Sectio Aurea

Bitcoin Mining on Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty" with poclbm and ATI

2011-05-07T15:33:00.000-07:00

Updated 6/19/2011 - updated bitcoin app version to 0.3.23, simplified bitcoin setup directions

Updated 6/8/2011 - updated example app versions, clarified use of pools, clarified use of bitcoin standalone app, path cleanup, added link to headless mining guide

1. Introduction

Recently, I got interested in the new peer-to-peer digital currency, Bitcoin (read about it all about it at bitcoin.org if you're not familiar with it yet). Having decided to make use of my idling ATI graphics card for some bitcoin mining, I was able to cobble together a mining setup on Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" without too much trouble. It uses a standard miner app "poclbm", the Python OpenCL Bitminer.

Note that I already had a working official, ATI 'fglrx' graphics card driver package installed, so you'll want that taken care of before starting. I am also running the 32-bit version of Ubuntu; if you are on 64-bit, you can follow the 64-bit specific directions here (tested on 64-bit systems).

2. Install Ubuntu packages

Install required packages:

sudo aptitude install python-setuptools python-numpy \
subversion g++ libboost-all-dev

3. Install Bitcoin

Get the latest Bitcoin distribution, (0.3.23 as of this writing), unpack it to ~/bitcoin-0.3.23/, and set permissions.

cd ~ 
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/bitcoin/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.3.23/bitcoin-0.3.23-linux.tar.gz 
tar xzvf bitcoin-0.3.23-linux.tar.gz 
chmod +x bitcoin-0.3.23/bin/*/bitcoin*

Configuring bitcoin:

cd ~
mkdir -p .bitcoin

Make up user/password here if you like:

echo "rpcuser=user" >> .bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
echo "rpcpassword=password" >> .bitcoin/bitcoin.conf

Now we can run bitcoin in server mode,

~/bitcoin-0.3.23/bin/32/bitcoin -server &

And wait...and wait...hours...until the current block chain is downloaded and verified by your bitcoin client to catch up with the rest of the network. In the meantime, you can continue installing the rest of the software required for mining.

4. Install python-jsonrpc library

Install python-jsonrpc from official Subversion repository:

cd ~
svn checkout http://svn.json-rpc.org/trunk/python-jsonrpc
cd python-jsonrpc/
sudo python setup.py install

5. Install AMD APP SDK

Grab the AMD APP SDK from the AMD website and install it:

64-bit:

cd ~
wget http://download2-developer.amd.com/amd/APPSDK/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64.tgz
tar xvzf AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64.tgz

echo export AMDAPPSDKROOT=${HOME}/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/ >> ~/.bashrc
echo export AMDAPPSDKSAMPLESROOT=${HOME}/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/ >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${AMDAPPSDKROOT}lib/x86_64:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}' >> ~/.bashrc

source ~/.bashrc
cd /

sudo tar xfz $AMDAPPSDKROOT/icd-registration.tgz

32-bit:

cd ~
wget http://download2-developer.amd.com/amd/APPSDK/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx32.tgz
cd ~
tar xzvf AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx32.tgz
cd AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx32/

echo export AMDAPPSDKROOT=${HOME}/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx32/ >> ~/.bashrc
echo export AMDAPPSDKSAMPLESROOT=${HOME}/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx32/ >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${AMDAPPSDKROOT}/lib/x86:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH' >> ~/.bashrc

source ~/.bashrc
     
cd /
sudo tar xfz $AMDAPPSDKROOT/icd-registration.tgz

6. Install pyopencl

Now you have to install pyopencl from source because the Ubuntu package depends on the Nvidia driver package, which will mess up our system if we are on ATI.

cd ~
wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/p/pyopencl/pyopencl-0.92.tar.gz#md5=0680f7272fe3ab5a3bcb0b6cfbd74994
tar xzvf pyopencl-0.92.tar.gz
cd pyopencl-0.92

32-bit configure:

./configure.py --cl-inc-dir=${AMDAPPSDKROOT}include --cl-lib-dir=${AMDAPPSDKROOT}lib/x86

64-bit configure:

./configure.py --cl-inc-dir=${AMDAPPSDKROOT}include --cl-lib-dir=${AMDAPPSDKROOT}lib/x86_64

Now build pyopencl:

make
sudo make install

7. Install poclbm command line miner

Get poclbm modules:

cd ~
mkdir poclbm
cd poclbm
wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/m0mchil/poclbm/raw/master/BitcoinMiner.cl
wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/m0mchil/poclbm/raw/master/BitcoinMiner.py
wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/m0mchil/poclbm/raw/master/poclbm.py
wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/m0mchil/poclbm/raw/master/sha256.py
cd ~

8a. Solo mining

When the block chain is downloaded fully, you can start up poclbm for solo mining:

python poclbm/poclbm.py -d 0 --user user --pass password

And wait a bit until you see khash/second appear.

8b. Pooled mining

To get more granularity from your mining results (i.e. the ability to make smaller earnings sooner, in exchange for a 0-3% fee), you can sign up for pooled mining at one of many pools, such as btcguild, btcmine, BitcoinPool, bitcoins.lc, or eligius. I recommend choosing one of the smaller pools in order to maintain health of the network, rather than favoring the largest pool by default. Search Google for "50% bitcoin hashpower problem" for more information on why this is important.

After you create an account at a pool, you'll generally need to create a separate worker for each miner that you run.

My poclbm command to mine in a pool looks like this:

python poclbm/poclbm.py -d 0 --host=[pool hostname] --port=8332 --user=[worker] --pass='[worker password]'

9. Final notes and related resources

After I wrote this, I found another complete guide for Ubuntu 11.04, targeted at 64-bit users, including the ATI fglrx driver installation if you haven't done that yet. You can find it on the bitcoin.org forums.

