Linux Community's Journal

What's special about Xandros?
What's special about Xandros?

http://www.xandros.com/products/desktop/

It looks like every other Linux desktop I've seen out there, but Xandros cost $99. So what's special about it?

Skype + Game = No Audio in Game
The year is 2009 (almost 2010) and Linux still appears to have the "device already in use" problem it's had since day one.

Specifically with respect to audio devices.

If I launch my game (COH under Crossover) the audio works perfect.

If I launch Skype alone - the audio works perfect.

But if I launch Skype and start a conversation, and then launch my game, I get NO SOUND in my game.

And If I launch the game first and the Skype, I get no sound from Skype.

I've tried to open the System > Preferences > Sound and try different mixers but nothing seems to work...

any help?

Update: I think I found the problem:

"There is no sound in my application running in Crossover.

Ubuntu 8.04 uses the PulseAudio backend, which isn't entirely compatible with Wine yet, and sometimes doesn't like Crossover. If you switch the OS back to using ALSA you should have audio restored to your Crossover apps. " [source: Codeweavers support wiki ]

Update 2: How to switch back to ALSA

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-820305.html

Update 3: Skype faq

I also found this helpful-> http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=10858

Update 4: Skype version 2.0
I found this old download link for Skype version 2.0 for Debian (should work for Ubuntu) which was the last version they released that used ALSA before switching to PulseAudio.

http://download.skype.com/linux/skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb

Hopefully that will fix my problem.

Playing City of Heroes under Ubuntu
I'm just amazed at how good City of Heroes/Villains looks on Ubuntu (playing under Crossover for Linux):

http://pics.livejournal.com/jackal/pic/005dsa06

http://pics.livejournal.com/jackal/pic/005eqwzq

http://pics.livejournal.com/jackal/pic/005dt7hh

It's playing on a pentium 4 (single core) CPU box with an ATI card that's at least 4 years old, and still it looks and plays amazing!

Update: Hardware info

$ grep name /proc/cpuinfo 
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz

$ lspci |grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc R480 [Radeon X850XT]

Deny local access to outbound ssh
I need to restrict access to the ssh command. I've denied root logins, so I can't just chmod 700 ssh - wouln't be able to log in again.

(note - I understand the diff between client->server "inbound" ssh connections and server->remote "outbound" connections. I am referring to the outbound connections here)

Ideas?

I finally got around to checking this solution

To refresh, the machine seems to function perfectly in every way (this is why it's taken me so long to get around to the issue)... As long as I'm not using X locally. The machine appeared to crash when booting, but if I ssh in all programs work perfectly, even those in X).

I started the procedure to address what I was convinced was a HD issue. I started a liveCD boot, the machine started, got to X, then when I fired up a console to run fsck, it froze. Just prior to this there were freaky 'ghosty' images on some objects on the screen. Figuring the issue wasn't a HD issue (the box ran flawlessly as a file server for weeks) I tried booting in the 'safe' mode. I had the mode fix any issues, then try to fix X... They all worked perfectly. When I rebooted, I could actually get to the regular screen, then when I fired up, say a console and moved the window, screen froze. I still had the same freaky 'ghosty' images.

Here's my question(s):

1) I'm guessing it's a failing graphics card... I'm not sure why it's not crashing the box, and only the video... that's my question, I guess.
2) While I can yank the thing easily enough is it difficult to get ubuntu to recognize whatever ubuntu compatible one I buy?

Any comments, help would be appreciated.

Input (trackpoint, hdaps) in 2.6.32
Just upgraded to 2.6.32 and I notice two problems (so far). I have a Thinkpad T61. I notice that my custom sysfs settings for my TrackPoint don't work: the entries which set settings such as sensitivity are missing from /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio0/serio1, and this might be because the mouse is detected as a Generic PS/2 Mouse instead of having the TPPS/2 protocol extension.

Possibly related is the fact that the hdapsd daemon cannot find the hdaps input device. Any clues what happened with input in the 2.6.32 cycle that might be causing this?

I note also that udev spit out a metric fuckton of deprecation warnings for configuration file syntax on bootup.

My .config is here if anyone thinks that I might have answered some oldconfig questions wrong.

Update: Oh, also, I have UltraNav so I have both the TrackPoint and a Touchpad. The touchpad still works and is detected correctly as before.

Update 2: Additionally, the hdaps input device is registered—

[   10.666730] hdaps: inverting axis (3) readings.
[   10.666733] hdaps: LENOVO ThinkPad T61 detected.
[   10.667382] input: hdaps as /devices/platform/hdaps/input/input8
[   10.667441] hdaps: driver successfully loaded.

—it's just that userspace can't detect it.

Current Mood: frustrated

I've successfully mounted a network share with mount.cifs for the past 2 years using fstab with credfile.

