ubuntu
Finding missing packages when building from source on Ubuntu
So, you are building a program from source on Ubuntu and you have run into dependency issues, what do you do?
One solution is to use apt-file. Install this with sudo apt-get install apt-file. Then run apt-file update to update it’s cache. Now, you can use it to search for your missing dependencies by running apt-file search mymissingfile.so (replace mymissingfile.so with whatver you want) and it will show you what packages provide that dependency. The go ahead and install that package to solve your problems, it even shows you where that dependency is installed to!
Turn programs on and off with Bluetooth in Ubuntu
Having recently been messing around with ZoneMinder for home security, I wanted to turn on and off the program using Bluetooth. Basically, the idea being that when I am around, the server will sense my presence (no Darth Vadar jokes please 
) via the Bluetooth on my phone and turn off ZoneMinder. Then, if I leave the location of the server, it will no longer be able to sense Bluetooth on my phone and thus will turn on ZoneMinder.
So, I hunted around for such a program, I came across bluemon and BlueProximity, but they both only worked on proximity, i.e. they relied on you being near by, as far as I could tell, there was no option of running an action when the phone was completely unavailable.
So, I decided to write my own script to do what I wanted. Now, bear in mind I have very little skill when it comes to Bash and scripting and what I wrote was a result of trial and error. It all revolves around a tool called hcitool that can be used in Linux to control Bluetooth connections.
The first attempt at my script can be found here and with another link below.
It is only designed to work with ZoneMinder and there isn’t much advice within the code, but I shall update it as time goes by to make it more useful
Here is the full link to the script:
Simple backups in Ubuntu
So, I was trying to find a decent way to carry out backups on my Ubuntu server. After trying and failing with many many different packages available from the Ubuntu repositories (keep, sbackup, backuppc) I came across rsback.
Rsback uses the highly recommended program rsync to make backups. It is basically a script for rsync that you need to add certain configurations to, to set up different backup jobs. It is set up in such a way as to perform incremental backups that occur daily and weekly – ensuring you always have a nice historical record of your files.
After messing around with so many other options, I found it the best option and highly recommend it. You need to get down and dirty with a text file configuration, but that is the norm with Ubuntu.
There are ofcourse many Windows options out there.
The problem with Ubuntu
Now, I am a huge fan of Ubuntu. It just works, in fact, I have never ever had it crash on me, whilst good old Vista and XP throws wobblies on the odd occassion. However, I think it has a fundamental flaw. It is written by techies, who know Linux inside out and are very happy with the command line. As such, if you want to do anything more than simple web browsing, IMing and emailing – which maybe most users want to to – then you start to get a little undone. Why? Because anything more slightly advanced requires you to start to know some command line stuff and be happy editing text files.
This includes setting up samba, setting up apache etc etc. Now, one could argue that those kinda things are pretty advanced and if you know about them, then you should be techie enough to be happy with the command line and text files, but I disagree. Looking at Windows, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it and you never have to edit a text file. This seems to be somethhing endemic within Ubuntu.
For example, I was trying to work out how to carry out simple incremental backups of certain folders in Ubuntu. After googling, it appeared that I need to use some command line tools like rsync or rdiff. Now, since I am still not that comfortable with scripts and cron, I just didn’t know what to do. Whereas in Windows, there are a million and one different options, all having a nice GUI. Thus me, being probobly the average Ubuntu user hits a huge barrier, and this is feel is the major problem of Ubuntu. It has not yet fully converted to the idea that simple users need GUIs. However, it is moving towards this belief and is much much more friendly than earlier versions, I just feel until it gets to the point where there is a GUI for every option and tool and all the packages that can be downloaded via synaptics have a GUI then it is going to have problems.
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