Where is my Apache installed on Ubuntu?

Go to the terminal and type:

locate apache

Add the terminal to the desktop right click menu in Fedora or Ubuntu

When you right click the mouse in Red Hat Enterprise, you get the terminal in your menu. I've always wondered why you didn't get that feature in default in the default Gnome for Fedora or Ubuntu

It turns out it's easy to add in at the terminal in either.

In Fedora:

sudo yum install nautilus-open-terminal

In Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal

Then reboot X.

Found on the Fedora Forums.

Fedora conquered

I finally ended up installing Fedora using the text based installer and it worked. It's also possible that the problem with the computer in the optics lab was due to errors in the install discs I was using since it said there were errors, but I find that unlikely since the second set of discs reported errors as well. I think that more likely the media tester and the graphical anaconda installer both have some serious issues.

In retrospect, I should have just used Ubuntu. I only chose Fedora because that's what the the people in the lab were accustomed to.

Fedora is driving me insane

I've been trying to install Fedora Core 9 on an ancient computer in the Optics Lab at school and I'm experiencing all sorts of craziness. When the graphical installer gets to the end it says:

No kernel packages were installed on your system. Your boot loader configuration will not be changed.

What on earth could cause a linux distro to NOT install the kernel? It boggles the mind.

I've had this problem since last week and even posted on the Fedora Forums, so far to no avail.

Today I got the smart idea to run the media test on the cds I was using to install Fedora. The very first disc got registered as bad by 12% in. When I saw Fedora complaining about the disc I thought that it could either the ISO or the cd itself. I downloaded JSummer and ran it against all the ISOs and as far as I could tell they were all good. At this point I figured it had to be the cd and not the ISO so I tried burning it again, but the second cd failed in exactly the same place, so I started downloading a new copy of the 600+ meg ISO. By then I had to leave, tomorrow I'll burn the new download of the ISO and try it again.

Tonight when I got home I downloaded all the ISOs off bittorrent. I burned the discs and started an install on an old box that's been collecting dust in the corner. Before I started the installation I ran an SHA1SUM on the ISOs and they all checked out. When I ran the media check on the first disc it got all the way to 100% and then it said the disc had errors! I decided I didn't care and went ahead with installing anyways, but at some point during the installation of libraries from disc2 it bombed out on me.

So, either I downloaded bad ISOs both at work and at home and yet they still managed to get past SHA1SUM and burn the discs correctly, or, all the cds I'm using are bad. I find either of these possibilities unlikely. I think it's more like that the Fedora Core 9 graphical installer is just bad for anything but the latest and greatest computer.

Ubuntu x11 problems

Ubuntu had gone into screen saver mode. I moved my mouse, but instead of ending the screen saver, the screen saver froze. However, I could see my mouse pointer, and move it around. There was no response to any keyboard or mouse input, so I did a hard restart.

When the login screen came up, I tried my username and password. I accidentally put in the wrong password and the screen froze, so I tried CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE. Now I have a screen that says:

The greeter application appears to be crashing. Attempting to use a different one.

I pushed ok a few times and finally it got out.

Ruby on Rails + Ubuntu = Hostility

I was considering trying Ruby on Rails for a project I'm working on and decided to try and install it on Ubuntu.

jfenwick@mars:~$ sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Could not find rails (> 0) in any repository

I did some searching on the internet and found that the gem server randomly can't find gems, but if you try again later it works. Eventually I did get the rails gem and its dependencies installed, but now the second major problem. I attempted to create an application skeleton and got:

jfenwick@mars:~/projects$ rails foo
The program 'rails' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install rails
bash: rails: command not found

Did some more searching, found that if you install gems using apt-get there are permissions problems. So I removed gems, go back to the rails site, download gems, try to install it and get:

jfenwick@mars:~/Desktop/rubygems-1.0.1$ ruby setup.rb
mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rbconfig
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:243:in `mkdir': Permission denied - /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rbconfig (Errno::EACCES)
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:243:in `fu_mkdir'
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:217:in `mkdir_p'
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:215:in `reverse_each'
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:215:in `mkdir_p'
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:201:in `each'
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:201:in `mkdir_p'
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:1527:in `mkdir_p'
from setup.rb:88
from setup.rb:85:in `each'
from setup.rb:85
from setup.rb:82:in `chdir'
from setup.rb:82

Weak.

I found this site, it helped a lot: urbanpuddle

When I tried to install Mongrel I got this error:

jfenwick@mars:~/projects/foo$ sudo gem install mongrel
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: Error installing mongrel:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb install mongrel
extconf.rb:1:in `require': no such file to load -- mkmf (LoadError)
from extconf.rb:1


Gem files will remain installed in /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fastthread-1.0.1 for inspection.
Results logged to /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fastthread-1.0.1/ext/fastthread/gem_make.out

This was my fault as I hadn't installed the ruby1.8-dev package. However, I still think the process of finding which packages you need to install through apt-get, and which ones you have to install through gems is maddening.

During my searching I came across a person who had my problem with Mongrel, and someone asked if they were "on Debian or something equally hostile to Ruby". I feel that's a fair judgment, getting Rails to work on Ubuntu has been pretty laborious.