A guide for headless mining on Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit also exists on the bitcoin.org forums.

Debian users may also be interested in LinuxCoin, a ready-to-go Bitcoin client/mining distro based on Debian Squeeze.

Any problems following the directions, or comments, let me know. Happy mining!

Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty" release

2011-04-28T15:33:00.000-07:00

The new Ubuntu 11.04, codenamed "Natty" has been released today! You can get it via Update Manager if you're already running Ubuntu 10.10. If you're new to Ubuntu, you'll want to visit the download page and get your Ubuntu installer CD image. You can also visit the main Ubuntu site to learn more about this release.

The screenshot above shows my KDE 4.6/Kubuntu desktop running in Natty. I'm very well pleased with it. I'm using the default theme; my only change was to move the taskbar to the left where I prefer it. Open windows include Firefox 4 browser, and Konsole terminal. You can see KeePass, KTorrent and QuickSynergy all running as tray apps; plus several browsers, Filezilla and Xchat all happily humming along.

I'm finally getting used to the idea of desktop widgets, and you can see a couple of my favorites in the screenshot as well:

Color Picker lets me grab any color from the screen with an eyedropper - very useful for graphics work.
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, because I like pictures of outer space.
GMail Notifier to tell me when my GMail accounts have new mail.

All these widgets are available in the default installation of KDE. You can find them (and many more) by clicking on the Toolbox in the top right corner of the desktop.

Hope you enjoy this release as much as I have! Cheers.

2 High Quality Free GPL Licensed Wordpress Themes

2011-04-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

I found these two free Wordpress media-targeted themes while building a Wordpress site and thought I'd share them.

The first theme is called "Magazeen", and it's released by smashingmagazine.com under the GPLv2 license. Here's a screenshot:

I like this theme because it's got large thumbnails, good

Download Magazeen for free from Smashing Magazine

Another theme which is attractive and polished looking, aimed at photo bloggers, is Vostok. Like Magazeen, Vostok is also created by a team who has released it under GPLv2. Here are the two versions, Light and Dark:

I'll post about Wordpress plugins as soon as I get used to the platform a bit more and learn which plugins I will be relying on.

Download Vostok for free from Google Code

Upgrading Ubuntu from 10.04 to 10.10 with a local mirror

2011-03-25T21:51:00.000-07:00

I upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 to Ubuntu 10.10 on my desktop today, using Update Manager. Since 10.04 is a Long Term Support release which features a long period of stability (bug fixes and security fixes only), 10.10 is not automatically offered. I had to hit the Settings button in Update Manager to bring up the Software Sources dialog, then the Updates tab and select "Normal releases" from the Show new distribution releases: drop-down menu in order to get the 10.10 upgrade to show up.

Connecting to a mirror

I wanted to connect to a local Ubuntu archive mirror for the update, since the upgrade would require downloading a large number of packages. There is a large official mirror list at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors. To find the repository address for a mirror, click "http" next to its name in this list, then browse to "dists" inside the directory it shows you. Copy the entire resulting URL from the browser's location bar:

http://your.mirror.hostedby.edu/ubuntu/dists

To construct the full repository address for Update manager, add "deb" with a space at the front, and your current Ubuntu version's codename after a space at the end, like this:

deb http://your.mirror.hostedby.edu/ubuntu/dists/ lucid

To enable this mirror, I clicked the "Add" button on the Other Software tab in Software Sources, then pasted in the full address as above. After that, the new mirror was recognized as an main source and I found it on the "Ubuntu Software" tab, in the "Download from" menu.

Side note: If you have ever added a package mirror the old way, via APT's "sources.list" file, you'll be happy to know that this method fills out that same sources.list with all necessary permutations of the new mirror address, including all the extra repositories like universe or non-free which you'd already enabled elsewhere. It's just much easier to use the Update Manager to handle this now.

The actual upgrade

Events of note which resulted during and after the upgrade:

The download of 10.10 from my local mirror took a little over 30 minutes for 1800 packages, which was nice. The config stage took close to an hour after that, with minimal interruptions from Update Manager asking how to proceed.
Possibly the most exciting thing that happened: A scary, pixelated distorted warning "LOADING CRASH KERNEL" appeared mid screen off center, in early boot stage, but everything was in fact OK after that. Oh well.
During the upgrade, Update Manager asked if I wanted to keep my customized Apache configuration files and I told it "yes."
Also during the upgrade, Ardour was removed (I'm not sure why, I do have Ubuntu Studio repositories enabled) and I'll have to look into reinstalling it. This was mentioned by Update Manager, with a warning about the upgrade removing a bunch of other packages, none of which i cared about.
Upon first login to 10.10, my desktop background had disappeared. Oops.
Font anti-aliasing is noticeably better, as if the "sub-pixel smoothing" algorithm in Appearance > Fonts was improved.
My Intel 5 Series/3400 Series on-board microphone input started working correctly for the first time (Didn't work in 10.04.)

My custom desktop theme is unchanged, save for those smoother looking fonts. The ATI Fire GL driver installed via Administration > Hardware Drivers (renamed "Additional Drivers" in 10.10) hums along as always.

Working out a few bugs

A few seconds on Google led me to this thread about desktop pictures disappearing on 10.10 upgrade, and indeed, like the folks on the thread I'm running Ubuntu Tweak and had disabled desktop icons prior to the upgrade. So this is an Ubuntu Tweak problem, really. I next went into Tweak's desktop settings, checked "Show desktop icons", and my old wallpaper (and icons) came back. I then unchecked it again and my icons vanished, wallpaper remained. Perfect!

