CFAvatar.com

Wireshark, No Interfaces on Mac OS X

2010-01-03T10:44:37-05:00

Just so I don’t have to look this up ever again, the following command will allow wireshark to display the capture devices.

sudo chown [you] /dev/bpf*

cfavatar is moving

2008-06-12T05:26:03-05:00

I have decided to move my blog to wordpress. This will also be the new home of the pages related to my hobby projects:

Text Complete
BDAdmin
OpenID Consumer for coldfusion

cfavatar.wordpress.com

The posts which I still consider relevant will be transfered to the new home.

cheers

Marcel

Open Id Consumer for coldfusion.

2008-04-13T20:00:23-05:00

I am currently playing around with openid, I have released my first attempts of rolling my own consumer here. cfkitopenid.riaforge.com/ Feedback is wanted.

cheers

Marcel

Using SSHFS to mount a subversion working copy.

2008-01-28T00:20:06-05:00

I am currently attempting to get our development environment as close as possible to production with a minimum of cost. Steps we have take so far is to virtualize our production servers, we have also started the migration from windows 2003 to linux. A major factor here was the difficulty involved in cloneing a windows based machines.

Having a virtualized environment allows us to download the production servers reduce the memory in the VMs to suit and the run the same servers as development machines.

The next step was deciding on the best way to connect to these development machines for coding. I decided to experiment with SSHFS and it;s working out very nicely so far.

We use subversion for code management and one gotcha was to specify the sshfs options allow_other and workaround=rename. Without the rename option subversion would throw an error when trying to work with the files. The command we used for mounting look something like this:

sshfs marcel@192.168.1.11:/var/cfml /home/marcel/mount/bd1/ -p 22 -o allow_other,workaround=rename

CFChart with bluedragon7 and apache

2007-11-28T13:00:00-05:00

To get the cfchart component to display charts when using apache2 ensure the apache servlet mapping
include the .cfchart extension the complete entry should look something like this:

# BlueDragon 7 JX
LoadModule servletexec_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_servletexec22.so
ServletExecInstances default 127.0.0.1:9999
ServletExecAliases default /servlet .cfc .cfm .cfml .cfchart
<location /servlet>
SetHandler servlet-exec
</location>
AddHandler servlet-exec cfc
AddHandler servlet-exec cfm
AddHandler servlet-exec cfml
AddHandler servlet-exec cfchart
ddHandler servlet-exec cfml

Apple Mac Book Pro is region free.

2007-09-22T00:00:00-05:00

Oh Joy Oh Joy,
After several weeks of intense searching and crawling through forums I finally found a "firmware" upgrade that enables me to once again watch all the DVDs in my collection.

I spent a long time living in another part of the world and also do a lot of traveling. So when I am sitting in a hotel and the weather sucks I like to be able to buy/rent a DVD and watch the same on my laptop.

Unfortunately some fuckwits decided to invent region restrictions, what that means to me is that if I buy a 'standard' DVD player I can nolonger watch the DVDs I paid good money for if the region on the DVD does not match that of the Player.

Back in the ugly days when I was using windows I bought a tool called regionfree. The $20- cost is well worth the price. When I switched to Linux regions where not an issue, smart people build linux, nough said.

For my MacBook things are tricky as the DVD player hardware itself is locked down. That is until today.

The following forum lists a firmware driver that set the region code to 1 = Region Free. Yahhhooo

P.S. Read the usual warnings. Applying a firmware update may KILL your drive.

The Firmware update worked for my 15" Intel Santa Rosa Mac Book Pro.
MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-857E Firmware ZA0E

http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=43082

A HUGE THANKS TO THE GUY HOW BUILD THIS FIRMWARE UPDATE YOU ROCK!!!!

Getting to Terms with the Mac Book Pro

2007-08-02T22:58:00-05:00

Hoochi mama,
After waiting several weeks I finally got a hold of my new mac book pro. The first impression on firing up Mac OS X was refreshing. The OS looks and feels fresh and sexy.

