Installing Vista Fonts in Ubuntu

Microsoft’s new ClearType fonts for Vista are great. The fonts include Constantia, Corbel, Calibri, Cambria, Candara and Consolas.

Getting them installed in Ubuntu is a breeze, thanks to a script I found.
To install the Vista ClearType fonts in Ubuntu, you need to install cabextract first. Cabextract is a utility found in the universe repository, so before you run the following command, make sure you have universe enabled in your repository list. Once this is done, install cabextract using:

Converting an ext3 filesystem to ext4

It is possible to mount both ext3 (and ext2, in kernels 2.6.28 and later) filesystems directly using the ext4 filesystem driver. This will allow you to use many of the in-core performance enhancements such as delayed allocation (delalloc) and multi-block allocation (mballoc), and large inodes if your ext3 filesystem have been formatted with large inodes as is the default with newer versions of e2fsprogs. Simply mounting an ext3 (or ext2) filesystem with a modern (2.6.27+) version of ext4 will not change the on-disk structures, and it is possible to revert to the ext3 (or ext2) driver should there be any problem with ext4.

In addition to the in-core performance enhancements, there are additional features which modify the on-disk format from what ext3 understands, such as extents, which can significantly improve the ext4 filesystem performance, but mean the filesystem cannot be mounted by kernels that do not support ext4. There are additional ext4 features, such as flex_bg and > 16TB filesystem support that can only be enabled at format time via mke2fs.

To change an ext2 filesystem (should you still have one) to ext3 (enabling the journal feature), use the command:

# tune2fs -j /dev/DEV

To enable the ext4 features on an existing ext3 filesystem, use the command:

# tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/DEV

WARNING: Once you run this command, the filesystem will no longer be mountable using the ext3 filesystem!

After running this command, you MUST run fsck to fix up some on-disk structures that tune2fs has modified:

# e2fsck -fD /dev/DEV

NOTE: by enabling the extents feature new files will be created in extents format, but this will not convert existing files to use extents. Non-extent files can be transparently read and written by Ext4.

WARNING: It is NOT recommended to resize the inodes using resize2fs with e2fsprogs 1.41.0 or later, as this is known to corrupt some filesystems.

Upgrading from Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop to Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop

To upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 on a desktop system, press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager -d” (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release ’9.04′ is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

Upgrading from Ubuntu 8.10 Server to Ubuntu 9.04 Server

To upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 on a server system: install the update-manager-core package if it is not already installed; edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and set Prompt=normal; launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade; and follow the on-screen instructions.

Installing Xten X-lite on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

The other day I was looking for a soft phone on my Ubuntu 9.04 desktop, and am used to X-lite on my windows machines, but have not found a soft phone that i like on Linux yet. Ekiga is to commercial, and Twinkle very basic. So I decided to try the Xten X-lite install on my Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope desktop. I ran into so issues, and have provided instructions for a Xten X-lite install on Ubuntu 9.04. Please follow my steps closely, and your Xten X-lite Ubuntu 9.04 setup will be completed in no time.

1.) Aquire Xten X-lite from Counterpaths website.

$ wget http://counterpath.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/X-Lite_Install.tar.gz

2.) Untar X-lite_install.tar.gz for use.

$ tar -xzvf X-Lite_Install.tar.gz

This will create a xten-xlite directory with a README file, and the xtensoftphone binary.

3.) Install libstdc++5 which is required to run the xtensoftphone binary.

$ sudo apt-get install libstdc++5

4.) Start the Xten X-lite software on Ubuntu 9.04 and configure it for your phone system.

$ xten-xlite/xtensoftphone

I was not very pleased with this version of Xten X-lite for Linux, but I do like the windows version, and I guess I will be sticking to my twinkle soft phone for now.  When Counterpath gets off it’s butt and builds a newer version of the X-lite for Linux I will try to install it again on my Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop. Please let me know if you have any questions or issues with these instructions and feel free to look at some of my other pages. Nvidia 6200 Xorg.conf with Twinview setup Ubuntu 9.04 Juanty Jackalope or Ubuntu 9.04 BIND DNS Caching server

I had some issues setting up the Nvidia 6200 xorg.conf with Twinview since I went from 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon to 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope alpha 6. My previous video card lost a fan over the weekend while I was gone, and overheated. I purchased the Nvidia 6200 AGP card cause I thought I would have not issues setup up my xorg.conf twinview. I remember when I installed 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon on my work desktop, and I had no issues once I installed the Nvidia drivers using apt-get install nvidia-kernel-common. Going into this install I thought it was going to be a breeze to configure the Nvidia 6200 xorg twinview. I was wrong, and am just putting up my xorg.conf, and creating a place for you all to ask some questions about my Nvidia 6200 xorg.conf Twinview setup. I love Nvidia, xorg, and twinview, and I know you will also. So good luck configuring your twin monitors with your Nvidia 6200. Below is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf please feel free to take what you like, and bitch about what I did wrong.

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor0″
VendorName “Unknown”
ModelName “Samsung SyncMaster”
HorizSync 30.0 – 81.0
VertRefresh 56.0 – 75.0
Option “DPMS”
# HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen0″
Device “Device0″
Monitor “Monitor0″
Option “TwinView” “1″
Option “TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder” “CRT-0″
Option “metamodes” “CRT-0: 1280×1024 +0+0, CRT-1: nvidia-auto-select +1280+0; CRT-0: 1280×1024 +0+0, CRT-1: 1280×1024 +1280+0; CRT-0: 1024×768 +0+0, CRT-1: 1024×768 +1024+0; CRT-0: 1024×768 +0+0, CRT-1: NULL”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load “dbe”
Load “extmod”
Load “type1″
Load “freetype”
Load “glx”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Mouse0″
Driver “mouse”
Option “Protocol” “auto”
Option “Device” “/dev/psaux”
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “no”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Keyboard0″
Driver “kbd”
# generated from default
EndSection

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Layout0″
Screen 0 “Screen0″ 0 0
InputDevice “Keyboard0″ “CoreKeyboard”
InputDevice “Mouse0″ “CorePointer”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “Device0″
VendorName “NVIDIA Corporation”
BoardName “GeForce 6200″
Driver “nvidia”
Option “NoLogo” “True”
EndSection

Section “ServerFlags”
Option “Xinerama” “0″
EndSection