I finally Got the Global Address To Work in Evolution for Jaunty!

This post is going to be relatively small and quick, but I thought I would put it out there because I had the damnedest time getting the Global Address list in Evolution to work in Ubuntu 9.04.

First off let me say that I hate Evolution. I don't use it on my Linux machines at home at all! If only someone would make a good OWA plugin for Thunderbird, then things would be better! Until then, Evolution is the only Exchange game for 'nix systems in town.

So back to my problem. I could not access the Global Address List! No matter what I put in, I would get an error saying that Evolution couldn't access the Global address list. Depending where I was in Evolution, here are the errors i got:

Error Loading Address Book

Or I would get this error:

Error Loading Address book.

This address book cannot be opened. This either means that an incorrect URI was entered, or the server is unreachable.

It was my fault though, I mistakenly thought that I should be putting in the FQDN of the Exchange server were you input the URI for the Global Catalog Server. I also read somewhere that you are supposed to put the URL of the OWA server. None of those worked. What did work though was putting in the FQDN of the local Domain Controller!

If you don't know where to do that, click on Edit > Preferences. Select your Exchange account and press the Edit button.



Click on the Receiving Options Tab, and under Global Catalog Server Name, input the FQDN of your local Domain Controller then click OK. You will have to restart Evolution for the changes to take effect.



After I did that, I was able to access the GAL, and grab contacts straight from Active Directory!

Now I believe this only works behind the corporate firewall. I am not quite sure what to do if you are wanting to access Exchange email from home on your Linux box. If you have gotten the GAL to open from outside of the network, hit me up in the comments to let me know what you did!

Technorati Tags: evolution, exchange, gal, global address list, ubuntu, 9.04, jaunty jackelope

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Ubuntu 9.04 Wireless On A Dell Latitude D610

Like millions of other anxious Ubuntu enthusiasts, I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu (9.04 Jaunty Jackelope) and decided to install it on my laptops at home. On one of my laptops, I got the idea for a quick blog post. The motivation? I ran into some problems with wireless on my Dell Latitude D610 laptop. I thought it was a little strange because in the last two or three versions of Ubuntu I didn't have a problem with wireless on my Dell D610.

I am sure it was just an oversight on Ubuntu's part, but it appears that they forgot to include the proper wireless drivers for the Dell D610. Never fear, Bauer-Power is here! Well, Bauer-Power and the power of ndiswrapper. For those not in the know, ndiswapper is a Linux utility to load Windows drivers when a Linux version isn't available.

It seems like we have everything we need right? Not exactly. It turns out that ndiswrapper isn't installed by default in Ubuntu 9.04. That sort of sucks because we are trying to connect to the Internet via wireless right? Oh well, suck it up and walk your fat-ass across the room and plug your laptop into the router with a CAT6 cable, and lets get your wireless working.

After you plug in your laptop install ndiswrapper from the terminal:

>sudo apt-get update
>sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

Now that is installed, you need the Windows drivers. You can get them here: (D610 Wireless)

After you download the tarball, right click on it and select 'Extract Here'. Now in a terminal CD into the DellD610 folder that you just extracted from the tarball. Install time using ndiswrapper!

>sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf (Installs the driver)
>sudo ndiswrapper -l (Checks to see if the driver installed)
>sudo ndiswrapper -m (Creates the wlan0 alias)
>sudo modprobe ndiswrapper (Loads the new driver)

After that the driver is installed, but is still not quite activated. To activate the driver click on System> Administration> Hardware Drivers:

Activate the new driver:



Your wireless should now be working. If it doesn't work straight away, try de-activating the driver, the re-activating the driver again. I had to do that a couple of times before I was able to see all of the wireless networks around me.

Did something similar to this happen on your laptop in the new realease of Ubuntu? Were you able to get your wireless to work? Lets hear about your troubleshooting steps in the comments!

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, 9.04, jaunty jackelope, wireless, drivers, dell, latitude, d610, ndiswrapper

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