I have a guest VM on my vSphere test rig that’s running Ubuntu 10.10. That I use for testing, for a while I could not get the screen resolution above 854×480 (For wide screen or 16:9 format).
Solution
Note I’m assuming you already have the VMware tools installed!
1. Shut down your guest machine, open the VMware VI client and go to the settings of the guest machine. go the the hardware tab and select video card. By default it will be set to auto detect, change it to a nice high resolution, and click OK.
Note: For VMware workstation the setting is under “Display” see below.
2. Power the guest VM back on again and now you should have a better range of resolutions.
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
Did you know you can install Java and Flash with the Ubuntu Restricted extras pack?click here
Im not a big fan of Java, In the past I’ve either had the wrong version, or it’s made something run like a dog, but I need it for the Cisco management stuff I need to do. (Guess what the next article is going to be 🙂 Like Adobe Flash, there seems to be a lot of different info out on the web about how to do this, so it took me a while to do something that was painfully easy in the end.
Solution
1. Click Applications > Ubuntu Software Centre > Type “java” in the search terms > Locate OpenJDK Java 6 Runtime.
2. Hit install.
3. You may be asked to authenticate, do so. My netbook is a little slow so at this point it appeared to hand for a while (Go and have a brew! It will be finished by the time you come back.
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
A while back I ran though “Managing Cisco ASA devices via the ASDM with Ubuntu“, I prefer to work at command line, with a new firewall my only choice is via the console port, In a windows environment I can fire up Hyperterminal and I’m away. With Linux there a couple of things to do first.
Solution
Step 1 (Get the Serial / RS232 / COM Port working)
As pictured above, this is being done on my Acer Netbook so I don’t have a serial port. I need to use a USB to Serial converter, If your machine has a serial port then simply skip this section.
1. Plug in your serial converter and wait a few seconds, open a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and issue the following command,
[box]dmesg[/box]
2. Amazingly it looks like been installed with the correct driver, without any effort by me at all! Lets make sure, unplug the USB to serial converter then issue the following command,
[box]lusb[/box]
Then plug the device back in and run the same command, notice the serial port has popped onto the list.
Note: If you not as lucky as me follow the excellent advice here to install the drivers you need.
Step 2 Install and Configure Minicom
1. Open a terminal window and issue the following command,
[box]sudo apt-get install minicom[/box]
Tap in your password, then enter “Y” for yes when prompted.
4. We need to know the connection name for the USB to Serial converter, issue the following command (See mines called ttyUSB0).
[box]dmesg | grep tty[/box]
5. Now lets fire up Minicom with the following command,
[box]sudo minicom[/box]
Tap in your password again, then as requested press CTRL+A, then Z.
6. To configure the serial settings press O (that’s O for Oscar not zero).
7. Select “Serial Port Setup”.
8. Press A to set the device.
9. As we discovered (above) ours is called ttyUSB0, so change the device to /dev/ttyUSB0.
10. Press C to change the connection speed to 9600 baud, Press Q (to set 8 bits, no stop bit, and 1 parity bit. On mine this was set by default), press {enter} to exit.
11. Press F to turn off hardware flow control (Some posts will say leave it on, I generally turn if off and I’ve never seen anything break!). Press G to disable software flow control (if enabled).
12. Then Select “Save setup as..”, and give is a sensible name. (If you went back too far simply press O again to get back here).
13. Now the settings are saved you can launch them at anytime with,
[box]sudo minicom {filename}[/box]
Note: Sometimes your serial drive gets locked up but a reboot will solve the problem.
14. Here’s me connected to an ancient old catalyst switch.
You have taken the plunge and installed Ubuntu, what are you going to do next? Here’s some stuff to make your experience a little bit better.
Solution
Restricted Extras installs flash, Java, Some Codec Packs and the Microsoft core font pack. Screenlets are a collection of desktop Gadgets/Widgets. And Cairo dock is a customisable screen dock/launch pad for your applications.
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
If you have only a few files to share, you might want to consider using Dropbox, however if you want to share your files over the network then you need to install samba and configure it.
Solution
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
Special Thanks to Morbuis1 Over at the Ubuntu Forms for the help.
While attempting to connect to a Cisco firewall with a Linux client (In my case Ubuntu 10.10,) using AnyConnect you see the following error.
Or on MAC OSX
Error: Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client
The AnyConnect package on the secure gateway could not be located. You may be experiencing network connectivity issues. Please try connecting again.
Note: You may also see this error on a Mac OSX, or a Windows CE machine.
Even though I prefer to use command line, there are times I need to manage Cisco firewalls from the ASDM. To do this from my Netbook running Ubuntu 10.10 it was not as straight forward as I was used to.
Solution
In my scenario I’m using Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop Edition, Chrome as my browser, and the ASDM is running version 6.3(1).
2. Connect to the web console of the firewall using its configured IP Address, Chrome by default will download the Java file (which I’ve written about before). Normally this is annoying, but here it’s a good thing, by default it will drop the file in your home folder in the downloads directory, for simplicity I moved it to the root of my home folder. Then open a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal), and execute the following command.
[box]javaws asdm.jnlp[/box]
3. After a little while, you will be prompted to accept the certificate (The self signed certificate on the server will not be trusted that’s OK).
4. After entering your password (User name will be blank, unless you have enabled AAA). the ASDM will open.
5. Thankfully, you only need to do this the first time you connect, the next time you try it will open the ASDM password prompt and run correctly.
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
Did you know you can install Java and Flash with the Ubuntu Restricted extras pack?click here
At the time of writing, Adobe have pulled the previous beta of x64 bit flash for Chrome, which is annoying because I am running it on my x64 Ubuntu 10.10 box.
Solution
To be honest more of a workaround than a solution, but you can get chrome to install the x32 bit version and it will run it as a separate process.
1. Launch a terminal Session (Applications > Accessories > Terminal), issue the following command followed by your password.
