Venture into the LinuxWorld

Harddisk recovery and how I helped a friend

2010-08-17T23:24:00.000+02:00

My neighbor came over with a big problem. On a vacation he managed to wipe his PC clean, and the biggest problem was the dissapearence of the tons of photos from the trip.

I knew I had used a program previously to recover one of my own hard drives, that had the accident to suffer the same fate. But I was not able to remember what the program was called.
Searching for the phrase "harddisk recovery linux", gave a lot of results, but I had no clue of what to click.
After a while I found "TestDisk" which is the best I have ever come across.
I remember the last time I used it I donated around 20USD because I was so happy.

My Updated Ubuntu - must have list -

2008-03-17T21:39:00.000+01:00

It's been a while now, and I've upgraded a few times since my last list entry. Now I'm on "Hardy Heron", that means a lot of the previous must haves are included, and I need to re-visit my must haves, for a complete Ubuntu OS.

List of Software that I have installed on top of the standard Desktop Ubuntu installation :

1. Kino, video editing. <- Still on top
2. Codecs for various music and video formats, they get installed when needed.
3. css2, for playing DVD's.
4. Pan, Newsreader.
5. Picasa from Google, Yes they made a linux one.
6. GParted, Gnome Partition editor, great for your external harddisks or USB sticks.
7. GLabels, great for name labels or cd covers..
8. abcde, the CD ripper, that generates the aac files correctly.

An this list will probably extend over time...

Try out a different linux distro using vmware.

2008-01-13T14:27:00.000+01:00

I would like to have an extremely basic linux system, with a simple desktop and a browser, which supports all the different plugins the new web needs. This means java, flash, adobe reader, quick time and everything else web related.
I've found a few minimalistic linux distributions, but the problem is burning every single one of them to a CDRom. Then trying them out by rebooting, it was too much of a pain.
I found out that, it's not nessecary, when you 've got wmplayer installed.

Just get a clean vmx file like this one:

#!/usr/bin/vmware
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "4"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
memsize = "256"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "~/cdrom/yourcdrom.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "es1371"
displayName = "LiveCD"
guestOS = "otherlinux"
nvram = "otherlinux.nvram"

insert your filename.iso instead of the one in this template.
Start it with vmplayer, and off you go...

Get vmplayer here:
http://www.vmware.com/download/player/open_source.html

New WIFI adapter NETGEAR wg311v3

2007-04-30T22:13:00.000+02:00

I've setup a Ubuntu PC for my 5 year old daughter. She want's to play games aso.
But because I don't wanna have cables lying around, and don't wanna drag another cable from the cellar to the first floor, I decided to buy a wireless pci card.

Fine I bought the cheapest I could possibly find in one of those electronic retail stores here in DK.

A 'NETGEAR' 'WG311v3' it was, and what a mess I ended up having. Linux or Ubuntu is not mature when it comes to WIFI and encryption, but kubuntu seems a lot better at this point. For Ubuntu you'll have to go through a number of howtos aso., but it'll still be messy.

First I had to use ndiswrapper, which is apparently a tool to wrap the windows drivers to be used within Linux (ubuntu).

~$sudo ndiswrapper -i $SOMEDRIVER$.INF

Then I had to remove all encryption from my wireless router, to test that I got a connection.
After that I fumbled with kwlan and wpa_supplicant, which should make me able to have wep encryption on my connection, I abandoned kwlan, and rushed back to networkmanager instead.

This last step was very time consuming, because I'm no nux-wizz, and I'm not familiar with starting up 'services' from boot. But in the end I found that command that did the trick :)

~$sudo ndiswrapper -m

Makes ndiswrapper start every boot.

Hope this link is helpfull in the future, it's about security: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202834

Kino and Qdvdauthor.

2007-04-03T21:52:00.000+02:00

I keep running into problems whenever I use these 2...

But they are two programs you need to have, when editing your own home video, and want them on dvd to share with your family.

I've recreated my entire system, switched harddisk and reinstalled Ubuntu Fiesty, and it is very satisfying to see how well it works, how smooth everything has become, how easy it is to use, or is that just me being a Linux user for 2 years now...

Still I keep getting some, REALLY pain in the butt, problems trying to create my own DVD's. This time I ran into some country code problem with Kino.

I authored a 1 hour long movie, and saved the project file, to return the morning after and start the encoding, just to find out, that all the timing was screwed, it doesn't recognise the beginClip and endClip time, I tried to recreate the movie, ending up with the same problem when I closed Kino and started over. ¤#&%#¤#"& Then endless hours later I find the solution on the forum of Kino, you have to start the thing with a command line like this:

$ LC_NUMERIC=en_US kino

ddennedy says that he solved it in the 0.93 release, which unfortunately is not out in the Ubuntu repos. yet...

Then afterwards, I start up Qdvdauthor and ends up using several hours before I actually succeed making a DVD menu, and the final DVD. the problem was the version of toolame mp2 encoder, that didn't recognise a parameter of '48000', but only '48'...

I guess That's life.. it sucks......and then you die..

Install Ubuntu in Virtual PC 2007 without DVD media or DVD-ROM Drive

2007-03-13T11:44:00.000+01:00

I read a post about installing MS Vista, using the free MS Virtual PC 2007 (download links attached), without having a DVD, and figured it would be possible to do the same thing with Ubuntu Fiesty Herd-5. But alas, it is not possible, unless you find a prebuild .vcm file somewhere.

But it is possible with VMware and their prebuild operating systems, some of them, which you can download for free is available here.

Furthermore I was able to get vmwareplayer installed on my Ubuntu Fiesty installation, although I had some minor issues. Like not being able to start the damn thing from the menu.

First I had to do the "mumbo jumbo lingo" to get it up and running.
I did this:
1. Go to /usr/bin
2. sudo ./vmware-config-network.pl (might not be necessary)
3. sudo ./vmplayer
3. download some free vmware prebuild OS.

I chose a reactOS, which is a free ground-up implementation of a compatible Microsoft Windows® XP operating system.
That's what I need for my daughter, she needs to play some Windoze games, and this might actually be a way to do it, from within Ubuntu.

