Sharing files between a VirtualBox WinXP and the Ubuntu 8 host

Its been an Odyssey moving from Windows to Linux, each day a new lesson, a new surprise and a new feature added to my laptop. Well I had successfully installed VirtualBox achieved a successful virtualization, installed Windows XP successfully, all was well. As usual though you always want more, I mean, it really makes no sense if the virtual machine cannot share files with the host machine or networked machines. Thus next task was to try to share the files - a daunting task. I went with what I knew and added the virtual machine to the network. That worked but, while I could see the virtual machine on the network I could not get into the shared folder. Oh Gosh I thought another hurdle. I tried to share the Ubuntu folders but, I kept getting alerts saying I needed permissions. These steps sorted the problem.

• I created a new network from the virtual server to the default network on Ubuntu called WORKGROUP. Having done that I started to see the virtual machine on the host and vice versa.
• Next I set up a file share on the folders I wanted to share on my Linux box and all was well.

And all was well.... amazing. Now I have a complete machine. Ubuntu rocks!!

Manchester United are Champions of Europe again

Long Live Sir Alex Ferguson!!!
Nuff Said. :D

Virtualbox: Open source virtualization with OOmmph!!

The wonders of Ubuntu and its open-source components never cease to amaze me. Once again I've had my mind blown. This time its Virtualbox - a virtualization utility to match the well known consumer versions - VMWare and Parallels to name but, two. I decided yesterday that the aggravation of installing Mono and trying to get software like Flashdevelop and such other Actionscript development tools was too much for me. The solution - run Windows XP as a parallel OS in a virtual machine on Ubuntu. The question was which virtualization package would be ideal for moi. I tried the demo version of VMWare and immediaely ran into trouble. Errors here, there and everywhere. Nah, not for me I said. As someone said '' Google is your friend', so I googled and up came VirtualBox. I must confess I was vastly suspicious until I tried to download it and was redirected to the Sun downloads portal. If Sun was supporting this little bijou, it cannot be half bad, I thought. SO onwards.
VirtualBox comes as a Debian package so downloading and installing it was smooth. Next I set up a new Virtual desktop. I initially ran into some problems with running the virtual machine but, the moment I assigned my user account as a member of the vboxusers group all was fine. I did this with this command in Terminal

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers ayo

You need to restart the virtual machine though for the settings to take effect. After this it was smooth sailing. I installed Windows XP Home and now I can run all my Windows software on my virtual machine in 'seamless mode'. Its bloody brilliant. I've installed .Net without issues, I'm really looking to running FlashDevelop and the Flex SDK here - see how it compares with the Linux FlexBuilder in performance. You should see the Flash 10 player run here, just amazing, its the fastest I've ever seen Windows run. Believe it or not WinXP runs faster in my vritual machine, than it does on my other laptop where it is the prime OS. Now I can start to work in earnest. On the downside, now I need to start installing antivirus software and all that crap... :(

Configuring Red5 server for manual start in Linux

The Red5 streaming server installation on Linux is configured by default as a start-up service. This may be fine when you are running Red5 as a production server but, definitely not adequate for a development machine, where you may be deploying more than one open socket server (as I do). In such an environment you need to be able to start the server of your choice manually - when you need it. The method outlined below will reconfigure your Red5 server for manual boot. The Red5 service discussed runs on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

First you need to navigate to the init.d folder
cd /etc/init.d

Stop the Red5 service
sudo ./red5 stop

Remove all the default auto-config settings
sudo update-rc.d -f red5 remove

Finish up by specifying the new config settings (stop always)
sudo update-rc.d -f red5 stop 20 2 3 4 5 .

An untried (untried by me) alternative suggested kindly by Mikko Rantalainen is

"As an alternative, one could specify new config in the second step, for
example:

# start with sequence number 80 at run levels 2, 3, 4 and 5
# stop with sequence number 20 at run levels S, 0, 1 and 6
sudo update-rc.d red5 start 80 2 3 4 5 . stop 20 S 0 1 6 .

I'm not sure about the official run levels for latest debian or ubuntu but, historically runlevel 2 is supposed to be without network connection - so red5 should probably run only at run levels 3, 4 and 5. However, at least default install of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS seems to run at runlevel 2 with active network connection."

My thanks to R.G Manuel and Mikko Rantalainen without whom I would still probably be scratching my head on this one.

Exploring other OS options: Ubuntu is Boss!!

