Step-by-Step: Installing Django

Josh VanderLinden

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Being the Django and Python zealot that I am, I often find myself trying to convert those around me to this awesome development paradigm. Once I break them, these people often ask me a lot of questions about Django. Over the past few months I've noticed that one of the biggest sticking points for people who are new to Django is actually getting it up and running to begin with. In response, this is the first in a series of articles dedicated to getting Django up and running.

What is Django?

The Django Web site describes Django as "a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design." Basically, Django is just about the most amazing thing for Web development. I have tinkered with several different Web technologies, but nothing seems to even come close to what Django can do for me.

What is Python?

Python is a programming language used in numerous aspects of computing these days. It has a very simple yet powerful syntax. It's an easy language for beginners to pick up, but it provides adequate levels of power for the more experienced developers out there. If you have never programmed anything before, or you have dabbled with something like BASIC, Python should be fairly straightforward. If you are a programming veteran, but have only worked with languages like C, C++, Java, etc, you might struggle a bit with the syntax of the language. It's not difficult to overcome the differences in a couple hours of hands-on development.

Let's get started.

Installing Python...

Having Python installed is critical--Django does not work without Python. I'm guessing that you're relatively familiar with the procedures for installing software packages on your particular operating system. However, I will share a few notes to point you in the proper direction if you're lost. If nothing else, just head over to the Python download page to download anything you need to install Python. I whole-heartedly recommend using the latest stable version of Python for Django, but you should be able to get by with as early a version as 2.3.

...On Windows

Simply grab the latest version of the Python installer. It is currently version 2.5.2. Once the installer has downloaded successfully, just run through the installation wizard like any other setup program.

...On Mac OS X

Recent Mac OS X computers come with Python pre-installed. To determine whether or not you actually have it, launch the Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and type python -c "import sys; print sys.version". If Python is already installed, you will see the version you have installed. If you have a version that is less than 2.3, you should download the newest version. If you don't have Python installed, you will get a "command not found" error. If you're in this boat, just download the latest version of the Python Universal installer and install it.

...On Linux

Most Linux distributions also have Python pre-installed. Just like with Mac OS X, you can check to see by opening up a terminal/konsole session and running the command python -c "import sys; print sys.version". If you have Python installed, you will see its version. If you get an error message when running that command, or you have a version earlier than 2.3, you need to download and install the latest version of Python.

If you're running a Debian-based distribution (like Ubuntu, sidux, MEPIS, KNOPPIX, etc), you can probably use sudo apt-get install python to get Python. If you're running an RPM-based Distribution, you can probably use something like Yum or YaST to install Python.

A sure-fire way to install Python on any Linux system, however, is to install from source. If you need to do this, you simply:

  1. download the source for the latest version of Python
  2. extract it: tar jxf Python-2.5.2.tar.bz2
  3. go into the newly-extracted directory: cd python-2.5.2
  4. configure it: ./configure
  5. compile it: make
  6. install it: make install

(I've only installed Python from source one time, so I might be wrong)

Setting Up Your PYTHONPATH...

Generally speaking, if you didn't have Python installed before starting this tutorial, you will need to setup your PYTHONPATH environment variable. This is a variable that lets Python know where to find useful things (like Django).

...On Windows

  • Open up your System Properties (Win+Break or right click on "My Computer" on your desktop and select Properties)
  • Go to the "Advanced" tab
  • Click the "Environment Variables" button
  • If you have permission to change system variables, click the "New" button in the bottom pane. Otherwise, create the PYTHONPATH variable for your user account using the "New" button in the top (User variables for [username]) pane.
  • Set the variable name to PYTHONPATH
  • Set the variable value to C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages (replace C:\Python25\ with whatever it is on your system if needed)
  • Save it

You may also need to add the python executable to your PATH. If you can successfully run python from a command prompt window, you don't need to worry about it.

If you can't run python from a command prompt, follow the procedure above, but use the PATH variable instead of PYTHONPATH. PATH most likely already exists, so you just need to append/prepend the existing value with something like C:\Python25\ (again, this might need to change depending on where you installed Python)

...On Mac OS X

Your PYTHONPATH should already be setup for you.

...On Linux

Usually you just need to edit your ~/.bash_rc script to setup your PYTHONPATH environment variable. Go ahead and open that up in your preferred text editor and make sure there's something in it like:

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages:$PYTHONPATH

Save any changes necessary and run the following command:

source ~/.bash_rc

This will take care of updating your current session with any changes you made to your ~/.bash_rc.

Installing Django

Once you have Python and have verified that you have version 2.3 or later, you are ready to install Django. Currently, the latest stable release is 0.96.1, but this is grossly out-dated. Django 1.0 will be released on September 2nd 2008, so the "unstable" copy of Django is pretty close to what 1.0 will have to offer. There are some incredibly useful improvements in the unstable version that I don't think I could do without anymore, so that's what I'll talk about installing here.

First, you need to have a subversion client. On Windows, the most popular one is called TortoiseSVN. On Mac OS X, I have played with a few, but I think Versions is a pretty decent one. Linux also has several to choose from, but if you're using Linux, you're probably going to use the command line anyway (right?).

For brevity, I will just use the subversion commands necessary to accomplish this task (instead of discussing all GUI interfaces to subversion).

