Hi everyone, this is just a quick how-to on handling the Ubuntu Maverick/Gnome Login Keyring issue which occurs when you change your user password.

The issue: You’ve decided to change your password for whatever reason and suddenly you’re presented with the following message whenever you launch an application you have instructed to “remember” your password.

Enter password to unlock your login keyring
The password you use to log in to your computer no longer matches that of your login keyring.

This is how you fix it:

Step 1: Go to System >> Preferences >> Passwords and Encryption Keys.
Step 2: If not already open, click on the “Passwords” tab.
Step 3: Right click on: “Passwords: Login“.
Step 4: From the context menu select: “Change Password“.
Step 5: Enter the Current password in the “Old Password” field.
Step 6: Enter the password you would like to change it to in the “Password” field.
Step 7: Enter the password you would like to change to again in the “Confirm” field.
Step 8: Click “OK“.

After this, relaunch the application which uses Gnome Keyring, you may have to re-enter your password, but after that, Gnome Keyring should remember your password for each subsequent launch.

In previous versions of ubuntu which used grub 1, setting up the resolution for tty was done by simply using the vga=??? boot option. In grub 2 however, this is not so easy.

I remember when it first came out. I was somewhat exasperated by the fact that I had _just_ become comfortable f*cking with grub’s menu.lst and now I had to learn how to use grub 2 – which had some new convention for editing menu items let alone setting up the resolution.

Anyway, there’s really nothing to it. I had to do a lot of digging around and some experimentation, but in the end, as with all things linux it was “easy” when I finally found out how.

Step 1: Open up your the grub header file stored in /etc/grub.d/00_header

$ sudo vim /etc/grub.d/00_header


Step 2: Add a command inside the block of string with script that sets the gfxmode. Acceptable Set the gfxpayload parameter to the resolution you want to use for your virtual terminals / TTY.

SO for me, lines 101 – 113 of the 00_header file in /etc/grub.d looks like this

101 cat << EOF
102 if loadfont `make_system_path_relative_to_its_root ${GRUB_FONT_PATH}` ; then
103 set gfxmode=${GRUB_GFXMODE}
104 insmod gfxterm
105 insmod ${GRUB_VIDEO_BACKEND}
106 if terminal_output gfxterm ; then true ; else
107 # For backward compatibility with versions of terminal.mod that don't
108 # understand terminal_output
109 terminal gfxterm
110 fi
111 #set gfx payload - use your own resolution here. I have a 19 inch monitor which natively supports 1440x900
112 set gfxpayload=1440x900x32
113 EOF


Step 3: After you save the file, go back to the terminal and run update-grub2 as root.


$ sudo update-grub2


Your terminal should look like this:

$ sudo update-grub2
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-23-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-23-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done


And that’s it. On your next boot, you should see your console displayed in the resolution you used for setting gfxpayload.

Anyway, to fix this issue, I installed the debian SDL library with X11 graphics and Pulse audio compiled Ubuntu Karmic has available in the repository.
Pulse audio is the default sound system used in Ubuntu Karmic.

Here’s the step by step

Step 1: Install by issuing the following command:

sudo aptitude install libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

This will automatically remove libsdl1.2debian-alsa which will trigger a warning presented by dpkg.

Step 2: Kill the existing instance of pulseaudio by issuing the following command:

killall pulseaudio

Step 3: Play Battle for Wesnoth with sound.

Anyway, todays post is basically to bring your attention to a site that I’ve found, posted last year, which lists 100 linux software applications that the author considers “the best”.

Upon checking it out, I’ll be installing the following:

• ardour – a digital audio workstation application.
• hydrogen – an advanced drum machine
• hugin – cross-platform panoramic imaging toolchain based on Panorama tools.
• pixelize – scales down images and duplicates as closely as possible.
• synfig – vector-based 2D animation software package.
• cinepaint – used to retouch feature films and in pro photography.
• recordmydesktop – desktop session recorder.

