After grabbing and installing Ubuntu 8.04 I then had to put together and setup the baby, luckily I wrote down most of everything I did in case I’d have to do it again and to help out you guys.

What follows are my findings and what I did to fix them. The machine I used is an HP Pavillion dv2000 model dv2742 special edition. It’s got a built-in intel graphics card, 3gb memory, sata 250gb drive, wifi, bluetooth and an intel dual core 2 processor.

I installed the o/s using the 64-bit edition of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, all what you see below are workable settings which provided the right setup; hope they help your situation if you go down this route.

Update System

First port of call, check for any new updates post-install,

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude upgrade

Dependencies / Software / Setup

Next, install Ruby, FlashPlayer, GCC Compiler, MySQL, JAVA, SqlLite,

sudo aptitude install mysql-server flashplugin-nonfree ruby-full libsqlite3-dev build-essential libmysqlclient15-dev sun-java6-jdk

Volume Mixer,

sudo aptitude install gnome-alsamixer

ImageMagick,

sudo aptitude install imagemagick

Ruby Gem Handler

I could get GEM from the repositories but because with each new update it breaks away from the in-built Linux installer it’s best to install it from source,

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/34638/rubygems-1.1.0.tgz 
tar xzvf rubygems-1.1.0.tgz
cd rubygems-1.1.0
sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem

Had problems updating the GEM system initally, so logged in as root to finish it off,

su root 
sudo gem update --system

Now when you type gem –version you should see GEM ready to roll,

Gem Libraries

The slow bit, ran this as root just to make sure it worked,

gem install rails
gem install rake
gem install mongrel
gem install mongrel_cluster
gem install thin
gem install capistrano
gem install mysql
gem install termios
gem install sqlite3-ruby
gem install mini_magick

VLC + GIT

Next VLC to play videos,

sudo aptitude install vlc

Transmission for torrents, most important bit,

sudo aptitude install transmission

And GIT to handle code versioning,

sudo aptitude install git-core

Firefox + MS Fonts

Next I need Firebug for Firefox 3. Ubuntu 8.04 comes with Firefox 3 beta 5, the one available thru Tools / Add-ons won’t work with it; but thankfully it’s in the repositories

sudo aptitude install firebug

And you’ll probably need Microsoft Fonts later down the line,

sudo aptitude install msttcorefonts

Pimp GEDIT

The default Gnome Text Editor Isn’t bad but let’s add some extra’s to really kick it in gear,

sudo aptitude install gedit-plugins

And tweak it,

wget http://robzon.kapati.net/rails/rhtml.lang && sudo mv rhtml.lang /usr/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs/
wget http://robzon.kapati.net/rails/rails.xml && sudo mv rails.xml /usr/share/mime/packages
sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime

Follow the guide here to get the TextMate look,

• Pimp GEDIT

Now when you open rails source files they’ll actually look right, thanks Grigio.

PostGreSql + Thunderbird

Pretty easy to install the most powerful db system, and the better email handler

sudo aptitude install postgresql thunderbird

Wine for Windows

Thanks to Google for their support the Wine project is going great, to get Windows software running natively on your machine,

First add the key,

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Then add the repository to your default repository list,

sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

And finally install it,

sudo apt-get install wine

Effects

To enable compiz effects make sure Appearance / Visual Effects is set to ‘Extra’, then install the Advanced Effects Manager,

sudo aptitude install compizconfig-settings-manager

This will give you access to the 3d cube, skydome effect and a host of other cool addons.

My desktop dpi is set to 100dpi, fonts set to ‘Bitstream Vera Sans Roman 8pt’, with ‘Bitstream Vera Sans Bold 8pt’ for Windows Title; and ‘Liberation Mono 8pt’ for fixed width font. Using subpixel smoothing for LCD.

Sound

For my laptop (hp pavillion dv2000 / dv2742se model), i had to use a different sound mixer to make sure the quickplay volume and mute buttons talked to the sound system.

So from the top menu bar, System / Preferences / Sounds, then set the Default Mixer Tracks hander device to: Conexant CX20561 (hermosa) (oss mixer).

Cleanup

To get any temp files carried on from the install, clean with,

sudo aptitude clean

Job done, however I had a problem with Hibernate & Suspend which was lucky fixed with some advice from here

Good site to use when planing your next vacation, flack jackets optional.