The exact location that Django should be installed differs from system to system, but here are some guidelines for typical setups:

  • Windows: C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages
  • Linux: /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages
  • Mac OS X: /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages

If you want a definite location, run the following command:

python -c "from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib; print get_python_lib()"

Once you know that location, go there in your command prompt or terminal session. Then execute this command svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/django django. You will see loads of output, showing all of the files that you are downloading as you install Django.

As soon as that process completes, you should run python -c "import django" to make sure everything worked properly. If the command doesn't display an ImportError, you're good. Otherwise, you need to try again.

Getting Access to Django Scripts...

Once you can successfully import django, you might want to make sure you can run the django-admin.py script that comes with Django.

...On Windows

This process is very similar to what we did with the PYTHONPATH environment variable earlier.

  • Open your System Properties again
  • Go to the Advanced tab
  • Click the Environment Variables button
  • Find your PATH environment variable (either for your user or system-wide)
  • Make sure that the variable value contains something like C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\django\bin
  • Save any changes
  • Open a fresh command prompt
  • Try to run django-admin.py. If you're successful, you're ready to get started with Django. Otherwise, you need to fix your path to django/bin or just call the django-admin.py script using an absolute path when needed.

...On Mac OS X

You can run a command similar to this:

sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/bin/django-admin.py /usr/local/bin

...On Linux

If you have "root" privileges on your Linux system, you can execute a command like:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/bin/django-admin.py /usr/local/bin

If you don't have "root" privileges, you can setup your own /usr/local/bin:

mkdir ~/bin

Make sure your ~/.bash_rc contains something like:

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

Then update your current session with any changes you made to ~/.bash_rc by running this command:

source ~/.bash_rc

And that should do it! Now you should be ready to get started with Django.

Feel free to leave a comment if you're having problems installing Django. Good luck!

Check out Installing Django on Shared Hosting.

How To Compile and Install a 2.6.x Series Linux Kernel

Josh VanderLinden

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The Linux kernel is the core component in any Linux distribution. Without a kernel, your computer would be essentially useless. It is the piece of software which allows interaction between you, your computer's applications, and your computer's hardware. With such a powerful role in your computing experience, it is important to keep your kernel up-to-date. Each new release provides more hardware support and many performance enhancements. It is also important to keep your kernel up-to-date for security purposes.

Let's upgrade our Linux kernels together. I will walk you through each of the steps I take, from beginning to end, to upgrade my kernel. Just as a warning, I prefer to do the whole process on the command line, so you might want to pull up a terminal, konsole, xterm or whatever you prefer to use for your command line operations.

First you need to download the kernel source code. Many Linux distributions provide specialized editions of the Linux kernel. Typically, you don't want to manually compile and install a custom kernel for these distributions. This does not mean that you can't, it simply means that you might be better off using the "official" kernels for your distribution, which can usually be obtained through your distribution's package manager. You can get the official, 100% free, and complete Linux kernel source code from http://www.kernel.org/. Look for "The latest stable version of the Linux kernel is:" and click the link on the F on the same line. Currently, the latest stable version is 2.6.20, and that's what I'll be using for this tutorial. Please note that commands which begin with a dollar sign ($) are executed as a regular user and commands beginning with a pound sign (#) are executed as a superuser.

$ cd /home/user/download
$ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.20.tar.bz2

Now login as the superuser, and navigate to the /usr/src directory. Then extract the kernel source into that directory.

$ su -
# cd /usr/src
# tar jxf /home/user/download/linux-2.6.20.tar.bz2

You probably already have a symlink or shortcut called linux which points to your most recent kernel. If you do, delete the link and create another link to the new source tree. Then go into your kernel source tree.

# rm /usr/src/linux
# ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.6.20 /usr/src/linux
# cd /usr/src/linux

I like to identify each compile of my kernel uniquely, to make sure that I'm using the right one. To do that, you have to modify your Makefile

# vi Makefile

You will see the following lines, or something similar, at the very top of the file:

VERSION = 2
PATCHLEVEL = 6
SUBLEVEL = 20
EXTRAVERSION =
NAME = Homicidal Dwarf Hamster

Change the EXTRAVERSION property to something you want to use to identify this kernel. I will use -jcv1

EXTRAVERSION = -jcv1

The rest of the Makefile should be fine. In fact, I discourage editing Makefiles unless you know what you're doing. This next step is totally optional, but I like to do it to save some time. You can copy your existing kernel's configuration file in order to have a very similar kernel configuration. My previous kernel version was 2.6.19.1, so this is the command I use:

# cp /usr/src/linux-2.6.19.1/.config /usr/src/linux/

Then I run make oldconfig or make silentoldconfig to update my older kernel configuration file to be able to handle newer features. If you use oldconfig you are required to specify whether or not you want the new features included in your kernel, whereas silentoldconfig will use the defaults determined by kernel developers (they usually know best), asking for minimal input. Let's update our configuration file and then customize it by running make menuconfig (there are several options here, such as make xconfig and make gconfig, but I prefer the text-based menuconfig; there is another you can run by using make config, which runs through each and every option available--it's scary).

