monkey-poo & linux

oops

2011-06-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

What if you woke up one day and realized that you have left a trail of hurt and lies behind you and even you couldn’t make sense of it any more? What if there was no one that you could think of to look to for help. What if you realized that even surrounded, you are eternally alone. What if all it was that you could do was to stuff it all down deep inside and try to pretend that you are actually human like all of them.

Thinkpad SL410 Crunchbang 10 "Statler" Debian 6.0 (revised incomplete)

2011-03-03T18:39:00.000-08:00

Thinkpad SL410 Crunchbang 10 "Statler" Debian 6.0

This Article has been updated as of March 2011

Laptop Specifications:

thinkpad_acpi unsupported Thinkpad detected!
This warning can be stopped by blacklisting thinkpad_acpi. You don't lose any functionality that you have because the module isn't loading anyway this just cleans up the boot messages.

"Waiting for /dev to be fully populated...[ 5.609978] ACPI I/O resource 0000:00:1f.3 [0x1c00d-0x1c1f] conflicts with ACPI region SMBI [0x1c00d-0x1c0f]"

This message can be stopped by blacklisting i2c_i801 again no loss aside from what already doesn't work.

There is a sync issue with the intel graphics in the current stable releases that can be worked around by appending "i915.powersave=0" to the kernel line in grub.

And now I have a smooth boot and in squeeze and most all distros, now including RHEL 6 Workstation, Fedora 14, Ubuntu 10.10, suspend is perfect.

I am having issues with Redhat based distros and a weird issue with the mouse pointer getting jumpy and pretty much the whole interface slowing down. Not really too sure what that is about yet but I'm hoping to get it worked out soon.

2010-03-12T18:44:00.001-08:00

everytime i see this it makes me smile. :-y

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Linux Phrasebook Essential Code and Commands by Scott Granneman

2010-02-13T19:53:00.000-08:00

Just picked up a copy of this book from books-a-million and I have to say it is very handy. My opinion is that most people aren't experts and even if someone is they still forget things. But for us normal users, that is those of us who seem to always have an open terminal, this book is awesome. I learned everything I know from googleing and reading articles and this can be tough to do when those that think they know more treat "newbies" as inferior in some way. So you just pick up the bits and pieces as you go along until you can manage things at times without really understanding what you are typing into that blinking cursor.

Well, that is where this book fits. It explains the essentials in a non threatening way, and in plain English. I have already found new things about old things that I didn't know. I would urge everyone to pick a copy of this up.

Syncing Folders Between two Machines Running Linux

2010-01-26T08:11:00.000-08:00

There was a thread in th #! forums that peaked my interest. A user wanted to be able to easily sync the music folder on a laptop with that of a desktop. I thought it was an awesome idea. Here is my solution:

install sshfs on the laptop

sudo aptitude install sshfs

install openssh-server and client on the desktop if not already there.

sudo aptitude install openssh-server openssh-client

Create a temporary directory for mounting the desktops music folder on the laptop. I created one named "desk_music"

Now you can use this script to sync your music!

#!/bin/bash

count=$(ping -c 4 192.168.1.100 | grep 'received' | awk -F',' '{ print $2 }' | awk '{ print $1 }')
if [ $count -eq 0 ]; then
   echo "failure"

else
   echo "we're in business" &
   sshfs chelsea@192.168.1.100:/home/chelsea/Music /home/monkeybritt/desk_music;
   cp -rnv /home/monkeybritt/desk_music/* /home/monkeybritt/Music;
   fusermount -u /home/monkeybritt/desk_music
  fi

using cp with the -rnv argument tells it to copy recursively and to skip existing files, and the v (verbose) will show progress.

HOW-TO: Manually Install Cursor Themes In #!Crunchbang Linux 9.04

2010-01-13T07:14:00.000-08:00

Not all distributions use a graphical cursor theme manager and at times it will be necessary to install cursor themes to x-cursor-theme alternatives. I ran into this issue and was disappointed at the lack of documentation. Basically this is how it's done:

1. Extract theme archive and copy it into /usr/share/icons.
2. Make sure the theme folder contains both an index.theme and a    cursor.theme. If it doesn't have both you will have to create them.

    index.theme:

    [Icon Theme]

  Name=name-of-theme

cursor.theme

[Icon Theme]

  Inherits=name-of-theme

3. Now you have to add it to your alternatives for x11 cursors:

sudo update-alternatives --install /etc/alternatives/x-cursor-theme x-cursor-theme /usr/share/icons/themefolder/cursor.theme 50

