thecrumb.com » Linux http://www.thecrumb.com ColdFusion, Ant, jQuery and other geeky stuff with the occasional motorcycle post. Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:13:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Hardy Heron Upgrade Complete! (Ubuntu) http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/22/hardy-heron-upgrade-complete-ubuntu/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/22/hardy-heron-upgrade-complete-ubuntu/#comments Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:09:49 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=434 Last night I decided on a whim to upgrade to the latest RC (release candidate) of Ubuntu called Hardy Heron (8.x).  It’s due to officially be released in a few days so I figured it should be fairly stable and I thought I’d beat the rush and upgrade now.   Usually I do these sort of things with little planning and last night was no exception!

  • No backup (rsync is sooo easy but really, what could go wrong?)
  • Started the upgrade right about the time a huge thunderstorm was overhead (computers love lightening!)
  • Forgot once again to backup my xorg.conf file (just in case)

The upgrade took about an hour.  Soon it rebooted my system and of course my monitors were all a mess.  Seems the NVidia drivers either didn’t get upgrade or got hosed.  Sigh.   Then I go to hit the Ubuntu forums (a great resource) and they are down for maintenance or something.  Ooops.

But I did find one post on the web that suggested trying Envy to load the latest NVidia drivers. I did that and things still weren’t right so I loaded up the package manager, uninstalled EVERYTHING NVidia related and tried Envy again.  This time I got nvidia-settings to run and from there it was just a simple matter of setting things up again and tweaking my xorg.conf file.   The only other thing that didn’t work was my sound for some reason but a quick search on the web and I found a few suggestions and after fiddling a bit I got it working as well.

I didn’t really have time afterwards to dig around and find out what’s new with the latest release but will hopefully have time to do that tonight after the TACFUG meeting!   Overall I’ve been very happy with Ubuntu but I do wish they could spend some time fixing the monitor setup issues.  That has been an issue during the last 2-3 upgrades.

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/22/hardy-heron-upgrade-complete-ubuntu/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ OpenBD Steering Committee http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/08/openbd-steering-committee/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/08/openbd-steering-committee/#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:13:20 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=412 Alan has a list of the OpenBD (Open BlueDragon) Steering Committee on his blog:

Andy Allan, Peter Amiri, Mike Brunt, Sean Corfield, Mark Drew, Adam Haskell, Jordan Michaels, Alan Williamson, Matt Woodward and Andy Wu

LOTS of good names on there and some really nice quotes but obviously I’m going to have to step up and volunteer for the committee myself.

OpenBD is FREE

“formalised language”… “masterful clustering-replication mechanism”…

Huh?

Not one of them mentioned the dreaded ‘f-word‘…. Can’t anyone say it??! Me of shallow pockets (have you priced kid sneakers lately?) will…

OpenBD is Free!! (it even rhymes - marketing will love that)

OK. Now I feel better.

On a serious note - I am happy to see such prominent names on the committee and I’m really looking forward to seeing where all this goes. Exciting times!

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/08/openbd-steering-committee/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Flex, Air Updates For Linux http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/31/flex-air-updates-for-linux/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/31/flex-air-updates-for-linux/#comments Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:09:42 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=400 This weekend I downloaded the Flex Builder Linux alpha, but ran into some issues and after digging around in the forums it was hinted that a new release would be out ’soon’. Soon turns out to be this morning. Alpha 3 was released today! I’m looking forward to getting home and trying that out!

I also saw on Sean Corfield’s blog that an alpha release of Air for Linux is out too! Sean’s post also pointed to this nice article on Read Write Web discussing Flex and Air on Linux. The article had this nice tidbit:

In addition to AIR and Flex releases for Linux, Adobe announced that it had joined the Linux Foundation in an effort to help “accelerate the growth of RIA technologies on the Linux platform.”

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/31/flex-air-updates-for-linux/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Windows Required. VirtualBox To The Rescue. http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/27/windows-required-virtualbox-to-the-rescue/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/27/windows-required-virtualbox-to-the-rescue/#comments Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:58:57 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/27/windows-required-virtualbox-to-the-rescue/ I recently purchased a GPS (Garmin 2610) to tote around on motorcycle trips. If you have never tinkered with one - it is VERY cool. Unfortunately the MapSource software that comes with it requires Windows… Ugh.

