tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88018918138532323232024-03-12T16:09:41.678-07:00Linux Hacks and FixesLord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-77284682516300043702013-04-25T06:14:00.003-07:002013-04-25T06:15:03.204-07:00How to Slow Down your Mouse Pointer<b>Quite frankly, this post shouldn't even exist.</b> Every operating system, except some recent Linux flavors, has always had a mouse speed option so that you can speed up or slow down your mouse. However, the recent KDE's (and from reading a bunch of forum posts, it looks like Gnome may also be affected) do not have this option.<br />
<br />
Instead there is an option for "Mouse Acceleration" in the KDE Control Panel. As I understand it, once your mouse moves more than a certain number of pixels (which is also adjustable), the acceleration kicks in and speeds up the mouse. The idea is that normally, your mouse moves at a 1-to-1 ratio, which is usually too slow for large screens, but it is good for clicking on icons, selecting text, and other fine detail work. Once your mouse moves more than the threshold number of pixels, acceleration kicks in and now it moves at a faster 2-to-1 ratio (or whatever you set it to) and you can quickly move from one side of the screen to the other.<br />
<br />
But since there is no velocity (or speed or resolution) control, if your mouse doesn't move at the right speed in the 1-to-1 mode, what you have to do is turn the threshold down to 1 pixel (so it's always on) and then adjust the acceleration. The problem is that if you have a high DPI mouse (mine is 5700dpi), KDE will let you set an acceleration down to a 0.1-to-1 ratio, but the setting has no effect whatsoever.<br />
<br />
<b>There are quite a few forums posts out there with "solutions" that don't work.</b> One involves modifying xorg.conf, which doesn't even exist on most systems anymore thanks to auto-detection and it requires root permissions. But even so, I couldn't make it work. Another suggestion is to use xset, but again, I made no headway.<br />
<br />
<b>The solution is to use xinput.</b> Open up a console and just run xinput with no options:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">xinput</span></span></blockquote>
<br />
You'll see a list of all of the input devices on your system, along with their ID's. My mouse showed up with two different ID's, so if this happens to you, here's how to figure out which one to change. Execute the following for each ID:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">xinput set-prop ID 'Evdev Axes Swap' 1</span></span></blockquote>
<br />
where ID is the numeric ID you want to try. Move the mouse after each time you run the command. When pushing the mouse up makes the pointer move left, you've found the right one. Reset the axes swap using:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">xinput set-prop ID 'Evdev Axes Swap' 0</span></span></blockquote>
<br />
Now, you need to set the deceleration. Do this with:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">xinput set-prop ID 'Device Accel Constant Deceleration' N.N</span></span></blockquote>
<br />
where N.N is the slowdown to apply. 1.0 is the minimum (fastest) and you can go as large as you like. For me, 1.5 was just about perfect. Try several values until you find one that you like.<br />
<br />
Finally, you need to make sure this command runs every time you log in, so add it to the end of ~/.profile . Note that this will only run after you log in, so if you use a log in screen, the mouse pointer speed will be unaffected there.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-1106891195796960322013-03-21T05:46:00.001-07:002013-03-21T05:46:06.530-07:00Quick Fix: Bad CodepageI just tried to plug my digital camera into my computer and when I did, Dolphin gave me a cryptic error message:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sd<span style="font-size: x-small;">b1</span>,<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span>missing codepage or helper program, or other error</span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">. </span>In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span>dmesg | tail or so</span></span></blockquote>
Considering that I've used this camera with the computer plenty of times before, I assumed that this error message meant that the flash card was corrupted. I did an fdisk, but it didn't find anything wrong. Doing a "dmesg | tail", as the message suggested, gave me:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><code>FAT-fs (sdb1): codepage cp437 not found</code></span></span></blockquote>
<code><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Codepage<span style="font-size: small;">s are </span>part<span style="font-size: small;"> of the <span style="font-size: small;">kernel, so this <span style="font-size: small;">was actually the <span style="font-size: small;">hint I needed. The problem was that the kernel had been updated<span style="font-size: small;">, but the system hadn't been rebooted. After a quick reboot, the pro<span style="font-size: small;">blem went away.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></code><br />
<br />
<code><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The l<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">esson</span> is that even i<span style="font-size: small;">n Linux, sometimes a good<span style="font-size: small;">, clean re<span style="font-size: small;">start is all that's needed to fix <span style="font-size: small;">a problem.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></code>Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-70959437714455352032013-03-18T07:45:00.000-07:002013-03-18T07:50:03.128-07:00Making a Narrated LibreOffice Impress (PowerPoint) Video using LinuxIn my work, PowerPoint presentations are used a lot and recently, the trend recently has been to re-distribute these presentations as videos with audio narration so that others may watch it later. Some of the videos are of particularly poor quality with the audio and video coming from a camcorder pointed at the screen during the live presentation. I'm going to show you how to make a quality video using only LibreOffice Impress, FFmpeg, and KSnapshot.<br />
<br />
These videos are handy for work, for creating video reviews for Newegg, and for creating how-to videos for YouTube. Especially since LibreOffice presentations can contain images, animations, and videos, you can really create some amazingly useful videos with this technique. <br />
<br />
From a hardware side, you will need a decent microphone, of course. And if you have a multi-monitor setup it will make things easier during the recording of the video, but it's in no way necessary. The broad steps are:<br />
<ul>
<li>Create the presentation.</li>
<li>Record it.</li>
<li>Clean it up and publish it.</li>
</ul>
So lets get started.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>1. Get the tools.</b><br />
<br />
Most openSUSE distributions will likely already include the tools you'll need. But as a double-check, execute from the commandline:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">sudo zypper in libreoffice-impress ffmpeg ksnapshot kmix</span></span></blockquote>
KSnapshot and KMix only apply if you're using KDE. If you're using another desktop environment, then just make sure you have an audio mixer (or volume control) and a tool that can take screenshots.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>2. Create the slides.</b><br />
I won't go into any great detail about creating the slides other than to say that you should try and consider all of your users' needs. Some people might be watching on a cellphone, so keep the fonts and images big and legible. Some people might be hard-of-hearing, so make sure that the slides are at least somewhat self-descriptive. And some people might be color blind or have low vision, so use a high contrast color scheme. By taking your users' needs into account, you'll make your video more accessible and by extension, more useful.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>3. Create the narration.</b><br />
<br />
In Impress, there is a Notes tab above your slide. Here you can enter in a script to read during each slide. If you have a multi-monitor setup, then you can have the presentation on one screen for recording and your notes on the other. If you don't, then you can print out the notes (under Print, change Print Slides to Print Notes). Having a script will reduce the number of "ums" and "uhs", keep you on track, increase the professionalism of the video, and ultimately reduce the length, since you're not trying to remember what to say next.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>4. Recording the video.</b><br />
It's time to record the actual video. First, make sure that your hardware is ready. From an audio standpoint, you'll need to test out your microphone. The easiest way to do this is to use an existing audio program on your computer. I use Audacity for this and Skype works too. You can also find Flash websites online that will let you test your mic.<br />
<br />
If your mic is part of a headset, then the boom should be to the side of your mouth. Putting it in front will make your breathing audible.<br />
<br />
In KMix, adjust the microphone volume under Capture Devices. It should be approximately halfway. A program like Audacity is great for audio testing because it lets you see the waveform and you can see if your audio is clipping (because it is too loud).<br />
<br />
Once you have your audio setup, get the room ready. You want to minimize all noise. Most microphones are very sensitive to external noises such as a TV on in the next room, your air conditioning, the neighbor's dog, etc. Sometimes you just can't record when you want to and you have to wait until everything else is quiet.<br />
<br />
Recording the video with FFmpeg is really simple:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">ffmpeg -f alsa -ac 1 -i default -f x11grab -r 20 -i :0.0 -sameq Original.mpg</span></span></blockquote>
Once you're done recording, press q to stop.<br />
<br />
The -f switch says to record audio from Alsa. -ac sets the audio to one channel (mono). -i says to use the default audio source.<br />
<br />
The second -f switch says to record video from x11 (i.e., your desktop). -r sets the frame rate; you don't need full motion video for a presentation, so slightly lower is okay. If you want, you can set this to 30, but the file size will be larger. -i sets the x11 desktop to record. -sameq sets the quantizer. If you have a multi-monitor setup like me, then you'll need a more complicated ffmpeg commandline. My monitor setup looks like this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqvvIj0coX-XsX9roMc06Xajnxbc-1BeGP4FCH7HfQK41dq1UZQG9GGJ-qjYMHGWR3h-qOTQNhzqknFBwic4ABidXMCJvoJ5H590GcUS19aeN3_wBfJr0rlfY5CYhaTdJcyqaKMJjkTHJw/s1600/Screenshot2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqvvIj0coX-XsX9roMc06Xajnxbc-1BeGP4FCH7HfQK41dq1UZQG9GGJ-qjYMHGWR3h-qOTQNhzqknFBwic4ABidXMCJvoJ5H590GcUS19aeN3_wBfJr0rlfY5CYhaTdJcyqaKMJjkTHJw/s400/Screenshot2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
If I want to record from the second monitor, then I want to record a 1280x1024 window that has its origin at (1920,56). The FFmpeg command to do this is:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">ffmpeg -f alsa -ac 1 -i default -f x11grab -s 1280x1024 -r 20 -i :0.0+1920,56 -sameq <span style="font-size: x-small;">Original</span>.mpg</span></span></blockquote>
Once you start recording, start the slide show (F5) and go through the slides. Once you are done, press q in the FFmpeg terminal to end the recording. Don't worry if you recorded a few seconds of getting ready at the beginning; getting rid of the garbage at the ends of the of video is the next step.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>5. Trimming the video.</b><br />
