To install Skype on an AMD64 system, you’ll need the 32-bit libraries (if you’re distro is 32-bit, skip this),

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Then download the appropriate package from…

• Skype Linux

Firefox should download it to your desktop so…

cd Desktop
sudo dpkg --install --force-architecture --force-depends skype-debian_2.0.0.68-1_i386.deb

And you’re done, with the Webcam driver installed and enabled you should now be able to make video calls too.

• Ubuntu Webcam Install

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.

Seriously, how good is this Linux distribution. It’s on a rolling release so you never need to worry about release numbers (7.04, 8.10, etc.) and it’s so light and tightly put together, just excellent.

I installed a dual-boot install on my new HP laptop with Vista + ArchLinux using GRUB in about 5 minutes, really impressed about the intelligence of this build; well done to all involved.

Also for learning Linux it’s got to be the best one to choose, ok it’s a toughie with it’s command-line install but with a 120mb install and creation of a rescue system incase you screw it up I’ve seriously grown to like it a lot; totally my favourite Linux distribution.

• ArchLinux Installation Guide
• Gnone Install

If you’re one of those guys with a hacked iPhone, you might get this error with the InstallerApp, nothing serious, just one of the repositories has changed location.

New Repository Location

• Go to Sources in Installer.app.
• Tap the Edit button. Click on the - icon over Ste Packaging source line to delete it.
• Tap the Add button and type the right new URL for STE Packaging source:
• Type in the new location.. http://repo.smxy.org/iphone-apps/

Getting Extra Space on your iPhone

PS, It’s recommend you install both Community Sources and BossTool (in the Utilities category) and run the Free Disk Space tool inside BossTool in order to relocate Fonts, Ringtones and Applications to the main disk partition and thus, be able to install a lot more applications without space problems.

Note: do this in the recommended order;

• first Fonts
• then Ringtones
• and Applications at the last

As always, be careful with this; haven’t done it myself btw.

Update

Just ran the BossTool on my iphone (1.1.4) and it worked fine, did each in order fonts, then ringtones, then apps.

Also try using ZiPhone to update and unlock your iphone, you should get the new sources in the installer automatically with it.

• ZiPhone

In this series of articles I’ll explain how to install and setup the super light and fast NGINX webserver on your Linux box and get it to host rails apps and maybe a little extra.

First off let’s install NGINX

To install the latest copy of NGINX you’re gonna need to build from source so make sure you install the build-essentials (gcc), to do this run…

sudo aptitude install build-essential

Now you’ve got the GCC compiler installed you can build from source, so let’s download the latest copy of NGINX…

First some dependencies,

sudo aptitude install libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libssl-dev zlib1g-dev

Now the bad boy himself,

cd ~/sources/
wget http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.5.35.tar.gz
tar -zxvf nginx-0.5.35.tar.gz
cd nginx-0.5.35/

now configure the source,

./configure --sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin --with-http_ssl_module

it’ll finish with a summary of locations like,

nginx path prefix: "/usr/local/nginx"
nginx binary file: "/usr/local/sbin"
nginx configuration file: "/usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf"

write these down before you continue, very important!

now build,

make

and install

sudo make install

Running NGINX

As those last summary lines told us, nginx lives in -> /usr/local/sbin/nginx, so let’s go start it,

sudo /usr/local/sbin/nginx

now if you navigate to your boxes ip address you should see a fancy ‘welcome to nginx’ message, wahey! you have it installed.

Final part, startup scripts

Now the next script I’m very thankful for PickledOnion over at Slicehost.com for providing.

First off let’s create an init script so we can start it more nicely and NGINX will start on reboot, so…

sudo nano /etc/init.d/nginx

And now copy & paste this init script into nano…

#! /bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          nginx
# Required-Start:    $all
# Required-Stop:     $all
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: starts the nginx web server
# Description:       starts nginx using start-stop-daemon
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/local/sbin/nginx
NAME=nginx
DESC=nginx

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

# Include nginx defaults if available
if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
        . /etc/default/nginx
fi

set -e

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile \
                /usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON
        sleep 1
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile \
                /usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  reload)
          echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: "
          start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile     /usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
              --exec $DAEMON 
          echo "$NAME."
          ;;
      *)
            N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
            echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
            exit 1   
            ;;
    esac

    exit 0

Yes it’s a monster, I’ve copied it over to my server so you can grab it at..

• NGINX Init Script

Now lets use it with…

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f nginx defaults

You should now see…

Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/nginx ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
   /etc/rc1.d/K20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
   /etc/rc6.d/K20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
   /etc/rc2.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
   /etc/rc3.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
   /etc/rc4.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
   /etc/rc5.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx

Now NGINX will startup on reboot and you can run these commands to control it better.

Start

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

Stop

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx stop

Restart

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

Next up i’ll put together the nginx scripts I use myself which should help you out a lot when hosting your site with this great tool.

Final Note

On a later note you may get times when you change your NGINX .conf scripts restart NGINX and it doesn’t seem to have taken your latest config changes, I get this myself sometimes.

What you can do is brute-force kill the NGINX process and restart it with…

ps aux | grep nginx

which will return the process id NGINX is running at, then kill it with…

kill [processid]

and now start NGINX from fresh,

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

.Conf Templates

For your info and more so the guys who have working NGINX setups, I’ve put example config files in my downloads area, with direct links here….

• nginx system .conf template

• nginx ruby app .conf template

• nginx redirect .conf template