So after the first couple of days getting my feet wet and playing around it was time to start migrating my data and applications so I could get back down to business and start getting productive.

I was hoping for a smooth migration from my kubuntu set up to OS X and indeed with a bit of googling I managed to get all the tools I needed.

This included:

Firefox + Plugins (Old habits die hard, safari is supposed to be nice but i've been with firefox sind firebird times.)
Thunderbird
Eclipse (Nuff said, the ultimate dev tool for my Java, Coldfusion and Flex needs.)
Neo Office (I only found this today – simply put it's open office for Mac OS X Tiger)
Bluedragon Server (CFMX does not run yet on intel macs.)
Fusion (Awesome VM-Ware for Macs, helps me run both Windows and Kubuntu)
TSClient (When forced to work with Micro$oft Servers)
Cyberduck (Apparently a good FTP client for Mac OS X)
VLC (Nice cross platform media player)

The Mac OS workflow seems quite different from the windows and linux environments, and I must admit being frustrated a lot of the time. Here is hoping that I “get” the mac way of doing things. Currntly I am missing my fully customized KDE set-up.

So here goes my current top hates:

Why can't I just pin any window to the front. I installed a utility for this but it only works in a couple of apps.
If I want to use an external monitor at native resolution I can not just press fn + f7 but have to close the lid wait for standby and the wake the laptop with an external keyboard. Thats just dumb.
Connecting my logitech keyboard maps the command key to alt resulting in me having to contort my fingers for saving, cut and paste and undo. This SUCKS.
The way the home and end keys work is stupid when you are used to Windows/Linux environments.
Why does the command key have to replace control? I am getting used to this but anyways?
The mac book pro dvd drive is locked to a region.
The bash shell for Mac OS X is retarted if you are used to the linux shell.
Menus always are pinned to the top of the screen. ok when in laptop mode but anoyinng on a 27" Flatscreen.

On the up side:

The hardware is awesome and stylish, besides soon Leopard will be released and if that does not fix the issues I know sooner or later Ubuntu will run on this beautiful machine.
The networking stuff works flawless, even getting my mobile working as a modem worked out of th e box.
Mac OS X is sexy sexy sexy.
Theire is unix inside. :)
Ipod, multimedia integration is excellent (suprise suprise).
The mac remote is actually usefull, always thought it was a gimick until i started using it.
Backlit keyboard has massiv style factor.

No doubt my next couple of post will be about my getting used to life on the Mac Side of life.

If any one can point me to some sites which explain the mac work flow please post it here. I am also thankful for any solutions to my anoyances listed above.

Google Desktop for Linux

2007-07-04T13:58:00-05:00

Google released it's desktop search for Linux a couple of days ago. Google desktop search is something I was hoping for for some time for my Linux installation as I am not hundred percent happy with the alternatives. Until now I have been using Beagle Search but never really got it to play nice with my Thunderbird mails. Here is hoping that Google does a better job.

First up installation:

Installation is a snap especially for Ubuntu users as Google provides a custom package for installation on Ubuntu systems . Easy to follow installation instructions can be found here: http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/ubuntu704.html

Some problems I had:

Could not use the preference pages. (Pages not showing)

Clicking links on the Google Desktop Preferences pages were breaking, and Firefox would show a page not found error. The URL would show the page being retrieved from KDE Cache or something along those lines.

Solution:

This was a problem with KDE, the resolution was to launch Firefox with the suffix %U, (e.g. firefox %U) I also did the same for the launch script for Thunderbird. This fixed the problem and the preferences screens now work as expected.

Googledesktop was not indexing Thunderbird mails or Firefox Websites.

Solution:

Both Firefox and Thunderbird need extensions (add/ons) for them to work with googledesktop,
on a standard installation this is taken care of by the package installer. However I manually installed the latest version of Firefox and Thunderbird by hand, so the extensions did not get installed. The installer can be found in the google desktop binary folder.

