This is the xorg.conf file as generated from the Live CD.

# xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

I had mentioned that I’d post a quick how-to on setting up Tomcat 5 on Ubuntu Dapper. So here it is and lucky for me it’s VERY easy.

Translations: castellano

First a quick overview of what we are going to do:

1. install software
2. change 1 line in a configuration file.
3. start the Tomcat5 service
4. go to http://localhost:8180

And now for the good stuff.

First we want to install the right packages. basically we want to install apache2, a java jdk and tomcat (duh). I’ve chosen to use Sun’s java implementation. To install this you need to enable the multiverse repository. See this section of the Unofficial Ubuntu Starter Guide for help with enabling additional repositories. To install Tomcat itself you will also need to have the universe repository enabled.

Note: For Tomcat you MUST have a jdk not just a jre.

So, for the basic install use the following command.

sudo apt-get install apache2 tomcat5 sun-java5-jdk

If you want a shiny Tomcat welcome page when we finally get that far then install the example apps by adding tomcat5-webapps to the end of the last command. For the Tomcat admin web interface add tomcat5-admin, too.

My final command looks like this.

sudo apt-get install apache2 tomcat5 sun-java5-jdk tomcat5-webapps tomcat5-admin

By default Ubuntu uses a free Java implementation. We now need to tell Ubuntu that we want to use Sun Java as the default. Run the following command.

sudo update-alternatives --config java

Then enter the number of the version of Java you want from the list when prompted. The one I wanted was /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java.

Now we need to tell Tomcat where the jdk is. Open /etc/default/tomcat5 and change the variable JAVA_HOME to read…

JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/

Make sure it’s NOT got a “#” at the start of the line. You can should now be able to start Tomcat5 with…

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat5 start

Tomcat is listening on port 8180. So open up firefox and enter http://localhost:8180 in the address bar. Once the page loads you should see either a tomcat welcome page or, if you chose not to install the examples and admin packages, a fairly empty page with “Apache Tomcat/5.0″ at the bottom left. Congrats, you just installed a working Tomcat service. If you don’t see one of these pages, either you or I screwed up.

If you installed them, the example apps can be found in “/usr/share/tomcat5/webapps/“. Also take a look at the configuration files in “/etc/tomcat5/“.

Hope that was helpful.

Update: Manolo Canga added a section in his Spanish translation of this tutorial that I’ve translated into English below.

Setting up an admin user

If you try to use the admin interface you’ll find you can’t because no admin user has been set up. To resolve that go into /var/lib/tomcat5/conf and edit tomcat-users.xml. You’ll see that 3 users have been created by default. We’re going to change the password of the user “tomcat” (<user username="tomcat" ) to something better than the default of “tomcat”. Duh!? Now we are going to give the user “tomcat” admin access. Add “admin” to the user tag’s roles attribute. It should look smilar to this.

<user username="tomcat" password="your_password" roles="tomcat,admin"/>

Now restart tomcat…

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat5 restart

…and you’re done!

On Sunday I installed Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) at Sprachenatelier Berlin e.V. a small language school in Friedrichshain. It took all night and I’m still not finished. Someone had installed a Tomcat server that was serving a custom jsp app. Having never installed tomcat nor having ever developed Java Server Pages and only finding out about it when I arrived I didn’t have enough time to do all the other thngs plus learn about tomcat and install jsp apps. So I installed Ubuntu on the 4 “student” computers and left the 2 office computers for some time in the next couple days. On Monday in the comfort of my own home I learned about Tomcat and I had everything running in an hour or so. I also wasted a good amount of time ridding the single duel-boot Windows install of viruses and spyware.

I’ll do an Ubuntu 6.06/Tomcat install how-to soon. No, really… I promise.

On Tuesday Annika and I packed a picnic and went to the Fan Mile to watch the Germany vs. Italy match. Of course, Everyone knows the outcome of that. I was so looking forward to the penalty shoot-out. Oh well. May Italy suffer a humiliating defeat in the finals. They are such whiners; falling at the slightest touch. I’m hoping Portugal wins it all now.

Ubuntu‘s quite known for its {obscure adjective} {animal} release names. I though it might be interesting to see how the Ubuntu release cycle affected the {obscure adjective}s’ search volume. I turned to Google Trends and did a query for each of the {obscure adjective}s. The results were quite interesting.

