Unoconv (converter between OpenOffice.org document formats): a commandline utility which can convert from any document format that OpenOffice can import to any document format it can export.

Install Unoconv

Debian

apt-get install unoconv

Ubuntu, Mint

sudo apt-get install unoconv

Start Open Office in headless mode

soffice -headless -accept=”socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;” -nofirststartwizard

doc to odt
unoconv -c “socket,host=localhost,port=8100;urp;StarOffice.ComponentContext” -f odt *.doc

doc to pdf
unoconv -c “socket,host=localhost,port=8100;urp;StarOffice.ComponentContext” -f pdf *.doc

Finally Stop OpenOffice

killall soffice.bin

The list of formats to which the document can be converted is given in the following page.

http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/unoconv/

“Liberate your documents” – documentfreedom.org

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Majority of bloggers and website owners choose shared hosting packages for hosting their blogs and websites. But as traffic increases the server begins to choke. You will see plenty of internal server errors, CPU over usage messages etc. Then you will find emails from the shared hosting company telling that your website/blog is not suitable for shared hosting. Here I will explain how you can migrate your websites to a Virtual Private Server (VPS). VPS is also called as Virtual dedicated server. In a VPS you can do everything like what you can do in a dedicated server. VPSes are cheap when compared to dedicated servers and have a better resources (CPU, bandwidth, storage). Lets start.

1. Find the best VPS hosting company.
2. Buy a package which satisfy your needs. You can choose your favorite GNU/Linux distro while purchasing. You will also get a static IP.
3. Note down the things to be migrated (database, static files, CMS)
4. Setup the VPS. install required services. write proper firewall rules. tune your vps to get the maximum out of your VPS.
5. Copy the files from shared hosting to VPS. This will take a considerable amount of time. Some shared hosting servers won’t give you shell access. This is the most worst condition. You will have to download the files to your local computer and then copy the files to the VPS. If you have shell access you can copy the files using ssh.
6. Dump the database, copy it to the new VPS and restore it.
7. Point your domain name to the VPS. You can do this by going to domain control panel and fill the A record of your domain with the IP of the VPS. It is better to change the TTL to a lower value before the migration so that it will take only a less time to spread the domain change throughout the internet name servers.

You can host unlimited websites and blogs in your VPS provided it will not affect your server performance.

Remember VPS is an unmanaged service. You have to manage your VPS yourself. Some companies offer paid support.

Recommended VPS hosting companies

www.vps.net
www.linode.com
www.slicehost.com

If you need any support for migration, optimization send an email to me at: contact [at] sreenadh [dot] in

Please don’t forget to drop your valuable feedback and suggestions about this post.

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How to reinstall GRUB?

Note: before continuing read this post if you are not familiar with GNU/Linux
http://debian.sreenadh.in/mount-partitions-in-a-gnulinux-system/

Put the first DVD of Debian in DVD drive.  After booting from DVD you will be asked to choose language, country, keyboard layout. you need to press 3 enter keys for that process.

Press Ctrl Alt F2 then
Press enter key

If you are reinstalling grub of latest Ubuntu versions the partition type may be ext4 so instead of using Debian DVD use Ubuntu live CD otherwise mounting will fail.

mkdir temp_dir
mount /dev/hda6 temp_dir

(where hda6 is your GNU/Linux partition. if you don’t know where you have installed GNU/Linux mount partitions one by one and run the following command to see the contents of that partition.

ls temp_dir
Eg:

mount /dev/hda5 temp_dir
ls temp_dir

if you can see bin boot usr opt directories then it is your GNU/Linux partition. else

umount temp_dir and try other partitions
)
then run the following commands in order.

mount -o bind /dev temp_dir/dev
mount -o bind /proc temp_dir/proc

chroot temp_dir

grub-install –root-directory=/ –no-floppy –recheck /dev/hda

where hda is your hard disk where you have installed GNU/Linux

exit

umount temp_dir/dev
umount temp_dir/proc

umount temp_dir

reboot

Related posts:

1. Grub 2 in Debian Etch

A few days back I have got a laptop from one of my friend. Since I don’t have another pc other than my desktop my plan was to use this laptop for doing experiments. So I decided to install Debian GNU/Linux Lenny to test LTSP5. But the optical drive of lap was not working. My friend told me that he transferred the data from the lap by connecting lap HDD to another pc using the external USB HDD adapter. But he doesn’t have that at that time. So the only option for me to install Debian is via LAN. For that the lap has to be booted from a pen drive.
So my first experiment was on how to boot a pen drive. The steps are given in the following tutorial. http://hackingwithdebian.blogspot.com/2009/01/triple-booting-from-pen-drive.html

I could boot the lap using the bootable pen drive. The distro used for usb booting was Debian Lenny Live. After booting. I created a partition in one of the harddisk in the lap and formatted it with ext3. The next step was to mount that partiton. So I mounted that in /mnt.

