May 7, 2008
I had a lot of fun with Linux Multi Media System. As far as I have been able to find, it’s the closest thing to Fruity Loops that I’ve been able to find for linux. It doesn’t take a whole lot of learning and is just an apt-get away on Ubuntu.
Here’s a little tune I did with it in a couple of hours:
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May 7, 2008
I thought tabs were great. In reality, they’re useful for some things — web browsing and file managing come to mind. But when it comes to working in a terminal, it’s really tedious to have to flip back and forth between tabs in your terminal emulator. Things get lost, you forget which machine is which, and on and on.
One thing I always liked about GNU Screen is that you could split the window up, however rarely I used that feature. But Terminator brings that functionality in a clean way to Gnome-Terminal, and you’ll never believe how much it boosts your productivity! These days, with large displays and dual-monitor setups more common, it just makes sense to be able to divide your terminal any way you see fit. Comparing output of commands, working with multiple machines, whatever your task might be — it’s easier than ever with this little add-on app.
Terminator is built off Gnome-Terminal, which means you still manage your terminal preferences through its interface. The options you’ll find in Terminator itself are pretty bare-bones — but I like it that way. Right clicking on the main window gives you a few succinct options:
- Copy / Paste
- Show Scrollbar
- Split Horizontally
- Split Vertically
- Close
There’s not much more to ask for once you have the look and feel right. It might be nice to be able to edit preferences directly from Terminal, but I don’t find myself digging around in terminal emulator options too much anyway once I have my main look and feel set up the way I like (white text on black blackground, please).
On Ubuntu, it’s an apt-get install terminator away. For other distros, see its home page, here.
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May 7, 2008
Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) came out at the tail end of last month and since upgrading, any operation with apt-get or Synaptics has been excruciatingly slow. For a time, probably the first 24 hours after having upgraded, apt-get update commands were even timing out! At that point, I manually changed my mirrors in /etc/apt/sources.list to a UK mirror just to get off the ground.
When the US mirrors began working again, I changed it back. However, they’ve remained incredibly slow for me, even with my 15mbit connection. Luckily, Ubuntu includes a handy utility to choose the best mirror and get you back up to speed.
Selecting a Better Mirror
- Select System > Administration > Software Sources
- Select Other… from the Download from: dropdown menu
- Click Select Best Server and wait for the tests to finish
- Click Close and allow the app to update the sources
After performing this, you’ll be installing software at better speeds in no time. I jumped from an average of 4-20KB/s to 800+KB/s.
Posted in blog entries 11 Comments »
April 30, 2008
I use the new Apple Slim USB Keyboard with my linux box because I love the way it feels. The new version of Ubuntu isn’t as fond of it as I am.
Number Pad
If you press the ‘clear’ button on the Apple keyboard, it functions as the NumLock button would on a regular PC keyboard. It turns NumLock on, but then part of the alpha portion of the keyboard works like the number pad — as it would on a compact laptop or PowerBook keyboard. Once engaged, pressing ‘clear’ again does not switch it off! Since Gnome stores the state of NumLock between sessions, rebooting doesn’t help. You’re able to log in, but once your session is loaded, NumLock is turned right back on.
If it’s stuck in the on position, you can tap the F6 key twice to turn it back off — when the layout is changed by the ‘clear’ key, F6 becomes the new NumLock. It does this because it assumes you are using a PowerBook style keyboard with no dedicated number pad. This is a kernel bug introduced by a recent patch to the Mac keyboard driver.
To get your number pad working normally, you can set a couple of compatibility options.
- Select System > Preferences > Keyboard
- Go to the Layouts tab
- Click Layout Options…
- Under Miscellaneous compatibility options, select both Default numeric keypad keys and Numeric keypad keys work as with Mac
Unfortunately, ‘clear’ will still cause the funky behavior described above. Until this bug is patched, just remember you can tap F6 twice if NumLock is stuck on.
Function Keys
Another issue is that the function keys no longer work normally. With Ubuntu Gutsy, you were able to use the function keys just like a PC keyboard. With the newer kernel, you need to hold the ‘fn’ key and then hit the desired function key.