# make silentoldconfig
# make menuconfig

menuconfig is a graphical command line application which lets you navigate the features offered by the kernel. Each computer is considerably different from the next, so it really does no good to provide a list of things that I tweak. However, it is important to note what some of the symbols are in the menuconfig utility:

  • M = Module. Modules are loaded when they are required and can contribute to the speed of your system
  • * = built into the kernel. These are typically things which are necessary for your machine to function properly, such as support for your root file system.
  • X = exclusively selected. You'll see this when you select what type of processor you have, for example.

One thing to note before we go further is MAKE SURE YOU KERNEL HAS BUILT-IN SUPPORT FOR YOUR ROOT FILE SYSTEM!!!! My root file system is reiserfs. In my configuration, I made sure that reiserfs was marked with a star. If you don't do this, your kernel won't boot and you will be very frustrated. Trust me.

Your computer is probably quite different than mine, so you might want to just poke around and see if you recognize things that deal with your computer's hardware. Once you are done tweaking your kernel configuration, exit the configuration utility and make sure the configuration is stored in /usr/src/linux/.config

Next we get to build and install the kernel. After that, we have to add an entry to our boot manager so that we can try out our new kernel. The compilation part usually takes just about a half hour on my 2.2Ghz Turion64 processor with 1.25GB of RAM. It takes about 6 hours on my 300Mhz Pentium 2 with 32MB of RAM. Let's find out how long it takes for you to compile your kernel!

# time make
...
real    27m29.663s
user    23m34.476s
sys     2m56.575s

Now let's install the modules and install the appropriate files in the boot area:

# make modules_install
# make install

This is the part that always used to mess me up. I use Slackware Linux, which is more UNIX-ish than most distributions. It's actually the oldest surviving Linux distribution to date, but that's another story. For some reason, the make install command doesn't always work with Slackware. There is a process I use to setup my boot directory when I compile a new kernel. I wrote a simple shell script called fixkernelinstall to take care of it for me:

#!/bin/bash
# Configure my computer for a new kernel
# Author: Josh VanderLinden
# Assisted By: Dan Purcell

# if the user didn't supply a kernel number, ask for it
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    echo -n "Kernel: "
    read kernel
else
    kernel=$1
fi

# determine root partition
echo "Determining root partition..."
rootpart=`mount -l | grep ' / ' | cut -f 1 -d\ `
echo "Root partition is $rootpart"

# copy kernel configuration file
cp /usr/src/linux/.config ./config-$kernel

# now rename everything
echo "Renaming files..."
mv System.map System.map-$kernel
mv vmlinuz vmlinuz-$kernel

# if the config file exists and it's a symlink, remove it
if [ -f 'config' -a `stat config | grep -c 'symbolic link'` = '1' ]; then
    echo "Removing link to configuration file"
    rm config
else
    # otherwise it might be important
    echo "Renaming configuration file"
    mv config config.bak
fi

# Link files
echo "Creating symlinks..."
ln -s System.map-$kernel System.map
ln -s config-$kernel config
ln -s vmlinuz-$kernel vmlinuz

# Update lilo
echo "Adding entry to /etc/lilo.conf for $kernel"
echo "image = /boot/vmlinuz-$kernel" >> /etc/lilo.conf
echo "  root = $rootpart" >> /etc/lilo.conf
echo "  label = $kernel" >> /etc/lilo.conf
echo "  read-only" >> /etc/lilo.conf
echo "Linux kernel $kernel has been configured."
echo "Please check your lilo configuration and run lilo before rebooting"

I'm not an expert on shell scripts, so please feel free to offer suggestions for doing things better if you know how. This script uses the kernel version (given by the user) to setup by /boot directory properly. In my case, I run the script as such

# cd /boot
# fixkernelinstall 2.6.20-jcv1

And the output is something like:

Determining root partition...
Root partition is /dev/hda5
Renaming files...
Renaming configuration file
Creating symlinks...
Adding entry to /etc/lilo.conf for 2.6.20-jcv1
Linux kernel 2.6.20-jcv1 has been configured.
Please check your lilo configuration and run lilo before rebooting

As you can see from the script, I use LILO instead of the arguably more popular GRUB. Either one works for me, but LILO is sufficient for my needs. If you want to use the same kind of script for a GRUB installation, just change the LILO part at the end to something like:

echo 'Adding entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst for $kernel'
echo '  title Linux on ($rootpart)' >> /boot/grub/menu.lst
echo '  root (hd0,4)' >> /boot/grub/menu.lst
echo '  kernel /boot/vmlinuz-$kernel root=$rootpart ro vga=normal' >> /boot/grub/menu.lst

Make sure you change the line with root (hd0,4) to fit your setup. With GRUB, you don't have to worry about applying changes to see the menu entry at boot. It's automatically there. With LILO, however, you have to actually apply changes each time you make them. You do this by running the lilo command as the superuser:

# lilo
Added Windows
Added Linux
Added 2.6.20-jcv1 *

The star (*) signifies the default kernel to boot. Make sure that your root partition is correctly specified in your boot loader configuration. My root partition is on /dev/hda5, but yours may be (and probably is) on a different partition. If you fail to specify the correct root partition, your system will not boot that kernel until the configuration is fixed. GRUB makes this a lot easier than LILO.

And this is the point when you start to cross your figures and hope that your computer doesn't blow up... We get to reboot our computer and hope that our configuration file plays well with our computer. So, let's do that! See you in a few minutes (hopefully).