Yes I'll be the first to admit it, I have caught the Linux bug and a really bad (or maybe good) dose of it. I had previously dipped my toe into Ubuntu - having being harassed by my brother who swears by the OS. My initial incursions were not the very pleasant for 2 main reasons, (1) I ran it from a virtual machine on Windows Media Center, where it felt like I was working on a remote machine via VNC with very low bandwidth, (2) I wanted, nay, expected Ubuntu to be a Linux Windows and got fed up at being clueless at every turn.
Over the last few weeks I have turned to Linux as my choice of operating system for a whole variety of reasons and have been very pleased with my initial choice Linux Mint Daryna. I had installed Linux MInt at work as a dual boot with Windows but a family of gremlins waylayed me en route to deploying dual monitors, as a result LM refused to boot but,in 'Failsafe'. Not much use there.
Grudgingly I took a pals advice and installed Ubuntu 8.04. Boy am I glad I took that advice. The first thing that brought a smile to my face was the blinding speed of response to everthing, Compiz 3D cubes and all. McLaren may want to talk to the Ubuntu boys about injecting some more speed into their cars. In addition all the basic software scafolding was in place, Firefox et al. Ubuntu is an operating system on steroids - believe me when I say that if I can get all the soft ware I need for Actionscript development and graphics on Ubuntu, its bye Windows.
I'm no fan of their default graphics though, its just soooo Sahara desert. Enter another good friend of mine Andy Gallagher. There's an ole Nigerian proverb, "Know your way no be curse", believe me when I say Andy did know his way. He showed me a dozen ways to customise Ubuntu - in short he made my day. The screenshot above is the result of a few hours of adjusting Ubuntu. Transparent tool bars, weather widgets, nice subtle metallic appliation frames, just wonderful.
What can I say Ubuntu Rocks!!!

Stopping, Starting and Restarting Red5 in Linux

Every so often an adage becomes part of your experience. The one for the day was "a friend in need is a friend indeed". I was truly a friend in need and I had a friend indeed in a guy who strangely enough I have never met in person but, I can count amongst one of my closest pals. Greg Whitehead (thats his name) and I met while I was developing the myForum2 online office/conferencing system (Flash Media Server application). He is the PHP guru who I collaborated with to build that and a couple of other systems. Well he saved my Linux newbie arse again, a true friend indeed.
All those who read this little treatise on starting, stopping and restarting Red5 in Linux, you owe this bit of information to him. Okay enough of the waffle.

To begin my distro is Linux Mint (Daryna), Greg is an Ubuntu man. I installed Red5 using the GDebi package installer. Then the 1st hurdle appeared, apparently Red5 was installed successfully but, "Where the Deuce was the damned thing?". As a windows user I expect to see Icons or a start-up link somewhere when I install a service, not in this case. The absence of an install Icon was painfully obvious. After some desperate Googling I managed to find out how to get at the demos, so I could test for the presence of Red5 http://localhost:5080/demos/port_tester.swf. Then the major hurdle, how do I stop the Red5 service. A lenghty session of Googling only brought frustration and desperation. After 3 hours I was irritated and fed up.
Enter Greg the Saviour, and here is the way:

First locate the service by typing the following in your Terminal
cd /etc/init.d

Next type
ls

This will show you all your services. If Red5 is there, you're in business.

To stop Red5, type:
sudo ./red5 stop

If you are successfull you will get the following print out
Stopping Red5 flash streaming server: red5.

To start Red5, type:
sudo ./red5 start

Success will yield the following print out
Starting Red5 flash streaming server: red5.

To restart Red5 type:
sudo ./red5 restart

Successfull you get:
Restarting Red5 flash streaming server: red5.

Thats it folks, if you're new to Linux like moi get ready for the next headache. By the by does any one out there know how I can get my web cam to work in Linux Mint? Once more, thanks G :)

Installing FlexBuilder3 on LinuxMint

Having gone through the travails of setting up LinuxMint. I say travails because despite the ease of install process, it took a prayer to get the damned thing to install. It shut down my computer so many times when it was about 98% complete, forcing me to do it all again. I often wondered if the struggle was really worth the effort. Finally it went through and as shown in the previous post I had the LinuxMint OS. There were of course a few more crashes as I muddled my way through updates and so on. Now the big challenge installing the new Flex Builder Linux Public Alpha. The first thing required was to get Eclipse Europa, this has to be downloaded and installed from the Eclipse site because the version thats built into LinuxMint as a choice of installable software does not support FlexBuilder 3. LinuxMint has a wonderful util called and Archive manager. Download the Eclipse Europa tar.gz and use the archive Manager to put it at the location of your choice on your hard drive, mine was /ayo/eclipse. Once that is done download your Flex Builder Linux Public Alpha .bin file. When the download is done, open the folder you downloaded the .bin, go to the Terminal from that folder and type

chmod +x Flexbuilder_blah_blah.bin

Click 'Enter', then type

./Flexbuilder_blah_blah.bin

Click 'Enter' again.
This will bring up the FlexBuilder installer. Follow the instructions and "Bob's your uncle". This version of FlexBuilder does not offer a Design View. This is unfortunate, nonetheless there you go, FlexBuilder 3 for Linux on LinuxMint Daryna.