Linux Neophyte

OK, this IS Linux related, in the way that you can run Thunderbird on Linux. I just thought this was pretty cool and I had a need for it. I recently joined the WFTL-LUG (how many times I type WTFL by the end of this who can even guess), which is a global Linux Users Group. While I have a real, physical LUG in my area, I’ve found the topics to be a little too technical for the beginner (to my dismay). Since I want to hear about the experiences of others and maybe even offer some tidbits of advice myself, I want to be involved in something with a good amount of Linux chatter. If something like this interests you, check out the link above. Not only is the LUG hella useful, but the site itself (http://www.marcelgagne.com) has a lot of great information. Thanks go to Jon Watson for directing me to the LUG.

What I wanted was a second (or third) gmail account that I could use just for the WFTL-LUG, and I wanted to be able to manage it in Thunderbird from two locations; work and home. Since there’s no IMAP for gmail, and I’m personally not ready to run an IMAP server on my own, I decided to enable POP on the account, grab the mail, and store it locally. This was a great idea until I remembered that once the email was downloaded into one mail client, the second client wouldn’t see those messages and they wouldn’t be downloaded. Well, this wasn’t going to work, I would either have to use one client, or worry about having some mail in one location and some in another. I can’t be the only one that has this problem. I googled for a solution and came up with “recent mode”. It works like this; you change the username (I did it on both mail clients, but one should have been enough) to recent:username@gmail.com. This retrieves all messages received in the last thirty days whether it’s been collected by another POP client or not. The exact wording for it is here.

Now I only need to worry about marking messages/threads read when I get home. Just thought I’d share as it saved me a headache

written by M@ \\ tags: Email, Gmail, Mozilla, Thunderbird

Installing DD-WRT on the Linksys WRT54GL went pretty much as the installation instructions said it would. I made it a point to follow them EXACTLY. Before getting started, I reviewed a lot of the info on the wiki pertaining to my particular router model as well as others.

Firstly, I powered up the router and performed a hard reset (hold the reset button down for 30 seconds). This just ensures that the router is using its factory default configuration. I then unplugged my Ubuntu Edgy machine from the old router and connected it to the WRT54GL. I reconfigured my network interface from a static address to DHCP and renewed my IP. I did this from the command line so it looked like sudo ifdown eth0 ; sudo ifup eth0.

The firmware installation is done from the router’s web based administration panel, so using Firefox 2.0.0.1 I logged in and navigated to the firmware upload administration tab. I used the browse button to locate dd-wrt.v23_generic.bin (which I had downloaded and extracted when I ordered the router) and clicked upgrade. After a few moments, I received a page telling me that the upload was successful and I walked away from the whole project for 5 minutes (as the wiki instructed me to. I wanted a beer anyway).

Time passes…

Back at the keyboard now, I click the Continue button and I’m presented with a white page and some fields asking for my username and password. I close Firefox, perform another hard reset of the router, open Firefox again and enter the address of router. Just like magic, I’m presented with the DD-WRT configuration pages of the router. Success!

Since it’s late and I just want to get things working, I’m only doing the basics, setting up static DHCP and a new wireless SSID.

Step one, change the default password from “admin” to something much, much better. Next, I collect all of the MAC addresses from the machines on my network and make my way to the Administration/Services tab. There, I assigned the MAC addresses to host names/IP addresses and configured my LAN domain name (just something I like to play with). I started testing DCHP by connecting to each of the Linux machines, changing them from a static to a DHCP configuration and renewing the IP address (same commands as above). Flawless! With the Linux machines done I configure the rest of the machines on the network the same way.

Next, I create a new wireless SSID and configure my two wireless machines to associate with it. This is where I had a little trouble. Everything but the Ubuntu install on the laptop connected without issue. For whatever reason I just can’t get the bcm4306 based wireless card to associate with the router using manually configured NDISwrapper. I’ll revisit this when I’m not so tired

Update: I think I have this fixed, I’ll tell you how in another post

I know I said I was only doing the basics, but I had to try SSH. So back to the Services tab, I enable SSH management (and disable Telnet as I’ll never use it) and click the Reboot Router button. Next, I open a terminal session and enter ssh dd-wrt. I log in with my user/pass and I’m at an ASH shell prompt. The output from a uname -r reads like Linux DDWRT 2.4.34-pre2 #170 Fri Sep 15 20:10:21 CEST 2006 mips unknown. Pretty sexy

All in all it was a satisfying experience. I’m running Linux on my router and there’s a LOT of cool things I can do. I haven’t scratched the surface yet, I’ll be exploring options for a while and when I come across something sweet I’ll post about it here. If you’re at all interested in exploring DD-WRT, start by checking out the compatibility list and reading up on the features. The wiki is a great place to start. I had no trouble ordering a 100% compatible router for around $55.00 US (there was a rebate).

