Lightening Ubuntu and Dropping Unity
Posted on | December 31, 2011 | No Comments
Make Ubuntu lighter and more fun to use with a couple apt-get commands
By Robin Rowe
HOLLYWOOD, CA (LinuxMovies.org) 2012/12/31 – Ubuntu is a popular Linux distro that many open source enthusiasts like. It’s based on Debian, but without so many rough edges. You could go instead with a Red Hat-based distro such as CentOS, Fedora or SUSE, but if you’re an open source developer being on a Debian-based distro just seems right. Unfortunately, Ubuntu made a desktop UI change that will tend to drive you nuts.
It’s called Unity. Gnome and KDE users hate it, and everyone else just says, what the f**K? If you like the Playskool interface of Windows XP, you’ll find Unity is a step further past that. Unity is so simple, so easy, that it’s unusable. Lot’s of folks have written about Why Unity Sucks, so let’s not repeat that here. The question is, if you’re not ready to throw out Ubuntu with the Unity bath water, what to do?
Open a terminal window by searching for ‘term’ in the confusing Unity interface. Once you get a Read more
The Perfect WordPress Configuration
Posted on | December 1, 2011 | No Comments
Tweak WordPress to be the best HOLLYWOOD, CA (LinuxMovies) 2011/11/30 – WordPress has many options and plug-ins. Here’s a recommended configuration.
- Build a custom template
- Check Permalinks work ok when clicking through a front page link
- Plug-ins: Akismet, Embed Iframe, Google News Sitemap, Really simple Facebook Twitter share buttons, WP Super Cache, Fix RSS Feeds, WP-Stats-Dashboard, WP to Twitter, WP YouTube Lyte, Really simple Facebook Twitter share buttons, Share On Facebook
- WordPress Settings: Akismet, WP to Twitter, WP Super Cache, WP-Stats-Dashboard
- Add contact and privacy policy pages
- Add links in template for our Facebook and Twitter pages
- Add banners in template for our sponsors and affiliates
- Add RSS feed link
- Add Google Adsense ads to template and sitemap to Google Analytics
- Add Alexa, Compete and Quantcast
Installing FluxBB on Linux
Posted on | November 7, 2011 | No Comments
FluxBB can use MySQL, PostgresSQL or SQLite
FluxBB is a free open source lightweight PHP bulletin board forum
By Robin Rowe
HOLLYWOOD, CA (LinuxMovies) 11/7/2011 – Installing a forum on your website enables your users to post useful information. There are many open source PHP-based forums available. FluxBB is a good choice as a lightweight forum that supports MySQL, PostgresSQL or SQLite. Here’s how to install on Linux with MySQL.
Create table in MySQL
mysql -u root -p
CREATE USER ‘fluxbb’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;
CREATE DATABASE fluxbb;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON fluxbb.* TO “fluxbb”@”localhost”;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
Download and Unpack FluxBB
cd /var/www/html/YOUR_WEBSITE
wget http://fluxbb.org/download/releases/1.4.7/fluxbb-1.4.7.tar.bz2
tar xvfj fluxbb-1.4.7.tar.bz2
mv fluxbb-1.4.7 forum
chown -R apache:apache forum
Finish Installation via Web Browser
http://YOUR_WEBSITE/forum/install.php
Lighten CentOS Server
Posted on | September 18, 2011 | No Comments
A few things to remove that are unneeded on your CentOS server
By Robin Rowe
HOLLYWOOD, CA (LinuxMovies) 9/18/2011 – CentOS is a Redhat-based Linux that many use as a server. Here are a few things to jettison that a server doesn’t typically need.
To disable X11 you could change your run level to 3 and edit the initdefault line in your /etc/inittab file. To get rid of X11 entirely, so you’re not updating useless packages with yum update, use this:
yum groupremove “X Window System”
We may want to put ImageMagick back.
yum install ImageMagick
We don’t need SAMBA:
yum remove samba-common
Windows 7 Putty SSH Access Denied Solution
Posted on | August 20, 2011 | 1 Comment
Quick fix for Putty ssh client “Access Denied” hiccup on Windows 7
By Robin Rowe
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Linux Movies) 8/20/11 – Windows doesn’t include an ssh client to connect to our Linux servers, so we use the open source Putty software. This software opens a terminal window where you can enter your login name and password. Windows 7 gave us a surprise, though. It was saying “Access Denied” as soon as a user name was entered, before prompting for the password.