# shutdown -r now

So here I am, back on Linux on my freshly-rolled kernel. I hope you are as successful as I have been this time around. Keep in mind that you have to reinstall custom kernel modules if you installed others while you were on your other kernel. For example, I use ndiswrapper to access wireless Internet. I have to recompile and reinstall the ndiswrapper module and device drivers before I can use wireless. Likewise, I have VMWare Server on my laptop, which installed special modules. I have to run vmware-config.pl to reconfigure VMWare Server for my new kernel before I can run any virtual machines.

To summarize, here are the commands that I used in this tutorial. Remember that lines beginning with a dollar sign ($) are executed as a non-privileged user, while lines beginning with the pound sign (#) are executed as the superuser (root).

$ cd /home/user/download
$ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.20.tar.bz2
$ su -
# cd /usr/src
# tar jxf /home/user/download/linux-2.6.20.tar.bz2
# rm /usr/src/linux
# ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.6.20 /usr/src/linux
# cd /usr/src/linux
# make clean
# vi Makefile (to change EXTRAVERSION to -jcv1)
# cp ../linux-2.6.19.1/.config .
# make silentoldconfig
# make menuconfig (just to ensure settings were good)
# time make
# make modules_install
# make install
# cd /boot
# fixkernelinstall 2.6.20-jcv1
# vi /etc/lilo.conf (to make sure things were good)
# lilo
# shutdown -r now

I hope that you are able to use this tutorial to successfully install or upgrade your kernel. Good luck! Any comments or suggestions are welcome!

MySQL on Slackware

Josh VanderLinden

Comments

Many of us who have installed Slackware on our machines in the past few years have noticed something annoying on the first boot: the MySQL service fails to start!!

In response to this, I would like to offer this simple tutorial. Right now I am doing this blindly, meaning I don't have a fresh install to work with. Please bear with me if you notice some errors in the tutorial, and please tell me about them!

  1. Log in as root: # su -
  2. Make sure the mysql package is installed. You can do this by running pkgtool and selecting the view option. Hit n and it will take you to the packages in the list that begin with n. MySQL should be right above the n packages. If you don't have mysql already installed, you can download it from http://www.linuxpackages.net/ or wherever you'd like. Once you have a copy of it, install it by using the installpkg mysql......tgz command
  3. Setup the databases: # mysql_install_db
  4. Apply the proper permissions: # chown -R mysql.mysql /var/lib/mysql
  5. Start the database: # mysqld_safe &
  6. Setup the root user:
# mysqladmin -u root password 'newpassword'
# mysqladmin -p -u root -h localhost password 'newpassword'

Finally, test your installation:

# mysql -p

That should do it! Please comment if you notice any errors with this posting.

Wireless Networking With SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

Josh VanderLinden

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Note: This tutorial is a continuation of yesterday's tutorial about installing SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on my HP Pavilion dv8000. I may or may not refer to steps that I took during installation, so if you are confused, you might want to check out the previous article.

The process of installing and enabling a wireless adapter will vary greatly from machine to machine. Some lucky folks have wireless adapters that come with official Linux drivers. For the rest of us, we usually have a Broadcom-compatible adapter. In order to use a Broadcom device, I use a program called ndiswrapper, which basically takes the drivers for the devices to function with Windows and wraps them in such a manner that Linux can use. Since I have the 64-bit version of SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10, I need to get a 64-bit driver in order for my wireless to function properly. These 64-bit drivers took me a while to get ahold of the first time I got my wireless working (on SuSE Linux 10.1), but I still have them in my archives, so I should be fully prepared to get my wireless working. In this article I assume that you are going to use ndiswrapper to install drivers for a Broadcom device. So let's get started.

Install Ndiswrapper

First, make sure that you have ndiswrapper installed on your system. You can install it by entering YaST. In KDE, click the K menu (the little green chameleon in the bottom left), go to System > YaST (Administrator Settings). You will be asked to enter the root password, which you set during installation. Once you've done that, you will see the YaST Control Center, which is a very powerful set of tools and utilities that greatly ease the configuration and management of SLED. Click on the Software category on the left to show a list of software management options (if it's not already displayed). Click on the Software Management module.

Once loaded, you will see an interface which is very similar to what you would see during the expert package selection while installing SLED. Make sure your Filter (in the top left) is set to Search, and enter ndiswrapper in the search box. The search will return a few different results for ndiswrapper. The first result, ndiswrapper by itself, should be sufficient for most of us. When you check the box by ndiswrapper, you will see a warning informing you that ndiswrapper-based network are not officially supported by Novell. Just click OK to dismiss this warning.

Now you should be ready to install ndiswrapper. Click the Accept button in the bottom right. You will be asked to confirm the installation of ndiswrapper; click Continue. If your installation media is not still inserted, YaST will request the disc which contains the ndiswrapper packages. Insert the disc and click OK. In my case, two packages were installed. It may or may not differ for you.

As soon as the packages are done installing, your configuration settings are saved once again, and you will be asked if you want to install or remove more packages. Click No. At this point, ndiswrapper should be installed on your system, and you may dismiss the YaST Control Center.