On my installation this was in:

/opt/googledesktop/bin

The installation scripts can be started with command line parameters which point to a custom installation. In my case I executed the following commands, and voila everything is working nice.

sudo ./install_firefox_plugin.sh -D 1 -F /home/marcel/apps/firefox2
sudo ./install_thunderbird_plugin.sh -D 1 -T /home/marcel/apps/thunderbird2

Note: I have installed Firefox and Thunderbird in a apps folder within my home directory.

Setting up the Epson DX6050 with Feisty Fawn

2007-06-11T21:45:00-05:00

I just got home from purchasing an Epson DX6050 Printer/Scanner, the friendly staff at the store answered my question "Does the printer work with Ubuntu?" with a helpful "What's ubuntu?". Ahhh well.

So first things first, setting up the printer, I use KDE so thats what I am explaining here.

1) Open K-Menu (click on the K Symbol)
2) Select "System Settings"
3) Click Printers
4) Click Add (Add Printer Class) ("The Add Printer Wizard" should start)
5) Next
6) Choose "Local printer (parallel,serial, USB)" -> Next
7) Expand "Local System" - USB - Epson Stylus DX6000 USB #1
8) Select EPSON Stylus DX6000 -> Next
9) Search and click on Epson under Manufactures
10) Search and click on "Stylus Color 860" -> Next
11) On the Driver Selection pane choose "Epson Stylus Color 860 Foomatics/stc2.upp" -> Next
12) Click On "Test" to print a test page.
13) Continue accepting the defaults until you come to the "General Information" part.
14) Assign the Printer a name. eg. MyAwesomePrinter -> Next
15) Click Finish - The Printer is now setup

That was that, I must admit I just guessed the driver and did not test any of the other options so if someone out their knows that a different driver works much better please let me know.

Getting Scanning Happening:

I must admit that getting the scanning to work was something I had written off right from the beginning. Fortunately my girlfriend can read french and she was able to translate a french forum post that according to Google would help me get scanning happening, and Indeed it did.

Getting scanning to work required modifying two files. So let's get cracking ;)

sudo vim /etc/udev/rules.d/45-libsane.rules

Add the following so that the last lines in the file look like this:

# Epson Stlus DX 6050
SYSFS{idVendor}=="04b8", SYSFS{idProduct}=="082e", MODE="664",GROUP="scanner"

LABEL="libsane_rules_end"

Then edit the second file:

 sudo vim /etc/sane.d/epson.conf

Add the following to the last line of the file:

usb 0x4b8 0x082e

After that reboot Ubuntu. (I am sure i could have restarted some daemon to pick up the changes but I have no idea which one, besides old windows habits die hard.) Maybe someone can write and let me know how to circumvent the reboot.

After following the above steps the DX6050 shows up when starting XSane Image Scanner and I can print from any program.

Hope that helps some people out there with there Feisty Fawn setup.

cheers

Marcel

Running Bluedragon 6.2 Headless

2007-05-14T23:11:00-05:00

After having my blog spammed by some friendly russians (thanks for the porn links )

I decided to implement the captcha functionality on the blog software used in running this site. (BlogCFM v1.14).

Keen to stop the spammers I quickly enable the captchas within the admin. Unfortunately only to be greeted with a nasty error message when opening the comment pages:

 java.awt.image.BufferedImage class not found error.

Seems this is a common problem when running a Linux server in headless mode, java insists on X server funtionality for certain function call for example the the awt class. After some messing around the error changed to java complaining aboout:

 error while loading shared libraries: libXt.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Here then is the final solution to get Bluedragon Working in headless mode.

First install the required X-Server libraries for the awt class:

sudo apt-get install xlibs libxt6 libxtst6

NOTE: The above only works on Ubuntu versions prior to Dapper Drake, seems that xlibs no longer exits on later systems, apparently this library has been split up into several packages. However no one seems to know which ones, a recommendation was to just install the library xlibs-dev instead of xlibs.

