In this article I will show you how to install Ubuntu Tweak and how easy it is to tweak your Ubuntu desktop to your hearts content.

Installation

You might be tempted to install the version included in Synaptic. Be warned, that version is older than the latest stable version on the web site. I highly recommend you download the latest version and install from that. Just click the Download button on the front page, which will open up the GDebi installation tool. Okay that installation, enter your password, and Ubuntu Tweak will install. Simple as that.

Of course, if you prefer, you can add the repos to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. Before you do this add the repository key with the command: sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com FE85409EEAB40ECCB65740816AF0E1940624A220 and then add the repo with the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tualatrix/ppa. Once you have done that enter the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

You are now ready to start tweaking.

Features

Ubuntu Tweak offers the following features:

• Basic System Information(Distribution, Kernel, CPU, Memory, etc.)
• GNOME Session Control
• Easy addition of Auto Start Programs
• Quick installation of popular applications
• Third-party sources for keeping applications up-to-date
• Package and cache clean up (to free disk space)
• Show/Hide/Edit Splash screen
• Show/Hide desktop icons or Mounted Volumes
• Show/Hide/Rename Computer, Home, Trash or Network icon
• Tweak Metacity Window Manager’s style and behaviour
• Compiz Fusion settings
• Screen Edge Settings
• Window Effect Settings
• Menu Effect Settings
• Quicker access your favourite applications
• GNOME Panel Settings
• Nautilus Settings
• Advanced Power Management Settings
• System Security Settings
• And other tweaks in the works!

That’s quite a number of tweaks. Now let’s take a look at how the tweaks are handled.

Usage

Figure 1

When you fire up Ubuntu Tweak you will be treated to a nice, simple user interface (see Figure 1).  If you don’t want to be treated to the Welcome screen every time you open the tool, you can click on Preferences and select which “tweak” you would like to set as your “welcome” window.

Ubuntu Tweak is set up so that some configurations happen in real time (So when you click a check box or select from a drop down, the configuration is immediately applied), whereas some require the click on an

Figure 2

Apply button.  In Figure 2 I have the Nautilus Settings window open. This was a good configuration to illustrate some options that aren’t easy to find. Here you can see the ability to open Nautilus with root privileges. Not something you would want to use carelessly (or in an insecure setting), but it’s still a feature not easily found.  There is no actual configuration setting for this. In order to open Nautilus as the root user you would have to open it using the command sudo nautilus. Of course, I don’t really recommend setting this option as it can be a security risk (if the wrong person gets their fingers on your machine). This was just to illustrate what Ubuntu Tweak can do.

Final thoughts

Spend some time going through Ubuntu Tweak. You will find TONS of handy configurations that would take quite a bit longer to track down without this tool.

In this article I will discuss what the security mode feature does and what the different modes are. By the end of this article there should be no confusion as to which mode your Samba setup should use.

What are security modes?

I like to think of security modes as a means to inform the server just how a client will authenticate. You know about authentication from many sources. You can authenticate at a local level, as part of a domain, using Active Directory, and more. How you authenticate is generally dictated by your IT department (or by yourself if you are personal or home user). Because of the different types of authentication, Samba needs a way to know how this authentication is going to happen.

Now, from a Windows perspective (and the reason why Samba exists) there are only two types of security level: Share level and User level. But because Windows has multiple ways of authentication Samba needs to break the user level down further. So, as far as Samba is concerned, these levels are called modes and there are five modes: user, share, domain, ADS, and server. Let’s take a look at each of these.

user

The security = user mode is really the easiest to understand. From the Samba server perspective, the only things that matter (with regard to user mode) is username/password and the name of the client machine. This mode works very simply: If the Samba server accepts the username/password of the client then that client is able to mount shares on the server.

share

The security = share mode the client will authenticate itself against a share on the Samba server. Unlike user, when security = share authenticates against a share, that means that client only has access to that share. When using this mode the client sends a password along with each share request. If the password authenticates, the client has access to the share. If not, no access is granted. The authentication process is like this:

1. The client sends a session setup request that includes a valid username.
2. Samba records this username.
3. Client issues a tree connection request and the share the client wishes to connect with.
4. The users password is the then checked against the username. If password matches, the client is given access.

domain

The security = domain provides a means for storing all username/passwords in a centralized, shared account. This account is then shared between domain controllers. So when Samba uses this mode of security it has a domain security trust account and forces all authentication requests to be passed through the domain controller. When using this mode the configuration requires a second parameter. So the configuration will look like:

security = domain

workgroup = DOMAIN_NAME

You also have to join the domain using the net rpc join -U ADMINISTRATOR%PASSWORD command. Where ADMINISTRATOR is the name of the administrator account and PASSWORD is the password for that account.

ads

As you might expect, this is the Active Directory mode. Samba added ADS functionality at release 3. Using ADS mode is only possible if the Active Directory server is run in native mode. When running in ADS mode Samba will need NT-compatible authentication data – in other words Kerberos. So your Samba server will need to have a working Kerberos system installed. When using ADS mode, your Samba configuration adds another line like so:

realm = YOUR.KERBEROS.REALM

security = ADS

server

The last mode is security = server. This mode is generally not used any more because it basically sends username/password authentication to another machine. If this other machine is down, there will be no authentication. This mode presents numerous problems, which is why it is often not used. One of the more serious problems is that once a connection to the password server is made, that connection can be left open for extended periods of time – thus a severe security issue.

Final thoughts

Now you should have a better understanding of the security modes for Samba. Which do you prefer? Which modes are you locked down to within your company? Samba is a very flexible tool that can be used in many different environments. Hopefully Ghacks is helping you to implement Samba more easily.

