A lot of people especially Linux die hards will believe this is a waste of time and why bother,  just run a full Linux distro and forget Windows.  I was a bit the same at first,  but them I thought about it and realised at work I am forced to used Windows and find I still want to use Linux to do some tasks.  With a laptop that isnt the most powerfull thing out there Virtualisation isnt an option,  so I tried Portable Ubuntu and works pretty well.

The Installation is very easy, all you need is a minimum 2Gig USB flash drive or similar.  The HowTo is here:   http://www.pendrivelinux.com/colinux-portable-ubuntu-for-windows/#more-1476

Enjoy

Sockso is a cross platform music server and requires no installation. It runs on a standalone PC or Server. This guide is for running Sockso on a Server platform,   to install and run with a GUI on a PC refer to the Sockso Web site.

Sockso gives you the ability to stream all your music  – Supports MP3, OGG Vorbis, Flac and WMA,  anytime, anywhere via a web interface through your browser.  All that you require is Flash on your client end and a decent internet connection minimum should have at least IEEE 802.11g (54M) Wifi connection for smooth operation.

Sockso requires Sun Java only, no Apache or other web server is require to run.

So,  lets start:

1 )

Sockso requires Sun Java to work. You should install the following packages.

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin sun-java6-fonts sun-java6-jre unzip

2 )

Download the latest version of Sockso. The current version is 1.2 at the time of this writing.

wget http://sockso.googlecode.com/files/sockso-1.2.zip

unzip sockso-1.2.zip

sudo mkdir /usr/share/sockso

sudo cp -R /home/user/sockso-1.2/* /usr/share/sockso/

sudo mkdir /var/sockso
sudo chmod -R 0755 /var/sockso

Step )

Run the Sockso at command prompt.

sudo sh /usr/share/sockso/linux.sh --nogui --datadir /var/sockso

To add your music collection, enter the directory path for all you music.  You can enter multiple paths eg. If you had to different directories with music, /home/user/music and /home/user2/mp3, just run the following command to populate your collection:

#SockSo#>coladd /home/samiux/music
#SockSo#>coladd /home/mary/mp3

To list all collection directory paths, use the following command.
collist

To delete a directory from the collection, use the following command.
coldel

Adding users to Sockso.

#SockSo#>useradd samiux <your_password_here> samiux@gmail.com

To exit the #SockSo#> command prompt.
exit

4)

Copy the init.d script to /etc/init.d/

sudo cp /usr/share/sockso/scripts/init.d/sockso /etc/init.d/sockso.pl

Create a sockso script file.

sudo nano /etc/init.d/sockso

-------- CUT HERE ---------
#!/bin/bash

perl /etc/init.d/sockso.pl $1

exit 0
-------- CUT HERE ---------

Edit the sockso.pl as the following.

sudo nano /etc/init.d/sockso.pl

system( 'sh linux.sh --nogui --datadir /var/sockso > /dev/null 2>&1 &' );

use constant SOCKSO_DIR => "/usr/share/sockso/";

5)

Make the scripts executable:

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/sockso
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/sockso.pl

Now, you can start the sockso with the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/sockso start

You can also stop the sockso with the following command.

sudo /etc/init.d/sockso stop

To connect to your Sockso Web Interface enter the IP or FQDN of your server.

http://192.168.0.1:4444

6)

To run the script automatically after reboot update the rc.d with.

sudo update-rc.d sockso defaults

Using MySQL as a backend

By default Sockso uses the Java database engine HSQLDB. This provides a nice fast easy way to get a database up and running in an application and works excellently for most uses of Sockso.

With a very large collection you may run into some performance problems and possibly “out of memory” errors when accessing some of the pages.   In these cases you have the option of changing the database engine Sockso uses, and for this MySQL support is available.

NB: Sockso requires MySQL 5+

1) Download Sockso’s Optional Components

You will need to install the optional components first to use MySQL.

2) Create the database

You  will need to create a MySQL database for Sockso to use. It doesn’t need to have any tables in it, Sockso will create all of these when it starts up, but the database does need to exist.

3) Start Sockso with MySQL

When the database is created, start Sockso with the following command line switches (changing the values to match your set up obviously) which tell it to use MySQL, and the connection information for the database.

$> java -jar sockso.jar --dbtype=mysql \

      --dbhost=localhost \

      --dbuser=myuser \

      --dbpass=secret \

      --dbname=socksodb

Sockso will now be running with MySQL.

NB: This will be a completely blank database.

NOTEs :

• Make sure you have stopped the Sockso before reboot or shutdown; otherwise, the mp3 databases would be corrupted. If so, you should delete everything inside /var/sockso and redo the Step 3.
• · Broadcasting copyrighted music can lead to heavy fines or even lawsuits.
• For more detailed information and questions refer to the Sockso Website http://sockso.pu-gh.com/ or forums http://forums.pu-gh.com/

This is the quick and easy way,  compared to going to the Java website downloading then installing etc etc etc.

