Will Pritchard

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A user sent in an email today requesting some help getting Ubuntu to run on Hyper-V.  While I haven”t had time to write out the whole process, screenshots and all (work has been brutal), I do have some handy links that got me going in the beginning. 

Hi Will

Are you ever going to post that promised walkthrough on installing FreeNX on Ubuntu on Hyper-V?

I really would like to try Linux out, but I want to put it on my headless server.  Without Ubuntu having any Integration Services, I cannot do anything without the mouse.  I cannot navigate using the keyboard, like I can on Windows, because I do not know how on Gnome.  I”m stuck!

Cheers!

Following are the links that helped me out in the beginning.  Make sure you install Ubuntu on a Virtual Machine that is using Legacy Network Adapters, that your Hyper-V host is all patched up and you should be ready to go on to the next two steps.  Once you have the install all worked out and Ubuntu boots the first time, login with your Administrator account on the Ubuntu box. You will need to use the guidelines in this link to get around without the mouse:

• http://arcanecode.com/2007/04/25/ubuntu-704-and-virtual-pc-2007-mouse-issue-workaround-sort-of/

Now once you have a terminal open, follow the steps outlined here for the FreeNX server install on Ubuntu:

•  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX

Once that’’s sorted, load the NX Client for Windows on your workstation and you should be good to go!

• http://www.nomachine.com/select-package-client.php

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I promise I will follow up with cam pics of this install.  But first things first.  I unwrapped this little beauty and booted into the factory installed Windows XP Home install.  Blech. Ok. Reboot. Install XP Pro.  Partitioned 60 GB for that one (160 GB drive). Gotta work sometimes after all.

First impression on the XP Pro install? Well, I did a slipstream with SP2.  All went according to experience.  It took longer than I had patience for. After all the mucky muck, it booted into XP Pro fine, however several drivers, including all the broadcom (wired and wireless) adapters were not recognized, as well as bluetooth, NVIDIA, etc.  Expected.

Ok, enough with that.  We all know how the rest goes.  Download drivers from Lenovo, move to USB stick, move to netbook, install . . . .blech.  Let’’s see how Jaunty Jackalope fairs.

I whipped out my trusty Corsair 32 GB Survivor Stick and lo and behold jaunt (pun intended) down the path toward Ubuntu.  I partition the remainder of the drive for ext3, swap, ext3 /home and a bit for FAT32 for sharing between Windows and Linux. Moving along, moving along, blammo! We arrive.  Everything working fine.

At this point its almost 7PM and I am still at the office babysitting an NTFS format of a RAID 5 array and decide its high time to get home and play.

I get home and first thing grab my WEP key for the home wifi (I know, weak, I am running an old Cisco Aironet 1200 and dont have a RADIUS at the house so its WEP). Load up the netbook and what!? my wifi is not working!?

Shit.

Well, after some thorough Googling and a few reboots with the proprietary drivers, disabling and enabling of the wireless on the broadcom and it takes.  And here I am. . . writing this to you in the blogosphere from a Jaunty Jackalope Lenovo s10 bad ass netbook.

Other annoyances you ask? Well, the shift key on this miniscule keyboard is a bit obscured by the arrow keys and I have to keep deleting crap from two lines above where I mean to type, but that is a matter of course and should go away with some learning of the tiny keyboard layout.

All in all, I am still excited and have little time left as I must be off to install all those little goodies that makes Linux distros so mouth wateringly tasty.

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Woohoo! My S10 Netbook should be showing up at the office today.  I will be writing later about my experiences.  I got the 160GB SATA model with the 6 cell battery and 1 GB memory.  I will be upgrading this later to 2 GB memory and a Seagate 500 GB 7200 RPM Momentus SATA drive, but will be playing with it OOB for now.

The S10 ships with Windows XP, which will be fine for loading some work related apps for on the go work, but I plan on repartitioning the drive and loading Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition for my main environment.  I have been playing a bit with other Ubuntu based distros, namely CrunchBang Linux, but still think Ubuntu is the best option for ease of use net apps.  Hopefully, I will have time to put together some howtos and reviews as I morph this thing into a useable and fun little piece of equipment.

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Paul Irish has come up with a sweet little JQuery to spawn Unicorn Babies, a la Cornify on your interwebs!

• Paul’’s Code
• ESPN Cornified (Removed)

Just press the old Contra 30 man code when you hit the site:

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left Right, B, A

Voila! Unicornigoodness!

Hint: Mine is cornified with the Doom God Mode cheat. Remember that?

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Since I will probably be moving some heavy piece of furniture on Easter, I am going to bid you all Happy Easter in advance with this cute tidbit sent to me by Stefanie this morning.

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Well despite having to move this weekend, I am going to try and get our old Ubuntu server migrated to a new 64 bit platform.  I will be posting up a HOW-TO as I go through it, probably in several parts.  Here is the process in short:

• Create an Ubuntu Hyper-V Disk
• Install Ubuntu 8.10 64bit Server on Hyper-V
• Install LAMP Server
• Install Gnome-Core
• Install FreeNX Server
• Install Gnome Goodies
• Install LAMP Goodies
• Voila

While Hyper-V has no VM Tools for Linux, we can get around this by using SSH and FreeNX to manage the server.  Works out pretty good and I already have one like this in production.  We have been moving from VM Ware ESX in our shop as we have a kick ass Microsoft DPM Setup for imaging and backing up our Hyper-V Servers and being a 90% Microsoft run shop this works out well. 

Look for the new article this weekend!

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We just ran into this for a customer this morning and it’’s very simple to do.  You will need access to the Wordpress MySQL database via phpMyAdmin and about 5 minutes.

Login to your phpMyAdmin account for your Wordpress site.  Usually something like http://www.yoursite.com/phpmyadmin.  If you are not sure, contact your host provider for this information.

Navigate to the database for your Wordpress site. Usually something like ”blogname_wp”. Click on Browse for the wp_users table.

Now click on edit for the user admin. You will see the pencil icon next to the checkboxes for each entry.

Now for the field ID user_pass, you will want to change the function to MD5. Enter the new password in the value field, press go and voila. Your password is reset!