Archive for the ‘ubuntu’ Category

VirtualBox and Mac OSX

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

VirutalBox and OSX has come a long way.  I got iATKOS S3 rev 2 and installed it on VirtualBox.  My experience with the installation was actually pretty good.  Nothing to painful and very straight forward.  But after it was done installing and onto the first boot, it would just hang…  I kept reading over and over the forums but nothing was specific to VirtualBox and iATKOS S3 rev 2.

What I do know (from reading different posts from different forums) is that a 32-bit system needs be installed, VirtualBox settings needs to have an additional “ExtraDataItem”, fakesmc and EVO Reboot needs to be unchecked.

Oh, as a side note, I’m running the host in a Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 specifically) environment.  There is no Mac OSX, there’s Mac OSX Server and Mac OSX Server 64-bit.  I used Mac OSX Server for the guest.

Reading somewhere, you need to install atleast one 32-bit app/binary for thesystem to boot into a 32-bit system.  In the boot options of the installer, choose the 32-bit and it will.

All the other stuff is self explanatory.  But after the initial boot, it just hangs.  Digging around, this person made a comment that the kernel they used “qoopz 10.3.0″ worked for them.  I tried the qoopz kernel with the other settings and then it worked.  I booted perfectly.

Now, I just need to install VirtualBox Additional Tools.  But overall, the install went fast, and from what I can tell, OSX runs a lot faster than before.

Dell Latitude E6510 issues

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

After using the laptop for a while now… there are some issues that I need to figure out.

- After waking up from “sleep”, the screen is still blank.  I read somewhere changing to a terminal and back to X fixed it for them, but it didn’t for me.  I think it’s because I’m on an Intel graphics card and the other person was on an Nvidia graphics card.

- I forgot what sequence it was, but if I’m docked, and undock it while everything is running, the screen is blank.  Or this issue was the reverse (I was undocked, then I dock it and so blank screen).

- When docked, I boot the laptop, but my KVM is not switched to the port.  I just let it load, and I switch the KVM to the port of the laptop and blank screen.

- Touchpad is not detected in X (basically, when I go to the system settings in KDE, and to Keyboard and Mouse, the Touchpad settings are disabled).  I read somewhere that it’s because the touchpad is detected as a mouse, so the touchpad properties is not valid.

Wow… I have a lot of video issues…

Dual Monitors

Friday, July 17th, 2009

http://www.jejik.com/articles/2008/10/setting_up_dual_monitors_system-wide_with_xrandr_on_debian_lenny/

Tethering with Blackberry

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
  • Blackberry Pearl 8130 on Sprint
  • Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10
  • Dell XPS m1330

Get rid of the low voltage message when connecting blackberry to xps

  1. Found this link: http://georgia.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6775440&postcount=2
  2. All I did was go here: https://launchpad.net/~doctormo/+archive/ppa
  3. Add OpenPGP key
  4. Add repository
  5. Update apt-get (apt-get update)
  6. Install barry-util (apt-get install barry-util)
  7. Not sure if it’s required, but I restarted xps here…

Get ready to setup tether…

  1. From previous post… go here: http://wiki.colar.net/tethering_with_blackberry_pearl_on_linux
  2. Oh…. there’s an easier way… go here: http://wiki.colar.net/bbtether

Get ready to setup easy tether…

  1. Go here: http://wiki.colar.net/bbtether
  2. Followed instructions installing the dependencies and bbtether.
  3. For me… I do have “replacedefaultroute”, so that was easy.

Let’s tether

  1. Connect blackberry to xps
  2. Watch screen popup a message (something about low voltage) and it will go away
  3. Start Berry4All
  4. Go to Device>Rescan
  5. Oh… says it failed… (expected)
  6. Disconnect blackberry from xps
  7. Go to Device>Rescan
  8. Only listed USB devices…
  9. Connect blackberry to xps again
  10. Go to Device>Rescan
  11. Oh… it worked.. but I got a warning… (we need this warning…)
  12. warning for tethering

    warning for tethering

  13. Disconnect blackberry
  14. Turn off blackberry (don’t need to remove battery)
  15. Turn on blackberry
  16. Close Berry4All
  17. Connect blackberry to xps
  18. Start Berry4All
  19. Go to Modem>Connect
  20. Select Sprint
  21. Connected!!!

