Archive for the ‘Linux’ category

Ubuntu Linux: Forcing sound out through your external USB Sound Card

September 8th, 2009

So… long story short, I messed up my headphone jack on my notebook which where I use Ubuntu Karmic Koala Alpha x (6 I think) as my primary OS. Luckily though, I found an old sony external sound card lying around the office at work. One of the artifcats that had been left behind by one of the developers of yester-year.

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.

» Read more: Ubuntu Linux: Forcing sound out through your external USB Sound Card

Ubuntu Linux: Fix for the disappearing Firefox Web Developer toolbar

September 5th, 2009

I use firefox as my browser on Ubuntu Karmic Alpha x (can’t remember which one). During one update, my firefox web development toolbar disappeared. There was nothing there aside from the blank grey bar.

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. :)

NSS Backup – a “Not So Simple Backup” solution for Linux

May 14th, 2009

As mentioned on my previous post, I’ve started using NSS Backup as my primary backup solution for my mobile workstation which runs Ubuntu Linux. I gotta say, it’s running pretty well, although recently I’ve had issues with Ubuntu recognising the mountable external hard disc I’ve been using as a back-up drive – save that story for another time – but yeah, it’s running pretty well. As mentioned I had asked the question. One of the development team members answered the question and requested that I open a ticket.

» Read more: NSS Backup – a “Not So Simple Backup” solution for Linux

sbackup issue: 30 GB Root Partition Full?! HOW?!

March 21st, 2009

So a while ago, some time at close of business, I was doing some final tests for the fourth phase of project achilles when all of a sudden, I’ve been struck with some random mysql errors. “Data source not available” and other similar errors with other etc.

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?!?!?

» Read more: sbackup issue: 30 GB Root Partition Full?! HOW?!

IPV6 enabled by default in kernels 2.6.28-4 and up

March 17th, 2009

Just a quick update to an old post I made: Disabling IPV6 to tweak network connectivity. The tweak mentioned on the post will only work for kernel versions prior to 2.6.28-4 as discussed on the following bug report: IPV6 causes slow internet access. Sorry for those who have tried to apply this tweak and failed. If you are using kernels prior to 2.6.28-4, this will still work.