UBUNTU Interesting Facts

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Private Cloud : We've discussed a few articles on cloud computing. Cloud computing is making software available as a service. In simple terms, host your applications in infrastructure (server,OS,databases,network) of cloud vendors like Amazon, Google, Salesforce etc.This is referred to as public cloud. Instead of having a seperate datacentre with servers hardware and IT infrastructure team, you can use this infrastructure to host your applications. This concept of cloud computing is supported my Windows Azure a recent OS release from Microsoft corporation. Microsoft do have their own data centre to support cloud computing. Today I logged onto ubuntu Linux website to see if the recent version is available for download. I happened to see an interesting concept called as ubuntu Enterprise cloud. This supports concept of private cloud within the organizations IT infrastructure.Primary benefit of cloud computing is scalability. More resources can be added on demand. We can deploy applications and have them up and running immediately. It is interesting to see that Ubuntu Enterprise cloud is compatible with Amazon EC2 public cloud. Ubuntu Enterprise cloud offers the same set of API that can be used with Amazon EC2. It is interesting to see that private cloud can be set up in as less as 25 minutes. In addition to this cloud management solution such as Canonical Landscape are made available by Ubuntu Linux. So system management (management of ubuntu instances in cloud) becomes so simple Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Orca Reader For Visually Impaired: I recently installed ubuntu 10.04 LTS Linux which is the long term support Linux, the recent stable version released this April,2010. I started exploring few interesting features od ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu Linux has an interesting reader named orca, which supports people with low vision, visually impaired. It has braille support. It helps us access standard Desktop applications using speech and braille output. Orca is also a screen magnifier that has automated focus tracking, full-screen magnification and many such useful features. When Orca is run for the first time it is in setup mode. This is same as ubuntu linux entering automatic configuration mode first time it is booted after installation/upgrade.We can proceed with command-line or we can invoke orca GUI. To invoke orka GUI press Insert+Space. These tools will invoke ~/.orca/user-settings.py file which holds preferences and accessibility infrastructure. Once settings are set, logout and log back for configurations to take effect. In terminal window orca command will invoke the orca reader and magnifier. How to install Ubuntu 10.04 in Windows 7 : We can download iso images, burn in CD and begin installation. alternatively, we can use ubuntu installer for windows to download the binary and install it in windows 7. I've installed previous version of ubuntu which took about 15 minutes. This version has plenty of new features included in it and took some more time.We can reboot the system manually or automatically once the installation is done. Linux Mutt Email Command Package : Mutt the email client program in ubuntu linux is a good alternative and best replacement for mail as it doesn't need encoding of attachments. Mutt command needs mutt package to be installed. If not we'll get the following error: root@ubuntu:/proc# mutt The program 'mutt' can be found in the following packages: * mutt * mutt-patched Try: apt-get install root@ubuntu:/proc# apt-get install mutt Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... 1% Need to get 2,515kB of archives. After this operation, 9,376kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main mutt 1.5.20-7ubuntu1 [1,194kB] Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main postfix 2.7.0-1 [1,321kB] Fetched 2,515kB in 4s (566kB/s) Ubuntu Linux CPU Information: In linux it is mandatory to determine system details including the architecture, CPU. If the documentation is not available (as is the case with most organizations) it is mandatory to have an idea of file structure and directories relevant to different tasks. For example /etc will include files on system information, user information. In same fashion /proc is another interesting directory that has files on system information. To find information on CPU os the system get the details from /proc/cpuinfo. We can make use of cat or more command to read the details of the file root@ubuntu:~# more /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU       T4400  @ 2.20GHz stepping : 10 cpu MHz : 2194.500 cache size : 1024 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss nx constant_tsc up arch_perfmon pebs bts xtopology tsc_reliable aperfmperf pni ssse3 hypervisor bogomips : 4389.00 clflush size : 64 root@ubuntu:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor: 0 vendor_id: GenuineIntel cpu family: 6 model: 23 model name: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU       T4400  @ 2.20GHz stepping: 10 cpu MHz: 2194.500 cache size: 1024 KB fdiv_bug: no hlt_bug: no f00f_bug: no coma_bug: no fpu: yes fpu_exception: yes cpuid level: 13 wp: yes flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss nx constant_tsc up arch_perfmon pebs bts xtopology tsc_reliable aperfmperf pni ssse3 hypervisor bogomips: 4389.00 clflush size: 64 cache_alignment: 64 address sizes: 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management