BimmaBlog

Xubuntu doesn’t come with the Remote Desktop screen you find in Ubuntu. All the VNC howtos (some which used to work) on the forums seem to come to nothing for me. I am happy to share directly via vnc over my LAN. Here is all I needed to do:

On the “remote” xubuntu machine

sudo apt-get install vino

vino-preferences (to get the screen - as mentioned above) up

Tick boxes as required, I tick the top two and then untick the next but require a password for access.

Add a startup item to Sessions and Startup -> Autostart

usr/lib/vino/vino-server

Reboot (or just start with the command above)

On the local “xubuntu” machine
(you may have other options here)

Install GRDC

sudo apt-get install grdc

Open up Grdc, enter the remote machine details and away you go. Response is a bit slow, but its the one that works!

I don’t need this very often, as I have become more adept at using ssh and ssh -X, but it is handy once in a while.

This is more of a news bulletin than anything else.

My new PC has Windows 7 by default, so I am playing with it every now and then when not booting into Xubuntu 9.10. Yesterday Firefox went after an update for itself, from 3.5.6 to 3.5.7. The update went OK, but then firefox flatly refused to start. Not even showing up in Processes or Applications in the Task Manager. A reboot didn’t help either.

The resolution was to download and install Firefox 3.6 (I tried to uninstall first but Windows Control Panel told me that Firefox was already uninstalled! (go figure). Anyway all working good now.

I know we have the win32 installer,
I know we can install to USB from CD,
but I wanted to use only Linux to
create a live USB that replicates the CD.

Requirements

UnetBootIn (in Xubuntu repos)
Standard or Custom GeexBox iso ( I used a Custom GeexBox 1.2.3)
USB Flash Drive (Used a Buffalo 1GB)

This all carried out on Xubuntu 9.04

Part I - Create Bootable USB Drive

Insert USB Drive to your PC running Linux (Ubuntu etc)
Start UnetBootIn
Tick the Disk Image Radio Button, ensure ISO is selected in the drop down and then select your GeexBox iso
Select your USB drive from the drop down box
Click OK and Wait until you get the Reboot or Exit buttons appear
Click Exit

Part II - Get the right GEEXBOX directory

Mount the GeexBox iso so you can access files
I use Gmountiso but you can create a directory and issue a command in the terminal

sudo mkdir /media/gb-iso
sudo mount -o loop /path/to/geexbox.iso /media/gb-iso

Go to your root directory of your USB drive and delete (yes, delete!) the entire GEEXBOX directory
Got to /media/gb-iso and copy the GEEXBOX directory, pasting it to the root of your USB drive.

Why have we done this? UnetBootIn does something to the GEEXBOX directory files, you need the unadulterated ones on the iso.

Part III - Edit syslinux.cfg

In a terminal, run the command:

sudo blkid -L

On newer systems (e.g. Karmic) run

sudo blkid

or

sudo blkid -o full

You will get all the UUID’s from your drives and partitions.
Note down the UUID for your USB drive
Mine was 0633-157B

Open up syslinux.cfg on the USB drive in your favourite text editor
Make it look like this:

########################################
default vesamenu.c32
prompt 0
timeout 20

MENU BACKGROUND /GEEXBOX/boot/splash.png
MENU TITLE Welcome to GeeXboX i386 1.2.3 (C) 2002-2009
MENU VSHIFT 11
MENU ROWS 6
MENU TABMSGROW 15
MENU CMDLINEROW 14
MENU HELPMSGROW 16
MENU TABMSG Press [Tab] to edit options, [F1] for boot options.
MENU COLOR sel 7;37;40 #e0000000 #fa833b all
MENU COLOR border 30;44 #00000000 #00000000 none

label ubnentry0
menu label Start GeeXboX …
kernel /GEEXBOX/boot/vmlinuz
append initrd=/GEEXBOX/boot/initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw rdinit=linuxrc boot=UUID=0633-157B lang=en remote=atiusb receiver=atiusb keymap=qwerty splash=silent vga=789 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr quiet

label ubnentry1
menu label Start GeeXboX for HDTV …
kernel /GEEXBOX/boot/vmlinuz
append initrd=/GEEXBOX/boot/initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw rdinit=linuxrc boot=UUID=0633-157B lang=en remote=atiusb receiver=atiusb keymap=qwerty splash=silent vga=789 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr hdtv quiet