The boot splash problem was a little trickier to track down, but eventually I found this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1587411. The solution mentioned here involves a long and involved process of modifying GRUB bootloader files, apparently because the installer didn't set them up right. This isn't really acceptable for the average user, and I wouldn't really mind doing it myself, except that it's 2011 and I expect better from my Linux desktop. There is also a script to run the solution, which doesn't mention that it relies on a non-standard package to be installed, "hwinfo". I haven't run this yet either.

I wanted to check to be sure that this problem was on its way to being solved the right way, so I followed a link from the blog page discussion which sent me to the official bug report on Launchpad, and I have cast my vote for "this bug affects me" (almost 140 such votes on Launchpad!) I also hit the "subscribe" link on the right side of the screen to get emails when the bug changes status. I view participation in this process as even more important than having it working "perfectly" for just me, because it helps fix the problem for everyone.

Outcome

Two big wins with fonts and microphone add up to a good upgrade!

Still strongly considering upgrading directly to 11.04 from here, as the 10.10 upgrade was somewhat lacking in excitement. I figure an alpha release with a new desktop environment might provide that...

How to get help with Ubuntu on IRC chat

2011-03-23T23:00:00.000-07:00

If you're new to Ubuntu or Linux, and you've ever run into a problem or question that you just can't seem to solve with Google searches, you will be happy to know that there is another resource available to you. Even if you're experienced, there's always going to be something new and obscure that trips you up once in a while. That's where IRC comes in.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is an ancient protocol for chatting on the Internet which is alive and flourishing. It is the predecessor to IM software, Web chatrooms and online gaming chat systems. IRC is commonly used for informal support and chat related to application software, operating systems, games, and a whole host of general interest topics like sports, politics and religion.

So how can you plug into this resource and get some answers? Ubuntu provides several IRC clients. I like Xchat (http://xchat.org/). You can find it in the Ubuntu Software Center. Once installed, it will show up in your main menu under Internet > Xchat-Gnome IRC Chat.

Launch Xchat and you will be asked for a username. Keep in mind this will be visible.

IRC networks are organized like this: you connect to a particular server, which has its own URL just like a webserver. Each server is a "network" in IRC terms and it hosts a variety of "channels". Channels are identified by hash marks (just like Twitter tags). By default, Xchat on Ubuntu will put you into the #ubuntu channel on the Freenet IRC network. This means there are a lot of people in the channel at any one time, and help is usually just a few seconds away!

A few tips for IRC:

Don't ask to ask, just ask your question. The #ubuntu channel exists to answer questions, so chit chat is unnecessary.
The channel bot, Ubottu, will answer your topical questions if you message it: "/msg ubottu !firefox4"
Be patient if your question isn't answered right away - it just means no one has an answer for you yet. Wait a few minutes before asking it again, even if it's busy in the channel.

And there you have it, Ubuntu IRC support in a nutshell. One of my favorite resources for truly stuck situations.

For more information on IRC, check out this tutorial: http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/irctutorial.html

Building TrinityCore 9847 with TrinityDB r34 on Ubuntu 10.04

2010-09-12T12:53:00.000-07:00

Well, another TrinityCore/TDB release has arrived (http://forum.trinitycore.org/topic/28139-tdb-3351134-love-hate-and-passion-has-been-released/), so I'm rebuilding my Trinity server from scratch and sharing the process again. Happily, I saw much fewer errors than when I built r33. No errors, in fact!

Accordingly, this guide describes the process of setting up TrinityCore revision 9847 with TrinityDB 335.11.34 (TDB r34) on an Ubuntu 10.04 system. The directions should work on Ubuntu 9.10 but have not been tested there. I got most of my clues from http://www.trinitycore.info/index.php?title=Installing_TrinityCore_on_recent_Linux-based_systems. I highly suggest you keep that document handy while following this guide, as it goes into detail on many explanations which I will be glossing over.

To avoid unnecessary content duplication, please see my post at http://sectio-aurea.blogspot.com/2010/09/installing-trinitycore-dependencies-on.html for an explanation of installing Ubuntu-specific build dependencies and setting up the Trinity server user environment. Specifically, I'm building under /home/trinity as 'trinity' user. Make sure you follow those directions first if this is your first build, then come back to this page.

Building TrinityCore rev9847

$ cd ~/
$ hg clone http://trinitycore.googlecode.com/hg/ trinitycore
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ../trinitycore/ -DPREFIX=/home/trinity/server -DSQL=1 -DTOOLS=1 -Wno-dev

For the build, I passed the '-j 4' switch to use all CPU cores - use different values after '-j' depending on the number of your cores.:

$ make -j 4
$ make install

Setting up TrinityDB 335.11.34 (TDB r34)

For this installation, I chose to do a clean install of the r34 database release. I am NOT preserving my current data. This was in large part due to the inconsistencies I encountered with r33 - I wanted to make sure that those issues were resolved. So, I completely dropped databases 'world', 'auth' and 'characters' prior to running these update files.

$ cd ~/
$ hg clone http://trinitydb.googlecode.com/hg/ trinitydb
$ mysql -u root -p < server/share/trinity/sql/tools/create_mysql.sql
$ mysql -u root -p auth < trinitycore/sql/base/auth_database.sql
$ mysql -u root -p characters < trinitycore/sql/base/characters_database.sql
$ cd ~/trinitydb/full_db/
$ unzip TDB_335.11.34_9847.zip
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < TDB_335.11.34_9847.sql

Setting up DBC, maps and vmaps

I copied a 3.3.5 retail client directory over from a Windows partition; you could also install through Wine directly to Ubuntu if desired.

