Showing posts with label laptop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label laptop. Show all posts

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Most exciting upgrade to Ubuntu/Edgy

This morning I had a free hour and this is how I upgraded my hp compaq nc6000 laptop from Ubuntu/Dapper to Ubuntu/Edgy. After updating /etc/apt/sources.list to point to the edgy repos...

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -dy dist-upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Well there was a conflict between x11-common and xinit which both wanted to provide the man page XSession.5.gz.




11:45am Wendy calls me and says the school just called and Griffin is in a ambulance on the way to the hospital and to meet her there. He accidentally ate something that contained pineapple -- to which he has a severe allergic reactions to.

11:49 I'm on the road approaching the hospital and get a call on my cell phone. The woman says she is the school nurse and starts saying my son is having an allergic reaction. I interrupt her and say 'Yes, I just talked to my wife and I'll meet the ambulance at the hospital'. She says 'Well, your son is sitting here with me in my office.' Then we realize she is the school nurse from a different chool and is talking about Trevor who is having an allergic reaction! Trevor had his bee/wasp allergy shot earlier this morning and is reacting to that. Since he too was having difficulty breathing, he too is sent via ambulance to the ER.

12:05 -- Wendy and I both arrive at the ER before either of the kids do. Explain to the ER admitting person that yes both boys are ours, they are coming from different schools, with the same problem (allergic reaction, breathing difficulty), but different reasons (food allergy vs reaction to allergy desensitizing injection).

Long story short, after evaluation, some benedril and alburterol breathing treatments, we were sent home.


Around 3pm I worked through a few iterations of apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade, apt-get -f install, aptitude dist-upgrade, I have a fully upgraded from Ubuntu/Dapper to Ubuntu/Edgy.

There are a bunch of new, interesting packages to take a look out. The list is here: EdgyConfiguration

Now that was a stressful upgrade.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

My Ubuntu/Dapper Configuration

I've posted some extensive notes on all the post-installation configuration steps needed to make an Ubuntu/Dapper standard install the way I like it -- dual head, personal & corporate email, network manager, f-spot, etc

Check it out: My Ubuntu/Dapper Configuration

Saturday, June 24, 2006

More on Dual Monitor with Ubuntu/Dapper

This is a follow on to last week's post about Dual Monitor on Ubuntu/Dapper

I've been using the xorg.conf-ati.20060621 configuration at work with two monitors, but when at home the laptop didn't degrade down to working with the one LCD monitor of the laptop. So, here is a new configuration that lets you switch between a single monitor mode (1024x768) or one large one (2048x768) that can be 'slid over to' by using the mouse. The key press is Control-Alt-+ (the + over on the side where the number entry is). On the laptop, it is Control-Alt-blue_Fn-?

Here the is xorg.conf file:

xorg.conf-ati-works-with-one-monitor.20060624

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Dual Monitor on Ubuntu/Dapper

I've noticed a number of people asking about dual head support in dapper on #ubuntu, so here is my setup:

This hp/compaq nc6000 laptop/notebook that has an ATI card:


$ sudo lspci|grep VGA
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]


I have two head monitors working with both the 'ati' and the closed source 'fglrx' drivers.

Here are the configuration files:

  • xorg.conf-fglrx.20060621 -- works when booting without the second monitor


  • xorg.conf-ati.20060621 -- when booting with out the second monitor attached, it still thinks it is there. Some windows may pop up on the unreachable monitor.



  • Before you start hacking around with your xorg.conf, save a copy somewhere safe.

    Thursday, May 11, 2006

    Getting ajaxMyTop to work on Ubuntu/Dapper

    I'm sitting in MySQL bootcamp today and wanted to have some ajaxMyTop eyecandy running on my laptop while doing the labs.

    Unfortunately ajaxMyTop is written to PHP5 and I'm using PHP4 on Ubuntu/Dapper. These are the steps needed to get it working:

    * Install php4-domxml (apt-get install php4-domxml)

    * Restart apache2 ( sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart )

    * Grab the modified processlist.php from the ajaxMyTop forum on sourceforge here and replace the one provided by the 0.5.5 kit.