<br />
When you went to record the video, you captured a few seconds of junk at the beginning and at the end (you know, where you were making the presentation fullscreen and getting ready to speak). Now, we're going to trim that off so that we're left with the pure video.<br />
<br />
There are a lot of nice, high-quality video editing applications for Linux, but since all we want to do is trim a few seconds of video, we're going to do it with FFmpeg.<br />
<br />
First, you'll need to figure out how many seconds of video you want to trim at the beginning and how long the entire video should be. For example, if the original video is exactly six minutes long and there is 10 seconds of junk at the beginning and 15 seconds at the end, then the final video should be 5:35 in length.<br />
<br />
You'll do this with FFmpeg with the following command:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">ffmpeg -i Original.mpg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss 00:00:10 -t 00:05:35 Trimmed.mpg </span></span></blockquote>
This command is actually pretty fast and it should be complete in under a minute.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>6. Publishing the video.</b><br />
<br />
<u>Newegg.com</u><br />
<br />
If you're publishing a video review on Newegg, they require that the final video be under 100MB. You can ensure the file is small enough with FFmpeg:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">ffmpeg -i Trimmed.mpg -fs 100M <span style="font-size: x-small;">100MBVersion</span>.mpg</span></span></blockquote>
The -fs switch specifies the maximum size of the final video and it provides a coarse way of controlling the quality as well. If you final video was going to be smaller than 100MB anyway, then this switch has no effect.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u>YouTube.com</u><br />
<br />
Publishing to YouTube is really straightforward and I won't go over it in detail here. Once you have the video up, you can then get an <embed></embed> code from the video page for embedding it in your own webpage.<br />
<br />
The only detail that you really need to pay attention to is the thumbnail. The thumbnail is what is shown in the embedded YouTube windows before the user clicks play and it is also what is shown in the search results on YouTube.com. YouTube grabs some random frames of your video and offers them up as possible thumbnails, however the frames will be from the middle of your video and in most cases, one of the first slides will be the one you want for the thumbnail. Grab a screenshot using KSnapshot (press the "print screen" button on your keyboard to fire it up). The "select rectangular region" option of KSnapshot is a useful way to snip out a section of a slide. Once you have the thumbnail you want, you can upload it to YouTube for use with your video.<br />
<br />
<u>Direct Distribution</u><br />
<br />
If you're going to share the video file with others, you might want to cut down the resolution first. This will give you a much smaller file size. If the original video was 1600x1200, you can cut it to a
quarter (800x600) using:<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">ffmpeg -i Trimmed.mpg -s 800x600 QuarterSized.mpg</span></span></blockquote>
I have found that the resulting video's file size is usually less than a quarter of the original - about 20% is typical.<br />
<br />
<br />
Then, you need to publish it. The file sharing service is up to you. I like Dropbox for work, but for this example, I've posted my results to Mega (see the next section).<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>7. The final results</b><br />
<br />
So here's an example video I made. The quarter sized version is available for download here:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://mega.co.nz/#!JlFWWCID!c8yS1yYefF9YULe_lMs7YWHgQxkcc-dOHxxmaoQi6Kw" target="_blank">Download Video (1.1MB)</a> </blockquote>
And here's the embedded YouTube version:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9EyAMsTUsLE" width="420"></iframe>
</div>
<br />Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-74930648826982029032013-03-15T05:39:00.002-07:002013-03-15T06:32:12.624-07:00openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop FixesThis is the first in a series of posts that I plan to do on various fixes that I usually apply to a vanilla openSUSE install.<br />
<br />
Today, I'm going to focus on improvements to the default desktop experience. I'm using the KDE desktop on a fresh install. A lot of what I do is personal preference, so you probably won't want to do everything I do, but I try to explain why I'm making each change.<br />
<br />
The initial desktop looks like this (click on any picture to view it fullsize):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDKOnIKypdiHbXjo2wR6UGl0_3C6RRH4Rs1kaRfESA_zJpvbONUX2pWe-Al_CEcsZRKZ47gmeitOHgjnvzX67t_hJELF-rgM2R9PjA2g2KEiLOSKCDAl4m4mVwIWDK7mxuo9fukBjB_iey/s1600/snapshot1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="openSUSE 12.3 - Default KDE Desktop" border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDKOnIKypdiHbXjo2wR6UGl0_3C6RRH4Rs1kaRfESA_zJpvbONUX2pWe-Al_CEcsZRKZ47gmeitOHgjnvzX67t_hJELF-rgM2R9PjA2g2KEiLOSKCDAl4m4mVwIWDK7mxuo9fukBjB_iey/s400/snapshot1.png" title="openSUSE 12.3 - Default KDE Desktop" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Some of the things I don't like are:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>It's too dark with the black background. It looks okay on my desktop, but on my fairly dim laptop screen, it's just too dark.</li>
<li>I don't like having a bunch of icons on my desktop. Launchers belong in the task panel or the system menu.</li>
<li>Why is the "openSUSE" and "KInfoCenter" icons doing on the desktop? Most people won't be using them regularly, so why have them?</li>
<li>The Desktop "tag" in the top-right corner just bugs me.</li>
<li>The task panel is too cluttered with a bunch of icons. </li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>1. Remove the floating frame.</b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQx00sqybnjFP2QD8B0ut8cbp31SIHw-8MzM93TA8duth5kb_YoTbCq00-SfAYJiF_8coLTiJIBAkcsHUMCJuLa4xzI1tl6Gy11i5LZFIocIgHsUUHahmNtANxSxTvjsKeYfTca98_38Tn/s1600/snapshot2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="openSUSE 12.3 - Removing the floating frame" border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQx00sqybnjFP2QD8B0ut8cbp31SIHw-8MzM93TA8duth5kb_YoTbCq00-SfAYJiF_8coLTiJIBAkcsHUMCJuLa4xzI1tl6Gy11i5LZFIocIgHsUUHahmNtANxSxTvjsKeYfTca98_38Tn/s400/snapshot2.png" title="openSUSE 12.3 - Removing the floating frame" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
To get rid of the floating frame, move your mouse over by the right edge and a toolbar will appear. Click the 'x' at the bottom, which I've highlighted in the picture. If the toolbar doesn't appear, then your widgets are locked. Anywhere in the task panel at the bottom, right-click and choose "Unlock widgets".<br />
<br />
<b>2. Change the desktop and background.</b><br />
<br />
I want the desktop to display the contents of the Desktop folder and I want a lighter background. Right-click on the desktop and choose the bottom option (most likely "Default Desktop Settings"). Under View, change Layout to "Folder View" and click apply. Under Location (it's a new option on the left), make sure that "Show the Desktop folder" is selected.<br />
<br />
For the background, go back to View and select a pleasant background. I chose "Air". Click OK.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWwiobsZdlqwaUQfUPkPUZkXnLUBo4EJ47UHcInaB2BiQ-eUsNBC-G7Am4l3WD5vCWrZJt9zGUsIpgshYUo_2TBfuP1irOCfJIMb88dnqOVKl4fINHed_7jdLKfu2YHWmGL9SUMkQ9GG95/s1600/snapshot3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop with Folder View and a lighter background" border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWwiobsZdlqwaUQfUPkPUZkXnLUBo4EJ47UHcInaB2BiQ-eUsNBC-G7Am4l3WD5vCWrZJt9zGUsIpgshYUo_2TBfuP1irOCfJIMb88dnqOVKl4fINHed_7jdLKfu2YHWmGL9SUMkQ9GG95/s400/snapshot3.png" title="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop with Folder View and a lighter background" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<b>3. Remove the desktop icons.</b><br />
<br />
Just select and delete all of the desktop icons.<br />
<br />
<b>4. Remove unnecessary task panel icons.</b><br />
<br />
Take a look at all of the icons in the task panel:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcVIF3LZBiqJAAqSFwEkdQsZEasEL4e_hG6nxxF3q3ozXbzeRhHrClYent8fzrWAMMZn-P_qSkR257jDpCsL_ewsvWxVxFKLWwGglrnCF6AUt-cEgRkQwP5ZKYRD76Mp-LeiwHW4WTat_/s1600/snapshot4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="openSUSE 12.3 - Icons to remove" border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdcVIF3LZBiqJAAqSFwEkdQsZEasEL4e_hG6nxxF3q3ozXbzeRhHrClYent8fzrWAMMZn-P_qSkR257jDpCsL_ewsvWxVxFKLWwGglrnCF6AUt-cEgRkQwP5ZKYRD76Mp-LeiwHW4WTat_/s400/snapshot4.png" title="openSUSE 12.3 - Icons to remove" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The first arrow points to the Activities Manager. While this is a cool KDE feature, I never ever use it, so it has to go. Right-click and choose "Remove this Activities".<br />
<br />
The second arrow points to the launchers for Dolphin (file manager) and Firefox. These launchers act similarly to "pinning" in Windows 7, where the running program replaces the icon. I've never liked this behavior. I'm going to remove these launchers and then replace them later with quick launch icons, which are just buttons to launch the program. It also happens to be that quick launch icons are larger, which I also like. Right-click on each launcher and select "Remove This Launcher".<br />
<br />
Next up are the icons in the system tray. The first one, which looks like scissors, is Klipper. Klipper is a cool program that offers some advanced copy/paste functionality, but like Activities, I never use it, so its going away. Right-click on it, choose "Quit" and then choose "Do not start".<br />
<br />
I don't use Bluetooth with my laptop, so I'm going to remove this icon too. You can restore it later from the KDE control panel. Right-click and choose "Configure Bluetooth". Then un-check "Enable KDE Bluetooth Integration". Click "OK".<br />
<br />
Finally, let's get rid of Nepomuk. It provides a search index, but again, I never use it, so it's going away. The icon for it isn't visible by default, so click on the up-arrow in the system tray and right-click on "Desktop Search File Indexing" and choose "Configure File Indexing". Un-check "Enable Nepomuk Semantic Desktop" and click "OK". Then go back to the icon, right-click, and choose "Quit" (and then confirm by clicking "Quit" in the new window).<br />
<br />
Finally, I want to get rid of that Desktop "tag" in the top-right corner of the screen. Click and drag it to the top-left corner of the screen and it will become much smaller and it's far less likely to be accidentally clicked on if it's over there. I would love to remove it, but I haven't found a way yet.<br />
<br />
Your desktop now looks like this:<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGt1N1MQo9k3_PjR8fKfO8G6TyfK1OaZCJcY17hGhFbOn1VTx8RFMZVPdnorMTuG7mFptXSmwBMHlZRy1jxlmkyWbMeMFR60BSZ9gNzvsli1351QRdbGW2_cpqNgRURmBairr9NxbN80eK/s1600/snapshot6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop without unnecessary icons" border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGt1N1MQo9k3_PjR8fKfO8G6TyfK1OaZCJcY17hGhFbOn1VTx8RFMZVPdnorMTuG7mFptXSmwBMHlZRy1jxlmkyWbMeMFR60BSZ9gNzvsli1351QRdbGW2_cpqNgRURmBairr9NxbN80eK/s400/snapshot6.png" title="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop without unnecessary icons" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>5. Add in quick launch icons.</b><br />
<br />