Then open up the file StartBlueDragon.sh file within the bluedragon bin folder, and add the following to the options line:

 -Djava.awt.headless=true

The final code then looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
cd /opt/bluedragon-6.2
JAVA_HOME=/opt/bluedragon-6.2/jre
NEW_CLASSPATH=/opt/bluedragon-6.2/lib/BlueDragonServer.jar:/opt/bluedragon-6.2/lib/BlueDragon.jar:
NEW_CLASSPATH=$NEW_CLASSPATH:/opt/bluedragon-6.2/classes:
HEAPSIZES="-Xms16384k -Xmx131072k"
OPTIONS="-XX:+UseParallelGC -Daxis.ClientConfigFile=./config/bd-client-config.wsdd -Daxis.ServerConfigFile=./config/bd-ser
ver-config.wsdd -Djava.awt.headless=true"
"$JAVA_HOME/bin/java" -server $HEAPSIZES $OPTIONS -classpath "$NEW_CLASSPATH" com.newatlanta.webserver.BlueDragon &
NEW_CLASSPATH=
JAVA_HOME=

now restart bluedragon and your good to go.

P.S. To get the galleries working in blogcfm you need to install the latest patch when running the free version of bluedragon 6.2.. The patch fixes a bug in the cffile tag which causes the blog code to crash when uploading images.

Bluedragon 7 on Ubuntu - Dapper Drake

2007-04-05T11:35:00-05:00

After yet another long period of silence, New Atlanta gave me a good reason to write another entry. Newatlanta just released the next version of theire awesome coldfusion server, Bluedragon 7.

So read on how to get the goodness that is Bluedragon 7 to play nicely with Ubuntu.

Prepare the folder into which you want to install Bluedragon for some reason I like to install my coldfusion servers into /opt but feel free to go with the default, you just have to adjust the following examples accordingly.

sudo mkdir /opt/bluedragon7 -p --mode=755

Visit the New Atlanta site and download the latest version of Bluedragon 7 for Linux at the time of writing the downloaded file is called: BlueDragon_Server_JX_70_339-Linux.sh

Make the file executable:

sudo chmod +x BlueDragon_Server_JX_70_339-Linux.sh

Execute the bluedragon installer.

For Ubuntu Desktop (With GUI):

sudo sh BlueDragon_Server_JX_70_339-Linux.sh

For Ubuntu Server (Headless):

Excute the Bluedragon installer (Ubuntu Headless)

sudo sh BlueDragon_Server_JX_70_339-Linux.sh –i console

Follow the prompts when asked where to install bluedragon specify:

/opt/bluedragon7

That's it!

To test if the installation was successful crank up the server:

sudo /opt/bluedragon7/bin/StartBlueDragon.sh

Configure Bluedragon to Run as a NON-Root User

It is usualy not a good idea to run the bluedragon server with a root account, especially so in a production environment.

Create a user group for bluedragon

sudo groupadd bdragon

Create a user for bluedragon. (we also set the home directory to the bluedragon install folder.)

sudo useradd -d '/opt/bluedragon7' -c 'BlueDragon Server' -s /bin/sh -g bdragon bdragon

Lock the bluedragon account

sudo passwd -l bdragon
 Give the bluedragon account ownership to the server files: sudo chown -R bdragon.bdragon /opt/bluedragon7

Read on how to modify the start script to use the newly created account.

Starting Bluedragon at Boot time.

We need a ubuntu friendly boot up script for bluedragon, luckily the installer does most of the work for us, however it is placed in the wrong folder and needs some small changes.

