Ubuntu Apache Dev Web Server Install

I'm investigating Yii, a PHP web framework, for some friends. We want to do a web project and they know at least some PHP. Since I don't want to do all the programming myself, PHP seems like a good option.

The first step is installing the Apache HTTP Server. While I have that self-same web server already installed on my machine as a service, I decided I wanted a development copy I could mess up and not hose my machine's install.

Going to the Apache download site, I see 2.2 is the latest stable version. I navigate to that page and find the Unix tarball to download. Once downloaded, I extract the file any old place.

Step 1 -  run 'configure' with your final install directory for Apache.

./configure --prefix=[Apache Install Dir] --enable-so

Lots of output follows. I recommend giving a full path vs. a relative path to the install directory. You can probably use either but you never know.

Step 2 - Now it's time to run 'make'.

make

Lots more output follows.

Now run 'make install'. This actually creates the server instance software in you install directory you picked in step 1.

make install

Now navigate to your Apache install directory. Since this is a development web server, we're going to change the default listing port to 8080. I do this so it won't interfere with an installed web server running on the default port of 80.

cd [Apache Install Dir]/Apache2.2/conf

Use your favorite editor, and open httpd.conf. Find the line 

Listen 80

Change it to

Listen 8080

You can substitute 8080 with any other open port. If you need to see if a port is open you can run

netstat -a

and look through the results to make sure your port isn't in use.

Now change directory to the Apache bin directory and run apachectl start. This starts your web server.

cd [Apache Install Dir]/Apache2.2/bin
./apachectl start

Now open a web browser and try

http://localhost:8080/

You should bet a message that says

It Works

If you get this pat yourself on the back and go get a cup of coffee smiling that you've successfully geeked for the day. If not, do what we professionals do, consult the all knowing Google search.

Coming up next, configuring Apache to run PHP.

Expanding A Disk in Oracle's VirtualBox

I run Ubuntu Linux at home. I love Linux. It's fast, has a smaller footprint than other O/Ss, and it's free. The rest of the world, however, lives on MicroSoft Windows or Apple OSX. I don't mind this. I like being different and enjoy the time I don't spend on virus issues and the money I save on hardware.

Still, ever so often you need a Windows operating system. Normally I can do these small tasks using other resources, but recently I've been hit over and over again with the need to have Windows at home.

If you run Linux you have a few options. You can use Wine to run windows applications within your Linux O/S or you can use a Virtual Machine server to host a Windows O/S within your Linux system. I decided to go this route.

I was once a VMWare fan. I guess I still am but Oracle has a free product called VirtualBox that was recommended by my next door neighbor, the Linux Kernel Commando. The primary advantage to VirtualBox is its ability to access the USB port. VMWare doesn't do that, at least the free version doesn't.

VirtualBox is easy to download, install, and setup as was the Extension Pack which added the USB 2.0 support. Everything was wonderful once I had Google Chrome installed in my new Windows 7 instance. I used it rarely, but it was always there when I needed it. The only issue was when it cranked up, Windows would download the latest MicroSoft patches. I think the VM spent more time patching than running.

Then came my decision to purchase MicroSoft Office 2010. I had 20 GB allocated to my Window's VM and needed more. VirtualBox doesn't have a nice little switch to extend a disk from their console (hint: THEY SHOULD). You have to go to the command prompt and do it. The pig that is Microsoft Office needs over 40 GB to install. After futzing around, making new drives, and generally getting frustrated, I found the magic command to extend a virtual disk.

Before running this, make sure you have a good snapshot of your current VM image. I did a full clone as well just in case.  Here's a screen print of my current VirtualBox console (after the expansion). Note the happy little Snapshots(1) button in the upper right. That's where you go to make the snapshot.

The command to expand the disk to 80 GB is

VBoxManage modifyhd [virtual disk filename] --resize [size in MB]

You find the path to the file from the Storage link on the console above. You can find this and other VirtualBox commands in the Manual.

I was then able to go in and install MicroSoft Office with no problems although I wonder how much more time my little VM will spend patching itself.