For this installation I will using Samba on a Debian server. Nothing really special, but it is on a fairly secure internal network (So I won’t really touch on security in this article). With that said, let’s begin.

smb.conf

First let me show you a simple, easy to use, smb.conf file. This file should be placed in /etc/samba/ AFTER you back up your current /etc/samba/smb.conf file with the command cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak. Once you have that done, open up /etc/samba/smb.conf, delete the contents of that file, and insert the following:

[global]
netbios name = NETBIOS_NAME
workgroup = WORKGROUP
security = user
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
interfaces = 192.168.1.1/8
[SHARE]
comment = COMMENT
path = /PATH/TO/SHARE
writeable = yes
create mode = 0750
locking = yes

Where everything in BOLD is user/network specific.

Passwords and users

Now of course you have to add users and add passwords for them. Do the following:

sudo smbpasswd -L -a USERNAME

Where USERNAME is the actual name of the user you want to add. You will be prompted to create a password and retype said password.

Now enable the user with the command:

sudo smbpasswd -L -e USERNAME

Again, where USERNAME is the actual user name you want to add.

Now restart Samba with the command:

/etc/init.d/samba restart

Connect from OS X

Figure 1

And now to the heart of the matter. How do you connect to your Samba server from OS X? Here’s how. The first step is to open up the Finder. Once the finder window is open click the <Apple>k key combination which will bring up the window you see in Figure 1.

If this is your first time to connect to this Samba server from your Mac, you won’t see the servers listed…you will have to manually enter them. As you can see, in Figure 1, the address to enter is in the form: smb://IP_ADDRESS_OF_SERVER.

Figure 2

Once you enter the IP address hit the Connect button and you will be prompted to select the SMB/CIFS share you want to connect to. After you do this the authentication window will open (see Figure 2). In this window you will be required to enter the Samba credentials for the Samba server.

Figure 3

Upon authentication to the Samba Server the Share will mount and appear in your Finder as you see in Figure 3 (only the share name will be different). You can now navigate this share as you would any folder.

Disconnecting from the share

Once you are finished using the share you can unmount the share by clicking the upward pointing arrow associated with the share listing in Finder. Of course you can leave this share mounted until you reboot the machine. I would suggest umounting the share before your reboot or shutdown.

Final thoughts

Mac and Linux do play well together. Hopefully you have found connecting to a Samba server as simple as nearly any other task in OS X.

A quick search on the Internet revealed that the WMPSideShowGadget.exe process enables Windows Media Player information to be displayed on Sideshow capable devices. Windows Sideshow basically transfers information from the PC to another display that can either be integrated into a computer or only remotely linked to it.

The only possible device that could have triggered the WMPSideShowGadget.exe was the Logitech G15 keyboard which uses an LCD display to show information whenever compatible applications are running on the PC.

The easiest way to disable WMPSideShowGadget.exe and wmplayer.exe from running is to go into the Windows Control Panel. Locate Hardware and Sound > Windows SideShow in the Control Panel. This should display a screen that looks like the following.

Uncheck the checkboxes next to the Windows Media Player entry (and every other entry that you do not need). This should immediately kill the two processes which can be checked by pressing Ctrl Shift Esc to open the Windows Task Manager.

Logitech G15 users might also want to check the device’s settings by opening the Logitech LCD Manager which lists a number of programs that are also automatically started with Windows. This includes LCD Pop3 Monitor and RSS Reader. All of those applications use computer memory even if they are not being used at all. It is recommended to disable the programs that are not needed to free up computer memory and speed up startup time of the operating system. A reboot is required before the changes take effect.

Docky is a little bit different. Docky is really nothing more than a front-end for Gnome Do (for more information on GNOME Do, check out my article “Don’t search, do – with GNOME Do“) that also serves as a really solid doc bar for the launching of applications in a very OS X like fashion.

In this article I will show you how to install and use Docky.

Installation

Because this is a front-end for GNOME Do, I highly recommend you install GNOME Do as well. What is really cool about this, however, is that you do not have to install GNOME Do. You can opt to only install Docky and use it as a simple Doc bar. Of course if you install GNOME Do, you will most likely want to work with Docky via the GNOME Do interface. It seems a bit convoluted, so let’s install both and you will see what I mean.

We’ll install Docky in Ubuntu. You can see how to install Docky in other distributions from the Docky Wiki. In order to install Docky in Ubuntu, follow these steps:

1. Add the correct repository with the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:docky-core/ppa
2. Update your sources with sudo apt-get update.
3. Install with the command sudo apt-get install docky.

That’s it. If Docky doesn’t start right away you can then hit <Alt>F2 and enter the command docky to start the application.

Using Docky

Figure 1

When Docky starts you might find it overlapping your bottom GNOME panel and it will be in Panel Mode (it will stretch all the way across the bottom of your screen). To move Docky click and drag it to one side or the other. Or, if you like it at the bottom, you opt to delete the bottom GNOME panel instead.) Once you have Docky where you want it, you might want to switch it out of Panel mode. To do this click the Docky icon (the anchor) on Docky to open up the settings window (see Figure 1).

Figure 2

If Panel Mode is checked, uncheck it and Docky will switch from Panel mode to to Dock mode (see Figure 2).

Adding launchers

By default Docky will only contain a few launchers. As far as most of the documentation goes, it would seem all you need to do is open up a GNOME menu, select and item, and drag it to Docky. That doesn’t really work. Instead, here’s how you add launchers to Docky.

1. From the GNOME menu, launch the application you want to add.
2. An icon for the launched application will appear on Docky.
3. Right click the new icon on Docky.
4. Select “Pin to Dock” from the new menu.

Removing launchers

Removing a launcher is simple. Click on the launcher you want to remove and drag it off of Docky. That’s it. You can also organize your launchers by dragging and dropping them where you want them.

Docklets and Helpers

From the Docky settings window you can also add Docklets and Helpers. Docklets are similar to applications you will find in the GNOME notification area (monitors, clocks, etc). Helpers are more along the lines of application controls (Banshee, Pidgen, etc).