Open the system menu and drag down icons for the programs you're going to use the most. I selected Dolphin (file manager), Firefox, and the LibreOffice launcher. In order to get them to drop into the task panel, I had to position the mouse on the left between the green gecko system menu icon and the desktop chooser icon. I think this may be a bug, since you should be able to drop the icons anywhere. Also, I chose the LibreOffice launcher (called just "LibreOffice" in the system menu) instead of the any of the specific LibreOffice program (Writer, Draw, Calc, etc) since the launcher can launch them all.<br />
<br />
I also like to add one widget to my desktop - the System Load Viewer. Nothing is more annoying than an unresponsive system and the load viewer allows you to see CPU and memory usage at a glance. If you click to start a program and nothing appears to be happening, the load viewer might show you that the CPU is at 100% indicating that it is indeed loading. Click the golden icon at the right end of the task panel and then click "Add Widgets" in the panel that appears. Search for "System Load Viewer" and double-click it when you see it. Once it's added to your task panel, you'll see it and there will be a green checkmark in the widget panel. Click the golden icon twice to close the widget and configuration panels.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuvBLVFn5LsPoujQyCubUIf4ulbWgCU6046eYynK6qyPR8007LMAiwUU6V17UwG_nQPktxmGv3nXqhHeZTlgi1QNaKuqm2n7ax5Vn_NHSqw9TWy3VImfCzzCLe7x7jfVG5aBg80n36Kdrn/s1600/snapshot7.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop with quick launch icons and the system load viewer" border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuvBLVFn5LsPoujQyCubUIf4ulbWgCU6046eYynK6qyPR8007LMAiwUU6V17UwG_nQPktxmGv3nXqhHeZTlgi1QNaKuqm2n7ax5Vn_NHSqw9TWy3VImfCzzCLe7x7jfVG5aBg80n36Kdrn/s400/snapshot7.png" title="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop with quick launch icons and the system load viewer" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
One other tweak: I don't like the icon for LibreOffice. It's too plain, so I'm going to replace it with the one for LibreOffice Writer. Right-click on the icon and choose "Icon Settings". In the window that appears, click on the icon, then search for "Libre" and choose the Writer icon.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihjy-DQW80KvqWmv2HncDw1Zsc7oJ5q-okxXFH9YAhIpOxJ32JQUKZGZ9WWH0Q7JeSXXeNXuBFuNU-Fg6a64JeFb872BWptgldUahLJM3SyOuy_ltAX2eYmtiea8PeClge819Ri3NG-fOQ/s1600/snapshot8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop with the LibreOffice Writer icon" border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihjy-DQW80KvqWmv2HncDw1Zsc7oJ5q-okxXFH9YAhIpOxJ32JQUKZGZ9WWH0Q7JeSXXeNXuBFuNU-Fg6a64JeFb872BWptgldUahLJM3SyOuy_ltAX2eYmtiea8PeClge819Ri3NG-fOQ/s400/snapshot8.png" title="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop with the LibreOffice Writer icon" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>6. Rearrange the icons to your liking.</b><br />
<br />
Finally, it's time to place everything where you want it. Click the golden icon at the right end of the task panel to open the configuration panel. With that new panel open, you can drag and drop the icons in the task panel.<br />
<br />
I like to have the icons in the following order:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>System menu (green gecko button)</li>
<li>Quick launchers</li>
<ul>
<li>Dolphin</li>
<li>LibreOffice</li>
<li>Firefox</li>
</ul>
<li>Desktop chooser</li>
<li>Task manager</li>
<li>System Load Viewer</li>
<li>System Tray</li>
<li>Clock</li>
</ul>
Once you have everything where you want it, right-click on the golden icon and choose "Lock Widgets". This will prevent further (and accidental) changes. If you ever need to make a change, right-click anywhere in the task panel and choose "Unlock Widgets".<br />
<br />
<b>7. System menu tweak</b><br />
<br />
One thing that
openSUSE has gotten wrong for the last few versions is that the System
Menu is just a hair too short and it, by default, requires scrolling on
the Favorites tab. One option is to remove an icon from Favorites, but I
just like to increase the height a bit. Up in the top-right corner of
the menu is place to grab and adjust the size.<br />
<br />
<br />
There you go, a clean and functional KDE desktop:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbdZRhI2akLi7uKo-THfiG1sTeq5GwCUz9ZWNje_8_3AL22MZ7eGI6bJhiqDS7TIg1n2XC-CTVLB8lUVl530CJlC9rJG826kQPL6KxgwwieNMcP2xuwiHjJ3SU2x1Up8lsdDo4RHkCJ9Fs/s1600/snapshot9.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop with all of the changes" border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbdZRhI2akLi7uKo-THfiG1sTeq5GwCUz9ZWNje_8_3AL22MZ7eGI6bJhiqDS7TIg1n2XC-CTVLB8lUVl530CJlC9rJG826kQPL6KxgwwieNMcP2xuwiHjJ3SU2x1Up8lsdDo4RHkCJ9Fs/s400/snapshot9.png" title="openSUSE 12.3 - Desktop with all of the changes" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-79636627602818405912013-03-14T15:50:00.001-07:002013-03-14T15:51:47.552-07:00openSUSE 12.3 is here!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhXG-ZYLLw9U6RfJpflHdd9hLWp-AkRmIzeZZfXGynZE8DBwFN1tF5Akl63LEpj8B9c8xK3eFpCOCK_V0F3ZP0o2igZKI_0LnxV0vzm1J-j6DYrfyhtovKIsPv3ecwf-6EPwJgZI88VrGQ/s1600/official-logo-color.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhXG-ZYLLw9U6RfJpflHdd9hLWp-AkRmIzeZZfXGynZE8DBwFN1tF5Akl63LEpj8B9c8xK3eFpCOCK_V0F3ZP0o2igZKI_0LnxV0vzm1J-j6DYrfyhtovKIsPv3ecwf-6EPwJgZI88VrGQ/s320/official-logo-color.png" title="openSUSE logo" width="320" /></a></div>
openSUSE 12.3 was released on March 14th and it is awesome. So far, I've installed it on six of my machines and with the exception of one reboot that failed, I have had no problems.<br />
<br />
You can grab the ISOs here: <a href="http://software.opensuse.org/123/en" target="_blank">http://software.opensuse.org/123/en</a><br />
<br />
I suggest you grab the torrent and download that way. As of right now, there are nearly a thousand seeds for the 64-bit version and a bit over 500 for the 32-bit version, ensuring that your download will be very fast.<br />
<br />
The <a href="https://news.opensuse.org/2013/03/13/opensuse-12-3-free-open-and-awesome/" target="_blank">release announcement</a> goes over all of the changes, but some of the ones that I'm excited about are:<br />
<ul>
<li>Version 3.7 of the Kernel</li>
<li>PulseAudio 3 (with better Bluetooth audio support)</li>
<li>UEFI support (I haven't tested this yet)</li>
<li>KDE 4.10, which is getting to be a very nice desktop environment</li>
<li>MariaDB (instead of Oracle's MySQL)</li>
</ul>
They have also released the following introduction to KDE video, which explains a lot of the features and tricks to using KDE effectively. I've been using KDE for around 12 years and even I learned a couple of things that I didn't know already.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UqHppnzlXN4" width="560"></iframe> </div>
Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-9947088266932490382013-02-18T09:38:00.001-08:002013-02-18T09:39:03.556-08:00Update: Logitech F710 GamepadIn my previous posts, I <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-logitech-f710-gamepad.html">reviewed the Logitech F710 gamepad</a> and I commented on <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2013/02/logitech-support.html">the lousy support I received from Logitech</a>. While I recommended the gamepad before, I can no longer do so. Originally, when I tested the gamepad, I did so with the gamepad only a couple of feet from the computer. However, I'm using this gamepad to play games on my HTPC which means that the signal has to travel about 8 feet from the front of the computer to my couch. I've had tons of intermittent signal drops. When this happens, the controller is unresponsive and then the mode light blinks when the gamepad gets signal again. 8 feet and line-of-sight should be no problem, but it is.<br />
<br />
I've tried all of the normal things, like checking the batteries and trying it on other computers, but the fact is that the wireless range on this controller is pathetic.<br />
<br />
Considering that I found two-and-a-half year old <a href="http://forums.logitech.com/t5/PC-Gaming/Wireless-Gamepad-F710-losing-connection/td-p/511610" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">forum posts on Logitech's website describing the same problem</a>, this seems to be a design flaw that Logitech doesn't seem interested in fixing. Normally, I'd contact support, but as you saw in my previous post, you can't expect much help there either.<br />
<br />
The point is that if you want a good gaming controller, I would suggest you steer clear of Logitech's offerings and see what Microsoft or Razer have available.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-17654501317898715822013-02-16T05:08:00.000-08:002013-02-18T09:39:52.435-08:00The Logitech F710 GamepadUPDATE (2/18): <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2013/02/in-my-previous-posts-i-reviewed.html">See my new post on the wireless range</a>. <br />
<br />
This is part one of a two part post. This part focuses on the gamepad itself, while <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2013/02/logitech-support.html">part 2 is a look at the absolutely terrible customer service</a> I received from Logitech.<br />
<br />
Once upon a time, I bought a Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht_RFkv_IjmSuqNZADTGDHCSVyNqMbnHtfTdL41vx7tpYVY47YMdwtmCUxHkujVJlu3YZZNvushKAbdcqnn6hQ88HkvE3xuLrQJT-wFTJIlz22O4wwOqUmKfM3zQTux_HUHSisUP4Q-qEg/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht_RFkv_IjmSuqNZADTGDHCSVyNqMbnHtfTdL41vx7tpYVY47YMdwtmCUxHkujVJlu3YZZNvushKAbdcqnn6hQ88HkvE3xuLrQJT-wFTJIlz22O4wwOqUmKfM3zQTux_HUHSisUP4Q-qEg/s320/1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
It was great. I liked the button layout, the feel in my hands, the weight, everything. It used DirectInput at the driver level and it worked well in both Windows and Linux.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_A25eCrn2tcbHXzrTLAyt0Ovlx9RbXLSIvMpK7o0UFc_AQu0XbqFQ2AvMjYYrIix43w_iKxo6jEm5gHWd0unq9NI-TUtW69xrJob_bOmgKi10kkhJoIS4QaQYKKS6Z7OwJUGN3v29lhp2/s1600/1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_A25eCrn2tcbHXzrTLAyt0Ovlx9RbXLSIvMpK7o0UFc_AQu0XbqFQ2AvMjYYrIix43w_iKxo6jEm5gHWd0unq9NI-TUtW69xrJob_bOmgKi10kkhJoIS4QaQYKKS6Z7OwJUGN3v29lhp2/s400/1.png" width="364" /></a></div>
And then Microsoft started pushing a new input method, XInput, which was incompatible with DirectInput and they started selling the XBox 360 Controller for Windows. Many newer games only support XInput. Logitech could have extended support for XInput games to the Rumblepad 2 through a driver update, but they decided to release a new series of gamepads instead. The flagship of this new series is the F710.<br />
Look familiar? It should. It's the Rumblepad 2 all over again. The only real difference is that there is now a physical switch on the back that changes it from DirectInput to XInput mode. So, I bought one and it, as the Rumblepad before, worked perfectly in Linux.<br />
<br />
Windows was another story.<br />
<br />
I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with Service Pack 1 installed. That is the absolute "best" version of Windows you can have right now for gaming. Everything should be compatible with it. And I use this computer for gaming and gaming only, so the firewall is shut off and there is no anti-virus software. In other words, I've done everything I can to make sure that this computer is as compatible with everything as it can be.<br />
<br />
So I plug in my F710, install the drivers off of the included CD and I find that when the switch on the controller is set to XInput, Windows can't find the driver to make it work. So, I check the manual and it says that when set to XInput, the drivers will be installed automatically.<br />
<br />
