Quick Tweaks » Installation

Kick ass guide for installing Oracle on Ubuntu

ashokgelal — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:35:14 +0000

One of the few complaints against any Linux OS – Difficult to install software which are not in the repository or in the standard .rpm/.deb format. Windows users enjoy double clicking an executable and then clicking NEXT button few times, Mac users just need to drag that .dmg file to the Application folder. Linux users feel themselves left out and find their own way playing with the Terminal, editing different system files, copying files from here to there and finally setting up some environment variables. Whew!

After switching to Ubuntu, I tried to install Oracle but no luck until I found this guide from Augusto Bott . He has really written an excellent guide on installing Oracle on different versions of Ubuntu. But again with this guide also the users need to open different files and edit them manually. It isn’t that much difficult but if you are like me who often needs to reinstall/upgrade Ubuntu for one reason or other, reading the whole guide and manually editing the system files is really time consuming and cumbersome. So, to save my time for future installation of Oracle database on my Ubuntu box, I wrote a couple of scripts (four scripts to be exact). Running these four scripts will install Oracle database and will give you a fresh database to start with. To facilitate visual-learners, I’ve also made two videos which have been embedded below. I will explain how to proceed briefly below:

1. Download all four scripts.and unzip them

2. Extract Oracle database downloaded from Oracle to a folder (such as in your home folder)

3. Open 2_OraInstaller.sh in a text editor and change the source/destination values. The default values assume that you have extracted the Oracle installer files in ~/oracle folder and you want to install Oracle db in /opt/oracle folder.

4. Open 4_OraInstaller.sh in a text editor and change the name of your database instance (dbSID). The default is oraIntrepid.

5. Fire up the Terminal and make all the files executable:

$chmod 755 ./1_OraInstaller.sh

$chmod 755 ./2_OraInstaller.sh

$chmod 755 ./3_OraInstaller.sh

$chmod 755 ./4_OraInstaller.sh

6. Make sure you have at least 3gb free space where you want to install your Oracle DB

7. Execute: $./1_OraInstaller.sh

You need to logoff and login once

8. Execute: $./2_OraInstaller.sh

This will install Oracle in silent mode. Please be patient as it will take some time and be very sure that YOU ARE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET!!!

9. Execute: $./3_OraInstaller.sh

You need to restart you computer once at this point.

10. Execute: $./4_OraInstaller.sh

This will install Oracle database instance in silent mode. This will take about 15 mins so be very patient.

At this point your Oracle installation on your Ubuntu box is complete.

Here are two videos showing all the above steps:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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CODEWEAVERS WILL BE GIVING AWAY CROSSOVER FOR FREE FOR ONE DAY

ashokgelal — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:13:21 +0000

Codeweaver, the maker of crossover software which allows you to run Windows applications in Linux & MacOS with the help of Wine, will be giving away its award wining software for free for one day.

Tomorrow, October 28, will be a day of joy for the Linux users who are looking to run some of the Windows Applications with Wine. Don’t forget to visit Codeweaver’s home page at least once tomorrow as they will give you a deal code which will allow you to download and use Crossover for free for your whole life. This will be a full version and will come with technical support. Did you bookmarked the site?

BTW, don’t forget to thanks George Bush for this. An excerpt from their press release:

“I launched the campaign to inspire President Bush to make the most of his final days in office. Who knew that our Challenge would have this kind of impact on the country?” White said. “On the other hand, who knew that the economy would implode, causing oil demand to drop into the abyss and gas prices to plummet as well. Clearly, investigating Bear Stearns, AIG and those guys is misplaced – CodeWeavers is responsible for this mess. So it’s free software for all!”

Kick ass guide for installing Oracle on Ubuntu Four steps for installing Oracle on Ubuntu. Steps by steps...

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Ubuntu 8.10 RC1 is here

ashokgelal — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:38:11 +0000

A week before the final release of Ubuntu 8.10, the guys at Canonical has released the last testing version RC1. Since this is only RC1, no changes in the features was expected. As discussed in my previous post, two system tools USBLive and System Cleaner, will be bundled with Ubuntu 8.10, change of the wallpaper, integrating a new Dark Room theme are among the noticeable changes in this version. Get Ubuntu 8.10 RC1 from here.

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Three easy steps to carry Ubuntu 8.10 in a pen drive

ashokgelal — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:26:57 +0000

Spent countless hours figuring how to install Ubuntu to make use of those extra GBs in your pen drive? pendrivelinux.com has got everything done for you. All you lazy folks have to do is:

1. Boot from you Ubuntu 8.10 live CD.

2. Plug in your pen drive, open a Terminal and issue following commands:
$ wget pendrivelinux.com/downloads/u810/u810.sh

$ chmod +x u810.sh && sh u810.sh

3. Follow the online instructions and reboot your system, change the BIOS setting so that your system boots up from a USB drive.