4. Now you can choose your theme
sudo update-alternatives --config x-curosr-theme

If you wind up with the plain black core cursor you need to restore the link between /etc/alternatives/x-cursor-theme and the default setting in /usr/share/icons/default by pasting this command:

ln -s /etc/alternatives/x-cursor-theme /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme

If you want to remove a theme use this command:

sudo update-alternatives --remove x-cursor-theme /usr/share/icons/theme-folder/cursor.theme

HOW-TO: SSHFS in Linux and SH with Midnight Commander

2010-01-08T10:27:00.001-08:00

I like using the terminal its just plain fun.
Gnome users depend on nautilus for all the networking and mounting but it uses sftp for mounting ssh folders and that doesn't always work for the best.

If your like me and you use pcmanfm, thunar or midnight-commander than you will want to use sshfs. I think even if I used nautilus I would use sshfs because it mounts the remote directory as if it were local and this seems to be easier for applications to read the files.

I'm going to show you my method for both mounting my shares with sshfs and how I use sh in midnight-commander to quickly copy files over my network.

The first thing I did was create a directory in my home folder ~/DekstopSSH. This is where I will mount sshfs.

mkdir DesktopSSH

Second I created an alias for the long string for mounting. This is the structure of the command:

sshfs remoteuser@remoteIP:/home/remoteuser /home/localuser/DesktopSSH

you will be prompted for your user password, and after successfully entering that your remote folders are now mounted as if there were local files in the directory that you created.

To close the connection use the command

fusermount -u ~/DesktopSSH 

If you would rather use more of a gui you can create two scripts, one for mounting and the other for un-mounting.

For mounting paste this into an empty text file and replace with your information:

#!/bin/bash

sshfs sshserver@ip.of.ser.ver:/home/remoteuser /home/localuser/DesktopSSH &

exit

save the file and make it executable.

chmod +x "filename" will make it executable.

For unmounting you would create another file that contains this:

#!/bin/bash

fusermount -u ~/DesktopSSH &

exit

Again replacing with your info and making it executable.

Now you can just click on the mount file and a nifty little box should pop up and ask you for a password.

Its really that simple.

Now for Part two I'm going to explain in brief how to copy files over from a remote folder using sh in the cli file manager midnight commander.

1. In the drop down menu for left select shell link.

2. Enter the remoteuser@remoteIP in the box.

3. Enter the password

4. Browse to the file you want to copy, highlight it and F5 to copy.

And... Success!

Thats all I have for today thanks for reading!

Intel Graphics Jaunty: Back With A Bang! (and a crunch)

2010-01-05T19:38:00.000-08:00

Grub 2 was distroying my karmic install, I assume it didnt sit well with the vga bios. It was like channel surfing blindly through a snowy tv at times. But i didnt want to give up the improved performance of the intel graphics.

That improvement is due to the bleeding edge drivers and really didnt have alot to do with kms as i found out. So i reverted back to !#9.04 and gave the drivers a shot and they worked so I thought I should share the hardware info so others would know.

First My Intel GPU is:

Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)

How to get the drivers -

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.lst

paste in these lines -

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main

To get the keys I used a script I found on Popey's blog.

Then,

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Thats it. Nothing more. Just restart and watch ur graphics improve. The improvement is UXA. You can find information about UXA in jaunty here.

You may also want to try kernel mode setting. A really good how-to is here.

Get More Out of Gnome-Terminal

2009-12-15T10:59:00.000-08:00

I really like cli apps. You can have many many apps running at the same time and use very little resources. Gnome-terminal has some really cool features that alot of us don't know about. I'm going to show you how to set up something like this-

That will launch all at once using a desktop launcher.

The three apps i use most are finch midnight-commander and moc.

So I want to launch all three in the same tabbed terminal window at the same time.

First thing to do is open a single terminal. Right click in the window and select "open tab" and repeat until you have the desired number.

Then issue this command:

gnome-terminal --save-config=.mytabs

This will create a file .mytabs in your home directory.

Now open the file to edit:

nano .mytabs

You should see this:

The lines you are concerned with are the blocks that go from [Terminal 00000] to height=#. Each of those blocks represent a tab.

Under the line Profile=default add two lines that look like this:

Command='finch'

Title=Message

Changing the command and title to your needs.

ctrl+x to close

y to save

and enter.