    * Create a dbconfig.inc.php that looks something like this:


    <?
    $dbHost = "localhost";
    $dbUser = "root";
    $dbPass = "YOUR-ROOT-PASSWORD";
    $db = mysql_connect($dbHost, $dbUser, $dbPass);
    ?>

    Friday, March 17, 2006

    Getting NetworkManager to work on Ubuntu/Dapper



    network-manager-working.jpg

    Originally uploaded by marcn.
    I've been running the currently unreleased Ubuntu/Dapper release after having upgraded first from Hoary to Warty before arriving at Dapper.

    Somewhere along the way something prevented the cool new NetworkManager from starting up. Whenever I logged it would immedately exit with a useless message about not finding all the needed resources.

    Last night at the GNHLUG meeting, Christopher Aillon of Red Hat told me the magic command to fix it:
    $ sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor

    The lack of some icon cache was preventing a network configuration tool from running. Ugh.

    This allowed the applet to start, but wasn't controlling the network devices. For that, I needed to remove references to any network devices so the only thing in my /etc/network/interfaces are these lines:
    # The loopback network interface
    auto lo
    iface lo inet loopback

    Thursday, September 29, 2005

    Dual head with Xinerama using Ubuntu/Breezy compaq nc6000

    I finally got around to hooking up a second monitor to my Ubuntu/Breezy laptop and convinced xorg.conf to 'do the right thing'.

    The compaq nc6000 notebook has the "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 9600/9700 M10/M11 (RV350 NP)" video card
    and has a video out at the back.

    Here is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf with Xinerama (move windows from one screen to another). The aging Compaq monitor sits to the left of the nc6000 laptop.

    Here is a copy of my configuration: xorg.conf-dual-head-xinerama

    Friday, July 22, 2005

    w32codecs for ubuntu 'hoary'

    The stock Ubuntu repositories don't include the w32codecs (wmvdmod.dll, etc) so xine, mplayer can play WMV and other formats. Basically the package puts 127 DLLs in /usr/lib/w32codecs.

    So, I temporarily added the following line to my /etc/apt/sources.list

    deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ testing main

    And then did this:


    apt-get update && apt-get install w32codecs


    I then commented that line out since and apt-get upgrade would have picked up a bunch of updated packages from that repository.

    Thursday, July 21, 2005

    Migrating to Ubuntu Hoary on my laptop

    I've been running Debian/Sarge (now the stable branch) on my laptop for quite a while now and its time to try a new distro for dailyl use -- Ubuntu. This week I've been running Ubuntu 'Hoary' and the transition has been very smooth.

    The only configuration issue was I wanted to use ALSA on this HP Compaq nc6000 laptop. The install did detect the sound device, but did separate the speaker from
    the headphone controls.

    phzi on #ubuntu pointed me to the unofficial UbuntuGuide.org, specifically the section configuresoundproperly. Those instructions were perfect.

    ipodder (v2.1) on Ubuntu 'Hoary'

    I'd upgraded to the latest iPodder (v2.1) on my Ubuntu ('Hoary') laptop today.

    # tar jxvf iPodder-linux-2.1.tar.bz2

    # cd iPodder-linux

    # sudo ./install.sh

    (take the defaults)

    The only glitch is wx libraries aren't in the default PYTHONPATH, so set this environment variable either at the command line, or pop it in ~/.bashrc

    export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/wx-2.5.3-gtk2-unicode/:$PYTHONPATH-unicode:$PYTHONPATH


    Now clean up a little bit...


    $ cd ../

    $ rm -rf iPodder-linux iPodder-linux-2.1.tar.bz2


    Now, you are all set to start iPodder!



    $ (nohup iPodder&) # or add it to a menu bar button



    Getting closer to not needing any special knowledge to get iPodder running on a GNU/Linux distro...

    - - - - -

    Just for searchers, this is the problem you see if you don't set the PYTHONPATH:


    $ iPodder
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "iPodderGui.py", line 38, in ?
    import iPodderWindows
    File "/opt/iPodder/iPodderWindows.py", line 4, in ?
    import listctrl as listmix
    File "/opt/iPodder/listctrl.py", line 296, in ?
    EVT_DOPOPUPMENU = wx.PyEventBinder(wxEVT_DOPOPUPMENU, 0)
    AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'PyEventBinder'

    Monday, May 23, 2005

    iPodder (v2.0rc3) on UbuntuLinux

    I usually run debian/sarge on my laptop, but tonight it is booted to Ubuntu 'Hoary Hedgehog' and wanted iPodder running in this environment too.

