Install wmii snapshot
These are my notes for installing wmii snapshot in my home directory on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy.Download the latest snapshot (wmii+ixp-20080520) from thewmii homepage and save it to ~/incoming.Untar the...
View ArticleNotes on moving Ubuntu Wubi to a standard ext3 partition using LVPM
Here are my notes for moving my wubi Ubuntu install to a dedicated ext3 partition. I used the Loopmounted Virtual Partition Manager (LVPM) to do the transfer. From the webpage: The Loopmounted Virtual...
View ArticleSomewhere on your Python path
As I install new python packages, I sometimes see instructions which say something like "check out the code, and place it somewhere on your Python path". These are very simple instructions, but since...
View ArticleNotes on users and groups on Linux
Here are some notes on some basic tasks dealing with users, groups, and permissions on Ubuntu Linux. All these commands (except passwd) are done as root. If you are not root, prepend sudo to all the...
View ArticleNotes on Django and MySql on Amazon's EC2
Install ElasticfoxInstall the Elasticfox Firefox Extension for Amazon EC2: http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=609Set up Amazon EC2 accounts and ElasticfoxFollow...
View ArticleSimple cron example
Simple cron example (tested on Ubuntu):Edit your (user) crontab file$ crontab -e This will bring up your editor (nano by default in Ubuntu)Enter the following inside. This will append the current date...
View ArticleHow to monitor an Apache web server using Monit
Monit is a tool that can monitor your Apache web server, MySQL database, or other daemon process. It can restart the service based on configurable conditions such as CPU usage, memory usage, number of...
View ArticleNotes on using EC2 command line tools
Create AWS accountsCreate an AWS account at http://aws.amazon.com/.Create an AWS EC2 account at http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/. (You will need to enter a credit card number.)Create a X.509 CertificateNote:...
View ArticleNotes on Python deployment using Fabric
I found out about Fabric via Armin Ronacher's article Deploying Python Web Applications. Fabric is a Capistrano inspired deployment tool for the Python community. It is very simple to use. There are 4...
View ArticleInstalling Emacs 23 from <del>CVS</del>Bazaar source on Ubuntu...
I have been using the emacs-snapshot package in Ubuntu Hardy. However, when I tried to use Tramp, I got an error message: Variable binding depth exceeds max-specpdl-size. I couldn't find out how to fix...
View ArticleInstalling Python 2.6 from source on Ubuntu Hardy
Python 2.6 was released yesterday! This version aims to smooth the transition from Python 2.5 to Python 3.0 which is planned for release soon (currently available as arelease candidate). Python 3.0...
View ArticleInstalling beanstalkd and pybeanstalk on Ubuntu
Nikolay pointed me at beanstalkd, a lightweight, message queue service partially inspired by the popular caching system,memcached. It features a blocking "reserve" call so workers don't need to poll...
View ArticleCreating remote server nicknames with .ssh/config
Using the ~/.ssh/config file is an easy way to give your remote machines nicknames and reduce the number of keystrokes needed to login with ssh, rsync, hg push/pull/clone, access files via Emacs Tramp...
View ArticleCard store project #1: Plans
I'm planning to start an online greeting card / stationary store with my wife. My wife (and possibly my sister and other friends) will create designs for the cards, while I'll run the website and...
View ArticleCard store project #2: Installing Satchmo, Django, PostgreSQL, and Apache on...
As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm planning to set up an e-commerce site using the Satchmo shopping cart framework. Satchmo is built on the Django web framework which is written in the Python...
View ArticlePostgres backup with cron
So I accidentally deleted my Postgres database on my public server instead of my local server last night. Luckily, I was still in the testing phase. I had been meaning to figure out how to backup...
View ArticleCard store project #5: Redirecting my www-prefixed domain to my...
For search engine optimization and analytics, I wanted to make http://www.handsoncards.com/ permanently redirect to http://handsoncards.com/. So I started Googling. It took me a while to figure this...
