Today we got a shipment from Dell Sweden. Two keyboards for Latitude D620 and Latitude D630 laptops. Sometimes you just can’t think of anything else that “wft?” with these large companies and their packaging methods.
Pictures below tell the story, no point for me to start ranting more. 
this post is being written at 2500ft. Hah! 
EDIT: Seriously, it was. That altitude was the cloud level at that day/time. I was on a hot air balloon trip that my wife arranged to me as a surprise. I’m turning 30 on sunday. I’ll post few pics and possibly some short video clip also. Stay tuned.
Some of you might have noticed that creating launchers to xfce-panel in Xubuntu Hardy is not as easy as in Gnome and Gnome-panel.
For example terminal server client and it’s panel-applet, woop-de-doo.
Another problem that popped in front of me was opening programs with a launcher from the panel. The command was luit -encoding ISO-8859-1 ssh hostname because the ssh server I’m using quite actively does not have UTF8 configured. However, my Xubuntu Hardy installation happens to come with UTF8 as default and I’ve intended to keep it as default.
I tried to put the command where it was supposed to bein the panel launcher properties, no luck. Tried to use xfce4-terminal shell-script-name to launch the command from panel launcher, no luck.
Finally, with help from few of my friends, I found out that I can use xterm -e luit -encoding ISO-8859-1 ssh hostname which solved the problem. -e tells that xterm should run the preceeding command IN the opened xterm window. But this created another. The font size was ridiculously small. After few moments of discussion, it was clear that one option for xterm execution was needed. The final execution command line is below:
xterm -fn 9x15 -e luit -encoding ISO-8859-1 ssh hostname
EDIT: or you can use xterm -fn 9x15 -en iso-8859-1 -e ssh hostname as xterm can use luit when you tell xterm to use desired encoding with option -en iso-8859-1
To check which font options you have available, check /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/fonts.alias file. 8×13, 9×15 and 10×20 should be there atleast. 8×13 is ridiculously small, 9×15 was my choice, 10×20 was too large for this Acer Aspire One screen.
EDIT: Also noticed that copying text or http links is not as easy as right clicking to get a menu and choosing copy. After consulting friends again, found out that when you press ctrl-left/right/middle mouse button you get xterm menus where you can set font size and other settings. Copying text to other window is done by selecting text with mouse (use left-click-hold normally or left click on beginning and right click at end) then paste text by middle click.
EDIT: Oh, and. If you need to use alt-number combination, it won’t work. Use esc+number instead.
Hey everyone,
I’ve been using this little bugger now for few days with Xubuntu Hardy 8.04.1 and thought that a part #2 post would be good. Otherwise the Edits to older posts will be unnoticed and important notes might “fade to the noise”.
So, those few things I’ve promised to try out:
Movie playback
Playing movie that has been ripped to .iso file from external usb hard drive works fine
Playing movie that has been ripped to .iso file from 8Gb SDHC card placed to Storage Expansion slot (formatted as ext2) works fine
Playing actual DVD from DVD-drive connected to usb – You need to install xubuntu-restricted-extras ($ sudo apt-get install xubuntu-restricted-extras – works fine
At this point some of you are asking “why/how is he using DVD movies ripped into .iso files?”. Quick and dirty answer is that I have most of movies backed up as .iso files, and I don’t have to carry an external DVD drive with me to watch movies.
To get the movies to .iso, I use dvd95 program to “compress” the original DVD to fit to DVD5 disc in case I need to burn the movies back to disk. Kids are quite efficient in destroying DVD’s.. and no, I’m not concerned about the quality. If I want top quality, I’ll go and buy full HD TV or projector and BluRay-player.
When I’ve moved the .iso file to the PC I want to watch it, I’ll mount it as loop device with command $ sudo mount -o loop /path/to/the/isofile /path/for/desired/mountpoint. remember to have the mountpoint folder created. Then open vlc and point it to open the DVD from the mountpoint you used.
Heat dissipation
Ok, this one I noticed yesterday late at night. I was sitting in bed with a small pillow under the laptop for some time. The laptop started to really heat up and the reason seems to be that almost all of the ventilation grille is pointing down and only small part of the grille is facing to the side from the case. As the pillow was blocking the grille facing down, the heat could not dissipate well enough. Not a big deal, but still something to bare in mind.
Touchpad
I’m not a fan of this kind of pointer device. Stick is much more user friendly, though it costs much more and replacement part price for keyboard with stick is ridiculous. First few days went on finding the correct setting to disable Touchpad tapping and scrolling. To disable tapping and scrolling, you need to modify xorg.conf file. Open terminal of your favor and..