Move the bluedragon startup script to a suitable location for Ubuntu:

sudo mv /etc/rc.d/init.d/BlueDragon_Server /etc/init.d

We now need to make some small changes to this script to make it work with ubuntu so open this script up with your favourite editor:

sudo vim /etc/init.d/BlueDragon_Server

The comment out this line:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

If you want to run as a not-root user (see configure Bluedragon to Run as a NON-Root User above) add the line:

bduser=bdragon

The final script looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
# Startup script for the BlueDragon Server

#. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

bdstart=/opt/bluedragon7/bin/StartBlueDragon.sh
bdstop=/opt/bluedragon7/bin/StopBlueDragon.sh

bduser=bdragon

prog="BlueDragon Server"

start() { echo -n "Starting $prog: "; daemon $bdstart ; echo ; RETVAL=$?

; return $RETVAL ; }

stop() { echo -n "Stopping $prog: "; daemon $bdstop ; echo ; RETVAL=$?

; return $RETVAL ; }

case "$1" in

start) start& ;;

stop) stop ;;

restart) stop; start ;;

*) echo $"Usage: $prog {start|stop|restart}"

exit 1

esac

Now bind the script into the ubuntu run time system:

sudo update-rc.d BlueDragon_Server defaults

Done!

If you get the following error message when running the startup script:

daemon: fatal: refusing to execute unsafe program: /opt/bluedragon7/bin/StartBlueDragon.sh (/opt/bluedragon7/bin/StartBlueDragon.sh is group writable)

You need to change the permission on the bluedragon server files:

sudo chmod g=rx /opt/bluedragon7 -R

Installing Adobe Coldfusion MX 7 on Ubuntu

2006-12-01T17:27:00-05:00

Lucky me I was invited to participate in the alpha 2 for the next release of Adobes coldfusion server code named scorpio.

I only just started playing with it and even the alpha works like a charm with some very complex applications we have running here in our shop. A very nice suprise was seeing that a few nasty problems we had with CFMX 7 and PDF creation have already disappeared in the alpha. I LIKE.

So seeing I will be doing a fair bit of installing of CFMX in the next couple of weeks I thought now would be a good time to post a small how-to on getting CFMX to play nice with Ubuntu. We have been developing CFMX 7 and Bluedragon applications on Ubuntu successfully for close to 9 months now so from my experience everything works fine. However please keep in mind that Ubuntu is not a “supported” OS so your mileage may vary.

NOTE:
This how-to applies to development machine with a running x-server. A headless machine will not run CFMX with these instructions as some required X-Server libraries are missing that the server requires. If I ever bring a Ubuntu server into production with CFMX I will post the extra steps necessary.

HOW-TO:
This how to is bases on instructions found here:
http://www.howtoforge.com/coldfusion_installation_debian_sarge

First download the coldfusion server installation file for linux (coldfusion-702-lin.bin) from the adobe web site. http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=coldfusion&loc=en%5Fus

1)The downloaded file will not be executable to make it executable open a shell navigate to the location where you saved the file and make the file executable by running:

sudo chmod +x ./coldfusion-702-lin.bin

2)
The next step only applies if you are running Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)
Seems that there is a major bug in this version of Ubuntu with some C library and Java. The bug will prevent the CFMX installer from running, you will receive the following nasty error:

Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...
nawk: error while loading shared libraries: libm.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
dirname: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
/bin/ls: error while loading shared libraries: librt.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
basename: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
dirname: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
basename: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Launching installer...

grep: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
/tmp/install.dir.5655/Linux/resource/jre/bin/java: error while loading shared libraries: libpthread.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The best solution to this problem was posted by Kasp3r on this blog:
http://daveshuck.instantspot.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/10/26/Warning-to-early-adopters-Ubuntu-Edgy-Eft-vs-ColdFusion-Installer

Within the installer there is a instruction (export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL) which causes the bug to occur, this problem has been reported in several products other than coldfusion. The solution is to uncomment this code within the installer. The downloaded CFMX installer despite it's name (coldfusion-702-lin.bin) is a text file. The following commands uncomment all occurences of export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL within the installer, allowing CFMX to be installed on Edgy Eft.

cp coldfusion.bin coldfusion.bin.bak

cat coldfusion.bin.bak | sed "s/export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/#xport LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/" > coldfusion.bin