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre
sudo update-alternatives –config java
java -version

All done

Ever had the issue with which you wish to send a file to someone when you are chatting via IM or in the middle of a gaming session etc and find its too big to send via your IM client and emailing is too much trouble at the time.  Well this small application is for you.  Its quick, efficient and easy.

There are a lot of tools to tackle this problem. For large scale communities there are dozens of   networks. However, they don’t work for small local networks. One way is to put your stuff  on a local  server to share, but maintaining this can be tedious. Tools like the ingenious npush/npoll are extremely helpful, provided that both parties have it installed, SAFT/sendfile also aims to solve this problem, but needs a permanently running daemon…

Woof (Web Offer One File) tries a different approach. It assumes that everybody has a web-browser or a commandline web-client installed. Woof is a small simple stupid webserver that can easily be invoked on a single file. Your partner can access the file with tools he trusts (e.g. wget). No need to enter passwords on keyboards where you don’t know about keyboard sniffers, no need to start a huge lot of infrastructure, just do a

     $ woof filename

and tell the recipient the URL woof spits out. When he got that file, woof will quit and everything is done.

And when someone wants to send you a file, woof has a switch to offer itself, so he can get woof and offer a file to you.

Prerequisites and usage

Woof needs Python on a unix’ish operating system. Some people have used it successfully on Windows within the cygwin environment.

    Usage: woof [-i <ip_addr>] [-p <port>] [-c <count>] <file>

           woof [-i <ip_addr>] [-p <port>] [-c <count>] [-z|-j|-Z|-u] <dir>

           woof [-i <ip_addr>] [-p <port>] [-c <count>] -s

    Serves a single file <count> times via http on port <port> on IP

    address <ip_addr>.

    When a directory is specified, an tar archive gets served. By default

    it is gzip compressed. You can specify -z for gzip compression,

    -j for bzip2 compression, -Z for ZIP compression or -u for no compression.

    You can configure your default compression method in the configuration

    file described below.

    When -s is specified instead of a filename, woof distributes itself.

    defaults: count = 1, port = 8080

    You can specify different defaults in two locations: /etc/woofrc

    and ~/.woofrc can be INI-style config files containing the default

    port and the default count. The file in the home directory takes

    precedence. The compression methods are "off", "gz", "bz2" or "zip".

    Sample file:

        [main]

        port = 8008

        count = 2

        ip = 127.0.0.1

        compressed = gz

It can be downloaded from HERE

After years of using SME server – I really like SME for its simple but effective package, and Clarkconnect – never again, I decided to take a big step and build a custom server from scratch built on Ubuntu Server 8.10, which turned out to be alot easier than expected. I had all services – File Sharing, SSL, Web server, mysql, FTP and torrent engine (see my torrentflux tutorial) up and running smoothly in about an hour. The only thing that stopped my in my tracks was setting up an email server…..

I searched the net for days reading a number a tutorials all saying something slightly different. I made several attemps to get the all the required applications working together with no success, and eventually gave up. I found that all the tutorials have some niggling problem that none of the forums could workout completel or made dodgy work arounds. Or they just plain didnt work.

So I have devised my own setup, which admittedly is a little more bulky but a hell of a lot easier to get up and running. For all the people that have given up try this.

Firstly, I am running Ubuntu 8.10 server Ed, so I cannot vouch for this elsewhere although it should work on all distros without hitch.

So the quick and simple solution I put together was to create a Virtual machine with VMware2 -a better version for server as it has a web interface ( see my VMware tutorial). With that in place I installed an SME server setup to be only an email server.

This will give up a functioning email with webmail with only a small and easy configuration on installation.

The Next step is to link the two with LDAP…

To be continued.

VMware Server is a proprietary virtualization software package made available for no cost from the VMware website. VMware Server allows you to run entire operating systems in a virtual machine, which run on top of Ubuntu. This guide provides instructions on installing, configuring and running VMware Server and VMware Server Console on Ubuntu. VMware server may be used on Desktop and Server editions of Ubuntu.

Installation and Quick Start

Ubuntu 8.10 (VMWare Server 2.0.0 Build 122956)

There is no package yet available. You can download it athttp://www.vmware.com/go/getserver

1. Get a serial number (displayed at the download page link received by email as part of the registration process)
2. Download the tar.gz file to your home directory
3. Install required packages

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

1. Download the required patch athttp://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=94477&d=1227872015 and save in your home directory

2. Unpack, apply patch and run vmware-install.pl

cd ~

tar zxvf VMware-server-2.0.0-122956.i386.tar.gz

cd vmware-server-distrib

sudo patch ./bin/vmware-config.pl ~/vmware-config.pl.patch

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

1. Follow the settings displayed at your screen and don’t change default values if not necessary. Be sure to add your normal username as VMware Server administrator

2. Enter the serial number when prompted

3. Vmware2 has a web interface. Browse with Firefox to http://localhost:8222.

4. Log in with your normal username and password

Note: You can also access the web interface via SSL at https://localhost:8333. You will probably need to add this site to your SSL Exception sites on your browser.