Just to verify, I tried playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, which according to Logitech's own <a href="http://www.logitech.com/en-us/game-gear/articles/compatible-gamepad-games" target="_blank">compatibility page</a>, should work in XInput mode. Nope, nothing. I finally managed to make it work by force installing the XBox 360 controller driver. To do so, tell Windows you
want to install a driver from off your hard drive, then ask it for a
list of all drivers, select all drivers, select Microsoft as the
manufacturer and then "XBox 360 Controller" is one of the last entries
in the hardware list.<br />
<br />
In the middle of the process of figuring this out, I emailed Logitech's customer service to see if they could help. That exchange is the focus of my next post.<br />
<br />
In the end, I'm glad I got this controller and it is awesome. But it shouldn't have been so much work to make it work.<br />
<br />
UPDATE (2/18): <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2013/02/in-my-previous-posts-i-reviewed.html">See my new post on the wireless range</a>. Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-16503357749891698132013-02-16T05:06:00.004-08:002013-02-16T05:14:11.037-08:00Logitech SupportIn my <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-logitech-f710-gamepad.html">last post</a>, I detailed the trouble it was to get my new Logitech F710 gamepad to work as advertised. When I first encountered trouble, I fired off an email (via Logitech's web form) to their support department. In the interim between my email and their first reply, I managed to fix the problem, but I decided to go ahead and continue to play the role of confused customer to see how quickly Logitech would resolve the problem.<br />
<br />
Recall, the issue is that in order to get the Logitech F710 to work, you must force the installation of the XBox 360 controller driver. Logitech does not supply the correct driver with their device and they do not provide instructions on how to use the Microsoft one.<br />
<br />
My first email:<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">From: Lord Byron II</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">Sent: 1/10/2013 7:04PM</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">Message: Whenever I switch the gamepad from DirectInput to XInput, it loses
connection with the PC and I must use the F710 re-connection program to
re-establish the connection. Further, the Logitech game profiler
software can't find the Gamepad when it is in XInput mode and Windows
shows the driver to not be installed when it is in XInput mode.</span></i><br />
<br />
<br />
The condensed nature of my message is due to the restrictions of sending a message through their web form. Had they supplied a real email address, I would have sent a longer, more detailed message, but this does get the point across. I received an almost instantaneously reply from their automated system with a couple of unhelpful links and a promise of a reply within 48 hours. I ended up getting a reply from a human <b>6.5 days</b> later:<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">From: Logitech Support</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">Received: 1/17/2013 11:45AM</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">Message:<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span>Thank you for contacting the Logitech Customer Care
Team. My name is Jay-R, and I am glad to assist you. Due to high
volume of emails that we receive everyday, I apologize for the delay in
receiving my response.<br /><br />Your support reference number is: 130111-003764. Your reference number is a way for us to track your support request. <br /><br />Please indicate or mention your support reference number for quick and future reference of this particular case.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;">F</span>rom your e-mail, I understand that whenever you switch your Logitech
Wireless Gamepad F710 to Xinput, it loses connection to your computer
and your Logitech Profiler cannot find it. <br />I do apologize for the inconvenience that you've had with the
product. I will certainly do my best to resolve your concern.<br /><br />About
your inquiry, I would like to inform you that the Xinput refers only to
Xbox 360. If you are going to use it on your computer, you should
always use the Dinput. You can also use the Xinput on your computer if
your computer has an Xbox driver. <br /><br />If you have any additional questions, please feel free to visit our website at <a href="http://www.logitech.com/" target="_blank">http://www.logitech.com</a>, or reply to this e-mail. <br /><br />If you need assistance with logging into your account, please click on this link: <a href="http://logitech-en/" target="_blank">http://logitech-en</a>- amr.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17111.<br /><br />Thank you for choosing Logitech.</span></i><br />
<br />
<br />
He incorrectly states that the XInput switch is for use with the XBox 360. However, the gamepad is not an XBox 360 gamepad. He also states that I can use XInput if I have "an Xbox driver". But he gives no instructions and no download link. I replied back with links to Logitech's website stating that the controller does work with Windows in XInput mode and that I need a link to the driver. After only nine hours, I get a reply:<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">From: Logitech Support</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Received: 1/21/2013 3:30AM</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Message:<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span>Thank you for contacting Logitech Customer Care again and I do apologize for the confusion. <br /><br />XInput
is the preinstalled, modern gamepad standard on Windows 7 and Vista. It
can also be installed on Windows XP (SP1 or greater).<br />Use XInput to
play games in Windows whenever possible. This input mode is intended to
make the gamepad work natively with modern games.<br />If you're playing a
new game with the F310 gamepad, we suggest you set the Input Mode
switch to "X". If you want to customize the input functionality, try
using DirectInput mode instead.<br /><br />Thank you for choosing Logitech!</span></i></span><br />
<br />
<br />
Now, he correctly states that I should be using the XInput mode, but still doesn't give me a driver link or instructions. He also talks about Windows Vista and XP, despite my having told him twice before that I am using Windows 7. I reply with my system specs again and ask him for the required driver. This time, I get a reply back in a little over <b>4 days</b>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">From: Logitech Support</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Received: 1/27/2013 10:42AM</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Message: Thank you for contacting Logitech Customer Care again and we appreciate your reply. <br /><br />You
may need to contact your computer manufacturer and they should provide
you the native driver prior to make the gamepad work. <br /><br />Thank you for choosing Logitech!</i></span></span></span>They want me to contact my computer manufacturer for support with their gamepad! Imagine what would happen if you called Dell/HP/Lenovo and asked for a driver for a gamepad they don't sell or support. They would send you right back to Logitech. In my case, I had built my computer myself and I sent that information back to Logitech.<br />
<br />
At this point, I should add that Logitech closes the support ticket if they don't receive a reply from you within a week.<br />
<br />
The next email I received from Logitech came <b>8 days</b> after my last reply:<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">From: Logitech Support</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">Received: 2/5/2013 4:59PM</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Message: How's everything going?<br /><br />I just wanted to
update you regarding this incident, because you will be receiving an
automated email stating that this will be closed. <br />If I may ask, is
there anything else I can help you with? If your issue has not been
resolved, please do not hesitate to update me.<br />Please respond first before completing the survey so that I can offer further assistance to resolve this matter. <br />I'm looking forward to your update. Have a wonderful day!<br /><br />If you have any additional questions, please feel free to visit our website at <a href="http://www.logitech.com/" target="_blank">http://www.logitech.com</a> or reply to this e-mail. <br />For reference purposes this is your
support reference number: 130111-003764.<br />Thank you for choosing Logitech.</span></i></span></span><br />
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First, this email does not address anything I had written in my previous email and it still does not address the problem I was having. Second, because it took them over a week to respond, a few hours after receiving this email, I received a second automated one stating that the support ticket was now closed.<br />
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In the period of a month, Logitech completely failed to address the problem I was having, offered no usable advice, and eventually closed the ticket because of their own inability to respond in a timely matter. This is no way to run support and I will definitely take this experience into account the next time I'm looking at purchasing a Logitech product.<br />
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<br />Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-18107642338749967942013-02-02T16:23:00.002-08:002013-02-16T08:36:06.268-08:00Recording a (data) Blu-ray from the command lineIn this post, I'll show you how to build an iso image, burn it to a Blu-ray disc, and verify that the burn was successful. These steps are for creating a data Blu-ray. Authoring a movie is a whole different subject, however if you already have the movie files created, then you can use these steps for the burn.<br />
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Nothing here is specific to Blu-ray, so these steps will work equally well with a CD or DVD, but I encountered a bug in K3B that prevents a successful burn using Blu-ray discs.<br />
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But first, let me warn you about the bug that I encountered in K3B, the GUI burner that comes with OpenSUSE. In 12.2 (and at least back to 11.3), K3B will not complete a burn. The (closed) bug report is here: <a href="https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=656502" target="_blank">https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=656502</a>. Basically, with around 100MB of data left to burn, K3B will report an "input/output error" and stop. Some suggestions for working around this problem include using BD-RE (rewritable) discs instead of BD-R discs, which I didn't try. Also suggested was using the original branch of the cdrtools and using the "create image" options, neither of which worked for me. I did get the burn to work via the command line, which is why there is this post.<br />
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Back to the burning. To create a burnable image: <br />
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1. I did use the original branch of the cdrtools. I don't know if this is necessary or not, but I was convinced from what I read about this branch versus the one that ships with OpenSUSE that it was better just to use this one. First, you'll need to download the source from <a href="http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/cdrecord.html" target="_blank">http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/cdrecord.html</a>. I used version 3.01a11. Untar it, and then do a:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">make && sudo make install</span></blockquote>