3.
Install libraries needed by the CFMX installer.
sudo apt-get install libstdc++6 libstdc++5 libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2

I had an issue getting web services to run to fix this problem I had to create a symbolic link:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2

4)
All pre-requisites for installing CFMX have now been met, just run the installer and follow the instructions. (More infos with screenshots can be found on the debian how-to).

sudo ./coldfusion.bin

Hope this works for you people out theire if you need a hand just give me a quick shout.

cheers

Marcel

D.I.Y Router

2006-11-22T06:18:00-05:00

Another day another problem. We planned to increase the available bandwidth in our office to 16mbit. This required an upgrade to ADSL2, not a major problem, or so I thought.

We were still making use of the ADSL router/modem solution from the internet provider we were with several years back and due to the age of the device it did not support ADSL2. We since have switched providers and received a new modem as part of our upgrade to ADSL2. However the new box was modem only, and we obviously need a router for the Office. So of I went to find a suitable device.

We run several services for our roadwarriors out of our office I.T. room, so port forwarding is a MUST have feature for us. I was absolutly suprised that I was unable to find a suitably priced router solution which supported port forwarding, even calling around to the sales guys from netgear and d-link was a disappointment. We purchased devices from both companies only to find that we were not able to do true port mapping, and sent them back.

The routers we sent back only supported what is called virtual servers which is almost what we wanted but not really. We have several web servers that all must run on port 80 within the intranet but also must be accessible from the outside world (obviously with a different port outside per webserver.) The virtual server feature only allows the mapping of incoming requests for fixed port to a different IP on the same port. What a bummer.

So what where we to do? Our old hardware solved the port mapping issue (strange that such an old router had a better feature set than all current offerings we looked at.) but we where not getting the 16mbit goodness from our ADSL2 line.

One of my tech guys stumbled upon an excellent solution called,
fli4l. The software is a free linux based router solution that fits onto a single floppy disk, the freaky thing is that the fli4l server only requires a single networkcard to do it's routing magic. Most excellent.

Our new router can be seen in the middle, the modem is directly connected by the
yellow cable on the bottom switch.

First we configured the fli4l floppy disk, included is not only an excellent web interface, but also a cool monitoring client that now runs on my linux desktop. An old dell laptop with broken TFT and keyboard would be put back to use as our new router. We hooked the modem up directly to our switch connected and connected the laptop to the same switch (remeber only one network card), wacked in the fli4l floppy and bam we had a working solution pretty much out of the box. I LIKE

check it out here:
http://www.fli4l.de

fli4l

Computer game ban in Germany?

2006-11-21T00:08:00-05:00

Another tragic school yard slaying a la columbine occurred a couple of days ago here in Germany.

link | link

The report was barely announced and politician are once again calling for the complete ban on ego shooters. Is this another knee jerk reaction from those trying to protect the population from themselves or does this reaction have merit?

Computer graphics have evolved over the years however game play in principle has not. The player invariably carries a weapon and has to shoot something, a game concept that has carried over from real life kids pretending to shoot each other while playing Cowboys and Indians in their backyard.

When I was playing Rambo on my C=64 all those years ago, my machine gun touting alter ego was represented by barely discernible brown blob of pixels blasting his way up the screen, fast forward to 2006 and I can feast my eyes on the wonderful rendering of my workmates alter ego slumping together after heaving his head blasted on to the wall he was cowering behind just seconds earlier, before I fragged his ass.

Rambo - This Game was banned in the 80's in Germany for being to violent.

Counter Strike source - buy it in any PC-Games store in germany.

Now we are all sane adults who grew up playing computer games, computer games with shit graphics. We are all able to discern what is real and what is fiction we are not psychos and we appreciate the nice rendering and realism in modern computer games.

However that is not the point, the point is that young people and kids are playing these games, and while I do not believe that playing a computer game will make someone a psychotic killer, I do think that the realism of computer games has a desensitising affect towards violence especially on children and young adults. That is is the real danger.

