The Nokogiri gem native extensions require libxml and libxslt. If you get an error like “libxml / libxslt is missing” during installation install the development packages for those libs. On Ubuntu do:
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev
Linux
11
Nov 10
Fixing installation problem with nokogiri gem : libxml / libxslt is missing
4
Aug 10
Thunderbird 3.1 on Ubuntu Lucid
Ubuntu Lucid currently comes with Thunderbird 3.0.x, but Michael found a nice way to install Thunderbird 3.1 on Ubuntu Lucid:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/ppa && sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install thunderbird
That’s it.
You can find 64-bit versions of lightning (v 1.0b2) and the google calendar add-on at: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/releases/1.0b2/contrib/linux-x86_64/
12
May 10
Ubuntu 10.4 : Move window buttons to the right
After upgrading to Ubuntu 10.4 LTS you might notice that the window buttons are left aligned. After browsing some forums I found a solution to move them back to the right:
run gconf-editor from terminal or Alt-F2, go to
apps - metacity - general
and set
button_layout
to
menu:minimize,maximize,close
Hit OK and the buttons are right aligned 
Update: Shortcut:
gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/general/button_layout -t String "menu:minimize,maximize,close"
1
Feb 10
Varnish on CentOS
I previously wrote on how to install Varnish on Debian/Ubuntu. Here is how to install it on CentOS and the like:
- add EPEL to your repositories:
rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm
- install vanish using yum
yum install varnish.x86_64
Note: Change x86_64 to i386 if you are not on a 64 bit system.
Config files are at /etc/varnish/default.vcl and /etc/sysconfig/varnish
12
Jan 10
Varnish on Ubuntu
“Varnish is a state-of-the-art, high-performance HTTP accelerator.” (varnish-cache.org). It’s configuration language VCL makes it very flexible – it even allows to use custom inline C code 
In the past I always build varnish from source myself and used checkinstall to create deb packages. A few days ago I came across a post by Trevor that simplifies the installation on Debian/Ubuntu:
- make sure you have all requires libs/tools installed:
apt-get update apt-get install subversion autotools-dev automake1.9 libtool autoconf libncurses-dev xsltproc quilt
- checkout the varnish source code from svn (change version number as needed)
svn co http://varnish-cache.org/svn/tags/varnish-2.0.6/
- build deb packages
cd varnish-2.0.6/varnish-cache/ dpkg-buildpackage
- install (package names may differ depending on the architecture, e.g. i386 instead of amd64)
cd .. dpkg -i libvarnish1_2.0.4-6_amd64.deb dpkg -i varnish_2.0.4-6_amd64.deb
- you can now change the config in /etc/varnish/default.vcl and /etc/default/varnish