First I installed the prerequisites: freetds and the python headers:

aptitude install python2.5-dev freetds-dev

There might be some other packages that are needed but that was the only ones I needed to install…. Then I decompressed the latest release from pymssql at sourceforge and installed:

NOTE : for me the latest package did not work so I used pymssql-0.8.0

tar -xvzf pymssql-0.8.0.tar.gz
cd pymssql-0.8.0
python setup.py install

Now you can test it out by creating your own test script and it is as follows :

import pymssql
conn = pymssql.connect(host='<hostname>', user='<username>', password='<passwd>', database='<dbname>')
cur = conn.cursor()
cur.execute('SELECT * FROM tbABCD')
row = cur.fetchone()
while row:
 print "ID=%s, Name=%s, Address=%s" % (row[0], row[1], row[2])
 row = cur.fetchone()
conn.close()

The script ran perfectly…
For more information on pymssql you can view its documentation here…

lshw -html > sysinfo.html

You may need to install it first… For Debian and Ubuntu users installation is simple..

sudo aptitude install lshw

You can find the detailed information about lshw from the following page: http://www.ezix.org/project/wiki/HardwareLiSter

First, install the curl package:

sudo apt-get install curl

Next, create a script anywhere in your $PATH, for example tweet.sh inside ~/bin, where ~ is your home directory (make sure ~/bin is included in your $PATH variable, in case echo $PATH doesn’t return it, edit ~/.bashrc and add a line like this: export PATH=/home/USER/bin/:$PATH)…

The script tweet.sh should contain the following:

#!/bin/sh

############EDIT THE FOLLOWING LINES...###########################
user="USERNAME"
pass="PASSWORD"
##################################################################

######################DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS######################
tweet="${@}"

if [ $(echo "${tweet}" | wc -c) -gt 140 ]; then
    echo "FATAL: The tweet is longer than 140 characters!"
    exit 1
fi

curl -k -u ${user}:${pass} -d status="${tweet}" https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml >/dev/null 2>&1

if [ "$?" == "0" ]; then
    echo "Successful tweet!"
fi

Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with your Twitter username and password, and then make the script executable:

chmod 755 ~/bin/tweet.sh

And now test it.. Just use it as :

tweet.sh YOUR MESSAGE

This should be all…

If you don’t want to copy paste the code for tweet.sh then use the following link to download tweet.txt and RENAME it as tweet.sh

Got a chance to play around with it on Ubuntu yesterday night… It is not as noticeably faster than Firefox…. But it is significantly better at managing large amounts (20+) of tabs than Firefox.. Chrome is the first mainstream Webkit Browser for Linux.  Most people won’t have used Konqueror as Firefox is the most popular browser on Linux. Overall, it is a great foundation for an excellent browser future.  It is in my top 3 with Safari and Firefox.

Chrome for Mac/Linux beta is a free download, works with Intel Macs running Leopard or Snow Leopard or Linux PCs.

Apple let Snow Leopard out of its cage earlier this autumn, and Canonical will release another beast this week: Karmic Koala, otherwise known as the open-source operating system Ubuntu 9.10. This comes on the heels of Microsoft’s launch of Windows 7, a major update of Vista. So, there are a lot of reasons for us to be excited.

Since I use Mac OS X (dual boot with Xubuntu) on Macbook Pro, Ubuntu on my main workstation, and Windows XP on some of our computers used for our family business, I’m looking forward to these consecutive “big-time” updates. However, I still haven’t made up my mind if I’ll immediately upgrade to the new versions. But I did a little research and collected some important information so that I could somehow find out early on if the upgrades will be worth it.

For all of you, I’m going to highlight the main features of Ubuntu 9.10, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, and Windows 7. I will also share my quick observation later on.

Read the complete story

What’s new in this Release

There’s some juicy stuff in this upgrade and here’s some of what you’ll find:

• Gnome 2.28
• Upstart (faster booting)
• Empathy IM (replaces Pidgin) It has the built in facility to have voice chat with google talk users.
• New login manager
• Quickly (easier application development)
• Ubuntu One (cloud-based sharing and storage)
• Linux Kernel 2.6.31
• Changes to power management
• New Intel video driver architecture
• Ext4 file system default
• Grub 2 default

When I booted into my Ubuntu Linux 9.10 desktop, I heard the Ubuntu theme play. So sound worked fine right from the start. No need to fiddle with any settings to get it working. Ditto with networking.

The new Ubuntu Software Center has an excellent selection of software. Even if you feel that your computing needs are fine with the default software included with Ubuntu 9.10, it’s still worth browsing around the Software Center to check out some additional stuff.

The new desktop sports the typical Ubuntu browns and oranges and, for the most part, looks the same as previous releases (aside from the wallpaper and the addition of a new set of icons with a pop-down menu:

I like this new option and think it adds some uniqueness to the panel with the quick and easy dropdown access to messaging options. One advantage that Empathy has over Pidgin is it’s clean integration with the panel. For instance, you’ll notice that once you sign in to an account within Empathy, you can adjust your status and settings from the user menu in the Ubuntu panel

The new Human theme and Humanity icons are still brown, but look fantastic. The Dust theme, as well as a few nice wallpapers are installed by default.

Pro’s

What are the best new changes to this release?

