Ubuntu'n'stuff

Ubuntu 11.10 Nautilus: Parent arrow gone – unfamiliar look.

Rock — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:18:45 +0000

Yes, another thing I don´t like aobut 11.10. Nautilus look+feel has changed too. I was quite familiar with the old Nautilus way and could work very fast the way it was. Maybe I am just too lazy to learn these new “features” and user experience simplicity as they might call it. Again, I am looking for a way back to revert these changes.

First of all, it´s not possible to copy all of the old Nautilus behavior – the Parent folder arrow is still missing on the main screen. You can press ALT+UP Key to go to the parent folder – but what the heck is the reason to always get your fingers off the mouse and finger around on your keyboard ?

So, what is it I don´t like ?
1) The Tree view
2) The missing UP ARROW
3) The missing Folder view in the adress bar

So, this is the way it is out of the box in 11.10:

And this is the result after a few modifications:

And here are the changes:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences always-use-location-entry false

This will change to folder view instead of folder adress.

Then View –> Side Panel –> Location
(not sure if this is location, if have another locale – just other than tree)

If you still have a tree view in the main window, then change to “symbols” in the main view Menu.

UPDATE:
Maybe take a look at pcmanfm (apt-get install pcmanfm) as an alternative to Nautilus as it looks very similiar to old Nautilus

Classic Look on Ubuntu 11.10 – aka I want my Gnome classic back !

Rock — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:34:34 +0000

I am not pleased at all with the new Unity and Gnome 3 look+feel Ubuntu has recently published when upgrading/installing Ubuntu 11.10. I find it uncomfortable, not intuitive and I generally don´t like the Look+Feel if you were used to Gnome2 without Unity. (which I disabled as soon as I got it running in 11.04)

Good news, there is a way back:

sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

Logout, and choose Gnome Classic in the Login Screen.

The most noticable change is when you try to change the panel contents. Right clicking on the panel isn´t working anymore – but don´t panic. Just use ALT+Right Mouse and you can add/remove panel or content to the panel you were used to.

If I wouldn´t have noticed the way back to classic gnome look, I would have really considered leaving Ubuntu at all, though I was a very early user of Ubuntu – since it was released. If I would want a Smartphone Look+Feel on my desktop, I would buy one of those giant XXXL+ Android phones or tablets.

Update:
Well, I finally took the decision to bust Ubuntu. The Gnome 3 thing wasn´t the only reason, but my installed version was always an update from release to release – so it was pretty slow already. I switched to Linux Mint 11 and I will stay with this version for now, because Mint 12 will have gnome 3 too.
For all of those who especially don´t like Nautilus (see my other post on this blog) I found pcmanfm as an alternative – no clue if it works in Gnome 11.10 too. But it looks pretty similiar to Nautilus of gnome 2.x

Z68 Chipsatz Lan Probleme unter Ubuntu Linux 11.04 und Fedora

Rock — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:23:50 +0000

Kürzlich habe ich festgestellt, dass ich extrem viele Packet-Drops bei der LAN-Verbindung meines PCs ins Internet habe, selbst die direkte Verbindung zum Router war kaum mehr möglich. Da diese Probleme nicht unter Windows aufgetreten sind, war mir klar, dass es ein Linux Problem ist.

Das Problem scheint darin zu bestehen, dass der Kernel irrtümlich den r8169 Treiber (also den Realtek Netzwerktreiber) anstatt des r8168B Treibers verwendet.
Barry Mavin hat hier eine Lösung erarbeitet, um den richtigen (r8168B) Treiber zu verwenden:

Original-Post:
http://www.foxhop.net/realtek-dropping-packets-on-linux-ubuntu-and-fedora

Überprüfen, ob wirklich der falsche Treiber geladen wurde:

lsmod | grep r8169
sollte in etwa zu dem Ergebnis führen:
r8169 182616 0
Dann ist das Problem in der Tat der falsche Treiber !
Den R8168B Linux Treiber downloaden und entpacken:

wget http://www.foxhop.net/attachment/r8168-8.023.00.tar.bz2 tar vjxf r8168-8.023.00.tar.bz2
Den Treiber unloaden:

sudo rmmod r8169
Den Treiber selbst installieren:

cd r8168-8.023.00 sudo ./autorun.sh
Nun müßte ein:

lsmod | grep r8168 so etwas darstellen: r8168 182616 0

Nun sollte man die Verbindung neu herstellen, falls dies manuell geschieht, aber OHNE den PC neuzustarten. Hat das Compilen des neuen Moduls funktioniert, das Surfen bzw. ping zeigt keine Packet-Losses mehr, dann, auch nur dann den übernächsten Schritt vollziehen, ansonsten den Treiber:
cd /lib/modules/2.6.x-x-x/kernel/drivers/net/ sudo mv r8169.bak r8169.ko
wieder in den Originalzustand versetzen, um das anderweitige Problem festzustellen.

