Here is a small script to remove all your Evolution settings:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 |
#!/bin/bash evolution --force-shutdown rm -rf $HOME/.evolution rm -rf $HOME/.gconf/apps/evolution rm -rf $HOME/.gnome2_private/Evolution kill -9 `pidof gconfd-2` |
Next time you open Evolution, you will be prompted to add a new account.
I installed Google Earth 5.0 and the ugly UI font from the beta is still here.
Based on the comments from Google Earth Help page from here I’ve created the following script wich will fix the user interface font issue.
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 |
#!/bin/bash sudo aptitude -y install libqt4-webkit ge=`which googleearth` if [ -n "$ge" ]; then ## get the path and check if it is a symlink if [ -h "$ge" ]; then real_path=`readlink -e $ge` dir_path=`dirname $real_path` else real_path=`dirname $ge` fi ## backup original Qt4 libraries for i in `ls $dir_path | grep libQt`; do sudo mv -v $dir_path/$i $dir_path/$i"_backup" done ## backup original Qt4 plugins for j in `ls $dir_path/plugins/imageformats | grep libq`; do sudo mv -v $dir_path/plugins/imageformats/$j $dir_path/plugins/imageformats/$j"_backup" done ## create a new qt.conf file cat > $HOME/qt.conf << "EOF" [Paths] Documentation=/usr/share/doc Libraries=/usr/lib Plugins=/usr/lib/qt4/plugins Translations=/usr/lib/qt4/translations EOF sudo mv -v $dir_path/qt.conf $dir_path/qt.conf_backup sudo mv -v $HOME/qt.conf $dir_path elif [ -z "$ge" ]; then echo -e "You don't have Google Earth installed!\n" exit fi exit 0 |
fsck is used to check and optionally repair one or more Linux file systems.
By creating /forcefsck file you will force the Linux system (or rc scripts) to perform a full file system check.
Create a file called forcefsck:
|
1 |
sudo touch /forcefsck |
Use this grep invocation to trim comments out of config files. Comments are great but can get in your way if you just want to see the currently running configuration. I’ve found files hundreds of lines long which had fewer than ten active configuration lines.
It’s really hard to get an overview of what’s going on when you have to wade through hundreds of lines of comments.
|
1 |
grep ^[^#] /etc/samba/smb.conf |
The regex ^[^#] matches the first character of any line, as long as that character that is not a #. Because blank lines don’t have a first character they’re not matched either, resulting in a nice compact output of just the active configuration lines.
One of the cool features in a Thinkpad is IBM Active Protection System.
The system consist of two parts. The driver that enables reading the acceleration data and some sort of userspace software that does the actual parking of the harddrive heads, usually hdapsd.
The hdaps driver is part of the kernel but the driver maintainers actually recommend using the tp-smapi driver instead. So that’s what we’ll do.
Make sure you have the necessary tools installed:
|
1 |
sudo aptitude install build-essential module-assistant |
The tp-smapi is in the package repository (universe):
|
1 |
sudo m-a a-i tp-smapi |
This will fetch and install the tp-smapi-source package, unpack the source and then compile and install the kernel module.
Try loading it:
|
1 2 |
sudo modprobe tp_smapi sudo modprobe hdaps |
The kernel log should show something like this:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |
[ 4504.896887] tp_smapi 0.40 loading... [ 4504.897178] tp_smapi successfully loaded (smapi_port=0xb2). [ 4532.702289] hdaps: initial mode latch is 0x05 [ 4532.702442] hdaps: setting ec_rate=250, filter_order=2 [ 4532.702674] hdaps: device successfully initialized. [ 4532.702788] input: ThinkPad HDAPS joystick emulation as /devices/virtual/input/input22 [ 4532.728212] input: ThinkPad HDAPS accelerometer data as /devices/virtual/input/input23 [ 4532.756552] hdaps: driver successfully loaded. |
For some reason some configuration for udev is missing. Fix this by running:
|
1 |
echo 'KERNEL=="event[0-9]*", ATTRS{phys}=="hdaps/input1",ATTRS{modalias}=="input:b0019v1014p5054e4801-*",SYMLINK+="input/hdaps/accelerometer-event"' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/51-hdaps.rules |
Now for the userspace stuff. First let us test if APS is actually working.
|
1 |
sudo aptitude install hdaps-utils |
This will install hdaps-pivot or hdaps-gl which you can use to verify that the sensors are working.
You can also test this by running this in your terminal (stop it with pressing CTRL + C):
|
1 |
sudo hdapsd -d sda -s 15 -a -v -y |
Next we need to update the hdapsd. The one provided in Jaunty is old. There is a PPA with newer versions.
|
1 2 3 4 |
cat | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hdapsd.list << EOF deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonasped/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonasped/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main EOF |
Add the PPA key:
|
1 |
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 45EA2DEACE74152B61554DE4036A90F2BEFC6EB4 |
Update the package list and install the package:
|
1 2 |
sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude install hdapsd |
Install gnome-hdaps-applet (optional).
There is a PPA for this. You can add it like this:
|
1 2 3 4 |
cat | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gnome-hdaps-applet.list << EOF deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/whoopie79/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/whoopie79/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main EOF |
Add the key:
|
1 |
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com e1c344a23bb057ff1d4d80cf8c236986e1ecdbb2 |
Update the package list again and install the packages:
|
1 2 |
sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude install gnome-hdaps-applet |
Enjoy!
