Experiments with Linux

Wireless card issue on the laptop

2010-12-14T20:32:00.000-08:00

This is how i solved my wireless card issue with the brand new HP laptop. This card support abgn specifications and is fairly new so I guess the driver is missing.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1645716

Conky inspires

2010-11-21T15:25:00.000-08:00

For quite sometime, I had been trying to make my ubuntu desktop more and more cool. First I stumbled upon macubuntu script. This is single no-hassle script that will make a Mac blush. And now, I found something more interesting - Conky. I was aware of conky earlier but not in the same incarnation. See the attached screenshot of my desktop. Isn't cool?

In case you are wondering, conky provides the nice looking sidebar on the desktop. This sidebar is heavily customizable in terms of what you fit in there. The desktop is inspired by this link. I did some customizations of my own and made a few things working. In doing so, I realized how easy it is build upon this nifty utility called conky.

Here is How:
Install the programs

 sudo apt-get install conky hddtemp lm-sensors python-feedparser

Download Scripts

Download the scripts that I used from here. Extract these files into ~/bin/conky directory. I generally keep my programs in ~/bin but feel free to customize the location. You would need to change in couple of files. So, watch for gotchas. I modified these files from the original link as some of the stuff was not working for me.

Scripts folder

.Conkyrc
Use the .conkyrc file from this zip and save it in your home directory as .conkyrc. Then you can run conky on the command line and should be able to get the basic conky stuff. Use ALT+F2 or terminal to fire conky.

Gmail
Change the username and password in .conkyrc file. Of course, do not do if you are concerned about security as the password in this file is plaintext.

Weather
This is the coolest part. In file "pogodynka.sh", look for "kod=USWI0254" and replace the USWI0254 part with your location code from weather.yahoo.com. Here is how .. head to weather.yahoo.com and search for your city. View the page source in html and look for your code in a string looking like below at the top of the page...

title="Franklin - Wisconsin Weather"

href="http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=USWI0254&u=f">

Battery
My laptop required me to use "BAT1" instead of "BAT0". This change should be done in .conkyrc file.

Startup
Conky created unnecessary borders and remained on top of the windows when it is added to start on login. This is fixed by using this small script instead of directly calling conky binary. Add the script "conky_on_startup.sh" to session startup. This is done from the menu System --> Preferences --> Startup Programs.

That is it. Happy working.

Credits to below blog where from I took the base for my customization.
http://www.quicktweaks.com/2008/09/27/gmail-weather-beauty-right-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/

VirtualBox to KVM Migration

2010-06-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

What:

Virtualbox is a nice desktop virtualization software from erstwhile Sun Inc. I used the personal use as well as open edition of it for quite sometime. However, could not resist the temptation to migrate to KVM, given its increasing roars in the virtualization space - both for desktop as well as server side. Not having a good tool to manage the VMs was a shortcoming of KVM for sometime. However, with Virt-Manger, this seems to have changed quite a lot. And so I started to migrate my windows image to KVM based.

Source:
Host OS: Ubuntu 10.04
Virtualization tool: VirtualBox
Guest OS: Windows XP Sp3

Target:

Host OS: Ubuntu 10.04
Virtualization tool: KVM
Guest OS: Windows XP Sp3
objective is migrate this guest image to KVM so that the migration is seemless.

How:

Pre-planning:

Shut off windows XP gracefully. It probably might make a difference. But in anycase, will be a good idea rather than land up in surprise
You need reasonable space. nearly 3 times of the size of the windows xp file disc.
You might need WindowsXP install iso or the setup disc. (I needed it)

Migrate the disc:

Migrate the file disc from .vdi format to .img first
VBoxManage clonehd --format RAW windowsxp.vdi windowsxp.img
Migrate to .qcow2 format
qemu-img convert -f raw windowsxp.img -O qcow2 windowsxp

Setup KVM:

Check if your hardware support hardware virtualization. If not, you can use qemu else use KVM
cat /proc/cpuinfo | egrep "(vmx|svm)"
If the above command returned something, you should be all set to use KVM
Install kvm and virt-manager. You should be able to install these using synaptics or Ubuntu Software Center. There are command line tricks but do you care?
Configure a new VM with image as windowsxp.qcow
In my case, I got my first bummer here - Blue Screen of Death
After a bit of googling, i found repairing the windows xp is the way to go.
Boot the VM from the windows xp ISO or the boot CD.
Go the repair option on the installed image.
It took as long as it takes to install windows xp. However, it retained the entire OS as is. I have an active directory join on this VM, this was intact. No software was removed or modified.
In other words, when repair finished, i could login to the KVM based Windows XP as if I was the previous virtualbox VM.