label ubnentry2
menu label Install GeeXboX to disk …
kernel /GEEXBOX/boot/vmlinuz
append initrd=/GEEXBOX/boot/initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw rdinit=linuxrc boot=UUID=0633-157B lang=en remote=atiusb receiver=atiusb keymap=qwerty splash=silent vga=789 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr installator quiet

label ubnentry3
menu label Start in debugging mode …
kernel /GEEXBOX/boot/vmlinuz
append initrd=/GEEXBOX/boot/initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw rdinit=linuxrc boot=UUID=0633-157B lang=en remote=atiusb receiver=atiusb keymap=qwerty splash=0 vga=789 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr debugging

label ubnentry4
menu label Start HDTV edition in debugging mode …
kernel /GEEXBOX/boot/vmlinuz
append initrd=/GEEXBOX/boot/initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw rdinit=linuxrc boot=UUID=0633-157B lang=en remote=atiusb receiver=atiusb keymap=qwerty splash=0 vga=789 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr hdtv debugging

########################################

Make sure you replace my UUID entry with your own for each stanza

Save syslinux.cfg

Part IV - Clean Up

Unmount the iso

sudo umount /media/gb-iso

Delete the directory if you wish

sudo rmdir /media/gb-iso

You are done. Either safely remove your USB drive, or leave it in and reboot.
You may need to edit your bios settings to allow booting from USB.
And there you have it, LiveUSB, just like the CD, but you can edit settings if you wish.

Always forget this:

To install Sun Java on your Ubuntu via the command line, emit the following comand:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jre sun-java6-jdk

As we move away from “burnable” media to solid state, then need to be able to use distros on usb sticks becomes more important. I have never yet tried wubi, but with a new PC on the way (with no optical drive) and Windows 7 pre-installed, I am tempted to try wubi as my installation method (even if only for a while! :))

So using unetbootin I setup a 1GB usb stick with Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10, booted up into Windows 7 and put in the stick.

Hmmm… no autorun of wubi.exe?

So opt to open folder and double clicked on wubi.exe. Accept the UAT control dialog and the wubi menu pops up. But with one problem. No “Install inside Windows” option. Not much good then.

Google away and find out its a bug. How to fix is quite easy and just takes one more step.

Open up a command window (or go Start > Run)

Type:    X:\wubi.exe –force-wubi

(where X is the drive letter of your usb stick)

and pass the UAT again and lo and behold,

your “Install inside Windows” option is there.

HOWEVER, wubi still seems to insist on downloading the distro from a torrent, as opposed to using the one you have on a stick. To overcome this, and if you have a big enough stick (!) copy the whole *.iso from your HDD onto the stick, into the same directory as wubi.exe. This will ensure you still have a bootable stick. Alternately, extract the wubi.exe from the iso, then with a blank formatted stick simply copy wubi.exe and *.iso onto the stick. Insert to a booted up Windows and go. You may nned to follow the initial instructions to get an install button, but I found with Xubuntu.9.10 I didn’t have too.

How long have I been using mplayer? Years. Why has it never bothered me to sort this out before? Don’t know. Ageism, autism, or general grumpiness sent me off in search of a solution, and how easy was it.

Every time I have run mplayer from the cli I got three lines written out before the “action”:

mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

The very simple fix to this is to add an entry to your ~/.mplayer/config file

lirc=no

That’s it, no more extra lines. Remember to comment out “lirc=no” if you want to use a remote control, though

Was time to treat myself to an early Christmas present, so splashed out on the ridiculously cheap HannsG HH241 24″, 1980×1080 WUXGA monitor @ £140. Comes with a VGA-VGAcable abd a DVI-HDMI cable (monitor has an HDMI port)

Plugged it in, powered up.

Nvidia Geoforce 6200 Graphics card with DVI/VGA output
HannsG HH241 24″ widescreen 1980×1080 WUXGA, HDMI 1.3 compatible
Multibooting @ 5 OS’s

PC booted up fine with post/bios screen viewable, then a blank screen for a few seconds (where grub menu usually is, then usual starting up for Xubuntu 9.04 (the default OS in my grub menu (grub legacy)

Once X was running everything fine.

