Bit Rot

Java ME on Arch Linux x64

2010-02-28T23:24:00.002+05:30

I was trying to setup Java ME on my machine running 64-bit Arch. It wasn't a smooth process. This is a list of problems I encountered:

The Java ME SDK 3.0 isn't available for Linux (yet). Had to settle for Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5.2 for CLDC
I have a 64-bit version of JDK installed on Arch. Java ME can't work with this. It throws a java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /opt/WTK2.5.2/bin/sublime.so: /opt/WTK2.5.2/bin/sublime.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32 (Possible cause: architecture word width mismatch)
To fix this, I installed bin32-jre from the AUR
Then edited the /opt/WTK2.5.2/bin/emulator file (path depending on where you've installed it), and changed the javapathtowtk to /opt/bin32-jre/jre/bin/
Restarted NetBeans, tested a simple project and it worked!

(Note: The Java ME installer asks for a java path during installation. It may be possible to point it to bin32-java during this time)

Goodbye Ubuntu, Hello Arch!

2009-12-04T21:27:00.006+05:30

A recent Ubuntu update made my system unusable. I couldn't boot in recovery mode, and I couldn't even press 'e' or 'c' in Grub to change options. Annoyed with this, I decided to try out Arch Linux.

I downloaded the 64-bit netinstall version, loaded the beginners' guide from the wiki on my laptop and proceeded to install it on the desktop. It was by no means, a piece of cake, but nothing I couldn't handle.

I already had my disk partitioned as per my needs, so I just needed to erase the Ubuntu Root partition. I have a separate /home partition, but I moved all my dot-hidden files into a separate folder to avoid conflicts.

Here is a list of issues I encountered during installation and configuring:
1) My local timezone was not present in the options provided during installation. So I just chose the closest one (which was about 30 minutes off). After setting up X, I found my timezone in /usr/share/zoneinfo, and made the changes in /etc/rc.conf.

2) When presented with cfdisk during installation, I deleted my ubuntu root partition, and made a new ext3 partition. This, however, didn't erase my partition. The old files from Ubuntu were still there! I didn't realize this at first and thus ended up wasting time. Later on, I just used a GParted LiveCD to delete the partition and reformat to ext3. That took care of it.

(I still don't know what I did wrong with cfdisk. If anyone has any idea, please leave a comment)

3) Post installation: When booting Arch, I would sometimes get a bad superblock error. I realized that this was happening because /devsda and /dev/sdb were getting swapped randomly. So I put in the liveCD and changed the /etc/fstab entries to UUID instead of sda and sdb. (Yeah, I was lazy the first time)

4) eth0 and eth1 are still getting swapped randomly. I use only one ethernet interface at present, so I just configured both with the same settings.
(Edit: found solution here)

Why I chose Arch
I wanted to try out Arch since a long time, but I had a slow internet connection. Recently, I upgraded to a better connection. This was important, since Arch involved a lot of initial downloading.

Arch seems to have a good package repository (though not as large a Ubuntu), which would help me keep the compiling and dependency headaches to a minimum. I've tried out Red Hat, Fedora, Slackware and Ubuntu in the past. I've stuck with Ubuntu for long, and its been my favourite so far. I'd still recommend Ubuntu to newbies.

Arch gives me the power to configure my system any way I like. And I like this kind of power.

First impressions
The wiki pages are comprehensive. The effort taken by the community to keep this updated is mindblowing. Great job guys! I hope I can contribute soon. Also, asking noob-ish questions on the forums seems to invite a lot of hostility :P (Not experienced first hand, I still have to make a forum account)

The concept of the BSD-style /etc/rc.conf is beautiful and simple. Organising and loading daemons is also very simple.

I also find the distro to be faster compared to Ubuntu. But that may be because I've used 'noatime' in my fstab. (Never really tried that option in Ubuntu).

In conclusion
I still have a lot to learn about Arch. It definitely looks promising. I can understand why so many people move to Arch after starting out with Ubuntu. I'm not throwing this as flamebait, its just that Ubuntu and Arch cater to different kinds of users.

MPlayer remote control using a cellphone and ssh

2009-07-04T16:46:00.009+05:30

Background
I recently purchased a Nokia E63 cellphone. With a home wifi connection and an ssh client installed on the phone and after getting over the initial excitement of remote-rickrolling the people in my room, I figured that I could use the phone as a remote for MPlayer. This would allow me to watch movies while sitting comfortably on my bed without the need to get up time and again to adjust the volume or pause the movie. Cool!

Requirements

A phone with an ssh client and wifi support
A computer running an ssh server (I use openssh-server on Ubuntu)
The MPlayer movie player
The lack of a better infrared or bluetooth remote control
Boredom

Procedure

Installing the PuTTY ssh client the phone

The Nokia E63 uses the Symbian S60 3rd Edition. PuTTY for Symbian can be downloaded from here.

Creating the mplayyerremote user

It may be an unprivileged user. The only purpose for a new user is convenience. I set a phone-friendly password for this user. The user can be added in Ubuntu via System > Administration > Users and Groups. This will also take care of creating the home directory for the user.

Creating the python script mplayerremote.py

Once the user is created, login as the user from a terminal.

sudo login mplayerremote

Once logged in, create a file named mplayerremote.py containing the following code:


#!/usr/bin/env python
import curses.wrapper
pipe_location="/home/mplayerremote/rc"
KEY_ENTER=10 #specific to my phone
def main(stdscr):
  stdscr.addstr("MPlayer Remote\n")
  while True:
      pipe=open(pipe_location,'w')
      c=stdscr.getch()
      if c==ord('f'):
          pipe.write("vo_fullscreen"+"\n")
      elif c==curses.KEY_RIGHT:
          pipe.write("seek 10"+"\n")
      elif c==curses.KEY_LEFT:
          pipe.write("seek -10"+"\n")
      elif c==ord('/'):
          pipe.write("seek 600"+"\n")
      elif c==ord('@'):
          pipe.write("seek -600"+"\n")
      elif c==curses.KEY_UP:
          pipe.write("volume +1"+"\n")
      elif c==curses.KEY_DOWN:
          pipe.write("volume -1"+"\n")       
      elif c==ord('j'):
          pipe.write("sub_select"+"\n")
      elif c==ord('o'):
          pipe.write("osd"+"\n")
      elif c==ord('p') or c==ord(' ') or int(c)==KEY_ENTER:
          pipe.write("pause"+"\n")
      elif c==ord('q'):
          pipe.write("quit"+"\n")
          break
      pipe.close()

curses.wrapper(main)

The command nano ./mplayerremote.py can be used to create the file. Run chmod +x ./mplayyerremote.py to make the file executable. I have only basic mplayer commands in this script. Feel free to expand it or change it. The commands I've used are:

f: fullscreen
right-arrow : seek forward 10 seconds
left-arrow : seek backward 10 seconds
up-arrow : volume up
down-arrow : volume down
'/' : seek forward 10 minutes
'@' : seek backward 10 minutes
'p' or [space] or [enter] : pause/resume playback
j: cycle through available subtitles
o: toggle osd mode
q: quit the application and mplayer

I have taken advantage of the Qwerty keyboard of the E63. For numeric keypads, this script would suck unless modified to be more convenient. The script makes use of the Curses library to capture the keystrokes

Creating the FIFO pipe

This named pipe allows us to 'talk' to mplayer. Use the following commands while you are still logged in as mplayerremote:


mkfifo rc
chmod a+rw ./rc

The python script assumes that the pipe is located at /home/mplayerremote/rc . Change the pipelocation variable in the script if you choose to put it in any other location

Modifying the .bashrc file for the user mplayerremote

I wanted the mplayerremote.py script to run automatically whenever I logged in as mplayerremote and exit as soon as I quit the application. To do this, I appended the following two lines in the .bashrc file of mplayyerremote's home directory:


/home/mplayerremote/mplayerremote.py
exit

Modifying the ~/.mplayer/config file

To make mplayer use the named pipe we created, we need to use the -input file=[path_of_pipe] option with mplayer. To avoid writing this every time, we can edit the ~/.mplayer/config file and append the line: input:file=/home/mplayerremote/rc

Note that this ~/.mplayer/config file is in the home directory of your normal user that usually runs mplayer and not the mplayerremote user. mplayerremote user is just the remote control and nothing more.

Creating an MPlayer Remote profile for PuTTY

PuTTY for S60 allows the creation of profiles. I have created a dedicated profile for mplayerremote with the username saved. Setting the Keepalive interval (to 60 or so) may also help prevent disconnections. Effectively, the only thing I have to do to activate my remote is select the PuTTY profile, choose the home wifi connection and enter my (phone-friendly) password for mplayyerremote.