Overall, a pleasant experience and a quick one too.

References:

http://blog.bodhizazen.net/linux/convert-virtualbox-vdi-to-kvm-qcow/
http://blog.mymediasystem.net/uncategorized/vmware-kvm-migration-guide/
http://outlyer.net/howtos-linux/kvm-qemu-notes/

Ubuntu Blackberry Tethering

2010-03-04T21:16:00.000-08:00

Tethering my modem on ubuntu was one thing I was postponing to do for quite a while. One of the reasons for not attempting it was that on windows too, it did not happen quite easily. And I was n't going to kid myself to believe that it will be breeze on Ubuntu. The ease of tethering on the same laptop with iphone took me by surprise today - more about that later. So, today is the day to try it on my blackberry...

First some versions etc. so that you know if this is a good match to your situation...

Ubuntu Lucid Dev (kernel - 2.6.32-15-generic)
pppd (version 2.4.5)
berry4all (latest from berry4all.com)
Blackberry Curve 8320
T-mobile unlimited data plan (Enterprise)

Installation:

No brainer.. just follow http://www.berry4all.com/install.
sudo apt-get install python libusb-dev ppp python-usb python-wxgtk2.8

Last one is for GUI and I dont think thats an optional package even if you are using a netbook. You want to make life easier - Don't you?

Using it:

tar -zxvf bbtether.tgz
cd bbtether
gedit vi conf/tmobile
uncomment replacedetaultroute. This did not seem to work for me. Fiddling with this option might be helpful.
sudo ./berry4all.sh
Add device password in the preferences window
Connect the blackberry using the USB cable
Fire Connect from the menu option

You should see connected at the end of the output message.
You can also verify if you can connected by typing "ifconfig" on command line and see if there is a ppp0 interface in the output
ping google.com

Troubleshooting:

Disconnect your wireless or ethernet and try again if you are connected by not able to browse any sites.
Unplug your battery, let it drain and retry. This helps on Windows also.

I also tried...

Barry from http://www.netdirect.ca/software/packages/barry. This did not quite work for me.

To Do:

Tether using bluetooth. Will retry this sometime later.
Create a desktop launcher to fire the GUI.

Summary:

Tethering blackberry using berry4all was very simple
GUI is simple and optimal

Gnome Shell - leaves Windows behind (again)

2010-02-08T19:46:00.000-08:00

When 3D effects came to Linux with Compiz and Beryl - much before windows - Linux made great news. MS tried hard with Vista to take on this challenge but we all know how these compare. They hardly do. do they? :)

Anyways, fast forward to Gnome Shell. This is another first from Linux (oops Gnome). Windows 7? It will take Windows 9, 10, 11 to reach there - if at all it did :)

Gnome Shell... My initial reactions

Its super coooool way of working with desktop. Nice gimick there
Best part is - the speed. Its so much faster to locate things - files, folder, commands, programs, places etc.
Combine it with Gnome-do and its nice look dock at the bottom, the efficiency in navigating around the desktop is awesome.
it is simple. Why do we need 2-3 drop downs at the top. Just have one launch point. Neat! No more trying to figure out where recent files are, network is etc.
But where is the System Administration stuff? It did not take much to realize that I have an expanded version of all the shortcuts available from the right side of the launchpad - my name -->; System Preferences

What still needs to be done..

i had a few applets on the panel which now disappeared and there does not seem to be a way to add these anymore :(. Hopefully, that will come back soon.
i could not move this to bottom or to any other side of the screen. Not a big deal since I really want it on top but other might prefer it elsewhere - side, bottom

In short, Gnome Shell rocks and is redefining the end user computing experience.

Few more screenshots

Linux Equivalents for Corporate

2009-08-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

While googling for linux equivalents yields many results, I thought it was a good idea to jot down a few ideas on what is suitable for corporate rather than for public in general. The below list is based on my experience with products and/or public experiences of others.

I published it here. This is in draft state as i buiild it over a period of time.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tNimbGu_4GYFmPu1NX7vtQQ&output=html

Some of the references used for this post include:
http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Linux_software_equivalent_to_Windows_software

High CPU usage in Jaunty (FIXED)

2009-07-30T18:24:00.000-07:00

After having trouble with high CPU usage in the newest version of Ubuntu - 9.04, I finally managed to get it in control.

