Craig Mayhew’s Blog

If you ever manage to damage your ubuntu install so badly that it won’t boot (as I recently did when trying to remove the gnome GUI) then boot from a LiveCD and then open up a terminal.

Type the following commands:

change to the media directory (where our drives should be)
# cd /media

Create a new directory called Ubuntu (We will use this to mount our boot drive too)
# mkdir ubuntu

Mount the boot drive, you will need to replace X with the correct letter
# mount /dev/sdaX /media/ubuntu

Mount some other required locations
# mount –bind /proc /media/ubuntu/proc
# mount –bind /dev /media/ubuntu/dev
# mount –bind /dev/pts /media/ubuntu/dev/pts

Run chroot, using this command and we are now root as if we had booted from the boot drive and not the liveCD:
# chroot /media/ubuntu

Your now in your Ubuntu system as root. If your unsure precisely why your system won’t boot then running an update is usually a good place to start. Good luck!
# aptitude update

I recently tried installing a .deb packagae I had made by converting an rpm. Synaptic package manager however errored and since then won’t open. Every time I started synaptic I was getting this error:

The package vmware-server needs to be reinstalled, but I can’t find an archive for it

This command solved it and will force the removal of my incosistent package:

dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq vmware-server

After a fresh install of Ubuntu Karmic I found that the additional hard drives kept asking for a password each time I logged in and accessed them for the first time.

To fix the problem, simply install pysdm:

sudo apt-get install pysdm

Then run it as root:

sudo pysdm

Choose your device and then mount your partitions accordingly.

One easy command to retrieve all drive UUIDs.

ls -lF /dev/disk/by-uuid

The most secure method of transfering files to and from your web server is via ssh. Here’s how to set it up and some of the pitfalls to avoid.

If you are using Putty generated key files they first need to be converted to openSSH before they can be used by NuSphere. If you are using Putty (Pageant) then instructions on how to do this can be found here. If not then please ignore that link and continue on…

1. Goto PHPED accounts, “keys” tab, create new SSH setting.
   
2. If you already have your keys then select no. Otherwise select yes and PHPED will auto generate a key pair for you. (Please note the server needs a copy of your public key)
   
3. Enable “Public key (ssh2)” auth method and add your OpenSSH key to “Public identity files” (Unless PHPED auto generated it for you, in which case it should already be there!).
   
4. Create new SFTP or SSH “accounts” on Account tab. In options set “SSH setting” to the one you have just created.
5. Enjoy your SSH uploads.

I recently needed to convert my Putty SSH files into OpenSSH so I could use them in NuSphere.

1. Open your private key in PuTTYGen
2. Export it in OpenSSH format. Top menu “Conversions”->”Export OpenSSH key”.
3. Save the new OpenSSH key when prompted.

For my and your reference, here’s a list of my firefox addons that I’m currently using :)

Am I missing any good ones?