$ sudo mcedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
now find the part that says
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Add the following line to the end of this section, above the EndSection
Option "TouchpadOff" "2"
Now log out and back in, result should be that touchpad is not scrolling anymore, and tapping is disabled.
External display settings
This I’m still working on.. I’ll edit this post as soon as I’ve got some solid settings/info gathered.
EDIT:
Screensaver and lock screen
As I use this computer at work, it’s vital for me to be able to lock the screen when I leave my desk. By default, Xubuntu seems to have a bug that prevents screensaver and thus screen locking to execute. To fix it, you need to add gnome-screensaver to autostarted apps under Settings – Settings Manager.
Click + Add then enter a preferred name, for example Gnome-Screensaver, description can be for example Gnome Screensaver Daemon and command is /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver and hit Ok. Log out and back in, modify screensaver settings to your desired choice, then right click the little icon for Quit-button in panel and click on properties and select action type as Quit + Lock screen.
Tsclient and tsclient panel applet
Again an work-required program/tool issue. As I work also with several Windows servers, I need to have terminal server client (RDP client) installed, with panel-applet so it’s fast and easy to open connections to remote servers.
Install tsclient package ($ sudo apt-get install tsclient) and try that it works. Create one quick connect entry as saving connection details for testing purposes. Now install xfce4-xfapplet-plugin ($ sudo apt-get install xfce4-xfapplet-plugin) and right click on panel – add new item. Browse to end of the list, click on Xfapplet, then Add, and then choose Terminal Server Client Applet. Terminal server panel applet should now show up on your panel.
Short info how to get the Wireless card working in Xubuntu.
EDIT:Make sure you have build-essential installed! (Pointed out by friendly reader, thank you very much! My mistake that this was forgotten from the original post! Sorry for the possible trouble!)
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
Get the latest madwifi pack http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz and save it to your home folder for example.
Disable current Atheros Hardware Access Layer (HAL) and Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless lan cards from Applications – System – Hardware Drivers and then reboot as requested
Make sure that ath_hal module is not loaded in the future:
$ sudo mcedit /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common
Add ath_hal between the quotation marks, for example DISABLED_MODULES=”ath_hal”
Unpack the downloaded tar.gz
$ tar xzvf madwifi-hal-yaddayadda.tar.gz
Cd into the new folder scripts under the new unpacked madwifi folder
Execute madwifi-unload and find-madwifi-modules.sh scripts
$ sudo ./madwifi-unload
$ sudo ./find-madwifi-modules.sh $(uname -r)
Drop one level back,
$ cd ..
and just to be sure, execute make clean to get rid of old crap
$ make clean
Then we check just to be sure that the Hardware Drivers does not show any drivers for Atheros wlan or HAL. If the window is clean, proceed to building the modules.
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo modprobe ath_pci
Then, check that you have ath0 and wifi0 network adapters created, ath0 should be the first, wifi0 last. You might need to scroll back a bit
$ ifconfig
Now you should be able to see AP’s via panel’s network applet. You can also scan for wlan’s with command
$ sudo wlanconfig ath0 list scan
That’s it, happy networking!
When you get updates/upgrades that change kernel in any way, your wireless card drivers won’t work anymore. Just do the whole thing all over again and you’re wireless again.
EDIT: If the driver is not loaded automatically, you can add ath_pci to /etc/modules
Here’s the commands:
$ sudo mcedit /etc/modules
add ath_pci into a new LAST line of the document, save the document and reboot.
If you don’t want to reboot right away, you can type
$ sudo modprobe ath_pci
This loads the module(driver) and you should have wlan up and running then. Just remember when you reboot the next time that you added the module to “loaded at startup” configuration.
Hah!
Took a while to find a feasible way to blog with a mobile device. Got Nokia 9300i phone to play with for awhile and thought that I will try to blog with it, as ssh with putty and web experience with opera mini was such an easy tasks.
The normal, “full” wordpress page does not work with the shipped browser and while opera mini solves that, the pages are way too heavy for this kind of crippled mobile device.
I really should have relied on my gut feeling and check this issue with google before start finding out on my own, as the answer of course was the mobile device fitted pages for wordpress at http://m.wordpress.com
So, this entry was made with Nokia 9300i via the mobile wordpress pages.
Oh, and. those few posts about acer aspire one will be posted in 16 hours. I need some sleep now.
Hi everyone!
Got one of these little subnotebooks to my hands for a short period and here’s a small summary about it.
