Notes

I tried to add a 2nd google account on my Android phone and got the following error even if I connected using wifi: “can’t establish a reliable data connection to the server”.

The workaround that I found is to register your Google account through your YouTube app, after which your gmail for that account will be available for syncing.

Source http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=780545

If, like me, you never use button mode you can set the location to text mode permenantly via the gconf editor. The easiest way to do this is to ALT+F2, type in gconf-editor and hit Run.In the configuration editor go to apps > nautilus > preferences then tick check always_use_locaion_entry. With that checked you’ll permenantly have the text based location bar.

via Text-based location address bar Ubuntu Lucid Lynx | Daniel Gibbs Journal.

1. :~$ sudo apt-get install pulse-audio-module-raop paprefs
   :~$ paprefs
   

2. check "Make discoverable network sound devices available locally"
   check "Make discoverable Apple Airtunes sound devices available locally"
   

3. Reboot (or restart pulseaudio)
4. Go to Sound Preferences – Output (by clicking on the speaker in the taskbar)
5. Select Base Sation as output
6. Start your favorite radio station (Pandora?), mp3, etc..

How-to move the minimize, maximize and close buttons to the right of the window in Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx).

1. Press ALT-F2, type: gconf-editor and click Run
2. Go to: apps > metacity > general and right-click on button_layout and choose “Edit Key….”
3. Type in menu:minimize,maximize,close and click OK
4. That’s it.

You first need to upgrade your gcc and glibc packages to their multi-lib versions and then install the 32 bits libraries (along with your 64bits libraries that are already installed). Detailed instructions at: http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/multilib/.

To avoid getting the error “Your operating system does not meet system requirements”, I had to use User Agent Switcher to download the spreadsheet at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC300022771033.aspx for electric meter logging for energy efficiency. Then I used cabextract to extract the .cab file and used Open Office to view the 30002277.xltx file. Here it is saved using Open Office’s ODS format: electricity_tracking.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install wine1.2
wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
sh winetricks vcrun2005
sh winetricks d3dx9
wine regedit

• under HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine, create key Direct3D if it doesn’t already exist
• inside Direct3D create the following values:
  • string: DirectDrawRenderer value: opengl
  • string: OffscreenRenderingMode value: fbo
  • string: RenderTargetLockMode value: auto
  • string: UseGLSL value: readtex
  • string: VideoMemorySize value: (video card memory size in MB)

I fixed it by installing libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio (which replaces libsdl1.2debian-alsa). So it might be worth a try if you get sound problems with any other programs.

Source: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/372843

For some reason, Ubuntu Karmic wasn’t saving my sound volume and settings that I set using the Sound Preferences. After attempting to run alsactl store I got:

$ alsactl store
alsactl: save_state:1530: Cannot open /var/lib/alsa/asound.state for writing: Permission denied
$ sudo alsactl store
E: core-util.c: Home directory /home/mycurrentuser not ours.

So I deciced to change “/var/lib/alsa/asound.state” ownership temporarily to the current user and then was able to successfully save my sound settings (then switched back ownership to root). I also added “alsactl restore” to /etc/rc.local to automatically reload my sound settings when I reboot.

If your Ubuntu installation (or any other linux distribution that has a liveCD) is broken and can’t boot because of a faulty update, you can try to update your installation after booting from the LiveCD.

Start a terminal and use these commands (/dev/sda2 might need to be changed to match your configuration, you can use fdisk to figure out which partition is your main one):

sudo mkdir /media/karmic
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/karmic
sudo mount -o bind /proc /media/karmic/proc
sudo mount -o bind /dev /media/karmic/dev/
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /media/karmic/etc/resolv.conf
sudo chroot /media/karmic apt-get update
sudo chroot /media/karmic apt-get upgrade
sudo chroot /media/karmic apt-get dist-upgrade

Re: help!! the last update broke my boot

1. press alt+printscreen+r (to release the keyboard from the Xserver)

2. then hit crtl+alt+F1 (and log in)
3. sudo pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the lines that says
   Section "Device"
Driver "nvidia"

4. to

   Section "Device"
Driver "nv"

5. Save the file and then issue the startx command or just reboot. That should get your desktop up and running, minus any hardware acceleration (e.g.: for compiz or video games).