Determine Your Wireless Adapter Make/Model

This step is absolutely necessary because if you install the wrong drivers, there is a chance (small as it may be) that your wireless adapter will be damaged. So let's ask Linux how our wireless adapter identifies itself. To do this, log into your SLED and open a Terminal or Konsole. On KDE, you can use the third button (a monitor with a black screen and > on it) on the menu panel at the bottom of the screen, or you can also click the "K" menu (same place as a regular start menu in Windows), go to System > Terminal > Konsole (Terminal Program). I am not exactly sure where this item is located with GNOME, but it might be under the System menu.

Once you have opened a terminal window of some sort, you must switch to a root user environment:

$ su -

You will then be asked for the root password, which you set during installation. Enter that password and type

# lspci

This command lists all of your PCI devices, according to the man pages, but you will see most if not all of your devices, PCI or otherwise, listed here. You'll notice that there is probably quite a list of devices. You may be interested in what your computer has in it, but since you're looking specifically for your wireless adapter, try one of the following commands

lspci | grep Broadcom
lspci | grep Wireless

The | after lspci will pipe the output of lspci to a useful and powerful program called grep. In this case, grep just looks for any lines that contain either the word Broadcom or Wireless. If you don't get any results from either of the two commands above, try to think of other keywords that might be used to identify a wireless adapter. My laptop returns the following:

# lspci | grep Broadcom
06:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1470 DualBand WLAN (rev 02)

When you find the wireless adapter, pay attention to the numbers in front of it (06:02.0 on my laptop). With those numbers, you can get the information you need to find the right drivers for your particular wireless adapter. Enter the following command, substituting my device numbers with yours:

# lspci -n | grep 06:02.0
06:02.0 Class 0280: 14e4:4319 (rev 02)

This command gives you the wireless adapter's numeric ID; mine is 14e4:4319.

Download Your Device Drivers

Now that you know your device's numeric ID, you can go to the ndiswrapper wiki, which has a list of numeric IDs and the drivers that are known to work with that device. Look for your wireless adapter on the list of devices. I would recommend using your browser's search or find on page function to locate your device by the numeric ID that you just found.

I'll leave the retrieval of your device drivers up to you.

Install The Wireless Drivers

Most device drivers will come in an archive of some sort. Mine came in a RAR file. Extract your drivers to the directory of your choice--maybe something like ~/wireless. You can use the archive utility provided by SLED to extract your files. It functions very similar to WinZip, WinRAR, and other popular archive clients. By the way, the ~ in a directory listing refers to the current user's home directory (/home/user, for example).

Now, go back to the root terminal that you used to determine what kind of adapter you have. Navigate to the directory where you extracted your drivers and list the contents of the directory, looking for any *.inf files:

# cd ~/wireless
# ls

Ndiswrapper will use an INF file to know how it is supposed to install the driver. My INF file is called bcmwl5.inf. Now for the actual installation of the drivers:

# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
Installing bcmwl5
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2

Now check to make sure that the driver is there and that it recognizes your hardware:

# ndiswrapper -l
Installed drivers:
nbcmwl5          driver installed

Ooops!!! It doesn't recognize that my hardware is actually there. If you see 'driver installed, hardware present' then you should be good to go. You may proceed to the next step. However, if you have the same problem as me, you either have the wrong drivers or ndiswrapper installed the drivers improperly. This problem took forever to track down when I was first trying to get my wireless to work. Remember the numeric ID that you found earlier? Check this out:

# cd /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5
# ls
14E4:4318.5.conf  bcmwl5.inf  bcmwl564.sys

Wait a second! Remember how my numeric ID was 14E4:4319? Why is there a listing for 14E4:4318.5? To solve this problem, I am just going to make a symlink (a shortcut) to 14E4:4318.5.conf and call it 14E4:4319.5.conf:

# ln -s 14E4:4318.5.conf 14E4:4319.5.conf

Now when I run the command to see if my hardware is recognized, I get this:

# ndiswrapper -l
Installed drivers:
bcmwl5          driver installed, hardware present

Hurray!! It says 'hardware present' in there!!! That means that the drivers are working and that my device can be used!

Enable Your Wireless Device

With ndiswrapper recognizing your wireless adapter, you can now enable it and start wirelessing your life away:

# modprobe ndiswrapper

There have been times when this particular step will lock up my machine and I have to do a hard reset, but most times it will work fine.

Connect to a Wireless Network

This part also gave me issues for a long time when I first installed my wireless drivers on SuSE Linux 10.1. I was able to connect to the wireless access points provided by my apartment complex, but I could not for the life of me connect to my own wireless router. Hopefully you don't encounter the same problem.

To see what access points you have available to you, check out the KNetworkManager applet in your system tray (next to the clock). I have 7 possible access points listed in the menu, including my encrypted router. When I clicked on my network, it asked me for my passphrase and connected immediately. Nice! That's definitely one plus for SLED over SuSE Linux 10.1!!

I am actually amazed at how easy it was to get my wireless working the second time around. Hopefully your wireless adapter installation was as painless as mine with the help of this guide.

Installing SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

Josh VanderLinden

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This will be the second time for me putting SLED 10 on my laptop, but I've also put SLES 10, SuSE Linux 10.1, and various others on this laptop several times before. It _has_ been a few months since I last installed Linux on this laptop, so we'll see how well I remember how to do it. I will be installing the 64-bit DVD version, so as to take better advantage of the 64-bit capabilities of my processor. This shouldn't have a drastic effect on the overall procedure, compared to that of installing the 32-bit CD/DVD version.