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You'll need to have make and gcc installed, of course. The binaries are installed in /opt/schily/bin.<br />
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2. Create the image. Say you have the files you want to burn in /home/user/disc/. Then, from /home/user, you would:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">/opt/schily/bin/mkisofs -J -r -iso-level 3 -allow-multidot -allow-leading-dots -joliet-long -o IMAGE.iso disc/</span></blockquote>
The "-J" and "-r" flags just specify how the file names are stored (specifically using Joliet and Rock Ridge) so that your file names are not mangled. "-iso-level 3" enables support for files over 4GB in size. "-allow-multidot" and "-allow-leading-dots" allow files with multiple dots and leading dots in the filename, such as ".myfile.txt". "-joliet-long" provides Joliet support for longer filenames.<br />
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You will need, of course, enough free space on your drive to store an entire copy of the files you wish to burn. It is possible to pipe the output of mkisofs into the burner in the next step, but I prefer to do it in two stages, because you'll need the image in order to perform a MD5sum in order to verify that the burn was successful.<br />
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I also found that each time you create the image, the md5sum is different. I'm not sure why this is, but my guess is that the metadata (most likely something time related) changes. So definitely keep the image until you have either written down or verified the MD5sum. <br />
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3. Burn the image. Stick a blank disc in the drive and then:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">/opt/schily/bin/</span>cdrecord dev=/dev/sr0 -v -pad -data IMAGE.iso</span></blockquote>
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4. Verify the data burned. First of all, this won't work:<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="color: #660000;">md5sum IMAGE.iso<br />dd if=/dev/sr0 | md5sum </span></span></span></blockquote>
The problem is that when you use dd to read the disc, it will invariably read some blank bytes past the end of your data resulting in a completely different MD5sum.<br />
The easiest way to verify the data is like this:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">dd if=/dev/sr0 | cmp IMAGE.iso</span></blockquote>
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If this ends with:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">cmp: EOF on IMAGE.iso</span></blockquote>
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then it was successful. The EOF means that the end of the image file was reached without finding a difference between the two. Everything else on the disc is just padding.<br />
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The only problem here is that you will presumably delete the image at this point and if later, you want to verify that the disc is still intact (say, you want to verify that a backup disc is still in good shape six months from now), you need a way to calculate the MD5sum from the disc. You could do so with:<br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">md5sum IMAGE.iso<br />dd if=/dev/sr0 bs=1 count=IMAGE_SIZE | md5sum </span></span></blockquote>
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where image_size is just the number of bytes of the image ("ls -al IMAGE.iso" will work). However, <b>this will take a very long time</b> (several hours) to complete since it's reading the bytes off of the disc one at a time. You can speed this up significantly by reading the bytes off in powers of 2. As long as the size of your image file is divisible by two, you're set; I believe that all images will always be divisible by 2048 bytes. In my case, my image had a size of 16,378,150,912 bytes, which when divided by 2^14=16384 is 999,643. That left me with a verify command like this:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">md5sum IMAGE.iso<br />dd if=/dev/sr0 bs=16384 count=999643 | md5sum </span></span></blockquote>
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It takes a little bit of math, but it will finish in 10-20 minutes and not hours later.<br />
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Once you have the MD5sum, I suggest writing it on the disc label for later use. In my case, I only write the last four digits (out of laziness), but the chances of a disc with an error generating the same last four digits in an MD5sum is 1 in 16^4=65,536. That's good enough for me.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-54333684302555430472009-12-21T12:14:00.000-08:002009-12-21T12:19:44.572-08:00Script to record the IP address of your computersI like to keep a simple script on all of my machines that routinely checks in with a server and records the current IP of the machine. It's great for ssh'ing into a machine that has a constantly changing IP address (like a laptop) and in case of theft, it could help track down the stolen machine.<br /><br />I like to have the clients check in with a webserver, instead of a machine I own. Basic websites are cheap (like GoDaddy) and have high availability.<br /><br />There will be three files that this project will use:<br />-CheckIn.php will be on the server and will record the IP.<br />-CheckIn.txt will store the IP addresses.<br />-CheckIn will be on the client. It will use wget to contact the server.<br /><br />1. Here is CheckIn.php:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 300px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><?php<br>//Begin Setup - Change these variables<br>$filename = "CheckIn.txt"; //The name of the text file to save the IP addresses to.<br>$my_pass = "password"; //The password to see the IP addresses.<br>$max_lines = 100; //The maximum number of IP addresses to store. 0 for no limit.<br>//End Setup<br><br>if (!function_exists('file_put_contents')) {<br> function file_put_contents($filename, $data) {<br> $f = @fopen($filename, 'w');<br> if (!$f) {<br> return false;<br> } else {<br> $bytes = fwrite($f, $data);<br> fclose($f);<br> return $bytes;<br> }<br> }<br>}<br><br>$computer = htmlentities($_GET['user']);<br>$password = htmlentities($_GET['password']);<br>$contents = file_get_contents($filename);<br>if(!$computer){<br>if($password==$my_pass){<br> echo "<table border=1 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=2>";<br> echo $contents;<br> echo "</table>";<br> }<br>} else {<br> $output = "<tr>";<br> $output = $output."<td>".$computer."</td>";<br> $output = $output."<td>".$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']."</td>";<br> $output = $output."<td>".date("ymd H:i D")."</td>";<br> $output = $output."<td>".time()."</td>";<br> $output = $output."<td>".$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']."</td>";<br> $output = $output."<td>".$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']."</td>";<br> $output = $output."</tr>\n".$contents;<br> $counter = fopen("Stats", 'w');<br> fwrite($counter, $output);<br> fclose($counter);<br> if($max_lines!=0){<br> $array = file($filename);<br> for($i=sizeof($array); $i>=$max_lines;$i--){<br> unset($array[$i]);<br> }<br> $array=array_values($array);<br> file_put_contents($filename,implode($array));<br> }<br>}<br><br>?><br></span></pre><br /><br />This code should work on all machines running PHP v4.3 and later. Change the filename, password, and max_lines at the beginning of the file to the values you want to use.<br /><br /><strong>2.</strong> CheckIn.txt is an empty file to start with:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">touch CheckIn.txt</span></pre><br /><br /><strong>3.</strong> Upload Checkin.php and Checkin.txt to your webserver. Setup the permissions so that Checkin.php is accessible, but Checkin.txt is not:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">chmod 644 CheckIn.php<br>chmod 600 CheckIn.txt</span></pre><br /><br /><br /><strong>4a.</strong> Add an entry to CheckIn.txt whenever there is a new Internet connection. This only works if you are using NetworkManager. As root, create the file /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/CheckIn:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 100px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">#!/bin/sh<br><br>if [ "$2" = "up" ]; then<br> wget http://URL_TO_CHECKIN.PHP?user=COMPUTER -O /dev/null > /dev/null 2> /dev/null<br>fi</span></pre><br /><br />and make it executable:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">chmod +x /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/CheckIn</span></pre><br /><br /><br /><strong>4b.</strong> Add an entry to CheckIn.txt every 10 minutes. Either as a regular user, or as root, create a crontab:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">export EDITOR=`which pico`<BR>crontab -e</span></pre><br /><br />The choice of editor is completely up to you. Put the following in your crontab:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">*/10 * * * * sh /root/script.sh > /dev/null 2> /dev/null</span></pre><br /><br />where the "*/10" indicates that the command should be run every 10 minutes. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron#crontab_syntax">Wikipedia</a> has an great page on the format of crontabs.<br /><br />Finally, check to make sure that the crontab was installed correctly:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">crontab -l</span></pre>Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-32268337302246964822009-12-20T06:46:00.001-08:002009-12-20T07:10:33.980-08:00The case against SwapSwap, that extra partition you keep around in case you run out of memory, is actually, in most situations, a bad thing to have. Here's why.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Why swap was a good thing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1. </span>Hard drives and RAM memory used to have similar speeds. RAM was faster, but not by so much that it meant the system was unusable if it was run off of the hard drive instead. When this is the case, it makes sense to use the hard drive as a backup, but slower memory.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2. </span>Applications tended to fill the RAM. Imagine you have a system with 16MB of memory. You have a word processor that uses 12MB and an image editor that uses 12MB. To have both open simultaneously, you need to have an extra 8MB of storage somewhere. It makes sense to use the hard drive. This way, you can keep the entire word processor in memory when you're using it and when you switch to the image editor, the system can swap the word processor to disk and bring the image editor back to RAM. You'll experience a word processor and image editor that both run at full speed and the only slowdown you'll see is when you switch applications.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Why swap is (now) a bad thing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1. </span>RAM memory is now so much faster than the hard disk that the system is unusable if it runs off of the hard drive. Maybe this will change again someday as SSD's pickup speed, but for now, it's better to have an application crash or fail to open rather than have an almost frozen and completely unusable system.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2. </span>In most cases, no single application consumes a majority of the RAM. Today, a large application might consume 15%-20% of the available RAM on your system. This makes it unlikely that you'll need to have one application's memory on disk while the other one is in RAM. Running out of RAM today is more likely due to having far too many applications open. The solution is not to mask it by swapping to disk, but rather to either change user behavior (keep fewer applications open) or install more RAM.