setting gnome options

While searching for how to disable the face browser (list of available users on the login screen) in gnome 2.22, I found the command line method for updating system wide gnome settings.

First to disable the face browser and shutdown buttons on the gnome login screen

sudo gconftool-2 --direct \
 --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
 --type bool --set /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list true
sudo gconftool-2 --direct \
 --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
 --type bool --set /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_restart_buttons true

And while initially installing the server I wanted to change the power settings for the laptop lid, ideally from the command line, I see that I can do these with these commands,

sudo gconftool-2 --direct \
 --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
 --type string --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons/lid_ac blank
sudo gconftool-2 --direct \
 --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
 --type string --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons/lid_battery blank

to make the closing of the lid just blank the screen instead of going to sleep. I actually set these through the power configuration applet when I did them the first time.

simple samba configuration

I am building a new home server from a laptop with a smashed screen, and I just configured the file server part of it.

After stripping out the comments and most of the configuration directives from the stock smb.conf file, I was left with a nice short file that works. The objective was to have the home directory available for users that are configured, and a public directory for anyone, also there should be no permissions restrictions on the public directory, people should be able to modify each others files.

The resulting /etc/samba/smb.conf file is

[global]
dns proxy = no
map to guest = Bad User
guest account = guest
unix extensions = no

server string = Home server
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 1000
syslog = 0

[homes]
browsable = no
read only = no
valid users = %S

[public]
read only = no
guest ok = yes
force user = guest
path = /export/public

I had also created a guest account for this setup.

sudo useradd guest -m -p \*

And of course the public directory to share

sudo mkdir /export
sudo mkdir /export/public
sudo chown guest /export/public

The server is behind a home router, which acts as a firewall, I would not put a configuration like this directly attached to the internet.

VNC Login on Ubuntu

I have a laptop running Ubuntu Desktop 9.04, which has been sitting on a shelf getting occasional remote use. I am also in the process of building a replacement home server for the house from a broken laptop, in a hope to replace the current home server with one that uses less power. So, I went about figuring out how to get a gdm login screen over VNC, for remote graphical login.

I found that I needed to use the vnc4server package instead of the other options for vnc servers on the laptop so that the keyboard would translate properly into the remote session.

sudo apt-get install vnc4server

I already knew that I needed to turn on XDMCP, but figuring out how was a little bit of a challenge since each display manager has the option in a different place, and it also changes with versions of the display managers. I eventually found a graphical tool to turn it on under "System -> Administration -> Login Window", in there I just set "Remote -> Style -> Same as Local" and XDMCP was turned on.

Now I needed to have an inetd to launch the vncserver from, on incoming connections.

sudo apt-get install xinetd

and add a vnc service name to /etc/services (if it is not already listed in that file)

vnc 5600/tcp

and add the vnc service to xinetd (/etc/xinetd.d/vnc)

service vnc
{
        only_from = localhost 192.168.0.0/24
        disable = no
        id = vnc
        socket_type = stream
        protocol = tcp
        wait = no
        user = nobody
        server = /usr/bin/Xvnc4
        server_args = -inetd -query localhost -once -SecurityTypes=None -extension XFIXES -pn -fp /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/
        log_on_failure += USERID
}

The long line starting with server_args is server_args = -inetd -query localhost -once -SecurityTypes=None -extension XFIXES -pn -fp /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/, which I could put into a script somewhere to make the line shorter, if I feel the need later.

connections are restricted to the local network only, after restarting xinetd it finally worked.

I will be setting this up again on the server that I am building, and if something is missing I will update it then.

minimal Apache HTTPD WebDAV configuration

I recently decided to see what the minimal configuration Apache HTTPD needed to allow MacOSX to attach using webdav, as in the minimal configuration to make a HTTP based file server with Apache HTTPD.

The environment:

• MacOSX client and server
• The Apache HTTPD modules installed at /usr/libexec/apache2/
• A working directory at /Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav
• A data directory at /Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav/data
• Apache HTTPD version Apache/2.2.13

The minimal configuration ended up being:

# start with "apachectl -f /Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav/httpd.conf -k start"

ServerRoot "/Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav"
Listen 8090

LoadModule dav_module /usr/libexec/apache2/mod_dav.so
LoadModule dav_fs_module /usr/libexec/apache2/mod_dav_fs.so

DAVLockDB logs/DAVLock
<Directory "/Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav/data">
DAV On
</Directory>

DocumentRoot "data"

PidFile logs/httpd.pid
LockFile logs/accept.lock 

This configuration does no authentication or access control, and runs the server as the user that launched it (I launched it as a regular user).

After also doing the same on a Linux machine, the only change was path names, I found that it is the network link rather than the protocol that is limiting my file transfer speed between the two computers.