This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz by Phillip Pearson. Original Post: Ubuntu and Debian on Windows Feed Title: Second p0st Feed URL: http://www.myelin.co.nz/post/rss.xml Feed Description: Tech notes and web hackery from the guy that brought you bzero, Python Community Server, the Blogging Ecosystem and the Internet Topic Exchange Latest Python Buzz Posts Latest Python Buzz Posts by Phillip Pearson Latest Posts From Second p0st

I've been getting some support e-mails for PeopleAggregator from people running it on Ubuntu, so I thought it was about time I at least set up a vmware install of Ubuntu. There's a mirror in New Zealand, so the 400 meg CD download (for the server version) took less than an hour. The installation was really quick, I guess because I was using the minimal version. Generally it looks very much like plain Debian so far. So now, while Windows XP is my primary OS on this laptop, I have Debian running under colinux, which is what I'm using to write this blog post, and Ubuntu running under vmware. Total memory+swap usage is showing as 0.99 GB right now, which is pretty reasonable for three simultaneous operating systems :-)

I'm going to write down everything I've done to configure it here, in the process of making a "how to install PA on Ubuntu" guide (which will go on the wiki).

Initial setup: vmware with NAT networking. Ubuntu server 6.06.1 install with LVM on an 8GB virtual disk. After installation and some apt-getting, the vmdk file is about 500MB, so it's fairly 'light'.

[now I can ssh in to the IP address for eth0 with PuTTY, which is nicer than using the vmware console.]

[change workgroup = MYELIN, uncomment [homes] (plus comment, valid users, writable, create mask, directory mask).]

[enter password for phil twice.]

[now I can successfully 'ping ubuntu' from the windows host and access \\ubuntu\phil.]

[change hostname from ubuntu to miniu - ubuntu is a PITA to type! - and s/ubuntu/miniu/g in the ubuntu.mshome.net line in /etc/hosts. if repeating this at home, keep a root shell open in another screen as sudo failed for me the first, until I edited /etc/hosts!.]

[wait as 30MB downloads from security.ubuntu.com.]

[browse to http://miniu/pa, click link to config page.]

[refresh config page, get huge list of errors.]

[uncomment the two lines required to access packages in the 'universe' distribution.]

[refresh config page, find that PA is now installable! enter an admin password, database password, and click 'Set up PeopleAggregator'.]

[browse to http://miniu/pa/web/ - and it's working!]

[browse to http://miniu/pa/web/api/doc/peopleaggregator.echo.html and click on the test links - and they work!]

So now we have a working PeopleAggregator install on Ubuntu. There are plenty of things you'd want to do to make it a bit more usable - in particular:

- install on a system with a real domain, with wildcard DNS configured, so network spawning will work.

- configure a root password for MySQL.

- set the DocumentRoot to /var/www/pa/web so the URL is http://miniu/ rather than http://miniu/pa/web/.

All these details are covered in installation guide (also linked from the download/update page).

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