Final thoughts

Docky is an easy way to extend the functionality and look of your GNOME desktop. But don’t forget that Docky does function with GNOME Do. In later articles I will show you how to take advantage of this feature.

Simple. You use the commands that have been around since the early days of Linux: shutdown, reboot, and startx. In this article I will introduce you to these commands so you will have a solid understanding of how they are used.  And hopefully the shutdown and reboot commands will rarely (if ever) be used.

Startx

Let’s begin with the startx command. This command is rarely used now, because most all distributions boot into graphical mode. But there are occasions where you will want to have a GUI-enabled machine stop at console login. And when you do have to get to that GUI running, you need to know startx.

Generally speaking the use of startx command is simple. After you log in you issue, aptly enough, startx. This command will bring up your GUI. The starx command is actually a “front end” for the xinit system and allows a single instance of the X Windows system to start. One neat trick with startx is that you can add an .xinitrc file to your ~/ directory to tell startx which desktop environment to run. Say you want to run KDE. For this your .xinitrc file would contain the line:

exec startkde

Or, if you wanted to start GNOME, the line would look like:

exec gnome

You can also start just about any window manager in the same way.

Reboot

If you have a console-only machine, and you have a need to reboot that machine, the easiest way to do this is to issue the command reboot. Now in some distributions the reboot command is limited to administrator-level users. So you might have to either su to root or use the sudo command in conjunction with reboot in order to successfully reboot your machine.

Shutdown

Shutdown is a bit more complicated than reboot.  With shutdown you need to indicate a time when the process is to take place. This, of course, means you can time your shutdowns. But most often the shutdown command will look like:

shutdown -h now

The h option tells shutdown to halt the machine. Shutdown can actually reboot the machine as well (with the use of the r option). Using the now option informs shutdown that the action is to take place immediately. You can also tell shutdown to run the process at a given time. For time you can use either the +m (where m = minutes) or hh:mm (where hh is hour and mm is minutes). So if I wanted to shutdown the machine in an hour I could issue the command:

shutdown -h +60

Or, if I wanted to shutdown the machine at midnight, I could issue the command:

shutdown -h 12:00

Final thoughts

Although these commands won’t be used that often, it is wise to have them in your toolkit. You never know when you are going to be faced with the Linux console!

In this Ghacks Linux entry, I am going t dispel the myths and fear of the dist-upgrade command. Of course, as with everything PC-related, you know their are always risks when you do a major upgrade. With that warning out in the open, let’s set out to curb a little fear.

Differences

First I want to compare the two apt-get options: upgrade and dist-upgrade. The difference between these two is very simple. The upgrade option is used only to install all of the newest versions of the packages already installed on your machine. This is what happens when you see the upgrade upgrade packages through the Update Manager (You know, when you are made aware of notification in your panel and then Update Manager opens to show you which  updates are available for your system.)

The dist-upgrade option is quite different from upgrade. But just what does dist-upgrade do? Simple. The dist-upgrade option not only will upgrade all of the currently installed packages on your system it will also handle the dependency changes with new versions of packages. In other words, dist-upgrade will remove obsolete packages from your system, whereas upgrade will not. This function is out of necessity for upgrading from one distribution release to another.

But doesn’t it upgrade my distro?

Not necessarily. Although, by itself, dist-upgrade, will prepare your system for a distribution upgrade, the only way it will actually perform the upgrade to a new release is if you have changed your /etc/apt/sources.list file to reflect the change. In other words, you have to add the repositories for the new distribution in the sources.list file before this can happen.

Well that sounds simple. Yes it is. But it is not the recommended plan of attack for upgrading to a new distribution. Although it will work, there is a better way…by command. The command do-release-upgrade was created specifically for upgrading the operating system to the latest release via the command line. Of course, before you issue this command you will want to check to see if an upgrade is available with the command sudo do-release-upgrade -d. When you do this you you be informed if a new release is available. If there is a new release available issue the command sudo do-release-upgrade and the upgrade process will begin. Of course this is a rather lengthy process and there are risks involved.You could lose packages you have manually installed (that are not supported by the new release) or (worst case scenario) your system could become unstable.

Distribution upgrades are always tricky. I have had them go exceedingly well and I have had them go very awry. It’s a gamble. But now you know exactly how to manage the task from the command line. You are now, officially, dangerous. ;-)

In this article I will introduce you to Trinity Rescue Kit and how you can use it to scan an infected Windows machine and remove dastardly viruses.

Getting TRK

The first step is to download TRK and burn it onto a disk. If you are unsure how to do this let’s walk through the process.Download an iso image of TRK from the TRK download page (make sure you scroll down to one of the four mirrors and download from their). Once you have the iso downloaded you only need open up a tool like K3B and burn the image (check out my article “Burn CD and DVD ISO images with K3B” for more information). You could also put this image on a USB drive to easier portability. The easiest way to do that is to use Unetbootin (see my article “Install Linux on a USB drive with Unetbootin” for more information).

With your CD or your USB drive in hand it’s time to march over to that infected machine and get to work.

Using TRK

The first thing to do is stick the CD or the USB drive in the machine and reboot. If your machine is not set to boot from either the CD or USB you will want to enter the boot menu of the machine and select either device (depending on which you are using). With TRK you can just let the boot process happen – there is no interaction necessary. Eventually you will wind up at a root prompt. There is no GUI to mention here. TRK is all command line goodness. But never fear, the commands are not too terribly challenging. In fact, to rescue a machine from virus infection there is really only a couple of commands you need to issue.

Mounting the drives

The first thing you have to do is mount the drives on the machine. TRK has a very simple command for that. At the command prompt enter:

mountallfs -g

Which will mount all of your drives in read/write mode. This is necessary in order to rid the machine of any infection. You will want to see where all of your drives have been mounted. Take a look in the / directory with the command ls /. You should listings like /hda1, /hda2, /hda3, etc. These are your mounted drives that you will want to scan.