$ cd ~/
$ cp -R /host/Users/Public/Games/World\ of\ Warcraft/ .

Now, extract maps and copy to the server:

$ cd World\ of\ Warcraft/
$ /home/trinity/server/bin/mapextractor
$ cp -r dbc/ maps/ /home/trinity/server/data/

And vmaps:

$ /home/trinity/server/bin/vmap3extractor
$ mkdir vmaps
$ /home/trinity/server/bin/vmap3assembler Buildings vmaps
$ cp -r vmaps/ /home/trinity/server/data/

Afterwards you can remove the extracted data from your client directory:

$ rm -rf dbc/ maps/ vmaps/

Configuring the worldserver and authserver

$ cd ~/
$ cd server/etc/
$ cp authserver.conf.dist authserver.conf
$ cp worldserver.conf.dist worldserver.conf

Setting up logs a bit better than the default, which dumps them into the bin directory:

$ cd ~/
$ mkdir -p server/log/worldserver
$ mkdir -p server/log/authserver

A few modifications are needed to worldserver.conf; set these values:

DataDir = "/home/trinity/server/data/"
LogsDir = "/home/trinity/server/log/worldserver/"

Changes in authserver.conf:

LogsDir = "/home/trinity/server/log/authserver/"
BindIP = "127.0.0.1"

Running TrinityCore 'worldserver' and 'authserver'

For server startup, it's nice to run each daemon in the foreground in a separate terminal, as the worldserver daemon will spawn an interactive control console upon startup.

The two server binaries which were just built reside here.

/home/trinity/server/bin/authserver
/home/trinity/server/bin/worldserver

I created convenient start scripts in the 'trinity' user's home directory.

$ echo "/home/trinity/server/bin/authserver" > authserver_start.sh
$ echo "/home/trinity/server/bin/worldserver" > worldserver_start.sh
$ chmod +x *_start.sh

And created stop scripts, although in practice you can just Ctrl-C in their terminals to shut down.

$ echo "kill -9 `pidof authserver`" > authserver_stop.sh
$ echo "kill -9 `pidof worldserver`" > worldserver_stop.sh
$ chmod +x *_stop.sh

Running the start scripts in separate terminals under the 'trinity' user:

$ ./authserver_start.sh
$ ./worldserver_start.sh

The authserver starts up quickly with a quiet log; the worldserver takes a minute or less to start up, and uses around 200MB of memory while running. What do they look like in the process list? Easy to spot:

trinity 25052 25051 6 09:57 pts/0 00:00:09 /home/trinity/server/bin/worldserver
trinity 25127 1 0 10:00 pts/1 00:00:00 /home/trinity/server/bin/authserver

Client Configuration

The realm is running - great! Time to test a client connection. You'll need Wine to run the client:

$ sudo apt-get install wine1.2

Make sure your realmlist references are to localhost. Here's my Data/enUS/realmlist.wtf for the client:

set realmlist 127.0.0.1
set patchlist 127.0.0.1
set realmlistbn ""
set portal us

And the WTF/Config.wtf:

SET realmList "127.0.0.1"
SET patchlist "127.0.0.1"
SET locale "enUS"
SET portal "us"
SET hwDetect "0"
SET gxRefresh "60"
SET gxMultisampleQuality "0.000000"
SET gxFixLag "0"
SET videoOptionsVersion "3"
SET movie "0"
SET Gamma "1.000000"
SET showToolsUI "1"
SET Sound_OutputDriverName "System Default"
SET Sound_MusicVolume "0.40000000596046"
SET Sound_AmbienceVolume "0.60000002384186"
SET farclip "777.000000"
SET specular "1"
SET groundEffectDensity "24"
SET projectedTextures "1"
SET gxWindow "1"
SET gxResolution "800x600"

Once the client is launched, you need to create an account to log in with: let's make a GM account first. We will use the interactive shell provided by TrinityCore. Go to the worldserver's shell, and hit 'enter', then give the following commands to create a GM account and give permissions for 2 expansion packs:

TC> account create admin PASSWORD
TC>Account created: ADMIN
TC> account set gmlevel admin 3 -1
TC>You change security level of account ADMIN to 3.
TC> account set addon admin 2
TC>Account ADMIN (Id: 1) have up to 2 expansion allowed now.

You may also wish to create a regular user for testing:

TC>account create user01 PASSWORD
TC>Account created: user01
TC> account set addon user01 2
TC>Account USER (Id: 2) have up to 2 expansion allowed now.

If you want to delete an account:

TC>account delete user01
TC>Account deleted: USER01

Installing TrinityCore dependencies on Ubuntu 10.04

2010-09-12T12:27:00.000-07:00

This guide is meant to accompany my release-specific build guides for TrinityCore/TDB releases on Ubuntu, in order to cut down on duplicate content in those posts since these procedures for brand new installations don't change.

TrinityCore dependency packages in Ubuntu

First, install the Ubuntu packages required for building TrinityCore.

$ sudo aptitude install build-essential autoconf libtool gcc g++ make cmake subversion mercurial patch wget links zip unzip unrar openssl libssl-dev mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient15-dev libmysql++-dev libreadline5-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev

Now create a separate 'trinity' user for the server to run under (or you can call this user 'tc' or whatever you like). Then, switch to this user and start setting up the dependencies which we must build. Note that on my development desktop machine, I give 'trinity' sudo on Ubuntu by putting it in the admin group, in order to install some libraries systemwide. If you're preparing a public server, you should remove the 'trinity' user's sudo privileges with "sudo gpasswd -d trinity admin" after dependency setup is complete.