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3. </span>If the machine starts to thrash (i.e., access the swap continuously), it can be rough on a hard drive, especially if you're using a SSD, where the number of writes is limited.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Why not having swap is a good thing.</span><br /><br />It can stop bugs. I had a buggy version of Adobe Acrobat that after you "closed" it, it would remain open in the background and slowly consume memory. After a couple of hours, all of the RAM would be gone and it would start in on the swap. After a couple of more hours, the system would be thrashing the disk and completely unusable. Without swap, after Acrobat used up all of the RAM, it would request more, the request would fail, and it would crash (and close). Of course, it would have been better if Adobe had produced a bug-free version of Acrobat, but consider in this case not having swap prevented my system from being brought down due to a buggy application.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Why not having swap could be a bad thing.</span><br /><br />If you have a particular use case that requires you to use more memory than you have RAM, then you will need to have swap. But let me suggest that instead of permanently keeping around a swap partition, use a swap file instead and only activate it when you know you're going to be needing it.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">My conclusions.</span><br /><br />I think for most users, swap is an outdated concept and causes more trouble than its worth. And your applications probably don't require as much memory as you think. A couple of real-world examples:<br /><br />I have an old P4 system with 384MB of RAM and no swap that's been running fine for word processing and Internet use for years. It has OpenSUSE 11.1 on it with XFCE.<br /><br />I also have a laptop with 512MB of RAM and no swap, running OpenSUSE 11.1 with KDE 3.5. I use it for word processing, web surfing, watching Hulu and YouTube videos. I even use a TV tuner card to record shows. I used this machine to write a 100 page technical manual filled with graphics (both vector and bitmapped). Again, I've had no problems due to the lack of swap.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-37178210211941309912009-12-17T19:00:00.000-08:002009-12-20T15:51:59.030-08:00Absolutely silent wgetI had an application where I wanted to use wget to request a file from an http server, but I wanted absolutely no output. No status, no errors, nothing to the console and nothing written to the disk. This is for a laptop "anti-theft" script I'm working on. Everytime an Internet connection is established, the local script calls a PHP script on my webserver, which records the IP address it was called from. As a result, I get a nice list of IP addresses where my laptop has been. However, I don't want the disk filling up with a bunch of HTML files, as is the standard practice for wget. The solution is this:<br /><br />wget http://URL -O /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1<br /><br />The "-O" directs the HTML file to /dev/null, then ">" directs the standard output to /dev/null, and then "2>&1" directs the standard error to the standard output which goes to /dev/null. As a result, this is an absolutely silent (even if its fails) wget.<br /><br />One quick word of warning, the "2>&1" does not work in the sh shell. So, in your script files, instead of:<br /><br />#!/bin/sh<br /><br />you'll need to use another shell (like bash):<br /><br />#!/bin/bash<br /><br />or, not use that fancy redirect at all and use "2> /dev/null" instead.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-74318223478636711282009-11-22T03:59:00.000-08:002009-11-22T04:02:41.734-08:00Use the numpad in KonsoleKonsole, the terminal application in KDE, now by default, disables the use of the numpad in openSuSE 11.2. If you want to scroll back, you have to use the arrow keys and not "8 up" and "2 down". This is easily fixed.<br /><br />In Konsole, go to "Settings", then "Edit Current Profile". Click on the "Input" tab. Select "Linux console" and press "OK".Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-55365379978210165212009-11-20T04:31:00.000-08:002009-11-20T05:06:01.707-08:00Watch TV with the ATI TV Wonder 600 USB stickThe ATI TV Wonder 600 USB stick supports NTSC and ATSC, as well as composite input and S-video. It shows up (if you do a lsusb) with a manufacturer:device combo as 0438:b002 from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the company that bought ATI a while back .This guide will walk you through the steps of watching and recording ATSC TV.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1. </span> Add the Packman repositories. You can do this in Yast2, under Software, then Software Repositories.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2. </span> Install the dvb, vlc, and MPlayer packages. As root:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">yast -i dvb vlc mplayer</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3. </span> Get the firmware file xc3028L-v36.fw from here:<br /><br />http://steventoth.net/linux/hvr1400/xc3028L-v36.fw<br /><br />and save it to /lib/firmware (you'll need to be root).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">4. </span> Get a channel list. Not as root, perform:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">scan /usr/share/dvb/atsc/us-NTSC-center-frequencies-8VSB -o zap -a 0 | tee ~/channels.conf</span></pre><br /><br />If you're not in the US, then you'll need a different scanning file other than us-NTSC-center. Look at the list in /usr/share/dvb/atsc and select one that is appropriate for your location.<br /><br />The "-a 0" switch indicates that it should use the first DVB adapter in your system. If you this is a second adapter, then use "-a 1".<br /><br />This will take some time and will generate a number of "tuning failed!!!" messages. These are harmless.<br /><br />When the process is complete, you may want to manually edit the first column of the file, which is the name of the station. Some stations include contact information and that may confuse other programs that try and use the file. For example, if the file contains a line like:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">WHSD - 1-800-123-WHSD:562000000:8VSB:81:92:3</span></pre><br /><br />Replace it with something more readable, like:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">NBC:562000000:8VSB:81:92:3</span></pre><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">5. Watch TV</span><br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">vlc ~/channels.conf</span></pre><br /><br />If this is the second adapter, use the switch "--dvb-adapter=0". The navigation controls in vlc change the channels.<br /><br />If you right-click on the image, there is a de-interlacing option. Enable de-interlacing to improve the video quality on LCD monitors, otherwise motion will appear to "tear".<br /><br />I am able to watch TV on my 900MHz Celeron netbook. It is important to note that different channels will broadcast at different quality levels. Depending on the channel, my cpu usage can be anywhere from 40% to near 100%.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">6. Record TV</span> First, copy the channels file to ~/.mplayer/. Record with:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">mencoder dvb://"NBC" -o Chuck.avi -oac copy -ovc copy</span></pre><br /><br />If this is a second adapter, then it will be 'dvb://2@"NBC"'. This requires very low CPU usage, but an extreme amount of hard disk space (roughly 1GB every ten minutes). You can try to re-encode the file on the fly, but the CPU usage will be very high and I haven't found a combination of settings that maintains the original quality of the video. But as a starting point:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">mencoder dvb://"NBC" -o Chuck.avi -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=1500:vhq</span></pre><br /><br />You can play back the recorded file using any media player, but with mplayer, it's:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">mplayer Chuck.avi -vf pp=fd</span></pre><br /><br />Where the "-vf pp=fd" switch turns on de-interlacing.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-56065895800277043432009-11-06T07:00:00.000-08:002009-11-06T07:06:49.455-08:00Prevent a printer from becoming "disabled"CUPS, by default, disables printout to a printer if the printer stops responding. In order to re-enable printing, you must go into YaST | Hardware | Printers and for the disabled printer, select the "Printout Enabled" checkbox.<br /><br />To prevent a printer from becoming disabled in the first place, as root, open /etc/cups/printers.conf. For each printer, change the ErrorPolicy line from "stop-printer" to "retry-job". CUPS will now retry the job every 30 seconds.<br /><br />If you want to change the time it takes before it retries, open /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and add a line (or edit, if it already exists) that says "JobRetryInterval 120", where 120 is the time in seconds.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-76473100291228967162009-07-30T15:19:00.000-07:002009-07-30T16:27:49.749-07:00How to set the time with NTP as an optionI will show you how to manually update the time and manually use NTP to update the time.<br /><br /><B>1.</B> Set the current time manually. Before you can use NTP, you need to have the time on your system correct to within a few minutes. If its more than an hour or so, NTP won't have confidence in the time it gets from the server and as a result, it won't update the time. As root:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">date "MMDDHHmmYYYY"</span></pre><br /><br />where MM is the two digit month, DD is the two digit day, HH is the two digit hour on a 24-hour clock, mm is the two digit minute, and YYYY is the four digit year. For example, 6:30pm on July 30, 2009 would be:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">date "073018302009"</span></pre><br /><br /><br /><B>2.</B> As root, use YaST to setup the NTP daemon:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">yast ntp-client</span></pre><br /><br />This YaST module is available under the "Network Services" section of the YaST2 GUI.<br /><br />You'll need to set the NTP start to automatic before YaST will let add a time server. Add a public server (the tool has a pretty good list of servers you can use). Then, if you don't have a permanent Internet connection (including a laptop or a computer using the Network Manager applet), set NTP to only start manually.<br /><br /><br /><B>3.</B> From this point on, anytime you want to reset the time on your computer, use, as root:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">ntpd -q</span></pre><br /><br />This will cause NTP to set the time and then quit.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-78662141079336198302009-06-27T07:32:00.000-07:002009-06-27T07:47:06.449-07:00Change SSH PortIf you have two or more computers behind a NAT (i.e., router) and you want to access both machines, you need to change the SSH port on at least one of them. To do so, as root, edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config. Add a line that reads "Port PORT_NUMBER". The relevant part of my file looks like this:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 100px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">Port 2200<br>#AddressFamily any<br>#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0<br>#ListenAddress ::</span></pre><br /><br />You will need to either restart the SSH daemon (or reboot) before the change will take effect. And of course, you'll need to adjust the firewall on your computer to allow the new port to pass through, as well adjust your NAT.