Built with Python and powered by the PostGreSql database engine it’s certainly an advanced webapp, with custom maps built specifically for the job using a number of open-source tools like MapNik & TileCache it’s no slowcoach to technology; good work!

• EveryBlock - Chicago
• EveryBlock - NYC
• EveryBlock - SF

Easy it aint, kept getting this…

The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail.

But here’s how to fix it,

Get MySQL

First download MySQL

• MySQL Download

Install MySQL

Now unzip the executable and install it, when it’s finished and asking you if you want to run the configuration tool, don’t; we’ll deal with this in a minute.

Install Resource Hacker

Now to fix the MySQL Instance Configuration Tool, so it will install the MySQL service in Vista, download Resource Hacker…

• Resource Hacker

Unzip it and open it’s folder, then Right-Click on ResourceHacker and Run as Administrator.

Edit Resources

Now using Resource Hacker open the file…

• C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\bin\MySQLInstanceConfig.exe

Navigate to 24 / 1 / 1033 and look at the config on the left. On line 6 you should see asAdministrator, change this to requireAdministrator then click Compile Script; then finally Save the file.

Run MySQL Instance Config

Finally run the MySQL Instance Configuration tool from within…

• C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\bin\MySQLInstanceConfig.exe

This should now be able to create the system service and finally give you MySQL running on Windows Vista.

To make a truly intelligent web application your gonna sooner or later have to play around with Sessions, which is basically a Cookie’s big brother.

Store in DB

Now Rails initally will store all it’s session data in a text file within the /tmp/sessions directory of your rails app, which is usually ok, but if you’re gonna build a production-ready app you’re gonna want to up the ante somewhat and store them in your DB.

This is simply done by opening up your environment.rb file and un-commenting the following line…

(within /config/environment.rb)
config.action_controller.session_store = :active_record_store

Then in the command-line generate a RAKE DB migration for your Session objects (so they’re stored in your db from now on).

rake db:sessions:create
rake db:migrate

Bingo, you now have a table within your database hooked up and ready to store your session data perfectly.

Storing Session Objects

Now that you’ve got your DB storing your session data, why don’t we start creating some session objects.

This is done by…

session[:order] = 'ASC'

Here, we’ve simply created a new session object, storing in it a text value of ‘ASC’; cool eh?

We can then check to see if our session is empty via…

if session[:order].blank?
   ..do stuff..

So if our session object contains nothing we can initialise it correctly.

Common Gotcha

Now one of the good things with switching sessions over to your db is that it’ll secure your app a little bit better and your performance will improve.

Plus if your building your app on your dev machine, then transfer it to your live box, but can’t find a reason why your sessions don’t work there it’s usually down to file permissions for the session file; by switching sessions over to a db you remove any future problem of this.

Good eh,

Convert Typo InnoDB > MyISAM

Simple script to convert your Typo database tables from InnoDB to MyISAM format.

use mytypo_production;
ALTER TABLE articles_tags ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE blacklist_patterns ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE blogs ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE categories ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE categorizations ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE contents ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE feedback ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE notifications ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE page_caches ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE pings ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE redirects ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE resources ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE schema_info ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE sessions ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE sidebars ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE sitealizer ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE tags ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE text_filters ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE triggers ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE users ENGINE = MyISAM;

Now What?

Change mytypo_production to your Typo database’s name.

Save it as convert.sql

Run it via,

mysql -u root
source convert.sql

You will get a load of check messages and hopefully no errors or warnings. If all goes ok you should now be over to MyISAM.

Convert Typo MyISAM > InnoDB

use mytypo_production;
ALTER TABLE articles_tags ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE blacklist_patterns ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE blogs ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE categories ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE categorizations ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE contents ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE feedback ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE notifications ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE page_caches ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE pings ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE redirects ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE resources ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE schema_info ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE sessions ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE sidebars ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE sitealizer ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE tags ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE text_filters ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE triggers ENGINE = INNODB;
ALTER TABLE users ENGINE = INNODB;

Also…

Also make sure you Tune your MySQL Install…

• Tuning MySQL

And optimize the Tables,

• Typo Optimization