• Faster boot times.
• Improved visual appeal and cleaner/crisper artwork.
• Integration of Empathy (hardcore Pidgin fans will argue this point but I like it).
• Drop down messaging addition.
• New “Computer Janitor” option in the administration panel that allows for cleaning up of old leftover files.
• Improved Add/Remove programs look and feel.

Con’s

• Integration of Ubuntu One which, in comparison to Dropbox (a similar cloud storage service) is quite poor and not well integrated or very user friendly.
• This release will be less appealing for those who like the console as with every release, Ubuntu gets more and more gui dependent.

Conclusion Ubuntu Linux 9.10 is well worth upgrading to if you’re running an earlier version of Ubuntu. I look forward to seeing the various remastered versions of Ubuntu switch to it.

After installing Ubuntu 9.10 have a look at this post : Top things to do after installing Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Karmic Koala

Bucking the historical trend of comparing desktop Linux with Windows, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth recently told journalist Bruce Byfield that he was looking to Mac OS X as the operating system to beat for future Ubuntu releases — particularly in the areas of usability and user experience.  Now that Ubuntu 9.04 is out, how does it compare to Apple’s latest offering?

The “overall usability” of an operating system is hard to assess because it is so nebulous, but by breaking down the subject into a handful of distinct areas, we can measure Ubuntu’s present status in more meaningful terms.

Read Full Story from here

Installation

First we will add launchpad repository to get latest binary for ubuntu :

Add these lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list :

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

For Jaunty(9.04) Users

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

For Intrepid(8.10) users

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

For Hardy(7.04) users

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Finally, you need to update the source list using the following command

sudo apt-get update

Install the required packages and empathy via this command :

sudo apt-get install empathy telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control telepathy-stream-engine telepathy-butterfly python-msn

SetUp Empathy

Start Empathy by going Applications –> Internet –> Empathy Instant Messenger or empathy command

Use your google talk account here and click Advanced and be sure server is talk.google.com , port 5223, and use old ssl is checked.

Installing and configuring Tomcat on Ubuntu is very easy.

Before starting you need the Java Development Kit (JDK) and not Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Download it from http://java.sun.com as a .bin file and install it on your system or use the command line:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

1. Download and install the Tomcat packages (run in terminal):

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-jk libservlet2.4-java libtomcat5.5-java tomcat5.5 tomcat5.5-admin tomcat5.5-webapps

2. Open the .bashrc file (run in terminal):

sudo gedit ~/.bashrc

3. Add the following line in the opened file:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

save and close the file.

4. Now make the Logs directory writeable (run in terminal):

sudo chmod -R 777 /var/lib/tomcat5.5/logs

5. To make Tomcat automatically start when we boot up the computer, you can add a script to make it auto-start and shutdown.

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/tomcat

Now paste in the following:

# Tomcat auto-start
# description: Auto-starts tomcat
# processname: tomcat
# pidfile: /var/run/tomcat.pid

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

case $1 in
start)
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
;;
stop)
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
;;
restart)
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
;;
esac
exit 0

You’ll need to make the script executable by running the chmod command:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tomcat

The last step is actually linking this script to the startup folders with a symbolic link. Run the following commands and we are ready.

sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/tomcat /etc/rc1.d/K99tomcat

sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/tomcat /etc/rc2.d/S99tomcat

6. To start the tomcat, run the following command:

sh /usr/share/tomcat5.5/bin/startup.sh

7. You can test to see if it’s working, point your browser at:

http://localhost:8180/

A word of precaution: It’s better to avoid running Tomcat as root.
There are many other setting within Tomcat, I think the user should better try them out themselves. Some are:
1) Making Tomcat to run on port 80.
2) Turning off Directory Listings like Index Manager.
3) Check out the Tomcat configuration file and try out something of your own. Only precaution required is that you should not be logged in as root

Cheers

For this tutorial, I’m going to be showing you how to install LAMP on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), but the process is very similar for other Linux distributions too.

All the stuff you need is pre-loaded into Ubuntu’s software repositories, and it’s really simple to install everything you need. If you’re doing a new install, you may want to take a look at the server edition of Ubuntu as it allows for a pre-configured profile that you can pick at install time.

You need to install the following packages:

• apache2
• php5-mysql
• libapache2-mod-php5
• mysql-server

Apache

Install Apache

Testing HTTP Server by open a web browser and enter http://localhost

PHP

Install PHP5

Stop/Restart Apache

Test the installation

Insert this following line into testphp.php file.

Save this new file.
Open a web browser and enter http://localhost/testphp.php
Be sure to remove the file afterwards, as it may pose a security risk.

MySQL

Install MySQL Server

MySQL initially only allows connections from the localhost (127.0.0.1). We’ll need to remove that restriction if you wish to make it accessible to everyone on the internet. Open the file /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Find the line bind-address = 127.0.0.1 and comment it out then save the file.
MySQL comes with no root password as default. This is a huge security risk. You’ll need to set one. So that the local computer gets root access as well, you’ll need to set a password for that too. The local-machine-name is the name of the computer you’re working on.

MySQL Administrator

Install MySQL Administrator

Refresh Gnome Panel

Run MySQL Administrator
Applications -> System Tools -> MySQL Administrator

MySQL for Apache HTTP Server

To get PHP to work with MySQL, open the php.ini file

You’ll need to uncomment the “;extension=mysql.so” line so that it looks like this

Restart Apache

That’s pretty much all the configuration you need to do, so you can now grab any web applications you want and install them.

Cheers