If you're near Montreal or Quebec city, you're invited to celebrate the Ubuntu 9.04 release with us on April 30th.
Check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuebecTeam/JauntyParty for the exact time and venues in Montreal and Quebec city!
Monday, 20 April 2009
Friday, 20 March 2009
[Sujet Avancé] Comment réparer une mise à jour ou installation brisée
Deux cas récents que j'ai croisés sur la liste distribution Ubuntu-QC ainsi que dans les courriels de Launchpad Answers (étant contact d'aide via Ubuntu-QC également...) me poussent à écrire ce petit billet. Attention; il s'agit là de quelques incantations qui peuvent être grandement utiles, mais également un peu dangereuses si on ne fait pas attention -- l'idéal reste d'être au moins un peu familier avec la ligne de commande, ainsi qu'apt-get.
Les cas discutaient précisément de la marche à suivre pour réparer des erreurs de parcours au courant de l'installation de paquets. Le premier, "[Question #64628]: Comment je supprime un paquet mal installé?", et le second: "[Question #64490]: J'ai perdu KDE et GNOM, comment les retrouver". Le deuxième n'est pas complètement le même type de problème, mais assez semblable pour me faire penser à différents types d'erreur lors d'installations et de mises à jour.
Donc, pour réparer une installation incomplète, qui peut s'être mal déroulée à cause d'une mise à jour, d'un paquet défectueux, mal téléchargé, ou tout simplement critique mais pas disponible sur les miroirs, alors que apt-get ne veut plus rien savoir:
Pour plus d'informations au sujets du système APT, consultez l'excellent manuel APT HOWTO (en français!) à http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/index.fr.html
Et juste parce que ces commandes existent:
Les cas discutaient précisément de la marche à suivre pour réparer des erreurs de parcours au courant de l'installation de paquets. Le premier, "[Question #64628]: Comment je supprime un paquet mal installé?", et le second: "[Question #64490]: J'ai perdu KDE et GNOM, comment les retrouver". Le deuxième n'est pas complètement le même type de problème, mais assez semblable pour me faire penser à différents types d'erreur lors d'installations et de mises à jour.
Donc, pour réparer une installation incomplète, qui peut s'être mal déroulée à cause d'une mise à jour, d'un paquet défectueux, mal téléchargé, ou tout simplement critique mais pas disponible sur les miroirs, alors que apt-get ne veut plus rien savoir:
Si vous voyez des messages d'erreurs évoquant une erreur de configuration, ou alors lors de l'installation d'un paquet, un autre (une dépendance) indique qu'il n'est pas configuré, c'est la commande dont vous avez besoin. De manière générale, cette commande s'assure que tous les paquets soient bien configurés après avoir été installés, ce qui inclue le dépaquetage de leurs fichiers de configuration ainsi que le démarrage des scripts post-installation.sudo dpkg --configure -a
Cette commande vise à régler les problèmes éventuels qu'apt-get a pu rencontrer, généralement à propos de dépendances défectueuses. Souvent roulée à la suite de la commande précédente, car elle demande plus ou moins à apt-get de reprendre là où il était rendu. On peut parfois devoir donner un coup de main à apt-get en faisant manuellement un dpkg --remove d'un paquet défectueux ou partiellement installé.sudo apt-get -f install
Pour plus d'informations au sujets du système APT, consultez l'excellent manuel APT HOWTO (en français!) à http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/index.fr.html
Et juste parce que ces commandes existent:
mtrudel@athena:~$ apt-get moo
(__)
(oo)
/------\/
/ | ||
* /\---/\
~~ ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...
mtrudel@athena:~$ apt-get help | grep Super
This APT has Super Cow Powers.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Likewise Open pour l'authentication Active Directory
J'ai commencé depuis hier à travailler brièvement (à la demande de Jorge Castro) au tests de l'outil d'authentication à Active Directory distribué avec Ubuntu depuis Hardy. Les tests vont bon train, mais le plus important à y retenir est la facilité d'utilisation de Likewise pour joindre une machine à un domain Windows et bénéficier de l'authentication centralisée (et aussi d'authorisation Kerberos!)
