The Flow of Consciousness

Sean posted some excellent Linux productivity applications a few days ago. However, these apps are all graphical, and I fancy myself a command-line jockey.

So, here’s a list of some bodacious console productivity applications similar to those Sean listed.

1. screen – Screen allows a console user to launch a command in a virtual window. The user can then “detach” from the window and “reattach” later if the command hasn’t exited yet. This command is excellent for any console application that will run for a long time or has its own text-based interface. In the early days of BitTorrent, I used to use only btdownloadheadless.py to access torrents (nowadays I use various graphical clients). Read man screen for instructions on how to use screen.
2. Finch – Finch is the text-based version of Pidgin, a multi-protocol IM client. Combine Finch with screen and the result is a windowed IM client. Finch could replace naim in Zack‘s AIM answering machine, and the multi-protocol handling of Finch would enable an answering machine for just about any IM network. The Pidgin wiki has a great article on how to use Finch.
3. GNUplot – GNUplot is an excellent graphing and plotting application. It just needs a little bit of input and can produce excellent visuals for a web site or presentation. It’s got a bit of a learning curve, but after a while, it gets quite easy. See the GNUplot FAQ for a HOWTO, or hit up man gnuplot.
4. mp3blaster – mp3blaster is console mp3 and ogg player. Most people use either of those formats, and the mp3blaster interface is pretty neat.
5. vi – vi, or specifically vim is a great text editor with syntax highlighting for just about every known language. I prefer its mode switching (command/edit) to emacs‘s ctrl+(whatever) tomfoolery.
6. alpine – alpine is a replacement for pine, a console email application. It can access pop and imap servers, as well as local mail in mbox format. The only negative thing is about alpine is that it is very young. It’s based on pine, which is ancient, but alpine is a complete rewrite, afaik.
7. alias – OK, so alias isn’t an app, persay, but it is certainly a neat function in bash, the shell most distros use. Open up .bashrc or .bash_profile and you’ll see how alias can be used. Zack has aliases set up so that he can connect via SSH to any of his computers with a single word.

Got more suggestions? Let me know!

HOWTO Install Roundcube Webmail on Ubuntu Feisty

Last time I installed Roundcube Webmail, I did it on Dapper and had to fanagle it a bit. However, with my new VPS from colo4jax, I had Feisty installed and setting up Roundcube was fairly straightforward.

Roundcube is a very attractive, secure, AJAX-powered webmail application that is very streamlined and beautiful. I like it far more than Horde or Squirrelmail.

To the task, ladies and gentlemen.

First, make sure that you’ve got apache2, mysql, and your favorite SMTP and IMAP servers installed. I’m using Postfix and Courier, respectively.

Second, install Roundcube with

This will place Roundcube in /usr/share/roundcube-webmail. We need a way to get to it, though.

Third, you need to edit the Roundcube configs before we make it live. Edit /usr/share/roundcube-webmail/db.inc.php.dist and /usr/share/roundcube-webmail/main.inc.php.dist and save them without the .dist. Take very, very good care to have the database DSN correct.

Fourth, execute the SQL script found in the SQL/ for your database. I’m using MySQL, so I did

You might also need to create the databse if you haven't done that already or aren't using an existing database.

Fifth, you need to make it live. You can either throw a symlink to it from somewhere, or do I like do and give it its own subdomain. Place this in /etc/apache2/sites-available/webmail:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com #change these!
        ServerName      webmail.example.com
        ServerAlias     mail.example.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/roundcube
        <Directory /var/www/roundcube>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride all
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>
        ServerSignature Off
</VirtualHost>

Go to http://webmail.example.com and you should be presented with the login screen. Good luck!

Tonight, PJ and I installed Unreal Tournament 2004 on his laptop, which runs Ubuntu Linux 7.04 (Feisty). I put together this little HOWTO detailing what we did to install it.

As you may know, UT2k4 has a native Linux binary. That’s right—no Wine or Cedega needed here, folks. However, the install process isn’t as easy as one would think. There’s a few caveats, so I’ll detail them as I go along.

First, put the UT2k4 disc in your drive. I used the DVD version, so if you’re using the CD version, you might have to combine them into a DVD and reburn it or find another tutorial.

Second, open a terminal and copy linux-installer.sh from the CD with cp /media/cdrom/linux-installer.sh . and chmod it with chmod +w linux-installer.sh.

Third, edit the first line of linux-installer.sh and change it to #!/bin/bash. Feisty doesn’t seem to like /bin/sh.

Fourth, execute the script with ./linux-installer.sh and use the GUI to install it where you want it. I put it in /home/username/.ut2004. When it’s done installing, run it just to see if it works. Don’t get too carried away, though: it needs patched.

Fifth, get the megapack that has all the Editor’s Choice Edition and Community Bonus Pack maps in it. It’s called something like ut2004-megapack.exe. Put it in your home directory. Unzip it with unzip ut2004-megapack.exe and move into the created directory (I can’t remember what it’s called) with cd directoryname. Copy all of the files with cp -ruv * ../path/to/UT2004directory. We put PJ’s installation in ~/.ut2004, so we did cp -ruv * ~/.ut2004. The “u” switch tells cp to only copy over files that were changed.