    $ sudo adduser trinity
    $ sudo usermod -G admin -a trinity
    $ su - trinity

Building ACE 5.7.8

One of the TrinityCore dependencies is the ACE framework. The latest version, 5.7.8, is recommended by the TrinityCore developers. I confirmed that Ubuntu 10.04's ACE packages are older than 5.7.8:

    $ apt-cache policy libace-dev | grep Candidate
    Candidate: 5.6.3-6

So, it's still appropriate to build by hand:

    $ cd ~/
    $ wget http://download.dre.vanderbilt.edu/previous_versions/ACE-5.7.8.tar.gz
    $ tar xvzf ACE-5.7.8.tar.gz
    $ cd ~/ACE_wrappers/
    $ mkdir build
    $ cd build
    $ ../configure
$ make
    $ sudo make install

That's it! You are now ready to install TrinityCore and TDB in your new build environment. Continue on with checking out the code and building.

Building TrinityCore with TrinityDB r33 on Ubuntu 10.04

2010-08-23T19:43:00.000-07:00

Setting up TrinityCore on Ubuntu 10.04

The awesomeness of 5-boxing localhost

IMPORTANT: USE UPDATED R34 GUIDE AT http://sectio-aurea.blogspot.com/2010/09/trinitycore-9847-tdb-r34-ubuntu-1004.html - THANKS

This original guide describes the complete process of setting up TrinityCore rev9535 with TrinityDB r33 (TDB) on a new Ubuntu 10.04 or 9.10 installation. This server build is compatible with the current 3.3.5 retail clients. During the bulk of the installation, I worked from the generally excellent Linux-specific instructions at http://www.trinitycore.info/index.php?title=Installing_TrinityCore_on_recent_Linux-based_systems which contains distribution-specific details for RedHat and Debian-like systems. The only place where those directions were necessarily incomplete was the TrinityDB update process, which required some troubleshooting due to the changing nature of the unstable release DB updates.

Setting up the base system (optional)

I began with a fresh installation of Ubuntu 10.04 using Wubi, which was patched up with the current updates (Update Manager will pop up and offer these updates to you):

libfreetype6 linux-headers-2.6.32-24 linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic linux-image-2.6.32-24-generic linux-libc-dev

I have also tested this process on Ubuntu 9.10, which happily worked exactly as 10.04 for the purpose of build dependencies.

Installing to a VirtualBox or VMWare instance should also work just fine, although I haven't tested a build on those platforms.

Installing TrinityCore dependencies

First, install the Ubuntu packages required for building TrinityCore.

$ sudo aptitude install build-essential autoconf libtool gcc g++ make cmake subversion mercurial patch wget links zip unzip unrar openssl libssl-dev mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient15-dev libmysql++-dev libreadline5-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev

Now create a separate 'trinity' user for the server to run under (or 'tcore' or whatever you like). Then, switch to this user and start setting up the dependencies which we must build. Note that I give 'trinity' sudo on Ubuntu by putting it in the admin group, in order to install some libraries systemwide. If you're preparing a public server, you should remove the 'trinity' user's sudo privileges after setup is complete.

$ sudo adduser trinity
$ sudo usermod -G admin -a trinity
$ su - trinity

Building ACE 5.7.8

One of the TrinityCore dependencies is the ACE framework. The latest version, 5.7.8, is recommended by the TrinityCore developers. I confirmed that Ubuntu 10.04's ACE packages are older than 5.7.8:

$ apt-cache policy libace-dev | grep Candidate
Candidate: 5.6.3-6

So, it's still appropriate to build by hand:

$ cd ~/
$ wget http://download.dre.vanderbilt.edu/previous_versions/ACE-5.7.8.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf ACE-5.7.8.tar.gz
$ cd ~/ACE_wrappers/
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ ../configure $ make
$ sudo make install

Note: If you get an segfault at this step on 'make', and you are like me, you are probably on your third fresh install of Wubi in a row and forgot to restart since installing kernel updates.

Building TrinityCore

Next, it's time to build the Trinity Core server itself - starting by checking out source from the repository. Still as user 'trinity':

$ cd ~/
$ hg clone http://trinitycore.googlecode.com/hg/ trinitycore

Now we make a build directory in the 'trinity' home directory, and run the Cmake configuration script:

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ../trinitycore/ -DPREFIX=/home/trinity/server -DSQL=1 -DTOOLS=1

For the build, I passed the '-j 2' switch to use both cores - use different values after '-j' depending on the number of your cores.:

$ make -j 2
$ make install

For future updates to the TrinityCore server, do this:

$ cd ~/trinitycore/
$ hg pull -u
$ cd ~/build
$ make clean

Then, repeat the steps to first configure with Cmake, then compile and install listed above.

Setting up TrinityDB r33 (TDB)

Warning! It took a lot of grepping around the updates folders to get me through this part of the installation. If you don't follow the order of operations described here, or you install additional update files not mentioned, there's no guarantee it will work. Heck, even if you do follow this order, you may have to correct something different which I didn't have to deal with. Here be Dragons.

Check out the database using hg:

$ cd ~/
$ hg clone http://trinitydb.googlecode.com/hg/ trinitydb

Now create the three databases, 'world', 'auth' and 'characters' including mysql user privileges for 'trinity'. Don't run these again for future updates, or you'll reset your entire database and lose any current data:

$ mysql -u root -p < server/share/trinity/sql/tools/create_mysql.sql
$ mysql -u root -p auth < trinitycore/sql/base/auth_database.sql
$ mysql -u root -p characters < trinitycore/sql/base/characters_database.sql

Now for some 'world' database updates which come from the trinitydb sandbox. The last major release was 8874, and there's also an update pack for 8875 through 8996, but we're patching even further up to date from there in a minute.

