Dad's Debian Install

June 18 2014

v 0.2

Of Windows, Skype and Printers

My Father has had a Pentium 4 3.2 gig IBM computer for a few years now.  It has 1 gig of memory and came with Windows XP installed.  Of course he never did software updates and it has not helped that I live on the opposite side of the Continent to him so I have forever been reminding him that Windows XP is the devil and that it will bit him if he is not careful.  I've had limited success training him NOT to use it for sensitive work.  My preferred option is for him to update, however he is adamant that this machine is fine and he does not want a new piece of hardware.

Well about a year ago, I installed Debian Wheezy in a dual-boot configuration and eventually convinced him to at least only do his banking and other critical work using Linux.  It has been unfortunate that Skype has not been functioning - no microphone detection and I was unable to help fix the problem, so he used Skype from the Windows side.  The other major problem was the old Epson printer / scanner just wouldn't speak to Linux.  It said it had installed, but just refused to function.

I've been visiting for the last week and one of the tasks I set myself was to get him set up safely so that he'd be less tempted to use Windows XP - he finally realised there were no more security updates, however like most people just does not understand how he can be badly burnt by malware.  The two major things I needed to do were to get Skype functioning and the Printer / Scanner on-line.

My starting point was Debian 7 Wheezy with Gnome 3.4 classic.  (I find this a very pleasing setup by the way ... elegant and fast)

Skype

When first sitting down to use Skype on Wheezy, I found everything worked except the microphone (combined with a logitech webcam which WAS detected).  Skype was at version 4.2 for me.  When I checked the sound options, I found that pulseaudio was the only microphone option I had.  I googled and found various recommendations for configuration file edits, but none worked.  I subsequently found that there is a bug in Skype that needs these edits, however this did not work for me.

Of course there was a simple fix.  The Gnome 3 settings have a "sound" icon where you can select the input device.  VICTORY! Gnome is the only desktop / manager that I've found that allows you to do this and Skype has ONLY worked for me in Gnome 3.

Printer / Scanner

I figured I'd just go and replace his old printer.  They are cheap and much improved on a few years ago.  I figured on an HP 8600 which I have found to be really great - particularly for scanning where you can scan double sided multiple sheets into a pdf file.  You can also save the scans/pdf to a memory card/stick, which is particularly simple.  This was not to be and I arrived home with an HP Deskjet 1510 having purchased it for the princely sum of $28.  "Nothing can go wrong now!"

Why did I go for an HP?  There is a linux support package called HPLIP that I have found makes integrating HP printers a breeze.  I simply went with what I know.

But of course there is a catch.  The version of HPLIP with Wheezy is too old for this printer.  Backports?  Nope.  I DID get the printer installed with the Gnome 3 setup though and it worked like a bought one.  The scanner though was not detected.  Sigh.

Distribution Upgrade

After some thought and looking at the HP support site, I thought that maybe it was time to bite the bullet and put the next Debian version Jessie (current testing branch) on and go from there.  This was more than I'd intended, but I figured I was probably going to have to do it eventually.  After backing up the files in the appropriate directories, I thought I'd give the in-place upgrade a whirl.  It was only partially successful and in retrospect I probably should have un-installed all but essential packages before progressing, however I took it as part of the learning experience.

Upgrading with Jessie DVD / CD ... 64 / 32

As luck would have it, I had a Jessie DVD with me and thought that would be perfect to use to upgrade, so off I went blowing away the old clagged installation.  Everything was going smoothly as I've found Debian installs generally go when one part of the installing packages caught my eye.  I was installing an amd64 Debian onto an i386 machine!!!  Bother.  But .... why was it installing then?  My initial urge to cancel and work out another plan gave way to curiosity so I let the install complete, reboot, and ... well .... well.... it works beautifully.  I had a smoothly working 64 bit Debian install on a Pentium 4 machine.  I'm left wondering if this was owing to the Debian "multiarch" characteristics I've read about or if the chip was secretly 64 bit.  Installing Skype proved a challenge however achievable (skype is only 32 bit and needs 32 bit support activated in 64 bit Debian), although the dependencies became too much of a bother for me so .. once again I decided to install it properly with a 32 bit version.  I downloaded and burnt a 32 bit Netinstall CD on another machine and tried again.