That’s it!

For complete step-by-step instructions and buy them a cup of coffee, visit pendrivelinux.com

[via: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2008/10/15/ubuntu-810-persistent-flash-drive-install-from-live-cd/]

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Mozilla released Firefox 3.1 Beta1. Try it now!

ashokgelal — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:52:12 +0000

Mozilla just released Beta1 of Firefox 3.1 browser. They haven’t yet made the official announcement though.

The noticeable features include Ctrl+Tab 3D navigation browser, faster JavaScript performance, and Open a New Tab button just like Internet Explorer 7.

Ctrl+Tab 3D navigation browser is a welcome feature

If you want to give a try, here is how to install it in Linux:

wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.1b1/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-3.1b1.tar.bz2Update: From the official What’s New page:

Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine

Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties

A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to

Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search

Support for new web technologies such as the and elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Don’t forget to backup your profile so that you can restore if something goes wrong.

Open a new tab button

$ tar -xvf firefox-3.1b1.tar.bz2

$ cd firefox

$ ./firefox

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Open Office 3.0 final officially announced; expect a record downloads

ashokgelal — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:19:37 +0000

The packages were already started showing up a couple of days ago and I’d covered a quick way to install Open Office 3.0 final in your Ubuntu box. I can’t say it for sure, but those packages don’t seem ‘final’ for me but only a snapshot. As expected, Open Office 3.0 has been officially released today and they are having problems to cope with the high downloads demand. The official site is down (literally) and only a plain page appears with a couple of links for downloading the packages. This is what they have to say:

Apologies – our website is struggling to cope with the unprecedented
demand for the new release 3.0 of OpenOffice.org. The technical teams are
trying to come up with a solution.

All this means Open Office 3.0 is all set to create a new record downloads and it deserves for that.

If you want to get your hand on this great free software, here it is how:

wget http://ftp.spnet.net/openoffice/stable/3.0.0/OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz

tar -xvzf OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz

cd into DEBS directory and issue the following command:
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
Now we need to add menu entries
cd desktop-integration

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

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Analyze and visualize your Gmail-ing trends

ashokgelal — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:20:04 +0000

Want to know who sends you the emails most often, or which is the year/month/day/hour you receive the emails most? With the help of a handy program called mail-trends you can easily visualize your Gmail-ing activities. Though it is a command line program but the output is a graphically rich interactive html file. And take my words, the command to launch the program is very simple.

Requirements:

1. The only requirement for mail-trends is Python but this tutorial is for any version of Ubuntu. With little bit of more work, it should work pretty well with any flavor of Linux, Windows, or Mac.

2. You have got a Gmail or Google Apps mail account and have enabled IMAP. Enable IMAP from Settings>Forwarding and POP/IMAP>Enable IMAP

Now, fire up the terminal window and get ready for some simple commands:

Python always comes shipped with Ubuntu, so you don’t need to worry about it.

1. Install Cheetah, an open source template engine, and code generation tool. Shoot the following command to install Cheetah:

$ sudo apt-get install python-cheetah

2. Either get mail-trends tar file from the terminal window…

$ wget http://mail-trends.googlecode.com/files/mail-trends-20080326.tar.gz

OR visit http://mail-trends.googlecode.com to download the stable version. Also, those of you who prefer to get your hands on the latest version can download the latest code from the Subversion by issuing: $ svn checkout http://mail-trends.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ mail-trends

3. Untar the mail-trends tar’d file by issuing:

$ tar xfv mail-trends-20080326.tar.gz

You will get a folder called mail-trends

4. Get inside mail-trends directory:

$ cd mail-trends
5. Issue the following command to analyze your Gmail

$ python main.py --server=imap.gmail.com --use_ssl --username=yourgmailusername@gmail.com --me=yourusername@gmail.com --skip_labels

It will then ask for your Gmail password.

If everything goes right, it will create a directory out inside the mail-trends directory and creates an index.html file and three other files inside the out directory.

Fire up the index.html file to open an interactive visualization of your Gmails.