$ cd ~/trinitydb/full_db/
$ unzip TDB_335.10.32_8874.zip
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < TDB_335.10.32_8874.sql
$ cd ../updates/335.10/
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 33_01_corepatch_world_8875_8996.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 33_02_procedures_world.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 33_03_updatepack_world.sql

Now import lots of updates from trinitydb, continuing basically where 8896 left off from, in the previous trinitycore sql updates:

$ cd ~/trinitycore/sql/updates/3.3.5a_old
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < ../3.3.2_old/7552_world_battleground_template.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < ../3.3.2_old/7432_world_access_requirement.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < ../2.4.3_old/90_world.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8897_world_npc_vendor.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8897_world_trinity_string.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8905_world_spell_proc_event.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8906_world_spell_proc_event.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8915_world_trinity_string.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8920_world_spell_dbc.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8920_world_spell_linked_spell.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8921_world_spell_dbc.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8925_world_spell_group.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8957_world_command.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8957_world_disables.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8957_world_trinity_string.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8971_world_command.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8971_world_trinity_string.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8975_world_spell_dbc.sql
$ mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < 8988_world_playercreateinfo.sql

$ cd ~/trinitycore/sql/updates
$ for i in `ls *_world_*.sql`; do mysql -u trinity --password="trinity" world < $i; done

The first few older updates are to fix problems with several recent updates which referred to nonexistent tables or columns. The new updates are not perfect yet, after all this is an unstable revision...

Procedure for updating database in future: run these commands to update your DB sandbox, then update from the new files since your last build.

$ cd ~/trinitydb
$ hg pull -u

DBC, maps and vmaps:

I copied a 3.3.5 retail client directory over from a Windows partition; you could also install through Wine directly to Ubuntu if desired.

$ cd ~/
$ cp -R /host/Users/Public/Games/World\ of\ Warcraft/ .

Now, extract maps and copy to the server:

$ cd World\ of\ Warcraft/
$ /home/trinity/server/bin/mapextractor
$ cp -r dbc/ maps/ /home/trinity/server/data/

And vmaps:

$ /home/trinity/server/bin/vmap3extractor
$ mkdir vmaps
$ /home/trinity/server/bin/vmap3assembler Buildings vmaps
$ cp -r vmaps/ /home/trinity/server/data/

Afterwards you can remove the extracted data from your client directory:

$ rm -rf dbc/ maps/ vmaps/

Configuring the worldserver and authserver

$ cd ~/
$ cd server/etc/
$ cp authserver.conf.dist authserver.conf
$ cp worldserver.conf.dist worldserver.conf

Setting up logs a bit better than the default, which dumps them into the bin directory:

$ cd ~/
$ mkdir -p server/log/worldserver
$ mkdir -p server/log/authserver

A few modifications are needed to worldserver.conf; set these values:

DataDir = "/home/trinity/server/data/"

LogsDir = "/home/trinity/server/log/worldserver/"

Changes in authserver.conf:

LogsDir = "/home/trinity/server/log/authserver/"
BindIP = "127.0.0.1"

Running TrinityCore 'worldserver' and 'authserver'

For server startup, it's nice to run each daemon in the foreground in a separate terminal, as the worldserver daemon will spawn an interactive control console upon startup:

The two server binaries which were just built reside here.

/home/trinity/server/bin/authserver
/home/trinity/server/bin/worldserver

I created convenient start scripts in the 'trinity' user's home directory.

$ echo "/home/trinity/server/bin/authserver" > authserver_start.sh
$ echo "/home/trinity/server/bin/worldserver" > worldserver_start.sh
$ chmod +x *_start.sh

And created stop scripts, although in practice you can just Ctrl-C in their terminals to shut down.

$ echo "kill -9 `pidof authserver`" > authserver_stop.sh
$ echo "kill -9 `pidof worldserver`" > worldserver_stop.sh
$ chmod +x *_stop.sh

Running the start scripts in separate terminals under the 'trinity' user, there will be several warnings/errors in the worldserver startup log but nothing critical.

$ ./authserver_start.sh

$ ./worldserver_start.sh

The authserver starts up quickly with a quiet log; the worldserver takes a minute or so to start up on my AMD Vision dual core system, and uses around 200MB of memory while running. What do they look like in the process list? Easy to spot:

trinity 25052 25051 6 09:57 pts/0 00:00:09 /home/trinity/server/bin/worldserver
trinity 25127 1 0 10:00 pts/1 00:00:00 /home/trinity/server/bin/authserver

Client Configuration

The realm is running - great! Time to test a client connection. You'll need Wine to run the client:

$ sudo apt-get install wine1.2

Make sure your realmlist references are to localhost. Here's my Data/enUS/realmlist.wtf for the client:

set realmlist 127.0.0.1
set patchlist 127.0.0.1
set realmlistbn ""
set portal us

And the WTF/Config.wtf:

SET realmList "127.0.0.1"
SET patchlist "127.0.0.1"
SET locale "enUS"
SET portal "us"
SET hwDetect "0"
SET gxRefresh "60"
SET gxMultisampleQuality "0.000000"
SET gxFixLag "0"
SET videoOptionsVersion "3"
SET movie "0"
SET Gamma "1.000000"
SET showToolsUI "1"
SET Sound_OutputDriverName "System Default"
SET Sound_MusicVolume "0.40000000596046"
SET Sound_AmbienceVolume "0.60000002384186"
SET farclip "777.000000"
SET specular "1"
SET groundEffectDensity "24"
SET projectedTextures "1"
SET gxWindow "1"
SET gxResolution "800x600"

Once the client is launched, you need to make an account to log in with: let's do a GM account first. We will use the interactive shell provided by TrinityCore. Go to the worldserver's shell, and hit 'enter', then give the following commands to create a GM account and give permissions for 2 expansion packs:

TC> account create admin PASSWORD
TC>Account created: ADMIN
TC> account set gmlevel admin 3 -1
TC>You change security level of account ADMIN to 3.
TC> account set addon admin 2
TC>Account ADMIN (Id: 1) have up to 2 expansion allowed now.