Installing VMware Tools on an Ubuntu VMware guest system

Installing VMware Tools inside your virtual machines can improve their performance. For information about speeding up your Ubuntu virtual machines see VMware/Tools

The following commands are generally the main ones you will need to navigate your way around the Terminal. Obviously there are more in depth commands but they will not be covered here (I may get around to posting and Advanced Command Line Syntax, so stay tuned if thats what your after)
Also, some of these comeands are based around Ubuntu as that is what I predominatly use.

Common Commands

ls- list directory contents, can be run as ls -la (’list’ mode, and ‘all’ files) to show a detailed listing
cd- change directory, eg cd /tmp
cp- copy files and directories, eg. cp work.txt /home/stuart.
mv- move files or directories, same notation as cp, also used to rename
rm- remove files or directories, eg.rm work.txt. Use rm -rf to remove a directory and all its contents.
mkdir- make a new directory; use rmdir to remove an empty directory
cat- view files, eg. cat work.txt. Be sure to only use on non-binary files.
All of these commands have various switches to change thier behaviour. These can be found in the man pages or by adding -h or –help to the end of a command.
man- brings up the manual for any command eg. man cp. Scoll with page up/down and cursur keys , Press “q” to exit
sudo- (ubuntu and variants) execute a command as another user, defaults to root (administrator)
sudo -s- log in as root and run commands without using sudo. BE CAREFULL when in root, I do not advise staying in root permanently.
passwd- change the password of the current account, pr specified user
top- displays real-time process list of running programs.
ps- like ls but for processes, use ps ax to show all processes on your system not just your own
kill- kill a process, requires a process ID (found with ps or top)
pkillsame as above but use the process name eg. pkill “process name”
apt-get- (ubuntu and variants) allows you to install or remove programs from ubuntu’s repositories
apt-get clean- will remove any cached ‘deb’ files (there will be one for every update or new program installed)
apt-get autoremove- will remove any packages from your system that are no longer required.
reboot- reboots the computer, requires root access – use sudo.
shutdown- shutsdown the computer, requires root access – use sudo. also shutdown -h now- immediate shutdown.

As I mentioned above this is only a small sample, but the ones you are most likely to need and yse regulary.

for install on Ubuntu Hardy Heron

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose

follow the prompts.

You Will probably get an error message similar to this

VirtualBox kernel driver not installed. The vboxdrv kernel module was either not loaded or /dev/vboxdrv was not created for some reason. Re-setup the kernel module by executing '/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup' as root.
VBox status code: -1908 (VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_INSTALLED).

Result Code:
0x80004005
Component:
Console
Interface:
IConsole {1dea5c4b-0753-4193-b909-22330f64ec45}

There a number of solutions that people have found work for them (more than one to skin a cat as they say) but this one worked for me:

Code:

sudo aptitude install virtualbox-ose-modules-generic

then

Code:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-source
sudo m-a update
sudo m-a prepare
sudo m-a a-i virtualbox-ose
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv restart

for the last line it produced an error about the current user is not part of the “vboxdrv” group, so just go to

System > Administration > Users and Groups , and add yourself to the vboxdrv group -
need to have admin rights.

This should work

If not you can find all the different solutions at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=737305 or http://www.ubuntu-forums.com/showthread.php?t=458494

Good Luck

If you wish to install a peice of software that you can only find in .rpm you will need to convert it to .deb format before it will install on Ubuntu. This is where Alien comes in.
Alien is a program that converts between the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and slackware tgz file formats. If you want to use a package from another distribution than the one you have installed on your system, you can use alien to convert it to your preferred package format and install it.

NOTE Alien should not be used to replace important system packages, like sysvinit, shared libraries, or other things that are essential for the functioning of your system. Many of these packages are set up differently by Debian and Red Hat, and packages from the different distributions cannot be used interchangably. In general, if you can’t uninstall the package without breaking your system, don’t try to replace it with an alien version.

Install alien in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install alien

This will install all the required packages.Now you can start converting your .rpm files to .deb packages.

Available Options for alien

Convert the package.rpm into a package.deb

sudo alien -d package-name.rpm

Convert the package.rpm into a package.deb, and install the generated package.

sudo alien -i package-name.rpm

If you want to keeps alien from changing the version number use the following command

sudo alien -k rpm-package-file.rpm

To install .deb file

sudo dpkg -i avg71lms-r30-a0782.i386.deb

If you don’t use -k option you should see avg71lms_r30-1_i386.deb file the difference is it will add 1

If you want more available options for alien check alien man page