Now, with the drives mounted, it’s time to scan. This is done with the following command:

virusscan -a clam,bde,va -d /MOUNTED_DRIVE

Where MOUNTED_DRIVE is the drive to scan. You can scan multiple drives by separating them with commas like so:

virusscan -a clam,bde,va -d /hda1,/hda2,/hda3

In the above command clam is for ClamAV, bde is for BitDefender, and va is for Vexira Antivirus. Yes you can scan with multiple antivirus engines, but know that the more engines you use the longer the scan will take.

Once the scan is done you will have a report on what the scan process found and what action was taken.

Final thoughts

Trinity Rescue Kit is an outstanding tool to place in your toolbox for disinfecting machines. Get to know it and start using it, you won’t regret the time spent.

The Avira company offers a number of different solutions. Scan through their product overview to find out which solution is best for you.  But for this article we are looking at the Avira Antivir workstation solution for linux. In this article I will show you how to install and use this outstanding product.

Before you begin

There is one pre-requisite for installation. If you want to use the real-time scanner you have to have Dazuko installed. This is a fairly complex installation which requires either building your own kernel or compiling Dazuko against your kernel source. We will deal with this in a later article, so skip the AvGuard installation for now.

Once this is finished you are ready to install Antivir.

Unpacking and installing

Hopefully you have already downloaded the source from the link above (see Avira Antivir workstation solution for Linux). Open up a terminal and change to the directory holding that file.  The first step is to unpack the tar with the command:

1. tar xvzf antivir-workstation-pers.tar.gz
2. Once you’ve done that change into the new created directory. If you do a listing of this directory you will find an executable install script. This is the way to install. Issue the command sudo ./install and enter your sudo password.
3. Here are the steps you will have to walk through:
4. View the license (space bar to view, Enter for accepting).
5. Enter the path to your license key (the key will be hbedv.key that you need to purchase from the site).  For evaluation purposes just hit Enter here.
6. Install the internet daemon. If you want to install the auto updater, hit enter.
7. Create a link for avupdater. (You will want this).
8. Would you like the update daemon to start automatically? (You will want this).
9. Do you want to install AvGuard (real-time scanner). For now we will skip this, until I have addressed the installation of Dazuko. The installation of Antivir can be rerun and AvGuarded added to it.
10. Configure AntiVir updater. Hit enter to configure.
11. Would you like to be notified about updates. This is up to you.
12. Would you like the updater to log to  a custom file? You will want this.
13. Accept the default location for the updater log.
14. How often should AntiVir check for updates (the default is every 2 hours – you might change that to once a day (d).
15. What time should updates be done. The default is RANDOM.
16. Does this machine use a proxy server? y/n
17. Save configuration settings? Hit Enter.
18. Would you like to apply the configuration? Hit Enter.
19. Hit Enter to complete, but take note of the common commands listed.

Usage

Using AntiVir is actually quite simple.  Here are some of the commands you will want to know:

• Configure the updater: /usr/lib/AntiVir/configantivir
• Start update daemon: /usr/lib/AntiVir/avupdater start
• Stop update deamon: /usr/lib/AntiVir/avupdater stop
• Update daemon status: /usr/lib/AntiVir/avupdater status
• Running a manual, recursive scan: antivir -s –update –scan-mode=all

NOTE: With only a trial license, the –update argument (used to check for updated virus signatures) will not work. For more arguments to use with the antivir command issue the command antivir -h (as you will not find a man page for this command).

Final thoughts

Avira’s Antivir is a powerful tool for the fight against viruses. And just because you are using a Linux workstation, does not mean you should snub anti-virus solutions. You get files from people that you pass on to others (others who may not be using Linux as their workstation). You will want to make sure those files are virus-free.

Usually a lot of options are displayed when right-clicking files or folders in Windows Explorer which makes it more complex than necessary to selected the needed options. A right-click on an archive for instance displays options to open the archive, extract the files, extract the contents in the current folder, extract the contents to a folder with the same name as the archive and to test the archive.

The same is true for creating new archives as options are displayed to add the files and folders to the archive, compress and email the selection, create a 7z or zip archive and compress and email the selection as a 7z or zip archive.

The entries that are displayed in Windows Explorer can be configured right in 7-Zip. A click on Tools > Options will open the 7-Zip configuration menu. Switching to Plugins and clicking on the options button will open the Windows Explorer integration options.

It is possible to remove the options that are not needed so that they do not appear in Windows Explorer in the menu.

The changes will be visible immediately in Windows Explorer. There are of course other ways of handling Windows Explorer context menu entries like the Windows Explorer Menu Editor or File Menu Tools.

I attempted to run AVG, Avast, Malwarebytes – but all for naught. The machine was so slow it seemed as if installing a simple anti-virus tool was going to take me an entire 40 hour work week. So I opted for a different approach. Instead of allowing Windows to boot, I decided it was time take advantage of my good old friend, Linux! That’s right, Linux can scan a Windows machine for viruses, and it does it quite well. And in this article I am going to show you a quick way to achieve this.

What you need

Amidst all the simplicity you will enjoy with the Linux scanning, there are a few things you will need. First you need to remove that drive from the Windows machine. That’s right, we’re going to attach it to the Linux machine and do a scan of this now “external” drive. I prefer to use a tool that allows me to attach the drive such that the drive is attached to the machine via USB.

You will also want to have a modern instance of Linux up and running. The machine can already be on. In fact, it’s better if it is.

You will also need to install an anti-virus on Linux. http://www.f-prot.com/download/home_user/ is an outstanding choice.

