloader is another problem. For example, when I install Ubuntu, it wipes out SuSE and vice verse. They are both on the hard drive but each one kicks the other out of the boot process. I don't know how to resolve this in the install process.
While listening to another podcast I discovered a couple of things. There are bootloader programs so that I can choose which OS to load. I knew this but it never occurred to me till I heard it on the other podcast. Second, Ubuntu 6.06 does not give an option to put the boot loader on the partition it is on. As a result it generates its own MBR, therefore making the separate boot loader program problematic. I suppose I could only put the boot loader program CD in only when I wanted to boot to other systems than Ubuntu. I think there must be a way to edit the boot.ini file in Windows but I am not to sure how it is done.
So here is the questions, can you recommend a third party boot loader program, I know System Commander is good but I have to pay for that, free would be better but not essential. I don't want to use a floppy so I have to be able to do it from CD? Next, any suggestions on the Ubuntu 6.06 conundrum? Are there other choices to accomplish this that I don't know about.
By the way the podcast I was listening to was Linux Reality, it is very good. I am sure you have heard it.
Looking forward to your next podcast.

Thanks;

Charlie
Content
Today we are talking about partitions and disks in Linux
Disks are not handled in the same way that Windows handles disks
In linux disks are handled as mount points
So in windows you have drives C:, D: whatever
in linux you have mount points
So lets say you have two partitions, A and B
You want your home folder to be on a seperate partition, A
so you set the mount point of partition A to be /home
so you can be using your home folder without ever realizing it is a seperate
drive
this makes the use of other drives very transparent
so to see what drives you have plugged in, we need to check a file
the file is located in the /etc directory called fstab
this will have lines that look like
/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults, errors=remount-ro 0 1
ok so you don't need to worry about the stuff after ext 2
the first thing says the device
in this case it is the first partition on the first channel of the master IDE
channel
hd means it is a IDE drive
a means it is the Master channel on the 1st IDE channel
the 1 is the partition
if you want the drive on the slave on the first IDE channel you can go to hdb
as for sata drives, you get sd drives
sd stood for SCSI
now sata runs on the same devices as SCSI
this uses the same scheme
the next entry in the fstab is the /
that is the mount point, this is loaded at the root
and the next is ext2 that is the filesystem
ext2 and ext3 are very common
so now we are going to go over partitioning
a lot of the times, I recommend this to be done graphically
you don't want to make a mistake, and a typo could be a massive mistake
but we are focusing on command line, so let me show you how to do this
I am going to assume that we are working on the HDA drive
so to see what is on the HDA drive type fdisk /dev/hda
this will print out the amount of cylinders and all kinds of other info
the cylinders are used mainly for size, but don't worry too much about it
so first lets go over deleting partitions
type fdisk /dev/hda
then at the prompt type p
this gets you a reference
now type d
and choose a partition to delete
now we want to create a new partition
type n
choose extended or primary
you probably want primary
the reason for this is that standard PCs only allow four partitions
these are primary partitions
if you want/need more you need to create extended partitionso
so now at the number field type in that same number that you deleted
now at the cylinder, choose how large, so you can do +5000M to create
something that is 5 gigs
now type t
this will ask what is the Hex code and if this is a linux partition choose 83
if it is a swamp file choose 82
now type p
you should see everything all right
now this is the big step
no changes have been written yet
so, make sure you know what you are doing
now type w
and you are done
since we are on drives, let me go over filesystems
filesystems are the way that a OS will find files, and information on those
files on the drive
Linux supports hundreds of file systems but here are the most common
ext2 is a ver fast filesystem, that defragments itself
its newer cousin is ext3 which is fast and defragments and also is journaled
journaled means that if your system crahses, or has an abrupt stop, such as
when you pull the cord
it probably wont' lose any data
ISO9660 is what is used on all CDs
FAT is a very common filesystem that can be read by OS X, Windows, and Linux
ResiserFs is a new filesystem optimized for smaller files
it is used by SuSe heavily
so you can't mount the partition you just created yet
it needs a filesystem
to do this we say mke2fs -j /dev/hda1
you then put it what partition you want
the j option makes it ext3
ok so if you want to mount this drive in the /home directory
you would type mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /home/
the -t ext3 chooses what filesystem
to unmount this type unmount /home/
That is drives in Linux for you
one more of these and then we are done for the linux for a while