Recently, I ran some updates and my theme automagically changed. This is annoying, but I need to go to work, so I’ll have to look into it later. However, I can’t possibly leave the house without at least disabling the annoying little clicks that make noise every time I click something. Here’s what I did:

• Go to: System -> Preferences -> Sound
• Find the drop-down box entitled ‘Sound theme’.
• Choose ‘No sounds’.
• Enjoy the sound of silence….

(Also, I made sure the mute button for ‘Alert volume’ was ticked, just in case.)

I’m running Ubuntu 10.04 and GNOME 2.30.2 on this machine.  (Yeah, yeah, I know I need to upgrade, but I’m avoiding GNOME 3.  I watched the SO struggle with Mint for awhile, and am considering The Next Step.  But that’s another rant/post.)

I recently spent way too much time faffing with trying to listen to one of my favourite NPR shows of all time: Car Talk. I’m running Ubuntu 10.04 so the iTunes option is a bit of a faff** and I had trouble with the play-online option.

Thus, I went on a search for a Ubuntu Car Talk podcast strategy that I’d be happy recommending to my parents. The winner is gPodder. (There may be others equally good or better, but I came across this one quite early in my search and it does the job.)

Here’s how to install it and get Car Talk up and running:

Open Synaptic Package Manager. On Ubuntu 10.4 and others, this can be found under System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. (You may have to enter your password to open Synaptic.)

Once Synaptic is open, you should see a box entitled ‘Quick search’ at the top. Click the mouse in this box, type in ‘gpodder’ then click enter. A package called ‘gpodder’ should come up in the search results.

If this program is already installed, there will be a version number listed in the ‘Installed Version’ column. If it isn’t installed, click the tickbox to the left of ‘gpodder’ and choose ‘Mark for installation’. You may be asked to install other files which support gpodder – this kind of message usually comes up in a box titled ‘Mark additional required changes?’. Agree to install these other files by clicking on the button labelled ‘Mark’.

Once you are done with all of that, click the button with the green tick and the words ‘Apply’ at the top of the main Synaptic window. Wait for awhile whilst the package is downloaded and installed. (You will need an internet connection for this.) Eventually, the ‘Applying changes’ window will disappear or give you a message saying that everything has been installed. At this point, you can close the Synaptic window by clicking on the ‘x’ at the top of the window.

Now, you can open gpodder, a nice piece of Ubunutu-friendly podcast software. You can find this in Applications -> Sound & Video -> gPodder Podcast Client.

When you open the client for the first time, you get a little window called the ‘gPodder startup assistant’. There is a button entitled ‘Choose from a list of example podcasts’. Click this button!

This opens a new window called ‘Find new podcasts’. If you click on the ‘Top podcasts’ tab, you’ll find a list with some gems on it. Most importantly, if you scroll down a bit, you’ll find ‘NPR: Car Talk Podcast’!

For each podcast to which you’d like to subscribe, tick the check-box to the left of the podcast. When you’re done, click the ‘Add’ button.

You might then get a window that says ‘New episodes available’. Select which ones you want by ticking the checkboxes next to the episodes (if they’re not already ticked) and then clicking the ‘Download’ button.

Once an episode has downloaded, it will have a little icon next to it under the ‘Status’ column. You can click on the episode to choose it and then click the ‘Play’ button at the top of the window.

You might notice older episodes that are available but that aren’t being automatically downloaded. (This is when you’re in the Podcast tan and you’ve clicked on the title of a certain show to see what episodes are available.) If you want these as well, you can right-click on the show title and choose ‘Download’. Once an episode is downloaded, you can delete it by right-clicking and choosing ‘Delete’.

Also, if you want gPodder to automatically download new episodes, you’ll need to go to Podcasts -> Preferences -> General and tick the boxes under ‘Automatic download of episode list’ which will allow gPodder to know when new episodes are available. You can then go to Podcasts -> Preferences -> Tray Icon. Here you can choose how gPodder is displayed on your computer and you can choose ‘Always automatically download new episodes’ under the ‘Advanced window options’ heading.

Of course, there’s a lot more to gPodder and you may want to use; Help -> User manual is a good place to start if you’re having trouble.

** Archduke did manage to download and play an episode of Car Talk using iTunes with wine, but it was all a bit touch and go, and not something I would recommend in general. When wine/iTunes were running, the display went a bit weird and one got the feeling that Bad Things Might Happen At Any Moment. So…I don’t think that’s a good long-term solution for people who aren’t looking for trouble. It’s very possible that with some tweaking, iTunes works perfectly under wine but life is short and I like gPodder’s simple, straight-forward design.

To add the ‘Universe’ repository, open Synaptic Package Manager by typing System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager and entering your password in the pop-up window.