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-70350263790378787732009-06-25T16:51:00.000-07:002009-06-25T16:55:05.532-07:00Freeing disk spaceThis is just an FYI to anyone who is deleting files off their hard drive and it's probably a pretty familiar concept to those who've been using Linux for awhile.<br /><br />For any file, Linux maintains a list of handles, that is programs that are currently using the file. When you delete the file, it is only removed from the disk when the number of handles goes to zero.<br /><br />This becomes important if your drive is almost full and you delete a file, but you find that your disk space has not changed. The most likely reason is that some program still has an open handle.<br /><br />Make sure that any program that might be using the program is closed and if all else fails, a reboot will clear all of the open file handles.<br /><br />And if you weren't already aware, the command line tool to find out how much disk space you have left is 'df'.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-48801511092844394602009-06-23T15:09:00.000-07:002009-06-23T15:21:50.276-07:00Sound not working in Flash? Here's a possible fix.Here's the symptom: your sound works fine, except in Flash. You've tried multiple browsers and Flash sound doesn't work in any of them.<br /><br />The problem is that you're using PulseAudio as a sound engine and sometimes Flash doesn't work well with it.<br /><br />To fix this, remove the libpulse0 package. As root:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">yast --remove libpulse0</span></pre><br /><br />When I did this, it ended up removing MPlayer due to dependecies. I reinstalled MPlayer from the repositories which brought back one PulseAudio package, but sound still worked in Flash.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-37009309551634721422009-06-22T15:32:00.000-07:002009-06-22T17:37:50.682-07:00::Updated:: A guide to getting the Digipro T-8000U Tablet to work with OpenSUSEThis post supersedes my <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2009/06/rough-guide-to-getting-digipro-t-8000u.html">previous one</a>. It fixes the bugs that were in that one.<br /><br />This guide will get the Digipro T-8000U tablet working with OpenSUSE 11.1.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1. </span> Install the necessary prerequisites. As root:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">yast -i gcc xorg-x11-devel xorg-x11-server-sdk</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2. </span> Get the latest version of the WizardPen driver, which as of now is 0.7.0a2. It is available on a Microsoft website (don't ask me why):<br /><br />http://cid-43438aff38d34c29.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/wizardpen/wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2.tar.gz<br /><br />Untar, configure, and compile it. Do not install it.<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">tar xvzf wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2.tar.gz<br>cd wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2<br>./configure && make</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3. </span> The Makefile installs the driver where Xorg won't find it, so you have to install it manually. As root:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">cp src/wizardpen_drv.la /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input<br>cp src/.libs/wizardpen_drv.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">4. </span> You need to find the device associated with the tablet. First, do:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;">grep Name /proc/bus/input/devices</span></pre><br /><br />Look for something that looks like your tablet. Mine was "Aiptek". If nothing sticks out, you can do an:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;">lsusb</span></pre><br /><br />to find the full name of the tablet and compare that with the output from "grep Name /proc/bus/input/devices".<br /><br />Then do (assuming your tablet's name is Aiptek):<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;">lshal | grep "input.product = 'Aiptek'" -A 20 -B 20 | grep input.device</span></pre><br /><br />This should produce a single line with your device. Mine was /dev/input/event7. If this doesn't work, do a "lshal" and search through the output until you find the string.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">5. </span> Download and run this calibration routine. The one that is provided with the WizardPen code does not calibrate in the Z-direction, which is critical to getting the pressures to work.<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 100px; text-align: left;">wget http://www.filefactory.com/file/ag8g447/n/wizardpen-calibrate_c wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2/calibrate/wizardpen-calibrate.c<br>cd wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2/calibrate<br>make<br>sudo ./wizardpen-calibrate /dev/input/event7</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">6. </span> As root, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Add a section that reads:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 150px; text-align: left;">Section "InputDevice"<br> Driver "wizardpen"<br> Identifier "WizardTablet"<br> Option "Device" "/dev/input/event7"<br> Option "TopX" "0"<br> Option "TopY" "0"<br> Option "TopZ" "54"<br> Option "BottomX" "3000"<br> Option "BottomY" "2200"<br> Option "BottomZ" "511"<br> Option "MaxX" "3000"<br> Option "MaxY" "2200"<br> Option "MaxZ" "511"<br>EndSection</span></pre><br /><br />where all of the numbers are from the calibration program in step 5. In the ServerLayout section, add a line that reads:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"> InputDevice "WizardTablet" "AlwaysCore"</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">7. </span> Reboot.<br /><br />The tablet should be working now. To use it in Gimp, you need to go to Edit, Preferences, Input Devices, Configure Extended Input Devices, and for the WizardTablet device, set the Mode to Screen. Be warned, with an extended input device (the tablet) enabled in Gimp the mouse can no longer be used to draw. However, disabling the tablet re-enables the mouse. See this <a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=406440">GTK bug</a> for more details.<br /><br />There is one lingering bug and that is that hotplugging does not work. I'll look at this sometime over the next week. Until then, you'll need to have the devices you want to use plugged in at boot.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">---===Very Important===---</span> If you have a dynamic collection of input devices, where what you have plugged into the computer changes from boot to boot, you'll need to make a couple of small modifications to your xorg.conf. These corrections are necessary if you want to, for example, use a USB mouse occasionally. You need to replace the "/dev/input/DEVICE" lines with either the "/dev/input/by-path/DEVICE_PATH" or "/dev/input/by-id/DEVICE_ID" for your device. You can find out what this are by doing a:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;">find /dev/input</span></pre><br /><br />with and without the device plugged in and then comparing the outputs. There will be two files associated with each device. For mice, use the one without "event" on the end and for the tablet, use the one with "event" on the end.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-86211120944125178882009-06-21T16:43:00.001-07:002009-06-21T20:34:12.789-07:00Install openSUSE from a USB driveIf you have a netbook or any computer without a cd drive you can easily install openSUSE from just about any USB drive.<br /><br />You'll need a bootable USB drive (they almost all are and the easiest way to find out if yours will work is just to try it) and a computer that can boot from USB (any computer build in the last five years should be able to).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1.</span> Go to <a href="http://software.opensuse.org/">http://software.opensuse.org/</a> and get a copy of the installer. Make sure you choose the correct type of computer. On AMD/Intel chips, 32-bit will always work and 64-bit will work on most newer computers.<br /><br />You can choose to use either the DVD or the network install. If you choose the DVD option, you'll need a USB drive with a capacity of at least 4.2GB. Practically, 8GB is the smallest USB drive you'll find with enough space. If you choose the network install, you'll need a network connection during the installation. In my experience, an ethernet connection always works and a wireless connection is somewhat iffy (although the Eee PC wireless card works perfectly).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2.</span> Install the required packages. As root (the rest of the steps require you to be root as well):<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">yast -i syslinux lilo</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3.</span> Mount the installation image:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">mkdir MOUNT_POINT<br>mount openSUSE-11.1-NET-i586.iso MOUNT_POINT -o loop</span></pre><br /><br />where MOUNT_POINT is any directory and openSUSE-11.1-NET-i586.iso is the name of the file that you downloaded.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">4.</span> The mkbootdisk program copies the files to the USB drive and makes the drive bootable.<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">mkbootdisk --32 --partition /dev/USB_DRIVE MOUNT_POINT</span></pre><br /><br />where USB_DRIVE is the partition you want to copy the files to. On my system, this was /dev/sdc1. If you're installing a 64-bit system, then replace "--32" with "--64".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">5.</span> Do a little bit of cleanup:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">umount MOUNT_POINT && rmdir MOUNT_POINT</span></pre><br /><br /><br />You now have a bootable USB drive with a copy of the openSUSE installation media.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-91189254267676317692009-06-18T08:52:00.001-07:002009-06-22T17:38:22.887-07:00A *rough* guide to getting the Digipro T-8000U Tablet to work with OpenSUSEThis post has been superseded by <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2009/06/updated-guide-to-getting-digipro-t.html">this new one</a>. It fixes the bugs that were in this one.<br /><br />This guide will get the Digipro T-8000U tablet working with OpenSUSE 11.1. However, following this guide will break a couple of things:<br /><br />-X will fail if the tablet is not plugged in.<br />-Gimp will not longer allow you to draw with the mouse.<br /><br />I think I know how to fix both. I'll test and post fixes for both over the weekend. Also, the calibration that I give here is specific to my tablet. I had to write my own code to get the correct calibration (the calibration included with the WizardPen driver doesn't handle pressures correctly). I'll post that as well this weekend.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1. </span> Install the necessary prerequisites. As root:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">yast -i gcc xorg-x11-devel xorg-x11-server-sdk</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2. </span> Get the latest version of the WizardPen driver, which as of now is 0.7.0a2. It is available on a Microsoft website (don't ask me why):<br /><br />http://cid-43438aff38d34c29.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/wizardpen/wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2.tar.gz<br /><br />Untar, configure, and compile it. Do not install it.<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">tar xvzf wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2.tar.gz<br>cd wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2<br>./configure && make</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3. </span> The Makefile installs the driver where Xorg won't find it, so you have to install it manually. As root:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">cp src/wizardpen_drv.la /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input<br>cp src/.libs/wizardpen_drv.