The guide mentioned Intrepid has the ability to create an automounting private folder using ecryptfs‐utils with next to no setup. That’s nice, but I’d rather have a bit more control over the folder – having it just pop up on login isn’t very appealing since my system gets used from time to time by other people. A bit of googling around turned this up:

1. How to auto-configure
   
2. How to configure hands on
3. The basic truecrypt way

Ubuntugeek has a nice writeup on the under-the-hood way to use ecryptfs-utils. The reason I’m going with this over Truecrypt is I’d rather have the files encrypt on the fly without needing a set amount of space first (as in a container). I’ll keep the containers on my thumb drives for now.

Started with the Ubuntugeek step by step:

• sudo aptitude install ecryptfs-utils
• mkdir ~/crypt
• chmod 700 ~/crypt
• sudo mount -t ecryptfs ~/crypt ~/crypt
  • chose 4 for passphrase
  • created passphrase<
  • selected aes for cipher
  • 16 for blocksize

After selecting my options:

Attempting to mount with the following options:
 ecryptfs_key_bytes=16
 ecryptfs_cipher=aes
 ecryptfs_sig=1c56a17407ef3160
 WARNING: Based on the contents of [/root/.ecryptfs/sig-cache.txt],
 it looks like you have never mounted with this key
 before. This could mean that you have typed your
 passphrase wrong.

Would you like to proceed with the mount (yes/no)? yes
 Would you like to append sig [1c56a17407ef3160] to
 [/root/.ecryptfs/sig-cache.txt]
 in order to avoid this warning in the future (yes/no)? yes
 Successfully appended new sig to user sig cache file
 Mounted eCryptfs

Not quite sure what just happened there. I just installed this thing, of course I haven’t mounted with this key before. I wasn’t asked for a plaintext passthrough either. Check to see if it worked anyways.

• cp Firefox_wallpaper.png ~/crypt
• ls ~/crypt
• sudo umount ~/crypt
• ls ~/ | grep crypt

Crypt is still there! Blast.

• ls ~/crypt

It still shows my png file too!

• gnome-open ~/crypt/Firefox_wallpaper.png

“Fatal error reading PNG image file: Not a PNG file”

Alright, so that’s good, it’s probably encrypted then. I’ll remount and see if it’ll open.

• sudo mount -t ecryptfs ~/crypt ~/crypt -o key=passphrase,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_passthrough=n
• gnome-open ~/crypt/Firefox_wallpaper.png

Yep, opens fine now. Since I was expecting Truecrypt style mount behavior from Windows I was expecting the entire folder to just disapear (even though I specifically created one, duh). Reading through the ecryptfs page and here made a bit more sense. Without pre-allocation there isn’t much of a choice anyways. Time to turn this bulky command into an easy use alias:

• echo "alias mount-crypt='sudo mount -t ecryptfs ~/crypt ~/crypt -o key=passphrase,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_passthrough=n'" | tee -a ~/.bash_aliases
• source .bashrc

Figuring out the above took a bit longer than those two lines… here’s some insight into my rookie mistakes. (460 through 471 was me playing videos in terminal via ascii, heh.)

hyperq just replaced his InputDevice section with the code below, when I checked my own xorg though I didn’t even have an InputDevice area at all – so I just pasted the following into the end of my xorg.conf and restarted X (ctrl+alt+backspace).

Section "InputDevice"
       Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
       Driver          "evdev"
       Option          "CorePointer"
       Option          "Buttons"       "7"
       Option          "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5"
       Option          "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7"
       Option          "Name"  "Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse"
EndSection

Once X loaded up I was able to use the buttons in Firefox, but that was about it. Still didn’t work in Nautilus, which is really where the functionality should be.

After a bit of hunting around I found this excellent UbuntuForum post by detyabozhye.

First step was to make sure that xserver-xorg-input-evdev was installed:

• locate evdev


Returned this for me:

xserver-xorg-input-evdev is already installed, no need to snag that particular package. Next was checking my installed USB devices to see exactly what Ubuntu thinks my Logitech MX-518 actually is.