Looking back on my teenage years the game Rambo, Green Baret etc. on the C=64 were all banned for being to violent, however we still managed to acquire these games and played them regularly and that was pre-internet, so a ban will only serve to hurt game sales with no influence on the access of these games to the population .

The focus needs to be put on motivating parents to spend more time with their kids. If your teenage son is running around the woods dressed in full army camouflage carrying a real gun and blowing shit up with real selfmade bombs, the least of your worries is him playing Counter-Strike.

Fixing broken flash sound in Firefox on Dapper Drake

2006-11-19T00:00:00-05:00

I just found a post-it note lying around on my Desk describing a fix for a problem I had several month ago when I started out with Ubuntu Dapper Drake.

Now I can't remember which kind soul posted this on the Internet but it helped me out so I thought I'd just post the text word for word in the hope that someone out might also find this information useful.

Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound on Ubuntu Linux Dapper

If after a system update you’ve discovered that streaming Flash is without sound - fear not. Dapper will at times drop the sound from Firefox & Flash, as always you need to search the forums before freaking out as someone has more than likely already experienced the problem and discovered a solution. Trial and error has lead me to the following fix on my system.

sudo aptitude install alsa-oss
sudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc

FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”

Fixing a X-Server crash on my Ubuntu Installation.

2006-11-16T09:42:00-05:00

It looks like I have finally succeeded in abandoning the Micro$oft empire. Over the years I have made several runs at switching over to Linux with little success, there always seemed to be something missing. Several month ago I once again attempted the switch this time to Ubuntu, and this time around things are going well. I love my new shiny OS.

However going the way of Linux was not an easy switch and took some getting used to, and definitely some unlearning of the windows way of doing things which have become a habit over the last 12 years.

One thing that I was unhappy with was the extra mouse buttons on my MX510 not working the way I wanted to. Logitech make the best mouses but unfortunately they do not support Linux yet. To cut it short the extra buttons did not work out of the box with my Ubuntu installation and that sucked,

Following this How-To on the Ubuntu forums I got the mouse working exactly like I wanted. The only MAJOR issue was that the X-Server would crash on startup if I did not have a mouse connected when I fired up the system. That's a major issue on a laptop. ;) Anyway, after some tinkering I figured out what the problem was.

The How-To specifies that the extra buttons on the MX510 only work when the mouse driver in the xorg.conf file is set to "evdev". Seems this change was breaking the X-Server. The reason being that no core-pointer was present when I booted the laptop with the mouse unplugged, and X-Server seems to need a core-pointer to be happy.

The solution was to configure my Touchpad as the core-pointer. Voilà, I am now one step closer to a perfect system and still windows free. :)

Here is what I did:

Open the xorg.conf file for editing:

sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Find the InputDevice section for the Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad" and replace:

Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"

with

Option "CorePointer"

the find the InputDevice section for the Identifier "Configured Mouse" and replace:

Option "CorePointer"

with

Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"

Ensure only one device section has the Option "CorePointer" set as X-Server will refuse to boot if more than one device is the core pointer.

My system is a Dell Inspiron 9400 - Ambassador.

An extract from the working xorg.conf file is listed below:

[code]Section "InputDevice"
     Identifier     "Configured Mouse"
     Driver         "evdev"
#   Option         "CorePointer"
     Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
     Option         "Device" "/dev/input/event9"
     Option         "Buttons" "10"
     Option         "Resolution" "800"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
     Identifier     "Synaptics Touchpad"
     Driver         "synaptics"
     Option         "CorePointer"
#   Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
     Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
     Option         "Protocol" "auto-dev"
     Option         "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
EndSection
[/code]

Building Beagle from Source.

2006-11-16T09:36:00-05:00

I was looking for a desktop search tool today, I stumbled upon Beagle for this task, unfortunately the build of beagle that comes with Dapper Drake does not index Thunderbird mails however the 0.2.8 release of beagle does. Yay. Here is what I did to get it working nicely together with Thunderbird under Ubuntu Dapper Drake.