I’ve run VMWare and QEMU on my Ubuntu box before. VMWare was very nice but a pain to install (granted it’s been awhile so that may have improved). QEMU was very fast but recently it’s been a bit flaky and this time when I tried to run Windows it wouldn’t find my USB mouse. I dug around online but was unable to fix it. I’ve heard about VirtualBox for awhile now and decided to give it a try.

While VirtualBox is free - I did notice they were recently acquired by Sun and now it appears they have two versions: one closed and one open-source. So far I’m very impressed. I ran into some issues installing the OSE version from the Ubuntu repositories. Downloading the .deb file from the VirtualBox site worked much better. Installation went well and I installed Windows XP without a hitch. And most importantly everything works - mouse, keyboard, internet, etc.

So if you are looking for a VM - check it out - they have an extensive list of supported platforms and Linux, Windows and Mac are all supported in one flavor or another. Lifehacker did a recent article covering installation and running Windows apps seamlessly on the Ubuntu desktop.

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/27/windows-required-virtualbox-to-the-rescue/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ ColdFusion Batch Scripts - For Linux http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/25/coldfusion-batch-scripts-for-linux/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/25/coldfusion-batch-scripts-for-linux/#comments Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:11:14 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/25/coldfusion-batch-scripts-for-linux/ I always set ColdFusion to NOT run at startup - why have it eating resources when you aren't using it? On Windows I had a few batch scripts to easily kick off ColdFusion. I dug around looking for something similar for Linux... I found a few things which I've added to my wiki in the ColdFusion section.

I basically came up with a very simple bash script:

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. #!/bin/bash
  2. read -p "Press ENTER to start ColdFusion and Apache (must be root!)"
  3. /etc/init.d/apache2 start
  4. /opt/coldfusion8/bin/coldfusion start
  5. read -p "Services started. Press ENTER to continue..."

Save this to a cfstart.sh file or something. Give it executable rights. Then it's just 'sudo ./cfstart.sh'. And of course you can make the same thing to stop the services. I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 so if you are on something different (RedHat) you'll have to change your paths, etc...

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/25/coldfusion-batch-scripts-for-linux/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Ubuntu, NVIDIA and Two Monitors http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/22/ubuntu-nvidia-and-two-monitors/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/22/ubuntu-nvidia-and-two-monitors/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:26:15 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/22/ubuntu-nvidia-and-two-monitors/ Ever since I've been using two monitors at work I've wanted to setup two monitors at home but finances are tight and I just can't afford another flat screen. But this weekend I did dust off my daughters old 17" CRT and tried to get it working with my Dell widescreen. I knew the latest Ubuntu had made advances in setting up monitors but I was also familiar with hacking on xorg.conf so I wasn't too concerned with screwing anything up. I backed up my xorg.conf and started tinkering.

NVIDIA Settings dialog I originally messed with Ubuntu's native screen controls but they were having no effect. After a bit of digging I discovered if you are using the 'restricted' NVIDIA drivers (which I was) there is another application for tweaking settings - nvidia-settings. This was a bit confusing. Which one to use? (Ubuntu should check to see if the NVIDIA drivers are installed and if so disable the native screen tools.) The NVIDIA application provided a nice dialog - both screens were showing - but at incorrect resolutions. I tweaked a few things - saved, restarted my session. Nothing happened. The CRT was working but my Dell widescreen was doing nothing. I tried a few more things and got frustrated so I hit the Ubuntu forums. Lots of threads on there about running dual head but no real silver bullet solutions. One suggestion did mention running the settings application as sudo. I tried that and things started to work. After a bit more experimentation I got the following modes to work.

Twinview Twinview - this is a NVIDIA setting. It basically takes your current desktop and 'stretches' it across both monitors. This would probably work OK if both monitors were the same size and resolution but since mine were different - it was a bit odd to work with. I could also not 'contain' my applications to one screen. If I maximized a window - it would stretch across both monitors. Not ideal.

X-w/compiz Next I turned off Twinview and enabled Xinerama.

Xinerama is an extension to the X Window System which enables multi-headed X: applications and window managers which use two (or more) physical displays as one large virtual display.

