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How to: Compile packages on Debian/Ubuntu by hand

In some very rare situations you may find yourself in the need to recompile a Debian (or Ubuntu) package. Luckily for all of use, the great Debian packaging system makes this a piece of cake.

Let’s say we want to recompile mod_python for apache 2 to hook in to python 2.5, instead of the default 2.4.

First, get every thing installed you may need to build the libapache2-mod-python package.

$ apt-get build-dep libapache2-mod-python

Okay, next let’s grab the source for the package. The source will be unpacked to your current working directory, so it may be a good idea to create a seperate directory for this.

$ mkdir src
$ cd src
$ apt-get source libapache2-mod-python

In the case of this example, you don’t need to do anything special to get python 2.5 linked. Just install the python2.5 and python2.5-dev packages.

If you need to apply patches to the source or need to make any other modifications, this is the time!

Okay, now go to the source directory and build the package. This is the tricky command here:

$ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b

This will build the package. You will get some warnings and errors about missing GPG keys. This is okay. You are not the package maintainer, so your packages should not be marked as ‘original’.

You’re now ready to install your compiled package.

dpkg -i ../libapache2-mod-python-3.3.1-3-i386.deb

That’s all! You compiled and installed a package from source!

Rails production server setup and deployment on Ubuntu/Debian

Please digg this story to spread the word! Thanks!

Okay, this is a big one! This article will show you (and explain to you) how to setup a Ruby on Rails production server with Ubuntu 7.04 or Debian 4.0 and how to deploy your Rails application there.

First, what’s getting installed:

• Ruby 1.8.5
• Ruby on Rails 1.2.3
• Subversion 1.4
• MySQL 5.x Server
• Apache 2.2.x
• Mongrel Cluster

I assume that you have just installed a fresh system with Ubuntu Linux 7.04 or Debian 4.0. If you haven’t, do so now! You don’t need to install the “DNS” or “LAMP” server in Ubuntu. Just a minimal system is enough for this tutorial.

I’ll be deploy an imaginary Rails application named “myapp” which uses MySQL and is stored in Subversion. More on that later on.

Well, let’s get going and get that Ruby on Rails server ready.
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Coming up: Ubuntu Development Server Guide

My articles about setting up a Ubuntu Development Server (part 1 and part 2) have been very successful.

I’m considering writing a new guide with more up-to-date information on how to setup a development server that allows you (and your team) to develop software, manage source code, track tickets and all that stuff.

What should, according to you, be included in this guide? Please let me know! Just leave a comment and I’ll pick it up.

Thank you for your input!

Update: Estimated release of the “Ubuntu Develpment Server Guide is mid july

Trac, WebAdmin plugin and global configuration

As you may know I manage quite a few trac installations. A few days ago I upgrade my server from Ubuntu “Dapper Drake” 6.06 to Ubuntu “Feisty Fawn” 7.04. This also upgrade trac 0.9.x to 0.10.3.

I was happy, since trac 0.10.3 has many improvements over 0.9.x, but there was one thing I was not so happy about. After the upgrade, I upgraded all my trac installations and everything seemed to be okay, except for the WebAdmin plugin. Apparently it was not installed anymore.

What happened? After upgrading the trac package, the plugins directory was emptied. Well, just re-install the WebAdmin plugin for 0.10.x.
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Slow connections with ProFTPD

My shiny new VPS, which is running Ubuntu Linux, uses ProFTPD for FTP access. Today I noticed that setting up the connection takes about 5 to 10 seconds. This is really annoying when editing files through FTP.

So, I investigated and found that by default ProFTPD tries to revolve the hostname of the client in order to put that in the logs instead of a plain IP address. This lookup can take quite some time, let’s say 5 to 10 seconds, especially when the look up fails and you have to wait on a time-out.

It’s easy to stop ProFTPD from behaving like this by adding the following line to your proftpd.conf in /etc/proftpd:

IdentLookups off

Restart ProFTPD and you’ll have a fast FTP connection to enjoy!

How to setup a Ubuntu development server - Part 2

Also read Part 1 - Subversion.

In this part I will tell you how to install Trac on top of your Subversion repositories on your Ubuntu development server. Trac offers you a wiki, roadmap, tickets (tracking system) and access to your SubVersion repository. All of this is bundeled in a very sexy web interface.

Well, let’s get to work now and get Trac installed. When you’re done you will have trac available for all your Subversion repositories.
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How to setup a Ubuntu development server - Part 1

Since I’m starting some real work on my final school project, I want to install a Ubuntu development server here at home. I have a Pentium 4 box here that will perform that task.

In this first part I will show you how to install Subversion over WebDAV. All of this will be done in such a way that it’s easy to serve multiple projects at once.

In future parts I will tell you more about installing Trac, FastCGI (with Apache) to host Rails applications and how to use Capistrano to deploy your app properly.

For now, let’s get cracking at Subversion.
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Ubuntu 6.10 Live DVD on the Apple MacBook

Since I teach various Linux courses at Fontys Centrum IT, I want to run a live CD or DVD on my MacBook. First off, here are my specs:

• Apple MacBook (White)
• Intel Core Duo 2.0Ghz
• 1.0Gb RAM
• 13.3″ 1280×800 TFT
• 60 Gb Internal Harddisk
• 300 Gb External FireWire harddisk

As my Live medium I chose the Ubuntu Linux 6.10 Live DVD. This DVD has several nice options (install server, for example) that I like. It also can boot up in a live desktop environment.
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CUPS: 426 - Upgrade Required

As I was installing my printer on my Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper LTS server with CUPS I noticed the following error:

426 Upgrade Required

After some research I came to the conclusion that CUPS, by default, tries to use SSL whenever possible. So, with this 426 error, you are redirected to the SSL domain. Chances are, you haven’t configured SSL properly, if at all.

In my case, I didn’t want to configure SSL. To get rid of this problem, the key lies in editing your configuration files ( /etc/cups/cupsd.conf ) and adding the following line:

DefaultEncryption Never

There are several options, Never, IfRequired and Required. By setting this to Never, SSL will never be enforced. Just restart your CUPS server with

$ /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

and you’re good to go.
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