New Zealand Linux

Was hard to find the info on how to setup kopete with google talk
To start, open up kopete.
Click on Settings
Click on ‘Configure Kopete ..’

This brings up a dialogbox which has all your accounts on it.
Click ‘New’ then the ‘Next’ button.

Select the Jabber protocol, then click ‘Next’

Use your current gmail address for username (aka Jabber ID)
Then click on the ‘Connection’ tab.
Now make sure all the checkboxes are selected. They are.
‘Use protocol encryption SSL’
‘Allow Plain text authentication’
‘Override default server information’

Now into the server box type in
talk.google.com

Then click Next. Now click Finish.
It should then ask you your password if you didnt already enter it and save it.

If you have an error message regarding SSL or TLS not being installed you can install the package qca-tls.

Bingo, it works.
Last-Modified: 2007-03-07 19:38:50

OK Quick and dirty here.
If unsure of your network card you need to do

lspci

This will spit a lot of crap that looks like

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS200/RS200M AGP Bridge [IGP 340M] (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc PCI Bridge [IGP 340M]
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
0000:00:08.0 Modem: ALi Corporation M5457 AC'97 Modem Controller
0000:00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
0000:00:0c.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
0000:00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)
0000:00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU]
0000:00:12.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
0000:01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon IGP 340M

Most of this isnt really needed, just look for the line that refers to Ethernet or network controller like this

0000:00:12.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller

Now you need to find the module for that network card driver, a list of available modules are found like this

ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/

When you probe a module/driver you need to leave off the .ko or .o at the end so it looks like this

modprobe natsemi

natsemi is the driver i need for my national semiconductor network card. If its sucessful then it will either exit cleanly or give you a message, if it errors then try another one.
to find out system messages you can run

dmesg

This is verbose but you only really need to pay attention to the last few lines really to see if it found your network card.
Once this is sucessful you need to give that network card an IP

ifconfig eth0 10.40.1.7

This will set the ip of the interface eth0 to 10.40.1.7. Feel free to use another ip 🙂
You can view the network status with

ifconfig eth0
inet addr will hold the magical IP number.
Now to add a default route to use the gateway.

route add default gw 10.40.1.254

This adds the ip 10.40.1.254 as my default route/gateway.
You can view the default routes by typing

route -n

Now to set up DNS resolving.
Find your favourite editor (probably nano,pico,joe.mcedit for newbies) and edit /etc/resolv.conf
Note: its resolv.conf NOT resolve.conf (that e can leave you in a world of pain if you add it in 🙂 )

It should look something like this

nameserver 219.88.241.110
nameserver 210.55.12.1

Now feel free to use my nameserver (the first) and im fairly sure Orcon (the second IP) dont mind you using theirs, however its probably a good idea to call your ISP and ask the ip of their nameservers and use theirs.

You should have working internet access at this point in time.
Now as soon as you reboot your settings will be gone (except for resolv.conf)
Most distros of Linux have a place to keep these, and each distro its a different one.
Debian based systems:
edit /etc/modules and at the bottom add in a single name of the module you used that work
ie
natsemi
This will now load on boot.
for network you would edit /etc/network/interfaces
it should look something like this

auto lo eth0
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.40.1.7
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 10.40.1.255
gateway 10.40.1.254

The auto means that its loaded automaticly on boot, lo is localhost/loopback.
Use your own ips and network settings.

Redhat based systems generally have network in /etc/sysconfig/ somewhere (been a while since i used them)

Other systems use other methods but generally all keep the config settings in /etc somewhere.

Last-Modified: 2007-03-07 19:38:50

As you may notice, debian.co.nz has new urls are cleaner, and look like static html.
This is not to do with the actual files or any major configs, but more to do with mod_rewrite, an apache module.

Basicly it takes the incomming URL and translates it into what it should be using basic regex.

The old news url looked something like this
/news.php?id=31
The newer one looks more like this
/news/31

Some advantages of this:
a) Some search engines dont like having file.php?foo=bar and rank them lower because of it. This will create the LOOK of static html pages.
b) People have to guess what language its written in before they can attempt ‘hacking’ it.
c) The URLs are much friendlier to look at or paste to others.
d) Nice easy URLs to remember 🙂

Okay, Now onto HOW i did it.
Into my httpd.conf under the virtualhost that I am using I added.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/news/([0-9]+) /news.php?id=$1 [NC]

The First line makes sure the rewrite engine is on, its fairly self explainatory.
The second line is the heart of it. It takes any incomming urls at /news/number and turns them into /news.php?id=number .

The NC is part of the flags you can parse it, which mean nocase, its not case sensitive.
There are several lots of flags available, and they are definatly worth looking into.

From there you can add in a whole lot more of conditions with RewriteMap Or RewriteCond

This is only a basic overview, there is an awesome tutorial here that can take you more in depth.

Liz
Last-Modified: 2007-03-07 19:38:50