Here are some specs of my laptop:

  • Make/Model: HP Pavilion dv8000
  • CPU: AMD Turion 64 ML-40 (2.2Ghz)
  • RAM: 1.25GB PC2700 DDR333 SODIMM
  • HDD: 5400RPM 80GB
  • Video: ATI Radeon Xpress 200M (128MB dedicated RAM, up to an additional 128MB shared RAM)

Note: I make a few assumptions in the writing of this article. One is that you are on a machine running Windows XP. If your computer can't handle Windows XP, you probably don't want to be running SLED 10. Another assumption is that you don't yet have your hard drive partitioned into more than one partition. I also assume that you already have the installation media in good working condition. For those of you in the BYU-I Linux Users Group (LUG), I am willing to make copies of the discs if you provide the media or discuss some sort of compensation if you want me to provide the media.

BACKUP ALL IMPORTANT DATA BEFORE PROCEEDING

We all hate losing the projects that we've slaved over for weeks and months. Take the proper precautions to backup anything you wouldn't like to lose before installing any flavor of Linux. That's not to say that you will lose everything, but it's not unheard of to wipe out all data from your drive while attempting to install Linux. With that warning out of the way, let's get started!!!

Defragment Your Hard Drive

If you have a secondary drive which you plan to dedicate to Linux, this step is not necessary. However, if you plan to install Linux on the same drive as your Windows installation, I would suggest defragmenting your drive prior to repartitioning your drive. In order to defragment your hard drive in Windows XP, open your Start menu and open the Control Panel. Once here, descend into Administrative Tools and run Computer Management. This utility is quite handy. On the left side of the Computer Management window, you should see a tree of options. Under Storage you will see the Disk Defragmenter. Simply click the Defragment button, and the program will begin optimizing your files. Defragmenting your hard drive basically puts each of your files into one piece instead of scattered across the drive (as they tend to be written). Defragmentation is a good process to run on a regular basis. Once again, this step is not necessary to the installation of Linux, but it is a good practice.

Begin The Installation

Once you're done backing up your files and defragmenting your hard drive, insert the first SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 CD/DVD into your CD/DVD drive and reboot your computer. You should be presented with a fancy blue welcome screen, but if you see the Windows boot screen, you'll have to change the settings in your BIOS to enable you to boot from your CD/DVD drive. That process will vary from machine to machine, so I won't even try to explain how to do it. Once you see the welcome screen, you are presented with several boot options:

  • Boot from Hard Disk
  • Installation
  • Installation--ACPI Disabled
  • Installation--Local APIC Disabled
  • Installation--Safe Settings
  • Rescue System
  • Memory Test

We're going to go with the first Installation option. In my experience, starting with SuSE Linux 10.1, I haven't had any issues at all getting Linux installed. Most people shouldn't have problems booting into the installation program, but if you do, try the other Installation options. Once we begin the installation process, the bootloader will load the Linux kernel into memory and begin booting the SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop installation utility. It will probe several devices to make the installation usable, after which you are presented with a language selection menu. Choose the language of your preference. Next you will be asked to accept the License Agreement, which I would recommend reading (with any product, not just SLED). If you accept, check the "Yes, I Agree to the License Agreement" option box and hit "Next." If you don't accept the agreement, this is the end of the road--your installation process will end.

Once we accept the License Agreement, a few more devices are probed and we're asked what kind of installation we'll be doing. With the assumptions I've made for this tutorial, we will proceed with a New Installation. If you have the "extras" CD, you can check the "Include Add-On Products from Separate Media" checkbox. You'll then be asked to insert the disc so that a catalog of available applications can be made. However, I'll assume that we all just have the required media. Click "Next" to create a catalog of the software available.

Now we're presented with a Clock and Time Zone screen. Choose the appropriate options for your situation and click next.

Installation Settings

Once we have set our clock and time zone, we are shown an overview of the current installation settings. I personally prefer to see all of the details, so I am going to click on the Expert tab. I don't like the predefined partitioning scheme, so I am going to change that.

Partition Your Drive

Partitioning a hard drive basically allows you to split up that brand new 500GB SATA-II drive you bought into smaller "virtual hard drives." I like to partition my hard drive because it allows me to manage my files easier, and I don't have to worry about losing ALL of my data if one of the partitions needs to be reformatted. Each partition can have a different file system on it, which allows us to run a Windows file system (NTFS) and a linux file system (ext2/3 and reiserfs are the two main ones, at least for workstations) on the same physical hard drive.

This is the first time I will entrust all of the data on my hard drive to a Linux installation partitioning utility in a very long time. We're talking about 7 years... However, for the sake of others, I am willing to put it to the test to see if SuSE will not wipe my drive when I try to resize the Windows partition. I usually use a utility such as Partition Magic to resize and create new partitions.

To change my partitioning scheme, I click on the "Partitioning" subtitle on the Expert tab in the Installation Settings section. I want to base my partition setup on the default proposal, so I select the second option "Base Partition Setup on This Proposal" and hit next. This part could be a bit hairy if you've never partitioned a drive before. I want to be able to share files between Windows and Linux, so I am going to create a small ~20GB partition which I will format to be FAT32, a format readable and writable in both Windows and Linux.