Warty wasn’t even on the chart before the initial Ubuntu release and the Hoary release showed the first clear jump in queries. It looks like the Ubuntu’s popularity really took of with the release of the Breezy Badger release and the Dapper Drake (current) release will soon top Breezy. Edgy just crossed Hoary and I suspect it will increase dramaticaly once the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Paris is finished and the work for the next release (Edgy Eft) gets underway.

This was originally going to be a response to a comment on my last post but it got a bit long.

I’ve been using Ubuntu Dapper Drake since Febuary and often forget about the improvements I noticed upon first upgrading. For me, Nautilus has finally become a pleasure to use instead of the pain it used to be. Although not in the default install, NetworkManager is my absolute favorite improvement. Even my wife can now connect to almost any network. The infrastructure for updates and adding/removing software is a huge step forward for linux distros. And last, but not least, the documention is light-years ahead of Breezy. I applaud the documentation and localization teams.

Some of the smallest things are also what makes Dapper such a pleasure to use. For example, my laptop’s (Thinkpad T43) volume keys finally change the master volume and not just the PCM volume. Also I now get an on-screen indication of the change. The menu layout is also much improved.

Even with all the wonderful improvements, there are still so many things to refine and many things that are still semi-broken. One of the more questionable choices in my view is making the live cd the recommended install path. I’ve tried this a couple times on machines with 256mb of RAM and it hung everytime. Even on the machines with plenty of RAM I found myself fighting with the partitioner. Both of these issues have been quite a lot of attention in Malone (The Ubuntu Bug Tracker). For me the “text-based” install is extremely easy to use and works flawlessly. I’d like the idea of have an atttactive introduction before the actuall install but not at the expense of causing a large portion of potential users the headaches that will prosumably come from the live cd.

Overall Ubuntu is hands down the best distro for the largest audience. Not only because it is currently the most user-friendly distro but because the communty (users and developers) that surrounds it is rapidly growing AND dedicated to continuing this tradition.

PS: For anyone interested in getting started with Ubuntu, Linux or open-source software, please don’t be afraid to ask questions to me directly. To start, go to ubuntu.com to get a feel of what ubuntu is.

Last night I went to the Berlin Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) release party at Danial Holbach‘s (dholbach) place. It was nice to meet other ubuntu lovers. I arrived at 8pm and left at ~4:30am. By then the sun was already on the rise and by the time I arrived home it had already become completely light out. I finally woke up at 12:30pm with a sore throat from all the talking I did.

It seems as if Daniel and I share a love for a certian british band from the 80′s and the singer of said band. I met Ellen, a kde usability contributer. I envy her persistence with such a thankless task. I also met Daniel Elstner, co-maintainer of gtkmm as well as a very easy-going and likable guy. Furthermore, Matthias Klose, Nina Feyh and about 20-30 others including a couple people from Frankfurt were there.

So it seems as if the Berlin Ubuntu community is pretty strong. Too bad I’ll be leaving in a few months. Of course, the wonderfull thing about the open source community is that it really doesn’t matter were you are. The community is global.

I just got finished installing Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Drake). It’s becoming ever-more polished although it is a beta and there are quite a few things that just don’t work yet.

I really like the cleaned up menu layout. The search function in Nautilus is also nice.

I’ve been having problems with quite a few Mono apps, though. Banshee, which I love, keeps seg faulting after a random amount of time (Bug #29957), Monodevelop needs to have a environment variable set before it’ll start (Bug #29958), Blam just refuses to start and Beagle can’t be installed because of a missing dependancy. Also, after the install, X wouldn’t start and I had to “sudo apt-get update”, “sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg” and finally “sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg” and choose the defalt selections when prompted. After that everything was fine. The /etc/X11/xorg.conf file was completely empty before the reconfig.

So, there is still quite a few broken things but that’s why I’m using a test release. With about 3 months to go I think the project is coming along great. I’m now administering about 10 Hoary desktops and am looking forward to getting Dapper on those in May.

I’ve kinda officially joined the Ubuntu Laptop Testing Team today. I’ll be testing my IBM Thinkpad T43, Model# 266875U. I haven’t got tons of time for it but another guy has a Canonical-supplied T43 that is about 90% the same hardware so I’ll just copy his stuff where appropriate.

If you’d like to help just get in touch.

For those who hate ubuntu spatial and never want to see it again, you can issue this command WITHOUT any users logged into Gnome (GConf can’t be running.).

sudo gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/no_ubuntu_spatial true

The same is true for other settings as well. Also, if you want to make a setting mandetory then just change “defaults” to “mandatory” and users will be restricted to that setting. For other settings you’d probably need to change the type after “–type” and the value at the end.