• cat /proc/bus/input/devices

The device list is quite extensive, and I just pulled out the Logitech related bit

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046d Product=c01e Version=0110
N: Name="Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse"
P: Phys=usb-0000:00:0b.0-4/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0/usb1/1-4/1-4:1.0/input/input4
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event1
B: EV=17
B: KEY=ff0000 0 0 0 0
B: REL=103
B: MSC=10

Perfect, this is the same thing I added into my xorg from earlier, so it definitely has the right mouse, and the Firefox back/forward buttons show this – but time to get it working with Nautilus. Unfortunately there isn’t a native way to do this, the buttons actually have to be bound to certain keys.

To do this there are two necessary packages, xvkbd and xbindkeys.

• sudo apt-get install xvkbd xbindkeys

Then xbindkeys needs to be configured to map the keys to Nautilus shortcuts.

• gedit ~/.xbindkeysrc

Paste in the following:

"/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Alt_L]\[Left]""
  m:0x0 + b:6
"/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Alt_L]\[Right]""
  m:0x0 + b:7

Hit CTRL+S to save, then ALT+F4 to close.

Started up xbindkeys and tested it in Nautilus – and nothing happened. Made sure the key commands themselves worked by hitting ALT+LEFT and ALT+RIGHT – moved back and forward just like it should, but my side buttons didn’t do it. The only thing different from what detabozhye did and myself is I defined the buttons, so I removed that part and matched deta’s suggestion, then restarted X. Firefox still worked, Nautilus didn’t.

This time I loaded xev to try and see what button was /actually/ being pressed since it obviously wasn’t 6 or 7 at this point.

• xev

(That was easy, eh?) Unfortunately xev is a pain in the arse to actually use. What I had to do was click, and hold the button to stop xev output from spamming my terminal and make very sure to not move the mouse (or more mouse movement spam would scroll by).

When I held down my large side button and scanned the output I saw this:

ButtonPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x4000001,
root 0x13b, subw 0x4000002, time 13076697, (36,18), root:(1014,814),
state 0x10, button 8, same_screen YES

Finally, it’s not 6, it’s 8. Great. The little upper one was 9. Changed my .xbindkeysrc to update with the new buttons and then restarted xbindkeys

• killall xbindkeys
• xbindkeys

Finally works.

Of course, after doing all of this I had a flash of insight… I could’ve simply had xev output to a file instead of trying to watch the terminal window and then searched for it later, which I did as a test with a left click, then a right click, then a middle click.

• xev > xevoutput.txt
• left click, right click, then middle click (in the xev window)
• cat xevoutput.txt | grep button

Returns:

state 0x10, button 1, same_screen YES
state 0x110, button 1, same_screen YES
state 0x10, button 3, same_screen YES
state 0x410, button 3, same_screen YES
state 0x10, button 2, same_screen YES
state 0x210, button 2, same_screen YES

There ya go… left click = 1, right click = 3, middle mouse click = 2. If I did that earlier (and made life easier on myself) it would’ve returned 8 and 9 respectively.

Now this needs to be added to your startup list so it isn’t necessary to start it each time manually. The easy way to do this in Gnome is by clicking System -> Preferences -> Session. Click “Add”, then type xbindkeys for the name, and xbindkeys for the command, and a description if you’d like.

I don’t like doing things through the GUI if I don’t have to, so I hunted around for a way to configure it manually (mainly because I spent half my time SSH’d into the box from work and would rather have the way to work with or without a mouse). After all of the above though I decided I’m done screwing around with this nonsense for the day and will make that into another post later tonight.

• Hit <Alt>F2 then type gconf-editor and hit <enter>
• Click Apps > metacity > keybinding_commands

gconf-editor - Apps > metacity > keybinding_commands

You’ll notice I’ve already added some common programs and commands in.  Under keybinding_commands panel simply double click the Value line and type in the command you would like to make a shortcut for. Now click on global_keybindings to make the actual keyboard shortcuts.

gconf-editor: Apps > metacity > global_keybindings

Here I’ve actually created the shortcuts themselves.  <Super> is for the Windows key,  followed by a letter to finish it off.  <Super>g opens up pidgin,  <Super>c for xchat,  ect.

