jonathan stegall

My favorite FTP client is FileZilla. In the last year or so, it became cross-platform. For myself, I currently run it in Windows and Linux, which in my system reside on separate hard drives. I share the data between the two.

This would also work for networking environments, where multiple designers or developers need to share FTP data from a central server or other system.

Configuring FileZilla

FileZilla has a file called fzdefaults.xml. On Windows systems, it resides at C:\Program Files\FileZilla FTP Client\fzdefaults.xml. Note that, when you first install the program, there will be an fzdefaults.xml.example inside the /FileZilla FTP Client\docs folder instead. Simply duplicate this file, move it into the main FileZilla FTP Client folder, and rename it to fzdefaults.xml.

On Ubuntu, if you install FileZilla from the repositories, the file resides at /home/username/.filezilla/fzdefaults.xml. The same process works, if there is an fzdefaults.xml.example. I have not yet had the pleasure of installing FileZilla on a Mac, but I suspect it is similar to the Linux path.

When you have this file in the right location, open it up. There is a line that reads

<Setting name="Config Location">$SOMEDIR/filezilla/</Setting>

Change the $SOMEDIR/filezilla/ to the centrally located folder where the data will be stored. An example is /media/shared/Filezilla_Profile/. Save.

Then, you should copy all of the files that are inside C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\FileZilla\ (Windows) or /home/username/.filezilla (Linux, but do not copy fzdefaults.xml) and move them to the above folder.

In the central folder, open up sitemanager.xml. This should be all of your FTP data. FileZilla will use this file the next time it opens, and from here on out it will update this file as you add new information.

Operating System Issues

Probably because FileZilla was originally a Windows program, there are few if any issues that will commonly arise.

On Linux systems, FileZilla requires that the central location (on another hard drive, or another server, or wherever it may be) have specific configuration when it is mounted. The current user (you, when you are logged in) needs to be able to read and write files in the mounted drive, or you will receive lots of errors when you try to open it.

For example, if you were trying to mount /sda5 as the external drive that FileZilla needed to use, you would do it like this:

In your terminal, type:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

This file controls what media (hard drives, CD drives, etc.) that the system mounts when it boots. Start a new line at the end.

/dev/sda5 /media/shared vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,uid=1000,gid=1000

This would name your new drive “shared”, put a link to it in the media folder, and give it the proper permissions for your user. To get the proper uid, type id in a terminal window. Replace uid and gid, if necessary.

FileZilla, as well as other programs that could share data across systems and operating systems (Firefox, for example), will now be able to use the data properly.

Today, I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu Hardy Heron, which came out a few days ago. In doing so, I decided to upgrade with a clean install, rather than using the built in upgrade manager. People with every operating system, even OSX, often recommend this, and given my random experiences with Linux I decided it would probably be safer.

So, I downloaded the CD, checked it for errors, and proceeded to start the install. Shortly after it began, it gave me an error message that suggested that either the CD had errors, or that my computer was too hot and should be moved to a cooler area.

At this, I freaked out, because of course I couldn’t start my computer back in Windows, or in the older version of Ubuntu.

I ran the disk error checker again, and then decided I had nothing to lose and would try to run the installation again. This time, everything went smoothly. The only thing that changed was the location I picked for the location of GRUB, the boot manager. I stuck it on the master drive, where XP resides, remembering that I had written something about that the first time.

Then, the installation ran perfectly. First, I started up Windows to make sure that it didn’t disappear, and then went into Linux. Apparently, all is nice with the world.

Recently, to my great jealousy, my wife bought a MacBook for graduate school. Her previous Windows laptop was on its last legs, so we replaced it. During its good times, she was able to use it to print to and share files with my Windows desktop. I knew it was possible to do this with a Mac as well, and didn’t know how.

Today, I found this tutorial on exactly that. Some of the dialogs are different than Leopard’s, but it is fairly easy to configure both on the Windows side and the Mac side. Note that the RedMon software required the use of a mirror site to download it.

Anyway. She can now happily print to my desktop from her laptop, when it is running Windows. My next related project will be attempting to understand how she can print to my desktop when it is running Ubuntu. Any advice is, of course, most appreciated.

Update: Using this tutorial, I was able to use the MacBook to print to my Ubuntu desktop. The configuration was much easier than it was for Mac to Windows printing.

The other day, I had to buy a new monitor. The one I had been using for three years finally croaked, and so I turned to eBay to get another one. When it came in, I hooked it up (after complaining that my desk hutch was too small for the larger monitor) and started up the computer. I received the message: “Out of Range,” on a black screen.