The “how to”

The first thing you need to do is connect the infected drive to the Linux machine. Depending upon your distribution, an icon should appear on your desktop. If it does, double click that icon so to ensure the drive mounts. Now check to where that drive mounted (most likely in /media). What you will now do is use your Linux scanning tool to scan that mounted drive.

Let’s say you are using F-Prot. To run this scan you would issue the command:

fpscan –disinfect /media/DISK

Where DISK is the mount point of your disk.

This will scan that drive and disinfect it. Understand that if one scanner doesn’t locate the infected files you might want to run a different scan. You can use ClamAV for email-based viruses (Check out my article “Scan your Linux machine for viruses with ClamTK” for using a GUI front end for ClamAV). NOTE: I will be doing an article on installing and using Avira Antivir on Linux this week.

Hopefully one of your anti-virus tools will have caught the culprit and either quarantined or removed the virus. Once you are done with the scan, make sure you unmount the “external” drive before you remove the hardware.

After the hard drive is off the Linux machine, re-install it to the Windows machine, and boot up. Hopefully you are good to go.

Final thoughts

You probably never thought you would need any anti-virus on a Linux machine. Well, if your Windows machine has become unusable you have found the perfect use for such a combination. And  remember, if you are using Linux for your mail server, you should certainly have anti-virus installed.

Every advertising company runs an ad server and it is not usually necessary to run another ad server to manage the ads on websites. An ad server on the other hand has several advantages (and some disadvantages) over using no ad server.

If you look at most websites you will notice that ads are usually displayed without an ad server in the background. All the webmaster has to do is to copy and paste the ad tags that are supplied by the advertising company on the website or pages the ads should be displayed.

That’s usually it for cpc based advertising solutions like Google Adsense but cpm based banner ads on the other hand require additional configurations. This can be largely attributed to the fact that cpm advertising companies often only display ads for some of the inventory. They do require a backup ad (passback ad) that they transfer the ad request to if they cannot display one. That’s tiered advertising (or ad chaining).

It is up to the webmaster where the passback ads are send to. It is possible to display a local banner, a transparent gif or ads from another company.

It becomes more difficulty if geographic parameters are taking into consideration. Say one advertiser is only offering banner ads for US visitors, one for UK visitors and one offers to display ads for all visitors. Most webmasters chain the ads then to direct all visitors from the US advertiser to the UK and the to the one that is serving all.

This means that the page loading time for visitors that are not coming from the US or UK increases. If you assume that each advertiser has the same loading time it increases by a factor of 3 for worldwide users.

An ad server on the other hand can be configured to take the geolocation of a visitor into account. It can for instance be configured to display ad 1 to US visitors, ad 2 to UK visitors and ad 3 to everyone else. This means that the loading time is always the same no matter where the visitor of the website comes from.

This is one of the biggest strengths of an ad server. It has to be noted though that an ad server that is not hosted locally adds its loading time to all ad displays. Locally hosted ad servers on the other hand require lots of server resources if the website is popular and it is often the case that they need to be hosted on another server because of their performance requirements.

An alternative to using an ad server for distributing ads to geotargeted users is to use a scripting language to do that during page loading time. This again has severe consequences as it increases the server’s load and prevents caching of those scripts since they have to be run individually for every visitor.

Most ad servers provide additional filtering options and ad display options. Google’s Ad Manager for instance can also filter by web browser, operating system and date or time. This opens interesting new options like displaying specific ads to Linux users for instance or Google Chrome users.

The second big benefit of an ad server are its ad management capabilities. It is for instance nearly impossible to sell part of the inventory directly to advertisers as it would be very difficulty to control the ads on the website.

An ad server can be easily used for that. An advertiser might want to purchase 100k impressions targeting Windows users from the UK. That would not be a problem with a proper ad manager which could be configured to run the 100k impressions on the web server disabling the ad after the last impression has been served.

Ad Server Benefits

• More flexibility to serve and manage ads
• Better performance by reducing the effects of ad chaining
• Ability to run highly targeted campaigns and to sell direct advertisement

Ad Server Disadvantages

• Requires some time to configure the ads that are served properly
• Might increase loading time for some users depending whether the ad server is hosted locally or remotely
• Not suitable for smaller websites or sites that display only ads from one advertising company

What’s your experience regarding ad servers? Would you recommend one if you could?

In this article I will give you a preview of what is to come for Ubuntu 10.4 and how easily it will be to tweet, IM, and facebook – all from the GNOME panel.

How it works

What this feature does is work with Gwibber and Empathy to enable users to connect with various types of accounts. As it stands you can connect with quite a few different types, including:

• IM
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google Talk
• gadugadu
• GroupWise
• ICQ
• MSN
• MySpace
• Yahoo!

and more.

How you connect

Figure 1

Figure 2

From the Ubuntu 10.4 GNOME panel the login username is listed (see Figure 1). If you click on that a drop-down will appear (see Figure 2) where you can either set your status or connect to an account. There are three different types of accounts to connect to:

• Chat accounts: These will go through Empathy and are standard “IM’ing” accounts.
• Broadcast Acounts: These work through Gwibber and are social networking accounts.
• Ubuntu One: If you have an Ubuntu One account, connect here.

Let’s make a Twitter connection. Click on the Broadcast account and then, in the new window, click the Add button. A drop-down will appear allowing you to select the type of broadcast account you want to add. Select Twitter from that list and then, in the new window, enter your Twitter username and password. You can do the same to add a Facebook (or any other supported) account.

Figure 3

When attempting to connect to Facebook you will have to walk through a couple of extra steps. Make sure you allow Gwibber to connect to Facbook. When you enter your credentials and click Connect (see Figure 3) you will then have to enable Gwibber to access your Facebook account. Once you have done that you are finished and you can then update your FB status from your GNOME panel.

Updating your status

One of the drawbacks to this system is that your status updates will go out to all configured accounts. So if you want to only update a Facebook or Twitter account alone, make sure you only configure that particular account.