If you plan to use this, please do so at your own risk. Any suggestions and comments are welcome.

Edit (2010-Feb-28): Found an excellent program named Remuco that does exactly what I was looking for. Supports Bluetooth as well.

keeponline.sh (Yet another one)

2009-03-27T13:14:00.002+05:30

I have posted two versions of my keeponline.sh script. (The one that checks if I have been disconnected from the net and reconnects)

Here's the latest one. It is now capable of checking if one instance is already running, and won't start another one unnecessarily:


#!/bin/bash
#echo "Going Online..."
#/usr/local/bin/online.sh > /dev/null
LOCKFILE="/var/lock/keeponline.lock"
trap "{ echo $0 removing lock; rm -f $LOCKFILE; exit 255; }" SIGINT SIGTERM
if [ -f $LOCKFILE ]; then
      echo "$0: already running, exiting..."
      exit 1
fi
touch $LOCKFILE
while true; do
      ping -c 2 -W 120 www.google.com > /dev/null

      if [ "$?" = "0" ]; then
              echo "You are connected"
      else
              /usr/local/bin/online.sh > /dev/null
              echo "Disconnect detected at `date`, reconnecting" >>  /home/akshay/logs/keeponline.log
      fi
      sleep 10m
done

There is no real use for this script, since SuperSify provides this feature. But I found that my version has less number of false positives when the bandwidth is completely choked. Besides, I just wanted to learn how to use traps :)

How I increased sound volume in ubuntu

2009-03-26T17:00:00.003+05:30

Ever since I upgraded my machine, I got very low sound volume in Ubuntu. In windows, the volume was nice and loud enough. After digging around a lot, I tried something on my own and it worked! (Yes, I had tried playing around with all the volume controls in alsamixer)

I have an NVidia nForce 630i board and I'm using the onboard sound card:


00:0a.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP73 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)

For some strange reason, I see four mixer devices:

I use pulseaudio as my default sound server. Here's what I did:

Under System > Preferences > Sound, I changed my Default Mixer Tracks to Playback: ALSA PCM on front :0 (ALC662 Analog) via DMA (PulseAudio Mixer)

Right clicked on the volume control applet in the panel > Preferences. Here, I could choose the default device and track to control. I chose the same: Playback: ALSA PCM on front :0 (ALC662 Analog) via DMA (PulseAudio Mixer). (There's only a master track).

Finally, I made all the other relevant volumes 100% in all the other devices (except capture devices). Don't forget to click on the "Preferences" button to see all the tracks

I'm essentially using only the Playback: ALSA PCM on front :0 (ALC662 Analog) via DMA (PulseAudio Mixer) for controlling my volume. I don't know why or how this works, but it works for me...

The only problem is that it won't remember my volume levels after I reboot.

Transparent menus in Gnome using compiz

2009-02-08T16:45:00.006+05:30

This needs installation of compizconfig-settings-manager (sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager)
Run (Alt+F2) > ccsm

Under accesibility, there' s an option called Opacity, Brightness and Saturation.

In here, under the Opacity tab, there's a section called "Window specific settings." Click on the New button. Write dropdownmenu in the Windows textbox. Set the opacity to 85 or so...
Click Close, do the same for popupmenu instead of dropdownmenu.

Making Kde4/Qt4 apps look like Gnome/Gtk

2008-11-11T15:19:00.002+05:30

1) Get QGtkStyle using svn - http://labs.trolltech.com/page/Projects/Styles/GtkStyle
Or
Download a .deb from here

2) Get qt4-qtconfig


sudo apt-get install qt4-qtconfig

3) Run qtconfig-qt4 (Using alt+f2). Select the GUI Style as GTK and File>Save.

4) Incase this does not work, install these packages:


sudo apt-get install kdebase-workspace systemsettings

Then run systemsettings. Go the Appearance section, and change the Widget style to GTK.

"renamescore"

2008-09-28T20:29:00.004+05:30

(Yes, yet another shell script)
I wrote a little bash script to replace all the underscores in a filename with spaces, in the current directory.
Here it is:


#!/bin/bash
#this script renames all filenames containing _ with [space], in the current directory
#copy to /usr/local/bin and set permission as +x

total=`ls | grep .*_.* | wc -l`
count=0
while [ $count -lt $total ]
do

     filename=`ls | grep .*_.* | head -1`
     newfilename=`ls | grep .*_.* | head -1 | tr '_' ' '`
     mv "$filename" "$newfilename"
     echo "renamed $filename to $newfilename"
     count=`expr $count + 1`
done

Alternate approach to 'keeponline'

2008-09-12T17:18:00.002+05:30

Instead of running the 'keeponline' script (described here) as a cron job, I decided to make it run as a standalone script. (Because the cron job kept spamming my syslog file)

The new /usr/local/bin/keeponline.sh looks like this:


#!/bin/bash
echo "Going Online..."
/usr/local/bin/online.sh > /dev/null
while true; do
     ping -c 1 -W 120 www.google.com > /dev/null

     if [ "$?" = "0" ]; then
             echo "You are connected"
     else
             /usr/local/bin/online.sh > /dev/null
             echo "Disconnect detected at `date`, reconnecting" >>  /home/akudewan/logs/keeponline.log
     fi
     sleep 10m
done

Next I make another script, keeponline-launch inside /etc/network/if-up.d/


#!/bin/bash

# Not for loopback!
[ "$IFACE" != "lo" ] || exit 0

sh /usr/local/bin/keeponline.sh &

exit 0

This will basically launch the keeponline script when the network interface comes up :)

(Thanks to Vivaldi Gloria from ubuntuforums)

OpenOffice is irritating!

2008-07-28T21:31:00.004+05:30

OpenOffice can really piss you off at times. It can be extremely unintuitive...

For instance, I wanted to print out some slide handouts today. There is a tab called "Handouts" at the top, where you can select a layout.

Now to print this, I went the usual File > Print, and ended up getting a normal print, not he handouts...

So what do you have to do to get Handouts instead of the normal print?
Go to File > Print. And click on the button called "Options"

Now how could this have been more intuitive? Instead of a button called "Options..." we could have a button called "Select print contents..." Or even better, if I'm currently on the handouts tab, select the handouts by default.

Despite the occasional irritations, OpenOffice is awesome. There I still a lot of improvements I'd like to see though.

A bash script to keep me online

2008-05-21T16:51:00.006+05:30

Most people I know don't use the Internet to its full potential. And they still complain about their ISP. People like me, who practically live on food, clothing, shelter and the internet have every right to complain. Despite having an unlimited connection, my ISP decides to kick me off the net ever so often, especially when I leave a large download running at night. Its a daily affair, and I needed a solution.

I already have two shell scripts to conveniently get on and off the net, which I call online.sh and offline.sh . Sify, my ISP, provides a graphical login program. This means that I cannot login if I don't have the X server running. Its a bad idea to have a login program in the first place, and even worse that it needs the X server. Fortunately, there are alternatives out there, and I use SuperSify instead.

So the /usr/local/bin/online.sh script is as simple as:


#!/bin/bash
cd /media/hda1/supersify/
./ss.sh -u your_username -p xxxx -m 00:11:B6:22:BB:F7

Make sure you chmod it to deny rw permissions to other users. I would have preferred to encrypt the password, but I don't know how. (replace the mac address with whatever you mac address is. Run ifconfig to find out)

Now comes the script which checks if you're online, and connects you if you're not. It just pings google.
/usr/local/bin/keeponline.sh


#!/bin/bash
ping -c 1 -W 60 www.google.com

if [ "$?" = "0" ]; then
  echo "You are connected"
else
  /usr/local/bin/online.sh
  echo "Disconnect detected at `date`, reconnecting" >>  /home/akudewan/logs/keeponline.log
fi

Unfortunately, the log file can grow too large. So there's yet another script to reset the log file every month.
/usr/local/bin/resetlog.sh


#!/bin/bash
mv /home/akudewan/logs/keeponline.log /home/akudewan/logs/keeponline.log.0

Needless to say, this is a very dirty fix, so you can skip the log file altogether if you wish.

Now we need to run two shellscripts as cron jobs - keeponline.sh and resetlog.sh.
Run the command:


crontab -e

This will edit/create a crontab file for the user you're logged in as.

Add the following lines to this file:


# m h  dom mon dow   command
0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/local/bin/keeponline.sh 1> /dev/null
* * 1 * * /usr/local/bin/resetlog.sh

This means that keeponline.sh will be run every 10 minutes, and resetlog.sh will be run on the 1st of every month.
(Run crontab -l to see your crontab)

Thats it! Now my ISP can't kick me off for more than 11 minutes :)

Always read your log files

2008-05-17T12:24:00.002+05:30

Whenever there is a new Ubuntu release, there's one part of the world that thinks that it is the worst upgrade ever, and the other part of the world that thinks that its the best thing that ever happened. Its the same with every distro, I guess.