So far I’ve tried out the Linpus Linux preinstalled to the laptop very briefly, as it had to make way for Windows XP SP3. Yep, got that right and no, it was not pleasure. Pain would describe the experience more.
Biggest reason is the very slow SSD hard drive. It just isn’t even feasible with Windows. Not even if you try to use fast SD card on the storage expansion slot for swap. It’s quite easy to get devices work in XP, as Acer kindly provides drivers for the laptop.
So, that was covered fast. Then to the part that was more interesting for me personally. Xubuntu 8.04.1 in a very, very small laptop. I was a bit afraid how the keyboard would fit for me, as i’m almost two meters tall. So far, I’ve had at least decent experience with it.
Biggest problem with the laptop and Xubuntu is the wireless card. It won’t work “off the shelf” and little tweaking was needed. Installation instructions will be posted on a separate quide and I will also post a separate post about device technical spesifications and how I installed Xubuntu to it.
Everything else seems to work out of the box.
As the out of the box configuration has only 512Mb of memory, I did an memory upgrade also. Didn’t take any pictures though, so we’ll have to see if I come across dismantling the laptop again. Will take pictures then, I promise! Verbal instructions coming up in a separate post also.
After the upgrade, things seemed a bit faster, but that was when the XP was installed. Xubuntu was installed onto the laptop with the additional memory already in place.
Next things to try out include bluetooth connectivity to phone to gain mobile internet over GPRS/EDGE/3G and how well the battery lasts in usual work/everyday usage. Also thought to try out playing videos, I have some movies in MPEG4 H264 which should stress the video playback enough. More about those when I have some experience..
EDIT: Tried to get Bluetooth connectivity to phone and internet-access via that way, and was not too hard. Biggest part is to find out correct settings for your service provider and phone model. Rest is just finding out correct channel etc. (I think I need to dump a post about using BT and mobile phone as internet connectivity)
Also, video playback seems to work out fine, just remember to ditch Totem Movie Player and get VLC. Tried with MPEG4 H.264 clip. Still need to try out DVD-playback with DVD-drive connected to USB and .iso file from internal storage and external USB drive..
Battery life with 3cell version is weak. There’s few tweaks that should help out, just remember to keep backlight as low as your eyes can take..
Waaaah!
Flies, oh god how I hate those damn buggers.
We came to upstairs with my wife some hours ago, moved the clean laundry to their respective places and during that session, I had to eliminate one fly bugging us. My wife really doesn’t like any flying wildlife creatures.
So, off I go on a hunt. Took first object that should do the trick, on my way to the “office”, which is the free room in our home currently, occupied with a desktop and apparels. After a small status check and finding a good spot to slap the fly to oblivion, I got my chance.
“peck” was the sound that emerged from the contact of the fly and the wall. “There, job well done, cat will take care of the remainings” thought I. Bollocks.
Here I was sitting on the “office” and minding my own business, while the damn fly passed my screens. Have to admit that I was a bit surprised, as it really took a hit against the wall. Oh well, back to job not so well done earlier.
DVD-case was this occasions melee weapon of choice. A good slap again, “peck” from the wall and the fly laying on the corner of the sofa (guest bed). hard hit with DVD-case to finish the deal. Fly again in the same corner where I thought was going to be the cat’s feast buffet.
“Good, now I should be able to mind my own business again” seemed to be too much to ask, as the fly apparently refused to die.
Got three not-so-good hits before the fourth that took the fly to ground, still twitching around. This time I sure did finish off the fly.
Decided to leave the fly visible, if it for some hellish idea decides to wake up yet again.
Uh,
This post is more or less to just keep me reminded of this, as it seems I tend to forget this every time I happen to need it. Frustrating to try to find it again when in need.
As there happens to be slight problems with storage media connected to USB ports and mounting them to correct places, it’s whole lot easier to refer to the storage media in /etc/fstab by it’s UUID. This way the device will be mapped even if it’s order in USB hub/chain/whatnot changes and therefore it’s /dev/sdx path would change at the same time.
So, long story short. if you have an external storage media connected to USB, say port 1, and you see it as /dev/sdb1, you then go and create an entry for it into /etc/fstab and continue working normally, thinking “now it works, yay.”, you’re wrong. Next time you have the device on USB port 2 and whoop-de-doo, the device is seen as /dev/sdc1 “oops” you whisper when you realize that the /etc/fstab entry you created, fails this time.
Instead of /dev/sdx1 use UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
To get UUID for the storage media, use one of the following methods:
1) ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid
2) vol_id /dev/sdx1
note that with this you need to know the path to the partition/disk you wish to get the UUID