In the main Synaptic window, go to Settings -> Repositories and then click the ‘Ubuntu Software’ tab. In the ‘Sources’ pop-up, click the tickbox next to the line that reads ‘Community maintained Open Source software (universe)’.

Click ‘Close’ on the pop-up.

This allows one to download programmes from the ‘Universe’ repository using either Synaptic Package Manager or apt-get install.

I like the focus to change when I move my mouse so that I can type in one window whilst having another window on top.

To make this happen in Ubuntu 10.04, go to System -> Preferences -> Windows and click the tickbox next to the statement, “Select windows when the mouse moves over them”.

I prefer a simple desktop environment free from whizzy graphical effects. In particular, I didn’t like the whooshing between desktops. I think of my desktops as discrete spaces and didn’t want them to appear connected in any way. In particular, I didn’t want to be able to move a window halfway off the left-hand side of the screen and then find it on the desktop to the next desktop over. How disorienting!

To disable the default

Navigate to System -> Preferences -> Appearance
Click on the ‘Visual Effects’ tab
Choose the ‘None’ option
Click ‘Close’

This freed me from all the unwanted effects.

(To disable only the desktop whooshing and not other graphical effects, perhaps it would be worth exploring ubuntu-tweak. After Ubuntu Tweak is installed, it can be accessed via Applications -> System Tools. I suspect playing around with “Compiz Settings” under the ‘Desktop’ heading could help. I may try this if I find a nice feature missing now that I’ve turned off visual effects, but for now, I’m happy.)

Well, today’s the day for installing a lamp server on my 10.04 machine! Wireless is working just well enough that I’ve not given up and gone running back to 9.04, although there are still some mysteries to figure out where that’s concerned.

It’s worth noting that I’m setting up my server for personal use. I want something that will let me test out webpages that will hosted by other people’s servers. (If you’re setting up an internet-facing server, these instructions will get you started, but more work is needed to keep the server safe from the wild world of the internet. If I come across a good tutorial on such things, I’ll post it.)

Downloading Necessary Packages

Synaptic Package Manager can be opened by going here:

System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager

and entering one’s password.

I used Synaptic Package Manager to download the following packages:

• php5 (this installs apache2-mpm-prefork, etc.)
• mysql-server-5.1 (this installs the client and core as well)
• Optional: phpMyAdmin (a nice GUI for managing MySQL tables)
• Optional: php5-cli (only needed if you want to run PHP from the command line)

The packages can be found by clicking the Search icon and typing in the package names. When a package name is selected, Synaptic Package Manager kindly prompts one to install all other files required. Once you have chosen all the packages needed, click ‘Apply’ (underneath the green check mark) at the top of the Synaptic Package Manager window.

File Installation

For the most part, Synaptic Package Manager will take care of all the installation. There are a couple things that might need to be done manually, however.

Configuring phpMyAdmin

If you have chosen to install phpMyAdmin, you may get a pop-up window called ‘Configuring phpmyadmin’ with the text “Web server to reconfigure automatically:” and a choice of servers. This is just asking which server you want to be able to run phpMyAdmin. I was given the choice of apache2 and lighttpd. I ticked apache2 and clicked the ‘Forward’ button.

Configuring MySQL

The mysql installation also requires some information. A pop-up window called ‘Configuring mysql-server-5.’ should pop up with the text ‘New password for the MySQL “root” user:’ and a text box.

Make up a password for the root user and enter it into this box. (Write it down – you’ll need it later!) Click ‘Forward’. You’ll be asked to re-enter the password. Do so, and click ‘Forward’ again.

Database for phpMyAdmin

If you’ve chosen to install phpMyAdmin, you’ll get another ‘Configuring phpmyadmin’ pop-up with the text ‘Configure database for phpmyadmin with dbconfig-common?’ and a tickbox. I left this ticked; clicking ‘Help’ explains under what circumstances one wouldn’t want this to happen. Once the selection is made, click ‘Forward’ to continue.

If the box was ticked, you are then prompted for “Password of the database’s administrative user:” and given another text box. Use the MySQL root password that you just made up.

After this, the installation should complete itself without any more human help.

Restarting the Apache server

Before anything can be done, the Apache server will need to be restarted.

Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and, at the command line, type:

sudo apache2ctl restart

The first time I did this, I received this warning:

apache2: Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName

This went away when I did this:

Letting Apache know about localhost

Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and, at the command line, type:

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

The sudo command gives you root-like powers (needed here to edit this particular file), gedit opens the notepad-like application, and /etc/apache2/apache2.conf is the name of the file being edited.

(If prompted for a password, use the password that is used to log in to Ubuntu.)

This should open a notepad-like window with a lot of stuff.