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Customizing Your GRUB Screen

ashokgelal — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:10:25 +0000

Ever wanted to show your favorite image as your GRUB splash screen in Ubuntu something similar to other distros such as Fedora? Follow these steps:

Get a picture and open it with GIMP.
Go to Image>Mode>Indexed…
Make the maximum no. of colors to 14. To do this, enter 14 in the box that shows the default value of 255.
Click Convert
Your image might not look that good, but GRUB screen can handle only 14 colors. If you don’t like the 14 color picture at all, try changing the color to grayscale (Image>Mode>Grayscale). Some pictures look great in grayscale than in 14 colors.
Go to Image>Scale Image…
Set the width as 640 pixels and height as 480 pixels. You might need to click on the Chain icon to be able to set the exact size.
Click Scale
You have to save the file as a X PixMap image. Go to File>Save As… In the save dialog box Click on Select File Size (By Extension). From the drop down menu, select X PixMap image (third option from bottom). Give a filename, Save and close GIMP.Make the archive of the image:
R-click on the the file you have just saved and select Create Archive…
Give a name (the default should be okay). Don’t forget the save the file type as .gz. From the extension menu select .gz.
Click CreateCopy the archive file to /boot/grub/mygrubimages
Those who know how to copy files using Terminal window can easily do that. For those who prefer graphical way of copying files should open the Run Dialog box (Alt+F2) and type:
gksu nautilus /boot/grub/ and hit enter. If it asks for your password, give it.
Create a new folder, name it mygrubimages (you can name it anything) and copy the archive file into it.
Open /boot/grub/menu.lst. Again in the Run dialog box, type:
gksu gedit /bott/grub/mnu.lst and hit enter. If it asks for password again then you know what to do – restart and use Windows Vista. It never nags you for doing any administrative tasks!
In the file that opens, add a following line:
splashimage=/boot/grub/mysplashimages/nameOfArchiveFile.gz
Save the file, restart your Ubuntu box, and get ready to be welcomed by your favorite picture

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Video & Voice Chating in Ubuntu

ashokgelal — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:18:46 +0000

In this article I will show you how to make your webcam work in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 without even without opening the terminal window once. I pre-assume your microphone is working, if not leave a comment and then I will help you. You would have more pain to make your video work in Windows than in Ubuntu Linux.

Follow these easy steps (and ask your girlfriend to follow these steps too):

Head to http://download.tuxfamily.org/arakhne/pool/ricoh-webcam-r5u870/2.6.22-14-generic/
Click on the file ricoh-webcam-r5u870-2.6.22-14-generic_0.10.0-4_i386.deb
In the dialog box that appears, select Open with GDebi Package Installer (it is default so you should be able only to click on OK button)
In the package installer dialog box click Install Package.
Done! Finished! But check if your webcam is working:
Go to Applications menu (or just press Alt+F1 you lazy fellow)>Add Remove …
On the upper right list box labelled Show: ensure All available applications is selected
In the search box type: xawtv and select and then install
Go to Applications>Sound & Video>Xawtv. You should straightly see your face yourself. Want to show your face to your girlfriend and do chat simultaneously? Follow these steps
Head to http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/choose/ and click on the link. Again the sametwo dialog boxes should appear. Install using the default option: Open with GDebi Package Installer and then clicking the Install Package on the second dialog box.
Go to Applications>Internet>Skype and log in.

Assuming your girlfriend is already waiting you in Skype, call her and enable your video. That’s all!

If you want to see your girlfriend’s face, ask her to follow all the above steps. If she can’t understand you talking so technically (for the first time in her life), send her a link to this blog. I swear I won’t ask her email id. I swear!

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Install MS Office 2007 in Linux

ashokgelal — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:10:44 +0000

Though there are many alternatives for MS Office, no doubt MS Office 2007 is a winner. If you want to install MS 2007 in Linux follow these steps:

Install Wine
Select Applications>Wine>Configure Wine to bring the Wine Configuration dialog box.
Select Windows Version as Windows Vista from the Applications Tab
Override two dll files rpcrt4.dll and msxml3.dll from Libraries tab. Override them to be Native (Windows)
Download rpcrt4.dll file. Click here and save it on your desktop.
Open the c_drive from Wine menu
Delete rpcrt4.dll and msxml3.dll files from Windows/System32 directory.
Copy the downloaded rpcrt4.dll file into Windows/System32 directory
Download msxml3.msi file from Microsoft download site (here is the direct link for your convenience).
Install msxml3.msi file from the Terminal window by issuing msiexec /i msxml3.msi
Double click on setup.exe file from your MS Office 2007 installation CD. If it doesn’t work just type wine setup.exe from the Terminal window.
Follow the normal installation procedures.

Watch the step-by-step video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

UPDATE: Before you install Office 2007 don’t forget about winetricks. It might help to resolve many issues. Just go to http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks, copy the text (codes) in a file winetrick. From the terminal window type sh winetricks. Check all the msxml stuffs and click install.

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