You may also wish to create a regular user for testing:

TC>account create user PASSWORD
TC>Account created: user
TC> account set addon user 2
TC>Account USER (Id: 2) have up to 2 expansion allowed now.

If you want to delete an account:

TC>account delete user07
TC>Account deleted: USER07

By default, new GM account characters are created as level 80. Regular user account characters come in as level 1. This and many other parameters can be adjusted in worldserver.conf to your liking.

Enjoy your new TrinityCore server! Comments/corrections are welcome as regards the build process on your system, especially on Ubuntu 10.04 or 9.10, and please keep in mind that future Trinity releases will almost certainly slightly change the database installation process.

Building Xnee 3.06 on Ubuntu Lucid 10.04

2010-08-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

Recently, I wanted to use Xnee (http://www.sandklef.com/xnee/) to automate some GUI application actions on an Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 installation, but I found that the version of Xnee available from the Lucid repositories still has some problems. Specifically, this older Xnee version, 3.02-2ubuntu2, still contains workarounds for some previously existing Xorg RECORD extension problems which have themselves now been fixed in Lucid. The outcome of this mismatch is that recording fails with any of cnee, gnee or pnee. This is resolved in the next release of Ubuntu, 10.10 "Maverick", which includes Xnee 3.06, but I preferred not to upgrade the entire system to a pre-release state just to get this one application working.

Therefore, desiring to build the latest Xnee release from source and resolve the recording problem, I used a trial and error process involving the output of the configure script, along with a good deal of web searching, to come up with a list of required packages to support building Xnee 3.06 from the GNU FTP tarball. On a fresh Ubuntu 10.04 installation, patched up to date but otherwise untouched, the build dependencies can be obtained as such (approximately 100MB in total):

    sudo aptitude install build-essential libxtst-dev libpanel-applet2-dev autoconf automake libtool libgnomeui-dev

If building package documentation is desired:

    sudo aptitude install dia texi2html texinfo texlive-font-utils texlive-latex-base texlive-generic-recommended

Now we can get the latest tarball from the GNU FTP site and install it. Include the --disable-doc flag (recommended) if you don't want to spend the time building the package documentation:

    cd ~/
    wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xnee/xnee-3.06.tar.gz
tar xzvf xnee-3.06.tar.gz
    cd xnee-3.06
    ./configure [--disable-doc]
    make
    sudo make install

I found that gnee, the graphical interface for Xnee, would launch and seemed usable enough (though a bit unstable when poked the wrong way) but I wanted to start by learning the basics of its command line interface, and so I haven't messed around with 3.06's gnee quite as much yet. Here are a few working examples using cnee, the Xnee CLI tool:

Recording both mouse and keyboard, storing mouse starting position, using F12 for the "stop recording" key, a countdown timer of 10 to begin and a maximum number of 1000 events to record, storing the results to a new file cnee_test.xnl:

    cnee --record --mouse --keyboard -o cnee_test.xnl --store-mouse-position --stop-key F12 --time 10 --events-to-record 1000 &

Playback of mouse and keyboard events, recalling window position from the recording, with a countdown of 10 seconds to begin playback:

    cnee --replay --mouse --keyboard -f cnee_test.xnl --recall-window-position --time 10

Notes:
1) Recording segfaults after the starting timer completes if F5 is the stop key... I haven't experimented further to see exactly which keys cause this.

Installing Heroes of Newerth Beta on Ubuntu Linux 9.04 Jaunty

2009-07-15T14:55:00.000-07:00

Well, I got my beta key for Heroes of Newerth through the recent Slashdot giveaways. I'm excited as I used to play Starcraft back in the day, but never got into DotA. Here is my experience installing this *early closed beta* version of the game and first playing it.

Installing

I downloaded the beta installer to my desktop. Looks like it's a shell script. I got a md5sum value of cc57bcbd083199b3d40007e9e8c32a5f for my download which matches the official information.

Made it executable:

$ chmod +x HoNClient-0.1.27.3-r2.sh

And then ran it:

$ ./HoNClient-0.1.27.3-r2.sh

After accepting the license agreement, to my surprise and delight it defaults to installing to my home directory at ~/HoN. No root privileges required! Thumbs up S2. The next installer screen confirms I want to install "XDG menu entries". I say yes. After a progress bar I click "Finish" and the installer peacefully exits.

In my K menu I go to Applications > Games and there it is, "Multiplayer Game" (Heroes of Newerth) with its icon. So far so good!

I do note, however, that if I remove the executable bit from the shell script, then click the shell script downloaded to my desktop, Ubuntu tries to open it in Wine, with no result. Presumably, the final installer will come with the executable bit set for a commandline-free install experience.

Patching

After logging into the game, the auto updater started to download a 26MB patch to bring me from 1.27.3 to 1.28.2. I tabbed out to do something else while it was updating... at this point my entire system froze up, necessitating a hard reboot. I started the game again to see if it was more stable if I leave it alone and do not tab away to a different application or desktop while it is updating. This time it froze on the S2 splash screen. I killed the HoN processes, removed the ~/HoN/Update folder entirely and tried again. The result was a clean update and no problems whatsoever.