Tried all sorts, reinstalling grub to mbr, reconfiguring X, checked for settings in bios (none obvious), but nothing changed.

So switched to VGA-VGA cable, and grub menu was back. So I am kind of sorted, but wavy lines and distorted image during post and splash, and was getting a better picture and all round performance using the hdmi connection.

Previous monitor, an Iiyama 17″ LCD worked fine on a DVI-DVI cable.

Also, Xubuntu Progess screen during boot up was not centred, off to the right a bit.

After hours and hours and hours of googling, finally found a post about toshiba laptop owners not getting grub on a cold reboot. The recommendation was to install grub2
To install grub2 on Jaunty or below

sudo apt-get install grub2

Test it by loading grub2 as chainloader (this option is offered on installation)
You’ll need to “e” “e” and change root to uuid to get the chainloader to work

If you are happy run

sudo upgrade-from-grub-legacy

and grub2 will take over, And lo and behold, the grub menu is back! New things to learn in order to customise grub2 menu, and set up a splash image for it.  Xubuntu progress splash also nicely centred.

Best place to go for just about everything grub2 is here

get_iplayer

My favourite program of the moment which exceeds the delivery of the iPlayer on Windows in just about every way!

To get the best out of it, download the latest version (and everything else you need) from here, and also make sure you have the following installed to make the most of the features available:

flvstreamer
ffmpeg
mplayer

(If you must install on Windows, there is an installer which takes care of everything for you)

flvstreamer is especially useful for getting higher quality versions of programmes, but you may have to fiddle about with the location of the file and its permissions to get things working correctly.

Ok, here are the commands I use the most:

get_iplayer
(this gathers a full index of programmes available)

get_iplayer keyword
(gathers index but also finds matches for “keyword” of your choice, e.g. Dr Who or Casualty)

Running the two above will show you the index number for the programme. Use this as follows:

get_iplayer –info 123
(will provide detailed info about the programme, including the various versions and qualities available)

get_iplayer -get 123
(will download the default version, usually iPhone - mov quality)

get_iplayer -get 123 modes=flashhigh flvstreamer=’/usr/bin/flvstreamer’
(will download a higher quality version in mp4 format using flvstreamer, my binary is located in /usr/bin/)

Finally

get_iplayer –update
(simply checks for any updates to get_iplayer and installs them)

Further commands, help and information here

What a palava. Grub2 will become the defacto standard in time, but right now I am not quite ready to switch over. Having installed Karmic to a separate partition, and chosen to install grub2 to the local root (not mbr) I could not chainload boot to karmic from grub legacy.

So, bootedup the live cd again and installed Grub2 to the mbr. Instructions on how to do this can be found here.

OK, good. Boot up Karmic now, and run “sudo update-grub” in order to load up all the other OS’s into Grub2 menu.

While you are in Karmic, open up the grub.cfg file and copy out the boot menu info for Karmic (you will need this later to put into your grub-legacy menu.lst) Should look something like this:

“sudo nano /boot/grub/grub.cfg”

menuentry “Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.31-14-generic” {
recordfail=1
if [ -n ${have_grubenv} ]; then save_env recordfail; fi
set quiet=1
insmod ext2
set root=(hd0,10)
search –no-floppy –fs-uuid –set b50237f3-c90c-4af6-a275-892a09165ea3
linux    /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=UUID=b50237f3-c90c-4af6-a275-892a09165ea3 ro   quiet splash
initrd    /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic

Now reboot, and you should be OK to boot back into Jaunty.

In Jaunty, open up menu.lst, and add the following entry to your “Other Operating Systems” section

title       Xubuntu Karmic Koala
uuid       b50237f3-c90c-4af6-a275-892a09165ea3
kernel    /vmlinuz root=UUID=b50237f3-c90c-4af6-a275-892a09165ea3 ro  quiet splash
initrd    /initrd.img
quiet

You’ll see why you needed the info from grub.cfg to insert the UUID information. This layout, I believe also has the benefit of coping with kernal updates to Karmic.

Save your menu.lst file, and reboot. You should now have an entry for Karmic and it should boot. 

Lots of large files come down split up into pieces using HJSplit. It’s a bit of a slog to do the joining manually, so here is a simple command line that solves the problem as a thunar custom action

java -jar /path_to/hjsplit_g.jar -c join -f %f

of course you need sun java installed