First, I must resize my Linux partitions. I don't need my home partition to be 22GB, so I'm going to resize that one to be 5GB. To do that, I select the partition with /home listed as it's Mount point and click the "Resize" button at the bottom of the screen. The window that appears shows a graphical representation of the changes we make. All I need do is enter "5" into the "Space Free (GB)" box or move the slider to the right spot and click "OK". Now I'm left with 17GB to share between Windows and Linux. To create this new partition, I click on the "Create" button at the bottom.

The new partition window asks me what type of format I wish to have on the new partition--I want to select FAT. I want to have this partition listed in a place that makes sense to me, so I'm going to change the "Mount Point" field to /windows/share and click OK. I think I'm now satisfied with the partitioning scheme, so I click "Finish" to return back to the Installation Settings screen.

Partitioning Pointers

Let me share some pointers for partitioning schemes. Traditional Linux installations would ask for a partition twice as big as the amount of RAM you have in your machine. This is for the swap, which is synonymous with virtual memory in Windows lingo. That means that if you have 512MB of RAM, your swap partition should be at least 1024MB (1GB). Likewise, if you have 1GB of RAM, your swap partition should be at least 2048MB (2GB). In my opinion, the average Linux desktop does not require more than 512MB for a swap partition. I may be mistaken, but I think the "double your RAM" rule became somewhat obsolete for desktop workstations with the advent of 2Ghz+ processors with 1GB+ of RAM. It could just be me, but I've never even filled 256MB of swap. Just something to consider while partitioning your drive.

If you plan on experimenting with several distros of Linux without wiping other installations of Linux, I would recommend a partition dedicated to your /home folder. This way, you are able to keep your personal settings across most if not all distros. I've found it useful on countless occasions.

Software Selection

One thing I really like about SLED is the ease of package selection. Their default package selection will suit most people just fine. However, I have developed my own tastes for how I like my Linux, so I am going to customize the package selection a bit. To do that, I click on the "Software" heading in the Expert tab of Installation Settings.

I personally prefer KDE to GNOME as my window manager. So I am going to deselect GNOME from the Desktops category, but not so the "Do Not Enter" symbol shows up where there once was a check. I want to click the checkbox until I see a white box (no checkmark). I'm not sure if this is required, but usually different environments will require libraries from other environments in order for certain programs to run. I suspect that the Do Not Enter sign means that nothing for GNOME will be installed, but this is not fact--it's simply a notion of mine. Now I want to put a check in the checkbox next to KDE. Being a nerd, I want to have my compilers around, so I will also select that option.

According to the disk usage graphs in the bottom right of the screen, I'm only going to be installing about 1.9GB of software. That's interesting because I downloaded a whole DVD... If anyone wants to see what other software is available, you can click the Details button below the software category list. This might scare a few off, but it's all quite simple. If you want to see more categories to choose from, select "Package Groups" from the Filter list in the top left. This is where you can explore all of your software options available on your installation media. I am going to leave that sort of customization until after I'm all installed and running.

Once you're done selecting the packages you wish to have installed, click Accept from the bottom right. You will probably encounter a few more license agreements at this point. These are for non-open-source applications (Adobe Acrobat Reader, Macromedia Flash plug-in, etc) included with SLED. I recommend reading and accepting each license agreement. Now I am presented with the same Expert tab in the Installation Settings stage. Now we're ready to proceed, so click Accept in the bottom right again. We're asked to confirm that we want to install Linux, with a warning that certain parts of your hard drive will be formatted, thus erasing any data that were there before. If you're ready, click Install, sit back, and enjoy.

Installing Everything

At this point your partitions will be resized/formatted and the appropriate files will be installed. This process can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours or more, depending on the packages you selected and the speed of your system. You might be interested in seeing what exactly is being installed on your system at this point. If so, you can click the Details tab and see each package being installed. Apparently I chose some other packages along the way or something, because now it says that I'm installing about 2.5GB of software and that this segment should take about 30 minutes.

Once all of the files are copied, the installation settings will be saved to the hard drive and your system will reboot for the first time in your brand new SLED. At this point, you shouldn't remove your installation media, as it is required in the following steps.

The Initial Boot And Final Settings

When we boot up our SLED for the first time after installation, we are asked to provide a hostname to identify our machine on the network. When you have set the hostname and domain name as you want them, click next. Now we're asked to set the root password. Make sure this password is one that you'll not forget, but at the same time make sure that it's not easy to guess. If someone gets root access to your machine, there's no end to what they can do.

Network Configuration

This is another section that is mostly correct, but a few settings are not the way I would like them to be. For example, my ssh port is listed as disabled under the Firewall heading. To enable it, just click the word "blocked"--it will change to "open". The rest of the settings look fine for now. If you have any customizations to be made, go ahead and make them. I'll wait.

When we're ready to move on, click next. At this point, our network configuration is saved. Next we're asked if we wish to try out our Internet connection. Do as you please. I usually skip this step, but for your sake, I will try out my connection. When we test, it tries to download the latest changelogs. If your connection works, you will see "Success" in the Result field. Click next.

