Monthly Archives: January 2009

Ctrl+Alt+Del to open System Monitor in Ubuntu

If you want to enable Ctrl+Alt+Del to open System Monitor you have to do this:

Go to System->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts and search for “Logout” action (that is under Desktop actions) and you will see that Ctrl+Alt+Del combination is associated to Logout shortcut.
You have to click on that shortcut and press Backspace if you want to disable it or choose another combination.
Close this and open the Configuration Editor (if you have installed it you will find it under Applications->System Tools; or just run gconf-editor).
– On left tree select: apps->metacity
– Select “Global_keybindings” and search for a “run_command_X” value where X is between 1 and 12 and it is not used
– Add this value: <Control><Alt>Delete
– Now select “Keybindings_commands” on left tree. Goto “command_X” where X is the same number selected in run_command_X option.
Add this value: gnome-system-monitor

Alternative solution (I prefer this one):
Run in terminal:

UUID issue with new hard-drive

I just added a new hard-drive to my system. I created an ext3 partition and used vol_id and blkid to show the UUID. Based on that information, I edited the /etc/fstab file accordingly. When I try the sudo mount -a command, I get

and the mount fails.
To resolve that, just use

It updates the /dev/disk/by-uuid directory and your uuid mount works like a charm.

Install Nodoka (Fedora theme) on Ubuntu (II)

I was explaining here how to install Nodoka theme on Ubuntu.
Or you can use this small script I made to automate this.

PS: You need to have libsexy-dev installed. If not, just run this command in your terminal:

I hope you’ll find it usefull.
Here is the script:

Change the number of comments per page in admin interface of wordpress

Let’s have this situation:

You need to make a backup of your blog, you have access only in the admin interface of wordpress and you have 3000+ comments containing spam in the ‘awaiting moderation’ state. Do you spend your day selecting 20 comments at a time and hittind the delete button? Hell, NO!

You hack the edit-comments.php file located in the wp-admin folder.
Locate the following line:

$comments_per_page = apply_filters('comments_per_page', 20, $comment_status);

Now you need to change the figure 20 to another figure, e.g. 100 so that it looks like this:

$comments_per_page = apply_filters('comments_per_page', 100, $comment_status);

Save the file and check the display of the comments in the admin interface.

Howto Change Ubuntu Forced fsck

In Ubuntu the boot hard disk is checked every 20 boots. I have to boot my laptop quite often, so about once a week booting takes more than 10 minutes. This clearly sucks. Fortunately, there is an easy way to fix this. With tune2fs it is possible to change the interval from mount-times to timed interval:

Install Flash in Songbird

If you have installed Songbird by hand, automatic instalation of flash will not work. Here’s a quick fix.

Under Windows:
Open Songbird and paste http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi in the location bar at the top of the library or browser. Follow the installation process.

Under Linux:
Flash on Linux got a whole lot better with Flash Player 10. Go to the Macromedia site, and download Flash 10 for Linux. Decompress the .tar.gz file. If you run the installer – it will install the plugin for supported web browsers (Firefox, Mozilla, etc.), but it will not auto-detect Songbird. To install it for Songbird, copy the libflashplayer.so to your Songbird application folder’s plugins directory. So if you have Songbird installed in ~/Songbird, copy it to ~/Songbird/plugins.
Restart Songbird, and you should be back in business!