There’s a whole lot more, so if you’re anything like me, this will give oyu something to do for a night or two

Check out the full link on the following URL: http://ubuntulinuxhelp.com/top-100-of-the-best-useful-opensource-applications/

GUAKE!

Years ago prior to checking out YeahConsole, I found Guake. Guake at the time, was buggy as hell. at the time, the Developer was in hiatus and I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if someone could actually pick this project up.

Latest version is in the Ubuntu Repos!

Then earlier this year, while I was still using Jaunty, I tried to install guake from the Ubuntu repo and they have finally upgraded to the latest version (at the time) – I’m using Karmic Koala Alpha 6 which has 0.4 available.

Install it now!

To install Guake in Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu you can either install it from synaptic or from the command-line:
$sudo aptitude install guake.

After installation is done, start the program up from your Applications >> Accessories menu or from the command-line with $guake and you have a native gnome drop down terminal with true transparency support at your disposal. I’m very happy with Guake!

I thought great! I’ll plug my headphone into the exteral sound card and I can again block the world out with sound the next time things get rowdy in the development room.

Everything worked great! Sound was channelled nicely out through the external sound card out of the box via pulseaudio. All except flash (flashplugin-nonfree) which has been hardwired to use my internal sound card. I don’t know what the particulars are, and what causes this, but I found that completely disabling the internal sound card was the solution.

Here’s how I disabled my internal sound card and forced all sound to use the usb sound card:

1. Blacklist snd_intel8x0 by editing the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-oss.conf and adding “blacklist snd_inten8x0″as the last line blacklist snd_inten8x0
2. Next, edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and replace: “install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-0″
   with: “install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd_usb_audio”
   Your edited file should look like:
   
install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd_usb_audio
#install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-0
3. Comment out options snd-intel8x0m index=-2, options snd-usb-audio and options snd-usb-usx2y so that the options portion of the alsa-base.conf looks like:# Prevent abnormal drivers from grabbing index 0
options bt87x index=-2
options cx88_alsa index=-2
options saa7134-alsa index=-2
options snd-atiixp-modem index=-2
#options snd-intel8x0m index=-2
options snd-via82xx-modem index=-2
#options snd-usb-audio index=-2
options snd-usb-us122l index=-2
#options snd-usb-usx2y index=-2
options snd-usb-caiaq index=-2
# Ubuntu #62691, enable MPU for snd-cmipci
options snd-cmipci mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388
# Keep snd-pcsp from being loaded as first soundcard
options snd-pcsp index=-2
# Power down HDA controllers after 10 idle seconds
options snd-hda-intel power_save=10

Can’t get it to work? leave a comment, we’ll sort it out together.

How do you fix this?

To fix this, I did the following steps:

1. Right click on the blank toolbar – this will bring up the toolbar selection context menu.
2. Click on “Customize” – this will load the toolbar “Customize Toolbar” screen.
3. Click on the “Restore Defaults” button located on the bottom of the “Customize Toolbar” screen.

By now you should have your Web Development toolbar icons appear where they should be (on the Web Development toolbar!)

“FAIL! That didn’t work!”

Failing the above, you could try the following:

1. Load up the “Customize Toolbar” screen by following steps 1 and 2 above.
2. Using your scrollbar, locate a few of the Web Development toolbar Elements and drag it to the blank Web Development toolbar.
3. Click on the button called “Restore Defaults” on the bottom of the “Customize Toolbar” screen – this should restore your web development icons.

“FAIL AGAIN!! That _STILL_ did not work!”

Failing the two methods above, you should look to see if you have the popular tab enhancement add-on called tab mix plus. If you have this installed, you will not be able to see the icons for Web Developer when you open the “Customize Toolbar” screen. With me not wanting to spend more time on delving into why TMP gets in the way of the Web Developer tool bar, I decided to disable the Tab Mix Plus add-on in favour of my toolbar.