Next create a custom launcher on your desktop. And make it look like this:

Now when you launch this It should look like the picture at the top!

happy tuxing ;)

Miro review [karmic]

2009-12-11T06:45:00.001-08:00

Fedora 12 included Miro by default and after checking out a video about the feature
I decided to install it. It is available in the Ubuntu repositories so you can find it in synaptic.

It does podcasts

Bittorrent and Bittorrent site search

And also plays and organizes your video and music collections. It is a little resource hungry but not to the point of being unusable.
Check it out!!

Opacity Settings in Metacity

2009-11-17T19:45:00.000-08:00

Metacity is the default window manager for the Gnome Desktop. One of the coolest and little known features is that you can set active and inactive border opacity via gconf-editor

Run gconf-editor [alt-F2 and type in gconf-editor]

In the left hand browser expand "apps" then "gwd"

screenshot here

Then edit the keys metacity_theme_active_opacity and metacity_theme_opacity by right clicking and selecting edit then just use the arrows to raise or lower level of opacity.

Customizing the Gnome-Panel Clock Applet

2009-11-14T08:10:00.000-08:00

To achieve the look of the clock:
step_one: alt+F2 and run gconf-editor
step_two: navigate to apps / panel / applets / clock_screen0 / prefs
step_three: edit format key from 12hour to custom
step_four: edit custom_format key by pasting in the code from here

adjust font name size and color to your liking.

TrueCrypt and Ubuntu

2009-10-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

These days most of life is recorded on our desktops, laptops, and netbooks. And in the case of the note and net books, we are carrying our lives with us. This means bank account info, saved passwords for web sites and so on all contained in a little box that someone could steal. Dont worry like those popular cell phone commercials say "there's an app for that".

Say hello to Truecrypt.
"Hi!"-you say
"wusup"-Truecrypt says.
"Not much just trying to hide stuff, can you help?"
"No Doubt!"-Truecrypt replies.

Any way you can get it --->here<---. If your running #! or ubuntu there is a ".deb" for that. I put that in quotes because it is really a tar balled script. Extract the script to your home dir, then open a terminal. command: $sh nameoftruecryptscript This will open a dialog that will ask you if you want to extract the .deb, I guess for later use or something, or install. Just select install.

This will open in debian installer and do the usual.

Ubuntu will create a menu option under something like "other". In #! its not as simple, but you can add the entry to the openbox menu later.
To run the app-

alt-F2

"truecrypt" --without the quotes

Then you get this:

Use the Volumes drop down and choose "Create a New Volume" to, you guessed it, create a new encrypted volume. Its pretty straight forward it will give you options to configure your volume. I would suggest creating a container instead of encrypting a partition.

Youve created the volume and now its time to use it. "Select File" and find your way to the volume you created. I created the volume .crypt in my home dir. Select mount.
It will have you enter the pass word for the volume and then your system password.
In Ubuntu, if you have "show volumes" enabled, the volume will show up on your desktop.
But if your in Crunch heres the deal:

It wants to open your dir in Nautilus. So, I guess you could:

Option 1 - sudo apt-get install nautilus

and then double click on the volume in the Truecrypt Interface,

Option 2 - you can simply find your mounted volume as /media/Truecrypt1.

Add all the files you want and then unmount knowing that they are protected!

Lacie 4L Lightscribe Labeler with Ubuntu 9.04

2009-10-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

If you have a light-scribe drive on your ubuntu box you might not have known that you don't have to be stuck using the simple labeler. Lacie has a 4L labeler build for linux. Though it only comes in an .rpm package this is easily overcome.

First make sure to get the lightscribe system software deb from here
and install.

Second download the 4L-labeler .rpm from here
[make sure to put it in your /home/you/ to save from changing directories later]

Third, open a terminal and put in:

sudo aptitude install alien

Wait until this has installed then:

sudo alien --scripts 4L-1.0-r6.i586.rpm

This will create the deb package.

Go to your home directory in nautilus and open the deb package you created.

The command for 4L has to be run as root so to launch:

alt-F2

gksu 4L-gui

Voila complete lightscribe labeling in Ubuntu!