Use this command in your terminal to clear the “Run Program” dialogue box invoked by ALT+F2 in Gnome:
|
1 |
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-settings/gnome-panel/history-gnome-run --type list --list-type string "[]" |
I experienced a lot of random X server crashes using the proprietary driver for the NVIDIA graphic card on my Thinkpad T61 running Ubuntu 9.04 x86 with Compiz activated.
I managed to fix the problem by installing the lastest NVIDIA driver. I wrote a little script to automate the process and save time. I recommend you to run this in command line mode. Here it is:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 |
#!/bin/bash # Check if the X server is running pid_of_X=`ps aux | grep X | grep -v 'grep' | grep root | awk '{ print $2 }'` if [ -z "$pid_of_X" ]; then echo -e '\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n' echo -e 'X is not running! - Good!\n' # Stop the xserver (GDM) sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop cd $HOME/Desktop if [ -e latest.txt ]; # Check for 'latest.txt' file then rm -f latest.txt fi if [ -e NVIDIA-Linux-x86-* ]; # Check for 'NVIDIA-Linux-x86-*' file then rm -f NVIDIA-Linux-x86-* fi # Get the latest driver from NVIDIA's ftp nvidia_ftp='ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86' wget -c -T 10 $nvidia_ftp/latest.txt new_driver_version=`cat latest.txt | awk '{ print $1 }'` new_driver_filename=`cat latest.txt | awk '{ print $2 }'` wget -c -T 10 $nvidia_ftp/$new_driver_filename chmod +x $HOME/Desktop/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-* # Remove all nvidia* packages in the system sudo dpkg -l | grep nvidia | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs sudo aptitude -y purge # Remove all the nvidia kernel objects currently installed export kernel_version=`uname -r` sudo rm -f `find /lib/modules/$kernel_version -iname nvidia.ko` # Install the new driver sudo sh $HOME/Desktop/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-*.run rm -f NVIDIA-Linux-x86-* rm -f latest.txt echo -e '\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n' echo -e '---------\n' echo -e 'All done!\n' echo -e 'Starting GDM in 5 seconds...\n' sleep 5 # Start GDM sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start else echo -e '\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n' echo -e 'X is running!\n' echo -e 'You should run this script in console mode!\n' echo -e 'Press CTRL+ALT+F1 to go to console mode, then run this script again!\n' echo -e '\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n' echo -e 'Aborting in 5 seconds!' echo -e '\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n' sleep 5 exit 0 fi |
Recently I made a clean install of Ubuntu 9.04 on my Thinkpad T61.
I configured the figerprint, the accelerometer is reporting correct values.
I did not like the default resolution at boot. So I created a custom usplash.conf file:
|
1 |
sudo joe /etc/usplash.conf |
I should contain these lines:
|
1 2 |
xres=1680 yres=1050 |
The next step was to update the “initial RAM disk”, that is used when the system boots up:
|
1 |
sudo update-initramfs -u |
Next, I modified my /boot/grub/menu.lst file.
I added as a parameter for the current kernel the value vga=872:
|
1 |
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=7281a5b5-6dd5-4011-beff-27339b4b9693 ro splash vga=872 |
Nice and clean!
I use the following script to automatically update my Ubuntu box.
I don’t recommend using this on your production servers!
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 |
#!/bin/bash ################################################# ## ## ## auto-update.sh v1.0 ## ## Use this script to set up automatic updates ## ## on your debian/ubuntu box. ## ## ## ################################################# ## Creating /usr/bin/auto-update.sh file sudo touch /usr/bin/auto-update.sh sudo chmod 700 /usr/bin/auto-update.sh sudo chown root:root /usr/bin/auto-update.sh echo '#!/bin/bash' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/auto-update.sh echo 'touch /var/log/auto-update.log' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/auto-update.sh echo 'echo '------------------' >> /var/log/auto-update.log' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/auto-update.sh echo 'echo `date` >> /var/log/auto-update.log' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/auto-update.sh echo 'PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/auto-update.sh echo 'export PATH' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/auto-update.sh echo '/usr/bin/aptitude update >> /var/log/auto-update.log' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/auto-update.sh echo '/usr/bin/aptitude -y safe-upgrade >> /var/log/auto-update.log' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/auto-update.sh echo 'exit' | sudo tee -a /usr/bin/auto-update.sh # Creating a cron job for root user (it will run /usr/bin/auto-update.sh every day at 14:30) echo '30 14 * * * /usr/bin/auto-update.sh > /dev/null' > cron_file.txt && sudo crontab -u root cron_file.txt && rm -f cron_file.txt |
Note that there are some dangers regarding automatic updates. You can read more about it here.
There is a new catch if you want to enable 5.1 surround sound in Ubuntu 9.04. First you need to follow the same steps like you did for Hardy Heron. There is an old post I wrote about it.
In this new version of PulseAudio they don’t synthesize an LFE signal anymore by default.
They introduced this new option called disable-lfe-remixing.
When upmixing or downmixing ignore LFE channels. When this option is on the output LFE channel will only get a signal when an input LFE channel is available as well. If no input LFE channel is available the output LFE channel will always be 0. If no output LFE channel is available the signal on the input LFE channel will be ignored. Defaults to “on”.
The solution to get you bass back is to set this option to no.
As a result, here are the steps you need to take:
|
1 |
sudo joe /etc/pulse/daemon.conf |
Uncomment the line containing:
|
1 |
default-sample-channels = 2 |
and replace '2' with '6' (if you have a 7.1 card, replace '2' with '8').
Next, set disable-lfe-remixing option to no
|
1 |
disable-lfe-remixing = no |
Restart your computer and you’re in business.
NOTE: Documentation for this article is taken from here and here.