Category: Ubuntu/Debian

Stuff about Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux

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403 Forbidden during Ubuntu Gutsy Security Update

Some of you may encounter the message 403 Forbidden during Ubuntu Gutsy Security update, especially when you does your update using “sudo apt-get upgrade”.

The message was displayed because the Ubuntu team deliberately block security updates from the server side following reports that the updates are breaking xorg-server package (this very same incident also happened last year, during Dapper release).

Thankfully the issue has been handled by the Ubuntu team, and now you can continue updating your computer without any interruption or side effects from installing the security updates.

Was Ubuntu the only distro affected by this problem?
Credit to enforcer, now I know there are several other distro (OpenSuSE, Gentoo, Debian) besides Ubuntu that experienced this problem.

Should I install any security updates ?
It highly advisable to install security updates whenever they are available from the update server. Failure of doing so may expose your system to various security holes and vulnerability which can lead to your system being compromised by malicious party.

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How to find fastest Debian apt-get mirrors with netselect-apt

Using the nearest server to your location does not guarantee that you will get faster connection speed, other factors such as network congestions, faulty routers and bandwidth may affect the speed of your software installations.

Thus it is best to update the sources.lst file from time to time to keep updated with the fastest mirror to you, to ensure faster software installation and updates on your computer.

Generally there are two ways to do this, one is by using Synaptic to check for the fastest mirror (works for Ubuntu too!) and secondly by using netselect-apt (currently does not work for Ubuntu).

How to get fastest apt-get mirror with netselect-apt (Debian)

Firstly you need to install netselect-apt. then just run the command by typing “netselect-apt distribution name” to get the fastest mirror. Append -n switch, if you want to include the non-free repository too

Example :
# netselect-apt lenny

Example (non-free repos) :
# netselect-apt -n lenny

The application will test each apt-get mirrors it could find on debian.org site and perform some connection to estimate its speed. At the end of the test, the fastest mirror will be selected and used in the /etc/apt/sources.lst file.

Nice, but does it work on Ubuntu?
Note that although Ubuntu has netselect-apt, the application is currently broken under Ubuntu
( as of Gutsy Gibbon ). Ubuntu users should try the Synaptic method instead.

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Squeezing size out of zip and gzip files in Ubuntu Linux

Here is how you can squeeze out few more kilobytes from your zip or gz files by using advzip or advdef from AdvanceCOMP package (installable from Ubuntu respository) :

advpng -z4 example.zip

Output
[code]
mypapit:$ advzip -z4 example.zip
761604 655677 86% example.zip
761604 655677 86%
[/code]
Saves you almost 6KB per file.

Similarly gzip files can be recompressed the same way to save more space.

advdef -z4 *.gz

[code]
mypapit:$ advdef -z4 *.gz
214451 207312 96% coolplayer.tar.gz
21523 20800 96% phex-pkg1.00.tar.gz
26527 25516 96% png2ico-src-2002-12-08.tar.gz
262501 253628 96%
[/code]
Saves you almost 11KB total.

The differences may be small for most of you, but it means a lot in situation where space is at premium and every little bit of Kilobytes count.

p/s: w00t, this is the first post for 2008!

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Should Ubuntu prevent “sudo rm -rf /” command ?

There have been talks over the ubuntuforums, regarding a user posts “sudo rm -rf /” command on “Absolute Beginner Talk” board, which results in deletion of the whole root directory of a Linux operating system (Ubuntu included).

Was the user out of his line when he’s posted such command on a beginners forum? Absolutely.

Exercise Caution When Running sudo
Users should exercise caution when running command with root privilege (sudo) . I pity to those who unknowingly execute the command and completely destroy their operating system. Its a truly lame attempt to humor oneself at the expense of others losing their precious data.

It is not a bug in coreutils, it is not a bug at all
But the lamest part is, somebody took the time to file a bug report regarding “sudo rm -rf /” on Launchpad.

There’s nothing wrong with that command, it did what it supposed to do, and that is the behavior expected from a Unix/Linux based system, there’s nothing wrong with that command at all.

Besides, if somebody compromised your system and got into your root accout, you are screwed anyway as there are a lot of other command which has the same (if not worse) devastating effect as “sudo rm -rf”, a fact that has been acknowledge on the same bug report

What do you think ?
I don’t know about you, but I felt more comfortable educating newbie users to be more careful when running command with root privilege than supporting an act which seems to ‘cripple’ the operating system itself. Trust me, this is not going to help newbie users.

p/s: I’m in complete agreement with this guy, this is not a bug, stop pampering newbies or else you’d ruin each and every of them!

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Ubuntu Alternative : Get Linux Mint

Linux Mint – a yet another Linux distro based on Ubuntu has made a fourth release last month, Daryna.

Originally started as no more than Ubuntu-distro preinstalled with proprietary multimedia codecs, Linux Mint now focussed on providing user-friendly Linux distribution complete with customizable desktop which achieved through its unique configuration tools.

linuxmint.png

The latest release Daryna, is based on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, and compatible with Gutsy repositories, meaning that you can receive (security) updates release from Ubuntu team for your installation.

Another Linux Mint area of focus is making everything works out from the box including Wifi and various multimedia file format which uses proprietary codecs.

Currently Linux Mint Daryna is available on 3 different download version :- Main, Light and KDE Community Edition. Linux Mint is only currently available for 32bit PC platform only.

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Ubuntu Linux : How to combine multiple PDF file

Here’s how to combine multiple PDF file on Ubuntu.

First install ghostscript and pdftk from Ubuntu repository :

apt-get install gs pdftk

Then, using ghostscript, combile all the pdf files you desired into one file, using this command

[code]
s -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOUTPUTFILE=combined_file.pdf -dBATCH file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf
[/code]

The command will produced the combined pdf output on “combine_file.pdf”