OR you could just use your Windoze install cd and use this little howto
I know it's for windows, but it works equally well on my Ubuntu.
Be sure to download his empty VMware virtual disk files, and extract the one you like, it will give you a virtual partition in the vmware system, to install the OS.

Download 32-bit Virtual PC 2007
Download 64-bit Virtual PC 2007

Got 3d acceleration, but no compiz or Beryl effects

2007-03-11T22:44:00.000+01:00

Followed the guide mentioned underneath, but still miss the Cool effects.
But what did I expect? ..having an on board, non supported Graphics card, called something "ATI"..

I just happened to have one of those Crap graphic processors X200G, and one of those crap manufacturers "ATI" who don't give a flying f... about support for Linux, or at least decent driver support.

Right now I've spent around 20 hours trying to get Xgl up and running, because that's what everybody is talking about.
Either you get it running automagically (read: have NVidia), or by going through vast amounts of howtos and knowtos and what have we! or you just leave it as is, no fancy effects...Probably for the best... I hated that cube anyway :(

Upgrading once again.

2007-03-07T23:38:00.000+01:00

Only a few weeks to the release of Feisty Fawn

I dared to do it once again, upgrading from Edgy onto a new and unpolished release. But I really want to have all the goodies that it gives you..
The word is 'eye-candy'. Read Compiz or Beryl, one of those 2, and your eyes will go pop-pop.

I've read so much about it the past week, I just have to try it out.

This will do the trick:

#>update-manager -c -d

And then just press the [Upgrade] button, sit back and relax for a few hours..
..And I mean hours, even with my HP Pavilion a1000, which is equipped with an AMD64 3200+ processor.

Afterwards, if you cannot get the desktop effects to work. You'd probably have to reconfigure your graphics card.

For me... I'll try this one:
Ubuntu_Feisty_Installation_Guide

Read/Write raw1394.

2007-02-16T22:08:00.000+01:00

I cannot believe I haven't got this in my blog..
How to grab video from your IEEE1394/FireWire interconnectable DV Cam...

Well here it is:
Possibly you will get an error message saying something like "failure reading from raw1394" when you either, try to use Kino to capture, or use dvgrab from the command line, what to do?

you@yourpc:/$ sudo chmod a+rw /dev/raw1394

Then try dvgrab, this is the most likely to work.
type "dvgrab -i" to use in interactive mode, then you can play and stop aso.

It works...it f..ing works, wahoo!

2007-01-17T21:47:00.000+01:00

I've been trying to get Picasa working on my Ubuntu, with no luck...Only I never tried just to install the plain .bin file. No instead I installed it using dchroot, as to get it on my 32bit environment...

And all I had to do was go with the .bin file and let it have the 64bit portion.
Damn!! now I'm having it scan my drives for pictures... There's ALOT!! I mean all the folders from a..z A..Z 1..9 bla bla bla, you know what I mean...

Now if I only knew how to remove the folders from this scan, and start all over when I copy my files from the laptop, where I previously saved some files..
God, do not have Picasa scan your whole harddisk and network drives, you'll have to remove a lot of unnecessary folders afterwards.

But hey, this has got to be the coolest thing since....whatever!

Waiting for webcam support.

2006-12-29T20:28:00.000+01:00

Maybe in another life, Ubuntu will have webcam support, I'm not sure I'll be waiting around much longer...my spark is fading!

Ubuntu or just Linux in all, is becoming a tight suit, and not as flexible as I'd hoped for.

This time it's a Creative webcam that works perfectly well with XP, but refuses to even be recognized by my Ubuntu Edgy installed PC.
Lack of drivers from the manufacturer, is the key issue here. The big problem that all users of Linux encounters, a manufacturer is willing to support most O/S' but Linux, apparently, or is it just me?

Is it there yet?

2006-12-16T22:18:00.000+01:00

The past year, I've been more than happy to tell friends about the great things about Ubuntu, and how wonderfully easy it is to install, and just how stable a "Linux box" is.

But a few days ago I experienced the unspeakabel; My "Linux box" froze, nothing I did could wake it up. It was completely unresponsive... I froze with it for a second... noo! I was thinking: "this is not what it seems, there must be some explanation... I can just hit the "B.Gates keys"... but alas.. I had to pull the plug..

I was astonished, in the wild, why would this happen? Yes, I've been installing ontop of a "Breezy" installation, and through a "Dapper", and ended up with this "Edgy", it might just be some forgotten file somewhere.. I'll never know!

Because I'm just a newbie still.

Maybe I'll be better off with a complete reinstall, and switch back to W......Ouch!

On the edge..

2006-12-05T21:35:00.000+01:00

The "Ubuntu 6.10 - the Edgy Eft" released in October 2006.
It was, once again, a breeze to move.

A hassless operation that took about 2 hours..
That's what it took to download a couple of hundred MB of data and to remove the old stuff and replace it with the new..

I'm glad i did! ...Not that I could see any difference right away, but small details are starting to appear.. like a new version of the popular Firefox browser, and the "Disk usage analyzer", that's a fantastic "need to have" tool.

And now I've finally got my onboard video card to work, nice and fast, with the great Open-Source drivers look at the wiki pages

Later...

Some "need to know" stuff, for handling DVD.

2006-09-27T20:28:00.000+02:00

First create the ISO image, in another folder from where you have the dvd

# mkisofs -r -o yourfile.iso dvd/name_of_folder/

The dvd/name_of_folder should contain the folders AUDIO_TS + VIDEO_TS

Now use the growisofs command to write the ISO onto the DVD:

# growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=yourfile.iso

To append more data for same DVD:

# growisofs -M /dev/dvd /tmp/file.1

To format (erase) a DVD:

# dvd+rw-format -force /dev/dvd

# dvd+rw-format -force=full /dev/dvd

The dvd+rw-format command formats dvd disk in the specified dvd drive.

To display information about dvd drive and disk using dvd+rw-mediainfo command:

# dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/dvd

Making some DVD home videos

2006-08-24T21:45:00.000+02:00

I used to use Graveman, to make my own DVD movies, succesfully, but back then I had a 'non standard' standalone DVD player, brand unknown, it played all the DVD's I made perfectly.

