boff

Automatically turn on the radio

boff — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:14:44 +0000

I use my netbook mostly for playing music or the radio, using Banshee and the browser, e.g. Last.fm. I’d like to be able to turn on the radio with minimal fuss in the mornings. Here’s how I set it up so that it starts BBC Radio 4, i.e. I just press the power button and the rest is automatic.

Set Ubuntu to auto-login
Go to “Startup applications…” and add the command google-chrome --app=http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/bbc_radio_fourfm
Bob’s your uncle

This assumes that the Google Chrome browser is installed. Other browsers should work similarly.

Upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 on Acer netbook

boff — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:00:31 +0000

I tried to upgrade my Acer Aspire One (AOA150) from Natty to Oneiric, but failed. So, I did a fresh install instead.

Upgrade experience: All seemed fine at first, but somehow the screen went black during the upgrade process and would not come back at all. There seemed to be some activity, so perhaps the upgrade was proceeding fine, but I had no way to tell. So I forced the computer to shut down, downloaded Ubuntu to a USB stick and started a fresh install.

Fresh install: Proceeded without a hitch. Obviously, everything on the computer was wiped out. This would have been a disaster on my main computer, but for the netbook it is fine because there is nothing personal on it, anyway. Only copying the music back onto it will take a bit of time.

Things to do after install: A couple of things to make it work the way I want it to…

Installing Google Chrome (not Chromium):
Download chrome installer, then…
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb sudo apt-get -f install
…the latter to resolve some dependency issues with the browser.

Skype:
Installed skype from the software centre, but microphone wouldn’t work. Sound recorder could record fine, however.
To fix this, I installed pavucontrol, and changed the input to 10 on one side and 90 on the other (after unlocking the left and right channels).
This is explained here: help.ubuntu.com/community/SkypeTroubleshooting

Most built-in mics are mono. The default setting on the Input Control is to lock the R&L channel together. By reading the mono mic as stereo, PulseAudio cancels the input. Click on the middle button on the upper right of the control panel to unlock the R&L channel. Move either the left or right channel to 10 leaving the other channel about 90.

Autologin to 2D:
When setting Ubuntu to automatically login as a user, it defaults to Unity (normal, i.e. with compiz and “3D”). To speed things up, I want it to autologin to Unity-2D. Here’s how:
In the file /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, change
user-session=ubuntu to user-session=ubuntu-2d
.. as explained here: askubuntu.com/…/how-to-default-to-unity-2d-on-auto-login

Network:
Luckily the netbook is hooked up to the network by wire, otherwise connecting to wifi would require a password (very annoying when wanting to use autologin). I set wireless to NOT connect automatically.

Final note: I like that in the touchpad settings I can now set it to two finger-scrolling.

Partitions

boff — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:45:04 +0000

Since it is always a bit of a headache getting the partitions right when upgrading, I am noting down here my partition setup for future reference – though it might change. I’m dual-booting with Ubuntu and Windows 7.

Partitions 500 GB hard disk /dev/sda (Master Boot Record)

DellUtility /dev/sda1 (41 MB, Hidden W95 FAT16 (LBA) (0x1e))
RECOVERY /dev/sda2 (16 GB, HPFS/NTFS (0×07))
OS (Win7) /dev/sda3 (107 GB, HPFS/NTFS (0×07))
377 GB Extended /dev/sda4 (W95 Ext d (LBA) (0x0f))
- Stuff /dev/sda5 mounted at /media/Stuff (268 GB, HPFS/NTFS (0×07))
- 10 GB Filesystem /dev/sda6 mounted at /home (10 GB, Linux Ext4 (0×83))
- 8.2 GB Swap Space /dev/sda7 (8.2 GB, Linux swap (0×82))
- 90 GB Filesystem /dev/sda8 mounted at / (90 GB, Linux Ext4 (0×83))

Lucid Lynx

boff — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:28:43 +0000

am a bit late, but have now installed Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx 64-bit (on a dell Studio 1747).

The installation went without a hitch, here are the major things I had to do afterwards. Actually, nothing major, mind you.

Wireless network: install required wired network, and then activating the Broadcom STA proprietary wireless driver ( > System > Administration > Hardware drivers)

Sound: No sound would play through the headphones. Solved by adding the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
options snd-hda-intel model=dell-m6
See also: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto

…other issues and notes later.

MeeGo

boff — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:58:12 +0000

Note to self:
Installed MeeGo on Acer netbook. Works fine.

Installed fluendo gstreamer stuff for MP3

http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?p=1762#post1762

Mounting FAT32 partition automatically at boot

boff — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:54:27 +0000

In Gutsy, all my partitions would be mounted automatically at boot. At the time I was thinking that I want that for my FAT32 partition, which I store most files on, but not for my NTFS (windows) partition, which I generally don’t need access to.