The culprit is 'vino-server'. This starts running when one will enable Remote desktop on ubuntu. I did not intend to use it. I prefer nx-server for the remote desktop connection - far more efficient and secure. Somehow, vino got enabled. The problem is that it does not show up as Vino usage but as xorg process usage - and thats hard to diagnose. But finally, googling worked :).

Go to system -> Preference -> Remote Desktop to disable this.

I used
- sensors-applets
- CPU Frequency monitor applets (perhaps part of cpufreq-utils package)

to switch the cpu to powersave mode and keep the cpu from overheating due to this unneccessary cpu usage.

Having killed the vino server and disabling it altogether, I dont have to restrain my laptop cpu to a lower frequency anymore.

Got tipped from here...
http://www.eigenmagic.com/2009/05/23/fix-high-cpu-usage-in-ubuntu-904-jaunty/
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/309776

Connecting Ubuntu to Belkin N+ router USB drive

2009-07-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

I recently purchased Belkin's N+ Wireless router. It worked great. Easy to set up and comes up LEDs that should help troubleshoot where the problem is. One of the other features is that it comes with a mount point for USB drive. This is good since it just provides an easy way to create a local NAS. You keep the drive in one place and access it from any of your laptops.

Connecting it from Windows is easy. The usual \\belkin N+\Drive Name works. However, on linux, it did not work out of box. Looked like trouble with space in the name at first. But when I tried with IP address and it did work. I inferred space may not be the issue. I tried few suggestions from ...

http://alittlecharm.blogspot.com/2009/06/connecting-ubuntu-to-belkin-n-usb-drive.html

.. this did not work for me. Not as it is, at least.

One reason i avoided to implement these suggestion as is that it required to install smb4k which would have also installed base kde and I wasn't in big favor of installing the whole thing. I started to look for a gnome alternate to smb4k. I remembered good old linneighborhood. This is now listed as pyNeighborhood in synaptic. This internally depends on smbfs. And I think thats the missing piece. Because I did not use pyNeighborhood at all - just installing "smbfs" did the work. I could browse the drive in nautilus and also mount it using the command line.

Here is how I did for nautilus:
For nautilus, i had to do smb://ROUTE_IP/. It wont list the shares in the BELKIN group for some reasons. When prompted for password, i entered ...
Username: guest
Workgroup: BELKIN (thats how it appeared in my network neighborhood)
password: leave it empty

Remember authorization forever. And now it works like a charm.

Repeating command lines from the link I referred above...

sudo mount -t cifs -o guest,ip=ROUTER_IP,domain=BELKIN,_netdev,mand "//ROUTE_IP/My Passport/" "/media/My Passport/"

(replace ROUTER_IP, BELKIN and My Passport with your names)

CoLinux - Setting it up on Windows XP

2008-03-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

About this article

I wanted to write an article thats quick and simple get colinux working on a Windows Host. I have skipped details that can be referred elsewhere in the spirit of keeping this article simple.

The infrastructure used:

Laptop: Toshiba Portege A 200
Host OS: Windows XP
Guest OS: Ubuntu 8.04 (alpha 6)

What is Colinux

Colinux or Cooperative linux is an easy way to run Windows and Linux simultaneously on the same machine without the hassle of partitioning.

More at ...

http://colinux.org/

Preparing Setup

Space Requirements

Ensure you have ample space on your drive depending on how full you want to enjoy linux. Below numbers may help you decide if you have enough space to set up colinux:

Bare minimum non-gui colinux: 2G

Gnome/Kde based colinux: 5G

For use as full time OS: 10G+

Software needed

Qemu
QEMU Accelerator Module
Colinux
Wincap
Ubuntu or any linux distribution of your choice. I used ubuntu for this article. And you should download the .iso file from this website.
UnxUtils - this contains unix utilities like dd, ls etc.
Xming Optional software if you want to access Linux the graphical way

Installation & Configuration Instructions

Qemu Based Installation

Download the latest Ubuntu installation .iso file. In my case, this is hardy-desktop-i386.iso
Download and install qemu
Download and install qemu accelerator module. Basically, download the zipped file and extract in qemu directory
Right click kqemu.inf file and click "Install" to install this software in windows
Create an empty file to install Linux using fsutil. I allocated 5 GB of space for this.

fsutil file createnew d:\colinux\Ubuntu\Ubuntu_5gb 5368680448

Create a small swap device for qemu

fsutil file createnew d:\colinux\swap_512mb 536903168

Start the qemu accelerator module before starting the install procedure. This is important to use -kernel-kqemu option in qemu. Else graphical interface may not come up.

net start kqemu

Create a small batch file to start Ubuntu installation in qemu.