To install Debian inside that partition we need the tool “debootstrap“.
But it was absent in my Lenny Live. So I decided to install it via the network. I gave an IP to the lap and another to the desktop. Then I installed Apache2 on my desktop pc. Then I created a directory named repo inside the document directory of apache (/var/www/repo). I mounted the first DVD of Lenny on /var/www/repo.

Next I added the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list of Lenny live running on laptop.

deb http://192.168.0.1/repo lenny main

where 192.168.0.1 is the ip of my desktop pc.

Then run the command apt-get update and apt-get install debootstrap.

So the lap is ready for the installation of Debian Lenny. Open terminal. Change directory to /mnt. Then run the command,

debootstrap lenny . http://192.168.0.1/repo

It will install the base system. Next is to install xserver gnome etc.
First of all mount /proc and /dev in the chroot environment

mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev

mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc

Then chroot into base system. chroot /mnt
then create a password for the root user using the command “passwd”

Installed the necessary applications.

apt-get install gdm gnome xserver-xorg iceweasel

Finally install the grub.

grub-install /dev/sda1 –root-directory=/ –no-floppy

Finally exit from the chroot environment. (press ctrl d to exit)

umount /mnt/dev
umount /mnt/proc
umount /mnt

sync
reboot

Remove pen drive.

Related posts:

1. How to upgrade Debian Etch / IT@School GNU/Linux to Lenny
2. Triple booting from pen drive
3. Grub 2 in Debian Etch

In this tutorial we can see how to compile and build the binary package of Linux kernel. The advantage of creating binary package is that you can install the kernel on multiple machines instead of compiling kernel in each and every machine. The kernel used is 2.6.28.

Prerequisites:

apt-get install libncurses5-dev gcc make linux-headers-`uname -r` g++

Download kernel source code from kernel.org

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/

Steps:

Extract the source code.
tar -xvvf linux-2.6.28.tar.bz2

/mnt/drive_5/source

change to that directory.

cd /mnt/drive_5/source

Now its time to configure the new kernel. In this step we can select the components we want in our new kernel or we can remove unwanted drivers/components from the kernel so that the kernel can perform more efficiently.

run the command.

make xconfig (for qt based configuration utility)

image1: qt based configuration utility (apt-get install libqt3-mt-dev)

make gconfig (for gtk based configuration utility)

image2: gtk based configuration utility (apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev libglade2-dev libglib2.0-dev)

make menuconfig (for ncurses based configuration utility)

image3: ncurses based configuration utility (apt-get install libncurses-dev)

After the selection we can start compiling the kernel. For that we need to install kernel-package

apt-get install kernel-package

Then run the following command
fakeroot make-kpkg –initrd kernel_image kernel_headers

you can  append custom strings to the kernel version as follows

fakeroot make-kpkg –initrd –append-to-version=-custom kernel_image kernel_headers

After the compilation you will get the deb package of kernel image and kernel headers in the parent directory of kernel source. You can install the deb package using the command

dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.28custom-2.6.28-686.deb

Next reboot and boot using your new kernel.

Related posts:

1. SquashFS Support in Linux Kernel 2.6.28
2. Grub 2 in Debian Etch
3. Triple booting from pen drive

Here is an how to for booting GnewSense from usb drive. GNewSense is a complete Free Operating System and is recommended by Free Software Foundation (FSF). It is derived from Ubuntu. The current version is 2.2 as of writing this post. Since the proprietary components are removed from the Kernel (Linux) and the OS it boots much faster.

Let us start. First of all download GNewSense ISO from http://www.gnewsense.org/Download. Then mount the ISO image.

mount -o loop gnewsense-livecd-deltah-i386-2.2.iso /mnt/temp/01
Next copy the contents of ISO image to pendrive.

cp -vR /mnt/temp/01/* /media/disk

Next rename the directory “isolinux” to syslinux

mv /media/disk/isolinux /media/disk/syslinux

Next rename the file “isolinux.cfg” to “extlinux.conf” if you are using “ext” partition or syslinux.cfg if using FAT partition.

mv /media/disk/syslinux/isolinux.cfg /media/disk/syslinux/syslinux.cfg  (if fat

OR
mv /media/disk/syslinux/isolinux.cfg /media/disk/syslinux/extlinux.conf

Next run the command

extlinux –install /media/disk/syslinux  ( if ext partition )
OR
syslinux -sfr -d syslinux /dev/sdb1

where /dev/sdb1 is the partition of your usb drive.

Next make your usb drives partition bootable. To make the partition bootable run the command

cfdisk /dev/sdb

select “bootable” press “Enter”. Then select “write” press “enter”.
type “yes” and press “enter” to confirm.

Next run the command.

cat /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sdb

Then run the command “sync”.

Unmount the usb drive

umount /media/disk

Reboot the pc

Change the first boot device to your pen drive. In some systems change the first boot device to USB. and in some other systems don’t forget to enable “boot to removable devices”.