Screencasts in Ubuntu

This one took me a while but I finally found a software stack that works well for screen casts in Ubuntu 10.10 and YouTube. recordmydesktop is great for capturing the full screen, a single screen, or a small portion of your display. The other product is Winff for converting the ogv file to an avi. This was actually the most painful part of the process as many products came and went but still exist in the wild world of the Internet.  The stack works really well. Just record, convert, and upload the YouTube.

Both are available from the Ubuntu repository via the Package Manager.

Below is a screen cast of me actually type this blog. It records audio from any microphone you have configure and thus you'll here me typing in the first part of the video. 

And here's a screen cast of using WinFF to convert OGV to an AVI file. You can view this file below.

Good luck and may the Force be with you.

Google And Linux

I am happy to report that Google now supports Linux for the Chrome browser. It was a painless install but I had to close Firefox in order for Chrome to import my settings.  Now I'm off to see if the Goggle Web Toolkit actually works with Linux now.

Ubuntu 8 and HP Deskjet F4280

My mother passed away recently bequeathed me a large number of old photos. I wish to save these treasures from the ravages of time and share them with others easily. Scanning them is the obvious solution but I"m afraid to use my old HP OfficeJeet K80 for the task. It has a scanner but you load the original like a FAX machine and I'm afraid this would damage the photos so I purchased a brand new HP DeskJet F4280 for the task. I got home with my new technological goody and prepared to scan away.

Note: I love Linux. Its a great operating system that takes a lot less system resources than Windows but there are times I just want to plug in my new piece of hardware and have it work. I you are that sort of person Linux is not necessarily for you.

I plugged the new device into my old home built computer and got an error. It simply would do a thing with it. So, I booted up my old laptop, discovered I had a bad disk drive, installed a new disk drive (we all have a spare laying around, right?), installed Ubuntu 8 on it and tried it. Same problem. Damn!

So, I hit the forums. The problem seemed to be that HP devices are controlled by something called HPLIP. HP decided to sidestep creating a new driver for everything that came out developed a single package which controlled all the HP devices attached to the various flavors of Linux.

The forum gurus stated I needed to upgrade to the latest version of this software if I had any hopes of getting the device working. But, as with everything involving Linux, it just wasn't that simple. I was running hplip 2.8.8 and needed hplip 2.8.10

I downloaded a run file named hplip-2.8.10.run from http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/install/index.html . Its simply a run file you execute by typing
sh hplip-2.8.10.run

Well, it almost worked. The thing hung up on the first step and would not go any further. I let the thing sit for an hour and still nothing.

I had tried to install Java docs earlier and for some reaons the java docs caused every install to hang afterwards. I'm still not sure why so I went to symantec package manager and unstalled java docs (although it never fully installed) and, for good measure, the existing hplip install.

After that, it installed fine and I saw the new print drivers in my printer setup window.

So now I can scan beauties like this

I can't believe I ever looked that young.

Failure to Recover

I have really old computers. You may think this odd with my being in the tech industry but I never go out and buy 'the next big thing' until it is superseded by at least two more 'next big things'. Its analagous to never buying a new car and letting someone else pay the 'drive off the lot' fee.

My personal computer has been a Dell Inspiron 8100 for some time. This thing is at least 6 years old and had begun to show its age. I run linux on my personal machines since it runs faster and in a smaller footprint than MS stuff and trends toward more reliable.

I like linux and I like the Ubuntu brand of linux for my personal use. Its reliable and easy to use without the normal issues of upgrading found in MS products. I did, however, get bit when I tried to upgrade from 7.04 to 7.10 (Feisty Fox to Gutsy Gibbon). The darn upgrade hung halfway through hosing my laptop. So, I created a 7.10 CD on another machine, mounted it on my laptop and proceeded to recover the files to my external USB via a combination of tar and gzip (also known as a tarball).

I wiped the disk on the laptop and proceeded to restore my data. This is when horror struck. The tarball was corrupt. The reason, I suspect, is that my usb is formated for the old windows FAT file system which has an upper limit of 4 GB. The tarball was bigger than that.

I tried everything I knew to try but I couldn't get past the corruption. Googling only brought back windows solutions to the corrupt tarball. I thought this very odd. Either I was missing something obvious or no one else had run into this issue.

