mbant's technical notes

So the thing is I always have terminal windows open in X. A lot of people do this , if course - but I wanted to neaten things out a bit.

At the mo, I'm running xubuntu gutsy. I have 4 desktops, and one of them I want to be a permanent terminal windows with as little else as possible. I tried several apps for this:

- xterm wasn't spiffy enough - I love transparency!
- aterm and Eterm don't support utf8. I just couldn't get them to show my special characters like äöüß. Besides, Eterm was up to 3x slower than aterm when starting. aterm doesn't support borderless windows with Xfce, either

In the end, I used xfce4-terminal. It doesn't start as fast as xterm, but as it only gets started once per session that didn't concern me - it's still fast enough. Plus: I can deactivate borders, make it transparent, hide the scrollbar and make it fullscreen - so on desktop 4 there's absolutely nothing except for my terminal with my shaded desktop background. The other desktops look like normal X desktops so I don't scare anyone with my laptop.

When I was running kubuntu, I had konsole doing the same job with a similar configuration. I used tabs for different shells. xfce4-terminal supports this too, but finally I've gotten round to using screen which does a much nicer job. Pity it doesn't save sessions through reboots.

I've been chatting around a bit and discovered that the fact that "vpnc doesn't work" is a myth - at least in my case.

Using vpnc doesn't only work, it's also a lot more convenient, because you don't have to keep upgrading manually.

If you're using Ubuntu, all you have to do is install the package vpnc. After that, Ubuntu will take care of the upgrades.

All you need is a conf file for vpnc which tells you how to connect. Luckily, vpnc provides a translate script which converts a PCF file into a vpnc conf file, it's called pcf2vpnc. In my case, it's in /usr/share/vpnc, so I ran

$ /usr/share/vpnc/pcf2vpnc vpn-v1.pcf

and the output is the ready conf file. Save that as /etc/vpnc/YourVPN.conf (you need to do that with root-privileges, i.e. use sudo) and you can start the whole thing with

$ sudo vpnc YourVPN

To terminate vpn connection, run

$ sudo vpnc-disconnect

to restore routing.

PCF files usually use crypted group passwords. You can decrypt them at this website: http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massar/bin/cisco-decode

http://www.penlug.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CiscoVpn is a pretty outdated site on vpnc, but can give some insight.


This is already a lot better than the cisco client, but there's more good news: vpnc integrates into network-manager, and there's a KDE gui called kvpnc. As soon as I'm up to date on those, I'll finish the trilogy and hopefully we're back to the world where ordinary people can use VPN from their laptops.

Getting VPN to work with Ubuntu was a real headache. Most instructions on the web were a disaster and I had to pick loads of stuff together from all over the place.

I wanted to get my laptop to use the wireless network of the University of Karlsruhe, Germany (Dukath). Apparently, the open source versions don't work and you need the Cisco one.
These instructions will thus be using the university network as an example, but might work for others, too.

1) Download the client. I got it from here: http://www.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/rd/vpn.php . If you're on another network, I recommend searching for cisco VPN client linux and downloading the latest version.

2) The file you downloaded is a tar.gz file. Extract this file:

$ tar zxf vpnclient-linux-4.8.00.0490-k9.tar.gz

You will get a new directory, vpnclient. Go to this directory.

3) Patch the client. This seems to be a Ubuntu problem. Get http://tuxx-home.at/projects/cisco-vpnclient/vpnclient-linux-2.6.22.diff and copy it into the same vpnclient directory. Apply the patch by going into the directory and run

$ patch < vpnclient-linux-2.6.22.diff

I got this advice from http://www.longren.org/2007/05/17/how-to-cisco-vpn-client-on-ubuntu-704-feisty-fawn/ , thanks for the hint.

4) Install. Now the patch is installed, this is simple:

$ sudo ./vpn_install

5) Install the PCF files. The page where I downloaded the VPN client also offered two PCF files for download (vpn-split-v1.pcf and vpn-v1.pcf). Download them and do

$ sudo cp vpn-split-v1.pcf vpn-v1.pcf /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles/

This directory is a new one which was created during the vpn_install script.

6) Install the root certificate. Get the certificate from the same place you got the PCF files. In the Karlsruhe case, this file is called dfnpca-02.der. Run

$ cisco_cert_mgr -R -op install

And enter the certificate filename when asked for it.

Note this certificate thing might not be necessary, or there might be a user certificate (which means you have to do -U instead of -R).