In trying to get both the HP printer/scanner and Skype working on the setup, I was getting driven nuts as things just weren't working.  After a few hours and somewhat dejected after trying various desktops I gave up for the evening.  Not happy.  (I subsequently found I was easily able to sort things after a night of my brain mulling over the problems).

Final Configuration

Whilst the default desktop for Debian Jessie is now Xfce, I have found that the ONLY desktop that conveniently does what I want this machine to do is Gnome 3 (3.8).  I did try putting some icons on the desktop for home and trash etc, however this killed the wallpaper, so I went back to the default settings.

Of course, how do you install Gnome3?  You can look in "Synaptic" however using the command line, it is simply:

# aptitude install gnome

Here is what I have and I am quite happy with it - it took a while to discover however there is nothing difficult about my setup:

Debian Jessie 3.8
GDM3 login manager
HPLIP and HPLIP GUI installed
HPLIP GUI made visible using the Main Menu editor
Skype works fine with the microphone selected in the Gnome Settings.
Printer installed
Scanner works fine - detected by scanning programs.


It works.
I am happy.

The Law and TLD, The Cloud and Home Servers

v 0.22

12 Jun 12

I've recently had a few disparate threads of the Cosmos come together to lead me down a new line of interest with my Computing.  It all started a few months ago when I was reading my daily dose of "Slashdot" and has finished with me starting to set up a Home Server for myself.

The Law

Whilst the Slashdot article was about the US Government seeking the extradition of a UK Student, the issue was their assertion that all ".com , .net , .org " etc domain names were subject to US Law, no matter where the servers or businesses or organisations were located.  Now, whilst the current actions involve copyright infringement allegations, I can see that this could easily be extended to other areas of the law,  were it convenient for those in power.  A link to a relevent article:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2083906/claims-com-net-websites-jurisdiction

Whether the legalities of this assertion by the US Government are shown to be valid or not, what it means (to me, anyway) is that if you host a website with one of these top level domains, then you potentially must comply with US Law.  You may, for example, run a business in one particular country using such a website, so not only do you need to comply with your own country's laws, you must also comply with those of the US.  Some (legitimate) Canadian businesses are already discovering this.

The lesson I've taken away from this is that if I need a business or other serious website, then a domain name from maybe my own country would be a better decision.

The Cloud

The Cloud is certainly a convenient place to store data, and in all normal circumstances, your data should be quite safe - Google has just received security certification for its services.  Dropbox, whilst convenient, doesn't store your data encrypted, whilst SpiderOak does.  If you are paranoid and want to use Cloud storage, then SpiderOak would be great.  Or encrypt your data on ANY Cloud device.

Of course the problem comes when your provider has their server seized by whichever Law Enforcement agency, because of some other entity which also uses that server ........

Home Servers

It almost feels to me that the concept of keeping your own data is making a comeback - perhaps not for all, but "the Cloud" is not necessarily the best move in all circumstances.  There are some really interesting Web applications that can be hosted on your own server.  Several I'm fascinated with are "OwnCloud", "OnEye", "Diaspora" and "Citadel".  I easily set up "OnEye" on a test virtual server at home, and did the same with "Citadel".

Routers

When I tried to demonstrate Citadel to an organisation I was a member of though, I found I couldn't get my router (Apple Time Capsule) to open any ports to allow this.  Googling for a solution gained me nothing other than finding more than a few others with the same problem and the best I could find was that it was a flaw in the firmware.

Bad Time Capsule .... Bad Bad Time Capsule.

So out of that, I thought maybe time for a "proper" router.  I'd recently seen an interesting "Category5TV" Episode 166 dealing with DD-WRT firmware and a Netgear router.  In the end, I chose to get a WNDR 3700 Netgear - for it's firmware flashing capabilities and the wireless range it offered.

* Subsequently I found that my ISP was blocking some ports - it wasn't helped by them denying it when I called to see if this was in fact happening.  Unfortunately I had to fall back on detective work to discover this (and then have my Nephew say "yes, of course they do, didn't you know?").  So Ultimately, I could have saved my money and continued with the Time Capsule by using unblocked ports.  Sigh

Server Hardware

As I mentioned before, I'd been playing with servers within Virtualbox Virtual Machines on my Desktop - now whilst at the time I knew my desktop wasn't the best machine to use as a server if only for its power consumption, I was prepared to live with this for a short while, however once I started thinking about the router problem, my mind drifted back a week or so to when Dell sent me an advertisement for what I considered to be a cheap desktop that would be suitable.  Of course, I wouldn't be buying the Dell because I had plenty of screens and keyboards already and saw no point in buying anymore, not to mention that I had no use for Windows on my server.  But research into the components did lead me to an interesting setup.