Par exemple, une fois la machine ajoutée au domaine, qui n'est que de démarrer Likewise avec Système->Administration->Active Directory Integration et y entrer le nom du domaine, on peut facilement découvrir sur le réseau les serveurs de fichiers et postes de travail Windows disponibles, voir leurs répertoires partagés, et ce sans que le système ne demande de nom d'utilisateur et mot de passe, pour peut que vous ayez accès à ces partages.
Presque la même histoire pour ajouter des imprimantes, ou en utiliser. Le seul bémol est ici que le mot de passe est bel et bien demandé, mais avec la bonne configuration d'utilisateur déjà en place.
Il y a évidemment bien d'autres fonctions à utiliser avec AD sur un système Linux... Ce n'est qu'un exemple, et on est encore à identifier les cas d'utilisation qui seront systématiquement testés par l'équipe de QA.
Pour installer Likewise Open, vous n'avez qu'à installer le paquet likewise-open-gui, qui se chargera d'ajouter les dépendances. Il peut être installé grâce au menu Ajouter/supprimer... du menu Applications; puis chercher et sélectionner "Appartenance à un domaine Active Directory".
De plus, la version 5 de Likewise Open a récemment été attribuée une exemption au "Feature Freeze", ce qui veut dire qu'elle sera probablement incluse et également disponible, au même titre que la version 4 courante, pour l'installation une fois Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope officiellement lancé. Même histoire à ce niveau -- Je n'ai jusqu'à maintenant pas trouvé de différences visibles.
Par exemple, une fois la machine ajoutée au domaine, qui n'est que de démarrer Likewise avec Système->Administration->Active Directory Integration et y entrer le nom du domaine, on peut facilement découvrir sur le réseau les serveurs de fichiers et postes de travail Windows disponibles, voir leurs répertoires partagés, et ce sans que le système ne demande de nom d'utilisateur et mot de passe, pour peut que vous ayez accès à ces partages.
Presque la même histoire pour ajouter des imprimantes, ou en utiliser. Le seul bémol est ici que le mot de passe est bel et bien demandé, mais avec la bonne configuration d'utilisateur déjà en place.
Il y a évidemment bien d'autres fonctions à utiliser avec AD sur un système Linux... Ce n'est qu'un exemple, et on est encore à identifier les cas d'utilisation qui seront systématiquement testés par l'équipe de QA.
Pour installer Likewise Open, vous n'avez qu'à installer le paquet likewise-open-gui, qui se chargera d'ajouter les dépendances. Il peut être installé grâce au menu Ajouter/supprimer... du menu Applications; puis chercher et sélectionner "Appartenance à un domaine Active Directory".
De plus, la version 5 de Likewise Open a récemment été attribuée une exemption au "Feature Freeze", ce qui veut dire qu'elle sera probablement incluse et également disponible, au même titre que la version 4 courante, pour l'installation une fois Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope officiellement lancé. Même histoire à ce niveau -- Je n'ai jusqu'à maintenant pas trouvé de différences visibles.
Monday, 9 February 2009
Canadian Government's RFI on Open Source
Interestingly enough, the Government of Canada's Public Works and Government Services offices have posted a request for information on the MERX website. While this doesn't actually mean that they are already looking for software for specific tasks, they are definitely taking a look at comments from the industry regarding the use of open source or free software. Some of the terms in this RFI may be slightly wrong, since it mentions free (as in money) software, but not software were the source code is necessarily freely available. Nonetheless, it does show how recent efforts such as the petition that was sent to the Government of Quebec regarding its policy on open source software, as well as FACIL's lawsuit targetted at the same government have been effective.
ArsTechnica speaks more about the RFI, which is among other things a nice idea on how to deal with cutting costs in these troubled economic times.
The RFI is up on MERX and open for response until February 19th.
