Setting up LAMP stack on Mandriva 2009.1

I used the LAMP task in RPMDrake to get everything installed and then configured by hand:

• Set HOSTNAME=simonpc.xxx.xx in /etc/sysconfig/network and reboot
  
• Using RPMDrake to install the MySQL server - why this is not included in LAMP I do not know
• Add a Mysql password: mysqladmin -u root password 'passwordyouwant'
• Configure phpmyadmin.
  
• Using RPMDrake to install: apache-mod_userdir
• Copy over mysql database from previous install
  

Mandriva 2009

KDE 4 may be the future but it's not easy.
A few things that helped along the way

• Adding programs to the panel
• Running KDE apps as su
  

Export Outlook addresses (to Linux/Mac)

Took me several steps to get outlook addressbook ready for Thunderbird and OS X Addressbook.

1) Export CSV - e.g. to all.csv

2) Convert to utf (thanks): iconv -f ISO8859-1 -t utf-8 -o all-utf.csv all.CSV

3) Use openoffice to change the email display names into a regular first name surname
I used this formula: =CONCATENATE(B2;" ";D2) on each row

4) Use kaddressbook to import csv file (Thunderbird has an outlook import wizard in its windows version,but it does not catch very much information).

I only had to tweak the outlook template a little to get it to import all the email addresses.  By default it uses the "email display name" field as as the "display name" - hence the reason for step 3.

5) Export as ldif

6) Import ldif into Thunderbird.

An alternative is to use a Yahoo! mail account.

Tags: outlook, thunderbird, address book

Centralised Mac addressbook using LDAP (2)

This time I just used the Mandriva wizard to setup the LDAP database and password, and added

include    /etc/openldap/schema/abxldap.schema
include    /etc/openldap/schema/apple.schema

to slapd.conf.  I then had to enable the following in the samba.schema:
acctFlags, pwdLastSet, logonTime, logonTime, kickoffTime, homeDrive, scriptPath, profilePath, userWorkstations, smbHome, rid, & primaryGroupID.

Then I was able to upload  from my Mac addressbook using  ABxLDAP.

Centralised address book using LDAP

This was my starting point, but Mandriva provides a wizard to get this started.  In retrospect they were not entirely compatible as they use different naming conventions.  I used the online info but changed "addressbook" into "People" "Manager" into "root".

I needed to add the Thunderbird schema.  I found a useful script to help convert the ldif export from Thurderbird so that it can be ldapadd-ed.  The last line needed to be changed to:
s/objectclass: mozillaAbPerson/objectclass: mozillaOrgPerson/;

To enable Mac's Addressbook.app to read, I need to add the apple.schema to my ldap.conf.  I then need this on how to rearrange it and had to uncomment several elements in samba.schema.

To enable uploading of address info from the Mac I turned to ABxLDAP.
 This did not work out of the box, but the author advised to use the old abxldap schema for the time being and (aside from endless config mistakes on my side) worked.

The end result is, however, not yet satisfactory.  I don't at the moment see very careful synchronisation.  If I capitalise a letter in a name for example, that does not seem to be propagated (although the address book is now right).  Likewise, I seem to get entries left in the LDAP server even when the original has been deleted.  But it does seem to be a useful start.

Printing from Mac to Linux

With Apple using (and owning) CUPS, this should be the obvious way to set up the print queue.  Once I discovered that i could surf to http://printserver:631/ and set up ipp URIs either using the Apple GUI or at the command line all was well.

The Macbook also found the printer on the Linux box when shared using samba, and seemed prepared to use the CUPS drivers on the Linux box (I could tell because I have an iPixma 3000 - see below - that is not supported out of the box by OS X Tiger).  However, I needed to add an entry to /Private/etc/hosts for the IP address of the Linux box in order for queued files to be sent across from the Macbook.

smb.conf in Mandriva 2007.1

I could not get access to shares using the smb.conf setup by draktools or KDE until I added:

smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd

That enabled me to see localhost, but I still could not get access from another computer and it was not a firewall issue as I had the smb.conf from my previous install that works fine

Linux OSX file sharing

Getting my new Macbook to see my main Linux box turned out to be rather complicated.
I followed this guide to begin with. I just had to change a few names for a Mandriva system:

• the config file is /etc/netatalk/netatalk.conf
• to add directories that can be accessed use /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default

This provided instructions on using howl, but that has been deprecated in favour of the avahi that is installed with Mandriva. The rest of the instructions I used were these, including the creating of

• /etc/avahi/services/afp.services (a file with this name now comes with Mandriva 2009.1)
  

Apple advise that you need to open port 548 on your firewall.

Drakmenusystem

This seems obvious in retrospect, but I somehow managed to change the menu system in Mandriva 2007.0 to the traditional, multi-layer system.  I wanted to get back to the "Discovery" menus with their single layer.  In the Control Centre there in an option for this but it only changes the settings for root.  I had to run it as a user in order to get it to take effect locally.

Obvious really!

Tags: Mandriva, menu

Mandriva automounting samba shares

Welcome to JustLinux: Wanna learn Linux?
This was a useful site for how to edit fstab so that when Mandriva starts up it mounts smb drives not wiht root but with my usename so that I can copy to and from this share