View ArticleUsing wmii with Gnome
.super { vertical-align: super; font-size: 85%; } .fn { font-size: 85%; } Thanks to Glyph, I can now usewmii as the window manager for Gnome. I like wmii because it makes good use of screen real...
View ArticleUbuntu notes
Boot processWhat are the stages of the boot process?BIOSMaster Boot RecordBootloader (LILO, GRUB)KernelinitRun LevelsWhere is the GRUB menu list?/boot/grub/menu.lstHow do I get rid of Ubuntu splash...
View ArticleScripting wmii column widths with Python
I mentioned in my previous post on using wmii with Gnome that I had written a script for resizing the column widths in wmii. This is the followup post. Note, I am using the 20080520 snapshot of wmii....
View ArticleNotes on using nginx with mod_python and Django
Here are my notes on setting upnginx as a reverse proxy with Apache, mod_python, and Django on Ubuntu Intrepid. Nginx is used to serve my static media files while all other requests are passed on to...
View ArticleNotes on using pip and virtualenv with Django
I have been using a symlinking method to install Python packages up to this point. To better handle dependencies and multiple versions I have wanted to switch over topip andvirtualenv. Pip is a better...
View ArticleNotes on C++ development with Emacs on Ubuntu Linux
Here are my notes on setting up an Emacs C++ development environment. I'm using GNU g++ (4.3.3),GNU make (3.81),GNU gdb (3.8-debian), and GNU emacs (23.0.92.1 built from CVS 2009-04-22) on Ubuntu...
View ArticleInstall wmii snapshot 20090703 on Ubuntu Jaunty
On Friday I installed the latest snapshot of wmii, the lightweight, tiling, dynamic, scriptable, keyboard navigatable window manager. (See my wmii tag for more posts about wmii.) Wmii orangizes windows...
View ArticleUsing psycopg2 with virtualenv on Ubuntu <del>Jaunty</del>Maverick
Update 2009-11-02: Well I am dumb-- psycopg2 can be installed with pip/easy_install. The reason I got the error before was because I didn't have the required dependencies installed. On Ubuntu, I used...
View ArticleFuse error on Scalr
I got the following error while trying to use s3fs on one of Scalr's Ubuntu EC2 instances:fuse: device not found, try 'modprobe fuse' firstTrying modprobe fuse, I got:FATAL: Module fuse not found....
View ArticleNotes on Python Fabric 0.9b1
Fabric is a Python package used for deploying websites or generally running commands on a remote server. I first used Fabric about a year ago and thought it was great. Since then, Fabric has procured a...
View ArticleNotes on installing Scalr on Ubuntu Jaunty
Here are my notes on installing Scalr. I am using an Alestic Ubuntu 9.04-jaunty-base-20091011 image. Here are my...
View ArticleInstall WordPress 2.8.4 on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty
Since we're using WordPress at work, I decided to install WordPress on my local machine for testing and educational purposes. Here are my notes. The versions of stuff are: WordPress 2.8.4, Ubuntu 9.04...
View ArticleNotes on switching my Djangos to mod_wsgi
I'm slowly trying to make my Django web servers conform to current best practices. I've set up an Nginx reverse proxy for serving static files, started using virtualenv to isolate my Python...
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How to make urxvt look like gnome-terminal
My terminal of choice is rxvt-unicode (urxvt) because it is fast and lightweight. However, I recently opened up gnome-terminal and it was so much prettier than my urxvt. Here's how I made my urxvt look...
View ArticleUsing Nginx as a caching proxy with Wordpress+Apache
We have been evaluating caching reverse proxy servers at work. We looked at Nginx+memcached,Squid, andVarnish. Most recently, we found that Nginx version 0.7 has support for caching static files using...
View ArticleWmii Python script to monitor remote machines
I like to monitor our web servers by ssh'ing into the remote machine and watching "top", tailing log files, etc. Normally, I open a terminal, ssh into the remote machine, run the monitoring command...
View Article"ImportError: No module named pstats" error on Ubuntu
Even though the pstats module (used by cProfile) is part of the Python Standard Library, Ubuntu requires installing a separate package because of its non-free license. For more information, see this...