Thanks to the guys on the Ubuntu-Quebec mailing list for bringing this to my attention :)
ArsTechnica speaks more about the RFI, which is among other things a nice idea on how to deal with cutting costs in these troubled economic times.
The RFI is up on MERX and open for response until February 19th.
Thanks to the guys on the Ubuntu-Quebec mailing list for bringing this to my attention :)
Saturday, 24 January 2009
New toys
I bought a digital camera yesterday. The Canon Rebel XS, with a 18-55mm lens. It was a pretty nice deal from Staples, so I'm quite happy with this so far. The picture quality is impressive, and it's easy enough to use for a DSLR.
I took the first opportunity I could to take a few shots and try out this nice little program available in the repositories: Hugin. It is a very complete and pretty simple tool for compositing images and creating panoramas.
Past the first little hurdle where Hugin was trying to use 'autopano-sift', which although it seems installed since the package exists, it looks like I needed to change the configuration to just using 'autopano'. After taking four quick pictures, one with the full-automatic settings, and three more with the automatically-detected shutter speed and aperture set manually, and selecting a few common points between each pictures, I was able to get an almost-perfect panoramic picture of my street.
Some things to keep in mind: keep a somewhat constant overlap between pictures, don't trust the wizard for finding the common points -- they won't.
Sadly, I once again had issues with using just a USB cable to connect my camera to Jaunty. Same thing as with the other camera I had tried before. Fortunately, I could download the pictures directly from the SD card, and F-spot happily imported my pictures from that point.
To use hugin, you will likely want to install the hugin, hugin-tools, enblend and autopano-sift packages.
I took the first opportunity I could to take a few shots and try out this nice little program available in the repositories: Hugin. It is a very complete and pretty simple tool for compositing images and creating panoramas.
Past the first little hurdle where Hugin was trying to use 'autopano-sift', which although it seems installed since the package exists, it looks like I needed to change the configuration to just using 'autopano'. After taking four quick pictures, one with the full-automatic settings, and three more with the automatically-detected shutter speed and aperture set manually, and selecting a few common points between each pictures, I was able to get an almost-perfect panoramic picture of my street.
Some things to keep in mind: keep a somewhat constant overlap between pictures, don't trust the wizard for finding the common points -- they won't.
Sadly, I once again had issues with using just a USB cable to connect my camera to Jaunty. Same thing as with the other camera I had tried before. Fortunately, I could download the pictures directly from the SD card, and F-spot happily imported my pictures from that point.
To use hugin, you will likely want to install the hugin, hugin-tools, enblend and autopano-sift packages.
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Status Update
Concordance and congruity are still being worked on in terms of packaging, so if you own a Logitech Harmony remote that you'd like to be able to configure via Linux, please take a look at my PPA for updated packages! I'll definitely take any help available to help test the packages, the software, and eventually get the packages into Ubuntu.
On the same note, I've setup an ITP bug for those two packages, and I have started work on including them in Debian as well. I've uploaded the packages ([1][2]) on to REVU a few minutes ago, and hopefully can get some tips and reviews from there too.
It's like Christmas again here. I received 4 10/100 blades, as well as a new Supervisor 2 engine to put in one of the Cisco 6506's, and was able to get it to fully POST, boot, and work -- also found out in the process that the backplace of the other is likely somewhat broken. I'm guessing that it's not big news to a lot of people, but screen supports making serial-based connections to devices, so minicom is much less necessary than it used to be. The greatest thing of this, is that screen is included by default in Ubuntu, which makes it perfect for system administrators to be able to connect a serial device to just about any Ubuntu system to be able to reach a serial console. With the work currently being done by Dustin Kirkland on screen-profiles (and the fact that the package is in Jaunty!), screen is likely going to be even more awesome very soon.
On the same note, I've setup an ITP bug for those two packages, and I have started work on including them in Debian as well. I've uploaded the packages ([1][2]) on to REVU a few minutes ago, and hopefully can get some tips and reviews from there too.
