Ubuntu For Free » Feisty Fawn

Upgrade from Gutsy to Hardy

admin — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:50:26 +0000

I have admittedly put it off for way too long. The recent OpenSSL Vulnerability with weak keys prompted me to change that on one of my systems. I was forced to use dist-upgrade when OpenSSL would not update, leaving me to continuously recreating weak keys. While I normally update packages using the command line, I was hesitant of using the GUI for Adept Manager. My previous attempts with dist-upgrade have all been failures (From Edgy to Feisty to Gutsy…) so I was not really expecting a smoothe transition. I used the GUI Adept Manager because it was the recommended method per the Kubuntu Hardy Heron upgrade documentation. Adept immediately gave me an error and closed the first time I tried. I rebooted and tried again with the same error. I kept trying, and it finally decided it would do it…and it did it well. I rebooted and I was almost unable to tell any difference. I did notice I had the new wallpaper available, but otherwise, OpenSSL let me create new, uncompromised keys… and that was what was important to me. It was so painless, I felt brave and tried it on another server. This time, no error message, and it upgraded just as easily. I still have one workstation remaining on Gutsy, a laptop that I don’t have any pressing need to update. The slow server took about two hours to update, and the faster one took about one hour.

Notes after the Gutsy crashed Feisty.

admin — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 03:10:03 +0000

It’s been awhile since I’ve written, mostly because I’ve moved to a new apartment. It’s a huge relief to get off the third floor, but it sure has slowed down my postings.

I’ve kind of gotten settled into the new apartment now, and have been spending some time getting Gutsy back the way I had Feisty. I’ve gotten transKode installed, but Media Tag Tools has been a thorn in my side. Fortunately I’ve found that Amarok does it, and does it better. At this point, I filed the bugs with Media Tag Tools on BerliOS and I think I’m washing my hands of it.

Something good had to have came from the crash, so here it is : It made me look into a backup system. I opted for keep, just because of the simplicity, and the fact that it was already there.

Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon Upgrade Crashed

admin — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:38:36 +0000

What a disappointment. I’ve previously written about experiencing the Blank Screen Bug in Gutsy with the Release Candidate CD. Today, I was forced to experience that the problem is still there on the official release. I used Adept Manager to update 16 packages it noticed that were behind. After the update, it finally figured out that I was due for the distribution upgrade. It started the process and crashed. I rebooted and it informed me of 1304 updates. I started that process, it crashed, and failed to boot again.

I used the ISO for the Kubuntu 7.10 official release and tried to install. The first try, GRUB failed to point to the correct hard drive. The second time, it still used the wrong drive, but I edited the GRUB configuration and it successfully booted.

The strangest thing, was even after I installed and booted up, the Adept Manager informed me of a couple of updates, and I updated those, and then it prompted me for a distribution upgrade… again. This time, I think I chose correctly when I opted to decline the upgrade.

How To Install Transkode

admin — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:11:09 +0000

I found a great program for converting my audio files from any format (flac, ape, spx, bonk, mp3, mp4, ogg, wav, wma, etc) to any other format. It’s called transKode and so far, it has actually supported all the formats I required, which was my biggest demand. I’ve got a Rio Carbon and my wife has a Creative Zen. I’ve been enjoying a lot of the wonderful free for non-commercial purposes music from sites such as Jamendo. Jamendo’s site only lets me download the .ogg files via torrent, and since neither of my players support that format, I’ve been looking for a program that converts them nicely for me.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the Ubuntu repositories, so I had to compile it. However, it was a lot easier than I had anticipated. I did have to compile one dependency, Taglib, and that was even easier.

Here’s the break down of the steps I went through, including taglib.

change to the folder where transkode was downloaded

cd /home/vmadmin/Downloads/transkode-0.7beta/

run the program to extract transkode. i used arK because it was easier than looking at a man page. i opened konquer in the current window using

konqueror $PWD&

change to source folder

cd transkode/

configure the setup

./configure

make the components

make

install the app

sudo make install

cleanup the source directory

make clean

download taglib

change to download folder

uncompress taglib

tar xzf taglib-1.4.tar.gz

change to the source folder

cd taglib-1.4/

configure the setup

./configure

make the components

make

install the components

sudo make install

cleanup

make clean

remove anything left behind

rm -f -R transkode-0.7beta/ rm -f -R taglib-1.4/

HOWTO : KSquirrel is a better image viewer

admin — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 05:53:05 +0000

I’d heard mention of KSquirrel in other neighborhoods before (Gentoo and Debian systems mostly) and thought anything would be better than gwenview. I was right. It’s much faster and a major improvement. It was a little tricky to install, but I was able to do it. Here’s how:

Installing KSquirrel

From the above link, click on Downloads and you’ll be taken to a page with multiple selections. You’ll need both files for the Debian binaries. In Konqueror, right click on the *-libs.deb file and use the Kubuntu package manager to install it. Mine failed, and that’s ok. Do the other file now using the same way, and it may fail again, like mine did. I fixed the install of both by using

sudo apt-get -f install

from Konsole. I was then able to launch by using alt+f2 and typing ksquirrel

nVidia TwinView Dual Display Monitor Orientation Configuration and Setup

admin — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:57:57 +0000

Was a real pain. The nvidia-settings program has always crashed on me, with two different video cards. I finally got it the way I wanted. One big large desktop/screen across my LCD and my TV. My LCD is on the right of my TV, and the orientation was the most troublesome for me. It seems that xorg.conf is rather forgiving, and literally allows us to describe the arrangement. I did so such as:

Option "TwinViewOrientation" "CRT-0 RightOf TV"

The best source of information is here and here. All of the other forums posts are pages upon pages of people struggling with other problems. Fortunately the official TwinView documentation is top-notch.