Hope that helps and I hope the nvidia driver was opens source!

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1265224&page=3.

Note: I was updating my Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 5 machine.

Skype 2.1.0.47 beta uses pulseaudio as the default sound device, so you need to change the default sound device fo skype using a pulseaudio.

1. Install pavucontrol if it’s not already installed
2. Start pavucontrol
3. Play a sound in the application where you need to change the default sound device.
4. While the sound is playing, switch back to pavucontrol and change the sound device.
5. that should be it.

I needed to set my Logitech Clearchat Wireless Headphones as the default sound device for Skype 2.1.0.47 beta in Ubuntu Karmic Alpha (pavucontrol was not installed).

After installing Acrobat Reader in my home directory, I was getting the following error when trying to view a PDF using Firefox:

Could not launch Adobe Reader 9.1.2. Please make sure it exists in PATH variable in the environment. If the problem persists, please reinstall the application..

I fixed it by creating a “.profile” file in my home directory (/home/user/.profile) with the following line:

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/apps/acrobatreader/Adobe/Reader9/bin/

Note: You might need to adapt acrobat reader’s binary path.

Using Digi Watchport/H USB Serial Humidity/Temperature Sensor in Linux

Ubuntu 9.04 has everything you need except for minicom. So all I had to do was to:

• plug it in

  dmesg should get you the following output:

  usb 2-9: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 50
usb 2-9: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
io_ti 2-9:1.0: Edgeport TI 1 port adapter converter detected
usb 2-9: Edgeport TI 1 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB0

• Install minicom: sudo apt-get install minicom
• Edit minicom settings: ~$ minicom -s

  1. Change the Serial Device to /dev/ttyUSB0

  2. Change the Bps/Par/Bits field to 9600 8N1, (9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit). These are the default settings used by the Linux kernel; they can, if necessary, be overridden from the kernel command line by adding extra parameters to the console= option. See kernel-parameters.txt and serial-console.txt.

  3. Turn off both Hardware Flow Control and Software Flow Control.

  4. In the Modem and dialing menu, remove the Init string and Reset string completely if required.

  5. Save your new config
  6. start minicom
  7. more details
• Use one of the following commands:
  

  Command	Description	Return Value
  ?<CR>	Tells about the command set available for this Watchport	as described in this section
  I<CR>	Tells what kind of Watchport is connected.	Watchport/H<CR>
  H<CR>	Gives the percentage relative humidity.	38%<CR>
  T<CR>	Gives temperature in Celsius.	+22.2500C<CR>
  TC<CR>	Also gives temperature in Celsius.	+22.2500C<CR>
  TF<CR>	Gives temperature in Fahrenheit.	+72.0000F<CR>
  TF+<CR>	Repeats the TF command every 3-4 seconds until the next keystroke. Appending + also works with the TC and H commands	+72.0000F<CR>
  L4<CR>	Adjusts the slew rate of the data line. When “L” is followed by a numeric value, 1 through 8, Watchport responds with OK. Other values return Invalid Command. The default setting is 4. Adjust the parameter until the data transmission becomes error-free. The setting remains in effect until the Watchport is power-cycled.	OK

Download Watchport’s manual

Now all I need is a perl script to automate the posting of these values to twitter?