Sixth, get the latest patch. Unzip it with tar xf ut2004-[version]-.tar.bz2. Do cd UT2004-Patch to move into the directory. Now to copy the files similar to the previous step, but sans the “u” switch because, this time, we want to force updates. Do cp -rv * ~./ut2004 or wherever your installation is.

That should be it. Run the symlink that’s in your home directory and it should work.

We didn’t get around to replacing libSDL and OpenAL with newer ones, mostly because PJ thought the performance was fine on his C2D and Quadro (can’t remember the model numbers, but it’s a Dell Latitude D820).

When I was working on the previous post, I went to Arby’s web site and found a really, really neat window effect. Shortly after the site’s intro ends, the whole browser window shakes!

I extracted the code and simplified/beautified it a little (it was already pretty easy to follow) for your enjoyment. Check out the page I made for it, the shaking window effect.

I’ve recently gotten really into City of Heroes. I really like the game’s approach to character management. There’s not many items to worry about, so the focus is on building skills and shaping your character’s combat and travel abilities. Paragon City, the city in the game, is very, very large and has a number of subdivisions, including Galaxy City, Atlas City, Peres Park, Skyway City, and The Hollows.

The graphics in the game are fantastic. The character models aren’t a sweet as World of Warcraft or as detailed as Lord of the Rings: Online, but the character combinations are ENDLESS. I’ve taken nearly 100 screenshots of neat character designs. The game really does allow a player to construct an awesome superhero.

My hero’s name is Summermute. He’s a bit of a parody of Wintermute from William Gibson’s Neuromancer. His story is that he gained enough power and knowledge within the Internet to construct a being based on electricity alone. From there, he turned to good and devoted himself to smiting all things that threaten the Internet. He also donned a red fedora as a symbol to those who would recognize his mission.

The last time I really got into an MMORPG was Ultima Online, and that was back in 2000-2003. I think the reason I’m getting into City of Heroes so much is the camaraderie that I’ve experienced. Fortunately, there’s a bunch of Phi Taus that play it, so I can find people to play with pretty often. The community is very accepting, too. Doug, who plays as Douglas McKiln, met up with a higher-level raiding party and one of the players was incredibly impressed with Doug’s ability for being so new to the game. He gave Doug 100,000 influence, the currency in the game. I also really like the combat system. There’s not a lot of abilities to manage, so things are fairly straightfoward. The whole point of the game is to use your superpowers, so regular attacks are very rare, unlike some games where mana or magic points are limited and don’t recharge very fast.

So, to the real purpose of the post. As of July 1, 2007, it is impossible to play City of Heroes using Wine on Linux. Do not waste your time like I did trying to get it to work. PJ and I installed Ubuntu on his laptop last night and we messed around for nearly three hours trying to get it to work. We even tried copying real Windows DLLs into Wine’s system32 folder—it actually made it worse. A fresh installation of Wine can launch CohUpdater.exe and begin to launch the game, but it stops there and exits. The only way to run City of Heroes on Linux is with Cedega.

Sign up for, download, and install Cedega. When you get to the download page, you can just use the “Open With” option in a fresh Ubuntu Feisty install to install the package with GDEB. Then, download CohUpdater.exe to your home directory and execute it using Cedega:

Now, the program will download. However, if you already have the files, you can copy them to the place where CohUpdater.exe will look for them:

Make sure that you remove the CohUpdater.exe file from there before you try to run it within your home directory again. Once the files are copied or downloaded, you should be able to run Cedega like this:

and it will run. After that, open Cedega through the applications menu and launch City of Heroes from there.

If you know of someone that has gotten it to run within Wine, please please please tell me about it and give me their contact information.

This little HOWTO will instruct you how to install Roundcube Webmail on Ubuntu Linux. I assume that you’ve set up an SMTP server and IMAP server locally.

First, install the package and create a symlink from your www directory to its installation directory.

I’m doing this on Dapper (Ubuntu 6.06), so I’ve got a few extra steps to upgrade to the new version of Roundcube. If you’re using Edgy or Feisty, you can skip to the next regular text section.

Now, to finish the installation, edit /usr/share/roundcube-webmail/config/db.inc.php and /usr/share/roundcube-webmail/config/main.inc.php to suit your needs. I’d recommend adding a prefix to the db_table_* config variables in db.inc.php. In main.inc.php, change default_host to ‘imap://localhost:143′ and smtp_server to ‘localhost’. I changed locale_string to ‘en_US’ because that’s my locale.

I’ve used Roundcube now for about two weeks and really enjoy its ultra-clean interface. It works well in the browsers I use (Firefox, IE7, Opera). It loads quickly and automatically checks for new mail. Its plug-in architecture is fairly young, but I predict that it will grow with time. I like the theme, but I’m more of a dark scheme person myself, so I may modify the theme for myself (and perhaps submit it to be included with the package).

I decided to stick with Roundcube. Squirrelmail was nice, but I didn’t need half of the features, and I wanted something that didn’t use frames so that I could use it on my mobile device (since there aren’t any free mail checking apps on Verizon’s Get-It-Now).

If you’ve got a computer that is persistently connected to the ‘net, you can setup an AIM answering machine–your screenname will be online and available so that people can leave you messages, and you can check your messages from anywhere in the world using telnet/ssh.

Great job, Zack!

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