Playing

Armed with a fresh pot of coffee, I am ready to start playing! But... at the Game Browser screen, HoN shoots up to 100% CPU usage and I am forced to kill -9 it. Right clicking on my taskbar did not work to quit the game at this time, in fact none of the KDE taskbar was responsive.

Long story short, killing PulseAudio with "kill `pgrep pulse`" after starting the game, resulted in no sound but no crashes. I filed a bug and am happily playing without PulseAudio (Used Aptitude to remove it). This incidentally resolves all the other problems I had with PulseAudio, so I'm not too upset about the workaround.

I am not so good at this game yet, my kill/death ratio is around 1:3. Still having fun and learning though! The game itself runs beautifully, there aren't any significant bugs that I've run into (none during in-game play) and I feel confident in predicting that this will be one of the most popular games on the Linux platform. I'll leave you
with some links that helped me get the basics down...

Links with info on playing Heroes of Newerth

The Art of DotA

DotA Basics for New to Average Skill

Hero/General Guide Links

Berkeley LOGO and the Turtle on Ubuntu Linux 8.10 "Intrepid"

2008-12-13T00:15:00.000-08:00

As a kid, the first programming language I ever saw was a variant of Logo on an Amstrad PC/M system. I discovered its graphic system, the "Turtle" and how it could be used to create Spirograph-like images in a totally different environment from the word processing application or the file manager (which resembled Midnight Commander!)

So naturally I have to see what it looks like now:

sudo aptitude install ucblogo

According to the user manual (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/usermanual) "Berkeley Logo provides traditional Logo turtle graphics with one turtle. Multiple turtles, dynamic turtles, and collision detection are not supported."

I start the interpreter with 'logo' in a Terminal.

I put my pen down:

pd

Hide the turtle:

ht

And draw a fancy shape!

repeat 65 [fd 300 rt 165]

I was very pleased to get back up and running with Logo. However, I doubt I'll truly be satisfied until I can run an emulated version of the entire Amstrad PC/M system!

A 3d File System Viewer: Building FSV on Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid"

2008-12-12T17:58:00.000-08:00

FSV is a 3d file system viewer which reimplements FSN, memorable for its appearance in Jurassic Park. You can read about FSN here:

http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool-from-jurassic-park/

The FSV website at http://fsv.sourceforge.net/ provides the downloadable source code for FSV, and here is how to build it:

Download the package from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31220&package_id=23252&release_id=48623, then:

cd ~/Desktop
tar xzvf fsv-0.9.tar.gz
cd fsv-0.9

I had to install a dependency of several GTK 1.x development libraries before the configure script would complete, as well as build-essential which I already had installed. There are a few dependencies that will additionally install when you run this:

sudo aptitude install libgtk1.2-dev gtkglarea5-dev build-essential

Now you can configure, make and install:

./configure
make
sudo make install

The application will be found in /usr/local/bin/fsv, you can run it with 'fsv' at the command prompt now. FSV will default to the current directory as its root but allows you to change root with File > Change Root... (or hit Ctrl-N). As a nifty bonus, you get all kinds of stats on the number and disk usage of files in the visible root.

I did get it to segfault when clicking on a large jpg file, but overall it is very stable and usable for a 9 year old program! Kudos to its author Daniel Richard G. aka "skunk".

Linux Audio and Music blog talks about Hydrogen

2008-12-12T14:41:00.000-08:00

Just found a blog called Linux Audio and Music which briefly mentions Hydrogen, one of my favorite apps:

Linux Audio and Music: Hydrogen drum sequencer

Three free Hydrogen drumkits to download

2008-12-12T14:29:00.000-08:00

Hydrogen drumkits are fairly easy to make and distribute, so I'm always on the lookout for new ones.

Here's a link to download three free kits from Zeta Centauri: Kawai XD-5, Roland JD-990, and Yamaha TG-55.

http://www.zetacentauri.com/samplecds.htm

Once downloaded, you can import them in Hydrogen as follows: Instruments menu > Import Library > Local File tab, hit Browse and select the downloaded .h2drumkit (which contains a .tar, if you're curious) then when the field is populated hit Install to load the drumkit.

More about Hydrogen here: http://hydrogen-music.org

Music and Photos on the Golden Section theme.

2008-12-12T02:57:00.000-08:00

So, it turns out that there is a band named Sectio Aurea. Here is their MySpace page:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=191837341

And their last.fm page:
http://www.last.fm/music/Sectio+Aurea

Visually, this Flickr group has some splendid photographs illustrating the golden section:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sectio_aurea/

Building Hydrogen drum machine from SVN on Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid"

2008-12-12T02:26:00.000-08:00

The SVN repository for the Linux drum machine software, Hydrogen has recently moved. You can read today's hydrogen-devel post about it here:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=4941A8C4.7070206%40smoors.de&forum_name=hydrogen-devel

Here is how I installed Hydrogen from the new repository today on my 8.10 Intrepid system (you'll need the QT libraries, libqt4-dev if you don't already have them, as well as build-essential and probably a few others I'm forgetting):

cd ~
mkdir hydrogen-build && cd hydrogen-build
svn co http://svn.assembla.com/svn/hydrogen/trunk
cd trunk && scons && sudo su -c "scons install"

Now I can run this one-liner to update Hydrogen to latest SVN (680 at this writing).

cd ~/hydrogen/trunk && svn up && scons && sudo su -c "scons install"

Hydrogen installs to /usr/local/bin/hydrogen when built this way, so you can run "hydrogen" in a terminal to open it.

Introduction

2008-12-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Sectio Aurea, a blog devoted to Linux related articles and news with a focus on the Ubuntu platform.

Sectio Aurea is Latin for "Golden Section". In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller.