No Way Know How

"HDMI Audio is disabled by default on kernel 3.0+ due to a black screen on some monitors. To get audio working again go to: etc/default/grub Open grub as administrator with a text editor. Then change the line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.audio=1" Type on the terminal: sudo update-grub Reboot and your HDMI sound will work again." http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1051

needs: sudo sysctl -w kernel.yama.ptrace_scope=0

Still enjoying Mint 17. I'm going through my usual new OS customisation processes and it's been pretty good so far. One thing I really enjoyed was being able to right-click on cairo-dock, create a custom launcher, assign the Numix round  Soulseek icon and then enter the command to run it. Et voila, soulseek shortcut in my dock! The reason for this post is, being a slow day at work I'm looking at the Mint user guide. I have to admit, a user guide is not something I'd ever normally read for an operating system, even if one exists. In fact, I'd be judging the OS on my ability to use it without any form of instruction whatsoever. But like I say, I'm skiving and reading this pdf and I come across the following passage: Sooner or later, though, you will probably have be in a situation which causes you to use the Terminal directly, either to access commands that are not available through any GUI, or to get a job done more efficiently. Yes, you read that right! It

eOS, despite having a nice interface, started to annoy me. Little things that I take for granted, like not seeing the progress of a downloading file (which admittedly might just be a midori thing and not eOS generally), not being able to plug in my scanner and have it work (even though it was detected and correctly identified by simplescan!) and not being able to pin custom app icons to the dock or app menu - even though I was getting my hands dirty making .desktop files in the command line and everything! The music player was doing my head in as well. Duplicate songs might have come from my rsync experiments, but they were a ball-ache to clear up. And I couldn't install Steam via the package manager either, I had to use the same debian script I used for #!. There was some other stuff as well, to do with the file manager. It was death by a thousand cuts really. I'm sure eOS will be really good in a couple of years, but for the time-being I think I need something more fully-

Soooo... I guess I added her profile to the mitch group and vice versa so we can share the music folder BUT I didn't add the right argument ( -a , I think - look it up!) to the usermod command or whatever I used, so the upshot was that I made her group the ONLY group I was in. Effectively, I deleted myself from the sudoers group and all the other default admin and device groups and whatnot. Real pain, because once you're out, you've no way back in - like the opposite of the Mafia. Looking around there are various suggestions but I went for the simplest one (the one I could understand): Used the eOS usb as it was first to hand, to log into a live session. As noted my previous post , I mounted the root file system: > sudo mkdir hdd > mount /dev/sda /mnt/hdd > nano /mnt/hdd/etc/group then I just added my username to the appropriate groups: root:x:0:mitch and adm:x:4:mitch and sudo:x:27:mitch works!

None of this is particularly complicated, so I'll keep it brief: - changed camille to user group mitch:  useradd -G {group-name} username I think this is the command I used... - added piNAS to the file manager by adding the following to .gtk-bookmarks:  sftp://192.168.1.107/media/Seagate%20Expansion%20Drive Raspberry Pi - downloaded soulseek (I need to create a .desktop executable file to add this to application menu) - something else... what was it? I remember copypasting long statements into the command line... yikes [edit] ah yeah, it was sudo apt-add-repository ppa:versable/elementary-update to add the community repository, and then some themes and stuff.

Quick update on what I've done since my last post: I put Opensuse / and /home on two of the LVs I'd set aside. That was a big iso. 4.3G, so I had to use a DVD. It installed fine, was all very swish. Gnome felt very different from what I'm used to and didn't seem massively user friendly for her to use, so I tried KDE. Lots of bells and whistles there, but also not what I was looking for. Looked at Elementary OS again and still found it very attractive. Found a method by which (in theory) I should have been able to install to the remaining LVs on my hdd: log into a live session and install lvm2: sudo apt-get install lvm2 - this gave me some problems, weirdly, not finding it in the repos and requiring me to try a few times. I went through this process of trying to install to LVs a few times - on some it worked fine. Odd. Then vgchange -a y to "activate" the entries in the volume group and make them available to the kernel. Running the installer now lets

In some respects I'm living in a brave new world of computing convenience these days. I have my external HDD sitting in the corner with the raspberry pi serving it's contents up to the tv, kindle and ipad. Photographs and music (which I never used to backup in any kind of coherent way), I now send to the HDD over scp by SSH or (latterly) ftp from the file manager. But I want more, dammit! I want the photos and music to be backed up automatically at regular intervals so all I have to do is plonk them in the right local directories and forget about them. I've been aware for a while that rsync might be the way to go about this. After reading about a bit, making sure rsysnc was present on the pi and laptop, etc: rsync -r --size-only /home/mitch/Music root@192.168.1.107:/media/Seagate\ Expansion\ Drive/Music And a similar experiment: rsync -r --size-only /home/mitch/images/photographs/copy_06_june_2014/ root@192.168.1.107:/media/Seagate\ Expansion\ Drive/Other\ files

I've installed libcrypto.so.0.9.8, or the package that contains it, or whatever, I can't remember now it was last week for God's sake. Useful record, this, right? And I had a bit of a "breakthrough" in terms of starting to figure out what, roughly, I'm supposed to be doing. The package downloaded from http://suse.mes.edu.cu/SLES_11_SP2/CD2/suse/src/libfprint-0.0.6-18.20.1.src.rpm contains various files and I believe it's to one of these that the patch is supposed to be applied. (when I'm home I'll have a look and try to list which.)  I did the patch -p1 < libfprint..blah thing and got some of the patch elements to apply, but not all. Still not sure whether this is going to work with Wheezy of if it might only work with Sid.

Pretty sure I've done some more low-level tinkering that I've not recorded here, but I must've been pretty confident about it. Not so this, my first attempt to get the fingerprint scanner working. I've done a fair bit of reading rather than my usual trial-and-error cut'n'paste command line hackery and here's where I'm at: >sudo apt-get install fprint-demo gets me a way to test functionality before getting too deep into the suggestions here >lsusb shows me that the validity sensor is recognised, but I think I'm missing the drivers * which can be found here , but need converting from rpm to deb >sudo apt-get install alien >sudo alien Validity-Sensor-Setup-4.4-100.00.x86_64.rpm >sudo dpkg -i validity-sensor-setup_4.4-101_amd64.deb Guess I need to go for a reboot now before I can see if it works. ... Nope, still getting Status: No devices found. Could it be that I need the fprint libraries? > sudo apt-get inst

The rigor of my change-logging has slipped a bit in the last 24 hours! I've copied my slim themes over from the Asus Arch install, and I've edited slim.conf to point at one of them (cb-distress) to give me my custom login screen, which works a treat. I had a bash at suppressing openbox's instruction to paint the back ground grey and then replace the nitrogen wallpaper like I did for Arch , but there's a different thing going on in #! where initrc kicks off a global xsession script, and I don't know how that works. I also couldn't get nitrogen to point to the slim theme - the %theme variable confuses the X session startup and it complains of being unable to find cb-distress session. Installed Soulseek and Skype both by downloading the deb packages and then GDebi. Easy.

cont. * removed myself from audio group deluser <user> audio * tinkered with the tint2rc, but it's backed up so not really an issue * 15 and 16 from "Round off your Crunchbang Waldorf" ICA Client (citrix receiver): OK, I thought I'd streamlined this before , before I got this done much quicker this time!  Forget compiling nspluginwrapper, manually creating those missing directories, editing the post-install script, etc. Here's what happened today on the probook. From this page followed these instructions: 1) Enable 32 bit architecture: % dpkg --add-architecture i386 (check, if you like) dpkg --print-architecture  amd64 dpkg --print-foreign-architectures i386 2) Add 32 bit repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list deb [arch=amd64,i386] http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free  While you're in there, add: deb http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free from the advice here . 3) Up

 as per this * add debian backports and set pin priorities * add signing key for deb multimedia * upgrade aptitude * comment out Jessie source * tried updating iceweasel as per the instructions but got: Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "flashplugin-mozilla" I reactivated the Jessie source and tried again, but the same thing happened. Ignoring that for now since I'm not too bothered about iceweasel, but I guess I might have problems since I've purged the old flashplugin! Moving away from that guide for a moment because I want to get my wireless working. Having added the backports this method should work. aptitude -t wheezy-backports install linux-image-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') firmware-ralink I need to reboot to see if this has worked, but it's giving me this in the meantime: The following NEW packages will be installed:   linux-image-3.14-0.bpo.1-amd64{a} The following packages will be upgraded:

Things I need to follow up on: Save Skype video messages Crunchbang via Debian netinstall  especially this  (here's some more detail ) Round icons for tint2

Work had this laptop with a broken screen and I was asked if I could use it for anything - hells yeah! £40 for a new screen from Laptop Adapters via Amazon , a few Youtube videos and half an hour's work and I have a new computer. I had intended to keep Windows 7 on there for games and for C. to use and so forth, but I actually couldn't stand it. Apart from how sloooow it was and the uuuuppppddaaattteesss and crappy touchpad functionality and whatnot, the hdd was all partitioned out to "hp tools" and "hp recovery" and stuff, so I couldn't even get a satisfactory LVM setup to dual boot with. After tooling around for a while I finally scrubbed it and put on linux Mint 17... which I also couldn't get partions I was happy with since I didn't have enough control at install time. Anyhoo, after days of messing around with different options I finally decided enough was enough and used a #! live disc to set up an extended partition with a linux vol

This is on a new laptop that I shrank the windows partition on and used a live CD to create a PV and volume group on. It wouldn't let me create a logical volume, giving me various messages like, the named volume wasn't found, volume group needed cleared, whatever. Found a page suggesting udev needed reloaded, but I don't want to have to do that 'cause I'm using the gui system-config-lvm and I don't want to have to update the live disc's repositories and re-install that again... sudo udevadm control --reload-rules Sorted , straight off.

Documented here .

Arch installation hitlist: getting correct keyboard layout. Finally got to this page in the Archbang wiki which describes adding a line to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-edev.conf (bolded): Section "InputClass" Identifier "evdev keyboard catchall" MatchIsKeyboard "on"  MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"  Driver "evdev"  Option "XkbLayout" "uk"   EndSection [Edit] This didn't work, either after restarting X or rebooting the OS. Looks like this might be the way forward. "gb" instead of "uk". [Edit] This works. Thank God!

Added sftp://root@192.168.1.107/media shares  to ~/.gtk-bookmarks  to create a shortcut to pi media centre in the thunar sidebar (shortcut view only). Upon subsequent reboot that has disappeared, which I need to investigate. Added  KERNEL=="dm-*",ENV{UDISKS_PRESENTATION_HIDE}="1" to  /etc/udev/rules.d/99-dmapper-hide.rules to remove lvm partitions from the thunar sidebar. I was concerned that I'd have to comment this out and reboot if I wanted access to, say, my Arch install's home folder, but no fear: sudo lvdisplay /dev/linuxVG lists the lvm partitions (where lunuxVG is my volume group) sudo mount /dev/linuxVG/OS3-home /mnt/arch_home mounts the volume at a previously created directory. I also want to get rid of the unused Network shortcut, but the only way I've found so far involves recompiling thunar, which I can't be arsed with. Preferable would be to use samba to connect to an actual windows network with, if that's the way to

Lots of stuff's been done in the last week or so. Opened the parents' router ports when I was up to allow me to access their mac by VNC viewer if they get into any technical strife. Fresh Arch install on the laptop. The last time I did this I just plonked a desktop package right on there - KDE I think - and I was not pleased with the results. I thought with Arch that the difficulty was all with the installation and once that was done I lost interest. Now I'm realising that all the post-installation config is the "interesting" part. I'm not going to list all the learnings during that process - I've made notes on the system which I might copy in here in a separate post (note to self - do this as I go next time!). Have spent most of my time so far getting xorg, Openbox and SLiM installed and configured. Oh, and tint2. I'm halfway towards a #!-looking desktop and conky's functional. What else... got the Pi attached to the external hard

I'd scanned 16 pages of a mortgage application form using xsane and I wanted to whack them all together in a single pdf. Googling revealed a consensus that the solution involved using ImageMagick . Lazily I just tried sudo apt-get install imagemagick , which did something , but I'm not sure what. Maybe provided some sort of infrastructure for imagemagick, if the description of the packages I checked on synaptic later are anything to go by. Anyway, I fucked about a bit and ended up compiling it and I was missing dependencies which I eventually got from following this advice : sudo apt-get install imagemagick libmagick++-dev And suddenly the starting instructions I was following worked: convert mortgage *. png mortgage_application . pdf Gave me the single document I needed. Pages all in the wrong order of course.  [EDIT] The files needed leading numbers in the name to order properly in the folder. I tried to use a for loop to rename each in turn ( f or v in mortgag

I have an old desktop pc in the office running as a server and I usually just mess about on it via SSH. Couple of times I've wanted to move files about and I always manage to do it eventually with putty's psftp function, but I always forget how it works and have to search up how to do it again... SO. http://www.msci.memphis.edu/~simmonsj/c4262/notes/psftp.html  is the source of the following information. Navigating the remote directory is pretty much just the usual shell commands (without useful filename expansion).  Navigating the local pc (the bit that confused me) requires commands like:  lpwd (local present working directory) lcd e:\ (change local working directory - to a USB on Windows in this case) !dir (list contents of local working directory) put filename (puts a copy of the file named in the remote working directory) Because I'm getting slightly to grips with how this stuff works I did put -r in this case because I was copyin

I was pretty happy using CLI for navigation and file-y stuff when I was first recommended cdparanoia, but the prospect of using it to rip CDs seemed too perverse. I've just had another go, and it's super easy. cdparanoia -B is the key command. It'll rip all tracks from the current disc drive to the current working folder. then $ lame track01.cdda.wav to encode a track as mp3. To do this for all the tracks in the folder: $ for t in track{01..18}*.wav; do lame $t; done and then it's just a matter of rm *wav to get rid of those. Though should I maybe back up the wav files to an external hdd though? decisions. Oh, and here's where I go the straight answers above.

I'd used LVM to set up logical volumes as per this guide on my last crunchbang install. I created root, home and swap volumes for my main distro and then later (as per Funishment post) set up similar volumes to dual-boot Arch. The snapshot bit looked beyond me at the time so I never got round to that. Now I'm confident enough to get GRML installed to USB and use that, with LVM in the command line (as opposed to the system-config-lvm gui) to follow the instructions here . So, there's not much more to say, beyond following the instructions on the thread. Initially I thought about using LVM to shrink the crunchbang root volume, which I've crazily allocated nearly 20GB after running out of space for the OS last time and having to grow it with LVM. Shat it, though. the thought of messing up the root partition while trying to find a way to back up the root partition was too scary. So I went ahead and allocated 4G to the snap volume instead of the 1G used in the example

I've not kept track of all the system changes I've made here. I probably missed out some stuff where I removed decorations from all my windows and then set shortcuts via keybindings. Anyway, nothing too stressful. The Arch partitions on my laptop are being ignored completely so I think it's time to give up on that project and try something a little less overwhelming. Archbang maybe, if that's not too close to Arch. Maybe something else, I dunno. I even sort of fancy Mint, maybe. Do I? Torn. At any rate, before I stary messing around with partitions and installations and whatnot again, I really felt I ought to make a proper system backup. I really don't fancy going though the whole setup process again and pawing through this blog to figure out that Citrix bullshit for a third time. Oh Christ, and Steam. brrrr. So I've spent a few days looking over the LVM monumental post on the crunchbang forums and finally felt confident in pursuing the snapshop and ar