First thing I did was go and get Bootchart, “a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the GNU/Linux boot process”. Bootchart is easy enough to install,  and unpacks at 51mb:

• sudo apt-get install bootchart

Wandered over to the bootchart documentation to see if there was anything special I ought to know about and realized I’m using Ubuntu… none of this is necessary.  Simply install and restart.

• sudo shutdown -r now

Once restarted,  you’ll want to check out /var/log/bootchart for the png files with the bootchart output.  Here’s an example from my 8.04.2 test machine I’ve been working with today.

Ubuntu 8.04.2 bootchart

Ubuntu 8.10 bootchart

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 bootchart

For added awesome, since I have Dropbox running on my work ubuntu, work XP, and home ubuntu installations I was able to do this to get the .png over to my WinXP while writing this post:

cp /var/log/bootchart/*.png /home/kyle-test/Dropbox/Public

By the time I had turned back to XP Dropbox had already synced, and I was able to right click the uploaded PNG and choose Dropbox -> Public link, send a copy to my friend, and upload here into the post with absolute minimum effort. I’ll also have the file for comparison when I get home and do the same thing on 8.10.

Once I’ve learned enough to sufficiently decode this I’ll make another post explaining what each thing is and what can be configured/removed to make boot times faster.

In a nutshell, my HP dx5150 here at work boots in 30 seconds.

[UPDATE 6-20-09 4:36pm]
Just ran another bootchart on a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 on my main machine – dropped from 24 seconds to 15, probably due to ext4 being the main filesystem.

[UPDATE 1-28-09 12:28am]
Finally got around to getting bootchart up on the 8.10 installation at home,  this one clocks in at 24 seconds!  Taking a look between the two it seems as if hard drive throughput is my biggest limiter – I only dropped 6 seconds on total boot time and this machine is at least 5 times as powerful as the dx 5150 at work.

Temporarily:

• sudo modprobe -r pcspkr

Permanently:

• echo "blacklist pcspkr" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

cd ~/

cp .bashrc .bashrc-backup

touch .bash_colors

gedit .bash_colors

Paste in:

# ANSI color codes
RS="\[\033[0m\]"    # reset
HC="\[\033[1m\]"    # hicolor
UL="\[\033[4m\]"    # underline
INV="\[\033[7m\]"   # inverse background and foreground
FBLK="\[\033[30m\]" # foreground black
FRED="\[\033[31m\]" # foreground red
FGRN="\[\033[32m\]" # foreground green
FYEL="\[\033[33m\]" # foreground yellow
FBLE="\[\033[34m\]" # foreground blue
FMAG="\[\033[35m\]" # foreground magenta
FCYN="\[\033[36m\]" # foreground cyan
FWHT="\[\033[37m\]" # foreground white
BBLK="\[\033[40m\]" # background black
BRED="\[\033[41m\]" # background red
BGRN="\[\033[42m\]" # background green
BYEL="\[\033[43m\]" # background yellow
BBLE="\[\033[44m\]" # background blue
BMAG="\[\033[45m\]" # background magenta
BCYN="\[\033[46m\]" # background cyan
BWHT="\[\033[47m\]" # background white

Save the file, close gedit

sudo gedit .bashrc

At the bottom of the file,  add:

PS1="$HC$FGRN[$FRED\u$FGRN: $FRED\w$FGRN]\\$ $RS"
PS2="> "

source ~/.bash_colors

PS1 will look like this: [kyle: ~/Desktop]$ 

PS2 will look like a standard >,  nothing special

Here’s what the bottom of my .bashrc looks like – everything has simply been added after the standard ubuntu configuration and has worked well so far.

# load extra source files
source ~/.bash_aliases    # customized alias list
source ~/.bash_colors     # ANSI color codes

# personal prompts
PS1="$HC$FGRN[$FRED\u$FGRN: $FRED\w$FGRN]\\$ $RS"
PS2="> "