Then last month, I bought a quite expensive HDD/DVD-recorder, brand Panasonic, and none of the DVD's will play, I'm feeling cheated.

Is it the player or is the burner?

I seems that graveman, and for that sake gnomebaker is not sending the right parameters to 'growisofs', the program that both cater as gui's for.

But after some searching I found some terminal commands that work.

First of all, you have a folder, lets call it 'dvd', where you have the folder 'VIDEO_TS', and perhaps the not so used folder 'AUDIO_TS'.
Now go and write the command:

jj@myLinuz:~/home_videos$ mkisofs -dvd-video -o dvd-master.iso dvd

It will start creating a .iso file wich you will transfer to a blank DVD after it has finished.
Now go and write the command

jj@myLinuz:~/home_videos$

 growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=dvd-master.iso

It will start to write the .iso file to blank DVD.

Now go and play your new home made DVD in that DVD playa...

J

Back from the holidays...

2006-08-15T21:50:00.000+02:00

Yeaah right!

Not long ago I was so keen on getting a lot of info up on this site, suddenly I packed my Linux equipped PC away... For a loong time, as you can see.

Now it's time to refresh a bit of the knowledge that I got a few months back.
So here I am, once again, ready to take a venture back into the LinuxWorld.

See you around.. when the updates has ended downloading..

Hurry up! dapper is coming..

2006-02-24T21:32:00.000+01:00

Yehaa! I'm Dappin'
I just replaced all breezy with dapper in my sources.list, just by renaming.
And after that I did an 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' and 'sudo apt-get update' and in the end 'sudo dpkg --configure -a'

...A few problems occured, non vital, but a little strange and annoying anyway, I have found solutions for the most of them.

1. I couldn't reboot or shutdown proberly.
- Solved: found that my desktop PC (an HP Pavilion Athlon64) need this line:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro noacpi nolacpi quit splash
instead of
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro noapic nolapic quit splash
in this file /boot/grub/menu.lst

2. Printing and scanning on my HP officejet v40
- Solved: found this howto
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=121896&highlight=hp+printing+psc
And remember to have your HPLIP start every boot... ;)

3. Network not active after login
- a half assed solution at the moment, is to deactivate the network card, and then reactivate it. Will do for now, missing a real solution.

Never mind the long wait..

2006-01-27T22:14:00.000+01:00

I found out that you're actually able to use 32bit programs within my 64bit environment, all you need is a chroot. chroot you ask? so did I.. :)

But this thing rocks, when you need that java applet capability in firefox, or the 'crap' flash thing....
.......anyway, I've had a struggle with my new system, and it seems I'm stuck with a 'half assed' 64bit system, that's capable of doing fast video encoding, but unable to actually author the DVD and burn the darn thing to a disc.
Well, not entirely true, I've actually got dvdstyler working by installing it into my chroot environment, using the .deb file that was compiled by some genius, at the ubuntu forums, and then applying the 'jpegtopnm' command that is stated here:
jpegtopnm "$FILE_IN" | ppmtoy4m -n 1 -I t -L $FRAME_RATE -S 420mpeg2 | mpeg2enc -f 8 -b $BITRATE -o "$FILE_OUT" $VIDEO_NORM

The only thing I need now, is the capability to burn the lot to my new DVD-RW disc... and yes the 'minus' gives me a bit of trouble, no problem with the 'plus', but the 'minus' ... DAMNÂ§!!/&%#!

I hope the waiting will pay off...

2006-01-22T22:08:00.000+01:00

Damn! It's not as pleasant, when you learn that your new hardware is a little too tricky. Not that it's NOT working, but that the software out there is NOT completely upto date... It simply lacks support for AMD Athlon64....
DAMN!!
And I was having this thought, way long time, before I actually bought the stuff. But I never went and researched my thought enough, I was just keen on getting a new toy... Well that money was burning a hole in my pocket.. And with Dapper just around the corner... it must be a matter of time, before this 'monster-pc' will rule my PC-park (of 3 to be exact).

Hope it's worth the waiting....

Anyway, I've been searching high and low for a amd64 .deb of dvdstyler.
Have had no luck. Do you know of any? Please report back...

While I wait for an answer, I'll try this guys guide instead:
http://www.tappin.me.uk/Linux/dvd.html#author_examples

New hardware arrived...AMD64

2006-01-10T20:18:00.000+01:00

Yihaa! now it's time for some real fun....Got my new PC. It was dirt cheap, but equipped just the way I want..

AMD64(Socket939)
512MB ram (with room for 3 xtra blocks)
160GB Harddisk
Firewire
Memory card reader
Low noise

although the Ubuntu Breezy kernel lacks support for most of my hardware, I'm pleased to see it runs smooth. I'll wait patiently on the release of Dapper Drake, which I tried in an early version, just to see what was going on...

And I actually completely removed the WindowsXP which was preinstalled, without a blink...

Been writing any posts lately?

2005-12-23T21:47:00.000+01:00

No, I've been lazy...or just hung up at work.

It's pretty close to Christmas eve, and that's kind of a big thing here in DK...and the days up until that special evening, is always kind'a hectic. No news this year..

Been thinking a little bit about 'security'.. Not a BIG problem in the linux world.
Or... is it? It is a big deal when you're a noob, you never know what to look out for, and that's why I'm going to explore this area a bit when I get back from the holidays..

Another area of exploration is the new Ubuntu release 'Dapper Drake' which is due in April 2006, there's been a lot of talk about how this release is going to rocket linux into a new era, where we will see linux workstations take over market shares from Windoze Vitza...G. gotta love that war...

Happy new Year..

Get rid of those unwanted siblings.

2005-12-12T21:24:00.000+01:00

From using windows I know that from time to time you need to do a little housework.. Cleaning!
You want to get rid of those orphaned files, those files that where left behind from an uninstalled program.
In windows you'd be doing this by using one of many programs, that clean the system registry and removes orphaned DLL's.

But how do you do this in linux? and here, I'm thinking Ubuntu.

