Linuxlore

Following on from the fun I’ve been having getting wireless cards working under Ubuntu (or Linux in general for that matter) I found a bit of a glitch in the 7.04 install I’m running on my laptop. So a matter of days before the release of 7.10 I’m beating 7.04 into submission! The story goes a little like this:

After using a pretty standard Ubuntu install with Gnome for a while I decided to switch back to my preferred XFCE desktop. This was fairly straightforward, although the xubuntu-desktop package pulled in a few things I didn’t want, so I used it to populate the new install list (in Synaptic) and then trimmed the packages I didn’t want (mainly the office applications since I prefer to stick with OpenOffice). One thing I noted after making the switch back was that there was no Network Manager applet running, and a quick check of the package details seemed to indicate that it was part of Gnome, so I decided to look elsewhere for an equivalent. I experimented briefly with Wicd, but whilst doing that I found out that, although Network Manager is part of Gnome it is pretty free of Gnome dependencies and is largely independent, so I decided to switch back. Having done that I needed to look for a way of getting the applet running. This seemed simple enough, I just needed to add an entry into the Autostarted applications list as accessed from Applications -> Settings. Having done this all seemed well until, after a few reboots I noticed that I had multiple copies of the nm-applet in the panel - oops!

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Anyone that has seen my posts on a number of (generally Linux) mailing lists, may well be aware that there are a couple of web ‘technologies’ that I’m not too keen on. One is forums, and I’m still holding fast on that one. Another is the Wiki. In the past I’ve not been too keen on the idea as they seem to provide no real control over the formatting of the information you put in. I’ve downloaded and tried a couple. Twiki comes to mind with a strange system of filling in a form to then be emailed a link to the download.

Well I think I may have found one I actually like and may well use - shock, horror. I’ve never had much issue with the general concept (unlike forums), and having somewhere internally to dump information with little formatting that has easier access than a directory full of almost randomly named text files does sound appealing. Having used the HantsLUG wiki to put a few articles up, I’ve since had in the back of my mind to try a local wiki again. Mediawiki has been one on my list, but having found previous attempts with wiki packages to have left me cold I’ve been in no particular rush.

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Recently on the Ubuntu Users mailing list there has been a thread on the ‘Apple TAX’ which started as somebody posting about purchasing an Intel based Apple without OS X, but has developed on to a discussion that seems to be comparing the inclusion by Apple of OS X with their systems to the inclusion by Dell and other PC manufacturers of Windows with their computers. I started off putting together a reply to one of the posts in that thread, but having typed it out I decided not to add fuel to the flames on that thread but to post a blog entry instead.

I may well be about to upset the applecart here, but personally do not see Apple including an OS with their hardware as a TAX. Part of this may be historical in that their platform started out back in the days when the primary development model was to create both hardware and OS in tandem to create a new platform. I’m thinking here of platforms like the Amiga, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes and even IBM’s original intent with the IBM PC (I suspect). The majority of it, though, is the fact that I do not see it as in my remit to demand of Apple the removal of their freedom to create a product to the
specification that they choose. I would see that as against that basic principles of freedom on which Ubuntu, Linux and other free software is based. Apple have a product, and they have defined that the market they are targeting it at is that of people that want a package deal of a computer built, installed and ready to use. That is completely up to them.

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Several months back, well probably last year in fact, I borrowed a couple of books from the library on XML, XHTML and the related standards with a view to revamping a few websites I look after. Good intentions, but lack of time meant I did little more than scan through the chapters and read a few sections before returning the books. Fast forwarding to the end of last week and this weekend and I’m back considering the long overdue overhaul of some of my websites - particularly my company one as it will be hitting the Yellow Pages shortly (yay, lookout for ‘Linux’ in the Yellow Pages!). Anyway, I did a bit of searching and reading around on sites like the W3C, W3Schools and a selection of other hits that came up and seemed to get nowhere. They all concentrate so hard on explaining what XML is, why it is good and a few references to the fact that XHTML brings XML to the web via updates to HTML, but none of them give any decent examples of how to actually use it. It all makes sense to me, or appears to, in concept. It all sounds very nice and I’m itching to get going, but whereas I could pick up a text editor and knock out some HTML pages quite quickly back in the days of Netscape 1.x; then as things progressed add in the new features, a bit of Javascript when needed and tidy things up with a bit of CSS; this next stage seems shrouded in a complete lack of any practical examples.

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Well, contrary to expectations that may be put upon the date today I managed to get wireless networking working in Ubuntu at last. Sadly this is on the ‘family’ desktop machine and not my laptop, but it is a start.