I finally found a product for windows called gzrt which restored broken gzip files. It is a C program that comes with a make file. Of course, since I had a new install I didn't have a C compiler so I downloaded G++ the GNU C++ compile then found I was missing the zlib library which I also downloaded.

Once compiled, I lauched it against my corrupted backup
./gzrecover backup2.tar.gz

This made a file called backup2.tar.recover. Since tar doesn't work agianst bad files I used cpio to extract the data.
cpio -F backup2.tar.recovered -ivd

After that all was well. All my precious files came back.

Lessons learned include
1) FAT sucks.
2) Gzip and Tar should allow for more robustness.
3) Thank God for other geeks out there who have run into the same problem and taken the time to find a fix.

ImageMagick, Travel Pictures, and Getting Pictures to Import

I had a problem importing photos on my Ubuntu O/S. I received the following error.

An error occurred in the io-library ('Could not claim the USB device'): Could not claim interface 0 (Operation not permitted). Make sure no other program or kernel module (such as sdc2xx, stv680, spca50x) is using the device and you have read/write access to the device.

It worked fine on my old Fedora Core system so I hit the web to find the answer. It only took a few minutes, and some help from Google, to find the answer. It appears to be a bug.

Here's the link to fix it.
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libgphoto2/+bug/91250

You can read the whole thing but here's the crux of it.

Edit /etc/udev/rules.d/45-libgphoto2.rules
replace
BUS!="usb*", GOTO="libgphoto2_rules_end"

with
SUBSYSTEM!="usb_device", GOTO="libgphoto2_rules_end"

On another subject, to change a bunch of photos at once, you can use a tool called ImageMagick. Here's a perl script I use to shrink photos for email or web posting. If you're using LINUX, you put it in a directory where your files are located and run it. At the end, you should wind up with some _sm.jpg.

#!/usr/bin/perl

## this perl script converts jpgs to smaller jpgs and set the maximum size.

$size = '640';
@files= `ls *.jpg`;
foreach $file(@files) {
chomp $file;
print "Infile is $file\n";
($outfile,$ext) = split(/\./,$file);
$outfile .= '_sm.jpg';
print "Outfile is $outfile\n";
$cmd = "convert -geometry $size $file $outfile";
print "$cmd\n";
system $cmd;
}


Here's another version that changes the formate from jpg to png. Note, you only need to change the filename extension to make this happen.

#!/usr/bin/perl

## this perl script converts jpgs to png and set the maximum size.

$size = '640';
@files= `ls *.jpg`;
foreach $file(@files) {
chomp $file;
print "Infile is $file\n";
($outfile,$ext) = split(/\./,$file);
$outfile .= '.png';
print "Outfile is $outfile\n";
$cmd = "convert -geometry $size $file $outfile";
print "$cmd\n";
system $cmd;
}

For more information about Image Magick, visit their site at http://www.imagemagick.org

Automatix on Ubuntu Linux

one of the forum guys, I loaded in Automatix which, amoung other things, provides links to the various multimedia codex. So far it just looks like a list of popular downloads. Seems like this could have been done with a web site vs. an application but it may download and install things that are in a non-debian install file.

I'll update the blog with the things I install from Automatix but below you'll find the intstructions for loading the software on Ubuntu Edgy.

 echo "deb http://www.getautomatix.com/apt edgy main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

Second Step:

 wget http://www.getautomatix.com/apt/key.gpg.asc

Third Step:

 gpg --import key.gpg.asc

Fourth Step:

gpg --export --armor 521A9C7C | sudo apt-key add -

Fifth Step:

 sudo apt-get update

Sixth Step:

 sudo apt-get install automatix2

DB2 on Ubuntu

I stated in my last post that I found a resource for installing db2. I'm going to quote that article verbatim here just in case that one ever goes away. Also, where my install differed from the instructions presented at
http://project-tigershark.com/people/rob/blog/2007/01/02/installing-db2-91-on-ubuntu-dapper-606/
I highlighted in red. Also, my Ubuntu is Edge Edge instead of Dapper Drake. I'm not sure this matters but it is a difference.


I do this because you never know when someone's going to delete their blog or have it removed by higher powers.