Figure 4

But to update your status you only need click on your name in the upper right hand corner, enter your status in the text area (see Figure 4), and hit Enter. That’s it. Once you do that your status will be updated on the associated account.

Final thoughts

As you can see Linux is become quite a user-friendly experience. Not many other OSes can say they offer such features out of the box. Not that this particular feature is going to bring Linux to the masses, but if Ubuntu continues growing the OS in ways like this, it’s going to become a choice that is certainly hard to resist.

There are a ton of mind mapping tools available. One of the most user-friendly of these tools I have found is VYM, or View Your Mind. This open source tool is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows (almost) and is ready to, quite literally, map your mind!

Installing

Since we’re talking about Linux, we’ll install VYM in Linux. You can download VYM from the website. You can download the binary for your distribution or you can install from source. If you install from source follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have QT 4.3 installed.
2. Download the source package.
3. Open a terminal window and change to the directory you downloaded the sources to.
4. Unpack the source with the command
5. Change into the newly created directory.
6. Issue the command qmake
7. Issue the command make
8. Issue the command make install
9. Fire up VYM with the command vym

You can also install VYM from the command line with a command like: sudo apt-get install vym or yum install vym.

Using VYM

Figure 1

When you first open up VYM you will see two windows (see Figure 1). The window you see on the left is the properties window and the window on the right is the working window.

To begin double-click the yellow rectangle and give it a name. This is the parent of your mind map. You will then add branches and children to this.

Figure 2

After you name the parent you can then add branches by clicking the “Add branch as child” button (see Figure 2). When you click the “Add branch…” button the child is automatically added with a branch connecting it to the parent. If you still have the parent selected and you click the “Add branch…” button again another branch is added to the parent. You can continue doing this until you have all of the branches necessary to map your mind.

Figure 3

If you take a look at Figure 3, you can see a mind map I have created that can map out Ghacks topics.

Of course, like any good graphical application of this nature, don’t think you are limited to the default look and feel of the map. If, while working on your map, you look in the Format menu you will find plenty of formatting options. You can change:

Style of line.

Color of line.

Color of sub-tree.

Color of background.

Background image.

In order to change the color of either the sub-tree or the branch, you would first change the color in the color selector (in Figure 3 the color selector is the small black square in the toolbar) and then select what you want to change in the Format menu. To change the color of the other options simply select that option from the bottom of the Format menu and then change the color from the color wheel window that opens.

Finally, when you have finished your map, you can save the map or export it to a few different type of formats (XHTML, ascii, OpenOffice, CSV, Taskjuggler, LaTeX, and more). Exporting to ascii creates a sort of Table of Contents of your mind map – something that could actually come in handy.

Final thoughts

Mind mapping software has a ton of uses for anyone who needs to see a less structured organizational representation of their thoughts. For some these maps work perfectly, for others they are too chaotic to makes heads or tails of. How do you map your mind?

That is what we are going to address in this article: Configuring the Compiz compositor in the Elive Linux distribution.

Installation

If you have installed the Elive distribution, there is nothing more you need to install in order to get Compiz running and configured. In fact, that is part of the point of the distribution itself – to have Compiz integrated with the Enlightenment window manager. So all you need to know is where to configure and what to configure.

The configuration tools

Figure 1

One thing you have to remember is that in Elive, Compiz is referred to as Ecomorph. That is because Compiz had to be seriously tweaked in order to get it to work with Enlightenment. So if you try to look for a Compiz configuration tool your search will be in vein. Instead you want to look for the Ecomorph Configuration tool (see Figure 1). You will find this in Main > Settings > Ecomorph.

If you scroll up and down in the left pane you will find many of the standard Compiz settings available to you. But as you go poking around a little more deeply you might find some features are simply not there. For one thing you will not find key bindings anywhere in this window. So how do you go about configuring a key combination to initiate or manipulate an action? That is in yet another window. But before we locate that configuration, let’s look at one feature you might find useful.

At the top left of the configuration tool is a checkbox and two buttons. The checkbox allows you to enable/disable Ecomorph. The buttons allow you to stop and start Ecomorph. You might want to disable Ecomorph if your hardware isn’t up to the task of using the full effects. You might want to stop and start Ecomorph if you feel something is amiss. This is also the first place to look if Ecomorph (out of nowhere) doesn’t seem to be running.

Now, what about those key combinations?

Key bindings

Figure 2

In order to configure the key bindings for Ecomorph you need to click Main > Settings > Settings Panel. In this window click on the Input tab and then click Key Bindings. From this window (see Figure 2) you can configure any/all key bindings for your system. Now I have to say there is a little work that needs to be done in order for this tool to really be useful. For example, if you click on an action in the right pane you would think the associated key binding would be selected in the left pane. That is not the case. If, however, you select the key binding in the left pane, the associated action does appear in the right pane. This makes it problematic when you want to know what a key combination is for a certain action. Instead of just clicking the action you actually have to go about finding the combination in reverse order – you have to navigate around the key binding listing hoping to find the associated action. This behavior really needs to be addressed in future releases.

The good news is you can always create a key binding for an action. Just follow these steps:

1. Click Add Key.
2. Press the key combination.
3. Click an Action from the right pane.
4. Click Apply.

That’s it. You can, of course, also modify existing keys. If you mess up your key bindings, just his Restore Default Bindings to resolve the issue.

Final thoughts

Some may wish Elive to switch to the standard Compiz configuration tool. But since that will most likely never happen, it is best to familiarize yourself with their version of the tool. Although not as user-friendly, if you’re using Elive as your desktop distribution, you’re not so concerned with user-friendliness that a little challenge won’t scare you off.

In this article I am going to show you one way to connect to a VPN, via an easy to use GUI. In another article I will outline a second method that will use command line only. Will either method work for you? You can only try and find out.

