Ubuntu 9.04 and UXA acceleration in X.Org

With the recent release of Ubuntu 9.04 and the brand new X.org stack, finally I have got quick and usable windows effects in my KDE 4.2 install (using Kwin, not Compiz).
My workstation is a Dell Optiplex 745 with an Intel grapphic chipset

$ lspci|grep -i vga
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

with the default install I had serious problems with X, and with serious I mean textures corruptions, artifacts with KDE/Qt4 applications and all sort of graphic glitches.. really a PITA. Then the great idea: Ubuntu 9.04 now ships with a DRI2 enabled kernel, GEM for graphic memory management and this new Intel-sponsored acceleration framework called UXA, which is supposed to improve XAA and EXA. So, if everything is already screwed, why not give it a try?

So I fired up my vim editor and changed my /etc/X11/xorg.conf to look exactly like this, no more no less:

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier      "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Default Screen"
        Monitor         "Configured Monitor"
        Device          "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Configured Video Device"
        Option          "AccelMethod" "UXA"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option  "DontZap"       "False"
EndSection

restarted X and the magic was done. I activated the composited effects in KWin and everything worked like a charm, really flying as it never did and as it is supposed to do (Vista on the same hardware works the same).
So, if you have a similar hardware, I encourage you to try the same. If anything goes wrong, removing this line

Option "AccelMethod" "UXA"

will fall back the configuration to its default state.

HTH

mii-tool is deprecated, use ethtool

Title says it all. If you want to check (or set) your ethernet NIC configuration or status in Linux, people used to use mii-tools. But there’s a lot more powerful and modern tool that obsoletes it: ethtool
You can install it with your favourite package manager, if it’s not already present in your system.
In Debian/Ubuntu, you can issue
# aptitude install ethtool

Here it is an example:


# ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: d
Current message level: 0x000000ff (255)
Link detected: yes


HOWTO: Managing Active Directory users under Linux with adtool

Usually people manages Linux boxes using Windows clients but sometimes, someone (like me, for example) needs to manage a Windows server from a Linux host (it could be a normal client or another server which wants to talk to Windows).

IMO, Active Directory is one of the best product from Microsoft, since it’s based on a well known standard like X.500 (aka LDAP) and it has a good interoperabilty (although it could be better, see all the problems Samba people had in the past).  So, even if there are tools like PHPLdapAdmin which are pretty good, if you need to automate users and groups management, there’s nothing better than a command line tool. Enter adtool.

adtool is very simple to use, but it’s not so simple to have it up&running, because this involves, amongst other things, to activate Secure LDAP in your Active Directory installation. To do this, you can follow this guide which will lead you through all the steps you have to do to enable LDAPS in Windows Server 2003. It may look scary but it works indeed, I used it myself.

Then, install adtool. In Debian/Ubuntu

# aptitude install adtool


Probably adtool is already present in your distribution’s repositories, so use your package manager. In the case it’s not present, simply download the adtool tarball from its homepage and do the usual

$ tar xzvf adtool-1.3.tar.gz
$ cd adtool-1.3
$ ./configure
$ make
# make install


It should be quite straightforward.
Now we have everything installed, so we can configure adtool.
Create /etc/adtool.cfg or, even better $HOME/.adtool.cfg because it will contain sensitive information, so lock it up to the user you’re willing to employ to modify Active Directory.
Put this in the config file (adapt to your needs)

uri ldaps://domain-controller.domain.tld
binddn cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=domain,dc=tld
bindpw $ADMIN_PASSWORD
searchbase dc=domain,dc=tld


As you can see we are using LDAPS here, because otherwise some adtool features like changing users’ passwords wouldn’t be available.
You don’t necessarily have to use the Administrator account, you can use whatever account you want, it just needs to have the right permissions (create user, change passwords etc).

So you can start poking your AD from the Linux command line, like this:

# create a new user with a dn like cn=$NAME,ou=$DEP,dc=domain,dc=tld
$ adtool usercreate "$NAME" "ou=$DEP,dc=domain,dc=tld"

# set user logon password
$ adtool setpass "$NAME" $my_secret_password

# to unlock the account (locked by default)
$ adtool userunlock "$NAME"

# to disable all the "account options" in the user's account tabe. Amongst them the "Password never expires" which is again enabled by default
$ adtool attributereplace "$NAME" userAccountControl 512

# to set user's mail address
$ adtool attributeadd "$NAME" mail user@domain.tld

# add the user to a group of users
$ adtool groupadduser $my_group "$NAME"

This could be very useful for user scripting and system integration if you’re in a mixed environment, just like we are.