Improve speed

  1. Edit conf/sprint file
  2. Increased speed to 921600.

Side Note

  1. I did have trouble with firefox… it wouldn’t “surf” the net
  2. I could ping though…
  3. Reading the FAQ on bbtether… sometimes firefox puts it to “work offline”.
  4. That is my issue…
  5. Unchecked “work offline”… and now I am able to surf the net.

Dell Linux Repository

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

Dell has an unofficial site for Linux distributions.  http://linux.dell.com/

For firmware updates… there is http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/firmware and  http://linux.dell.com/repo/software/

KDE Keyboard doesn’t work

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

Basically one day, my keyboard stopped working.  I could use the mouse, but the keyboard doesn’t work.  Even if I put a USB keyboard on it.  So… after some debugging… I found this:

- Keyboard works while booting up
- Works during login
- When KDE starts, the keyboard disappears (I did this by pushing the caps lock key to see the light come on)
- Even the virtual keyboard didn’t work
- Somehow I managed to log into console (non-X) and the keyboard worked.  Checked dmesg and /var/log/Xorg.0.log, but everything looked good.

So… I searched online, and found this post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=458036

Basically… yes, that was my problem.  I turned on accessibility “slow keys”.  From what I remember, it was before class, and I was playing a flash game.  Holding down a key, the popup came up and asked something about accessibility.  I just randomly clicked something and that is when it started to get “weird”.

After turning off “slow keys”, everything is good…

Ubuntu Blackberry tether

Saturday, October 25th, 2008

I used the following resources.

http://wiki.colar.net/tethering_with_blackberry_pearl_on_linux

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=617811

Some issues I had…

When trying to compile opensync, there was no opensync/opensync-xml.h.  I found this and it fixed my issue.  http://blackberryforums.pinstack.com/f158/tethered_modem_support_in_linux-40533/

Basically, I created a file  /usr/include/opensync-1.0/opensync/opensync-xml.h, and put copied and pasted this

==================

#ifndef HAVE_OPENSYNC_XML_H
#define HAVE_OPENSYNC_XML_H

#include <libxml/xmlmemory.h>
#include <libxml/parser.h>
#include <libxml/xpath.h>

#include <opensync/opensync.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C"
{
#endif

typedef enum osxmlEncoding {
OSXML_8BIT = 0,
OSXML_QUOTED_PRINTABLE = 1,
OSXML_BASE64 = 2
} osxmlEncoding;

typedef enum osxmlCharset {
OSXML_ASCII = 0,
OSXML_UTF8 = 1
} osxmlCharset;

typedef struct OSyncXMLEncoding OSyncXMLEncoding;
struct OSyncXMLEncoding {
osxmlEncoding encoding;
osxmlCharset charset;
};

typedef struct OSyncXMLScore {
int value;
const char *path;
} OSyncXMLScore;

xmlNode *osxml_node_add_root(xmlDoc *doc, const char *name);
xmlNode *osxml_node_get_root(xmlDoc *doc, const char *name, OSyncError **error);
xmlNode *osxml_get_node(xmlNode *parent, const char *name);

xmlNode *osxml_node_add(xmlNode *parent, const char *name, const char *data);
//void osxml_format_dump(OSyncXML *xml, char **data, int *size);
xmlNode *osxml_format_parse(const char *input, int size, const char *rootname, OSyncError **error);
char *osxml_find_node(xmlNode *parent, const char *name);
void osxml_node_add_property(xmlNode *parent, const char *name, const char *data);
char *osxml_find_property(xmlNode *parent, const char *name);
osync_bool osxml_has_property(xmlNode *parent, const char *name);
osync_bool osxml_has_property_full(xmlNode *parent, const char *name, const char *data);