After upgrading to Hardy, I thought it was the worst upgrade ever. The system was unstable, buggy, and programs would crash randomly. This was until I read my log files after an X server crash.


from /var/log/syslog :
May  8 12:34:08 ranjandesk -- MARK --
May  8 12:46:35 ranjandesk gdm[5796]: WARNING: gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873564] Bad page state in process 'kdesktop'
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873565] page:c1a04120 flags:0x80000000 mapping:00000000 mapcount:-285212672 count:0
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873566] Trying to fix it up, but a reboot is needed
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873567] Backtrace:
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873591]  [bad_page+0x63/0xa0] bad_page+0x63/0xa0
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873620]  [get_page_from_freelist+0x343/0x3a0] get_page_from_freelist+0x343/0x3a0
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873662]  [agpgart:__alloc_pages+0x4f/0x340] __alloc_pages+0x4f/0x340
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873684]  [anon_vma_prepare+0x1d/0xe0] anon_vma_prepare+0x1d/0xe0
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873687]  [loop:kunmap_atomic+0x6a/0xa0] kunmap_atomic+0x6a/0xa0
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873699]  [__handle_mm_fault+0x8c7/0xb00] __handle_mm_fault+0x8c7/0xb00
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873713]  [snd_pcm:getnstimeofday+0x36/0x96b0] getnstimeofday+0x36/0xd0
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873732]  [sched_clock+0x1a/0x70] sched_clock+0x1a/0x70
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873755]  [do_page_fault+0x126/0x690] do_page_fault+0x126/0x690
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873792]  [do_page_fault+0x0/0x690] do_page_fault+0x0/0x690
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873798]  [error_code+0x72/0x80] error_code+0x72/0x80
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873818]  [clip_ioctl+0x3a0/0x510] clip_ioctl+0x3a0/0x510
May  8 12:46:51 ranjandesk kernel: [ 6802.873836]  =======================

Bad Page? I know the next thing to do. Check the RAM! I ran the memtest86+ thingy that comes with Ubuntu. And sure enough, it showed errors in Test 5. The RAM chip works fine in the first slot, so it would seem that the problem is with the second slot. Since the mobo and RAM are still under warranty, I can get this fixed before its too late.

I wouldn't even know that there was something wrong with my RAM slot if I hadn't read my log files. I remember in my old machine, the graphics card fan was bust, and it would start running in "modulated clock mode". The log files told me.

A few days ago, I was getting random telnet attempts from IPs in Korea and China. Again, it was in the log files. Most probably botnets. I decided to remove telnetd and just stick to ssh instead.

Even if you don't know what the log files mean, doing a Google can show a few results with bugs or solutions to the problem.

rsync

2008-05-02T00:22:00.003+05:30

rsync is probably the simplest way to sync data between two computers, or even the same computer. Now that I have plenty of storage on my desktop, I can take backups from the laptop. So I tried out rsync.

There are a lot of howtos out there, telling you to schedule backups and stuff. But they seemed somewhat complicated, and I didn't really want scheduling...The laptop runs at irregular times.

So whats the simplest, no-shit solution for rsync? Its grsync!

Ok, then I saw what commands its running on the terminal, and made a shellscript :)

On Ubuntu, install grsync by running: sudo apt-get install grsync

Legal advertising == Spam ?

2008-04-15T16:21:00.004+05:30

There was recently a story on Slashdot, about a court case - e360 Vs. Comcast - in which the judge declared e360 a spammer. e360 calls itself an Internet marketing company.

I noticed that whenever I get an e-mail that's an advertisement, I mark it as spam! What exactly is spam anyway? Wikipedia defines it thus (E-Mail spam):

Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk.

A more general definition of spam would be:

Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.

I guess there would be legal definitions of Spam, and also definitions by ISPs. But as far as the user is concerned, I could safely say that any kind of advertising e-mail that I never wanted in the first place - is Spam. Invitations from random Social networking sites and communities? Also Spam!(?)

New Computer

2008-03-31T20:59:00.002+05:30

My graphics card finally died, and I decided to get an upgrade. I now have an nForce 610i motherboard, 2GB RAM (800MHz), a Core2Duo (2.33GHz). The motherboard has an on-board GeForce 7050, which is quite good for my needs. I'm using the same hard-disk and DVD drive, but might get a new hard-disk soon.

Now I can finally run visual effects in Ubuntu, and boy, is it sweet!! The pretty animations, the desktop cube - I love it. And it runs so smooth!! Aero just sucks in comparison.

Since the motherboard is quite new, I needed to do some tweaking to get it working properly.

sudo update-pciids

To get the "lspci" list updated.

Install the nvidia graphics drivers manually to get the sound working.

For the sound, I followed these instructions posted on ubuntuforums.

The Ethernet card uses the "forcedeth" driver, which has a strange bug that caused the MAC address to change on every boot. I couldn't live with that, since I configure my wireless router based on the MAC. I decided to use my old Ethernet card for the time being.

Trouble with fans

2008-03-19T16:09:00.004+05:30

I noticed a strange phenomenon with my computer. When I try to play a video, CPU usage would shoot up too 100%. I tried the usual troubleshooting methods, playing without the audio stream, trying different video output drivers, and so on...But nothing worked.

Then I noticed something else. If I pause a video for a minute, and then resume it, CPU usage goes back to the usual 20-30%. After a minute of playing, it would shoot up to 100% once again, until I let it cool off...

Sure enough, my CPU fan was bust. I bought a new one today and fixed it. Pentium-4 fans have a reputation of being notoriously difficult to remove. Ended up breaking a clip in the process.

The strange video problem didn't go away though. Next check: Graphics card. And Hurray!! that fan is bust too. Fortunately, a little nudging got it to work. But it seems I'll have to nudge it every time I start my computer.

I think its time to buy a new mobo. Nobody sells AGP 4x cards anymore :(

Edit: here's a good one. Anything running OpenGL (glxgears, -vo gl2 in mplayer) segfaults whenever the fan is RUNNING!! Works fine when its off...wtf.....

Edit Edit: If I stop the fan with my finger, and then start glxgears, it runs fine (even after I let go and the fan starts). Then I can run it even while the fan is running...
Hmm...this is quite entertaining...

If anyone has an explanation for this strange behavior, do leave a comment.

Looking forward to the sweet smell of burning silicon.
-Aku

Workaround for watching .flv videos on slow computers

2008-03-01T18:13:00.002+05:30

I have a 1.6GHz processor, a GeForce 440 MX, and 376MB of RAM. But it seems I have to upgrade to a GeForce 8-series or something to play friggin' flv video in Linux. Until I can do that, I think I'll have to use this workaround:

Let the video buffer completely.
Close the window so that it stops sucking 100% CPU
Go to the .mozilla/firefox//Cache directory
$ ls -lhS
The entries on the top are the largest, one of them will be the video. Try running them with mplayer.
Copy and rename if the video is worth saving on disk.

This works with youtube, but I think it should work with any website that allows videos to be buffered.

Sorry, not supported in Linux

2008-02-28T19:51:00.002+05:30

I hate it when I buy a piece of hardware and find that it's not supported in Linux. Why don't I have the freedom to choose the operating system of my choice?

Some companies have problems with opening up their drivers. Fine. At least do what nVidia does, provide closed, binary drivers. (Thank you nVidia, at least you provide them, and they work!).

Flash on Linux has always been a problem. It runs slow, jittery and is practically unusable. I tried to find out if other users were facing this problem, and sure enough, many are. The solution posted on (this thread) was to downgrade to a previous release of Flash. I had to download a 73MB archive containing a number of previous releases from Adobe's website. Adobe doesn't seem to care much about Linux users. Even the downgraded version has issues, but at least its somewhat usable.

I'm in a good mind to write to every company I come across that doesn't provide Linux support. About time Linux users made themselves heard. There are already a number of petitions.

Adblock or not ?

2008-02-16T20:57:00.003+05:30

Firefox has this neat extension called Adblock. It blocks out those annoying ads on web pages. Great! Now I don't have to look at flashing smiley ads anymore. (Who the heck would want to buy smileys anyway?)

But when I installed Google AdSesnse on my blogs, sure enough, I couldn't see them. Now, ads definitely help bring the pennies in, but do they have to be so annoying that people should want to block them? Most users hate ads, as they are distracting and loud^{[citation needed (LOL)]}. In my case, Flash ads even use up a lot of CPU. (Hopefully, Flash will be faster with Firefox 3). In comparison, Google Ads are not irritating, and are usually quite relevant.