Giving Up the Windows Addiction: Asus G51 a Linux Testimonial

2009-10-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law is a struggling victim of the windows plague. But why wouldnt he be? School, work, stores, they have the general public locked in to an endless cycle of bluescreens and service packs. But two days ago Josh bought an Asus G51 to use for "play" but work mostly. He is a civil engineer and uses auto-desk [ a rather bulky, resource devouring, program] which wont run on just anything. When he told me he was buying it, me being me, the first thing i wanted to do was give it a gnu heart. This was the open door that you wait for when you dont know how to approach a rabbid windows addict, you just dont know how they will react. Now he has known me for a while and knows all about gnu/linux because of that. So it wasn't hard to talk him into a dual-boot setup with ubuntu and grub calling the shots after the last few months struggling to keep his windows "workstation" going.

Here are the G51's basic specs:

-Core 2 Duo with Centrino2 technology
-Nvidia Geforce GTX 260M CUDA 1gig
-Dolby Sound
-ExpressGate
-Lighted Keys

The desired outcome:

Expressgate [for those times you just have to im in the next four seconds]
Vista x64 [happy? and running autodesk]
Ubuntu 9.04

It came from the store with vista x64, so to save some time and headaches i just reduced the size of the windows partion, to give enough space to install Ubuntu. I decided to give windows slightly more room on the HD to allow space for his auto-desk projects.

A few other side notes, before our procedures were started we noticed that he couldn't get his wireless to work out of the box while in windows.

I used the diskmgmt.msc utility in vista to do the initial resizing to make windows happier the next time it boots [no chkdisk]. Downside is that Vista is a hog and only gave me 87gig of the 305. But ubuntu is so much smaller and can access the windows drive so it isnt even an issue. Files can be moved back and forth with no problems.

Then while in live install I used partition manager [during the installation process] and manually specified partitions with a simple layout.

Luckily on this pc the splashtop is installed on its own flash drive so that saved some time and trouble too.
I let the installer do its thing and waited to see what would come of it.

Once the installer finished we were greeted in the usual way, and there it was graphics detected, and i was prompted to install version 180 of the nvidia driver. Wireless worked without a driver install, bluetooth also seemed to function although we didnt have any real way to test it. I will have to say that ubuntu has come along way since I started using it. Since Hardy 8.04.2 I havent ran into too many instances of unrecognized hardware.

To finish off the conversion I set Josh [my brother in law] up with a few snazzy themes and icons. Then I gave him the run down on the basics of getting used to the gui part and let him loose. I plan to post updates to this story as I see how the creature reacts to his new environment. But for now, its another conversion gone smoothly.

happy tuxing :)

Beautiful Ubuntu Wallpapers

2009-10-14T20:19:00.001-07:00

HotAmr is a graphic artist who has turned out some of the most beautiful Linux wallpapers. He was kind enough to create one for me a while back to compliment a gtk theme that I created, so I thought his work deserved a special spot here on Monkey-Poo.

So here they are in no particular order, download links provided. You can also check out his work at deviantart.

“Ubuntu feel at home”

download "feel at home"[here]

“3D Ubuntu”

download "3D" [here]

“Gnome”

download "Gnome" [here]

“Gnome Blue One....”

download "blue one" [here]

Hulu Desktop Linux

2009-10-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

Hulu Linux Desktop Beta

If your like me, you like to keep up with your favorite shows on your own time. Enter the world of online streaming video. My favorite is Hulu, mainly because there is no paid membership required and the site keeps up with most shows only a day behind the television schedule. Hulu has recently released the Hulu Desktop which is an interesting app that serves up the site's content in a pretty little [or fullscreen-box] on your desktop. Best of all there is a linux debian package.

My Experience:

Here is the setting-
I chose to test it on my Desktop-PC running ubuntu 9.04 x86, with ATI Radeon 2400 HD [using latest ati-site driver revision], with 2GB of ram and core2-duo, Direct connection via ethernet to cable modem. This set up should grant the most desirable platform for the app [compared to my other options].

a few other notes- the desktop is compiz enabled with emerald as the window manager.

As Long as the app was kept to its own window the app ran smoothly with emerald enabled. The fullscreen is very nice but i would recomend disabling compositing before using it. But if you like to watch your movies in their own window while doing other activities like, i dont know--comletely recompiling the gnome toolbar to get rid of that silly little arrow that covers up your beautiful custom main menu icon--, then you will be happy with it having its own window. I noticed that the buffering was improved by using the app as opposed to watching the ad ridden site. I was able to browse firefox and use synaptic while the app was open without any odd behavior.

Though its still in beta stage i have gotten hours of trouble free use from it over the past few days. Kudos to Hulu.
you can download Hulu Desktop Here.

Happy Tuxing! ;)