HOWTO: Active Directory authentication in Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10

This is a second version of this other guide that applied to previous Ubuntu versions.
Since Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), and now Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) it come the Likewise Open package that makes basic Active Directory authentication in Ubuntu a breeze.

Just follow these steps:

1. sudo apt-get update
2. sudo apt-get install likewise-open
3. sudo domainjoin-cli join fqdn.of.your.domain Administrator
4. sudo update-rc.d likewise-open defaults
5. sudo /etc/init.d/likewise-open start

and you can now log into your machine using your DOMAIN\user credentials. Remember that the DOMAIN\ part is mandatory and that it represents the short name of your Active Directory domain. You can join the domain using any user with sufficient privileges (there’s no need to use Administrator), and you can even directly join the PC in a particular OU passing the –ou argument to domainjoin-cli. The fourth point maybe won’t be necessary when Ubuntu 8.04 LTS wil be released because it seems to be a bug in the package (it won’t start likewise on reboot, so if you don’t issue this command it would seem that nothing is working after a reboot).

I’ve just started to use this method on a test machine so I’ll leave more opinions on this product in the future.

EDIT: First impressions

After some days of not so extensive usage, I’ve seen a couple of things that it’s worth notice:

• the likewise-open process seems to “die” from time to time, blocking all your login accesses with a “ERROR” message. Restarting it through init script solves the issue… but it’s something that definitely should not happen
• It informs you on login if your password is going to expire in X days (as set in your GPO). Very nice indeed.

Notes to the readers: if you’re experiencing installation problem, the best way is to report them to the likewise-open-discuss mailing list. There you can contact directly likewise developers (of Samba fame) and solve your problems or doubts.

EDIT2: it seems that with the final Ubuntu 8.04 update, likewise-open package is now 100% stable, I didn’t have a single failure since last update (one week up, while before it died at least once per day)

EDIT3: as mentioned in the comment, with likewise-open 4.x you can add

winbind use default domain = yes

in /etc/samba/lwiauthd.conf so you d’nt have to specify the DOMAIN\ part every time you log in your box.

Obtain the Dell service tag in FreeBSD/Debian/Gentoo

Well, the title could be a little misleading cause this actually works in Linux and with other manufacturer as well, but since we were searching info for this particular topic, and didn’t manage to find anything useful on Google…

Anyway, it’s very very simple. All you have to do is install dmidecode (from Alan Cox) with:

FreeBSD

portinstall dmidecode

or whatever manner you use to install FreeBSD’s ports :)

Debian/Ubuntu

apt-get install dmidecode


Gentoo

emerge dmidecode


NOTE: this work as well with HP servers’ serial numbers and, I suppose, with IBM, Sun etc too.

Once installed, all you have to do is execute

# dmidecode -s chassis-serial-number

et voilà, you will get your service tag printed on screen. Moreover if your server is in the datacenter and you cannot remember the exact model

# dmidecode -s system-product-name
PowerEdge 1750

for example.

Just a note: dmidecode is the program used by OCS Inventory client to collect all these data.

Deleting non-free Software from Debian GNU/Linux

Hello,

If you use Debian or Debian based like Ubuntu, you can check if you have installed non-free software via Debian way. By Default Debian does not install it unless you put non-free on your apt repo, so delete it first if it exists.

Install the tool vrms (virtual Richard M. Stallman)

# apt-get install vrms

or

# aptitude install vrms

Then, delete all non-free software, mandatory if you want to be a 100% Free Software guy, also to make happy RMS :)

# apt-get remove –purge `vrms -s | xargs echo -n && echo`

or

# aptitude purge `vrms -s | xargs echo -n && echo`

See you!

Active Directory authentication with Ubuntu

DISCLAIMER: This entry is almost an integral copy of this post on the Ubuntu Forums, so let’s give the credit where is due and I give a huge THANKS to tfiedler. Now, why am I doing this? The reason is simple: I’m using this blog as a scratchbook/memo/notepad so if one day I’m going to need again this howto, I will know for sure where to find it easily. Moreover I will cover more in depth a couple of points so… let’s go!

1. Install the required packages with all their dependencies:
   apt-get install krb5-user
apt-get install winbind samba
   Note: you have to enable the Universe repository in your Ubuntu configuration (edit your /etc/apt/sources.list) or you will not find krb5-user