If you're a normal user you'll hardly run into the problem of orphaned files, because when you remove something you'll tell synaptic/aptitude that it is going to remove the program completely, that means all other programs that depend on this, if you don't, they will be broke afterwards.
But sometimes this approach will tell you that "gdm" (Gnome Display Manager) or some other essential system file are going to be removed as well, and you don't want that to happen..

I have been through a number of installs, to get some other programs to compile. The new Kino 0.8.0 for instance.
I installed quite a lot of dependent libraries, to try and get this thing to compile, and I forgot all about what those libraries where. That's why I was looking for a program to give me a list of orphaned libraries, and I found "deborphan", which will give you a list of programs that you can remove without breaking anything.
And then at the end, or actually you should do this often, run another program called "debfoster", which will keep track of packages you want and the ones that are obsolete. It will ask you a few questions the first time, and then start uninstalling the unwanted programs. Very handy tool.

Learning by doing....mostly wrong!

2005-12-08T22:02:00.000+01:00

By trying and trying, again and again, you learn alot! but you also get frustrated alot!
I'm going to write a good portion of my experiences on "How to make homemade DVD's." here.
I wanted to be able to edit my video, place this video on a DVD with a nice title screen and a menu. The menu should make it possible to jump to different chapters/sections...this happens to be a little more difficult than I expected.
I have, as mentioned before, Kino to edit my video, uh ohh, did I mention that this piece of software is awesome...Well it is! I tried to install the new 0.8.0 version, no-go! had to compile it myself, and ran into 'dependency hell'(that's another story).
Stick to the old version which rocks anyway :)
Then I've done different trials to find the perfect menu generation tool for DVD's. There's actually only one - 'dvdauthor' but it's command line, and you have to do a lot of stuff before you can generate your menu. For a 'non commandline' guy you'll be better off with an easy and userfriendly gui.
I tried some of these out, here's a list :

Varsha, Java based front end, problems with saving.
Qdvdauthor, becoming an overall DVD author Gui, but not quite there yet!
Tovid, more problems with error messages, probably the mjpegtools version.
DVDstyler(get the file from post#23), very simple intuitive and userfriendly, but I still had to downgrade the mjpegtools.

The mjpegtools problems might have solved the problems I had with both qdvdauthor and Tovid. I don't know, I don't wanna find out either.

Anyway, to get the DVDstyler working I had to downgrade 2 programs :
mjpegtools and libmjpegtools0 to version 1.1.6.2 from the Breezy version 1.1.6.3. This might interfere with Kino and encoding to divx, but I use the normal mpeg2enc anyway to encode my movies, so I have no worries.
The way I accomplished the downgrade was, I added the marrilat repository in my /etc/apt/sources.list

deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ etch main

Then in Synaptic, select the file, mjpegtools in this case, and choose 'Package' > 'Force version', to select another version than the one you have.

One thing I did, and you should'nt, was getting Kino to encode every scene to a different file, that way I thought I could choose whichever scene to jump to, but this was too big a job for DVDstyler, and dvdauthor. So don't do that!
I did get the files merged though, by just doing this

# cat file1.mpeg file2.mpeg > outfile.mpeg

But this broke my internal file counter somehow, and spumux refused to work with the files. After hours of searching I found the command, to run my merged files through a re-encoding, here's the command :

# mencoder -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -o %newfile.mpeg -oac copy -ovc copy %sourcefile.mpeg

or with an AMD64 version of mencoder:

# mencoder -of mpeg -o %newfile.mpeg -oac copy -ovc copy %sourcefile.mpeg

Now I had no errors at all, the DVD was ready to burn. And lucky me :) My dad gave me some DVD+R in a bulk with 25pcs, I thought it was the same as a DVD's he'd handed me over to test, that DVD was 4x, but these new ones was 8x, wohoo!

I'm thinking of writing a howto, but let's see, the time is limited, and it's soon going to be christmas. I need to do at least 4 new DVD's.... capture, edit, encode, and package before 24th of December...

Later I have learned that this command could do it :
mencoder -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf /somedirectory/* -o test.mpeg -ovc copy -oac copy

Another milestone passed.

2005-12-01T20:28:00.000+01:00

I was, as mentioned in an earlier post, having some trouble with a netbanking applet, which was supposed to work according to the webbanking survey database.

But apparently I was infected with some sort of Windoze 'virus', the one that tends to copy files UPPERCASE, instead of the original case. Java is case sensitive as well, and that might be the actual problem and why the banking applet couldn't find the file it was looking for.

I found the solution at the webbanking survey site, salute!
And me.... I was looking east and west for a solution to the "Netscape security model is no longer supported." problem...doh!

And.... as I was writing in that post, I now have absolutely no use for my WinXP partition.....Erase and rewind! ahemm...My wife just told me that she actually uses XP and another banking application (the competitor) which means, I'll have to migrate that as well...Dang! Well, no time to waste, let's get on with it..

Small breakthrough tonight.

2005-11-25T22:41:00.000+01:00

A couple of days ago, I had a family member drop his notebook PC at my place. It needed a quick runover, and some things updated, it was a "Scompaq" Armada M700, running XP. It's not one of those machines you'd expect to run XP smoothly, so I convinced him that they needed Ubuntu to run programs faster and more efficient. He said "OK, let's have a go at it. The only thing I really need, is a browser which runs flash,acrobat,mpg's, and the lot... And it should run wireless too"
alright..Challenge taken...Problem solved!
I ran down the local "PC pusher" and bought a cheap wireless pc-card "Zyxel G-162". First I tried it without installing any ndiswrapper and windoze drivers, but I used all night yesterday without success. Then I decided to try what they describe in the ndiswrapper howto and installed the windoze driver that came with the card. SUCCESS!! It connected right away, using 128Bit WEP encryption and all, Leds flashing, and 100% signal strength(yes I'm standing right next to the access point).

Now I'll grab a copy of automatix, the automatic installer for most multimedia programs, codecs and plugins for firefox.

Album shaper, it's worldclass!