As I suspected, the Linksys WMP55AG worked a treat and was automatically detected and, after a bit of a pause while I cursed it not working, my two local networks appeared in the network manager applet and off I went. It correctly identified that I was using WPA and allowed my to put my TKIP passphrase in and off it went. A quick install of Thunderbird and it should be ready to start pursuading my wife to give it a go. It will be interesting to give this installation a real workout as the Windows XP install on the same machine runs like a dead Norwegian blue parrot!

I guess I should give a bit more detail, but for now, since I’m tired, I’ll call it a night. I will add that the card uses the MadWiFi driver which is manged by the restricted-manager utilty - I’ll have to learn more about that now so I can get the nVidia driver working properly.

I’m in the process of trying to get wireless working on one (or both) of my aging laptops with Ubuntu 7.04. Having looked at the documentation it seems to be sadly lacking in anything useful in terms of WPA, although this may well be partly due to the sad lack of proper support in Linux for WPA in general (as in you are very restricted in the cards you can use). That said, I’m not having any more luck with WEP either. Not that a working WEP would help much as I really can’t reconfigure the networks I connect to using WEP just to allow Linux access sadly. I suspect the WEP issue may partly be due to the fact that I’m probably only half heartedly working on it as WPA is the real target.

So, where am I with my selection of cards? Somewhere about here:

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More of a note to self, but I thought I’d blog it since I haven’t for a very long while! Anyway, I finally got around to patching in a few extra codecs into my Debian install the other day and it was surprisingly easy.

• first off I downloaded the file: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-20050412.tar.bz2 from the MPlayer site
• next I extracted it and renamed the directory it created to codec
• this new directory was then moved to /usr/lib/
• finally a symlink was created so it also showed as /usr/lib/win32/

Not entirely sure whether working with it symlinked is necessary, or whether simply creating it as win32 would have done. It works OK though, so I’m not really complaining!

So why haven’t I linked the download? Well I’ve just checked it and there’s been an update, so this looks to be the latest version:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-20060501.tar.bz2

So I’m downloading that for an update!

I’ve been resisting blogging this piece for about two months, but it bugs me so I’ve given in.

I’ve been working with somebody who hasn’t upgraded their mail server for a while now and they have been using a well known local company (which I will not be naming or identifying in any way). Sadly I am only involved on the domain side of things and not the implementation. Thankfully for the end users I know enough about their setup to save them from the ‘experts’ doing the work.

The first thing to do was install a new ADSL line ready for the shiny new Exchange server. The first I was aware of this was a request to point the MX record at the IP of the new ADSL connection. I almost did this on the assumption of some degree of technical competence, and more significantly the assumption that they had installed the new server they were talking about. I wasn’t completely convinced though, so double checked. The new server was not installed, and they knew little if anything about the existing setup. They were unaware of the following information:

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OK, as a first pass at getting my two graphics cards working in a dual head mode I’ve made the following key changes to my XF86Config-4 file. This is by no means exhaustive, but should give a few reference notes to refer to. A HantsLUG wiki entry is planned

First off the Device sections. I had an original one for my NVidia card along these lines:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "NVidia GeForce MX 440"
        Driver          "vesa"
#       Driver          "nv"
#       Driver          "nvidia"
        Option          "UseFBDev"              "true"
        BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Note that the two commented out lines are due to switches back and forth with the NVidia drivers. So far the vesa one is the only on that has consistently worked and for my usage is doing me fine for now!

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I finally hooked up a pair of old monitors onto my computer system last night which resulted in a small ‘yay’. It may seem a bit odd putting old monitors on, but the ones they replaced (an old Dell 17″ Trinitron and an ADI Microscan GT56 - again 17″ Trinitron) weren’t really that much newer, if at all. Sadly these two screens don’t appear to have built in anti-glare, but they are still nice Trinitron tubes. The screens are a matching pair of Iiyama Vision Master Pro 400 17″ monitors that I picked up from Jamies, so that must beg the question, “what was the point of switching?”.

Well these screens have dual inputs instead of the usual captive lead or single D-Sub. They still have the D-Sub, but in addition they have a set of 5 BNC connectors. This allows me to use a different lead that I’ve had kicking around for some time unused to connect to the computer, but more importantly it allows me to connect two computers at the same time and switch between them and therefore saves me a £200 outlay on a KVM (the cost of a Belkin twin screen USB keyboard and mouse unit with necessary cables). Although it doesn’t give me keyboard and mouse switching it does have one advantage over the KVM - it allows me to switch the screens individually.

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