Some people go so far as to call Adblock "Stealing", and there are a number of discussions on this topic.

So my dilemma was: whether to Adblock or not. I thought of striking a balance. I have Adblock installed, but I'm not subscribed to any of the filters. I block the irritating, flashy ads manually.

The Linux blog expanded

2008-02-09T23:10:00.000+05:30

http://akulinux.blogspot.com/ is now http://bit-rot.blogspot.com/ . Why the change? The Linux blog was just a journal of problems and solutions that I came across while using linux. This blog however, deals with anything and everything that's tech-related.

Please feel free to leave comments, suggestions, your arguments, or if you simply wish to call me a nut for my naïve posts :)

Shellscript to save power

2007-12-30T19:55:00.000+05:30

Even though I run a Desktop, I do whatever I can to save electricity. Turning off the monitor helps a great deal. Then there's CPU frequency scaling. But when I set my machine to "ondemand", I noticed a marginal drop in performance, especially when playing a game or something. So I kept my machine on "performance", and set it to "ondemand" only when I had to leave the PC unattended for a while. Needless to say, it was quite a pain in the butt. So I made a shellscript to automate the process. Whenever my screen is locked, the script will turn CPU frequency governor to "ondemand"


#!/bin/bash
#Script to put the cpu in "ondemand" if the screen is locked

check=`pidof kdesktop_lock`
if [[ -n $check ]] ; then
/usr/bin/cpufreq-set -g ondemand
else
/usr/bin/cpufreq-set -g performance
fi

exit 0

Then I added a task to my root crontab:


0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * root /usr/bin/freqmod.sh

where /usr/bin/freqmod.sh is the path to the script.

This is my first "real" bash script, so suggestions are welcome :)

Integrating firefox with KDE

2007-12-16T18:11:00.000+05:30

If you think firefox looks a bit weird when using KDE, have a look at these links:

http://konquefox.free.fr/index.html#tricks

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Integrate_Firefox_with_KDE

Dolphin

2007-11-07T17:03:00.000+05:30

Dolphin is a new File Manager for KDE, which I encountered when I upgraded to Kubuntu Gutsy. It's supposed to be lightweight with the sole purpose of being a file manager, unlike Konqueror, which is a complete web browser.

There has been some talk about adding tabs to Dolphin. I missed the tab feature initially, being used to konqueror and firefox. But I realized that I don't really need tabs, except when copying files from one location to another. And for that, there is something called "Split View" in Dolphin. I find this better than tabs actually...

Linux to the rescue

2007-08-22T23:26:00.000+05:30

I haven't posted anything on this blog since ages. Thats mostly because I haven't come across any more problems using linux. The nvidia kernel module problem mentioned in the previous post was sorted out thanks to another update by the cool ubuntu guys.

I've been really pissed off with windows. The computers in my college are quite slow, and they run windows XP. Opening a damn window takes ages. I opened about 5 windows of Internet Explorer today, simply because windows didn't provide any feedback (not even the mouse-cursor-timer...). Then then killing the windows takes another 10 minutes. And then the great explorer.exe decides to crash...

I had to make copies of a few VCDs of some dance performance for my cousin. No big deal right? Well, apparently windows can't even handle a couple of corrupt VCDs. Explorer.exe, as usual hangs like crazy, and lets not talk about Nero. I wonder why people pay money for that piece of shit?! Even VLC couldn't play the VCDs. Killing a process is practically impossible. Windows keeps reading the CD even when I tell it to stop....

In linux, copying the VCDs was a breeze. Mplayer and K3b are everything you need. For the corrupt VCDs, I could just use mplayer -streamdump, and a Clone Copy in K3b for the ones that worked. Nothing hung, it didn't even slow down the machine. Now that's the way it should be!

The kernel upgrade - Nvidia

2007-06-26T22:41:00.000+05:30

There was a kernel upgrade a couple of weeks ago, and the sda/hda thing was sorted out. But the nvidia modules weren't loading and X didn't start. As usual, I posted a thread on Ubuntuforums.

For now, I don't want to install the nvidia drivers manually. So I'm sticking to the older kernel.

Issues with the new kernel: 2.6.20-16-generic

2007-05-30T11:52:00.000+05:30

Adept-notifier showed me new kernel updates, and I installed these, only to find that I was greeted by a whole bunch of problems.

During the upgrade process, Adept seemed to have hung at 100%, (yes 100%). It showed dpkg-run finished in the terminal. I had to close the window, but just to be on the safe side, I opened a terminal, and ran sudo apt-get upgrade again. There was an unmet dependency, and I sorted this out. All seemed to be OK, and I rebooted the machine.

I had played with my partitions a bit, and all the /dev/sda* entries in the partitions wouldn't be mounted. Also, a new partition that I had created showed some superblock error. I just rebooted the machine, using the old kernel, and none of these problems showed up.

As usual I checked on UbuntuForums, and it seems the new kernel has a whole load of issues:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2733874
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=456662

Lets wait and see if the issues are sorted out. It seems all /dev/sda* has been made into /dev/hda* again

Command Line guide for newbies

2007-05-21T11:36:00.000+05:30

Have a look here.

Edgy to Feisty

2007-05-05T12:49:00.000+05:30

I upgraded to Feisty Fawn a few days ago. It was quite a smooth process as compared to the previous release. The upgrade tool on the DVD was crashing, so I used the commandline instead.

Apart from Samba breaking, (which I managed to fix in a few hours), everything went quite well. My thanks to the Ubuntu team for a nice release.

Downloading the DVD was quite a waste. Inspite of spending a week downloading 4.3 GB, I still had to download another 400MB. Next time, I'm sticking to solely to apt-get.

The Linux Distro timeline

2007-04-24T13:26:00.000+05:30

I came across this on the Coding Horror Blog.

CPU frequency scaling

2007-04-23T11:48:00.000+05:30

I found a very nice guide on CPU frequency scaling. Have a looky: http://technowizah.com/2007/01/debian-how-to-cpu-frequency-management.html

Feisty Fawn

2007-04-21T12:24:00.000+05:30

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn was released on the 19th. I've been trying to read the wiki pages for upgrading, but the servers are so slow I can barely open a page. I'll have to wait a bit for my upgrade. But till then, I'll download the alternate CD (using bittorrent)

PhotoRec

2007-04-15T15:09:00.001+05:30

I had made a post some months ago, on how to recover accidentally deleted data. I never had to use it, but today, I accidentally deleted an important spreadsheet file, while cleaning up some older files.

PhotoRec came to the rescue. Its fairly simple to use, and within a matter of 20 minutes it searched for over 170 old, deleted files. I easily found the one I was looking for. I think everyone should have a copy of PhotoRec, just in case...

Tip: Don't recover all the files, (I ran out of disk space). Go to "FileOpt" and just select the filetypes you are looking for.

Dvdisaster

2007-04-13T22:44:00.000+05:30

Dvdisaster home

Have you ever faced a situation when your important backup DVD is corrupt? I have, and it can be quite frustrating. Strictly speaking, optical media is not good is backups and archiving. But if I were to buy a 100GB hard-disk every 3 months, my dad would freak out

So it would seem that DVDs are the way to go for the time being. And I found a good piece of software that would help me restore my DVDs if they ever got corrupt. Its called Dvdisaster.

The process of creating the error codes is a bit tedious, but it would help with important data.

Additional Plugins required ?

2007-03-10T23:47:00.000+05:30

How many times have you seen the "Additional plugins are required" message in firefox? I found a neat workaround. There's an extension called "Unplug" that allows you to download media directly from a page. Then you can watch it in your favorite media player. (Might not work with Flash though. I'm not sure...)

Latest Screenshot

2007-02-05T23:14:00.000+05:30

Modifying keys with xmodmap

2007-02-03T21:22:00.000+05:30

I have fat fingers, and my backspace ans insert keys are quite close to each other. And accidently pressing the insert key instead of backspace can be really annoying....All of a sudden you notice
your text is getting overwritten.

So, is there any way of getting rid of my insert key? Or better yet, can I replace Insert with Backspace? The answer: xmodmap

Here's what I did:

xmodmap -pke > ~/.xmodmap.myown (This created my own xmodmap file)
Open it in a text editor. Find where Insert is. (Keycode 106 in my case)
Find the line with Backspace, and replace the insert value with backspace. In the end, it will look something like this: keycode 106 = BackSpace Terminate_Server

And incase you can't find which keycode is what, then you can run xev in a terminal. Press a key, and its info will be displayed on the terminal.