2005-11-24T22:38:00.000+01:00

I'm short for words! I've found a "hidden" treasure, sort of... The album shaper software I mentioned in the previous post, does absolutely all the things you'd want from such a program. Here's a short list :
1. Organize you photos, in neat collections
2. Enhance your photos, color/contrast enhancement + red eye + remove grain
3. Manipulate, add filters like sepia, emboss, painting and black&white conversion
4. Crop, a few preset and a custom is available, Postcard is the one I wished for ;).
5. Create an album, to upload as is to a webhotel (templates included).
6. Export the manipulated images to a directory for printing.

I must say, this is one of my top priority picks for all future installations.

Finding "hidden" treasures.

2005-11-24T13:06:00.000+01:00

I know I've been promoting F-spot, as THE photo organizing program for Linux. But that was because I didn't know better, or maybe because some other fool promoted this as being "THE THING".
Anyway, as the curious human being I am, I had to take a look at packages.ubuntu.com to check out, what some of the members at Ubuntu forums where talking about.
Looking in the x11 section I stumbled upon 'albumshaper', Photo album creator and photo manipulator. <- I need to check this out when I get home. It looks really cool, you have the posibility to do a lot more actions with your pictures. I hope crop format 10x15cm is supported....
What else is hidden in these package sections? I can't wait till I get the time to crawl it!

to Switch or not to Switch.

2005-11-21T20:41:00.000+01:00

It's been a couple of days now. I've run into a problem I must resolve, before transforming my "machine park" into Linux's, and remove XP out of my sight, forever I hope. Ain't that a dream? Well, the nagging problem just put a stop on that dream.
I've been struggling with Firefox and the Java runtime plugin! I've had both the version 1.4 and the 1.5 Sun jre installed, and made the so called 'symbolic link' to both from the firefox/plugins folder, to be exact "/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/".
But they both had a very bad habit of yelling :

Netscape security model is no longer supported.

Please migrate to the Java 2 security model instead.

and refused to work with my banking applet.
Later I tried installing a Blackdown jre from the Ubuntu repositories, and letting this version tell firefox where to look for the plugin, no luck either, this time it just stalls when starting the applet.
I've posted my first question at the Ubuntu forums, so if anyone, with an answer, happens to stop by, please leave a note.

Thanx anyway. I'll report back with the solution, if I find any :)

Report back: look at another post, where I tell you all about the solution.

Committing to the LinuxWorld.

2005-11-18T10:15:00.000+01:00

I've registered as a Linux user at The Linux Counter.
It's like being part of something bigger... At the time of writing the number of users registered is 142809, and the people behind The Linux Counter estimates that there's

twenty-nine million linux users

around the world, which is far from the number I got, when registering. But they try to explain why the number is so far from each other here.

My Ubuntu Linux - must have - list.

2005-11-14T22:07:00.000+01:00

List of Software that I have installed on top of the standard Desktop Ubuntu installation :

Kino, video editing.
ffMpeg, to encode your home video.
MJpeg, to encode aswell.
F-Spot, get your pictures sorted, and edit.
InitNG, New Generation bootup for Linux.
Nvidia GLX legacy drivers.
Java sdk1.4.2, for developers. Needed with your Firefox aswell.
Screem, HTML, PHP and other - editor.
Samba, share your linux files via network. (only if you use Win32 also)
Xmms, listen to Mp3, Ogg, aso.
Xine, watch video whatever, and hear the sound.
AcidRip, to make that DVD copy, for your kids to handle.
css2, for playing DVD's.
Gnomebaker, burn CD's & DVD's.
Pan, Newsreader.
Alien, convert .rpm packages to .deb
MPlayer W32 codecs, to have xine play streaming videos from the net.

Back in the 'game', full throttle!

2005-11-04T10:26:00.000+01:00

I'm back! What an old expression. But really, that's how I feel it when I reinstall. I've allways tried not to do that too often, with Windoze, because it takes hours, and it's a pain.. with Ubuntu it feels different. It does take hours, but you don't need to be there all the time.
- Make you choices and leave the installation for a while, come back, pickup the ejected CD and reboot.
- Install the free software that you want, with the help from Synaptic, and never reboot again, unless you install new generation init 'initNG' hi hi... and you're ready to personalize you're Gnome desktop.
For personalization, take a look at this art site for Gnome or Gnome-look.
If you're using Kubuntu, take a look at this site kde-look.

It might give you a thrill installing gDesklets those cool looking little apps that run on you desktop...

I'm going to post a Screen-shot later ...

Rage is what comes next.

2005-11-03T11:41:00.000+01:00

I had a 'font' problem. Some default system font had been overwritten at some stage. I'm not sure how and when, it might have been some program I installed, or some update that went wrong. I'm kind'a leaning towards the 'update' thingy.
But as this font-problem had no plausible cause, I was left quite alone with it. No answers in the forums, no correct Google answers... At the same time I had problems with my HDD, bad blocks was showing up... Could this be the cause? I'm not sure.. I've had problems with this drive before.
That, and the fact that the drive is only 10GB, convinced me that I had to reinstall on another partition.
It's not easy trying to do this manually, not when you are, still is, a noob. But I muddled along and had the system up'n'runnin.
But HELL! The 'general system font' still had a problem... Was this the ubuntu archive at : dk. Something I can't remember? Or might it be that I have a preview Breezy... I tried to find the mirror at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Archive but it's now gone... hmm! smells like...
I'll download a new distribution CD, and try it again..
What a pitty, I was really happy with the configuration, and just starting to get some work done, but now it's probably all 'down the drain'.

- Wrapup. I've installed Ubuntu on another drive, and with a new Breezy CD. It has no errors, and it took me as little as 2 hours to do the job. And that's including all previously installed software as well.

Boot the speed limit!

2005-10-31T21:00:00.000+01:00

I've been almost happy with the Ubuntu boot-time, but being the nature I am, I'd like to tweak a little here and there to get it a little, or should I say -much faster.
I, once again (I always do this) searched the Ubuntu forums, to find an answer to my question "How do I reduce Boot time in Ubuntu?". This was what came up "HOWTO: Reducing boot time in Breezy using InitNG" and I did exactly what was stated, thereby reducing the time from 1min 10sec to 45sec. But that's not enough though... I read about boot times of 30 sec and less, hmm need to do some 'Googling' on this one!
It could be something to do with hardware, but I'll leave that as 'not an issue' for now..