If you’re new to Linux and don’t want to have to manage your router from a command shell, no worries. The web configuration pages are extremely useful and cover the full configuration of the router in a point and click fashion. You just can’t go wrong

written by M@ \\ tags: DD-WRT, Edgy, Firefox, Hardware, Mozilla, SSH, Ubuntu

Well, it’s here! What you ask? My shiny new WRT54GL router of course! For Christmas I was given some gift cards and wisely decided to replace the evil Netgear WGT624 router I’ve been hating on for about a year and half. I will soon be free of ANYTHING Netgear in my home, and that will be a joyous day.

If you haven’t read between the lines, I have a really bad Netgear taste in my mouth. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great unless you want a quality product or some type of service when you eventually give up and call for support. I digress.

I chose this model because you can replace the stock firmware with third-party stuff. I’ve been reading for months about the DD-WRT project and wishing I had a compatible router. If you haven’t checked this project out, and you want to be able to do some really neat and powerful things with your router, what are you waiting for?

I mention this here because DD-WRT firmware is Linux based and open source. I’ll be posting about installing and configuring the router here as soon as I get it configured/tested and my notes are cleaned up. If all goes well, I can use the machine I’ve had acting as an SSH server (among other things) as a test bed for some play I want to do.

I can’t wait to get started

written by M@ \\ tags: DD-WRT, Hardware

I’m still following the course over at LinuxBasics.org (and I’m waaaay behind at the moment). Chapter 6 is all about editors, and specifically the Vim editor. So for a least the next few posts, I’ll be composing in Vim and then pasting into WordPress.

Vim is the editor I’ve been forcing myself to use since jumping into the Linux ring. I chose it because I had heard of it before, I had actually used a GUI version of it in Windows for a while to maintain a Windrop IRC bot, and because everything I had read online made it clear that Vim was a very common and powerful UNIX editor.

There are tons of sweet commands in Vim that allow you to keep your fingers on the keyboard at all times. IMO, much preferable to mousing around an editor (even when I couldn’t type, I still found the keyboard faster). The commands do (of course) require a little practice to really nail down. The good news is that there’s an extremely simple to follow tutor built into the program. To run it, simply enter vimtutor at the command line and follow the on-screen instructions. I did find this tutor back when I started using Vim, I went through it once to collect enough information to make using the editor bearable, now I’m actually taking some time to get this down. Unless you’re an elephant, you’ll probably need to run the tutor a few times.

I’ve re-read the last two paragraphs, it almost sounds like I dislike using Vim. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s got a learning curve to it, it requires some thought in the beginning and (fortunately) that eventually leads to muscle memory. It was a moderately tough road at the start. So indeed, in the beginning I had to force myself to use it and at times it was as frustrating as hell. That ends, and I’m very comfortable using it on a daily basis now (I admit that I’m still looking up commands from time to time). The more you use it the better it gets.

Whatever you do, don’t go starting up Vim without (at the very least) going through the tutor or checking out some online tutorials. One of the things that make it such a powerful editor is that it has two modes, command and input. When you first launch it, you’re in command mode. Unless you happen to enter an i, a or o as the first character, you’re going to find yourself a little confused and probably annoyed.

Vim is certainly worth snuggling up to if you want to hone some of your skills. If you’ve been exploring your system, you know that almost every configuration file is comprised of plain text and you need an editor to make changes to them. Since you’ll find Vim on just about any distro, you’ll want this weapon in your arsenal.

Note: If you’re using Edgy, perform a sudo apt-get install vim before getting started, it seems that Ubuntu defaulted to Vi (the inspiration for Vim) and IMO, it’s just a bit more difficult get used to.

For more help with Vim check out the links below:

*http://www.apmaths.uwo.ca/~xli/vim/vim_tutorial.html

*http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html (neat cheat sheet)

written by M@ \\ tags: Apps, CLI, Console, Edgy, Getting Help, Ubuntu, VIM