Abschließend noch den falschen Treiber daran hindern , wieder geladen zu werden:
(wenn das Compilieren ohne Fehlermeldung funktioniert hat bzw. die Verbindung jetzt stabil ist – ansonsten SIEHE OBEN!!!!!)

sudo su echo "blacklist r8169" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf exit

Die Verbindung ist jetzt absolut stabil und das Problem mit den Packet-Losses ist Gschichte !

Update: Seit dem Update auf kernel 3.x.x funktioniert der Treiber nicht mehr richtig. Um das zu berichtigen, die Datei src/Makefile im Editor öffnen und die Zeile:

KEXT := $(shell echo $(KVER) | sed -ne 's/^2\.[567]\..*/k/p')o
mittels # am Anfang auskommentieren, und darunter diese Zeile hinzufügen:
KEXT := $(shell echo $(KVER) | sed -ne 's/^[23]\.[0123456789]\..*/k/p')o

Somit sollte auch das Compilieren mit dem Kernel 3.x.x funkionieren!

Ubuntu Taschenrechner – Komma funktioniert nicht

Rock — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:54:13 +0000

Beim gcalculator (dem systemeigenen Taschenrechner von Gnome) in Ubuntu 11.04 habe ich kürzlich entdeckt, dass er keine Kommas über das Numpad akzeptiert, sondern nur umständlich über die “Punkt” Taste.

Dieser Bug ist nicht neu und laut bugreports hängt er mit der deutschen locale zusammen. Obwohl der Eintrag schon aus 2009 war und als gelöst markiert wurde, tritt er scheinbar wieder bzw. sporadisch auf.

Dazu ein einfacher Workaround:
Menü —> Einstellungen –> Tastatur

Im Belegungen-Reiter auf Optionen —> Belegungsauswahl des Nummernblocks —> Veraltet

Damit sollte das Komma wieder wie gewohnt funktionieren.

Convert Videos for the Nokia 5230 (and Nokia 5800)

Rock — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:35:35 +0000

I recently purchased a Nokia 5230 and looked for a way to convert videos using Ubuntu.

There are plenty of free and unfree solutions in Windows for conversion (which didn´t work very well for me). So, there is an easy way in Ubuntu 9.10 which produces vids with nice quality both in video and sound in full resolution, which is 640x360px for the Nokia 5230.

I am using ffmpeg via console – it´s fast, very flexible and exactly does what it should do.

The command goes like this:
ffmpeg -i SOURCEFILE -f mp4 -vcodec libxvid -s 640x360 -b 768kb -r 25 -aspect 16:9 -acodec libfaac -ab 96kb -ar 44100 -ac 2 DESTINATIONFILE

That´s it. SOURCEFILE is the name of the video you are planning to encode, DESTINATIONFILE is the name of the vid you are expecting.

I put this command in a very simple (and primimtive) bash script:

#!/bin/bash


echo Name of the Input File:

read input
echo Name of the Outputfile

read output

ffmpeg -i "$input" -f mp4 -vcodec libxvid -s 640x360 -b 768kb -r 25 -aspect 16:9 -acodec libfaac -ab 96kb -ar 44100 -ac 2 "$output"

Copy & Paste the code into your favorite editor and save the file into the directory where your video files usually belong to, for instance covert.sh .
Followed by a chmod +x convert.sh you should be able to start the script via ./convert.sh

Note:
It is very important that both your Input- and Outputfile doesn´t contain spaces or some special characters which could confuse the script. That should do it.

Firefox “Diese Website stellt keine Identitätsdaten zur Verfügung” entfernen

Rock — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:09:51 +0000

Schon seit längerem fällt mir die Meldung “Diese Website stellt keine Identitätsdaten zur Verfügung” in Firefox störend auf, sobald ich eine Webseite per drag+drop aus der Adreßleiste in die Bookmark-Leiste ziehen möchte.
Diese nervige Meldung verhindert desöfteren ein simples Bookmarken der Webseite, aber sie kann deaktiviert werden:

in der Adressleiste eingeben:
about:config

Im Feld für Filter folgendes eingeben:
browser.chrome.toolbar_tips

Im Fenster darunter erscheint dann diese Zeile, die man dann doppelklickt, woraufhin der Boolean Wert von True auf False geändert wird.

