OpenDNS with Ubuntu

OpenDNS is a safer and faster free DNS service. It protects you from phishing sites and gives you a feature to block adult sites. You can use it whether you use a single computer or a network. No software install needed.

Instructions for Ubuntu

Because my ISP (Asianet) uses Dynamic IPs, I need a dynamic dns client to be logged in to the OpenDNS account. You don't need to even create an account to use OpenDNS, but without it, you can't use many of its features or set your preferences. If you have dynamic IP and no dynamic dns client, you need to manually login and update the IP to keep your preferences.

To use inadyn with Ubuntu, download the inadyn source code from OpenDNS site, extract it, cd into it and run make. You need to install libcurl3-openssl-dev before it. After the make is over, copy the binary from bin/linux/ directory to /bin. Edit inadyn.conf with your OpenDNS username and password. Move it to /etc/. Run inadyn.

That's all

Installed LAMP server.

Ubuntu Feisty Plugins for firefox

• Install sun-java6-jre and sun-java6-plugin (for firefox): sudo aptitude install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts
• Install Flash player plugin for firefox
• Install RealPlayer10. Download and chmod +x RealPlayer10GOLD.bin; sudo ./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin

sudo without entering a password!

Hate entering password every time you have to do some administration work? Do this. Not a secure thing. I do this because nobody else uses my computer.

sudo vsudo

Move cursor to the following line:

%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

Change it to %admin ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

Press Ctrl+X

Type Y to save

Press ENTER to confirm the file name.

That's all! Now you will not be asked for your password when you sudo.

Ubuntu does not ask for a root password on installation. Add a root password with sudo passwd root

Configuring Firewall in Feisty

Check for any open ports at Gibson Research Corporation's Shields Up tool

Before configuring firewall:

After sudo aptitude install firestarter and configuring firewall with it:

It is now very easy to search and install codecs for different media types in Ubuntu feisty. When you try to play a music file or video file, a confirmation box will appear asking whether to search for a codec.

Everything works fine now. Previously, in dapper, I used VLC player because of the codec problems in the default players. VLC is a very good media player which plays almost all formats. It is also available for windows platform.

Feisty Fawn Humour!

I installed Feisty Fawn. I got this message during the first boot up: " / has gone 49710 days without being checked, check forced". After checking, grub started again, but this time, it booted ok.

Installing Ubuntu 7.04, Feisty Fawn!

Ubuntu CDs came thursday. I made a decision to sacrifice my ubuntu 6.06 Long Term Support version for the new features in Feisty. I am going to make a clean install instead of upgrading.

First, I made a note of installed applications and the tweaks I made, then backed up important files to a FAT partition, put the CD into drive and rebooted.

It did boot up faster than the previous versions, but that's probably because I added more RAM two months ago. First thing I checked was firefox. It is the newest version (2.0.0.3). I clicked the install icon in the desktop and started the install process. When the partitioning part came, I selected manual partitioning and checked the partition where current ubuntu version is installed. Then I resized the partition to make more swap space. My partitions were like this:

• hda1 fat32 104878 MB
• hda5 ntfs 104878 MB (windows xp)
• hda6 ext3 18885 MB (current ubuntu installation)
• hda 7 swap 197 MB

I resized partition and made a 1GB swap space, then selected ext3 partition as /. Now installation is going on.

• Install Firefox New version on your Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)
• Install Firefox Ubuntu themes: sudo aptitude install firefox-themes-ubuntu
• Prettify the Firefox widgets
• Tweak Firefox (All platforms)