The NumLock / keypad bug is logged here on launchpad, as well as a lengthy discussion about this particular keyboard’s issues with Ubuntu at this time. Check it out for more details and geekery.
Posted in blog entries 34 Comments »
April 29, 2008
Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 came out last week, and I thought I’d take a moment to do a new post about connecting to a workplace VPN that uses Windows Server’s built in PPTP ability. Not a lot has changed, so you can also refer to the older article here.
The process is simple, but oftentimes discovering the necessary steps is the hard part.
Install PPTP plugin for Network Manager
- Open Add/Remove from the Applications menu
- Select All available applications from the show dropdown menu
- Enter pptp in the search box
- Select VPN Connection Manager
- Apply Changes to install.
Reboot or Restart the dbus Service
Next, you can either reboot your machine or restart the dbus service and log out and back in. If you’d rather not reboot, follow these instructions:
- Open a terminal and restart the dbus service with: sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart
- Log out of GNOME, or hit control-alt-backspace
- Log back in
VPN Setup
Entering the details of your VPN is relatively straightforward, with one caveat and a few advanced options.
- Click on the Network Manager applet in your system tray, and select VPN Connections > Configure VPN…
- Click Add and follow the wizard to begin configuration. Enter a name for the connection, and the address of the VPN server.
- IMPORTANT – Switch to the Authentication tab and select Refuse CHAP. This is necessary to connect to a server using the default configuration of the Microsoft PPTP VPN service.
If you have special requirements, or prefer not to tunnel all your traffic through the company VPN while connected, you can specify some advanced options that allow you to customize the connection
- DNS – Deselect Use Peer DNS under the PPP Options tab and Peer DNS through tunnel under the Routing tab if you’d prefer to use your local DNS server for queries.
- Routing – Select Only use VPN connection for these addresses if you know the address or subnet of the machine you’d like to connect to. This is specified using slash (or CIDR) notation. For example, if your workplace network uses addresses on the 10.10.1.0 network, you would specifiy 10.10.1.0/24 to only route those addresses over the VPN.
Connect!
All that’s left now is to connect. Click the Network Manager applet once more, and select the profile you defined in the last step from VPN Connections. Enter your credentials in the authentication screen that pops up, and wait for it to connect. Once connected, Network Manager will display a lock on your connection, signifying that your secure tunnel is in place.
Kubuntu PPTP VPN
Unfortunately, there is a standing bug in KNetworkManager (network-manager-kde) that prevents configuration of the PPTP client with the error message:
There is no configuration interface for the VPN service ppp installed. Please check your installation.
However, if it has been configured via the Gnome NetworkManager plugin, you are still able to connect.
- Right click the KNetworkManager icon in the tray
- Select VPN Connections > Connect to Your Network and go.
After connecting with KNetworkManager, you are able to browse shares with Konqueror and access any other services on the remote network normally.
Posted in backtrack, blog entries 41 Comments »
March 24, 2008
I was getting a little bored with the layout of Tip o’ the Day, so I clicked around a bit on del.icio.us for articles tagged with ‘wordpress’. I came across this pretty useful WordPress Theme Generator. Check it out!
Posted in blog entries 3 Comments »
March 13, 2008
Spotted this tip on the programming subreddit, and I thought it was too clever not to post.
Creating a file named -i will prevent an errant rm -rf * from wiping out the directory containing it. How? The * expands -i to your command line, and your rm -rf * becomes rm -rf -i *!
See it in action:
[mshade@slicebot ~]$ cd test/
[mshade@slicebot test]$ touch -- -i
[mshade@slicebot test]$ touch 1 2 3 a b c
[mshade@slicebot test]$ ls
-i 1 2 3 a b c
[mshade@slicebot test]$ rm -rf *
rm: remove regular empty file `1'?
So how do you actually delete this odd file?
rm -- -i
The ‘–’ option tells it to stop looking for flags and treat the rest of the command line as operands.
Note that this trick won’t work if you specify an absolute path (as in rm -rf ~/test/) — only when you are within the directory. I’d recommend dropping this in your home and / directories.
Enjoy!
With credit to probablycorey.