Installing DB2
The DB2 installation package is rpm-based, so we’ll need to install an rpm-compatible installer for Ubuntu. For this, we apt-get alien, an rpm package installer:

$ sudo apt-get install alien

also installed pdksh

sudo apt-get install pdksh

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

openssh-client was alread installed

sudo ./db2_install (from installation directory)

Now we may db2_install installation script that is bundled with DB2. This needs to be done as root:

$ tar xzvf db2exc_91_LNX_x86.tar.gz
$ sudo exp/disk1/db2_install

Here I simply used Archive Manager. In my installation is ran ./db2install from the directory where I extracted the tar file.

This should take a few minutes to install. At the time of this writing, the installation procedure had approximately ten steps and lasted about three to five minutes. Note that depending on the version of gcc that you have installed (if at all), you may need to install libstdc++5, as it is required for successful installation. This is easily obtained:

$ sudo apt-get install libstdc++5

Setting Up Groups/Users
Now that we have DB2 installed, we need to configure it for use. We start by creating the standard DB2 user groups: instance owners, fenced users, and administrators. (Note that these commands need to be run as root — the sudo is dropped here for notational simplicity and a # is added in its place for clarity).

# groupadd -g 999 db2iadm1
# groupadd -g 998 db2fadm1
# groupadd -g 997 dasadm1

Now we’ll create a default user for each group:

# useradd -u 1002 -g dasadm1 -m -d /home/dasusr1 dasusr1 -p password2
# useradd -u 1003 -g db2fadm1 -m -d /home/db2fenc1 db2fenc1 -p password3
# useradd -u 1004 -g db2iadm1 -m -d /home/db2inst1 db2inst1 -p password4

Creating the Adminstrative Database
Now we need to create a DB2 Administration Server to administer all instances of DB2 under the purview of this installation:

# /opt/ibm/db2/V9.1/instance/dascrt -u dasusr1

Note here that dasusr1 may be any user that is a member of the dasadm1 group we set up earlier.

DB2 Instance Semantics. Creating an Instance.
A DB2 instance is an environment that acts as a logical container for a collection of databases. It’s an abstraction that allows the creation and usage of multiple independent DB2 environments using the same physical resources.

We need an instance to hold all of our databases. We’l create a default instance using the db2inst1 user we just created as its owner:

# /opt/ibm/db2/V9.1/instance/db2icrt -u db2fenc1 db2inst1

As we noted, db2inst1 is the instance owner, while db2fenc1 credentials are used to execute fenced stored procedures and executables.

Below lists the commands and output of the commands presented in the referenced blog.

The execution completed successfully.

For more information see the DB2 installation log at
"/tmp/db2_install.log.9926".
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ sudo groupadd -g 999 db2iadm1
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ sudo groupadd -g 998 db2fadm1
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ sudo groupadd -g 997 dasadm1
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ sudo useradd -u 1002 -g dasadm1 -m -d /home/dasusr1 dasusr1 -p password2
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ useradd -u 1003 -g db2fadm1 -m -d rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ useradd -u 1003 -g db2fadm1 -m -d /home/db2fenc1 db2fenc1 -p password3
useradd: unable to lock password file
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ useradd -u 1003 -g db2fadm1 -m -d /home/db2fenc1 db2fenc1 -p password3
useradd: unable to lock password file
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ sudo useradd -u 1003 -g db2fadm1 -m -d /home/db2fenc1 db2fenc1 -p password3
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ sudo useradd -u 1004 -g db2iadm1 -m -d /home/db2inst1 db2inst1 -p password4
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ sudo /opt/ibm/db2/V9.1/instance/dascrt -u dasusr1
SQL4406W The DB2 Administration Server was started successfully.
DBI1070I Program dascrt completed successfully.
rkathey@delllaptop:~/db2install$ sudo /opt/ibm/db2/V9.1/instance/db2icrt -u db2fenc1 db2inst1
DBI1070I Program db2icrt completed successfully.