It's like Christmas again here. I received 4 10/100 blades, as well as a new Supervisor 2 engine to put in one of the Cisco 6506's, and was able to get it to fully POST, boot, and work -- also found out in the process that the backplace of the other is likely somewhat broken. I'm guessing that it's not big news to a lot of people, but screen supports making serial-based connections to devices, so minicom is much less necessary than it used to be. The greatest thing of this, is that screen is included by default in Ubuntu, which makes it perfect for system administrators to be able to connect a serial device to just about any Ubuntu system to be able to reach a serial console. With the work currently being done by Dustin Kirkland on screen-profiles (and the fact that the package is in Jaunty!), screen is likely going to be even more awesome very soon.
Saturday, 17 January 2009
More Linux-supported hardware
I went to buy new USB thumb drives for work this morning, considering I've had to do some work lately that requires transferring data from highly secured machines and there wasn't really any better option...
Anyway, went to the one of the obvious places for office supplies: Staples, or actually "Bureau en Gros" here in Quebec. Found exactly what I was looking for: the SanDisk Cruzer Micro Skin is the perfect size, only very slightly larger than the actual USB connector, which makes it perfect for these thight places like the back of a server, or when connectors are too close together. It so happens that the Cruzer Micro Skin is also supported on Linux, which seems kind of obvious, but SanDisk actually took the time to show it on the packaging, which is great. Here's a shot of the relative size of the USB drive with it's protective shield and cap, and without:
And here are the pictures of the front of the packaging, the back, and a close-up of the signs on the back:
Notice how happy Tux is that his face is on hardware packaging! Also disregard the poor quality of the pictures, I'm far from good with this camera. I was pretty surprised to notice the Tux logo on the back of the packages, and frankly, although I was already sure any USB key would work, I was happy that SanDisk took the time to show it on the boxes.
On the other hand, I had quite a lot of trouble getting these pictures off the camera and on my computer. The camera's USB connection was not working properly on my desktop computer running Jaunty, so I tried on my work laptop which I had also just upgraded, but I had the same problems. I reinstalled my laptop with Intrepid to make sure things would work again properly. The exact error was about devices showing up multiple times, and the device not being loaded properly to either display reliably in the file manager with gvfs, or to be captured by F-Spot to import the pictures. The same camera and task however runs just fine in Intrepid.
That said, I very much like the new volume controls on Jaunty. They work pretty well past the initial sound level issues, and much simplify working with multiple hardware sound devices.
Anyway, went to the one of the obvious places for office supplies: Staples, or actually "Bureau en Gros" here in Quebec. Found exactly what I was looking for: the SanDisk Cruzer Micro Skin is the perfect size, only very slightly larger than the actual USB connector, which makes it perfect for these thight places like the back of a server, or when connectors are too close together. It so happens that the Cruzer Micro Skin is also supported on Linux, which seems kind of obvious, but SanDisk actually took the time to show it on the packaging, which is great. Here's a shot of the relative size of the USB drive with it's protective shield and cap, and without:
And here are the pictures of the front of the packaging, the back, and a close-up of the signs on the back:
Notice how happy Tux is that his face is on hardware packaging! Also disregard the poor quality of the pictures, I'm far from good with this camera. I was pretty surprised to notice the Tux logo on the back of the packages, and frankly, although I was already sure any USB key would work, I was happy that SanDisk took the time to show it on the boxes.
On the other hand, I had quite a lot of trouble getting these pictures off the camera and on my computer. The camera's USB connection was not working properly on my desktop computer running Jaunty, so I tried on my work laptop which I had also just upgraded, but I had the same problems. I reinstalled my laptop with Intrepid to make sure things would work again properly. The exact error was about devices showing up multiple times, and the device not being loaded properly to either display reliably in the file manager with gvfs, or to be captured by F-Spot to import the pictures. The same camera and task however runs just fine in Intrepid.
That said, I very much like the new volume controls on Jaunty. They work pretty well past the initial sound level issues, and much simplify working with multiple hardware sound devices.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)