It seems upgrading to Ubuntu 13.04 breaks a few things in the QGIS build process. Here’s some quick workarounds I’ve found to get it building again.

Firstly, Ubuntu defaults to Qt 5, causing the error:

CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindQt4.cmake:1216 (message):

 Found unsuitable Qt version "5.0.1" from /usr/bin/qmake, this code requires
 Qt 4.x

This can be fixed by switching the system default back to Qt 4, so that  qmake refers to the Qt 4 version. The “qt4-default” package handles this switch for you, so just run:

sudo apt-get install qt4-default

Update: A better solution was found by Pierre and Pvanb and is described here. Basically it involves changing the QMAKE_EXECUTABLE option from /usr/bin/qmake to /usr/bin/qmake-qt4.

Next, I was getting the error:

make[2]: *** No rule to make target `/usr/lib/libpython2.7.so', needed by `output/lib/libqgispython.so.1.9.0'. Stop.

I’m not sure if this is the correct solution, but setting up some links and re-running ldconfig gets around this:

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpython2.7.so.1 /usr/lib/libpython2.7.so.1
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpython2.7.so /usr/lib/libpython2.7.so
sudo ldconfig

Update: a better solution is to change the PYTHON_LIBRARY option from /usr/lib/libpython2.7.so to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpython2.7.so

These two changes were enough to get QGIS building again. If you’ve got a better solution for these errors, let me know…

There are various tools to automatically keep a Debian/Ubuntu system security wise up to date, among others the unattended-upgrades package.

Also, there’s the checkrestart script from the debian-goodies package, that scans all the open files on a system and tries to determine to what service they belong and how that service might be restarted.

The last piece that’d tie all those scripts together and would automatically restart all services that are using stale libraries or files was missing.

With the help of Michal Fiala there however is now the restart-services script, that does just that.

The script has not seen much real world usage and as such should be regarded as experimental (f.ex. by restarting /etc/init.d/screen it will as of the time of writing terminate existing screen sessions).

The script currently lives on Github. If you encounter any problem with the script then we’ll very much wellcome a patch that fixes it…

Tomáš Pospíšek

Update 18.6.2012: The most recent checkrestart (from debian-goodies 0.61) now excludes screen from beeing listed among the services to be restarted.

There are various tools to automatically keep a Debian/Ubuntu system security wise up to date, among others the unattended-upgrades package.

Also, there’s the checkrestart script from the debian-goodies package, that scans all the open files on a system and tries to determine to what service they belong and how that service might be restarted.

The last piece that’d tie all those scripts together and would automatically restart all services that are using stale libraries or files was missing.

With the help of Michal Fiala there however is now the restart-services script, that does just that.

The script has not seen much real world usage and as such should be regarded as experimental (f.ex. by restarting /etc/init.d/screen it will as of the time of writing terminate existing screen sessions).

The script currently lives on Github. If you encounter any problem with the script then we’ll very much wellcome a patch that fixes it…

Tomáš Pospíšek

Update 18.6.2012: The most recent checkrestart (from debian-goodies 0.61) now excludes screen from beeing listed among the services to be restarted.