The GUI

Figure 1

The GUI that I will be demonstrating a PPTP connection with is an extension of the Network Manager applet. This applet resides in your desktop panel (see Figure 1 – far left icon). I will be demonstrating within the GNOME environment. If you do not already have this applet installed (and you should if you are using a  modern GNOME installation) you will need to install it as well. If the Network Manager applet is there, you only need install a single package.

If you do not have the Network Manager installed you will install this (and the required package) with the command:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome network-manager-pptp

If you already have the Network Manager installed remove network-manager-gnome from the above command.

Now issue the command:

sudo NetworkManager restart

Figure 2

If you left click the applet you will now see a VPN menu. Within that VPN menu select Configure to open up the VPN tab of the Network Connections window (see Figure 2).

To set up a new connection click the Add button which will bring up yet another new window. This new window will ask you the connection type. Sine we have only installed PPTP support for Network-Manager you will only have one option from the drop down. You can also install support for:

• OpenConnect: Cisco VPNs
• OpenVPN: OpenVPN support.
• VPNC: Support for vpnc package.
• Strongswan: IDEv2 IPSec VPNs.

Search Synaptic for any of the above that you might need.

Figure 3

After clicking Add the next window (see Figure 3) is where you set up all of your options. Most of the configuration should be easy to follow (Gateway, User name, Password, NT Domain) But you do need to click the Advanced tab and do the following:

Uncheck PAP

Check: CHAP, MSCHAP, MSCHAPv2

Check “Use Point-to-Point encryption (MPPE)”

Select 128 bit from the security drop-down.

Check “Allow stateful encryption”.

Check “Send PPP echo packagets”

Click OK.

Once you have made all of your configurations, click Apply and you’re ready to connect. Go back and right-click the Network Manager applet and then click the VPN entry which will open up a sub-menu. Select the connection you just created and the connection will attempt to establish. Upon a successful connection you can then attempt to navigate within your VPN. To do so try the Network entry in the Places menu. Your VPN should show up. If it does not hit reload a few times and it should.

Final thoughts

Oddly enough, connecting to a Microsoft VPN is often the easiest to connect to from a Linux client. They only get harder from here on out.

In this article I am going to demonstrate how simple it is to share a folder, using NFS, between a Ubuntu machine and a Debian machine. When all is said and done, you’ll be surprised at how simple it is.

What is NFS?

NFS stands for (take a guess…) Network File System. NFS is a protocol developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984 to allow computers to share files and folders over a network. NFS is an open standard, defined in RFCs, and allows any to implement the protocol.

Although many prefer to employ Samba for network folder sharing, NFS still has a lot of good uses and some even prefer it over the more flexible Samba.

Installation

Both client and server will need the package nfs-common. On the server machine you will need to install the package nfs-kernel-server. To install these packages follow these steps:

1. Open up Synaptic (or your favorite Add/Remove Program utility).
2. Search for “nfs” (no quotes).
3. Mark nfs-common (for the client) and nsf-common and nfs-kernel-server (for the server).
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. Now it’s time for a little configuration.

Configuration

For example’s sake, the two machines we are using are addressed as such:

Server: 192.168.1.100

Client: 192.168.1.10

On the client we will create a directory which the NFS server share will mounted to. We’ll create the folder ~/UBUNTU_NFS with the command mkdir ~/UBUNTU_NFS. Now let’s move over to the server.

The first thing to be done on the server machine is to create folder that will be shared out. Let’s call that folder ~/SHARE and we’ll create it with the command mkdir ~/SHARE.

Now we have to create an entry in the /etc/exports folder. This entry will tell NFS what to share and who to share with. The entry will look like:

/home/USERNAME/SHARE     192.168.1.10(rw)

Where USERNAME is the actual name of the user. NOTE: You could share a folder in /opt if you like.

Now nfs-kernel-server has to be restarted with the command:

/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Mounting

Hop back on to the client machine and issue the command:

sudo mount 192.168.1.100:/home/USER/SHARE /home/USER/UBUNTU_NFS

Where USER is the actual user name.

You should get no errors. Now let’s test this out. Hop on back to the server and create a file within ~/SHARE. After you create that file, check the ~/UBUNTU_NFS directory on the client to make sure the file shows up. Try to delete that file. Now create a file in the ~/UBUNTU_NFS directory on the client. You should have no problems creating a file.

Automounting

Say you want this share to always be mounted upon boot of the client machine. This, of course would require the server machine to be on. To do this add an entry on the client machine’s /etc/fstab that looks like:

192.168.1.100:/home/jlwallen/ELIVE  /home/jlwallen/UBUNTU  nfs rsize=1024,wsize=1024,noauto 0 0

NOTE: The above fstab entry is all one line.

Now that NFS share will mount even when the machine is rebooted.

Final thoughts

As you can see, NFS has become much easier than it was in the old days. Now, armed with NFS and Samba, you can be sharing files and folders with anyone and everyone.

Bleachbit easily clears out free space, removes junk, and helps to guard your privacy. Bleachbit goes beyond just deleting files. You can set this tool up to shred your files as well…so when they are gone, they are really GONE! It’s not just for Linux though. Bleachbit is available for Windows as well – and both versions are open source. In this article I will show you how to install and use Bleachbit.

Installation

Installing Bleachbit is simple. Go to the download page and download the version that is right for your distribution.  There are binary files available for Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Mandriva, Debian, OpenSuSE, RHEL, and SLED. Let’s take a look at installing in either a Ubuntu or Debian environment. The file you will download will be a .deb package. Save that file to familiar directory and follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Change to the directory where the Bleachbit binary is stored.
3. Issue the command sudo dpkg -i bleachbit-XXX.deb Where XXX is the release number.

That’s it. Bleachbit is now installed.

