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The thing that scares me most about server upgrades is the mail server… the thought of having to reconfigure the many interdependent servers and processes involved is horrible.

So I wasn’t pleased to find my postfix-dovecot installation dying on upgrade from 11.04 to 11.10. I couldn’t sent outgoing mail or receive inbound.

Fortunately I wasn’t an “early upgrader”… both issues were easy to find and fix.

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It’s now easy to set up your own cheap VPN virtual private server that can be used with your mobile devices. Great for accessing resources on private networks, browsing securely, or accessing blocked sites.

This is now much easier than it used to be. Last time I tried to set up a VPN on an Ubuntu server, I had trouble with reconnections and had to manually compile OpenSwan. These all seem to be fixed.

Instructions are already all over the internet, but there are a few extra steps for a default Ubuntu linode in order to get routing to work.

These instructions are tested with Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty), but should also work on 11.10. We will set up an OpenSwan IPSec server with l2tp encryption provided by xl2tpd.

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It’s easy to share traditional keyboards between multiple computers using a USB KVM. Obviously, with a bluetooth keyboard, things aren’t so simple.

I wanted to share my Apple bluetooth keyboard between my Mac mini and my desktop computer (running Ubuntu, but this would work with Windows).

First step was to get a USB bluetooth dongle and plug that into the KVM. Any USB dongle should do. When the KVM is switched to the Mac, the bluetooth dongle takes preference over the built-in Mac bluetooth receiver.

This works to share the keyboard, but the keyboard had to be disconnected and re-paired each time the KVM was switched — this is particularly problematic if you need to repair the keyboard at, for example, the login screen. It also requires you to enter a PIN code each time.

Fortunately this can be easily solved by sharing the generated link key between the two computers:

1. Pair the keyboard in Ubuntu, then in OSX.
2. In OSX, look at the bluetooth properties for your keyboard device to get the address.vThen open the terminal and type sudo defaults read /private/var/root/Library/Preferences/blued.plist. You will see something like the following:

   {
       LinkKeys =     {
           "00-aa-bb-cc-dd-ee" =         {
               "00-00-00-aa-aa-aa" = <81a83517 cc3c7afc fb8e99fc 5147fbf4>;
           };
       };
   }
   

   Here, the first code is the address of the bluetooth dongle. The second is the address of the keyboard, and the final, longer code is the link key.

3. Convert the link key into a format suitable for Linux (or Windows), by reversing the endianness; simply reverse the order of the key, taking each pair of hexadecimal numbers as one value. So, the above key would be f4fb4751 fc998efb fc7a3ccc 1735a881. Easy…
4. Use this link key in Linux or Windows. On Ubuntu the link key is at /var/lib/bluetooth/00:AA:BB:CC:DD:EE/linkkeys — the code is the address of the bluetooth dongle. Edit that file and replace the link key corresponding to the address of the bluetooth keyboard to the converted key, above.
5. That’s it — restart Ubuntu, and the keyboard will work seamlessly as it is switched by the KVM.

To change the link key in Windows, you need to edit the registry — I didn’t do this, but a search for “Windows bluetooth link key registry” should give the goods.

Provided the keyboard doesn’t become unpaired, the setup should last indefinitely.

I just upgraded my main desktop PC, running Ubuntu 10.04 (”Lucid Lynx”). After an 8-year hiatus, I’m back on Intel, with a nice new Core i7 930 and a Gigabyte x58a-ud3r.

There’s not a great deal to write about compatibility, as everything “just worked” out of the box.

The upgrade went well — one of the great things about Linux is how well it takes to a complete brain transplant. No HAL trouble or “repair install” nonsense that you get on Windows.

Here are the things I had to do after the upgrade to get a 100% perfect system…

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I’ve never been one of the vi or emacs brigade — when editing code (mainly PHP and Python), I’ve always found it easiest using a lightweight editor (together with a local server).
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Logitech Squeezeboxes are great little network audio streamers — I have a squeezebox Duet, which is much cooler (IMO) than an Apple TV + iPod.

Squeezeplay is the Squeezebox controller / squeezebox touch user interface, and it can run on any computer. You can use that computer as a controller for your squeezebox receiver, or as a complete squeezebox, playing music. If you can get it running on a portable device, you effectively get a new Squeezebox Controller for free.

Unfortunately, even though the Squeezeboxes are based on a GNU/Linux foundation, Linux users don’t get much love when it comes to releases of SqueezePlay… so we have to compile it ourselves.

Here is how to get SqueezePlay working on Ubuntu karmic amd64, but the instructions should apply to other distros. I’ve also tested it on Karmic 32 bit.

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One of the first things I noticed on upgrading to Karmic was that notifications were lower than they were in Jaunty.

Like most people, at first, I thought this was a bug. The short answer is — it isn’t. The devs, in their infinite wisdom, think its better this way — the “top slot” for notifications is reserved for synchronous notifications, such as brightness and volume.

Karmic notification position

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If you followed my guide on getting Ubuntu 9.04 to run nicely on the eeePC 1005HA, and have or are considering upgrading to Karmic, these few notes will help you.

A karmic Koala in a seashell

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Ubuntu 9.10’s new login screen looks great — brown, black and white. Much improved over the previous version.

However, if you try out the Accessibility options, in particular, the “improve contrast” option, it goes ugly, with a nasty grey bar.

The problem is that, even after you deselect the option, the theme does not revert back, even after restarting again. The problem is that some needed theme files are deleted.

The solution is simple — you need to re-install gdm. Either fire up Synaptic, search for gdm, and then mark it for re-installation, or do sudo aptitude reinstall gdm in a terminal.

There you go — sexy login screen back again.

The 1005HA is one of the brand new Asus eeePC netbooks, and it is a great little machine — aside from the fact that it comes with Windows XP or a dumbed-down customised Xandros (allegedly — as time goes on, Asus seem to be selling out to Microsoft).

As the 1005HA is pretty new, it has a few odd hardware quirks that won’t be fully supported out of the box until the next release of Ubuntu.

Here I run through what I did to end up with a 100% working install — including all Fn hotkeys. The good news is that it is very easy!

My perfect Ubuntu setup on the 1005HA

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