Richard A. Johnson

Here is my new years resolution:

• Quit smoking (again!)
• Work more with upstream
• Contribute more time to FOSS
• Contribute way more time to Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and KDE

Please have a safe and happy holiday!

I have always been a street art, or graffiti, fan. Because of this I have always wanted a Kubuntu or KDE wallpaper with this style. The other day while checking out KDE Look, someone had made some for other distros. I messaged the person online and today he answered and answered big time, producing 2 great looking wallpapers. A big thanks goes out to gnokii for creating them.

Click either image for the full size. They are only 1024×768, but I have them on a 1680×1050 LCD and they look great actually. I have asked for bigger images, so we shall see. Thanks again gnokii for your awesome work!

Well, Jono has kicked off another blog post asking for a response, and my good buddy Daniel has already replied.

At first I was going to wait to post a response, but after reading a comment on Daniel’s previous Ask MOTU post, it hit me and I knew why I had to respond on why I believe in the Ubuntu Ethos.

Like Jono, I am a great fan of the entire Ubuntu community. From users to developers, each and everyone of them have such an important role in the greater community. It is watching the interaction of our community that really makes me enjoy Ubuntu. It is also the great friendships I have created in this community that makes me enjoy Ubuntu. The Ubuntu Ethos is deep!

Now, let me quickly get back to that comment on Daniel’s Ask MOTU post. The comment pretty much said that you have to create a patch, get it into a package, and make a MOTU friend, which for most people, is way outside of their scope. At first I wanted to agree sort of with the comment, but after thinking about our community, and a lot of my friends, it dawned on my just how wrong that statement really is.

I have been around here now for more than 3 years, and in that time I have seen many people come and go, and 99.9% of the time, when they go, they leave a much better person and far more intelligent in many ways. I have witnessed community members as young as 12 years old create patches and packages, and get them uploaded by one of their many MOTU friends they made without any problems. Now if you don’t believe in the saying that anything is possible as long as you put your mind to it, then you are saying to yourself, yes that is way outside any 12 year old’s scope. Recently we had a young, as in age, member join the ranks of the Ubuntu MOTU community. I have witnessed this person mature by leaps and bounds over most adults I work with on a daily basis, including myself. I have witnessed people who have never used Linux before in their life, install it, and within months start contributing like I have never seen before, and even some of them have become MOTUs. It is this community that makes me realize that there is nothing outside of our scope, and as a community we can achieve far more than we could have ever imagined.

Another thing that I love about this community is that they made me a better person. Prior to hanging out with the people around here, I was just another typical American asshole, and in many instances I still am. Maybe now I am just a Chicago asshole

Anyways, I was one of those people who thought America was the best, nothing could come close, and I don’t care what you think. Yes, I was like that. Some would even have called me racist to a point, and you know what, I don’t blame them. Hanging around all of these great people from different parts of the world, have made me seen the greater good of human beings, and for that I will be forever grateful to not only them, but Ubuntu and the community. Yes, I am far from perfect, I have made many mistakes, and my close friends have always been there to help, but there are people in this community, who I have never met face-to-face, who have helped me achieve far more than I could have ever imagined, and they will forever be a friend of mine!

So, if you are lost or confused, give the Ubuntu community a shot. Not only is it an amazing community, but it is so easy for you to be a part of it. Who cares what your background is, who cares if you have only been using Linux for the past 5 minutes, who cares if you have made mistakes in your life! The Ubuntu community cares, that’s who, and they are here to help you not only better yourself, but allow you to help others better themselves. It is this ethos that really makes me LOVE the Ubuntu community.

When I need to test some Django code, I find it much easier to just run or install a copy of Turnkey Linux and grab the appliance that I need. They have a few different types of appliances and if you need to do any code testing for Django, Rails, Drupal, and more, I suggest you give this a shot if you don’t want to sit there and configure a server just for testing.

One thing with the Turnkey Django appliance, there are 2 HTTP ports. One is 80 for the Django administration interface and the other is 10000 for the Webmin administration interface. One problem I just ran across was how do I forward 2 TCP ports with Virtual Box. Easy, just do this:

$ VBoxManage setextradata <vbox guest name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/apache/HostPort" 8888
$ VBoxManage setextradata <vbox guest name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/apache/GuestPort" 80
$ VBoxManage setextradata <vbox guest name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/apache/Protocol" TCP

To connect to your guest OS via Firefox, you would go to the following URL in your web browser: http://localhost:8888

This works great for one port, but what if I need 2 HTTP ports? Then try this:

$ VBoxManage setextradata <vbox guest name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/HostPort" 8889
$ VBoxManage setextradata <vbox guest name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/GuestPort" 10000
$ VBoxManage setextradata <vbox guest name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/Protocol" TCP

To connect to your guest OS via Firefox to this port, look above on how I explained the connection via port 8888. Just change the 8888 to 8889.
Adding more than this, well that I will have to dig in to further, but for this case, I only needed to forward the 2 HTTP/Apache ports.

Now if you would like to SSH into your guest, try this:

$ VBoxManage setextradata <vbox guest name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/HostPort" 2222
$ VBoxManage setextradata <vbox guest name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/GuestPort" 22
$ VBoxManage setextradata <vbox guest name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/Protocol" TCP

You can now SSH into your guest box by typing the following at the command line:

$ ssh -p2222 username@localhost

Or you could add the following to your ~/.ssh/config:

Host guest
        Hostname localhost
        Port 2222
        User username

And now to connect you would just do:

$ ssh guest

Yes, the Ubuntu Chicago LoCo team is looking to make a substantial contribution to the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam, February 20-22. Details at this time are sketchy of course, but with the help of the Chicago members, we should be able to pull of some good stuff.

Also, I am planning on adding upstream work to this jam by including members of Chicago who work for upstream projects such as:

• KDE
• GNOME
• Banshee
• MySQL
• Drupal
• Django
• and more…

If you are interested in participating in the bug jam with Ubuntu Chicago, please keep an eye on our Mailing List. If you have yet subscribed to the list, please do so. It is a very low traffic mailing list. Also stop by our IRC channel on Freenode in #ubuntu-chicago.

We could use any and all help in planning this event. I have put out an email to the list already. You can view it HERE. Thanks!