After some Googling, the answer came up that I needed to reconfigure the monitor’s drivers. I didn’t really understand how to do this (until later), so I thought, “This is the perfect time to upgrade to Gutsy Gibbon. For what it’s worth, though, the monitor could probably have worked with Feisty Fawn had I done the following:

1. Boot into recovery mode
2. Enter the following command:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

I tried doing this, but I went into the Advanced settings instead of the Basic ones. My belief is that I don’t know enough about the new monitor to correctly fill in the values, so things didn’t go very well and the monitor still didn’t work. Should the issue arise again, though, I’ll try Basic first. The reason is that later, after I had already gotten everything working, I ran into the error again and fixed it through the Basic configuration.

Anyway. To upgrade, I first moved the /home folder to its own partition, which I should have done in the beginning of my Linux experiences. But, understandably I was too confused at the time to do anything beyond get things working. This partition move was achieved through this article, and will allow future upgrades to happen without losing data (websites, documents, etc.).

After this, I was still incredibly worried that things would go as badly as they did on my first attempt to install Linux. I burned a CD from the Ubuntu website, loaded it, and started to install things. I selected each partition, choosing to format the root (where the installation of the operating system resides). This allowed me to keep /home unaffected.

Things went very smoothly from there, and Ubuntu booted perfectly and I didn’t lose my Windows dual boot, and all was well with the world. Because I have an ATI graphics card, I needed to follow these steps, but I was even able to get Compiz-Fusion working with all of its eye candy goodness.

In essence, my upgrade experience has gone much smoother than the initial installation. Gutsy Gibbon seems to have a lot of nice changes, and I’m enjoying it thus far.

So I’ve been successfully using Ubuntu for two weeks now. I have several initial reactions, and other thoughts. I’ll talk about what I don’t like first, and then about what I do like.

What I don’t like

My main issue thus far has been my graphics card. Which, of course, isn’t Ubuntu’s fault at all. I have my graphics card working very well with Ubuntu, so it’s not that my graphics card is junk, either. The issue is that it doesn’t seem to be able to run Beryl, which from what I hear is the eye candy of Ubuntu. I like eye candy, so I’d like to be able to run Beryl.

Other than that, my issues are with the software companies inability or unwillingness to make software that I use compatible with Ubuntu. One of these is iTunes. I love iTunes. I’ve been using Banshee on Ubuntu, and it’s a great player. It has a great interface, great organization, great everything. My main issue with it is that it doesn’t know about my podcast subscriptions, presumably because they’re in an iTunes formatted XML file. So this is a really minor thing.

A related issue is that there is not a 64 bit version of Last.fm for Linux. I’m a huge fan of last.fm, and use it all the time. When I play CDs in iTunes, the last.fm player knows what’s being played and adds it to stuff that I’ve played, and lets me recommend it, or tag it, or whatever. Banshee doesn’t appear to do these things.

Adobe is my other issue. I tried downloading gimpSHOP, just to play around with it and see if I could get used to it enough that I could occasionally avoid rebooting into Windows to use Photoshop. Nope. Can’t do it. I love Photoshop. As much as I sometimes hate it and am frustrated by it, I don’t want to imagine life without it. Flash and Illustrator are also things I couldn’t do without, but I don’t spend an incredible amount of time in either, so it’s a smaller issue for me.

I’m not very impressed with the text editors, and I think the default is better than the several downloadable ones I’ve tried. Sorry about that one. I think Notepad++, which appears to be exclusively Windows, is far better.

I’m sure there is a way to do this properly, that I just haven’t learned. If I’m logged in to my default account, which is not the root, and I double click to open a text file that is only editable by the root user, I’d like to be able to have a graphical equivalent of the sudo Terminal command, so that I could edit said text file without having to use the Terminal. I actually like the Terminal, and find it incredibly powerful, but sometimes I just don’t want to look up commands that I haven’t learned yet, just so that I can edit a text file that Apache uses.

What I do like

Ubuntu is a great operating system. I love almost everything about it. It has a great community on a number of different forums, all of whom were amazing in helping me through my various issues in getting Ubuntu working in the first place. It’s an incredibly powerful system, and it runs very fast for the power that it has.

Mozilla has been amazing for me. I can share my Thunderbird and Firefox profiles between Windows and Ubuntu without the slightest issue. FileZilla (no relation to Mozilla) has also been wonderful, as the beta version of my favorite FTP application runs very smoothly on Ubuntu.

Back to the Adobe thing, for a positive note, Dreamweaver isn’t a big deal for me. I like Dreamweaver, and I plan to use it whenever I have to do web edits in Windows that need a directory tree, but I’ve been using Eclipse, with some plugins for PHP, Python (which I hope to learn soon), JavaScript, CSS, and XHTML, and love it. It exceeds the expectations I had, prior to trying it out.

On a similar note, Apache on Ubuntu is far superior to any implementation of it that I’ve seen on Windows. I’ve tried several of the packages for LAMP development on Windows, and their weirdness is one of the reasons I wanted to try Linux. Initial setup, configuration, and changes on Apache and the development things on top of it are a breeze for me, compared to the way they were on Windows. This also exceeds my expectations.