To use this new configuration, I ran the command: xmodmap ~/.xmodmap.myown

And so that I don't have to run it everytime, I put this command in my KDE autostart directory in a shellscript.

Pretty neat eh?

The DMA toggle

2007-01-15T17:36:00.000+05:30

I had to burn a lot of anime for a friend who was visiting after a long time. The first few DVDs burned fine. Then my data transfer rate dropped from 8 to 10 MBps to a mere 2 MBps. I don't know why this happened.

My system started acting odd, there was a lot of CPU usage, and I could barely move my mouse. First thing I did was checked whether DMA was enabled. Yes, it was. Next, I did a google search, and found a forum post somewhere.

The post was about windows users encountering a similar problem, and all they did to solve it was to disable DMA, and then enable it again.

I remembered that there was a problem reading one of my old DVDs. So maybe there were a few CRC (cyclic redundancy check) errors, that caused my system to stop using DMA, just like windows.

Ergo, I decided to "toggle" DMA, turned it off, and turned it back on again. And tada!! All is back to normal. I'm burning as I type!

------------
Edit: 21 March 2007:

Today, the same thing happened, and I now have definite evidence of the fact that DMA was disabled by the kernel:

Mar 21 15:54:36 ranjan404 kernel: [17197775.652000] hdd: DMA disabled

Sure enough, CD burning was slow and crappy, and the mouse went nuts:

Mar 21 16:13:34 ranjan404 kernel: [17198913.988000] psmouse.c: Wheel Mouse at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost synchronization, throwing 3 bytes away.

The distro of the beast

2006-12-16T22:45:00.000+05:30

I came across an interesting version of Ubuntu: Satanic Edition. Check it out...

It was a nightmare allright...

2006-11-08T18:16:00.000+05:30

But I did manage to get it running. I had run this command to get all the debs in my cache before upgrading the system, as my internet connection is quite slow. (But its free at night)

  apt-get --download-only dist-upgrade

I checked on the Ubuntu wiki page, and it mentioned that using apt-get is not recommended. So I used the graphical interface, as mentioned. Unfortunately, I got some error, that I didn't bother noting, and the installer quit. The graphical interface gave the same error again, and the only way to fix it would be apt-get -f install

So I chucked the graphical interface, and went back to the CLI. After a whole day of forcing (apt-get -f install) and dpkg-ing (some things went so bad, they had to be done manually), I finally managed to get the system up.

Today, I see that Upstart hasn't been installed, inspite of doing apt-get dist-upgrade twice. I had forgotten to install Ubuntu-minimal...geez...

So now I'm going to reboot my system, and hope that it boots properly, and faster!! :) Wish me luck...

Upgrading to Ubuntu Edgy Eft a "Nightmare" ?

2006-10-30T11:39:00.000+05:30

There's an article on Slashdot saying that several people are having trouble upgrading to Edgy (the latest Ubuntu release). I'm currently in the process of upgrading. Lets hope everything works out well...

I have followed this guide to do the upgrade. (The wiki keeps updating) Only difference is that I'm using the command: sudo apt-get --download-only dist-upgrade . Since I have a slow internet connection, I figured it would be better to download all the packages at night, little by little, and then run the upgrade process.

I don't have important data on my root partition, and my /home partition is separate.

Just to be on the safer side, I'll backup all important data before doing the upgrade.

Out of space...

2006-10-09T17:28:00.000+05:30

The other day, I was just browsing around, and I started downloading something. All of a sudden, firefox crashed!! I'm like...wtf...

Anyway, I just started the browser again, and recovered my browsing session, thanks to this nice extension.

Then, I tried to copy a shortcut from the K Menu to the desktop. I got an error message saying "Insufficient disk space". Wtf, a teeny-weeny shorcut...how much free space do I have anyway?

So I started Kwikdisk, and I saw that I just have 36KB free on the /home partition!!!

At this point, I would have expected any operating system to crash. But this is linux, things work differently here. ;)

The reason why firefox crashed was because it probably couldn't cache anything in ~/.mozilla. Technically, this would be a firefox bug, and not a linux bug. (Or so I think).

Finally, I just copied stuff onto my other partitions that had some free space. Now i have a lot of DVDs to burn.

MP3FS and Upstart

2006-10-06T18:35:00.000+05:30

No need to rip your CDs to MP3s. You can just use MP3FS: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/29/1525201

Also, Ubuntu will be replacing init with Upstart. Check out this article for in-depth information: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/18/1623244

What you should (and shouldn't) expect from 64-bit Linux

2006-09-13T17:45:00.000+05:30

See link:
Linux.com | What you should (and shouldn't) expect from 64-bit Linux

Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel

2006-09-05T00:10:00.000+05:30

The article linked below is a must read for every linux user, new or experienced:
linux kernel monkey log

Installing Xmms Presets

2006-09-02T23:37:00.000+05:30

Installing Xmms Presets - Freespire

How to convert YouTube videos to DivX or XviD

2006-09-02T23:20:00.000+05:30

Linux.com | How to convert YouTube videos to DivX or XviD: "How to convert YouTube videos to DivX or XviD

Wednesday August 30, 2006 (08:01 AM GMT)

By: Manolis Tzanidakis

YouTube clips are everywhere these days, and I must admit I'm addicted to the site. Nevertheless, I've had a couple of small annoyances with YouTube videos. I wanted to be able to play my favorite ones on standalone DVD/DivX players. I also found I couldn't go backwards or forwards when playing the site's Flash videos with MPlayer. For those reasons, I decided to convert my favorite YouTube videos to DivX or XviD formats. Here's how you can do the same.

"

Linux Flash Player

2006-09-02T18:37:00.000+05:30

FINALLY!! Our prayers have been answered. :D

» Interview with Mike Melanson, lead engineer on the Linux Flash Player team | The Universal Desktop | ZDNet.com

Linux.com | How to recover lost files after you accidentally wipe your hard drive

2006-08-29T20:11:00.000+05:30

Linux.com | How to recover lost files after you accidentally wipe your hard drive: "How to recover lost files after you accidentally wipe your hard drive

Monday August 28, 2006 (08:01 AM GMT)

By: Shawn Hermans

Recently I wanted to make sure I had enough space to back up my home digital videos and pictures, so I purchased a new hard drive to add to my home Linux server. I moved all the files I wanted to save onto a single hard drive and repartitioned the old hard drive so I could upgrade to a newer version of Linux. After going through the process of reinstalling the operating system, I mounted the backup hard drive and discovered that it was empty. I had some how mixed up the hard drive I used to back up all the data with a hard drive that I wanted to wipe. Because I had done such a poor job of retaining backups on external media, I did not have any backups of my pictures and videos.

After the overwhelming feeling of dread passed, I started to look into file recovery options. I demoed a variety of commercial products to see if any of them could find my lost files or partitions. Nothing seemed to work. Finally, I discovered TestDisk and PhotoRec, and was able to use the latter to recover my lost files.

TestDisk can recover lost partitions of virtually any filesystem. PhotoRec can recover files of most types, including most picture and video formats. PhotoRec can be used on existing partitions, or can be used to recover files on deleted partitions without having to recover the underlying partitions. Both PhotoRec and TestDisk can be run on DOS, Windows (9x, NT, 2000, XP, 2003), Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Sun Solaris, and Mac OS X, and, their developers claim, can be compiled and run on most Unix systems."

How to Create DVD-Video Content

2006-08-14T19:33:00.000+05:30

I found this page very helpful:

How to Create DVD-Video Content

NewsForge | Linus Torvalds doesn't matter!?!

2006-07-17T18:20:00.000+05:30

NewsForge | Linus Torvalds doesn't matter!?!

Check it out! ;)

Japanese Input in linux

2006-06-25T22:36:00.000+05:30

I was trying to setup Japanese input in linux. This was not an easy task, however I found it easier than windows. Here's what I did (on ubuntu):

1) sudo apt-get install im anthy scim-gtk2-immodule scim-uim scim-qtimm
2) Create a file called 75custom-write_japanese in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/
Paste the following lines in it:
export XMODIFIERS="@im=SCIM"
export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
export XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"
export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"

3) sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
(Over here, if you have the option of selecting anything, select en_US.UTF-8. But I was not given the option of selecting)

4) Add scim -d to your startup. For KDE, make a file ~/.kde/Autostart/startscim
Paste the following lines:
#!/bin/sh
scim -d

5) Run: chmod 744 ~/.kde/Autostart/startscim

6) Restart the X server.

Now you will see a nice little gtk-applet sitting in the systray. You can click on it, configure it, and use it to select Japanese or English. It takes a while to get used to it. It will also popup an annoying panel of its own when you select Japanese input. You can drag this to a place more convenient.