I was getting this error:

[Mon Jul 20 12:32:05 2009] [error] [client 192.168.241.233] Premature end of script headers: elite_inventory.pl
[Mon Jul 20 12:32:05 2009] [error] [client 192.168.241.233] DBI connect('my_database','my_user',...) failed: [INTERSOLV][ODBC Informix driver][Informix]Unable to load locale categories. (SQL-HY000) at C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/script.pl line 37

The fix involved modifying Apache’s environment variables using SetEnv in httpd.conf:


SetEnv INFORMIXDIR "C:/informix32"
SetEnv INFORMIXSERVER "isaac_net"
SetEnv DELIMIDENT n
SetEnv DBANSIWARN n
SetEnv CLIENT_LOCAL "en_US.CP1252"
SetEnv DB_LOCAL "en_US.CP1252"


This is because even if the variables are set in the registries in Windows (they are environment variables in Linux), the web server doesn’t use them.

Reference #1 and Reference #2.

You might need to use a different locale under Linux or Unix.

How-To Change The Default Sound Card in Slackware Linux

My case: I have an on-board sound card that I use for everything except for Skype, where I use my Logitech ClearChat Wireless USB Headset. It is easy in Skype to select a different sound device. So I needed to set my on-board sound card as the default output for everything else.

If they both use a different kernel module you can easily make sure the right one is the default card.

Find out what module is being used for your soundcards:

cat /proc/asound/modules

On my computer this gave

0 snd_usb_audio
1 snd_intel8x0


Sound card 0 is the default one (snd_usb_audio in this case). This is the module’s name.

You can’t assign card 0 because whichever card get’s loaded first get # 0. So, you have to assign # 1 to the one you don’t want as the default card. This can be done by adding one simple line to /etc/modprobe.d/sound (create it if it doesn’t exist):

options name_of_offending_module index=1

So, in my case this would be

options snd_usb_audio index=1

Reboot and try

via HOWTO make one soundcard default.

While trying to burn a 900mb ISO file on a dual layer DVD, I got the error. “more than 50% of space will be *wasted*! use single layer media for this recordiong”. I avoided it by burning a multi-session DVD (e.g.: growisofs -Z /dev/hdc -R -J /home/user/files/*). Another solution would be to add more files to the iso (using isomaster) until it is more then 50% of the capacity of a dual-layer DVD.

Debug output:

growisofs: 7.1
growisofs
-----------------------
Executing 'builtin_dd if=/dev/fd/0 of=/dev/hda obs=32k seek=0'
:-( more than 50% of space will be *wasted*!
use single layer media for this recording
growisofs command:
-----------------------
/usr/bin/growisofs -Z /dev/hda=/dev/fd/0 -use-the-force-luke=notray -use-the-force-luke=tty -use-the-force-luke=tracksize:437396 -dvd-compat -speed=2.4 -use-the-force-luke=bufsize:32m

The best solution/workaround I found is to create an executable script (eg: start_firefox) with the following lines (1, 2):

#!/bin/sh
export LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/libGL.so.1"
/home/alexb/apps/firefox/firefox
chmod +x start_firefox
./start_firefox

Another solution is to disable the hardware acceleration in Flash (probably a bad solution):

1. Right click on the embedded Flash window inside Firefox (flash video)
2. Settings…
3. go to the first tab
4. un-check “Enable hardware acceleration”

Now you should be able to go full screen…

Here is the version of the software I was using.

• Flash v10,0,15,3
• Firefox 3.0.5 and 3.5.2
• NVIDIA video driver 180.22
• Kernel 2.6.27.7-smp

Safer Security Camera System with Motion

Now that you have your motion activated security camera system, you could make if safer by uploading the captured images automatically to a remote server just in case something happens to your computer. I’m using Slackware Linux but the setup should be very similar on other distributions.

1. Create an executable batch file containing the following (pico ~/batch_file):

   rsync -avz /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/cam1 destinationserver.com:~/

2. Edit /etc/motion.conf and add/uncomment the following line

   on_event_end /home/user/batch_file

3. Edit ~/.ssh/config (create the .ssh folder if it doesn’t exist) and add the following lines to it:
   

   
Host destinationserver.com
HostName destinationserver.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_dsa
User your_user_name

4. Install and setup keychain so that ssh doesn't ask for your pass-phrase every time it tries to connect. Take a look at this keychain/ssh-agent tutorial