//server/share /mnt/mycooldir cifs credentials=/etc/credfile,dom=mydomain,uid=123,gid=123,file_mode=0666,dir_mode=0755 0 0

credfile:

Code:

username=foobar
password=1234  (ends here no line return after '4')

Yesterday I moved this system to a new datacenter, but did not alter fstab or the credfile. The //server/share directory has IP rules in place, but this was updated with the new system IP while we moved the system.

Now, I am mysteriously unable to automount //server/share. The local error is 13 (permission denied). The Windows server we are mounting returned a code that is defined as "username is valid but password is incorrect"

Again - no changes (content or permissions) were made to my credfile or fstab entry. I've restarted netfs a few times, including rebooting the system twice.

What is baffling is I can successfully mount //server/share via command line:

Code:

mount -t cifs //server/share /mnt/mycooldir -o username=foobar,password=1234

The username and passwords are identical in credfile and the mount options - I copied & pasted username / password from the credfile itself.

I'm at a loss. Help?

Union Filesystems headache
I'm trying to set up a union filesystem to serve up a boot image for PXE thin clients. So far I've been completely unsuccessful in anything more that beating my head against my desk.

I'll be running it on Debian (lenny) and for now I'm just working with the union idea in a test VM. The PXE and NFS stuff will come after I prove that this can reasonably work.

I'm working with unionfs-fuse but I'm also open to funionfs. I looked at aufs but I think it's more complexity than we need. I'm pretty sure I've got the basic idea here but it doesn't seem to be working so I could be wrong in my understanding.

( Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? )

Update: Okay, I've got the union working but the copy-on-write/editing part is still screwed up. I think I was getting confused between unionfs-fuse, funionfs, and unionfs as I was struggling to find documentation for any. I rolled back my vm to the base Debian image, installed unionfs-fuse through apt-get, and am now here:
( Updated issue )

Current Mood: frustrated

[ot] Static Linking
I have a Qt application I need to run on Mac OS X. It's going to be a "portable" application, as in, download the .app bundle inside a ZIP file and run it. No installs, no admin privileges assumed. Due to the way Mac OS X works, it is possible to take a regular, dynamically-linked executable that is linked to Qt and put the .dylib binaries (libQtCore.4.dylib, etc.) inside the bundle and the linker will find them.

This is pretty expensive in terms of application size, however, considering I am download the app from my home server which only has a 1Mbps uplink. If I split the Universal binaries into separate bundles and compress them in ZIP files, a single (i386 or ppc) download weighs in at about 6MB. This is not bad, but I wondered if I could go one better by using static linking to include Qt.

My question is this—is static linking intelligent enough to jettison functions of Qt that I don't touch at all, thus potentially further reducing the size of the resultant binary? I tried static linking on Linux and came up with a binary that was about 6MB, or around 3MB compressed using gzip or ZIP.

I can also configure out things I don't need (e.g. WebKit, SQL support, Qt3 compatibility) since I have to self-compile Qt anyway to get statically-linkable binaries on Mac OS X.

Thoughts?

Current Mood: curious

Is there an easy way to track people who access files on an NFS share? I'd like to know who's accessed a file, and when. I'm hoping there's a way to get an http style usage log.

Suppose I have a bunch of a particular kind of file with scrambled names (ABCD.jpg CDBA.jpg BBCA.jpg, etc) all from www.website.com/foo/

Suppose then I would like to wget replacements for all of the files.
Who knows why? Maybe they're growing mold. Not the important part of the scenario.

Is it possible to make a bash script using grep to get the file names and insert them into a wget command? I am not very familiar with bash or grep, so assuming this scenario is possible how might one do it?

Thanks.
-bmach

I've got a box running Hardy Heron I've been using as a file server. It's been acting a little flaky lately, and today for some peculiar reason when it reboots the machine seems to just die. I can log in remotely, the shares still work, I just can't access the box locally.

When it does boot, just before the orange line gets to the end (on the splash screen) there's a peculiar system beep (i.e. not through the audio port), then nothing.

I've tried restarting in recovery mode, and there don't appear to be any obvious problems... until you get to the login screen, and the video gets wonky and it appears to hang.

I've tried booting from the live CD, but the options on what to repair aren't obvious... I strongly suspect a boot drive is failing, but what do I know?

I'd like to keep all the configurations as I've got a rather large OS RAID I'd hate to reconfigure, as well as the server settings. Is there an easy way to back up the relevant boot drive settings remotely, replace the boot drive, and install a more recent version of ubuntu (while still retaining the settings)?

[Fixed] Sound not working in VLC, mplayer, totem, works fine in madplay
So I just updated my Ubuntu install to 9.10 and sound seems to not work in any of my video players (yes, I checked the sound levels both in the programs and with the alsa mixer). I tried installing ubuntu-restricted-extras but all that did was turn all my videos blue.