void osxml_node_mark_unknown(xmlNode *parent);
void osxml_node_remove_unknown_mark(xmlNode *node);
void osxml_map_unknown_param(xmlNode *node, const char *paramname, const char *newname);

void osxml_node_set(xmlNode *node, const char *name, const char *data, OSyncXMLEncoding encoding);
xmlXPathObject *osxml_get_nodeset(xmlDoc *doc, const char *expression);
xmlXPathObject *osxml_get_unknown_nodes(xmlDoc *doc);
OSyncConvCmpResult osxml_compare(xmlDoc *leftinpdoc, xmlDoc *rightinpdoc, OSyncXMLScore *scores, int default_score, int treshold);
xmlChar *osxml_write_to_string(xmlDoc *doc);
osync_bool osxml_copy(const char *input, int inpsize, char **output, int *outpsize);

osync_bool osxml_marshall(const char *input, int inpsize, char **output, int *outpsize, OSyncError **error);
osync_bool osxml_demarshall(const char *input, int inpsize, char **output, int *outpsize, OSyncError **error);

#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif

#endif

==================

GVIM startup settings

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

When I use GVIM to edit files, I like to have console font and have automatic syntax highlighting.  So, here is my ~/.vimrc

<File ~/.vimrc>
set gfn=Console
syntax on
</File>

M1330 gets too hot

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

I’ve searched and since I’m using the 64-bit version of linux, it doesn’t have the i8k module yet.  So, I searched some more, and found that I need to install dellfand to have the fans work.

Oh… and I found a KDE applet that will show me the speed of the CPUs.  Its called Kima (Kicker monitoring applet).  Very useful to verify what speed the CPUs are on.

Dell M1330

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Finally got my new laptop.  A Dell M1330.

Removed Windows.

Had to boot into a live CD to remove hidden partition which is for MediaDirect.  The button which looks a “Home” button next to the power button.  Zero-ed out the whole drive…

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024& pid=$!

To check status use:

$ sudo kill -USR1 $pid

After a few hours, we’re ready to install.

I like KDE, so I’m using Kubuntu.

After installing, and first boot into Kubuntu, I want to mount the iso image so I always have the discs. First install smbfs.

$ sudo apt-get install smbfs

Append fstab to mount network drive

//ip/sharename /path/to/mount smbfs username=xxx,password=xxx,rw,user,noauto,exec 0 0

Create the mount paths and change the ownership to myself so I don’t have to always do sudo.

sudo chown xxx.xxx /path/to/mount

Mount the path and transfer iso images.

Edit fstab to always mount iso images

/path/to/filename.iso /path/to/mount iso9660 ro,loop,auto,user 0 0

Add the mounted isos to apt source.  Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add

deb file:///path/to/mount/ hardy main restricted

Only one user, so auto login

Go to “System Settings”, then “Advanced”, then “Login Manager”.  Click “Administrator Mode” and enter password.  Go to “Convenience” and check “Enable Auto-Login”.

This is specfic to M1330.  We must blacklist the driver video, this fixes with brightness being issued more than once when pushed.  Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Change the video drivers to use “intel”.  It’s currently as “vesa”, but I want “intel”.  We don’t need to install 915resolution.  But when changing the drivers, we must select the specific monitor and say it is widescreen.

Go to “System Settings”, then “Monitor and Display”.  Click on “Administrator Mode” and type password.  Click on “Hardware” and push “Configure” for “Graphic card: VESA”.  Choose “intel” from the “driver” section.  Then click on “Configure” for “Monitor”.  Select “LCD panel 1280×800″ from “Generic” and make sure the “Image Format” is widescreen.

I like the console font for Konsole.  So lets install the console bitmap font.

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config
$ fc-cache -f -v ~/.fonts

After all this… reboot the laptop to take changes.

 I like gkrellm, so install it.

$ sudo apt-get install gkrellm

A new way of setting up the fan

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4069092&postcount=6

 For some reason, the sound didn’t work… or it was muted.  So, go into right click on KMix, and select “Select Master Channel”, then select “PCM”.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5407780&postcount=8