DVD playback, YoPaaa!

2005-10-23T20:43:00.000+02:00

I'm not blind...I've read a few things about DVD Jon in the past. Something about him doing a 'terrible' thing with the encrypted DVD's. And just because he wanted to play his own DVD on his Linux machine, he was haunted by some guys at RIAA.... I too, like the story about 'one small guy, and the BIG bad company who just wants to crush him'...
Of course I had to test if my Ubuntu Linux would play my 3 LOTR DVD's, it's just natural!
They wouldn't!!
But as always I searched the Ubuntu Forums ;) lucky me!! Found some question about how the Ubuntu community could allow to have a DeCSS script on the distribution....hmmm a script? Wasn't this installed default??

Edit: Before you try this, you need gawk +gcc installed

Tried the thing
~:sudo sh /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh
It installed some DeCSS files, and now I'm able to play my LOTR DVD's.
Cool! Well, not that I'm actually going to sit down and watch it on my lousy 15" monitor, horrible speakers, and my armchair.... But it's possible :) The only thing I need is, a 500$ big screen monitor and a 200$ soundcard, instead of my 1000$ surround system and my couch....Like that's gonna happen...

Edit 2: As of 2007 you need to go to http://download.videolan.org

Why my [Delete] key doesn't work!

2005-10-21T23:32:00.000+02:00

I was doing some video editing, and saving some temp-files on my xternal harddrive, suddenly Kino told me that it didn't have enough space?? Very weird, because I had just deleted a bunch of files. I knew I was going to use a lot of space.
What I didn't know, was that linux don't delete the files right away...ahaa! Nice feature!! But saves them in a folder/directory called '.trash' <- very nice... except, the folder is HIDDEN.... don't laugh! I was going nut's, I deleted more files and no space got released, delete-delete-delete... Damn!

... Later I found the menu [Empty trash] under [File], in the 'File Browser'....

Zippedy zipp...

2005-10-20T21:11:00.000+02:00

Once upon a time we had floppies.. You know the 3.5" floppies, that was actually quite hard. Back then you had to span multiple disks when you wanted to take along big files. Back then I was using windows, and WinZip... allthough it seems ages ago.. I can still remember how I managed to bring a complete installation of Windows95 home on floppies, whooping 50 or so, pieces.
Now you don't need the ability to span more floppies, or do you? if you, like me, want to send a small movie to work, to show off you capabilities as a director. And the Gmail that you have is limited to sending 10MB files, then you'd like to span one file over multiple files... and thats just not possible with the ubuntu archiver...maybe I can find the solution somewhere in the Forums, I'll have a look...
....Tried I'll host it instead. Nice online file hosting service... you're only allowed 5MB downloads without paying though..

Install....Never restart!

2005-10-18T08:27:00.000+02:00

I keep getting these 'wow's, using Linux. One evening I was installing a bunch of stuff, including telnet (thought I would use this as a remote control to linux) and samba (not default in Ubuntu desktop), configured it, and had it working in no time. Then I uninstalled Telnet(it's a security risk), and installed Kino. 'Fired' up Kino with no problems. Apache2 was installed and started, meantime Ubuntu had some updates installed. All of this I did without restarting a single time. Had this been windows I'm sure I would have had to restart at least once.

I just have a few outstanding issues left(to really quit my Windoze habit):

Eclipse IDE(Integrated Development Environment) and JDK(Java Development Kit)
Ant installation
Apache2 configuration
PHP module for Apache, installation and configuration
Servlet module for Apache, installation and configuration
MySQL installation and configuration

....a few hours more....and I can leave Windoze for good... <- wishfull thinking, but very close..

Video editing revisited. Again!....

2005-10-18T08:08:00.000+02:00

RTFM! thats what I should have done, before I left out Kino as a 'decent' video editor. It's #1!
It does all you want, and does it well. Kino has the features I need and more.
Here are some of them:

DV-based
Supports PAL or NTSC
AVI (type1 or type2)
Capture/Export by Firewire(IEEE 1394)
Drag-n-drop from file manager
Fade in/out transitions
Gamma correction <- thats what said it lacked in the previous post.
Export to DVD/Divx and others
Does not require Tons of memory ;)

Now, I just want to fiddle around with it.

Video editing revisited.

2005-10-14T12:49:00.000+02:00

I'm still in search of a decent video editing 'package' for Linux.

Found :
Kino, it cannot adjust lighting, which I need.
Mainconcept MainActor, doesn't really work well + it's payware!
Cinelerra, very demanding when it comes to CPU power and Memory.

I'm aware of one fact for this to succeed, I need to upgrade my current hardware.

Current setup:

Pentium III, 1Ghz
256MB SDRAM
10GB Linux HDD
120GB NTFS windows HDD
30GB external USB2 Linux-ext2 HDD
GeForce2 GTS/Pro
10/100MBps Network SMC
ADSL 2048/512

that's not the configuration, with what, you would expect to do DV editing.
I've decided to buy some new components

MotherBoard Asus ATX VIA K8T890 Chipset
ProcessorAMD Athlon 64 / 3200+ 2.0 GHz
RAM 2x512MB PC3200

Then I'd be more than up to date...Wouldn't I?

Ohh! I'd probably be better off repartitioning the 120GB HDD, to Linux ;)

Compiling... compiling... compiling ...done.

2005-10-11T12:17:00.000+02:00

Yep, wanted to try compiling my own kernel, found a nice howto, and yes! It does take time, but it works :) When you have done it once, you can do it again.

But why would I want to do that? Well, I wasn't able to run the NVIDIA display driver install script. It complains about my kernel being compiled with another gcc(GNU Compiler Collection) version, than is installed on my machine? NVIDIA wants 3.4 but I have 4.0...
Well, I thought, then I'll just recompile my kernel using the gcc4.0 that I had installed default.
But this apparently didn't work either. The NVIDIA script still complains.

...I once again, read through these Ubuntu Forums, and once again, I find out I was misguided. You just need to 'unmask' the restricted multiverse repository in the file /etc/apt/sources.list, and voila! You have access to a nvidia-glx driver. Which I intend to try out now :) howto for this.

later....