This worked but oddly enough some applications (like terminal and Gnome Do) would not start. After tinkering a bit I discovered the fancy new compositing window manager Compiz wasn't running. Why? I have no idea. But overall this was the most "Windows" like setup. I could drag running applications between screens but if I maximized an application it would contain itself to one monitor. But without Compiz running the system was unusable. If I can get Compiz running in this mode I'll be happy.

X w/no compiz Finally I removed the Xinerama setting and just set configured two X sessions. This gave me two independent desktops. I had two taskbars, two desktops and while I could drag and drop icons and files between the two screens I could not open an application on one desktop and move it to the other. This works and is what I'm using now but obviously it is not ideal.

I'm going to tinker with the 'restricted' NVIDIA drivers a bit more. If I can't make any progress I may try the drivers from the NVIDIA site itself and see if anything improves. The other alternative is to figure out why Compiz isn't running and fix that.

I've been so happy running Ubuntu it is a shame that getting this setup is so difficult. While I'm happy tweaking things I could easily see others hitting this roadblock and giving up. Hopefully the Ubuntu team will make some progress on tightening up the integration between native Ubuntu apps, restricted drivers and Compiz.

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/22/ubuntu-nvidia-and-two-monitors/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ KDE4 Released! http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/11/kde4-released/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/11/kde4-released/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:37:40 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/11/kde4-released/ I know what I'm doing tonight! I've been a long time Gnome fan but KDE has always intrigued me. When I did my latest Ubuntu update I was going to switch but then I found out v4 was just around the corner so decided to wait. Today they officially released KDE4 and it looks good.

Tonight I think I'll backup my /home directory and give it a shot.

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/01/11/kde4-released/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Cheap PC Review - gOS http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/12/22/cheap-pc-review-gos/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/12/22/cheap-pc-review-gos/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2007 02:50:51 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/12/22/cheap-pc-review-gos/ My kid's PC is REALLY old. I decided for Xmas I'd get them a new PC and ordered one of the $199 Wal-Mart Linux PCs.

Tonight I started to tinker with it in preparation of sticking it under the tree. The hardware seems decent. The OS it ships with 'gOS' is not so hot. Out of the box the UI is really horrible and I found it completely unintuitive. I couldn't figure out how to easily change the resolution, then I accidentally blew away the dock menu and couldn't figure out how to restore it. Apparently this is based on the Enlightenment window manager. Why they picked this over something like Gnome or XFCE I have no idea. It is REALLY unfriendly. After about 10 minutes I finally said screw it and am downloading Edubuntu. This should provide a more 'Windows' like UI which they are familiar with while providing me a familiar interface.

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

  • No Related Posts Found
]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/12/22/cheap-pc-review-gos/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Gnome Do - Quicksilver For Linux http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/12/05/gnome-do-quicksilver-for-linux/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/12/05/gnome-do-quicksilver-for-linux/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:08:28 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/12/05/gnome-do-quicksilver-for-linux/ I'm into application launchers.

At work (on Windows) I use Find And Run Robot and have gotten really used to launching applications (and a lot of other neat functionality) with the keyboard. I've been missing the same thing on Gnome at home but tonight stumbled upon Gnome Do it's still fairly immature but so far I've not had any issues with it and it will launch apps, find my bookmarks, and with a few plugins will search my Tomboy notes as well as skim though my MP3 collection in Rhythmbox. Very slick!!! Installation was just a matter of adding a new repository and doing an apt-get install. The author has a blog where you can read a bit more about the project.

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/12/05/gnome-do-quicksilver-for-linux/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Ubuntu 7.10 http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/10/18/ubuntu-710/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/10/18/ubuntu-710/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:44:36 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/10/18/ubuntu-710/ Ubuntu 7.10 is available today. I've been running the betas for a few weeks now with just a few issues but I update frequently and things have been really smooth lately.

If you haven't tried Ubuntu yet give it a shot! I've been using Ubuntu now for more than a year now and could never go back to Windows. I would switch at work as well but I'm stuck with running Powerbuilder though I could probably get by with a VM install for that.

Gutsy Gibbon is certainly easier to install and set up than Windows Vista, and it's very close to matching Mac OS X when it comes to making things "just work" out of the box. Wi-Fi, printing, my digital camera and even my iPod all worked immediately after installation -- no drivers or other software required. ~Wired

No Microsoft headaches and no Apple 'upgrade fee' every year or so... it's free!

On the web:

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/10/18/ubuntu-710/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/