View ArticleIterating over lines in multiple Linux log files using Python
I needed to parse through my Nginx log files to debug a problem. However, the logs are separated into many files, most of them are gzipped, and I wanted the ordering within the files reversed. So I...
View ArticleA hack to copy files between two remote hosts using Python
I sometimes need to copy a file (such as a database dump) between two remote hosts on EC2. Normally this involves a few steps: scp'ing the ssh keyfile to Host 1, ssh'ing to Host 1, looking up the...
View ArticleHow to install pip on Ubuntu
Pip is a better alternative toEasy Install for installing Python packages. It is most "nutritious" when used with its companionvirtualenv. For more information on pip and virtualenv see my blog post:...
View ArticleHow to install MySQLdb in a virtualenv on Ubuntu Karmic
Install dependenciessudo apt-get build-dep python-mysqldbInstall MySQLdb with pip/virtualenvcd ~/lib/python-environments virtualenv --distribute --no-site-packages default pip install -E default/...
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Using Python to write to an Excel / OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet on Ubuntu Linux
Via Matt Harrison's blog post, here is how to write Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet files using Python and the xlwt library. Xlwt is a fork of pyExcelerator which handles only writing...
View ArticleSamba notes
AssumptionsTrying to access filesystem on Ubuntu Hardy Linux server from Windows Vista PC over the internet. Want to have read and write access.Ubuntu Linux server IP address is: 99.99.99.99Windows PC...
View ArticleNotes on sshfs on Ubuntu
sshfs is an easy way to mount a remote filesystem usingssh and FUSE. If your remote server is already running a ssh server that supportssftp (Ubuntu's ssh server does), there is nothing to set up on...
View ArticleMonitoring a filesystem with Python and Pyinotify
Pyinotify is a Python library for monitoring filesystem events on Linux through theinotify Linux kernel subsystem. It can monitor when a file is created, accessed, deleted, modified, etc. For a full...
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This time I decided to build my Linux desktop PC myself
Three years ago, I decided to buy a Dell Ubuntu desktop PC instead of building it myself. This time around, I went the other way. My main reasons were: better parts and easier upgrades. We'll see what...
View ArticleHow to install Apache Thrift on Ubuntu <del>10.10 Maverick 12.04...
Update 2014-10-06: Here's what I did to install on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty.$ # Install your choice of java $ sudo apt-get install libboost-dev libboost-test-dev libboost-program-options-dev...
View ArticleNotes on debugging ssh connection problems
Run the ssh client in verbose mode$ ssh -vvv user@host On the server, check auth.log for errors$ sudo tail -f /var/log/auth.log On Red Hat, it's /var/log/secureFor more debugging info, (assuming you...
View ArticleNotes on sqlalchemy w/ pyodbc, freetds on Ubuntu
These are my notes for connecting to a MS SQL Server using Python on Linux. My developement environment is Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick (64-bit). The production environment is Redhat/Centos-based Scientific...
View ArticleVirtualbox with Windows guest and Ubuntu host
Virtualbox 4.1, Ubuntu 10.10 https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.htmlContents Install Virtualbox Run Virtualbox Create a VM Run VM and install Windows Install Guest Additions Add another...
View ArticleTesting HTTPS w/ Flask's development server using stunnel on Ubuntu
Our website is served over HTTPS. To more easily test certain issues (e.g. mixed mode content warnings, or Mapquest SSL tile servers), I wanted to access my Flask local development server over HTTPS....
View ArticleSetting up the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2nd gen) fingerprint reader in...
These are the steps I used to get the fingerprint sensor on the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2014 2nd generation) to work on Ubuntu Linux 14.04 Trusty Tahr 64-bit. After googling through many articles,...
View ArticleSwitching to OS X and front end development
After 7 years, I've yielded to the Dark Side and switched from Ubuntu to OS X on my work laptop. I've also switched from Python and back end web development to JavaScript and front end development. The...
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