Dowload beagle: download.gnome.org/sources/beagle/0.2/beagle-0.2.8.tar.gz

tar -xvvf beagle-0.2.8.tar.gz

sudo apt-get install mono mono-devel
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-dev   : Not sure if this is needed but it was mention somwher for ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install libmono-dev        : Fixes: "configure: error: missing the mono.pc file"
sudo apt-get libxml-parser-perl            : Fixes: "Parser perl module is required for intltool"
sudo apt-get install libsqlite0-dev    : Fixes: "checking for SQLITE3... configure: error: You need to install sqlite 2.x or >= 3.3.1es:"
sudo apt-get install libgnomevfs2-dev    : Fixes: "No package 'gnome-vfs-2.0' found"
sudo apt-get install libgnome2-dev    : Fixes: "No package 'libgnome-2.0' found"
sudo apt-get install gtk-sharp2
sudo apt-get install libgmime0-dev
sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev
sudo apt-get install librsvg2-dev
sudo apt-get install libexif-dev
sudo apt-get install libxss-dev
sudo apt-get install xpdf-utils

Beagle search can't open thunderbird mail items.
The startup script for thunderbird on ubuntu is called mozilla-thunderbird however beagle thinks the startup script is called thunderbird.

Setting a symlink did not work the script complains.

To fix this I copied (duplicated with different name) the mozilla-thunderbird file to thunderbird (beagle will use the script called thunderbird as the launcher)
I then changed the line in the thunderbird script that read:

progname="$0"

To:
progname="mozilla-thunderbird"

voila:
beagle-search now finds thunderbird.

This is probably a nasty hack but what the hey works for me.

Textcomplete

2006-10-21T16:59:00-05:00

The text complete extensions allows the quick insertion of frequently used text snippets into text fields. Since the release of version 0.9.9.2 text complete can be used with Thunderbird to insert text snippets into the message composer, as well as the subject and to fields. Within Firefox textcompletion works not only within all web forms but also the URL, Search and Find dialogs.

The current approved version of Textcomplete can be downloaded from the mozilla addons site: addons.mozilla.org

I created this extension for our support staff who frequently require to enter standart responses into our web based support system. As some staff also needed snippets in email s I added Thunderbird for textcomplete.

Since writing this extension I found personal use for Textcomplete, I use it to quickly enter my signature to forum posts and emails. I also have several email addresses which I need to frequently enter as well as some hard to rember tax codes. Using the extension I just type VAT hit CTRL + ALT + M and the text code is filles in for me. For my emails I just defined snippets for the shortcuts e1 e2 e3. I like.

I always look forward to feedback to this extension, please email me: extension.developer@scherzerclan.com

Textcomplete FAQ

How do I completely reset the extension?

To prevent the initial extension setup from being a nightmare, a default content xml file is built the first time the extension is run. At this time the paths for retrieving and setting the XML file are also set. When the extension is upgraded this init routine is NOT run.

To force text complete to execute the setup routine you must set a firefox configuration option.

Type about:config into the address bar then press enter

Type textcomplete into the filter field.

A list of text complete extension preferences is shown. The preference which control the init functionality is called doFirstRun

Right click on the doFirstRun preference and select modify from the context menu.

Enter the 1 as a string value

The next time a page is opened text complete will be reset.

How do I define Shortcuts?

Since version 0.9.9.2 a menu option has been added to the Tools menu which allows access to the options Dialog, To Add a new shortcut click on the Add button.

If you wish to edit a shorcut click on the shorcut you wish to edit, then click the edit button.

Why does completion not work?

On some non US keyboard layouts the combination of CTRL + ALT + M has already been mapped to a different character. As a workaround open the options dialog, when adding your trigger symbol hold CTRL + ALT this should the add the special character as the trigger string. This issues was first found with a German Keyboard layout. I am working on a fix for this,