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Linux distributions tend to come as ISO images – files which are images of CDs/DVDs. I’ve always burned the images to a disk to install, but I’ve been meaning to try setting up a bootable USB stick instead.

Better for the environment, right? More importantly, I never seem to have a blank CD knocking about when I decide to do an install.

I expected some hassle, but it turns out to be trivial if you’re already on a Ubuntu machine, so long as your BIOS supports booting from USB devices. So…

• Check the computer you want to install into supports booting from USB; if it doesn’t I guess you’re stuck with the CD option
• Slap a USB stick with 2GB space or more in a slot on another Ubuntu machine (make sure there’s nothing on the stick you’ll miss if it gets lost!)
• Start up usb-creator from the command line (just type usb-creator, or sudo apt-get it if it’s not installed)
• Choose the .iso in the usb-creator utility
• Choose the target USB device
• Wait while files are copied and stuff
• Pull out the USB stick when it’s ready, plug it into your target machine and reboot.

The familiar installer screens should start up.

More details here.

Paul Brabban Ubuntu Ubuntu

Getting stuff to work from the Ubuntu Menu is pretty straightforward, but I ran into some little problems that confused me with Matlab. This post goes through the steps and difficulties I had, which might be useful in general, not just in relation to Matlab.

First up, I installed the Student Edition of Matlab (currently R2009a and a steal at the student price), taking into account the fact that I’m running a 64-bit OS and the student edition doesn’t come with the 64-bit architecture libraries. Pretty confusing on first install as the installer detects the architecture but then can’t find the libs, but corrected using this guidance on the Mathworks website.

Once you’ve done that, you need to pass the argument ‘-glnx86′ to Matlab every time you start it up.

That’s a pain, plus the other boilerplate to run it in the background – so I tried to set up a menu option using ‘Main Menu’, which is the relevant administrative tool that comes with Ubuntu. It’s in System – Preferences – Main Menu if you’ve not used it before. Here’s a screenshot of it, set up with a Matlab launcher.

The obvious thing is to give Main Menu the command that works from the command prompt, but no. Doing this results is strange behaviour where the splash screen fires up, disappears, and nothing. Checking the .xsession-errors log file in my home directory shows what’s happening. The application is launching in command line mode, writing its prompt to stdout, and then being shut down.

Kinda weird, maybe, as launching the app from the command line launches the Matlab GUI. Anyway, you also need to also add a ‘-desktop’ argument to the launcher command. My Matlab is installed in /opt/matlab, remember to change the path as appropriate for you.

You can also add the icon if you want by clicking where the Matlab icon is shown above, browsing to wherever you installed Matlab then into the ‘X11/icons’ directory, where you’ll find a number of icons.

Now you can launch the program from Main Menu, or drag-dropping it onto a panel, onto your desktop – wherever you like.

Paul Brabban Ubuntu, matlab matlab, MSc

I tried Dropbox when I was doing my first MSc module.

As the course involved writing code and documents, I would work during the day when I was onsite on my laptop, then switch to my desktop to continue working for the week.

Naturally, I would forget to copy something to my laptop ready for the following week, so I tried Google Docs and blogged about it here. Pretty good – just a little clunky and not quite up to the job with the maths symbolic stuff I needed to use.

In a comment to that post, Luke Maciak suggested Dropbox. (Incidentally, I can recommend his blog for entertaining reading too)

Using it, I get an online repository where I can put files, and I can download client software for my (Windows when I was running Windows) and Linux machines.

The client software gives me a ‘Dropbox’ folder. Placing any files in there synchronizes them with the online repository. Any files I’ve added or updated on other machines are synchronized down from the repository, and I can get to and share my files via the Dropbox website as well.

The main difference for me is that Dropbox is completely transparent. It’s just files in that folder. No messing.

So far*, it just works – in fact, I’ve started using to to share some of my Ubuntu desktop configuration. Everything behaves exactly as I expect it to, and there’s been no nasty surprises, so I’d tentatively recommend it if you have multiple computers that you want to keep files in sync across.

You get the first 2GB of space free. If you’re interested in giving it a go, you can get Dropbox here.

*of course, tomorrow it will probably break. That’s computers for you. I’d suggest taking your own, separate backups of that ol’ Dropbox folder now and again, just in case.

Paul Brabban MSc, Ubuntu dropbox, sharing, sync