"Did it work?" you ask. I'm not sure, I have no errors, and no games to test... hmm, I say it works... done √

Safety belt...OFF!

2005-10-09T20:29:00.000+02:00

I'm always trying to tweak the system. Of course that means you need to have the right video drivers, and in this process you need to recompile some kernel or whatever.
Apparently I mis-configured the whole damn thing, trying to get this wine and dvddecrypter thing working. It doesn't wanna reinstall or reconfigure Python?? That means I have to remove it alltogether. And for all things 'Python'!!! What the hell does this Programming Language have to do with k3b(which I installed on the way through DVD burn programs) and why does it have to remove both gdm(which I know is the Gnome window manager) and xchat, openOffice, nautilus, GnomeMessenger, Gaim and what have we, damn!

Well, I write this post hoping to be up after my reboot.....Fu.....ed up!

...Getting back from the 'partly dead', I'm in chaos! I was just removing some 'Python programming language' and it was apparently depending on other things that some other things depended on, way out!
It seems it even removed 'Synaptic' and almost every other program under [Administration]??? luckily I knew of 'aptitude' which is almost like 'synaptic'.
I'll try to assemble the things that were left off, from my removing 'Python'.
...Must be more careful next time..

DVD Copy - and hours wasted..

2005-10-08T10:18:00.000+02:00

I wanted to do a DVD copy, not the copyrighted ones, but a DVD I made using Video editing software. I found it difficult from Ubuntu, and used hours searching the very nice forums. I stumbled upon a program called wine, a 'windoze emulation' sort of thing. Very handy when you have all kind of programs installed on your winXP, and don't have anything similar on your linux. But every post I read was talking about DVDDecrypter and DVDShrink, being the best to copy a DVD, even the copyrighted ones. But the hell I went through, trying to get this wine/dvddecrypter thing to work, was a lot of wasted hours.
Meanwhile, I was updating my Ubuntu every day. I had to update between 50 and 100 files every day, 'Does it really get updated that quickly?' I must say that's impressive. Every day new things showed up, new programs, new layout, and in the end I got this strange feeling that it was actually starting to look very much like my 'old' winXP... The desktop is now equipped with a [Computer] logo, and the familiar [Trash]. WOW! Is this what the public wants? A Linux that looks like XP? hmm, not me!
Anyway, after all these wasted hours, the only thing I had to do was: clickety click on the [Computer], and mouse-right-click on the DVD logo, to find a menu called 'Copy disc', Whaaat!! I was amazed, if not all this time then at least some, I had this DVD copy right by me.... Damn!!!
Next thing I have to do is format my USB harddisk so that I can write to it, it's Partitioned with NTFS, and Linux doesn't like to write that... I can't use Fat32 because it only supports files of 4GB, and I need more to do a DVD image...And I still need winXp to have access to the drive.... well, more searching in the forums...

Ubuntu - you rock! ...Flawless - not!

2005-10-03T10:37:00.000+02:00

It is a breeze to install the Ubuntu 'Breezy badger', and all the problems I had using Debian disappeared, almost :p. As mentioned in an earlier post, 'it might have been the same, did I just install the new kernel 2.6' but I wanted to try Ubuntu.
The problem I have now is : keyboard layout!
As some might have discovered already(by reading), English is not my native language, Danish is. Therefore I need a DK layout, and that's not a tedious affair with Ubuntu either. Even though I choose DK layout, it doesn't give me the keys.

The good part is:

- USB works, attaching my external hdd, gives me a mounted drive automatically.
- I can see all my partitions, and mount them.
- Playing movies work, not too good, but it works.
- Sound is playing well.
- MainActor video editing works, I had to do some tweaking here, installing old GNU C++ compiler libraries.
- CD/DVD burning works well.
- Graphics card(NVidia GeForce II) worked perfectly

The bad part is:

- OpenOffice 2, works but has some problems with M$ Office documents and images
- KDE window manager not preinstalled

I'm moving - to a new linux distribution.

2005-09-29T11:27:00.000+02:00

My troubles with Debian and support for my hardware, and the 'mount' issue gives me the idea, that I need a less troublesome distribution. Maybe a new kernel would do the trick, but I don't wanna spend hours trying to compile my own kernel.

I've read about:
MEPIS - seems very easy, has nice USB features, but has problems with community support.
UBUNTU - pretty new, looks very much like Debian, and seems easy to install.
and Gentoo - very much a 'command line' linux, which I don't like, being a 'newbie'.

I think I'll try the Ubuntu 'BreezyBadger' cutting edge technology <- as of October 2005

later...

You & me USB! - You & me

2005-09-28T14:13:00.000+02:00

I'm starting to get the hang of it...but there are still issues that I cannot comprehend.
'mount' for one... How on earth, will the linux world ever get to a point, where they have the same amount of ease as windoze does? When it comes to 'drives' HDD/USBSticks/Zips whatever... 'mount' is your worst enemy. Mine at least!
Here is the story: I have an external harddisk, enclosed in a box with a USB2.0 connection. Obviously, I want it to communicate with my Linux! I plug it in and knowing that 'mount' is the key, I start Googling for 'howto mount usb hard disk'.
Great sources of knowledge came towards me, but none gave me the clue I needed. While struggling for hours, I started getting a little bit impatient, and started 'shouting' (inside). Finally I found some newsgroup answer, talking about 'fdisk /dev/sda' <- this little command will give you a menu, if there is something attached to /dev/sda (normally SCSI drives, that's another story) and pressing [p] will give you partition information. The clue it gave me, was that my External HDD has 2 partitions. This means, if you need partition 2, you'd have to tell it to mount on sda5 instead of sda1/2 or 3..... Nice! It never occured to me that I have two partitions, and why would I give a sheit!, just give my drive som sort of nice standard name like 'hdd1..10'
Well I had it working 2 seconds after my finding, and now I'm smiling again :)
Gave the 'KDE' chat client 'KoPete' a try, it works great! Now my friends are smiling too...

What the HELL!

2005-09-26T20:00:00.000+02:00

Well, had to reinstall Debian. I couldn’t see any other way out of my misery.

