An Ubuntu Resource Treasure: Ubuntu PPA

Posted on March 6, 2009 by Ahmed Tawfik

Ever tried installing packages that weren’t built for your version of Ubuntu? I’ve tried that HELL lot of times!
The solution was in front of my eyes, but seems I was blind or something :S; It’s Ubuntu PPA (Personal Package Archive): https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas. Just search for whatever software you want or a certain update for it and It’s there, just take care that these are PERSONAL, so might not be very stable

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How to force remove an erroneous package in Ubuntu

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Ahmed Tawfik

If things get messy and you weren’t able to remove it using the package management tool (apt-get or aptitude), then you can manually remove the package:

Open /var/lib/dpkg/status as root, “sudo gedit /var/lib/dpkg/status” and search for your package and remove the whole block.

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Terminal Terminal Terminal Terminal :)

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Ahmed Tawfik

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Type The Command Once, Execute in Multiple Terminals: keyboardcast

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Ahmed Tawfik

“sudo apt-get install keyboardcast”, nothing more to say 🙂

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Getting X11 forwarding through ssh working after running su in AIX

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Ahmed Tawfik

After logging to a remote server using the “ssh -X user@host” (assuming that you have enabled X11Forwarding in your “/etc/ssh/sshd_config” file, and then restarted ssh by issuing “stopsrc -g ssh” and then “startsrc -g ssh”), you can run any X-windows application you want ONLY WITH THE USER YOU USED TO LOGIN FROM THE BEGINNING. Whenever you switch your user using “su – username“, you won’t be able to run any graphical application due to the following two problems:

  1. The $DISPLAY variable value is lost
  2. X authentication is based on cookies — secret little pieces of random data that only you and the X server know… So, you need to let the other user know what your cookie is

To solve problem one, you can simply add this entry to your “/etc/profile”: “export DISPLAY=localhost:10.0”

To solve problem two, you’ll have to do the following after login to the server:

  1. run the command “xauth list” to request the cookie for the current DISPLAY that’s connecting to your X server, you’ll receive something like that: somehost.somedomain:10 mit-magic-cookie-1 4d22408a71a55b41ccd1657d377923ae
  2. Switch to the other user by issuing “su – username“
  3. Copy the above response and paste it to produce this command “xauth add somehost.somedomain:10 mit-magic-cookie-1 4d22408a71a55b41ccd1657d377923ae“
  4. Important Note: You’ll have to repeat the above steps every time you use ssh to login to a server.

Example Scenario (Commands are in bold):
“ssh -X root@10.11.12.117“
“xauth list” Output -> “xyosd/unix:10 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 321c1d6b5bf22484395d0e05b0a29104”
“su – ahmad“
“xauth add xyosd/unix:10 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 321c1d6b5bf22484395d0e05b0a29104“

Article Resources: “http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/494”

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