Arun Stephens

For some strange reason, the Ubuntu people decided that the latest release should mimic Mac OS as much as possible. The default background is now purple, eerily similar to the Mac OS default. And they decided to move the buttons to the left hand side, just like on a Mac. Which is annoying. Not because I am used to Windows, but because if you were used to previous versions of Ubuntu, you’d be very annoyed. Rant over, here’s Read post »

The default installation of VMware Server 2.0 uses a self-signed certificate for the web-based management console, VMware Infrastructure Web Access. (Notice how they copied the Microsoft fashion of naming the web based tool, like Outlook Web Access and Project Web Access.) But you may want to use a different certificate. One that browsers in your organisation will actually recognise. I couldn’t find any information on the web, so went hunting in the config files. The location of the Read post »

I have been setting up a whole swag of virtual machines to do my bidding. Ideally I would use ESXi but it doesn’t support my choice of server – my old laptop (Toshiba Tecra M5). So I am back to using VMware Server. Since I last used it, VMware Server 2.0 has been released. It features a web-based management interface, which is quite good, though it uses a self-signed certificate that causes browsers to complain. I will eventually figure Read post »

By default in Ubuntu (and probably other distributions), when you log into the SSH server, it will do a reverse DNS lookup of the client for security reasons. That’s fine, but it’s kind of annoying when you don’t have a working reverse DNS for your IP address. Like for all my internal addresses. To turn it off (thanks to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=577616): Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and add the following line: UseDNS Read post »

This is nothing new, but I wanted to stop X from starting on bootup with Ubuntu Desktop 8.04. I would prefer to start it using startx. The easy solution, from within the Ubuntu desktop (seeing X has started already, I may as well use graphical tools) click the System menu, then Services. Unlock (if you need to) and deselect Graphical login manager (gdm). BE CAREFUL THOUGH: If you apply those changes, X will stop, presumably because it was started Read post »