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">4. </span> You need to find the device associated with the tablet. First, do:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;">grep Name /proc/bus/input/devices</span></pre><br /><br />And look for something that looks like your tablet. Mine was "Aiptek". Then do:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;">lshal | grep "input.product = 'Aiptek'" -A 20 -B 20 | grep input.device</span></pre><br /><br />This should produce a single line with your device. Mine was /dev/input/event7. If this doesn't work, do a "lshal" and search through the output until you find the string.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">5. </span> As root, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Add a section that reads:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 150px; text-align: left;">Section "InputDevice"<br> Driver "wizardpen"<br> Identifier "WizardTablet"<br> Option "Device" "/dev/input/event7"<br> Option "TopX" "0"<br> Option "TopY" "0"<br> Option "TopZ" "54"<br> Option "BottomX" "3000"<br> Option "BottomY" "2200"<br> Option "BottomZ" "511"<br> Option "MaxX" "3000"<br> Option "MaxY" "2200"<br> Option "MaxZ" "511"<br>EndSection</span></pre><br /><br />And in the ServerLayout section, add a line that reads:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"> InputDevice "WizardTablet" "AlwaysCore"</span></pre><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">---===Very Important===---</span> My xorg file already had two input device sections, one for my touchpad and another where it had detected the tablet as a mouse. I had to delete that extra mouse section before the tablet would be correctly recognized. Otherwise, Xorg uses the wrong mouse driver and your tablet will only half work.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">6. </span> Reboot.<br /><br /><br />The tablet should be working now. To use it in Gimp, you need to go to Edit, Preferences, Input Devices, Configure Extended Input Devices, and for the WizardTablet device, set the Mode to Screen.<br /><br />Like I said above, this is a very rough guide. I'll clean it up in a few days and repost then.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-1824532595663948772009-06-12T15:51:00.000-07:002009-06-12T16:02:02.879-07:00TV Antenna DesignI want to mount my TV tuner inside my laptop and I also want to build an internal antenna. In my area, TV stations are in the frequency range from 500MHz to 750MHz (as determined from my <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2009/05/sabrent-tv-dgusb.html">channels.conf</a> file) which according to this <a href="http://www.csgnetwork.com/antennaedcalc.html">online calculator</a> puts my ideal antenna length (for a dipole antenna) at between 90 and 150 mm per half.<br /><br />I wanted to get a better feel for the best antenna length to use, so I rigged an antenna like this:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis_641A3OkToRP0QOKkgjSFG0Hc-M3kmH7DM6Lm3KWVTNCATkAUf5-wKIsENOwve0_2iKjSK_84OpDTt-AZHfrSP2D6XuF1M2z24REk4Mp-cUgHzUBtBDLFnBEitxe2P4SgUbcaIHLZc-O/s1600-h/p1010539.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis_641A3OkToRP0QOKkgjSFG0Hc-M3kmH7DM6Lm3KWVTNCATkAUf5-wKIsENOwve0_2iKjSK_84OpDTt-AZHfrSP2D6XuF1M2z24REk4Mp-cUgHzUBtBDLFnBEitxe2P4SgUbcaIHLZc-O/s400/p1010539.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346578528546585554" /></a><br /><br />and I scanned for channels several times, each time cutting 4 mm off of the end of each lead. I recorded the number of channels detected with each setup and then made a plot of the results:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCKGcALUW4rciz1y0W8qTdMAs4xF2Jy_2iaG01CKq86k30ZFEqNiHJd72kawgTPutP1ngH34jrA7CNCKyZXToZG84wGi9c93w02bHxDq-eLsAfiOvrVyrsde2tfK_h82iJ1uocBT9qnIR/s1600-h/antenna.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCKGcALUW4rciz1y0W8qTdMAs4xF2Jy_2iaG01CKq86k30ZFEqNiHJd72kawgTPutP1ngH34jrA7CNCKyZXToZG84wGi9c93w02bHxDq-eLsAfiOvrVyrsde2tfK_h82iJ1uocBT9qnIR/s400/antenna.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346578863528246642" /></a><br /><br />While 128 mm was the best length, there is quite a bit of noise in the plot, so its hard to say for certain that the best length might not be somewhat shorter or longer. There definitely is a tendency for the longer antennas to do better than the shorter ones. Based off of this, I'll probably end up going for a 130 mm antenna, if I can make it fit in the case.<br /><br />Also interesting: The 128 mm antenna picked up 34 stations, while the high quality antenna that came with the tuner picked up 37 channels. Overall, I think that is pretty good for an antenna made out of a couple spare pieces of wire.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-57801729141300691172009-06-11T07:14:00.000-07:002009-06-11T07:22:45.008-07:00Creating and using an encrypted hard drive or partitionConsidering the dropping cost of laptops and external drives, the most damaging part of having one stolen is not the cost of replacing the hardware, but the cost of the data.<br /><br />You may have proprietary company information, tax returns, financial information, or worse on there. The best way to protect your data is to encrypt it and encrypt it well. Thankfully, Linux makes this really easy.<br /><br />The encryption I'll show you how to setup uses a block-encryption algorithm, meaning that the encryption respects the underlying filesystem and in case of a hardware failure, such as a bad block, you'll only lose the data stored at that one location. I once had a Windows encryption package that encrypted using the entire volume. One day, an error cropped up in the middle of the encrypted volume and instantly all of my data was gone.<br /><br />All of the following should be done as root.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1.</span> The first step is to fill the drive with random data. This serves two purposes:<br /><br />-If the drive previously contained any unencrypted data, you want it gone and unrecoverable.<br />-If the drive is not filled with random data, an attacker may be able to determine how much of your encrypted partition is in use.<br /><br />I feel that the first reason is the more important one, so if your drive is new, then you can skip this step. If you are performing this step via a USB connection, it can be incredibly slow; you can expect this step to take up to a week to complete. If you need it done quick, then hook the drive up via SATA or eSATA.<br /><br />The command to perform is:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">dd /dev/random /dev/DEVICE</span></pre><br /><br />/dev/random contains high quality random data. You can replace it with /dev/urandom, which is faster, but uses lower quality random data (i.e., its not quite as random).<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2.</span> Create the encrypted partition:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">cryptsetup --key-size 256 luksFormat /dev/DEVICE</span></pre><br /><br />You will be prompted for your passphrase. LUKS does not use your passphrase to encrypt the data, rather it uses your passphrase to secure the key that encrypts the data. As a result, you can setup multiple passphrases or even revoke passphrases. This way, if you ever feel that your passphrase may have been compromised, you can quickly swap it with another passphrase to maintain data security without having to reencrypt the entire drive.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3.</span> Open the encrypted partition:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/DEVICE NAME</span></pre><br /><br />"NAME" is the name of the unencrypted device and can be any convenient name for this partition. For example, if you're setting up a backup drive, use "backup" to remind yourself what the drive is for.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">4.</span> Create the filesystem:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/NAME</span></pre><br /><br />Of course, you can replace mkfs.ext3 with whatever filesystem you want to use.<br /><br /><br />You're done! Now how to use your drive. To set it up, use:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/DEVICE NAME<br>mount /dev/mapper/NAME MOUNT_POINT</span></pre><br /><br />And to shut it down, use:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">umount MOUNT_POINT<br>cryptsetup luksClose NAME</span></pre><br /><br />And if you're going to use this for a partition that needs to be mounted at boot, see <a href="http://linuxhacksandfixes.blogspot.com/2009/06/make-opensuse-111-ask-for-encrypted.html">my note about getting openSUSE to ask for the password at boot</a>.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8801891813853232323.post-68424396935515123092009-06-10T07:48:00.000-07:002009-06-10T15:13:03.732-07:00Backup - Part I<span style="font-style:italic;">"If there's one thing people know they should do, it's backup their data.<br />If there's one thing people don't do, it's backup their data."<br /><br />-Jim Fraser</span><br /><br />For me, I resisted making backups for a long time because as a former Windows user, I was scarred by how hard it was. In Windows, your data is all over the place (and not in just one directory), backing up Windows itself is just about impossible, most backed up programs won't run after being restored, and there's no easy, integrated way to make backups.<br /><br />Proprietary software tends to save your files in volumes, so that you have no access, without the software, to the individual files that comprise the backup. If you lose the install disk, your backup is garbage.<br /><br />Linux makes backing up data so unbelievably easy though, it's almost stupid not to.<br /><br />Rsync is the tool and it makes perfect copies between filesystems. It is incremental, so the first backup will take awhile, but each one after will only backup the changes. The command to use is:<br /><br /><pre style="border: 1px inset ; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; overflow: auto; width: 640px; height: 50px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">rsync -a SOURCE DESTINATION</span></pre><br /><br />The "-a" switch puts rsync into archive mode, which activates a number of other switches that are useful for performing backups (such as recursing into subdirectories, for example).<br /><br />Other switches to consider are:<br /><br />"-x" keeps rsync from crossing filesystem boundaries. This is useful if you're doing a backup of / and you have /home on a different partition and you don't want the other partition included in the backup.<br /><br />"-H" preserves hard links. The man page says that this is computationally expensive, but in my experience, it has never been a problem. Hard links occur when two files both point to the same location on the disk and they very rarely occur in personal files. If "-H" is not used, then the backup will have two separate files with two copies of the data, instead of two files pointing to the same data. I generally turn this on when I'm backing up / and leave it off when I'm backing up /home.<br /><br />"-v" is for verbose mode and results in a listing of all the files that are backed up.<br /><br />"-z" turns on compression of the data stream. This does not compress the backed up data. Generally, I only turn this on if I'm backing up data across a slow connection, such as across the Internet.<br /><br />"--delete" deletes files at the destination if they don't exist at the source. Turn this on if you want a one-to-one copy of your data.Lord Byron IIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07104317046505745241noreply@blogger.com0