All in all, it works well, and I'm happy with it.

Information taken from this page

Dealing with "The Most Annoying Web Page"

2006-06-24T11:20:00.000+05:30

Many of you may have come across "the most annoying web page". It's a sick page that keeps giving you popups. Now if you don't want to keep clicking on those retarded popups (javascript alerts). Then here's what you do: (apart from killing your browser).

1) Open a new browser window
2) Disable Javascript (In firefox you go to Edit>Preferences>Content)
3) Click on the popup one last time, and it's all over.
4) Enable Javascript again.

Click here if you want to check it out. (Its way too annoying)

Firestarter and BORGChat

2006-06-23T11:02:00.000+05:30

I use a LAN chat client called BORGChat. Its a very good piece of work. Although its a windows program, I run it in linux with WINE.

Getting BorgChat to work through firestarter was a bit of a problem, but I managed to figure it out. First, I found out which ports borgchat uses. This can be done in two ways:
1) Open BorgChat, go to "Options > Connections" and it will show you the post
2) Disable the firewall, run BorgChat. now open a terminal, and type sudo lsof -Pni . Now look for Borgchat and Wine. You will find the ports on which they are listening.

Once you know the ports, you have to open these ports in Firestarter. I allowed only Local users to access, by using 10.10.19.152/255.255.255.128 (ip-address/subnet-mask) in the "allowed" section.

But borg was still not working. Then, I went to "Options > Connections" in BorgChat again, and selected the method IP multicast instead of UDP broadcast. And then I told my friend on LAN to do the same. Borgchat then started running normally. I can even transfer files.

The obvious drawback of this method is that you'll have to tell all people on the LAN to use IP Multicast. I have only one friend on LAN, whom I chat with, so it was not a problem for me.

If, by chance, Borg is still not working for you, then you may need to follow the steps in my previous post (Firestarter and Samba).

LiNuX RuLZ!!

Firestarter and Samba

2006-06-22T14:56:00.000+05:30

In my previous post, I have described how I set up Firestarter. However, there were a few issues with Samba. I was able to browse my shares by entering the IP address. But, today when I tried to "browse" my network, I couldn't see anyone. Konqueror gave me an error saying. "Unable to browse local network. This may be caused by a firewall" (something like that).

Then I stumbled across this thread on ubuntuforums. It gave a very good picture of what was going on, and also a solution to the problem. Now, as you know, I'm a total n00b when it comes to networking, and I didn't actually understand everything, but I managed to set things right.

First of all, in the "Policy" tab of firestarter, I had opened Samba ports (137-139 445) and I had set "10.10.19." as my allowed source for samba. I figured that the correct format should be IP-address/subnet-mask. So I set it as 10.10.19.152/255.255.255.128 . Again, I'm not entirely sure of this. See this page for more details.

Next, I installed "winbind." I don't know what exactly winbind is, but it seems that it plays a role in resolving hostnames. Do a web search for more details.

After that, I edited the file /etc/firestarter/inbound/setup .There I added the line:

# Allow response to netbios name broadcasts from the local network.
$IPT -A INBOUND -s $NET -p udp -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

Then just restarted firestarter (sudo /etc/init.d/firestarter restart), and I was able to browse my local network in konqueror.

Since I installed winbind, I also added "wins" to the "hosts" line in /etc/nsswitch.conf:
hosts: files dns mdns wins

This will allow ordinary TCP/IP programs to resolve hostnames with netbios. (Don't know what it means :-P )

Firestarter

2006-06-21T13:22:00.000+05:30

I installed Firestarter today, after the whole "Mysterious Download" thing, I got a little paranoid. Now I'm quite a n00b when it comes to networks and stuff. But I managed to get Firestarter running just fine :)

First, I apt-getted firestarter. Then I started it. Then I had to go through the configuration wizard. I didn't understand a word of wtf was going on in the wizard, so I just kept the default options, and kept clicking Next.

The Firestarter window has 3 main tabs. Status, Events and Policy. I figured I had to open the ports that I get incoming connections on. So after fiddling around a little, I clicked on "Policy", (Editing > Inbound traffic policy)

Then I clicked on "Add rule", and added FTP (ports 20-21), since I run an FTP server. Next, I added Samba, (ports 137-139 445). Here I didn't choose the default option of "When Source is Anyone". I wanted only LAN clients to be allowed, but for some reason, that option was grayed out. So I selected "IP, Host or network" and entered the IP 10.10.19. Notice I didn't put the last digits.

Next, I added Bittorrent (ports 6881-6889). And then clicked on "Apply Policy" on the top.

Now I tested my FTP and Samba. Both were working fine. (I'll also get my friend to test these from his computer, just to be sure. This post will be edited if I encounter problems).

Bittorrent: Azureus was using port 21351, which was obviously blocked. So I configured azureus to use port 6889. Then it showed the nice "green" status, and I was happy. :)

I also noticed many connections on Bittorrent ports, even after quitting azureus. I asked some people on the azureus IRC chatroom if this was normal. Yes, they said its normal. It probably happens because the tracker(s) have my IP address, and people try connecting. But since azureus is not running, the connections just get rejected, or something like that.

ext2 upgraded to ext3

2006-06-19T13:22:00.000+05:30

I was absolutely bored of fsck running every time I have an unclean unmount. It was so fscking boring! This was bacause my linux partitions are ext2, and not ext3.

I realized that ext3 partions are nothing but ext2 partitions with journaling. (ext3 = ext2 + journaling)

So is there any way to upgrade to ext3. Yes, there sure is! I found this page.

Basically, I had to run the command:
tune2fs -j /dev/hda3

/dev/hda3 being my root partition. After running the command, a .journal file will appear in the root directory.

Next, change your /etc/fstab and mount the / partition as ext3, instead of ext2. And then reboot your system.

Warnings:
1) Make sure your kernel supports the ext3 filesystem. Ubuntu Dapper supports is, so no problem.
2) Do this at your own risk. Backup data just incase.
3) Read this page for more detailed information

Mysterious download

2006-06-19T12:59:00.000+05:30

The other day, at night, I was doing nothing, just staring at gkrellm. Now, I noticed that some data is being downloaded at a steady 4kBps. At first I just thought it must be a cron job, like apt-get update or something. But I have a 128kbps connection, and whenever something is downloaded, I get a full speed of around 13-14kBps, even during apt-get update

Next, I decided to see whats up, and I ran the command "sudo lsof -Pni" to see all connections. I expected to see an external IP address, but I just saw the usual processes, no external IP was listed, and nothing out of the ordinary was established on the daemons listening on ports. I started to get more suspicious. I started killing daemons that I thought might be causing this: smbd, nmbd, vsftpd, ircd, and some others. But the download didn't stop.

Even though I have a cable connection, my IP address is dynamic. So I simply logged off the internet and then logged in again. The download now stopped, and I had a new IP address.

After this experience, I have decided to install firestarter (which is a firewall). It seems to be very easy to use.

But I wonder what that mysterious download was! And why was it downloading at a lower speed? "ps -A" also showed nothing out of the ordinary and gkrellm showed "1 user".

Strange, isn't it ?

Printer - there and back again

2006-06-19T12:22:00.000+05:30

After I upgraded to Dapper, my printer stopped working. /var/log/cups/error_log gave me this error:
E [19/Jun/2006:12:01:40 +0530] cupsdAuthorize: Local authentication certificate not found!

I looked at a lot of threads on ubuntuforums and a lot of results on google. Finally I deleted my printer, and added it again. And now, it works. Just finished printing a test page. Boy, them test pages sure suck up a lot of ink!!

Azureus and the disappearing tray icon

2006-06-14T15:02:00.000+05:30

I installed Azureus today, using apt-get. There were a few problems with it:
1) The Tray Icon at the bottom is a white blank space
2) There is no X button to close tabs.
3) If there is an improper shutdown, the warning message will not go, as the "Hide" button does not respond.

These problems are verified by other users on ubuntuforums. There are 2 ways of solving this:
1) Use Automatix to install azureus
2) Download the package from azureus.sf.net and extract and use it mannually.

And remember to remove the apt-getted version first.

Google Earth for Linux!

2006-06-13T17:22:00.000+05:30

Yes, its finally released for Linux!

It needs a lot of resources though, and some people are having trouble using it. I'll download it tonight.

Special thanks to Ryan Gordon for making this possible :)

Google Earth - Download

Breezy to Dapper in 36 insane steps

2006-06-13T11:34:00.000+05:30

Ubuntu released it's latest version 6.06 (Dapper Drake) a couple of weeks ago, and I decided to upgrade. I was using the Breezy Badger release. I had to do some really insane stuff to upgrade. This is primarily because I have a crappy internet connection, and I can download large files only at night (10:00pm to 8:00am). Also, my computer turns off automatically at 7:50am, I have set this as a cron job.

