Turning to the dark side

It's been over 15 years since I've tried switching to Linux for the first time. I distinctly remember the first experience I've had that day when "to install" really meant "to compile the kernel". It was awful, bad and completely not approachable by mare mortals. That's how I met Linux.

The astounding thing about it though was that it kept nagging me over and over again. The sole idea of having an operating system for free and be able to customize it to your liking (although excruciatingly painful) stayed with me since that day. I was sold to the idea of using free software and some years later to give back something in return.

Some years later I've learned that there's nothing like a good Linux server and bought into the idea that as far as I am concerned Linux is The Operating System for servers but as far as Desktop is concerned it just doesn't measure up to the competition.

It's years later now, the new millennium, and I can finally enjoy a Linux distro prepared truly in a way that can compete with what I've already knew. It's Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - the first Linux I feel is worth using at all on a desktop.

So here's what I value the most and why I think you should just switch to Ubuntu 12.04 and never look back again:

• Unity: User Interface that rocks! The first ever successful attempt to create a good looking and usable alternative to Windows
• Memory consumption that doesn't eat all you have for breakfast
• Hardware support that blows your mind
• It's Linux inside all this meaning you can do whatever you please to it

My advise to you is: If you have not tasted it yet go ahead and try it out! It'll blow your mind how much space you can get in almost every aspect of your PC, starting with hardware requirements and ending with available screen space. It is truly astonishing!

Have a nice day!

PostgreSQL and phpPgAdmin on Ubuntu Server

I was struggling to get the phpPgAdmin application to work on a virtual machine running Ubuntu 9.04 today. As it turns out phpPgAdmin's default installation is by default targeted at desktop environments which is by all intents and purposes stupid (to say the least).

So what's so "desktop-ish" about it? Well as it turns out the default configuration accepts connections from localhost only which is completely unusable in a server-like environment with no graphical environment and no web browser whatsoever.

The default behavior also manifests itself in a very non-verbose manner. At first the log entry

"GET /pgphpadmin HTTP/1.1" 403 268

is not saying very much. It'd be better if the error message said something more verbose and direct the user to change the access rules or better yet to have a configuration step during installation that asks for this rather than to have poke around some configuration files.

To change it's default behavior one has to edit the file /etc/apache2/conf.d/phppgadmin (which is a symbolic link to /etc/phppgadmin/apache.conf) and change the default access policy from 127.0.0.1/255.0.0.0 ::1/128 to all.
To do that simply comment out the line that reads

allow from 127.0.0.1/255.0.0.0 ::1/128

and remove the comment from one line below that reads

allow from all

That does the trick. Of course that opens the ability to connect to this server from the outside world, but since this is a server installation it's not uncommon to access it from far far away, is it?


Happy hunting!