Installing latest Flash Player 11rc on Debian Squeeze

Here is a little HOWTO about clean installation of  the latest release candidate of Adobe Flash Player 11 on Debian Squeeze. It should also work on Ubuntu and other derivatives of Debian.

The method proposed here uses Debian's Alternatives System which makes it possible to install latest Flash Player in a dedicated directory and  switch between it or the default version installed from Debian repository (v10) if needed.

1. Install flashplugin-nonfree (standard Debian repository) or flashplayer-mozilla (debian-miultimedia repository). This will install Flash Player 10.
2. Download latest Flash Player for Linux from Adobe.
3. Unpack it to /opt/flashplayer-11rc1 (or any other directory of your choice).
4. Add entry for Flash Player 11 in the Alternatives System:
   sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so flash-mozilla.so /opt/flashplayer-11rc1/libflashplayer.so 0
5. Switch between installed Flash Player versions (will launch interactive menu):
   sudo update-alternatives --config flash-mozilla.so

Please note that  Flash Player tarball contains a few other files that you may find interesting - such as flash-player-properties configuration tool. They won't be automatically picked by the above procedure, as update-alternatives for flash-mozilla.so maintains plugin symlink only. See man page for update-alternatives for more information.

Debian 6.0: encrypting /home partition after installation

Debian installer provides an easy way of creating encrypted disk volumes during installation, including encrypted root partition. However, if you skip this step and decide to encrypt a disk partition later, you need to perform manual setup. Fortunately, it's not too difficult. The following steps cover creating an encrypted /home, so you need to have a separate disk partition for it. Encrypting root filesystem is more sophisticated and it's not covered by this tutorial.

1. Install cryptsetup: apt-get install cryptsetup
2. Backup current /home contents and unmount the partition.
3. Create encrypted LUKS partition: cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda2 (replace sda2 with your partion name).
4. Open LUKS partition and map it to 'crhome' (this name can be arbitrary): cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda2 crhome
5. Format encrypted partition, e.g.: mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/crhome
6. Mount it: mount /dev/mapper/crhome /home
7. Restore /home contents from the backup.
8. Recreate initrd: update-initramfs -u
9. Create /etc/crypttab entry for encrypted volume:
   #
   crhome                  /dev/sda2                    none              luks
10. Change /etc/fstab entry for /home, .e.g:
    /dev/mapper/crhome   /home          ext4    defaults        0       2
11. Reboot!

During system startup you will be prompted for password to access LUKS volume. If you have Plymouth installed, you'll see a nice graphical password prompt  - see the screenshot. For more documentation, including Debian-specific docs, got to /usr/share/doc/cryptsetup and cryptsetup/crypttab man pages.

GNOME 3.0 = big letdown

The GNOME project has just released GNOME 3 - a major overhaul of this popular desktop environment - which promises a new, beautiful and improved interface and a shift in the way users access their desktop. I've been using GNOME 2.x for a few years already and had really high hopes about the upcoming release. Unfortunately, all I got is a big letdown.

The key features I loved about GNOME 2 were its simplicity, configurability, extensibility and stability. This is no longer the case with new GNOME. GNOME developers did what KDE developers did a few years ago, by replacing KDE 3.5  with KDE 4.0: they have rewritten their desktop and dropped tons of features to provide "new desktop experience". I don't mind GNOME Shell - in fact I find some of its aspects quite appealing - I just miss the freedom and flexibility of GNOME 2. In GNOME 3 configurable panels are gone, existing panel applets are gone (well, most of them - all the bonobo-based), apperance settings are gone, gdm settings are not configurable (GDM setup tool had been removed a long time ago, around gnome 2.28 and it is still not available).  Not to mention that GNOME 3.0 in its current shape is not really stable and I found some irritating bugs in Gnome Shell after using it just for around one hour.

Some of the missing features will probably be provided by 3rd party tools that I'm sure will fill the vacuum sooner or later, but I'm afraid that reaching the functionality and stability offered by GNOME 2 may need a few development cycles. This makes me a little bit concerned about the state of Linux desktop in the next 1-2 years: with immature GNOME 3 and Ubuntu/Unity abandoning GNOME, the only viable option is to stick with a distribution that still supports GNOME 2, or move to XFCE. The current state of affairs may be a big chance for the latter, by the way.u

After testing GNOME 3 & XFCE 4.8 in Arch Linux for a few days, I've sadly decided to abandon Arch Linux... The disadvantage of running a rolling distro is that updates such as GNOME 3 are just rolled out and you either accept it or refuse them (and stop getting security updates at the same time)... And for all these reasons I decided to move to  Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) and stick with it for a while... Let's see how GNOME 3 and Unity develop. Maybe by the time of next Debian stable GNOME 3 becomes really usable?

Fixing usb drives automount issue in Debian 6.0

If you happened to experience issues with auto-mounting of USB hard disks in Debian 6.0, like the one on the attached screenshot, then read on as this is very easy to fix. The problem is caused by an improper entry in /etc/fstab created by Debian installer: if you've installed Debian from a USB disk, then a "cdrom" entry pointing to that drive could have been created in fstab, e.g.

/dev/sdb1 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto  0 0

Just remove such entry and you're done! Note: I experienced this issue when installing Debian 6.0 iso. Chances are this issue was corrected by Debian 6.0.1a (or later) iso, but I haven't verified this.

Ubuntu security?

I've recently noticed a security update for git-core in Debian stable/testing/unstable, which fixes a denial of service bug in the git-daemon. Debian got the fix on Jul 25th.
Fedora 11 folks were even more responsive by releasing an update on Jun 23rd (!). How about Ubuntu I hear you asking. Guess what... no update so far. I bet the bug applies to Ubuntu as well: Jaunty uses git-core 1.6.0.4; for Debian sid it was fixed with version 1.6.3.3-1. Fedora users got git-1.6.2.5. Wake up, Ubuntu Security team!

Fell in love with Debian Lenny

Debian 5.0 (Lenny) has been released. I've been running it for about one month (installed from a release candidate iso) and I must admit I'm absolutely delighted by it. Being an Ubuntu user before I already got used to apt-get, synaptic and other goodies. Where Lenny really shines (compared to Ubuntu) is:

• it's rock stable; I haven't had a single stability issue so far
• it's well tested and you can really feel it. I haven't experienced any stupid / trivial / obvious bugs that  should have been detected and fixed (as it was often a case for Ubuntu or openSuse). It just feels the release was not rushed as it often happens to commercial distros.
• it's not bloated (number of services is reduced to the minimum, no desktop indexing like Beagle or Tracker is installed by default etc.)
  
• no experimental or unfinished features (e.g. no PulseAudio...)

All in all, Lenny seems to be a really good and solid release. Long live, Debian project!