Note: This is not intended to be a guide to upgrade to Dapper. Please refer to the Ubuntu wiki page for information on how to upgrade.

So here's what I did, step by step:

1) I downloaded the dapper CD. (took 2 nights, on my 128kbps connection)

2) I realized that this is the wrong CD, and the "alternate" CD is needed to upgrade from breezy to dapper. The one I downloaded was for a fresh install only.

3) Downloaded the "alternate" CD. (took another 2 nights)

4) Installed the ubuntu-desktop metapackage, had to remove firefox and gaim that I had installed myself, not from the repository. (Used kopete and mozilla in the meantime).

5) CD burning issues cropped in, maybe the DVD lens has dust, or my CDs are bad. :(

6) Mounted the iso directly, using the command "mount -o loop /mnt/ranjan/dapper/whatever-alternate-i386.iso /cdrom"

7) Changed the repository to "dapper" and added the CD to the repository.

8) Tried to run "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade", but it said that another 740MB of packages need to be downloaded. This is a pain in the ass. Will take another 2 nights.

9) I used the option "sudo apt-get --download-only dist-upgade" to download the packages at night, i didn't want the upgrade to take place while I'm asleep.

10) Now I realized that some packages are going to be REMOVED, this incudes KDE, that I need. Can't let this happen, can I?

11) Found help in the ubuntu chatroom, someone told me I need to install the kubuntu-desktop metapackage as well, since I'm using KDE.

12) I must change the repo back to breezy, and I'm afraid I might lose all the data that I downloaded in 2 nights, so I took a backup. "cp /var/cache/apt/archives/*.* /mnt/c/apt-cache"

13) changed back to breezy, and apt-get updated and apt-get cleaned.

14) sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop and got this error:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
kubuntu-desktop: Depends: akode but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

15) Decided to install the "akode" package manually. "sudo apt-get install akode"

The following packages will be REMOVED:
juk kdeaccessibility kdemultimedia kttsd libakode2 libarts1-akode

I decided to proceed anyway. Then Went to pee and then drank some cold water.

Came back, and process went smoothly.

16) sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop.

17) KDM was kind enough to ask me which login manager I want to use, and I selected GDM. This happened while "configuring packages" after apt-get.

18) Changed /etc/apt/sources.list back to dapper.

19) sudo apt-get clean

20) cp /mnt/c/apt-cache/* /var/cache/apt/archives

21) sudo apt-get update

22) had to add cdrom again

23) sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

24) had a look at the packages removed, they are in the "installed" list, so no problem

25) closing all programs and proceeding. 60 MB more need to be downloaded, using --download-only option and going to sleep.

26) Woke up this morning, all downloads were complete. Did sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, and got an infinite loop of errors. Now doing sudo apt-get update to correct the problem. I can only hope it will be solved, as the error seems to be similar to the one when apt-get update fails.

27) Process started (apt-get dist-upgrade) :D .I hope I don't run out of disk space (only 1.4GB free) :-P

28) Dist-upgrade suddenly stopped in the middle, and gave me this error:

Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/artwiz-cursor_1%3a1.3-2ubuntu1_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

29) Anyway, I did "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" again, but some problem about something depending on libsdl-gfx1.2-4, so installing that mannually

"sudo apt-get install libsdl-gfx1.2-4"

Then it started installing/setting up a whole load of stuff :-S (possibly continuing the dist-upgrade?)

30) That got over after a long time. Then i did "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" yet again. And again, got the artiwiz-cursor error :(

31) I decided to remove the artwiz-cursor deb file from the cache, maybe it got corrupt somehow.

32) sudo apt-get dist-upgrade again, 8KB need to be downloaded, fine.

Same error again. This is sick, saw the description of this horrid artwiz-cursor. OK, its just a freakin Ascii X mouse cursor font, I got rid of it.

33) Again, sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. And Finally no more artwiz shit.

34) Finally, its over :) Checked if there are any broken packages. No broken packages, now rebooting.

35) X server refused to start, thanks to artwiz being uninstalled. Now I had to boot into windows to use the net to find out what I could do about it. A bug report page told me that installing or reconfiguring "xcursor-themes" package may do the trick. And yes, "dpkg-reconfigure xcursor-themes" solved the problem. And then I could install artwiz-cursors.

During this process, however, whenever I switched to a "blank" terminal (say, CTRL+ALT+F10), the system would freeze. No keyboard response, nothing at all. Had to press the reset button. And had to run fsck every time, and loads of errors were found on /home. I wonder how many files became corrupt in the process :'(

36) Reboot again, and HURRAY, DAPPER IS WORKING!!

About google & Linux

2006-06-07T12:07:00.000+05:30

Google, I think, has been more kind to linux compared to other companies of the same gernre. When they released google-pack, linux users were quite disappointed, because it was available only for windows. However, they recently ported their software Picasa to linux. It uses WINE and mozilla. Google also made several patches for WINE in the process.

Google-talk is another software thats available only for windows. However, it uses the Jabber Protocol, which means that linux users can use Gaim or Kopete to chat. Later on, they made a web-interface built into GMail. The fact is, my friends who use windows prefer the web-interface over Google-Talk.

Google-Earth is available only for windows, but linux users can go to maps.google.com and have a look at satellite images. Maybe not as good as Google-earth, but heck, it works!

Google even has Special Search options, which includes a section on linux and BSD.

Recently, google started an online-calendar, and they are working on an online Spreadsheet. All you need is a web-browser, which means they'll work on any OS.

Slashdot | First Photos of MIT $100 Laptop

2006-05-25T12:20:00.000+05:30

Slashdot | First Photos of MIT $100 Laptop

Processes using the internet

2006-04-30T14:55:00.000+05:30

Sometimes I notice that some mysterious process is downloading data from the internet. (gkrellm shows me that data is being downloaded, even though I'm not doing anything). This is probably just "apt-get update" running in the background. But is there any way to tell for sure which process are sending and receiving data from the internet?

I asked this question on Ubuntuforums, and I got a very nice reply.

There are two ways of doing this:

Simply use the command: sudo lsof -Pni
You can use a tool called trojanscan (homepage here)

Personally, I prefer the first method. But system administrators may like TrojanScan better, has it has more features, and you can choose to ignore the usual processes.

Have fun

-Aku

Super Grub Disk : HomePage

2006-04-30T12:55:00.000+05:30

Super Grub Disk : HomePage

This is a great software that helps you boot if you've messed up grub or your MBR. I haven't tried it out, but it seems fairly simple to use. If I encounter any problems with it, I'll edit this post and tell the details. :)

A new look & feel

2006-04-20T12:30:00.000+05:30

I've been using xfce for quite some time now, almost a year, and I began to get bored of it. So I decided to switch to KDE. That's quite a drastic change, compared to the minimalistic look of xfce.

Even so, it's a good change. That's the beauty of linux, you have many choices. And if you don't like the choices given to you, you can even make your own desktop environment :)

subtitle trouble

2006-03-25T11:40:00.000+05:30

My friend gave me a copy of Final Fantasy - Advent Children. It has an srt file with english subtitles. But for some reason, mplayer wouldn't recognise the subtitles.

Then I realised that the subtitle file and avi file must have the same name. So a simple renaming solved the problem, and I could play the subtitles

Copying VCD tracks using cdfs

2006-03-18T18:54:00.000+05:30

I tried to copy a vcd just by copying the avseq01.dat and other .dat files, but I was getting an I/O error. So I found out that I have to install a program called CDFS. You can download it from here.

Next, I unzipped the folder, used "make" and "make install". I had to do an additional step: sudo insmod cdfs.ko This is to activate the filesystem. See the INSTALL file for more details.

Now I mounted the VCD, not using iso9660, but cdfs, like this: sudo mount -t cdfs /dev/dvd /media/cdrom

Now when I browse the /media/cdrom folder, I can see the vcd tracks as mpeg files. All I have to do is copy them. Its taking a long time, but its working...

Apparently, CDFS has a lot of other uses, like copying data from corrupt multisession disks. Get more info from this site.

Update: 05 August 2006: Easier solution:

Just get vcdimager and use vcdxrip :)

Enable DMA

2006-03-14T12:01:00.000+05:30

Is your CD/DVD Burning too slow? Does it make your system hang? Maybe you need to enable DMA !!

I bought a DVD writer, an LG model, and I noticed that burning was slower than usual and it was making my system hang.

To check whether DMA was enabled, I did:
sudo cat /proc/ide/hdd/

The last line was something like this:
using_dma 0 0 1 rw

Notice that the value in the first column is zero, which means that DMA is not enabled.