I added

ServerName localhost

as a separate line at the end of the file and saved the document (File -> Save in gedit).

After saving, restart Apache again by typing

sudo apache2ctl restart

at the command line.

Testing to make sure PHP works

Open a terminal window by going to

Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

Type this (pressing enter when finished) at the command line:

cd /var/www/

This takes you to the /var/www folder. Then type:

sudo gedit

and press enter. You’ll be prompted for your system password (the one used to log in to Ubuntu). (The ‘gedit’ opens a notepad application; the ‘sudo’ is necessary because if gives you root-like powers which are needed to save a file in the /var/www folder.)

In the notepad application that should have popped up, type the following:

# test.php
<?
phpinfo();
?>

Then go to File -> Save As and enter test.php as the name of the file.

Open a browser (like, say, Firefox at Applications -> Internet -> Firefox Web Browser) and type

http://localhost/test.php

and you should get a page come up with all sorts of useful and interesting information about your Apache server! It works!

(If you get a page that just says “# test.php” then Apache doesn’t know about localhost. Try editing /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and restarting the Apache server as described above.)

Setting up phpMyAdmin

If you’ve opted for phpMyAdmin, there is one quick little thing to do to make it work.

Open a terminal window (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type:

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

at the command line prompt. If prompted for a password, use the password for logging in to Ubuntu.

Add this line to the file that has been opened in the notepad-like window:

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

Make sure this is on a line of its own. Save the file (File -> Save), close the gedit window and restart Apache by typing:

sudo apache2ctl restart

at the command line prompt.

Check to make sure phpMyAdmin works

Open your favourite web browser (say, Firefox) and navigate to:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

This should bring up a login screen. You can log in to phpMyAdmin by using ‘root’ as the username and the mysql root password set during installation.

The mysql root password can be changed in phpMyAdmin by going to the privilege page and clicking the pencil icon next to each root account. Enter a password in appropriate field of the newly-loaded page.

Once logged in, you can use phpMyAdmin to manage your MySQL databases.

Where Important Things Are

Here’s where to find useful stuff.

The Apache configuration file is located at:

/etc/apache2/apache2.conf

The default web folder is here:

/var/www

Apache error logs are here:

h1

If anything goes horribly wrong, reading these can often be very helpful. (Even if what’s written in the file makes no sense, it’s often quite easy to pop the error message or warning into Google. Very often, there’s someone talking about the problem using real words in the first page of hits.)

Apache access logs live here:

/var/log/apache2/access.log

NB: Both etc and var can be found two levels ‘up’ from the home folder.

Now to get KGS working on the 10.04 machine….

First, java is needed:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre

A quick check of java -version tells me I’ve just installed

java version “1.6.0_18”
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.8) (6b18-1.8-0ubuntu1)
OpenJDK Client VM (build 14.0-b16, mixed mode, sharing)

Then, I downloaded cgoban.jnlp from the KGS CGoban Download page by clicking the link entitled “CGoban for Java Web Start”.

I put this file on my desktop.

Run cgoban.jnlp by typing

javaws cgoban.jnlp

from the command line or double-clicking or right-clicking the file and choosing “Open with OpenJDK Java 6 Web Start”.

This causes a file called CGoban_3.desktop to appear on the desktop and opens CGoban 3 (which provides an option for connecting to KGS). The first time this runs, a security warning about digital signatures pops up; I ticked the “Always trust content from this publisher” box and clicked “Run”.

After this, CGoban and KGS can be accessed by double-clicking CGoban_3.desktop (or by right-clicking and selecting ‘Open’).

Doing this gave me an warning message:

Untrusted application launcher

The application launcher “CGoban_3.desktop” has not been marked as trusted. If you do not know the source of this file, launching it may be unsafe.

The only option was to ‘Cancel’ the launch.

To allow this to run, right-click CGoban_3.desktop and choose “Properties”. In the “CGoban 3 Properties” pop-up, choose the “Permissions” tab and click the box near the bottom that says “Execute: Allow executing file as program”. (This caused the file to display on my desktop as “CGoban 3” with a KGS go stone logo.)

Double-clicking (or right-clicking and choosing “Open”) now opens CGoban and allows one to connect to KGS.

The cgoban.jnlp file can now be deleted or moved elsewhere.

Note: I get a significant delay between clicking the icon and the CGoban main menu appearing – long enough that I tend to think I haven’t clicked properly or that something is broken. It is a muuuuuch longer delay than the unnoticeable pause I get between clicking and menu coming up in Ubuntu 8.04 with Java 1.5.0_22.

Navigate to:

System -> Preferences -> Screensaver

to open the Screensaver Preferences" dialog box.

Uncheck "Lock screen when screensaver is active" at the bottom of the dialog box.