I tried also opening several mp3s in each of those programs and the sound does not play as well. However madplay can play those mp3s just fine. I also tried with a .ogg, the video players won't play it either.

When I view the mp3 in totem with visualizations on it does seem to be basing them on the music, instead of just sitting there flat like it does with dead air.

I tried running each program from the command line, but I didn't get any sound related errors. I can post the output if anyone thinks it would be useful.

Any ideas? I tried searching through the forums for something related, but nothing popped up.

EDIT: The issue was pulseaudio. Rather than trying to figure out what was wrong with it I just bypassed it and use ALSA now. Since I don't use any of the advanced stuff that pulseaudio does that should meet my needs.

Text editor.
Hello all. I want to know if anyone can recommend a text editor that has code folding (ie folding trees) like Notepad ++? I use gedit but I'm finding that I'm producing longer programs and editing larger html files than usual and I found the code folding a nice touch while working on various projects.

I don't know if there are any available for Linux but I had to try. :) Thanks!

PS: I'm in Fedora Linux 11 on GNOME.

ETA: Thanks to everyone and

clupea_rufus suggested Geany which was in the Fedora repository. It had what I'm looking for. Thanks for the other suggestions (edited for my bad grammar)

removable media in ubuntu...
It isn't so much a problem, as a nuisence. My USB drive mounts perfectly to the /media/drive mount point. My problem is that it defaults to having 'root' be the group, and it keeps this assignment to all children files and directories.

I've tried changing this using:

sudo chown user:group /media/drive/

but, it won't let me. At first I thought this was because it was mounted, but it won't let me change subsequent directories (i.e. /media/drive/subsequentdirectory/) either. This only became apparent to me when I tried to use rsync to backup some stuff to a removable drive, and rsync wasn't able to retain the file/directory attributes.

I even went so far as to look for an entry in the /etc/fstab table see if there is some way address the issue here, but there isn't an obvious entry for removable media...

Comments? Suggestions?

Cardbus Expresscard adapters
Hi all. I'm getting a new laptop soon, and I'll need an Expresscard to Cardbus
adapter to use this Atheros-based wireless card I have here. Does anyone
recommend any particular adapter to use with a 2.6 kernel? I found several on
Newegg, including this
one. I'm just trying to make sure I don't end up with something that
requires obscure Windows-only drivers to work. Thanks.

Crypto
Hey everyone.

I was wondering if anyone had a suggestion for a (classic pen/paper) cipher toy?
I am not familiar with cryptology at all, but it has recently become intriguing, and has been sneaking it's way into my interest.

What I am looking for is something that will take input, apply a cipher of my choice, and display the encrypted result.
An encoder, decoder, I know, but I don't want it for anything serious; Just a "I wonder what this will look like with such and such cipher applied!" toy.

Thanks,
-BMACH

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Unreal Tournament - SKYWARD.UMX

RAM failure?
I am having some occasional system freezes.

If I run Memtest86+ immediately after a crash, Memtest86+ finds faults, if however, I Memtest86+ at a different time (>10min after a crash) the RAM passes.

Does this sound like a typical RAM problem or is there likely to be an underlying problem.

Image current linux install for reinstallation
Hello all,

Used Acronis TrueImage for Linux to image a current linux install for reinstallation. However, didn't quite like the results.

Anyone have a good solution they perfer, which they can share?

Oh dear, I am sad, so many Ubuntu errors!
Hi all,

Ugh. I just wanted to thank you for all the help and then also tell you that I may end up having to ask for all that help yet again! I had my computer set on the arm of the chair where I was sitting and it fell off and onto the ground. It didn't have the battery in it, just the A/C adapter. Anyway, when it fell, I just picked it up and everything seemed like it was fine. However, only about a minute later, it turned off and then I saw that the A/C adapter had fallen out of the A/C port, so it wasn't really charging. I tried to restart my computer with Ubuntu and everything seemed fine until after the main start up where it says "Ubuntu" on the screen and has the little bar under it.

Well, after that, it started giving me tons of errors. There were a lot of long numbers with a decimal point in each. Then there were things like I/O not found and initrd errors and such. It was crazy! It was always five minutes worth of errors that appeared on the screen. I could still type "help" to get directory commands, but nothing seemed to do anything else.

So, now, it looks like I am just going to have to reinstall Ubuntu, which I'll probably do a bit later tonight.

I'll try to get files saved online or e-mailed to myself, but I'm not sure what I can and can't do.

After all, Windows Vista doesn't really seem to like me all that much. I can do things like use notepad, but when it comes to using the Internet, it doesn't like to cooperate with browsers.

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