Posted in blog entries 2 Comments »
February 29, 2008
After a long wait, the latest edition of the fast-paced free and open source FPS, Nexuiz, has been released! Major updates include a new menu system, additional maps, more efficient use of memory, updated textures and graphics, and lots more.
For screenshots, video, and download see:
How do I install Nexuiz?
Nexuiz runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows alike, so no one is left out. The community is large and growing quickly. Here’s how to run the latest Nexuiz on your platform of choice.
Linux
Some distributions, like Ubuntu, include Nexuiz in their software repositories. Generally, this isn’t the latest version. You are better off downloading the latest .zip and running from there.
Nexuiz is self contained, so there’s really no installation — simply unzip and run the appropriate version.
$ unzip nexuiz-24.zip
$ cd Nexuiz
# Now, run either nexuiz-linux-sdl.sh or nexuiz-linux-glx.sh
$ ./nexuiz-linux-glx.sh
Nexuiz should now present you with its main menu where you can set up your player, join a multiplayer game, or begin a single player compaign. If you like, you can set up a Gnome or KDE desktop shortcut to launch Nexuiz in the future.
Enjoy!
Windows
Start by downloading and unzipping Nexuiz. In the Nexuiz directory, you’ll see both Nexuiz.exe and Nexuiz-SDL.exe. Run either one of these, or drag to your desktop while holding the ALT key to create a shortcut.
Mac OSX
Download and unpack Nexuiz. In the created Nexuiz directory, double click either Nexuiz.app or Nexuiz-SDL.app to launch the game.
Posted in blog entries No Comments »
February 15, 2008
Just ran a whois on Google.com and I notice a bit of hackerspam:
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM
GOOGLE.COM.ZOMBIED.AND.HACKED.BY.WWW.WEB-HACK.COM
GOOGLE.COM.YAHOO.COM.MYSPACE.COM.YOUTUBE.COM.FACEBOOK.COM.THEYSUCK.DNSABOUT.COM
GOOGLE.COM.WORDT.DOOR.VEEL.WHTERS.GEBRUIKT.SERVERTJE.NET
GOOGLE.COM.VN
GOOGLE.COM.UA
GOOGLE.COM.TW
GOOGLE.COM.TR
GOOGLE.COM.SUCKS.FIND.CRACKZ.WITH.SEARCH.GULLI.COM
GOOGLE.COM.SPROSIUYANDEKSA.RU
GOOGLE.COM.SERVES.PR0N.FOR.ALLIYAH.NET
GOOGLE.COM.SA
GOOGLE.COM.PLZ.GIVE.A.PR8.TO.AUDIOTRACKER.NET
GOOGLE.COM.MX
GOOGLE.COM.IS.NOT.HOSTED.BY.ACTIVEDOMAINDNS.NET
GOOGLE.COM.IS.HOSTED.ON.PROFITHOSTING.NET
GOOGLE.COM.IS.APPROVED.BY.NUMEA.COM
GOOGLE.COM.HAS.LESS.FREE.PORN.IN.ITS.SEARCH.ENGINE.THAN.SECZY.COM
GOOGLE.COM.DO
GOOGLE.COM.CO
GOOGLE.COM.BR
GOOGLE.COM.BEYONDWHOIS.COM
GOOGLE.COM.AU
GOOGLE.COM.ACQUIRED.BY.CALITEC.NET
GOOGLE.COM
Seems you get similar results for queries on youtube.com, yahoo.com, etc. What’s going on here?
Posted in blog entries 1 Comment »
January 25, 2008
I have a couple of VPS servers at Slicehost. I highly recommend them — simple admin interface, good prices, and good performance. We’ve only seen a tiny amount of downtime in over a year, due to a DDoS attack at their datacenter. But I digress…
Many VPS hosts are in the practice of rolling out their own slimline custom images for installs. Just how barebones are they? Well…
[root@amped ~]# which mtop
-bash: which: command not found
A little ridiculous!
Other missing staples are wget, whois, and a few others. These are a quick yum install away, but we *nix geeks get used to taking these utilities for granted. Perhaps they could fatten the image just a bit!
Posted in blog entries No Comments »
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