Starting and Stopping an Instance
A DB2 instance is an environment that acts as a logical container for a collection of In order to start and stop the DB2 instance (remember, we may have multiple instances for a given installation on a physical host), we log in as the owner and call db2start after inializing the DB2 environment:

$ su db2inst1
$. ~/sqllib/db2profile
$db2start

db2inst1@delllaptop:~$ db2start
ADM12026W The DB2 server has detected that a valid license for this product has not been registered.
SQL1063N DB2START processing was successful.
db2inst1@delllaptop:~$ db2sampl

Creating database "SAMPLE"...
Connecting to database "SAMPLE"...
Creating tables and data in schema "DB2INST1"...
Creating tables with XML columns and XML data in schema "DB2INST1"...

'db2sampl' processing complete.

Stopping the environment is just as simple: we’d call db2stop instead of db2start.

You may enable (or disable) automatic DB2 instance start/stop on system start-up/shut-down by calling:

$ db2iauto -on db2inst1

where db2inst1 is the login name of the instance. Replacing the -on flag with -off disables this feature.

The Sample Database
If you wish to build the sample database bundled with DB2 in order to play around, call db2sampl while logged into a DB2 instance owner account:

$ su db2inst1
$ . ~/sqllib/db2profile
$ db2sampl

After this I logged into db2inst1, ran the db2profile (as above) and launched db2ca to enter the graphical user interface. Thanks to the original author for the ubuntu db2 install.

The Great Ubuntu Reinstall of January 07

Well, I did it. I royally hosed up my new Ubuntu Linux install trying to get my laptop to play a microsoft media file. Oh sure, it wasn't easy. I had to install and reinstall about twenty packages but I finally managed to bugger up the the O/S. I could claim it's all part of Microsoft's attempt to take over the world but in the end I have only myself to blame.

So its back to a thirty minute operating system load then another hour spent reloading things I'd already loaded once. If I find the packaged that did me in I'll post it here so other will know what not to do.

Thus shows the true value of blogs and the internet. Don't do as others have done. Do as others wish they had done.

Ok, that said, here's a list of steps I performed.
First I backed up the old home directory. Basically I just copied the files to a blank CD

Next I reinstalled Ubuntu by placing the Ubuntu install CD into the drive and rebooting. It'll boot Ubuntu off the CD. There is an icon on the desktop labled "Install". Double click that.

Follow the install menu options. I choose to reformat the drive in order to blow away my old install. Wait forever for that to finish then allow the software updater to update what you just installed. You'll need to rebot after that.

Here's where I did things differently from the last install.

I edited the /etc/apt/sources.list and added universe and multiverse to the end of the first two lines so they look something like

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted universe multiverse

Next I ran

sudo apt-get update

The reason this was needed is the fact that java-5 isn't in the application list of the default entries in /ect/apt/sources.list

After that I went to the System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager, found Java 5 (and some cool 3d star system packages) and updated my system. I decided not to install java 6 this time.

I rebooted my system after this just to make sure all the java stuff was set correctly. This probably isn't needed, after all this isn't Windows I'm using, but I decided to do it anyway just to make sure.

After this I installed Eclipse using the package updater under Applications->Add/Remove menu

Next, so I won't have to do another full install, I did a system backup. To accomplish this, first read this post in the Ubuntu Forums for details but it boils down to the following two statements.
cd /
then
sudo tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

After the backup finished, I copied it off to an external drive. The files was over a gig so it wouldn't fit on a CD.

I'll update the blog with more information as I run into other snags.

My next effort will be to install DB2. Luckily I found another blogger who's written instructions for this at http://project-tigershark.com/people/rob/blog/2007/01/02/installing-db2-91-on-ubuntu-dapper-606/

Of Networks and Bandersnatch

Recently, AT&T VPN caused a problem at my house. I bought a new Linksys SRX 200 wireless router but regardless of my attempts and calls to Linksys support, I could not get my VPN to work with it. So, I would disconnect the rest of the household to work during the day. This caused problems due to the fact that
a) A tech person today seldom works an eight hour shift and
b) Teenagers are addicted to myspace.com

The solution turned out to be to use the old router connected directly to the cable modem the attach the new, high speed router to the first. I had to subnet them differently (added a 1 to the third network octet) but it seemed to work. So now I have a DMZ in my home network. Computers attaching to the old router have one firewall between them and the outside world while the folks using the newer network have two firewalls between them and the evils of the open internet.