    The current 'released' version of iPodder today is v2.0rc3 for Linux.

    First off, go grab and install the the kit from http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/

    You'll need to use python2.3 instead of the default python which is v2.4. I already had it installed, but you many need to install it. Also the older version of the xmms python library needed to be installed, but the current version of libwxgtk2.5.3-python is needed.

    The commands to install those packages is:

    sudo apt-get install python2.3 python2.3-xmms libwxgtk2.5.3-python

    Finally the PYTHONPATH needs to be extended to pick up the wx 2.5.3 libraries.

    Either edit /usr/bin/iPodder to look like this, or just do it manually when you want to run iPodder:

    export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/wx-2.5.3-gtk2-unicode/:$PYTHONPATH-unicode:$PYTHONPATH
    cd /opt/iPodder
    python2.3 iPodderGui.py

    Enjoy!

    Tuesday, October 26, 2004

    Creating an audio blog reply using Festival

    I listened to Dave Winer's Coffee Notes for 24-Oct-2004 podcast on the way home tonight and felt compelled to reply to him with an audio reply email about Richard Scoble/Scooble's voice mail. Here is how I created it.

    * Get the Festival Speech Synthesis package for your Debian GNU/Linux box


    $ sudo apt-get install festival

    [...bunch of status about installing a festival and dependancies removed...]
    $


    * Create a snappy reply. I like emacs. This is exactly what hi-dave.txt looks like:

    Hi Dave!

    This is Marc No-zell and I just listened to your Coffee Talk with
    Richard Scoble. It sounds like Microsoft's voice mail system is using
    a descendant of the DECK-talk system that was created by DECK in the
    1980s.

    I'm creating this audio reply using the Festival Speech Synthesis
    System on my Deb-ian GNU Linux laptop. Neener, neener, neener!

    Well, thanks for the Coffee Notes!

    Now I did do a little cheating here. Festival follows strict pronunciation rules and sometimes gets words wrong. For example my surname would be said as 'nozzel', so I spell it how I want it to sound. The same is true for DECtalk and DEC, which sounds like 'dec-tork' and 'december' (trying to be a little too clever ;-)

    * Convert from text to wave format:


    $ text2wave hi-dave.txt -o hi-dave.wav


    * Convert from wav to mp3 format


    $ lame hi-dave.wav hi-dave.mp3



    * Listen to the result:


    $ xmms hi-dave.mp3

    Friday, October 22, 2004

    Installing ubuntu 4.10 on an Compaq Armada m700 laptop

    In addition to a work-provided nc6000, I also have personal Compaq Armada M700 and gave ubuntu 4.10 a install this evening.

    Absolutely no problem installing or having X properly configured! One nice touch is the installer found the Orinoco wireless PCMCIA card and configured it so the network was available immediately on boot.

    Installing ubuntu 4.10 on an HP/Compaq nc6000 laptop

    Here are my notes on install ubuntu 1.0 on an HP/Compaq nc6000 laptop.

    Used warty-install-release-i386.iso downloaded on 21-Oct-2004. (md5sum a491903a2d2197651864dec3836d85e0)

    The laptop has currently installed WinXP (hda1), Debian/Sarge (hda7) and now ubuntu (hda6).

    Booted the laptop while in the docking bay and started install. Complained that it couldn't find a NIC, I told it to continue and not to use a static IP address.

    The nc6000 has:

    * Pentium M (should do power management, but stock debian kernels don't seem to include it), 1G memory, 60g internal drive, 30G or CD/RW in multibay
    * embedded intel wireless -- works with ndiswrapper
    * bluetooth -- don't have any other bluetooth devices, haven't tried
    * IR -- haven't tried, but should try to get going with my palmpilot
    * Broadcom nic -- works
    * SD bay -- works under WinXP, but appears to be impossible under Linux

    The docking bay pretty much just has a USB breakout, passthrough nic and power. There are 2 multibays which usually have a CD/RW and/or an extra disk.