Usage

Figure 1

When you first fire up Bleachbit the Preferences window will open up along with the main window (see Figure 1). As you can see there are three tabs to configure:

General: If you are really concerned about privacy you can check the box for Overwrite files to hide contents. What this will do is overwrite deleted files so their contents can not be viewed.

Drives: Add a drive (directory) to be included in the overwriting of free space.

Languages: All languages will be deleted except for those checked.

Figure 2

Now let’s take a look at the main window. Bleachbit is really quite simple to use. Scroll down to the section you want to set up (see Figure 2), make your selections, and click either Preview (to see what will be done) or Delete (to run the actions).

You may notice, depending upon the sections you mark, that you will get either information or warnings. For example, in the System section if you click Memory you will be warned that this section is experimental and it could cause system problems. If you’re working on a production machine you might want to avoid selection this option. Another warning you might see is the Free Disk Space will alert you that the option is slow. So if you’re going to opt to clean the free disk space (this is overwriting deleted files) your system might become a bit sluggish or the cleaning might take more time than expected.

Once you have made your selections click Preview which will then give you a report detailing all of the files it will delete. If you’re happy with the report, click Delete and Bleachbit will do it’s business.

Final thoughts

If used with caution, Bleachbit will keep your system free of junk and your deleted files free from prying eyes. Just make sure you do use this with caution – especially on production machines, where data loss is tantamount to you losing your sanity or your job.

Dovecot is an open source IMAP/POP server that runs on either Linux or UNIX systems. Dovecot is suitable for both small and large installations (I just recently installed Dovecot on a 300+ user system) and will work in the background like a workhorse.

In this article I will show you how to install Dovecot and get it up and running with either IMAP or POP quickly and with as little pain as possible.

Installation

Since we are installing on a Ubuntu machine, installing Dovecot is as simple as running the command sudo apt-get install dovecot-common dovecot-imapd dovecot-pop3d. You can actually install either dovecot-imapd or dovecot-pop3d depending upon which protocol you need to support.

Once installed the executable command is /etc/init.d/dovecot start.

Configuration

There is only one configuration file you need to deal with. That file will be located in either /etc/dovecot.conf or /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. Believe it or not, the default configuration file is fairly well set up for you. You will only have to make a few modifications. So don’t let the 1,000+ line configuration file look you in the eye and defeat you. You can best this beast with little time.

The first configuration you will need to make is to configure the protocol. Look for the line:

protocols = pop3 pop3s imap imaps

You can just leave this as is, or, if you know you are only using certain protocols, edit to suit your set up. Just remove the protocols you do not need.

The next line you need to look for is:

mail_location =

There are two popular choices here:
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir # (for maildir)
or
mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u # (for mbox)

In other words, if your users’ mailboxes will reside in the home directory, use the former. If the users’ mailboxes will reside in /var/spool/mail, use the latter.

Restart and test

Now restart Dovecot with the command /etc/init.d/dovecot restart and let’s give this system a test. We’ll test this with the help of telnet. Issue the command telent ADDRESS PROTO Where ADDRESS is the address of the server and PROTO is the protocol you want to use (either pop3 or imap). Here’s what the test will look like:
telnet localhost pop3
+OK dovecot ready.
user USER
+OK
pass PASSWORD
+OK Logged in.
list
+OK 1 messages:
1 622

Where USER is a legitimate user on the system and PASSWORD is the password for that user.

If you see the +OK at the end, Dovecot is ready to go. If you have any problems, the best place to look is in /var/log/maillog. And the best way to run that check is by using two terminal windows. In terminal A issue the command tail -f /var/log/maillog and in terminal B run the Dovecot test above. Terminal A should report any issues which will be your starting point for troubleshooting.

Final thoughts

Dovecot really is that easy to install. Of course Dovecot is much more flexible than that. In later articles we will discuss other configuration options for this outstanding server.

In this article you will learn the tools you need to install and how to share out folders, via Samba, in the GNOME desktop.

Sharing out Public

Figure 1

In modern GNOME installations you should notice a folder called ~/Public. To make things simple, we’re going to share out that folder (It makes the most sense anyway).  If you haven’t already installed Samba you will now get your chance.

Open up Nautilus (GNOME file manager) to your Home directory. Right click the Public folder and select the Sharing Options entry. When this new window opens (see Figure 1) you will instantly see a simple check box to tick.

When you tick that checkbox a window will appear informing you that the “Sharing service is not installed”. Click Install Service in that new window. After you enter your password Samba and libpam-smbpass will be installed. When the installation is complete a new window will appearing instructing you to restart your session.

Figure 2

Once installed and restarted, the sharing options will be available to you (see Figure 2). Configure this folder as per your needs. Understand that if you check “Guest Access” that means anyone that can see your network will have access to this folder – so choose wisely.

Figure 3

After you make all of your configurations, click Create Share which will then open up a new window. This new window will really surprise you. Check out Figure 3. GNOME has become so intelligent and user-friendly that it will make all of the permission changes necessary for you! Just click the Add the permissions automatically and you’re done.

Figure 4

You will know a folder is shared in GNOME because the folder icon will have changed (see Figure 4)

Now go over to a different machine on your network and see if the new share is available. If, on a Windows machine, you can’t see it yet you can always open up Explorer and enter:

\\IP_ADDRESS_OF_SHARE

Where IP_ADDRESS_OF_SHARE is the ip address of the machine with the new share. If you opened that folder up to guests you won’t even need to enter a username or password.  And you will automatically have read/write access to that folder. How simple is that? Of course, if you should change your mind about the permissions of the shared folder you can always right click that folder select Properties, go to the Permissions tab, and change the permissions as needed.

Final thoughts

It always seems that the GNOME desktop is one step ahead of the competition. When there is a feature available for a desktop, GNOME always takes that feature and either makes it better or easier. If you’re looking to share out folders on a GNOME desktop, it couldn’t be any easier.