As I tried out the new setup I discovered that the folks on the second segment of my LAN were very slow retrieving web pages. The solution seemed to be to turn off the wireless setting on the older router (which has no wireless clients). After that things sped up considerably.

If you want to run your own speed test, I recommend http://www.speedtest.net/

The have cool graphics and its the service Time Warner uses to test their cable modem connections.

If anyone else finds the solution to the Linksys SRX200 and AT&T VPN dialer client let me know.

Linux, Commies, and Capitolism

Note: How To's are located at bottom of post

Ok, for those of you who don't know what Linux is, crank up google and do a search. Its ok, I'll wait.

Ok, so now you know that Linux is a free operating system with a number of distributions from companies like Red Hat, SuSe, and others. Recently, at the advise of my java programing guru, I decided to try the Ubuntu version of Linux.

At first I typed in the wrong URL and went to Ubuntu.org which is a left leaning world community web site. I have nothing against left leaning community sites but I thought it was an odd place to store a Linux distribution. But then again, some raging capitalist believe the Linux development effort is lead by leftist radicals out to destroy the capitalist system as a whole. After all the thing is free!

What those folks don't understand is that the open source movement is built on the economics of ego, not dollars. You can download the source to the Linux kernel, make changes to it, compile it, and walla! You have your own operating system. For those of us with a semblance of life and a brain somewhat smaller than Jupiter this is a daunting task that we would never, ever, in a gagillion years undertake.

But luckily for us there are folks with brains the size of Jupiter that can do that and do it as a labor of love, pride the the ability to look down their nose at the rest of us that have, at least once in our lives, kissed a member of the opposite sex. But I digress.

I'm a wood-be java developer who is being guided on his virginal steps into Javadom but an experiance hack who works on an open source project that displays graphics for some of the games I enjoy. If you're interested you can go to the RPTools project web site.

I needed to reformat my aging laptop and decided to install Linux on it. I use Linux often and its my operating system of choice for home because I have teenagers who regularly virus anything with a Microsoft logo. Linux solved my woes and kept me from reinstalling Windows every other month.

So I took my old Dell Inspiron 8100 and and installed Ubuntu Linux. I liked the install process because it tool only one CD vs. the 4 that are required for Red Hat's Fedora Core or Suse Linux. The install went smoothly and I was up and running in no time. I installed Eclipse for Java development and upgraded the Java 1.4 to Java 5. Later I upgraded to Java 6.

Here's a list of things I did to get Ubuntu running on the laptop.


To install Java 5:
Open a terminal window.
sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jdk

And that's all there was to it.

Here's a link that discusses installing Tomcat as well.
http://www.spaceprogram.com/knowledge/2006/05/installing-java-5-jdk-and-tomcat-on.html

The next problem I ran into was Netscape Firefox had an issue. When I used the touch pad Firefox would navigate back to previous pages. This problem with Firefix and Unbuntu Linux was solved at the following link.

http://www.beginningubuntu.com/dapper_tips.html

Here's a quote from that page.

To configure the horizontal scroll of the touchpad to actually horizontally scroll a webpage, open Firefox, type about:config in the address box, and use that page's "Filter" text box to search for mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action. Double-click the line in the results and set the value to 1, rather than 2. The change will be instant and permanent.

Later I decided to upgrade to Java 6 on Unbuntu Linux. Here are the steps I followed for that.

download java from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
cd to dowload directory
chmod a+x jdk-6-linux-i586.bin
sudo ./jdk-6-linux-i586.bin
sudo mv jdk1.6.0 /usr/lib/jvm/
sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0/bin/java" 1
sudo update-alternatives --set java /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0/bin/java
java -version

For those of you who want to just install the Java runtime, go to my fellow blogger's page for those instructions.

http://rchandran.blogspot.com/2006/12/as-java-se-1.html

The only downside to the install is that my Dell 725 printer wouldn't work on Linux. I contacted Dell support and was told that printer wouldn't work with Linux. This runs contrary to what I know about print drivers but who knows what Microsoft has done to squash other peoples attempt break away from the Microsoft and enter a world with people are paid with praise and knowledge of a job well done.