The Crane Has Landed


XBMC redirect in Ubuntu
July 12, 2009, 5:34 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

After installing the fantastic iPhone skin for XBMC on my Ubuntu machine, annoyingly, http://xbox:8080/iphone doesn’t work because XBMC’s web server expects default.asp to be the first page to go to, and when that’s not there (’coz the skin uses index.html), it errors out.  And Response.Redirect isn’t known by the server.

Not to worry – the following default.asp page will redirect to the index.html page in less than a second:

iPhone control loading...

Loading...



Great link for command line SAMBA
July 12, 2009, 9:06 am
Filed under: Development, Tips, Tools, Ubuntu

I’m just discovering the usefulness of smbclient and this link has a great summary of the commands you can fire through this tool from the terminal.

Probably the most common one I need to do is to use the tarmode to copy whole folders down, like so:


tarmode
lcd /tmp #this switches the local directory
recurse
prompt
mget pdf995/ #this recurses and tars the pdf995 remote directory and puts it in /tmp on the client



GPG key error
July 10, 2009, 8:58 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

When the apt-get gives an error about a missing gpg key, there will be a hex code, and you can use the following (sometimes) to add it:


gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv [KEY]
gpg --export --armor [KEY] | sudo apt-key add -



Hiding the Gnome panel
July 5, 2009, 2:44 pm
Filed under: Tips, Ubuntu

This one bugged me for ages, and it’s still not something you can completely remove, but if you are using Ubuntu or a Gnome desktop as, say, a media centre, you may not want to have the Gome panel/bar appearing at all.

The current best solution is to use gconf-editor to set the auto_hide_size of the panel you want to change (under /apps/panel/toplevels/[panel name]) to 1.  Then make sure the “auto hide” option is checked and voila – pretty much gone.



Ubuntu bug with Samba shares unmounting
July 5, 2009, 12:14 pm
Filed under: Intrepid, Tips, Ubuntu

So, there’s this very well documented bug with all versions of Ubuntu where the network connection is dropped before any set Samba shares are unmounted.  This results in annoying “CIFS error 50″ type timeout issues. 

It’s unbelievable that this still isn’t fixed in Jaunty, and I’ve never really got the workarounds working.  But the most common is to move the unmounting command up the stack of priorities when shutting down or suspending.  To do this, as The World shows:

ln -s /etc/init.d/umountnfs.sh /etc/rc0.d/K15umountnfs.sh
ln -s /etc/init.d/umountnfs.sh /etc/rc6.d/K15umountnfs.sh



Get GCalDaemon running at startup
May 21, 2009, 8:56 pm
Filed under: Ubuntu

To get the GCALDaemon up and running at startup in Ubuntu, check out http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4473753&postcount=5



CIFS unmount error
May 19, 2009, 8:43 pm
Filed under: Ubuntu

Still trying to find the solution to the damn CIFS error whenever you reboot or shutdown Ubuntu, which is all to do with shutting down the network before trying to unmount the shares. Have been told that the following works:

sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/umountnfs.sh /etc/rc0.d/K15umountnfs.sh
&& sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/umountnfs.sh /etc/rc6.d/K15umountnfs.sh

Will have to wait and see.



VGA modes in boot settings
May 17, 2009, 8:33 pm
Filed under: Ubuntu

You can append the following after vga= on a distro line in /boot/grub/menu.lst to change the font size of the CLI console:

640×480 800×600 1024×768 1280×1024 1600×1200
256 (8 bit) 769 771 773 775 796
32,768 (15 bit) 784 787 790 793 797
65,536 (16 bit) 785 788 791 794 798
16.8M (24 bit) 786 789 792 795 799


How to disable PC speaker in Ubuntu
May 2, 2009, 5:31 pm
Filed under: Ubuntu

In my upgrading of my laptop to the new Ubuntu Jaunty, I’ve found the PC speaker very, very loud. 

Not to worry.  To shut it up, type modprobe -r pcspkr. And, to make that permanent, add the line /sbin/modprobe -r pcspkr to /etc/rc.local.



Creating a favico in Gimp
April 9, 2009, 3:18 pm
Filed under: Photography & Graphics