Note that this is completely unnecessary if you have root access.

Assuming you already have a shell account and you are ssh’d in, execute these commands to install your virtual python environment:

$ wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/virtual-python.py 
$ python virtual-python.py

Those commands copy the Python binary to your /home/user/bin directory and sets up symbolic links to the system wide libraries. This means that the ~/bin/python executable will have access to the same libraries as the system Python but that any extra installed software will not affect the system wide Python install.

Next you should add the ~/bin directory to your PATH by adding this block to your .bash_profile:

 if [ -d ~/bin ] ; then     
    PATH=~/bin:"${PATH}" 
fi 

$ wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py 
$ python ez_setup.py 

Now you should be able to install whatever you want using easy_install. The first thing I did was install django-db-log using this command:
$ easy_install django-db-log

Firstly you will want to turn the mysql service off.

codytaylor@server:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
 * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld   

 codytaylor@server:~$ sudo mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables --skip-networking &

codytaylor@server:~$ mysql -u root mysql
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('password') WHERE User='root';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

codytaylor@server:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

If you are using windows and you want to reset the mysql root password then check the mysql documentation.

Vim is my editor of choice but I hate coding without syntax highlighting and DreamHost doesn’t have Vim Syntax highlighting on by default. It is possible to type “:syntax enable” when already in the editor to enable syntax highlighting on the current file that you’re editing but after closing it and opening another file you will be forced to do it again.

To enable syntax highlighting forever I had to edit the .vimrc file which lives in my home directory. It didn’t exist so I had to create one. After I created this file I added the lines :

syntax enable
set background=dark
set nocompatible
set autoindent
set smartindent
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set showmatch
set ruler
set virtualedit=all

The exclamation mark, in this case, is referred to as a ‘bang’.

• !!
  This bang command, when entered into the bash shell will run the previous command. It basically does the same thing as hitting the up arrow to take you to the previous command and then hitting enter.
   
• !ls
  This will run the last command that started with ‘ls’. If you ran ‘ls -al /etc/init.d’ a few commands ago and then you type ‘!ls’ the full command will be run again, assuming that you haven’t used that command since then.
   
• !ls:p
  This will display the command instead of running it.
   
• !$
  This one will run the last word of the previous command. This one is mainly useful for substitutions.
   
• !$:p
  Instead of running the last word of the previous command this will print it out.
   
• !*
  This bang command will run the previous command without the first word. This one is also only really useful for substitutions as we see in the examples that follow.
   
• !*:p
  This will print the previous command without the first word.
   

Here are a few examples of how to use these bash bang commands in everyday command line usage :

For the purposes of these examples, every example will assume these are the last three commands you ran:

    % which firefox
    % make
    % ./foo -f foo.conf
    % vi foo.c bar.c

Getting stuff from the last command:

    Full line:     % !!            becomes:   % vi foo.c bar.c
    Last arg :     % svn ci !$     becomes:   % svn ci bar.c
    All args :     % svn ci !*     becomes:   % svn ci foo.c bar.c
    First arg:     % svn ci !!:1   becomes:   % svn ci foo.c

Accessing commandlines by pattern:

    Full line:     % !./f          becomes:   % ./foo -f foo.conf
    Full line:     % vi `!whi`     becomes:   % vi `which firefox`
    Last arg :     % vi !./f:$     becomes:   % vi foo.conf
    All args :     % ./bar !./f:*  becomes:   % ./bar -f foo.conf
    First arg:     % svn ci !vi:1  becomes:   % svn ci foo.c

There are two packages that you can install to get syntax highlighting to work in Vim: vim-full and vim-common. Because I didn’t have gnome installed vim-full was a very large download (like 50MB) and it errored out anyway. vim-common is definitely the way to go.

sudo apt-get install vim

cody@taylor:/var/some_folder/server$ ./process_xml.sh
-bash: ./process_xml.sh: /bin/sh^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

I figured it was probably a permissions error or an issue with the shebang (#!/bin/sh) line. I tried removing the shebang line, changing it to use dash or bash explicitly, chmoding to 777 and still no luck and another odd error.

cody@taylor:/var/some_folder/server$ sh process_xml.sh
: not found.sh: 4:

I then checked the log file that the commands were supposed to be writing to and it was filled with ‘^M’ on every line break and the log name itself was followed by a ‘?’. Took a minute or two but I finally clued in that I wrote that script on a windows machine and then exported it to an ubuntu linux server via subversion. It was just a basic text format issue.

Under DOS (Windows/PC) the end of a line of text is signalled using the ASCII code sequence CarriageReturn,LineFeed. Alternately written as CR,LF or the bytes 0×0D,0×0A. On the Macintosh platform, only the CR character is used. Under UNIX, the opposite is true and only the LF character is used.

After a quick :

cody@taylor:/var/some_folder/server$ apt-get install tofrodos
cody@taylor:/var/some_folder/server$ dos2unix process_xml.sh

Everything worked fine.

To re-enable grub was a lot simpler than I thought it would be. Since the Ubuntu 8.04 install disc that I had lying around also works as a live disc I booted my desktop off that. Once Ubuntu started up I opened up a terminal and typed these commands:

sudo grub
root(hd0,7)
setup(hd0)
quit

If you installed ubuntu before you installed windows then you’re probably going to have to edit your ‘/boot/grub/menu.lst’ file. The grub documentation may be helpful.

K3b gives me this error :

:-[ WRITE@LBA=0h failed with SK=3h/ASC=0Ch/ACQ=80h]: Input/output error
:-( write failed: Input/output error

BraseroWodim process finished with status 254
BraseroWodim called brasero_job_error
BraseroWodim finished with an error
BraseroWodim asked to stop because of an error
  error    = 0
  message  = "no message"
BraseroWodim stopping
BraseroWodim got killed
Session error : unknown (brasero_burn_record burn.c:2602)

I ended up taking my burner out of my ubuntu machine and putting it in an old windows box. The first dvd that I’m burning is a windows 7 install disc. After using ubuntu for about 6 months as my primary desktop operating system I think I’m done.