Firefox neustarten und weg ist die Meldung.

Solution: Mythtv somtimes doesn’t detect the tuner cards

Rock — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:44:29 +0000

As described here I fought the problem for a long time, that mythtv sometimes just refuses to detect the TV cards, when two TV cards are installed.

I think I found the solution to the problem now finally – the problem appears when the loading order of the driver modules are mixed up, so that Card1, which normally is linked to /dev/video0 is linked to /dev/video1 and vice versa for Card2 – that seems to confuse mythtv.

So, the trick is to define in mythbuntu (or Ubuntu+mythtv), that it should load Card1 before Card2 so that the corresponding linking to the video-devs is done correctly.

As Ubuntu uses udev, which is not really easy, I just did the old dirty trick:
1) blacklist both TV card modules (in my case: ivtv and bttv):
sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
and add :
blacklist ivtv blacklist bttv

2) Load the modules in your desired order:
sudo vi /etc/modules
and add:
ivtv bttv

That’s it – I hope it finally really works and will test it in the next days.

UPDATED2: Quick tip: Asus A8V-VM SE and mythtv

Rock — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:42:16 +0000

I am running Mythbuntu 8.10 on my Asus A8V-VM SE with a Athlon 64 3200+ and faced severe problems. The most annoying one was the problem, that mythtv periodically wasn’t able to detect the tuner cards, although they were detected by the kernel and were configured correctly.

I tried several tips like moving the daemon call of mythtv-backend in /etc/rc5.d to a later position, from S25mythtv-backend to S99mythtv-backend – this didn’t really help. Until I finally got a setup, which works now in most cases or let’s say, nearly with all bootups.

So to help you preventing one or another headache, this is my setup wich works now really well:

In the Asus BIOS, you have to disable:
APIC
ACPI 2.0 support

and in Ubuntu, you have to add
noapic

in /boot/grub/menu.lst, so that it looks like this:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=UUID=xyz ro locale=de_DE quiet noapic

The next article I am planning will describe how to setup mythwelcome and acpi wakeup with Mythbuntu 8.10 on the crappy Asus A8V-VM SE – stay tuned.

Update:
I recently posted exactly here another socalled dirty tip, which should solve the problem – but as I have faced the same problem today again, that mythtv sometimes just refuses to detect the cards, I deleted it. But I think (and hope) I found the real deal today, the problem, why mythtv sometimes just doesn’t detect the cards, although the kernel detects it correctly.

The solution is posted in another post here:
Link

Howto: Use Floppy in Ubuntu

Rock — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 08:19:04 +0000

By default, the use of floppy drives is disabled in Ubuntu 8.10.
The reason for a not responding floppy under /dev/fd0 (standard device) is the deactivated kernel module for floppies. To permanently activate the module loading of the floppy, simply run in xterm:

gksudo gedit /etc/modules

and add this simple line to /etc/modules at the end of the file

floppy

Don´t forget to save (and overwrite) the file afterwards !!!

The Floppy will be now available after reboot – to use it instantly, simply type into xterm:

sudo modprobe floppy

To mount the floppy, add a mountpoint in /media like
sudo mkdir /media/floppy

and mount it with:
sudo mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy

To permanently have the device linked to the mountpoint, edit /etc/fstab:
gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

and add this line:
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

Again, don´t forget to save (and overwrite) the file!!!

Generate strong WPA2 passwords with Ubuntu

Rock — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:19:56 +0000

To secure wpa/wpa2 keys from brute-force or dictionary-attacks, it is evident to use strong, that means long and purely randomly generated keys, which are in addition generated with a strong algorithm.

WPA/WPA2 limits the length of passwords to 63 digits, including upper/lowercase and special characters – so that’s what we are trying to generate….

There is a versatile tool for Ubuntu available – apg.

Install it via


sudo apt-get install apg

Now, let’s use the full length available for WPA2 and generate some passwords with apg using:


apg  -m 63 -x 63 -a1

To parse the keys automatically into a file, so that you can store and copy&paste the password, use this command:


apg  -m 63 -x 63 -a 1 > password.txt

Both commands will generate 6 very strong and purely random passwords. You can use the file later to copy&paste the password into your network settings.

One thing:

surprisingly, some passwords include (though ASCII) characters, which might give you some problems within the network configuration, especially those, which cause a special behavior of the bash. To be sure, that your generated password won’t cause those problems, paste the password in this command:


echo "your-pass-word-with-special-characters"

If the displayed password is different than the pasted or especially, if the bash displays a syntax error, then change the displayed errornous character with for instance #.