Posts in category Ubuntu


VMware sound on Feisty

| tags: ubuntu

Lots of pages out there address problems people have getting sound to work with VMware running on Linux hosting Windows but none of those solutions did it for me. VMware Workstation 6 insists on using /dev/dsp which for some strange reason I didn't have. I noticed I had /dev/dsp1 through /dev/dsp5 but no plain /dev/dsp. A few minutes fooling with Audacity showed me where each of those played, and /dev/dsp3 seems to play through the speakers on my Audigy 2 so I knew that was the one I wanted it to use. I simply did: sudo ln -s /dev/dsp3 /dev/dsp and that seemed to do the trick.

more...


Doh! Wireless doesn't work on my R60 laptop

| tags: ubuntu

Wireless actually works except for the campus network. I can connect to the network over at the Inn (by accident I assure you) but our campus network uses WEP and does not broadcast SSID. Something about that kills it. Lots of Googling hasn't produced an answer. Michael suggests trying ndiswrapper.

more...


My Logitech web-cam is faster on Feisty than on XP!

| tags: ubuntu

I was surprised and pleased to see that CVtypes, our python ctypes wrapper for OpenCV, actually worked with my Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000 right out of the box. Later when I started to seriously try it out I was disturbed to see I was only getting 10 frames per second. I tried setting the frame rate with the interface provided by highgui but that fails for the frame rate. Anyone know why? Then I discovered setpwc a command-line utility for viewing and setting parameters on cameras that use Phillips chips. It revealed my camera was set for 10 fps. It was easy to change the setting to 30Hz at 320x240 and now my OpenCV apps run at 30Hz. I was never able to go above 15Hz on Windows XP. This is great.

more...


Open web links from programs in Ubuntu

| tags: programming, ubuntu

In both Python and VMware I've noticed that attempts to open a link in the browser failed with a very strange file:// link containing double quote characters. A bit of searching revealed this is a problem with the calling syntax from Firefox in System -> Preferences -> Preferred Applications. Changing from "Custom" to "Firefox" so the Command is firefox %s fixes things nicely.

more...


Turn on the firewall!

| tags: ubuntu

Murray kindly pointed out that my ssh port was getting assaulted by various lower forms of life trying to guess a user name and password. Yikes! A bit of Googling revealed firestarter a nice GUI for iptables. A few rules limiting access appear to have shutdown the script kiddies.

more...


Running Windows Apps on Ubuntu

| tags: ubuntu

I need to test our applications on several versions of Windows and the Flash development environment only runs there. My machines still dual-boot but that is a bother. So I decided to check out ways to run windows on Ubuntu. I first tried QEMU with the kernel accelerator. There are lots of fiddly command-line flags to get right but it worked pretty well. I successfully installed Windows XP though it took a long time. I discovered some tips about disabling ACPI and that sped things up quite a bit. Now full of confidence, I decided to install Flash CS3. The install took a while but it does when running native as well. Unfortunately, when I tried to run the Flash IDE, QEMU would crash hard with bus error, core dumped. I've posted a query on the QEMU forum but haven't gotten a reply yet.

more...


Moving /home to its own partition

| tags: ubuntu

I wanted to make /home its own partition to ease backups, synchronization, and future upgrades. This is how I did it. I'm no expert so beware of taking these as instructions. I got most of this from this post .

more...


Feisty forgets my Search Domains

| tags: ubuntu

When I type ssh gb-cs I mean ssh gb-cs.cs.unc.edu but I couldn't get that to work consistently at home. I'd add it to the Search Domains section of the DNS tab in the Network Settings dialog but next time I hibernated or rebooted, it would be gone. This tip suggested adding a package and then making a simple change:

more...


Recording the desktop

| tags: ubuntu

Pete says check out istanbul when I need to make a screencast. xvidcap is another possibility but it doesn't seem to be in Synaptic Package Manager.

more...


« Previous Page -- Next Page »