Happy Hacking.

Related posts:

1. Triple booting from pen drive

Debian GNU/Linux Lenny released on 14th February. It comes with more than 25000 Free Software applications.

In this post we can see how we can upgrade the existing installations of Debian Etch 4.0 (IT@School GNU/Linux 3.2/3.0) to Lenny.

First of all open terminal application. I use Konsole. Switch to super user (root).
su -
password: xxxxxxxxx

Then open the file /etc/apt/sources.list using your favorite editor.

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

This file contains the list of repositories you are using for installing packages. Remove all the lines. (F9 to delete a line in nano)

Now exit the editor Ctrl X. type ‘y’ to save the file.

Put the first DVD of Lenny in your CD/DVD Reader/Writer. Now run the following command to index the DVD.

apt-cdrom add

Repeat the same step for all the 5 DVDs.

Note: You can use Synaptic for indexing. Open Synaptic. Edit menu>Add CDROM

Finally run the command

apt-get upgrade

Note: In synaptic click mark all upgrades. then click apply to install the updated packages.

Since Debian’s package management tool is designed to manage packages more easily, it is very easy to upgrade or downgrade from one version to another version.

Related posts:

1. Grub 2 in Debian Etch
2. Mount partitions in a GNU/Linux system
3. Triple booting from pen drive

The following tutorial will help you to learn how to mount partitions
in a GNU/Linux system.

First step is to create a mount point. A mount point can be any
directory. Usually the directory should be empty. Otherwise after
mounting you won’t be able to access the contents of that directory.
Naming of partitions in GNU/Linux

For IDE hard disk

Primary Master: hda (hda1 hda2 hda3 hda5 hda6 hda7)
Primary Slave: hdb (hdb1 hdb2 hdb3 hdb5 hdb6 hdb7)
Seconday Master: hdc (hdc1 hdc2 hdc3 hdc5 hdc6 hdc7)
Secondary Slave: hdd (hdd1 hdd2 hdd3 hdd5 hdd6 hdd7)

Note: GNU/Linux allows you to create upto four primary partitions
during installation. ie 3 primary and one extended. All Logical drives
comes under extended partition.

So first primary partition in Primary Master will be hda1 and second
primary partition in primary master will be hda2 and first logical
drive in primary master will be hda5. and So on.

If the HDD is SATA then it will be “sda” if HDD is connected to SATA
port0. Numbering will be same as explained above.

If you have a proprietary Operating System then there will be only one
primary partition. So the partitions will be as follows.

hda1 hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 hda9 hda10 and so on

hdb1 hdb5 hdb6 hdb7 hdb8 hdb9 hdb10 and so on

hdc1 hdc5 hdc6 hdc7 hdc8 hdc9 hdc10 and so on

hdd1 hdd5 hdd6 hdd7 hdd8 hdd9 hdd10 and so on

Login as root and create a directory as follows

$su
password:

#cd /mnt

/mnt# mkdir mount_point OR /mnt# mkdir /mnt/mount_point

next is to mount the partition.

/mnt# mount /dev/hda5 mount_point OR /mnt# mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/mount_point

To make mount permanent add the some lines to the file
/etc/fstab as follows,

/dev/hda1 /mnt/mount_point vfat defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/d_drive vfat defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hda8 /mnt/g_drive ntfs defaults,umask=000 0 0

Note: “umask” is used to allow read/write permission to all the users in a system.

If you have installed ntfs-3g (apt-get install ntfs-3g) then you can provide “ntfs-3g” as the partition type in /etc/fstab instead of simply giving ntfs.

Hope this helped you to learn how to mount partitions in GNU/Linux.

Related posts:

1. SquashFS Support in Linux Kernel 2.6.28
2. Triple booting from pen drive
3. How to enable designer in PHPMyAdmin?

You may be a person who wants to make your OS look and feel different from others. You may be succeeded in doing so on your desktop or at the boot screen using splash screens. So what about grub? Could you able to customize with a high quality background image? No. why? Because older grub versions supports only text mode with minimum colors.

Now the situation is changed. The GNU team has released grub 2 which allows us to display grub menu using background images of your taste. Are you thrilled? But I was not happy, because I am using Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 code named “Etch”. It doesn’t have the grub2 in its repository. Also I don’t want another distro for just using grub2. I want it right in Debian Etch. So I googled. I got the Debian package for the upcoming Debian release “Lenny”. Since it is compiled with newer libraries I couldn’t install it in my machine. So I decided to compile the source code of grub2. I downloaded the source from the official repository (ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/). But I failed to compile the source.

Then I downloaded the source from the Debian sid repository so that I can create a debian package from the source. And it was a successful compilation.

One more attraction to this version of grub is that it supports ext4 partitions.

Install the following packages.

Download1
Download2

Related posts:

1. SquashFS Support in Linux Kernel 2.6.28