Below are the contents of my entire xorg.conf now:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig # nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder3) Wed Sep 12 14:29:35 PDT 2007

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf(5) manual page.
# (Type “man xorg.conf” at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen 0 “Default Screen” 0 0
InputDevice “Generic Keyboard”
InputDevice “Configured Mouse”
InputDevice “stylus” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “cursor” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “eraser” “SendCoreEvents”
EndSection

Section “Files”

# path to defoma fonts
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1″
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi”
FontPath “/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType”
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load “i2c”
Load “bitmap”
Load “ddc”
Load “extmod”
Load “freetype”
Load “int10″
Load “vbe”
Load “glx”
Load “v4l”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Generic Keyboard”
Driver “kbd”
Option “CoreKeyboard”
Option “XkbRules” “xorg”
Option “XkbModel” “pc105″
Option “XkbLayout” “us”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “mouse”
Option “CorePointer”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice”
Option “Protocol” “ImPS/2″
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “true”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “stylus”
Driver “wacom”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “stylus”
Option “ForceDevice” “ISDV4″# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “eraser”
Driver “wacom”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “eraser”
Option “ForceDevice” “ISDV4″# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “cursor”
Driver “wacom”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/wacom”
Option “Type” “cursor”
Option “ForceDevice” “ISDV4″# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “VA1912wb”
DisplaySize 1440 900
HorizSync 30.0 – 82.0
VertRefresh 50.0 – 85.0
ModeLine “1440×900_70.00″ 127.0 1440 1536 1688 1936 900 901 904 937 -hsync +vsync
ModeLine “1440×900_60.00″ 106.5 1440 1520 1672 1904 900 901 904 932 -hsync +vsync
Option “DPMS”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
#
Identifier “monitor1″
Gamma 1
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “Generic Video Card”
Driver “nvidia”
VendorName “NVIDIA”
BoardName “NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series”
BusID “PCI:1:0:0″
Screen 0
Option “ConnectedMonitor” “TV,CRT”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Device “Generic Video Card”
Monitor “VA1912wb”
DefaultDepth 24
Option “TwinView”
Option “TwinViewOrientation” “CRT-0 RightOf TV”
Option “TVOutFormat” “SVIDEO”
Option “TVStandard” “NTSC-M”
Option “MetaModes” “1440×900,640×480; 1440×900,NULL; 1024×768,NULL; 800×600,NULL; 640×480,NULL”
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1440×900_70.00″ “1440×900_60.00″
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
EndSection

StartUp Manager : Old News Good Utility

admin — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:59:37 +0000

Browsing some other blogs, I encountered the Ubuntu StartUp Manager. It allows you to customize some of the GRUB settings, which are rather helpful. It allows

you to change the resolution, the colors, and the default selection… even allowing you to automatically use what was last selected. This is especially helpful for dual boot computers, like the laptop that my wife and I share.

You can also password protect your GRUB entries. This is helpful for the security conscious.

Katapult – Do away with the kmenu

admin — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 16:24:44 +0000

Today’s post discusses one of my new favorite apps for Ubuntu. It’s designed with KDE in mind. It’s called katapult and allows a user to quickly access their bookmarks, applications, kmenu entries, documents, etc.. by typing a couple letters that represent the intended item. I highly suggest it. You can install it by using
sudo apt-get install katapult

It’s a lot more intuitive and much less of a pain than using unique key combinations for everything via a program like xbindkeys.

Watch Internet TV using Miro on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

admin — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:08:03 +0000

A great application to watch Internet TV, Miro, has provided the Ubuntu community with instructions on how to install Miro in Feisty Fawn. I’ve used the software for a while now, since it was previously called DemocracyTV Player. It requires a lot of resources to use, but the output is excellent. The best part is the ease of use. I was able to install, open, and subscribe to Pal Van Dyk’s Fast Tracks in a matter of minutes. It integrates with Google Video, YouTube, Bit Torrent, and many different services to allow you to view and save video content and has quickly become a favorite of mine.

HowTo install soundKonverter

admin — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:14:22 +0000

I tried and tried getting soundKonvertor to compile in my Ubuntu Feisty Fawn installation, but got stuck with an error I was unfamiliar with:

cd . && make -f admin/Makefile.common configure make[1]: Entering directory `/home/vmadmin/Downloads/soundkonverter-0.3.4' Can't open configure: No such file or directory. make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/vmadmin/Downloads/soundkonverter-0.3.4' /bin/bash ./config.status --recheck running CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/bash /bin/bash ./configure --no-create --no-recursion /bin/bash: ./configure: No such file or directory make: *** [config.status] Error 127

Well, I gave up and did it an easier way:

I downloaded the .deb from KDE-Apps and am relieved. After right clicking on the .deb and selecting to install the package, it complained I needed a couple of other packages. I was able to install those through the Adept Package Manger GUI interface and then soundKonverter finally installed.

It’s running rather smoothly and creating nice output. Give it a try for yourself.