Quick Tweaks » ubuntu

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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Intrepid Ibex to be Bundled with Two More System Tools

ashokgelal — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:10:57 +0000

Canonical, the distributor of Ubuntu OS, is often blamed for not listening the community such as ignoring the request for changing/improving default appearance. But not this time. Ever since they launched brainstorm.ubuntu.com, they have been very responsive about what the Ubuntu fans want. As a result of this Intrepid Ibex, which is due to release on 30th of this month, will be packed with two very useful system tools:

Just few days ago, I wrote a post on making a live Ubuntu usb disk in three easy steps. Integrating a live USB maker tool into Ubuntu default installation has been one of the popular requests on brainstorm site.

USBLive Ubuntu

A new application USBLive has started showing up in Ibex beta. As you might have guessed, this handy tool helps you to make pizza. Just kidding! Of course, it allows you to make a USB bootable disk with Ubuntu in it. Just give the source image (.iso) file or insert a live CD, plug-in your USB drive, adjust the space to be reserved by the default installation, and click Make Startup Disk. How easy as that? You can access USBLive from System>Administration>Create Startup Disk menu

Another system tool that has been included is System Cleaner. It cleans up your system to make it

System Cleaner

‘kinda-new’. You can clean all the installed applications or select only those which you are not going to use any more. Access System Cleaner from Applications>System Tools>System Cleaner menu At first, you might think removing the applications can already be done with Add/Remove tool. So, what’s the difference? Nothing! It just gives you a list of those applications which you have installed after running up Ubuntu for the first time. No confusions whatsoever. It comes very handy when, for an example, you don’t want to poke the default applications but only want to remove those non-sense applications which you gave try few days ago. BTW, if you want to track all you apt activities, the ever useful tapt is always there.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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/]

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

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Welcome a New Theme in Ubuntu 8.10

ashokgelal — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:24:34 +0000

A new theme “Dark Room” has been added to Ubuntu 8.10. Human Theme is still the default so you need a few more clicks to get it. As the name implies, the theme is dark and looks better than the default. Have a look:

: Better than the default

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Run your virtual OS directly from GDM in Ubuntu

ashokgelal — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:12:46 +0000

If you regularly run a couple of OS from your VirtualBox and want to login to those OS directly from GDM session, here is a quick way to do it. For this to work you should have already set up your VirtualBox. Here we won’t be talking about how to setup VirtualBox but only how to login to a virtual OS from GDM session.

: Windows XP GDM

1. Create a bash script with the following contents

#!/bin/bash VirtualBox -startvm NameOfYourVirtualOS

Replace yourSUPassword with your password, and NameOfYourVirtualOS with the name that you have given to your virtual OS in VirtualBox.

2. Name it something like windowsXPGDM (if you want to run Windows XP), make it executable, and then copy it to /usr/bin.

$ chmod 755 windowsXPGDM
$ sudo cp windowsXPGDM /usr/bin

2. Go to /usr/share/xsessions and create a new file with the following contents:

[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=WindowsXP Comment=My Virtual WindowsXP Exec=/usr/bin/windowsXPGDM Icon= Type=Application

3. Save it with a name something like windowsXP.desktop.

4. Log out and you will see a new entry WindowsXP in your GDM session. You can now directly open VirtualBox session without even logging in to your Ubuntu machine.

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

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Switch to Linux Today! bsod Linux Flier

ashokgelal — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:50:12 +0000

There are many reasons to switch to Linux, but this is one of them – to get rid of BSOD!

Download it, print it and paste it on your college flier board if you ever need to show your Linux love, Windows hatred, and bsod anger.

bsod Linux flier

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Install OpenOffice 3.0 Final in Ubuntu

ashokgelal — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:15:15 +0000

[Updated: .deb packages also started showing up] OpenOffice 3.0 Final is all set to be officially released on Monday, October 13 but it has already been uploaded to many servers worldwide. As of this writing there is no .deb package available. If you can’t wait a couple of more days to get it installed in your Ubuntu box, here is a quick way to install it.

update: .deb packages started showing up. Install OpenOffice 3.0 final by issuing:

wget http://openofficeorg.secsup.org/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 OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358/DEBS/

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

That’s it!

1. Get the file. Either download it manually or get it from your Terminal window. OpenOffice 3.0 has been uploaded to different servers, you can find it in …/stable/3.0.0/ folder. You can get it by issuing one of the following commands:

wget http://openoffice.mirror.wrpn.net/stable/3.0.0/OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US.tar.gz

wget http://mirrors.isc.org/pub/openoffice/stable/3.0.0/OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US.tar.gz

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/openoffice/stable/3.0.0/OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US.tar.gz

ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/openoffice/stable/3.0.0/OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US.tar.gz

2. Untar it

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

3. Get inside the folder

cd OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358/RPMS

4. As of this writing, .deb package was not available so you need to install alien

sudo apt-get install alien

5. Convert all rpms packages to debs

alien -k *.*

6. Install OpenOffice

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

7. Now we need to add menu entries

cd desktop-integration

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A Ubuntu developer asks a user to dump Ubuntu for his idea

ashokgelal — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:19:29 +0000

While skimming through the ideas listed on Ubuntu brainstorm site, I stumbled upon this idea today. A user, nandersson, thinks that a packager shouldn’t be the only one giving attention towards bugs and they shouldn’t be the only one to consider the ideas that the Ubuntu community suggests for a software. He suggests that the main developer of the software should draw their attention too and should try to consider the ideas. In response to this idea an anonymous developer writes:

Developer comments
Whoever said that packagers were not real developers? Packaging takes a lot longer than 5 minutes. Packages that are done in 5 minutes certainly don’t get approved, as they’re usually buggy and wrong.

Most of the time, reporting a bug / feature request in the upstream bug tracker will get it to be fixed more quickly. Of course, you’re free to use the brainstorm for this if you like – it just may not be as effective.

Also, it’s not a requirement that Core Devs have commit access upstream. And if you don’t want to use whatever a developer has worked on, then you’d better stop using Ubuntu. Please remember to follow the code of conduct, at http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct/

Well, I personally believe that this is what happens when you give so much priority to one thing, become a brand loyal, and go crazy after it. It doesn’t make sense for a developer to suggest (or threaten or whatever) a loyal user to dump Ubuntu. He’d better said “In Open Source world there are always alternative software which you can use instead of the one which you think the developers don’t pay much attention to.”

From: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/14123/

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The wallpapers that should make their ways to Intrepid Ibex

ashokgelal — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:56:47 +0000

[Updated] No more discussion on the new wallpaper that is probably going to be ported with the next version of our favorite OS that is going to be released on 30th October, 2008. Everyone agrees that the default wallpaper sucks! Ubuntu fans were asking for a better theme and a default wallpaper but it seems that the developers worked hard on how to make its apperance even worse. Here are some Intrepid Ibex wallpapers floating around the internet and honestly each of them deserves to be a default wallpaper for the upcoming Ubuntu.

This wallpaper just got updated

If they don’t want to include any of the above for some reasons, than this wallpaper is far better than the current wallpaper:

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

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.