I’d just bought a dead cheap DVD-burner. Installed it instead of my old DVD-Rom, and tried the ‘thing’ in Windoze, worked perfectly! Did some testing with a couple of movies, not illegal ones (don’t worry I have none) but some I did previously with my DV-cam and my kids. Worked as expected, Great! Now I just want to try this out on my Linux…

So, I ‘boot’ up my Debian…and suddenly it halt’s….waiting!.. Nothing…it’s stopped, try pressing [CTRL+Alt+Delete]..Nothing.. it just said something like ‘keyboard character whatever not supported’…bla bla bla, what the hell do I care! ‘The only thing I did was change a DVD-Rom drive for gods sake. Tell me I can get around this’ I was on my knees, crying!! well actually not, I just reinstalled the bugger.

Don’t mess with a windoze nerd, we’ll just reinstall!!!

I might end up being really glad I did. Learning a lot from it…I mean you learn a lot by doing wrong sometimes…

Hold it, where's my drives?

2005-09-20T20:50:00.000+02:00

I knew one or two things about Linux and the filesystem it uses...It's not FAT!
like it's not too obvious how to get to the different drives you've placed on your system. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm a windoze nerd (still is, has'nt convinced me just yet), that means, I have a couple of NTFS drives around somewhere. They are 'floating' around when it comes to Linux, because they are 'persona non grata' if you don't do nothing, to get them onboard.
Thats where 'mount' comes in handy, and "what the hell is mount?" you ask! A little tricky for me to explain, let's just say "it's a way to give you access, to your drives'.
But the tricky part, is to give the right person the rights to 'read-access' to your NTFS drive, never 'write'(it's not supported yet I hear). The easier way is to put this 'mounting' into the file that handles all mounting at startup. It's called 'fstab' and resides under the folder '/etc'. To mount your NTFS partitioned drive you would do something like (this gets a little technical I know...)
/dev/hda1 /media/xp ntfs ro,umask=000 0 0
Will I try to explain that? No! ...I will just tell you that the tricky part is where it says 'umask=000'(thats 3 zeros) and it means, give everybody readOnly rights to this drive... Enough of that technical stuff, damn I'm getting 'nerdy' again...

Oh well....

..a little too late.

2005-09-19T22:30:00.000+02:00

A good friend told me(a little too late) that Debian actually has a very nice way of keeping up-to-date. It's called 'apt'(Advanced Packaging Tool), this sounds way too xtra-terrestrial for me.
I found 'Synaptic' which is actually part of my distribution, and that would, I hoped, guide me to 'the safe haven' . But alas, another tool that gives you endless lists of unpronounceable names of programs/tools/utilities or what have we... I browsed, I searched ...and finally! I found a name I recognized! 'Mozilla Firefox', yiphee!! ....but.... a little too late, is a little too late.
Yesterday, I was crawling with Mozilla, I thought to myself, better find my normal browser, and install that. I did! I downloaded a Linux version of Firefox and with no fuzz at all, it worked like a charm... the next day my good friend told me of the terrific way Debian keeps itself all shiny and happy, using 'apt'. Great work guys!!!

Later....

- Wish these Blogs would be able to go upside down instead...

Good lord, it's VI...

2005-09-16T10:00:00.000+02:00

Did I mention VI? I think I did... But did you get it? - neither did I, when first introduced to this 'headache' of an editor.

There are 'nerds' out there saluting this editor, I'm definitely not one of them :( allthough I would like to be.... knowing this editor well, does give you a feeling of being part of some secret society... one of the 'dawgs'. But you need a loot of experience! ...and it's essential when fumbling around with Linux. That hit me, the first time I had to edit a config file, on my new Debian linux.

It was'nt my first time using VI, I'm happy to say! I was introduced by 2 former colleagues of mine, that used it primarily to edit Java source code ...and they had a lot to say, when it came to what programs you could install, on your work PC. I figured...better do what these guys say, or I'll have a rough time(meanwhile I did some research on other editors).
But you have alternatives to VI. I found JEdit which is a good IDE(Integrated Development Environment) and used it when they were not looking ;) no! not really... but they kept teasing me... resulting in a short period, where I tried to learn the 'VI-way'.

That short period saved me, when I had to edit that linux config file ...and the vi Cheat Sheet.

First off..

2005-09-15T12:39:00.000+02:00

You want high resolution, when using your 17" monitor, at least 1024x768, and not the standard "looser" 800x600.
Where to start?

I tried to "Google" the question "debian linux howto" and got a list of what claimed to be the knowledge I wanted (it's always like that with Google). Searching the list, I found the Single list of howto's and thats what I want, Yeah!.... A *single* page nothing less, nothing more!
...and my problems started. Where do I go from here? what am I actually looking for? 'Monitor', 'gui', 'video', 'graphics' 'hardware' WHAAT!?

Ahemm, I feel that I need to tell you that I have some knowledge of the linux world, allthough I'm a Windoze nerd. That's why I knew to look for X windows.

I found something that looked like the thing I was looking for. The complete HOWTO XWindow guide, and that gave me an idea of what to do..

Found the file "/etc/X11/XF86Config" and with my VI skills, managed to edit the line where it states both "800x600" and "640x480", insert'd "1024x768" in front, and did a restart, woohoo!
It worked...

An adventure has begun...

2005-09-15T10:02:00.000+02:00

I was wondering why my Windoze XP started giving me problems, when I found out... It's still the trial version I'm using. In the beginning of XP, they gave it away with a 60 day trial period. And some Crackers found out how to remove the annoying 'reminder' after the 60 day period. I just installed that... It's still a crack you say? nooo! it's just hacking... Anyways, the little trick M$ use on windozeUpdate to check for validity of your XP, just had me.
I'm going to switch OS.. Yes! and Linux just happened to be at the right spot this day... Grabbed a copy off some server, burned a CD (the one that said network install), and the rest is a piece of .....

Well not really, it's a bloody miracle I'm up and running. The work I had to put into this, is horrifying, I'll tell you the whole story later ... but for now, I'm still sure this is the way I want to go, because MickeySoft will throw more of that 'validity-check' at you once their new 'Vista' OS hits the market, and that gives me the creeps!

Later..