Then I ran the command:
sudo hdparm -d1 /dev/hdd

And Tada !! CD burning doubled in speed, and no more hanging. cool, eh ?

Edit: Everytime you reboot, DMA will be disabled, so you have to take appropriate steps to make sure that DMA is enabled on boot. Ubuntu users can follow this guide.

Resizing lots of images at once

2006-03-02T11:18:00.000+05:30

My sister got engaged recently, and I had a lot of high resolution pics, which I wanted to upload. I needed to resize these images, in order to make them small and upload them.

I found out about a command called "mogrify". All I had to do was:
1) Create a separate folder, and backup the high-res pics, as they will be overwritten.
2) Run the command mogrify -geometry 640x425 ./*.* in the directory that I had to resize the images.
3) Wait...

In a couple of minutes, all the images will be resized !!

Mogrify can do a lot more than just resize images. Run mogrify -help for details. :)

Why windows Vista won't suck.

2006-03-01T11:26:00.000+05:30

I came across this article from slashdot. Why Windows Vista won't suck

Well, I'll be able to tell that only after I use it. Moreover, my computer isn't fast enough to support Vista. I've only downloaded a transition pack that changed the graphics to Vista style :-P

Whatever the case, there seem to be some major improvements in Vista. Lets wait and see

wma to mp3

2006-02-25T22:11:00.000+05:30

I found an old script on linuxquestions.org to convert wma's to mp3's.
I had to make a minor change to get it working with the latest version
of mplayer.

Requirements: Lame, mplayer.

To save the script, do this:

sudo
gedit /usr/bin/wma2mp3

then copy paste the code.

Then type:

sudo
chmod a+x /usr/bin/wma2mp3

If you don't have sudo, then just remove sudo and run the commands as
root.

Here is the code:

#!/bin/bash current_directory=$( pwd ) #remove spaces for i in *.wma; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr ' ' '_'`; done #remove uppercase for i in *.[Ww][Mm][Aa]; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`; done #Rip with Mplayer / encode with LAME for i in *.wma ; do mplayer -vo null -vc dummy -af resample=44100 -ao pcm:waveheader $i && lame -m s audiodump.wav -o $i; done #convert file names for i in *.wma; do mv "$i" "`basename "$i" .wma`.mp3"; done rm audiodump.wav

The script runs without any arguments, and it will convert all files in the folder.

Warning: All files will be overwritten

mp3 player

2006-02-15T13:10:00.000+05:30

I bought a Creative mp3 player. Its 1 GB, with FM, Voice recorder, FM recorder, 4 equalizer presets, and folder support.

To get it running on linux was a breeze. First, I shoved the player into the usb port, then I mounted the player on a directory that i created, /mnt/usb/

So I do:
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb/

And then I run nautilus as root, and just copy whatever songs I want into the player. Voila !!

I could have solved the permission issues if I wanted to, but I didn't want to :-P

Oh, before pulling out the player, remember to
sudo umount /mnt/usb

Have a nice day!

nihongo benkyo

2006-02-13T17:44:00.000+05:30

This is a really cool Japanese dictionary, that I found helpful.
GnomeFiles - GNOME/GTK+ Software Repository

Evince - PDF viewer

2006-02-05T11:11:00.000+05:30

I came across this really neat PDF viewer. I like it bacause I can actually copy-paste text from it :)

Click here to go to the homepage

Gimp Plugin GREYCstoration - Haypo

2006-01-24T11:00:00.000+05:30

Gimp Plugin GREYCstoration - Haypo

Software War

2006-01-22T10:52:00.000+05:30

softwarewar.png (PNG Image, 959x719 pixels)

Desktop screenshot

2006-01-12T16:45:00.000+05:30

Here is a screenshot of my desktop. Its nothing grand, but its my blog, so I can post whatever I want

Frostwire

2006-01-10T12:16:00.000+05:30

I found this really great p2p client. I had heard a little about it. Today, I downloaded the linux rpm, used alien to convert it to a deb, and then did a dpkg -i to install it. Its a java progam, but I fell in love with it instantly. Bye bye apollon

Heres a link to frostwire

Main Page - Ubuntu Document Storage Facility

2006-01-06T11:18:00.000+05:30

Main Page - Ubuntu Document Storage Facility

Automatix (Automated GUI installation script) - Ubuntu Forums

2006-01-06T11:17:00.000+05:30

Automatix (Automated GUI installation script) - Ubuntu Forums

Creating Shiny BUttons in the GIMP

2005-12-27T17:38:00.000+05:30

Creating Shiny BUttons in the GIMP

Howto turn off your monitor when you lock your screen

2005-12-26T23:16:00.000+05:30

I wanted to turn off my monitor when I lock my screen. Now, I use xfce, and the (default) shortcut to lock your screen in xfce is ctrl+alt+del

I have a habbit of pressing ctrl+alt+del when I leave the PC for a few minutes, and I thought it would be nice if I could turn off the monitor simultaneously. So here's what I did.

xfce runs the "xflock4" script to lock the screen. So open the script in a text editor
sudo gedit /usr/bin/xflock4

Now add this line before "exit 0"
xset dpms force off

So basically, your file will look like this:


#!/bin/sh
#
#  xfce4
#
#  Copyright (C) 1999, 2003 Olivier Fourdan (fourdan@xfce.org)
#
#  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
#  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
#  (at your option) any later version.
#
#  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#  GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
#  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
#

xscreensaver-command -lock || xlock $*
xset dpms force off
exit 0

The disadvantage is that if your mouse moves, or any key is pressed, the monitor won't turn off again, but I can live with that :)

Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions.

Again, do this at your own risk, and don't forget to make a backup.

Linux.com - Double Sided Printing

2005-12-26T17:48:00.000+05:30

Linux.com - Double Sided Printing

Note: I haven't tried it out yet, but it looks promising.

GIMPTalk.com - Ultimate gimp tutorials and community forum

2005-12-26T11:10:00.000+05:30

GIMPTalk.com - Ultimate gimp tutorials and community forum

Gadgets | The Top 10 weirdest case mods

2005-12-24T11:26:00.000+05:30

Gadgets | The Top 10 weirdest case mods

GNU/Linux Cool Tools

2005-12-21T16:50:00.000+05:30

GNU/Linux Cool Tools

Linux.com - Turn Monitor off, use Keyboard LEDs

2005-12-21T16:31:00.000+05:30

I found some really cool apps, check out this link:
Linux.com - Turn Monitor off, use Keyboard LEDs

I especially like the one called "tleds." It blinks the LEDs of the keyboard indicating TX and RX network packets :)

HOWTO Automatically turn off your monitor

2005-12-20T13:02:00.000+05:30

HOWTO Automatically turn off your monitor - Gentoo Linux Wiki

I've used it in ubuntu, haven't tested it out yet, but I guess it will work.

Firefox middle-click to close tab solution

2005-12-11T11:25:00.000+05:30

I upgraded to firefox 1.5 using the ubuntu wiki. (see previous post). Its really cool, the only problem I came across was that when I was middle-clicking to close a tab, it was opening a google "I'm feeling lucky" page.

So I came up with a solution on my own. (yay) :) Here's what I did...

Type about:config in the address-bar
Enter middle in the "filter" area. You will see a few options
Right-click on middlemouse.contentLoadURL and click on Toggle. This will now become bold, and it will show "user set"

And thats it! Now I can middle click on a tab to close it. :)

Warning: Do this at your own risk

FirefoxNewVersion - Ubuntu Wiki

2005-12-10T12:52:00.000+05:30

FirefoxNewVersion - Ubuntu Wiki

Gadgets >> The top 10 weirdest USB drives ever

2005-12-10T12:48:00.000+05:30

Gadgets >> The top 10 weirdest USB drives ever

A few key strokes I have found useful...

2005-12-06T11:54:00.000+05:30

A few key strokes I have found useful...

(For xfce)

Slashdot | Driving Away Teens With High Frequency Noise

2005-12-01T11:20:00.000+05:30

Source: Slashdot | Driving Away Teens With High Frequency Noise

"The New York Times is reporting on a device called the Mosquito invented by Howard Stapleton designed to drive teens away by emitting a high frequency noise at 75db. Apparently most older people can not hear the sounds, but teens can not stand it. Reports are that it works quite well, but some older people can hear it too. He found the prefect irritating sound by experimenting on his children."

Welcome to my linux blog

2005-12-01T11:16:00.000+05:30

My website was getting rather difficult to maintain, so I decided to start a linux blog. I'll just keep dumping interesting linux and opensource related stuff on this blog. Feel free to leave comments. :)