12 Feb 2010 Logon to Norsk Tipping using Ubuntu 9.10
This post is a short howto how I managed to use my Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to log on to the web pages of Norsk Tipping using a USB CardMan 3121 buypass card reader and Firefox web browser.
First of all you need to install Java to login to Norsk Tipping webpages.
# aptitude install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
I got the following error message while trying to login “Feilreferanse 31503″.
Installing the following packages solved the problem and I am now able to use the webpages to Norsk Tipping just like I do in Windows.
# aptitude install libccid libpcsclite-dev pcscd libpcsclite-dev
Tags: 9.10, Karmic Koala, norsk tipping, sun java, Ubuntu
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
07 Oct 2009 Create a Debian Lenny installation USB stick
This is a short post that describes how to prepare your USB memory stick for a base installation of Debian Lenny. This will most likely also work on Debian based distributions like Ubuntu.
Download the latest Debian boot.img.gz file
# wget http://people.debian.org/~joeyh/d-i/images/daily/hd-media/boot.img.gz
Download the latest Debian netinst ISO image
# wget http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/i386/iso-cd/debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso
Connect the USB stick in the computer and verify that the drive is recognized in /var/log/messages.
It is now time to write the downloaded files onto your USB stick.
First write the boot information to the stick
# zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdb
I am assuming that /dev/sdb is the memory stick. Always check that you are writing to the right device!
Mount the USB stick and copy the installation files from the ISO image
# mount /dev/sdb /media/memstick # cp debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso /media/memstick
The USB stick is now ready to be used as a boot media just like a CDROM.
Tags: Debian, howto, memory stick, Ubuntu
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
05 Oct 2009 iptables connection tracking table full
I’ve recently experienced that my workstation (Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope, 9.04, x86_64) “hangs” periodically when my internet browser, Mozilla Firefox, has a lot of active tabs.
In my case I had > 100 active tabs in more than 20 windows. I know I should have closed some of them but that is not an option right now.
The problem reveiled itself doing a dmesg on my workstation
# dmesg [1737157.057528] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737157.160357] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737157.260534] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737157.361837] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737157.462305] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737157.564270] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737157.666836] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737157.767348] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737157.868338] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737157.969828] nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. [1737162.214064] __ratelimit: 53 callbacks suppressed
This bahaviour looks like Denial-Of-Service and is caused by a full iptables connection_table.
The default size of the iptables connection tracing table is
# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_conntrack_max 65536
The solution I went for was to double the size of connection table to 131072 and restarted firefox.
# echo "131072" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_conntrack_max
This value is a 32-bit integer so the table size can be quite large and you will need much more RAM before you can use this size.
To make this solution permanent I added the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_max = 131072
You can test this by executing the following command
# sysctl -p 131072
This command loads the /etc/sysctl.conf settings.
Tags: iptables, Ubuntu, ubuntu jaunty
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
07 Aug 2009 Suspend a VMware Workstation host from command line
This post gives a short description of how to suspend a VMware Workstation 6.5.x host on a Ubuntu 9.04 Workstation but it shouldn’t be any problem to follow it on other linux distributions. Lately I’ve experienced that one of my VMware hosts lock up and my mouse cursor stops responding. The keyboard doesn’t let me switch applications (Alt+Tab) because the Tab-key doesn’t respond. The solution to my problem was to suspend the virtual machine from the console.
- First you have to switch to a console by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 – This lets you login to a console.
- Suspend the virtual machine by issuing the following command from the console
# vmrun suspend /path/to/the/vmx-file/vmxfile.vmx
Switch back to your graphical desktop by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7. You will now see that the suspend indicator is hard at work suspending the virtual machine that is causing problems. When the host has been suspended you can shutdown VMware Workstation as you normally do.
To make sure that VMware haven’t got any processes that are defunct stop and start the VMware daemon.
Note:
Remember to shut down or suspend all virtual machines before issuing the following commands from the console to avoid losing data
Stopping the VMware daemon
# /etc/init.d/vmware stop Stopping VMware services: Virtual machine communication interface done Virtual machine monitor done Blocking file system done
Starting the VMware daemon
# /etc/init.d/vmware start Starting VMware services: Virtual machine monitor done Virtual machine communication interface done Blocking file system done Virtual ethernet done Shared Memory Available done
Start VMware as you normally do and resume the host. The host should now work without any problems.
The vmrun command gives you other options as well like list, start, stop, reset and upgradevm, but I won’t describe the use of these in this post.
Tags: console, suspend, Ubuntu, vmrun, VMWare, VMWare Workstation
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
05 Jun 2009 Howto install Skype on a 64bit Ubuntu 9.04
This post describes how to install Skype, the popular VOIP and video conference program on a 64bit Ubuntu 9.04 (Jauty Jackalope) system.
# sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32asound2 libqt4-core libqt4-gui # wget -O skype-install.deb http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu # sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture skype-install.deb
The application should now be located under Applications -> Internet -> Skype.
Tags: 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope, skype, Ubuntu
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