@ECHO OFF
REM I installed qemu in colinux folder. You may need to change this.
set qemu_dir=d:\colinux
set hd=%qemu_dir%\Ubuntu\ubuntu_5gb
set swap=%qemu_dir%\swap_512mb
set cdrom=%qemu_dir%\Ubuntu\hardy-desktop-i386.iso
set mem=512
qemu -kernel-kqemu -hda %hd% -hdb %swap% -cdrom %cdrom% -m %mem% -boot d -L .
pause

Boot from the CD and then click the install icon on the desktop to install Ubuntu.
Configure to your liking if you wish. You can do that later too.
Shutdown

Qemu part is now over.

Convert Qemu image to Colinx

Convert Qemu image to Colinux image

dd if=ubuntu_5gb of=ubuntu_5gb.img bs=512 skip=63

Qemu can now be deinstalled and the qemu image can also be deleted. However, its best to retain unless you have colinux up and running

Colinux configuration (Windows)

Install colinux
Install WinPcap
Rename the WinPcap based network connection as "Tap". This is for easily identifying and referring the network connections. The network connections can be renamed in the network connections panel
Configure the "Tap" network with the below configurations. (you can choose any network that does not conflict with the IPs within your network):

IP: 192.168.37.10
Netmask: 255.255.255.0

Tap is the interface used to communicate between Guest OS and Host OS
Create a small file in the colinux directory as below (Ubuntu.conf). This is modified example.conf file of colinux. This file is colinux start up file and is loaded whenever colinux is restarted.

kernel=vmlinux
cobd0="d:\colinux\Ubuntu\Ubuntu_5gb.img"
root=/dev/cobd0
ro
initrd=initrd.gz
mem=512
eth0=slirp,,tcp:22:22/tcp:80:80
eth1=tuntap,"Tap"

"tcp:22:22/tcp:80:80" allows routing requests to port 22 and 80 on the windows host to the linux OS. These arguments are not necessarily needed but I keep these to test out the configurations
Create a batch file to boot colinux as below..

@echo off
colinux-daemon.exe @"Ubuntu.conf" -d -v 3

This should start colinux.
Double click "colinux-console-fltk.exe" view the linux console booting up.
If you see any error, make sure there are no syntax or path errors in the Ubuntu.conf file in the colinux directory.

Guest OS configurations (Ubuntu)

Network configurations

Set up the /etc/network/interfaces file as below

auto lo eth0
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto eth1_rename
iface eth1_rename inet static
   address 192.168.37.20
   network 192.168.37.0
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   broadcast 192.168.37.255

Somehow eth1 is recognized as eth1_rename in colinux. I have not bothered to find out how i can rename it to eth1. (FIX ME)
Add the below line to /etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 10.0.2.3

The ip addresses 192.168.37.20 & 192.168.37.10 are just a matter of choice. Please use what ever works for you.
Restart networking

/etc/init.d/networking

ifconfig should show the interfaces lo, eth0 and eth1_rename properly configured

Testing

Ping from windows OS to host 192.168.37.20. The ping request should be responded
Internet should work from the Linux host if you have a working internet connection (Lan or wireless) on your windows host
wget, nslookup, dig to google.com or somewhere else should work too

Accessing the Graphical Linux

XDMCP & Xming Way

Below is how it should work. However, it has worked for me yet. I believe thats just a matter of what depth of colors my display can support on two monitors. (FIX ME)

edit in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf to disable opening local display and enabling xdmcp

[xdmcp]
Enable=true
[servers]
#0=Standard

Restart gdm

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

Launch using xlaunch

Display Settings One window
Display number  0
Start Xming  Open Session via XDMCP
Connect to host the IP adress from eth1 (192.168.37.20)
Clipboard  enabled

Using VNC

Easiest way to get the graphical linux working is to set up vnc on the colinux OS and then access it using vnc client from the Host OS. Below is how i configured it:

On the Guest OS (Ubuntu)

Install vnc

sudo apt-get install vnc4server #vncserver for previous versions, i suppose

as a regular user, set a password for vnc

vncpasswd
Password:
Verify:

Add the below lines to your xstartup file (/home/user/.vnc/xstartup)

#!/bin/sh
exec gnome-session & # or startkde if you are kde fan

Start the vnc service (there are other ways to start vncserver which may be more efficient eg. through xinetd or init.d scripts)

vncserver :1 -depth 24

NOTE:I could not get a proper gui unless i ran it with -depth 24 or -depth 16 options. Apparently, thats a video card limitation. So, your experience may vary depending on your graphics card.