Motherboard   Asus P8H61-M LX Rev 3
CPU                Intel i-3 2120
Memory          8 gig
HDD               Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green
DVD drive

This machine is about 10 times as fast as a P4 3.0 box I already have and uses less power.  How much less?   Testing I've seen indicates the machine should use between 50 and 100 watts under most conditions.  Using this as a server rather than one of the previous two I've mentioned would be a minimum saving of 200 watts.  This works out at roughly 5kwhr per day or over $1 per day where I live.  It would pay for itself in electricity charges in a year.

Server Software

Having worked out the hardware, I'm planning on replacing an old P4 desktop that is used by the family.  I intend having it used as a desktop, with Virtualbox providing servers in virtual machines.

Debian "Wheezy"  64bit
Xfce Desktop
Virtualbox

At the moment, I intend setting up one or two virtual machines as Citadel servers - one for the family and one for my organisation to evaluate.  After that, well there are a number of interesting projects that are available, even within the Debian repositories.

I think that is enough for now ... I shall report back with my installation adventures.



Later ...........

Comparing Debian Netinstall with MSDOS

v 0.2

15Feb12

Why would I bother comparing Debian Netinstall with MSDOS?  Sounds silly - HOWEVER - when you look at it in a historical perspective, it is quite interesting.  This has no secret how-to at the end, I was simply thinking this morning when I was doing my 3k walk ... "isn't that cool" ....

In the '80s, MSDOS was king.  You got to pay good money to get a box and some diskettes that had a single user operating system that you could add to to get anything useful done.  Of course, if you were keen, you had the batch language and GWBASIC, but that was pretty much it.

• If you wanted, you could pay more good money and get Turbo-Pascal, or MS-Basic or some other compiled language.
• Perhaps you'd like to spend some more money and buy QNX - a multi-user system (that I think still exists).
• How about a DOS Markup Text processing language?

Now, Debian Netinstall (doesn't matter whether it is Squeeze or Wheezy, the principle is the same) - you get to download it for free.  Looking at what you get in what is considered today to be "a bootstrap loader" for the real system - well we are smothered in riches and don't even know it.

• You get the same sort of screen those MS-DOS users got, except you have Bash - a powerful programming language in its own right - but that is the SHELL!   
• zip/unzip .. bzip .. grep ... awk ... wow!
• Multi-User / Multi-tasking out of the box.
•  Not happy with Bash?  How about Perl?  Pretty hard to beat that!
• Typesetting?  Groff.  At least as powerful as those systems you paid good money for, but .. yes .. it's free.
• No edline here - Vim.  You may laugh, however Vim is a pretty damn powerful editor.  But if you don't like that, how about Nano - still better than anything MS included at that time.

 There's more, but you get my drift ..



Later ...

Debian - Netinstall + Window Manager

v 0.4.7

Subsequent to my last post about the Netinstall as a console system, I experimented with installing Xorg and a Window Manger.

" aptitude install xserver-xorg wdm wmaker xterm "

as I found when I did the initial install, xterm was not installed and this made it all very difficult.

18 meg unpacked ... reboot and works like a charm.  Now, having given the example, you could insert gdm3 or slim instead of wdm and fluxbox or whatever instead of wmaker.  I simply did this as an experiment.

Since we are talking about Window Maker as a manager, here is a description as to how to configure it ...

http://maketecheasier.com/create-a-great-window-maker-desktop/2009/02/14


Later .....

Update Monday 6 Feb (just after shaking my head in wonder at how you get to the Superbowl, then get caught out putting 12 men on the field .....)

I also installed Fluxbox and Fvwm.  Both seems to have improved default values these days - but I also installed Conky from the repositories.

Netinstall + X + Window manager (Fvwm) + conky .... under 35 meg memory useage!  And this from a standard Debian install - just choosing what you run.

Others (approx):

• Fvwm   34 meg
• Fluxbox  32 meg
• Window Maker  28 meg
• Openbox-Session 24 meg
• Add 5 meg for each terminal

By way of comparison, the Wheezy Xfce install I did previously uses just on 92mb.

Later....