    At the point it asked about installing GRUB in the master boot record, I skipped that and continued
    on with the installation. I prefer to let debian/sarge manage grub.

    After the ubuntu installer finished, I booted into debian/sarge and added the following to
    it's menu.lst file:

    title Ubuntu 1.0
    root (hd0, 5)
    kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 ro
    initrd /initrd
    savedefault
    boot

    Then rebooted to Ubuntu...

    After about 40 minutes it started poking around and found that kacpid was sucking up 95% of the cpu. I did

    renice 19 -p 5 (which was the pid of kacpid)

    and the install proceeded much faster.

    The X displayed looked nice along with the drum sounds.

    But the Broadcom or tg3 driver wasn't loaded. Using 'sudo network-admin' fixed that.

    Still looking around.

    [still installing -- watch here for more info]

    Saturday, September 4, 2004

    flickr upload for gnome's nautilus

    This evening I noticed that there was a new perl module in CPAN by CPB Flickr::Upload. So I hacked together a Nautilus script to integrate Flickr.com uploads with the Gnome file manager.

    If you want to give it a try,

    * Install the perl module Flickr::Upload using either CPAN or download from http://search.cpan.org/~cpb/
    * Grab this script
    * put it in your ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts directory
    * edit the following lines for your own use:


    my $FLICKREMAIL = 'your-flickr@email-address-here.com';
    my $FLICKRPASSWORD = 'somesekretword';
    my $FLICKRTAGS = 'i like traffic lights'; # space separated list


    It works find on my debian/sarge laptop, but should work fine on any other gnome desktop.

    Patches would be welcome.

    Thursday, June 13, 2002

    Teaching SpamAssassin about the Microsoft KLEZ virus.

    Adding lines like the ones below does a pretty good job about tagging
    the KLEZ virus as spam. It does miss some of the KLEZ variations
    because the KLEZ_CONTENT is slightly different.


    $ grep -i klez /usr/share/spamassassin/*
    /usr/share/spamassassin/20_body_tests.cf:rawbody KLEZ_IFRAME /iframe
    src=3Dcid:/i
    /usr/share/spamassassin/20_body_tests.cf:describe KLEZ_IFRAME Frame u
    sed by the KLEZ virus
    /usr/share/spamassassin/20_body_tests.cf:rawbody KLEZ_CONTENT /TVqQAA
    MAAAAEAAAA/i
    /usr/share/spamassassin/20_body_tests.cf:describe KLEZ_CONTENT Content
    of part of the KLEZ virus
    /usr/share/spamassassin/50_scores.cf:score KLEZ_IFRAME 10.0
    /usr/share/spamassassin/50_scores.cf:score KLEZ_CONTENT 10.0

    Sunday, June 9, 2002

    Upgrade to autoconf 2.53, gettext

    Newer versions of lifelines
    requires autoconf 2.50 or later and
    (maybe) a more recent gettext to build. Upgraded to autoconf 2.53
    (autoconf-2.53-5.noarch.rpm) and gettext 0.11.2
    (gettext-0.11.2-2.i386.rpm)

    Upgrade Mozilla 1.0 and Galeon 1.2.5

    Now that Galeon has released a version that works with Mozilla 1.0 now
    is the time to upgrade both packages. See href="http://ftp34.newaol.com/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.0/Red_Hat_7x_RPMS/i386/">http://ftp34.newaol.com/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.0/Red_Hat_7x_RPMS/i
    386/
    and galeon.sourceforge.net

    Monday, June 3, 2002

    xmlto pdf file.xml doesn't work well on Red Hat 7.3

    A tip from #linuxdoc regular gleblanc suggested upgrading to rawhides
    newer href="http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=xmltex">xmltex
    and href="http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=passivetex">passiv
    etex.
    Stock Red Hat 7.3 has: xmltex-20000118-8 and passivetex-1.12-3,
    rawhide has one minor version later.

    .procmailrc configuration for spamassassin

    I put filters for mailing lists that are for the most part spam-free
    above these to entries and those lists that are spam-heavy below it.


    :0fw
    | /usr/bin/spamassassin -P -c /usr/share/spamassassin

    :0:
    * ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
    caughtspam