After installing Hardy, things have changed around and neither of those two partitions are mounted automatically. They mount when I choose them in the “Places” menu. That is good for the NTFS partition, but quite annoying with the FAT32 partition, as I have photos, music files, wallpapers, etc on there. Which means, to play a song I first have to click on the drive to mount it and then load the media player (banshee, or…). Also, my wallpaper doesn’t show up until I have clicked on (i.e. mounted) the partition.

So, after some searching, I found some instructions about how to edit the /etc/fstab file. This page here is quite useful among others: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

It seems that the fstab file has changed somewhat with Hardy, and the changes seem pretty difficult to understand for a newbie like me, but I decided to try it out following the somewhat older instructions. This is what I have done:

backup fstab: sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.backup
make a directory to mount the partition in: sudo mkdir /media/fat-partition
find out about my partitions: sudo fdisk -l
edit fstab: sudo gedit /etc/fstab
…added the line: /dev/sda3 /media/fat-partition vfat defaults,nosuid,nodev 0 0
save and reboot

…I am writing this just before the reboot, so lets see what happens…

UPDATE: at first it seemed to work… but then it didn’t. I have postponed solving this issue until after the Intrepid Ibex upgrade. Perhaps it won’t even be there anymore.

Linking master and headphone volume to volume buttons

boff — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:42:37 +0000

It is quite simple to get the external media volume buttons to apply to both master volume and headphone volume simultaneously.

Go to > System > Preferences > Sound and select both Master and Headphne (using Ctrl + click) under Default Mixer Tracks.

That’s it.

(Trying BloGTK for posting this entry)
More on this here http://freemor.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/using-blogtk-with-wordpresscom

Hardy Heron / Ubuntu 8.04 install

boff — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:12:47 +0000

I have just upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04, and thus there are some new things to blog about.

I could not actually upgrade, as I got this error every time I tried:
Could not calculate the upgrade
A unresolvable [sic] problem occurred while calculating the upgrade.

So, guessing that it may be caused by “unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu” I uninstalled/disabled the following:
BlueMarine, easyTAG, Firefox add-ons, flashplugin-nonfree, Flock, Gnomad, GQview, gstreamer plugins bad, ugly and ffmpeg, gxine, libdvdread3, LightZone, MPlayer, multiverse sources, NVidia restricted drivers, Picasa, pysdm, Skype, Sun Java, VLC
Still, every time I tried upgrading the same error popped up.

So, instead I did a fresh install of Ubuntu, which went well. I don’t find the partitioning part well done for someone who’d like to keep his existing Windows installation. I chose manual configuration, deleted the existing Ubuntu (7.10) partition, and chose to reformat it as ext3 as root partition… all the while not being sure whether I was doing the right thing…

To-do list

boff — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 20:00:45 +0000

Now that I’ve upgraded to Ubuntu 7.04, here’s a note to myself of things I can think of now that I still need to do:

Keep windows in /boot/grub/menu.lst

Every time there is a kernel upgrade (or after upgrading to Feisty), the menu.lst file gets changed. That file lists what operating systems choices GRUB lists upon bootup. I dual-boot between Ubuntu and WinXP. After every upgrade, however, WinXP gets deleted from the list. I have learnt to backup the old menu.lst and restore the appropriate lines of code to it afterwards, but it is annoying. So I have to find out how to tell Ubuntu to keep that choice there when upgrading.

Does linux keep all the old kernels around? (i.e. there are more and more options in GRUB) Can I get rid of old ones and save disk space?
Wireless networking

Before the Feisty upgrade NetworkManager has given me all sorts of headaches when trying to connect to wireless networks. Need to investigate situation now and see what needs to be done…

Have DVD’s autorun in VLC player instead of gXine.
Move the home folde to a different partition… maybe
Get rid of the icons for my different partitions on the desktop

I can access them through the > Places menu. However, do show icons for inserted media such as CDs or USB sticks. Also, I want to make the “DellUtility” Partition, that presumably is factory installed from Dell, totally disappear from view.

Install beagle, tracker, … desktop search?
Experiment with desktop effects?

…I’m sure there will be more.

Upgraded to Feisty

boff — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:33:42 +0000

I have just upgraded to Feisty Fawn (i.e. Ubuntu 7.04) and it all went so smoothly there is nothing to write home about. I’m almost disappointed
I took an hour of letting the upgrade tool do its work.

The only small annoyance that I have noticed so far is that it changes menu.lst the way it always does when you do a kernel upgrade. It takes Windows off the list, which is quite annoying for a dual-booter like me. More in another post.