Host OS (Windows)

If you have n't figured it out already. Connect using vncviewer or any vnc client using the "Tap" network.

vncviewer 192.168.37.20:1

:1 specifies the display to connect to. If you have xdmcp up and running, you would be connecting to display :0

Adding Colinux as service

Adding colinux as a service helps to have colinux running in the background. So, you can ssh to it anytime. However, you may not want to run it all the time as it will take some system resources especially, if you are running graphical mode.

d:\colinux\colinux-daemon.exe @Ubuntu.conf --install-service "Colinux Ubuntu"

References

Setting Up Ubuntu 6 in colinux

Networking In Colinux

Graphical Colinux

Fix Sound problem in youtube (Ubuntu firefox)

2007-11-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

Problem: In Ubuntu Gutsy (Perhaps other versions too), there is no sound when you play any videos on youtube.com

Solution: there seem to be many when you google but the one that worked for me was to install a package "libflashsupport" from here..

http://www.paulbetts.org/projects/libflashsupport_1.0~2219-2_i386.deb

Setting up Ubuntu 7.10 on HP Pavillion dv6500t laptop

2007-10-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

Ok. this is my new challenge. Having worked on linux for so long and always wanted to see ubuntu on my laptop, I started setting it up on my new HP laptop and I am going to use latest and greatest Ubuntu 7.10.

First the specs of the laptop...

HP Pavillion dv6500t
Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T7300 (2.00 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
15.4" WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
2GB DDR2
383MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
HP Imprint (Influx) + Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
120GB 5400RPM
LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer

Now, coming to some action...

Installation
Nothing could be much simpler.

Boot using the Ubuntu CD
Double click the "install" icon
Follow the simple on-screen instructions
Reboot after installation and you are on your new ubuntu desktop (login window actually)
Login using the username and password you created during installation.

Connecting to Internet
well, that surely would be the first order of the day and here is how it went for me

i use WPA based authentication on my wireless router
my wireless card was detected
i clicked on the network tray icon to pick up the SSID of my wireless netwrok
i was prompted for the WPA password
and then a password to store it in a keyring
thats it. i was online while it left a staircase kind of icon in the tray
feeling happy because without internet, i could have had a major challenge

Nvidia Display Card
I had tried to set it up using Ubuntu 7.04 tribe 5 on the same laptop but was quite disappointed with the stability of the effects. Infact, i quit trying after a while and reverted to the not so funky aka default desktop.
So, here is how it went with the new Ubuntu 7.10.

When i booted the new ubuntu 7.10, i got the warning message about having hardware that with run with restricted/proprietary drivers.
i clicked the "restricted driver" icon and click on "Click to use" checkbox
it swiftly instally the nvidia-new driver
reboot
go to Systtem --> Preference --> Appearance
go to the "visual effects" tab in the configuration window
I picked up "Normal" mode for effects and was prompted for the "keep configuration", "previous configuration"
this is really making me happy now. So, i am thinking of graduating :)
in the same visual effects windows, i now picked up the "Extra Effects" and bravo, ubuntu developers have really worked hard, everything is working great. Kudos!

Most of the M$ Vista aspirants should be happy with what Ubuntu has to offer with these extra effects enabled but if you are somewhat adventurous, you can install compiz packages to take the graphics to a limits. I haven't tried it on Ubuntu 7.10 so I dont know if thats a good idea. With 7.04 and on this laptop configuration, i was challenged. will try it sometimes and let know how it went.

Sound

Sound on this laptop does not work out of box. But the instructions @
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto

are just great for gutsy 7.10. Just download and compile the latest alsa 1.0.5 driver, lib and utils and you have the sound right there on your laptop.

Bluetooth
not tested yet

5-in-1 media card reader

SD card slot - works like a charm. In fact, prompts me to import pictures because thats what i got there. Cool. i was using 2GB ultra II SD card
Sony Memory Stick - ?

S-Video Port
works out of box. Fn+F4 key combination sends to TV. Needs to pressed twice to play on both Tv and Laptop. I have some challenge with the display area on the TV though which i need to further investigate.

Media
?