The solution is to create a new Putty connection with GSSAPI turned off. Putty was checking for that type of encryption by default. You can’t turn that off in your saved connection. Turn off GSSAPI first in Putty’s authentication settings, that’s under Connection/SS/Auth/GSSAPI. Then create a new connection and save it.
TIP: To see the event log in order to debug a Putty session, CTRL-click on the terminal window.
Set CentOS Server Time Zone
Posted on | August 8, 2011 | No Comments
# cd /etc
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles localtime
# date
Installing WordPress on Linux
Posted on | June 27, 2011 | No Comments
Quick set-up guide for installing WordPress on a virtual host
By Robin Rowe
HOLLYWOOD, CA (LinuxMovies) 6/26/2011 – WordPress is open source PHP and MySQL-based content publishing software. We’ll configure MySQL with wpdb as the user name and a password that isn’t actually ‘password’. We’ll name the database the same name as our website. Then we’ll download, unzip and install the latest WordPress.
- mysql -u root -p
CREATE USER ‘wpdb’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;
CREATE DATABASE linuxmovies;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON goshtv.* TO “wpdb”@”localhost”;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT; - cd ~
mkdir install
cd install
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar xvfz latest.tar.gz
md /var/www/html/linuxmovies.org/
cp -rv ~/install/wordpress/* /var/www/html/linuxmovies.org/
mv /var/www/html/linuxmovies.org/wp-config-sample.php /var/www/html/linuxmovies.org/wp-config.php
chown -R apache /var/www/html/*
chgrp -R apache /var/www/html/* - Edit wp-config.php
Enter db, user, and pwd
Enter secret keys:https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/
define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);
define(‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true); - Edit httpd.conf to add virtual host
- Check DNS is set
Virtual Host Apache Settings
<VirtualHost *:80 *:8080>
ServerName www.linuxmovies.org
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/linuxmovies.org
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ “/var/www/html/linuxmovies.org/cgi-bin/”
Redirect permanent /webmail http://www.linuxmovies.org/cgi-bin/webmail.cgi
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80 *:8080>
ServerName linuxmovies.org
Redirect permanent / http://www.linuxmovies.org/
</VirtualHost>
Install These Plug-ins
- Akismet: Scrape off comment spam.
- Fix Rss Feeds
- Google News Sitemap: Install before posting your first story.
- WP-Stats-Dashboard
- Jetpack: Necessary for WP-Stats-Dashboard. Don’t use abandoned WordPress.com Stats plug-in
- WP YouTube Lyte; Embed YouTube videos easily.
Useful MySQL Commands
show databases;
use linuxmovies;
show tables;
select user from user;
source batch-file;
SHOW COLUMNS FROM City;
select option_name from wp_options;
select option_name from wp_options where option_name like ‘akismet%’;
select option_name, option_value from wp_options where option_name like ‘%key%’;
UPDATE wp_option SET option_value = ‘HP’ WHERE option_value = ‘IBM’;
delete from wp_options where option_name = ‘wpsd_un’;
delete from wp_options where option_name = ‘wpsd_pw’;
Making and Restoring WordPress Backups
mysqldump -u root -p wordpress > goshtv.sql
mysqldump -u root -p wordpress_spl > screenplaylab.sql
mysql -u root -p goshtv < goshtv.sql
mysql -u root -p screenplaylab < screenplaylab.sql
mysql -u root -p hollywoodtoday < hollywoodtoday.sql
zip -rv goshtv-images.zip /var/www/html/goshtv.net/wp-content/uploads/
Linux Movies, Hollywood Loves Linux
Posted on | June 26, 2011 | 3 Comments
Linux is #1 in Hollywood
By Robin Rowe
HOLLYWOOD, CA (LinuxMovies) 6/26/2011 – Linux Movies is the source for news and information about Linux being used in the motion picture industry and television. Linux is the most popular operating system for studio animation and visual effects. It’s used by Disney, DreamWorks Animation, ILM, Sony, and just about everywhere else where major movies are made. Where you won’t find much Linux is in TV or smaller films or being used anywhere for editing. Where it’s just a few machines, Windows or Macintosh are typically preferred. Linux is better, faster, cheaper where large numbers of machines are deployed as artist desktops or renderfarm grids.