The overall interface and methodology of Ubuntu is wonderful. I love the themes (in spite of not being able to use Beryl), the customizability, the ease of configuration and administering and all those other common tasks; many of which are not very fun on Windows. Not to mention the ease of adding software! The repositories are huge, and full of amazing software that can all be updated at once. I’m amazed by that one.

Other initial thoughts

For what it’s worth, I haven’t lost my Mac envy. My ideal setup, at this point, is to get myself a MacBook Pro (drool), get rid of Windows on my desktop, and use Ubuntu as the desktop system/home server. To use Ubuntu for certain development tasks, file storage, learning things, times when I need a desktop, etc. and use the Mac for design work, iTunes, other development stuff, and portability.

Until then, though, Ubuntu is easily the best system in my house.

So, following the previous post about my Ubuntu dual boot woes, today I have successfully set up a dual boot of XP and Ubuntu.

Steps taken

Steps that did not work

1. Download Ubuntu desktop install file again, as the original CD started showing up with errors in testing

   It’s important to note that I did check the disk for errors before attempting any initial install procedure.

2. Test new install CD - errors reported

Steps that worked

1. Download Ubuntu Server edition and create CD. Test for errors, receive none.

2. Install Ubuntu server, following instructions in the prompts and choosing to create dual boot with XP

   This really was as easy as it sounds. The prompts were fairly similar to the prompts one sees while installing Windows from a CD. Prompts were used to set localization, profile username/password, and so on.

   For partitioning, I chose to leave my master drive untouched, and install Ubuntu on an empty slave drive (which was an option). I created a partition for /home, /root, and /etc. After this, the installer placed GRUB into the master drive for me, allowing the dual boot to occur successfully. I tested both systems boots before continuing.

   At this time, I was booting into an Ubuntu server that was exclusively a command line terminal.

3. Install GNOME GUI to cause Ubuntu to act like a desktop as well as a server. This was done through the following command:

   sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

4. Feel proud of myself

Woo hoo.

I had hoped to delay this post until I encountered some degree of victory, but that doesn’t look like it’s coming anytime soon. Plus, of course, we should always have the courage to speak in the midst of difficulties, and all that mess.

I’ve been trying to install Ubuntu Linux on my desktop for over a week now. I’m interested in learning Linux for its own sake, and in running web applications (like PHP, MySQL, Ruby, Python, etc) in a more native environment. I’ve reformatted my hard drive (I have backups this time) several times due to these attempts. I have never gotten Ubuntu to load successfully, but obviously I have lost Windows several times.

Failed Attempts and Current Messiness

I’ve tried the following steps in an attempt to have a working Ubuntu and XP:

1. XP Master Drive, Ubuntu Slave Drive, no other configuration - this was done by selecting use entire slave drive in the install dialogue.
   • Resulted in having to format the master drive due to Windows not booting.
2. Unplug XP drive, install Ubuntu on slave drive, using entire drive, replug Ubuntu slave drive.
   • Resulted in having to format the master drive due to Windows not booting.
3. XP Master Drive, Ubuntu Slave Drive using entire drive, instructing Ubuntu to put GRUB onto the master drive.
   • Resulted in having to format the master drive due to Windows not booting.
4. Partition master drive with first partition NTFS and XP, second partition Fat32 and Ubuntu, use slave drive for storage.
   • Resulted in having to format the master drive due to Windows not booting.
5. Install XP on the master drive first partition, leaving ~10 gigs of unpartitioned space. Then, using the Ubuntu manual partition to create the / partition at 8 gigs, the swap partition at 1 gig, and the /home partition set to use the entirety of the slave drive.
   • After the install process, Ubuntu did not ask me to reboot my system, and when I rebooted it myself it gave several errors in a list, and stopped shutting down. Windows did successfully boot after this, but when I booted from the GRUB CD, it did not find an Ubuntu installation.
   • This is the current state of my hard drive. The master has Windows on it with ~10 gigs of unpartitioned space. The slave drive is empty. Windows does not recognize it, which I’m assuming means that the Linux install did format it as FAT32.

As noted, several attempts have resulted in Windows being unable to boot. I suspect at least some of it has been due to Ubuntu being unable to boot, as well, but I can’t verify that. Fixmbr has never worked, bootcfg has never worked, and the GRUB CD hasn’t worked. Formatting both drives again and reinstalling Windows has been the only thing thus far that has resulted in a boot of anything.

With the GBUB CD, I’ve tried all the various options that are under GNU/Linux in an attempt to boot Ubuntu after it has been installed. GRUB typically does recognize that Ubuntu is present, but it is always unable to boot it or create the MBR.

When running the Ubuntu installer, it once gave me an error related to creating the user, and then it appeared to continue installing, but didn’t work. Other times, it has gone through the install process, and then appeared to finish. It didn’t ask me to reboot, though.

Looking Forward

In some way, I still hold on to the hope that in the near future, I will have a working copy of XP and Ubuntu, on the same computer. Ha.