So if the two suggested fixes don’t work, try the following:

1. Load up the Add-ons menu and disable TMP
2. Right click on the blank toolbar and click on “Customize”.
3. You should now again be able to see your Web Developer Toolbar icons.
4. Locate a few of the Web Development Toolbar Elements by using your scroll bar then drag a web developer toolbar icon to the empty toolbar.
5. Click on the Restore Defaults button.

One of the above mentioned workarounds should work, but if your firefox Web Developer toolbar doesn’t work on Ubunutu, or any Linux distro, leave a comment. We’ll figure it out together.

Shortly after that, chanages were made and the developer in charge was nice enough to leave us with an update:

I’ve change the default behaviour from creating the ‘last’ directory to creating NO directory. By default the backup is aborted now if destination directory does not exist. This prevents accidents like described here http://blog.rvdavid.net/30-gb-root-partition-full-how/ and serves the request for an option to enable such behaviour.

Changed in nssbackup:
assignee:	nobody ? peer.loz
status:	Confirmed ? Fix Committed

So I guess that’s that for an update. Since this little hick up has been fixed, I’ve had nothing but a stable backup solution.

I highly recommend that you do this. So-that-when-you-accidentally-hose-your-system-down-playing-with-gparted-to-resize-your-partitions-then-deciding-it-was-too_long-and-cancelling-halfway-through-”analysis”-thinking-it’s-”ok”-because-it-was-just-”analysing”-but-then-when-you-reboot-the-computer-it-tells-you-that-you-have-a-corrupt-mbr-or-something-so-you-scour-the-internet-for-a-solution-and-paste-a-command-which-wipes-out-your-nodes-because-you-forgot-to-put -n or -r-after-the-command (*whistles innocently*)… You can… recover!

Again, I highly recommend it. Not So Simple Backup solution for linux… A very stable alternative to the now super seded sbackup. NSSBackup a replacement for sbackup on Linux operating systems.

This is some crazy s#it which I didn’t need, deadlines coming at me left, right and centre, this is the last thing you want!

I thought it may have been a memory issue so I did a du:

du -s * | sort -nr | head

This reported that my fricking hard disk was full!!!!

How? why?! … HOW?!?!?

Simple backup (sbackup)
Rewind back to a few weeks before this happened, I implemented a backup solution called “sbackup” (installed via $sudo aptitude install sbackup). I had it set up to do the following:

- Target backup drive was an external USB drive I hook up daily to my LG S900 laptop desktop replacement – Ubuntu auto mounts this drive to “/media/disk”
- I backup my home directory and etc directories.
- I have it scheduled to do an incremental back up every day at 5pm
- I have it scheduled to do a full backup every week.
- I have it set to “Abort backup if destination directory does not exist”

A few weeks before the event, I had been working from home and worked through the afternoon. My backup drive was left on my desk at the office so it was not connected. _THIS _ was the problem!

What sbackup did was ignore the “Abort backup if destination directory does not exist” setting in the GUI and had actually created a backup directory called “disk” in “/media”. Due to this, the following happened:

- From that day forward, sbackup did incremental and full backups locally to my hard disk slowly filling it up.
- Whenever I connected my backup drive, it was mounted as “/media/disk-1″ so it was never touched.

sbackup was ignoring the “Abort backup if destination directory does not exist” checkbox option.

Inspecting the sbackup configuration file, I found that the config variable that stores this was set to 0 (meaning “no”) rather than 1! That’s terrible. A suggested workaround was to manually change this setting in the configuration file, but every time you load up the gui and make changes, it gets reset to 0 again. Absolute BS!

I’ve done some digging around and sbackup is now abandonware. The developers who created it originally are now focussing on not so simple backup suite. Which does not seem to have the abort if destination does not exist option.

I’ve installed nssbackup, but have it set to manual. Hopefully the guys developing this project will at least implement the “abort backup if destination directory does not exist” option. I’ve asked the question “ability to abort backup if destination directory does not exist?” on launchpad anyway and will post an update if I get an answer or not.