7) Start the vpn client by running

$ sudo /etc/init.d/vpnclient_init start

This is not necessary if you restart the computer before doing the next step. But it doesn't do any harm, either.


Now, assuming you have an active network connection (e.g. in the Karlsruhe university library), you can run

$ sudo vpnclient connect vpn-v1

And the VPN client should connect. The VPN profile (i.e., what you have to write after 'connect') is the same as the PCF file name without the .pcf. In the Karlsruhe case, the one that's called vpn-split-v1 is for external connections, where you want to use university-internal stuff from a normal internet connection. Inside the university, you want the other one.

If you do this inside a shell (like xterm, konsole or whatever), the vpn client stays active until you signal it's end (with Ctrl-C) or run sudo vpnclient disconnect from another console.

9) Keep the client up to date. Sorry, but this nightmare is not yet over. Everytime you update your kernel, you have to re-install the client. I can't confirm this, but I think the other steps do not need repeating.



Is this the famous ubuntu usability? Seriously, this needs easing up. I'm not exactly a newbie to this stuff, but it took me ages to figure out.

Using Ubuntu Dapper Drake, that is.

1) Install vmplayer. If you are using a precompiled kernel package, all you have to do is this:


# apt-get install vmware-player-kernel-modules-2.6.15-26 vmware-player


Make sure the kernel modules correspond to the exact version of the kernel you are using!

2) Get files ready

Create a directory for your VM and place the windows ISO inside (if you want to install from a CD, you do something else later on).
For the actual vmware-files, you can either download the files here [win2kprovmwarefiles.tar.gz, 1.7kB] or create them by hand. To create the image file, run the following command:


$ qemu-img create -f vmdk win2kpro.vmdk 2G


You might have to install qemu if you don't have it yet:


# apt-get install qemu


Next, you need a vmx file. Create a file called win2kpro.vmx with the following content:



#!/usr/bin/vmware
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "3"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.filename = "win2kpro.vmdk"
memsize = "64"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
# create a fake CD drive with the windows ISO
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "~/vmware/win2k/w2k.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "es1371"
displayName = "Windows 2000 Pro"
guestOS = "win2000pro"
nvram = "Windows2000Pro.nvram"
MemTrimRate = "-1"

ide0:0.redo = ""
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d ab 86 9b 9b d4 08-7b 74 25 cd 22 ce 7e d1"
uuid.bios = "56 4d ab 86 9b 9b d4 08-7b 74 25 cd 22 ce 7e d1"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:ce:7e:d1"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

tools.syncTime = "TRUE"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"

uuid.action = "create"

checkpoint.vmState = "win2kpro.vmss"

tools.remindInstall = "FALSE"
usb.autoConnect.device0 = ""


This assumes that the windows ISO is called w2k.iso. If you want to install a different OS, make sure you modify the guestOS parameter accordingly. You probably also want to change the filenames to avoid confusion. If you're installing windows from a CD, ide1:0.deviceType needs to be set to cdrom-raw, fileName is 'auto detect'.


3) Install Windows

Now all you have to do is boot your VM. As the image is empty, it will boot from the CD device - which is, in this case, the windows ISO. You will get a regular Windows installation routine, as you do when installing Windows onto a computer (but with faster reboots).

4) Install VMtools

Trust me, you need this. I think the 100% legal way to do this is this: Get an evaluation version of the Workstation from vmware.com. Unpack it and get the file called windows.iso.
According to something I read on vmware.com (sorry, can't find it right now) it is legal to keep the file after the 30 days trial period is over, and it might be legal to just copy the file from someone who's already got it, but don't ask me about that.

Adjust the VMX file to point to the windows.iso instead of the installer ISO (just change the ide1:0.filename parameter)., start your VM and reboot it. When Windows has rebooted, autorun the CD; it should spawn a setup program to quickly install all the VM-tools. This includes a SVGA graphics driver, tools for network connections and a mouse driver that can automatically grab the input when the mouse is above the vmplayer windows (you don't have to click or press Ctrl+G anymore to grab input or Ctrl+Alt to release input).

That's it, happy virtual machining.
Thanks to

http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html
and
http://www.hackaday.com/2005/10/24/how-to-vmware-player-modification/

for most of the instructions and to ff for getting me started.


Known Issues:

VMWare for Linux seems to use OSS and can't access the sound device on my system if anything else is using the playback device. Just stopping playback and connecting the sound device works, though.


Performance:
I'm currently running a Pentium III 1GHz toshiba laptop, the performance isn't enough to do anything useful like playing windows games (even old ones).