Today, for some bizarre reasons only my android phone was connecting to a WiFi. So I decided to use it as a tethered modem. The problem was that my friend Bruno could not use the net either, so since networkmanager ad-hoc networks were not working and it is our day off climbing we decided to keep our fingers trained on the keyboard.
Here are two little scripts to create an adhoc Wifi and forward internet connection over it.
enjoy Marco (and Bruno)
Server:
#!/bin/sh
WIFINAME=bernaadhocwifi
KEY=keyneedtobe13 #key needs to be 5, 13 or 29 chars
GWIP=192.168.0.1
INTERFACE=wlan0
INTERFACETOSHARE=usb0
#
#Uncomment get ip from android phone or anything you need
#sudo ifconfig $INTERFACETOSHARE up
#sudo dhclient $INTERFACETOSHARE
#END CONFIG
#
sudo ifconfig $INTERFACE down
sudo iwconfig $INTERFACE mode ad-hoc
sudo iwconfig $INTERFACE essid $WIFINAME key s:$KEY
sudo ifconfig $INTERFACE $GWIP netmask 255.255.255.0 up
#Follow the above steps for another wireless card and set IP address in same subnet, say 192.168.0.2, and ping each other.
#
#Now to share the internet over wireless,
sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $INTERFACETOSHARE -j MASQUERADE
#where usb0 is the connection you want to share
#You also need to enable IP forwarding:
sudo sh -c "echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward"
#Or, to enable permanently add the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf
#net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
#Some ISPs might limit the TTL so that you wont be able to share the internet. Fix:
#sudo iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -j TTL --ttl-inc 1
Client
#!/bin/sh
WIFINAME=bernaadhocwifi
KEY=keyneedtobe13 #key needs to be 5, 13 or 29 chars
IP=192.168.0.2
GWIP=192.168.0.1
INTERFACE=wlan0
#END CONFIG
#
#Using the shared internet (in Linux)
sudo ifconfig $INTERFACE down
sudo iwconfig $INTERFACE mode ad-hoc
sudo iwconfig $INTERFACE essid $WIFINAME key s:$KEY
sudo ifconfig $INTERFACE $IP netmask 255.255.255.0 up
#
#Now to use the shared internet on another computer, set it to ad-hoc mode and assign IP address in the same subnet as described above and perform the following:
#
#Set the IP of computer sharing internet as gateway
sudo route add default gw $GWIP
#Set DNS server. We're using Google's DNS.
sudo sh -c "echo 'nameserver 8.8.8.8' >> /etc/resolv.conf"

A while ago I’ve compiled PostGIS 1.5.2 for PostgreSQL 9.0.

To install it on Ubuntu the following steps are required:

apt-get install python-software-properties

add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
add-apt-repository ppa:pitti/postgresql
add-apt-repository ppa:pi-deb/gis

apt-get update

apt-get install postgresql-9.0-postgis

A basic template database can be created with the following commands:

sudo su - postgres

createdb template_postgis
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis-1.5/spatial_ref_sys.sql
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis_comments.sql
cat <<EOS | psql -d template_postgis
UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate = TRUE WHERE datname = 'template_postgis';
REVOKE ALL ON SCHEMA public FROM public;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO public;
GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA public TO postgres;
GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
  ON TABLE public.geometry_columns TO PUBLIC;
GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
  ON TABLE public.spatial_ref_sys TO PUBLIC;
EOS

To test database creation you can do the following:

createdb --template template_postgis test_gis
psql -d test_gis -c "select postgis_lib_version();"

Ubuntu supports parallel installations of different PostgreSQL versions. So if you have already PostgreSQL 8.x installed, PostgreSQL 9.0 will probably be configured to listen on port 5433. So you have to add the option -p 5433 to each command and to specify the full path for the executables. For example:

/usr/lib/postgresql/9.0/bin/psql -p 5433 -d test_gis -c "select postgis_lib_version();"

A while ago I’ve compiled PostGIS 1.5.2 for PostgreSQL 9.0.

To install it on Ubuntu the following steps are required:

apt-get install python-software-properties

add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
add-apt-repository ppa:pitti/postgresql
add-apt-repository ppa:pi-deb/gis

apt-get update

apt-get install postgresql-9.0-postgis

A basic template database can be created with the following commands:

sudo su - postgres

createdb template_postgis
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis-1.5/spatial_ref_sys.sql
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis_comments.sql
cat <<EOS | psql -d template_postgis
UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate = TRUE WHERE datname = 'template_postgis';
REVOKE ALL ON SCHEMA public FROM public;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO public;
GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA public TO postgres;
GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
  ON TABLE public.geometry_columns TO PUBLIC;
GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
  ON TABLE public.spatial_ref_sys TO PUBLIC;
EOS

To test database creation you can do the following:

createdb --template template_postgis test_gis
psql -d test_gis -c "select postgis_lib_version();"

Ubuntu supports parallel installations of different PostgreSQL versions. So if you have already PostgreSQL 8.x installed, PostgreSQL 9.0 will probably be configured to listen on port 5433. So you have to add the option -p 5433 to each command and to specify the full path for the executables. For example:

/usr/lib/postgresql/9.0/bin/psql -p 5433 -d test_gis -c "select postgis_lib_version();"