User Authentication Method

Most home users won't have their own LDAP server or Windows Domain setup, so I won't go into how these are to be set up. Let's just go with Local authentication for now, the default option. Click next.

New Local User

This is when we create our very own user account. This set is essential. DO NOT EVER RUN EVERYDAY APPLICATIONS AS ROOT. There are serious security implications involved if you choose to login and perform your daily tasks as the root, or all-powerful administrator, user in Linux. It's much easier to just create an "unprivileged" user and do your regular business with that account. Only login as root when you need to perform system maintenance or install something. When you're done with those tasks, logout of the root environment immediately. Trust me.

Anyway, back to our installation. Go ahead and create your user. You may or may not want to check the checkbox to receive system mail. System mail includes certain security breaches on most distributions. If you don't wish to have to enter your password in order to use your computer, click the automatic login checkbox. If you wish to add more than one user at this time, you can click on the User Management button. The process is pretty much the same as it is to add the first unprivileged user. Click next when you're ready to proceed.

Now our system configuration is saved again (this seems to happen all the time in SuSE... it gets rather annoying in my opinion). After our settings are saved, we are presented with the release notes (which may have been more useful had they been displayed during the file copy process, but whatever). Read them if you wish. Click next when you're ready to proceed.

Hardware Configuration

Now this is one of the selling points for me with SuSE. I have a 17" widescreen (1680x1050 max resolution) for my laptop. There weren't many distros for a while that could handle the resolution out of the box. Fedora Core 5 was the first that I tried that handled it without any manual configuration, and SuSE was the second. I'm pretty happy with the configuration listed here, so click next when you are too. Once again, the settings will be saved (seems like saving settings in SuSE is as bad as rebooting in Windows...).

If you have several similar machines, you can save your installation configuration by checking the "Clone This System for Autoyast" checkbox. If you choose this, the system will determine what settings exactly were used for installation and create a file somewhere that you can use in later installations. When this is done, or when you click finish if you don't want to clone, a login screen will appear.

First Login

When you see this login screen, enter the username and password that you created for the unprivileged user. You'll see a fancy loading screen while your profile is being created for the first time.

Now, you may or may not have noticed, but I wrote this article as I installed SLED. I want to watch a movie now, so subsequent configuration (wireless, 3D acceleration, etc) will take place later. I hope this is good enough for the time being.

How To Create A Subversion Repository

Josh VanderLinden

Comments

In this tutorial, I assume that you have access to a Linux machine on which you plan to create the repository. I have never tried to create a repository on Windows or Mac, but perhaps in the future I will. I am doing this on a Slackware 10.2 machine with subversion 1.3.2. Version differences shouldn't have a great effect on the validity of the steps outlined here.

Install Subversion

If you haven't already installed subversion, you can download it from http://subversion.tigris.org/. You can download the svn package for a variety of platforms. If you download the source package, you should simply have to do the following as root:

  • unpack the archive and enter that folder
  • configure the application for your system by typing ./configure on the command line
  • compile the source code by typing make
  • install the package by typing make install

Note: these are the general steps for installing a package from the source; they may be slightly different with svn.

Choose A Home For The Repository

Next, choose a place for your server to keep track of all of the changes to your project. Try a place like /var/svn or /home/[your_username]/svn. I would recommend creating a folder specifically for the repository.

Create The Repository

Once you're in the directory in which you wish for your svn repository to reside, type the command svnadmin create repo or you can type the full path to be certain svnadmin create /var/svn/repo. This will create the repository.

Import Your Project

I do most of my development on my local area network, so I haven't created a repository that can be used over the Internet. I would imagine that it's pretty similar to what we do to create a repository for your LAN. Choose a project to import into your repository and navigate to the folder that the project is in. For example, if I have a project called Foo in /var/www/htdocs/foo, I would go to /var/www/htdocs. Next, use the command svn import to pull your project into the repository. For our Foo project, we would use the command svn import foo svn://localhost/var/svn/repo/foo -m "Initial Import". This will create a new folder in our repository at /var/svn/repo called foo (/var/svn/repo/foo). Our project files will put crammed into that directory for tracking.

Checkout Your Project

In order to be able to save your changes to our repository, we have to checkout the project again from the server. This is a pretty simple step, but it is critical. Even though we imported our project already, that folder remains untouched. SVN will not know how to handle the updates unless we checkout the project from the svn server. So, we proceed to checkout by removing or renaming /var/www/htdocs/foo and typing svn checkout svn://localhost/var/svn/repo/foo /var/www/htdocs/foo. This will place some hidden folders in each of the directories in your project. These hidden folders keep track of your local changes so that svn will know how to merge your changes with those of other developers.

Update The Repository

When you've made some changes that you want to save, you can send them out by typing svn commit /var/www/htdocs/foo. This command knows how to get to the server to save the changes, since the project was checked out from the repository.

Update Your Files

Sometimes you'll need to get changes that other developers have made, or revert back to a version of your project that didn't have as many problems. You can do this using the svn update command. If you're already in /var/www/htdocs/foo, you can type svn update and it will update files that have been changed in the repository since you last updated. If you're looking to get an older version of your project, you can type svn update -r PREV or a revision number in place of PREV.

Remember, these are just the basics of using SVN. You can do many amazing things with this utility. I actually did all of this as I was writing this article, so I'm sure that it works.