So I am letting the Update Manager do its thing the other day, and it kicks an error that looked a bit suspicious. Was saying something about a partial upgrade had failed and would I like to let it fix that. Well, I know for a fact I did NOT allow it to upgrade to 11.04 as I don't want to break everything I have working. and I did not think this was a true and valid message.
I didn't want the system to blindly upgrade since I play some games under Wine and have read there are problems with the new Ubuntu which I don't want to deal with just yet.
Instead of letting the updater try and fix something that might force an unwanted upgrade I first went looking and found blog and forum postings similar to this (Ubuntu#root), that talk of several steps to take including verifying each application and selectively allowing the updates to occur.
In a word YUCK!, much too difficult a process. (first letter of the exclaim may be adjust to suit taste)
Instead I went to the Ubuntu IRC channel (#ubuntu) and posted the question "What is this message about a partial upgrade all about anyway?"
Almost immediately I get a simple answer on how to fix my local package archive.
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
My understanding is this was a hands free, simple check of all my repository connections with a leaning towards repairing my local package database and upgrade a package only if it does not impact other packages.
Whatever it did, it did it quickly and without any hassle from me.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Camera issue resolved
Ubuntu and digital cameras don't work well together for me, and from what I could find on the various forums, for other people too. Well, this problem only took about a year to puzzle out. With many failed sessions of mounting and remounting the camera as a hard drive and copying the files over, then using the cool photo categorizing apps to sort through them
Turns out, and not sure what update finally fixed this, or at least got me to a workable solution. But, if I dismount the camera from the desktop. since it auto-mounts when you plug it in. So, dismount the camera and then start the photo application. It will now link and import photos from within the application.
This works for both of my current favorites. DigiKam and F-Spot.
Yeah!
Turns out, and not sure what update finally fixed this, or at least got me to a workable solution. But, if I dismount the camera from the desktop. since it auto-mounts when you plug it in. So, dismount the camera and then start the photo application. It will now link and import photos from within the application.
This works for both of my current favorites. DigiKam and F-Spot.
Yeah!
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Camera Woe
Ok, the Kodak Easy Share digital camera still won't connect to Ubuntu. The front end photo management software (such as F-Spot) will not pull images from the camera, and I typically get an error " Error initializing camera: -60: Could not lock the device" even when trying to open.
I've seen some references to applying camera.app via synaptic (done that) and also about elevating user rights for the device (have not tested that).
But, the most promising so far is this, which I will try this evening and see if it provides any solutions.
I've seen some references to applying camera.app via synaptic (done that) and also about elevating user rights for the device (have not tested that).
But, the most promising so far is this, which I will try this evening and see if it provides any solutions.
Apply to U9.04 and Kodak DX7590 = OK *******
sudo gedit /usr/share/
Search for "Kodak DX7590" (or your camera model)
Put in XML comment of this paragraph =
Reconnect your Kodak DX7590
Search for "Kodak DX7590" (or your camera model)
Put in XML comment of this paragraph =
Monday, March 1, 2010
Harder than it looks
I fully sympathize (empathize??) with people that maintain a weekly blog, let alone a daily blog. I started this year to post some thoughts weekly. And did fairly well for January I thought. But, now February has come and gone and I didn't post a thing.
Yes, work was a bit busier than normal, but you'd think I could squeak out a few minutes here and there. I will try harder from now on though, and have lined up a few topics that should keep me going for a while. Personal technology pains that I've had to deal with.
We'll see if I can time manage better as I go forward.
Yes, work was a bit busier than normal, but you'd think I could squeak out a few minutes here and there. I will try harder from now on though, and have lined up a few topics that should keep me going for a while. Personal technology pains that I've had to deal with.
We'll see if I can time manage better as I go forward.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Temetum Lusus
Still working my Ubuntu 9.10 system into shape, and playing games on it to wile away the hours. I've found some things that work very well, and some disturbing things as well.
The very well. Again I wanted to see about pushing the video card a little bit. I wasn't looking to find a FPS game to prove things out, I just wanted to see something that had 3D graphics, and would allow me to interact with the environment. And, since it was/is a test I don't want to have to pay for it.
A little bit of searching, and I stumbled on Secondlife. And found, I didn't have to fiddle with a windows installer under Wine. Not saying anything bad about wine, but if there is a native client for anything, be it game or other app, it should be better than forcing it through a secondary system. So, install this application is as simple as extracting the tar.bz file and then executing the startup script.
And, everything seemed to work right off. Except. (there always is an expection) It was apparently written specifically for RedHat, or at the very least a system that had KDE and not Gnome. First things first, setup of your account is done through a web page, and not the viewer client. So that done I start the client script and I see several errors flying by, a little worrisome, but the login is there. Pressing on, I actually get into the system, and it appears that everything is rendering fine. Since this is essentially a huge 3D rendered environment made for user interaction and chatting I wasn't really sure what to check out. So, I went through the supplied tutorials, and found right away that my system would not play in game video's or in game sound. (heavy sigh)
Referencing their secondlife wiki, and since this client is still beta release, I guess I shouldn't be too upset. I verified that all the pre-requisite support software was loaded (for example minimum gstreamer 0.10) But in the end I find that there is a simple script setting commented out because it is still unstable. Basically, review each of the known problems and solutions in the wiki. For me just "uncomment the 'LL_BAD_ESD' line in the 'secondlife' script" and then going into the environment setup of the client to allow the streaming video and audio to flow through was enough.
The Disturbing. And now to what I consider a disturbing, and as yet unexplained issue. In facebook, there are a lot of games. Most of them flash based, some of them interesting enough to play. I had been having issues with them for as long as I could remember, and always just chalked it up to poor programming on the game writers part, or incompatibility with the supplied linux flash program. The crux of this happens in FireFox, while accessing any flash game that opens a sub menu within the game itself. Be this simple things like the poker games, or the farming games, or any of the various others. If you go to open this sub menu, you get a cut-off weirdly truncated view with no active boundaries. They just plain do not work.
I have found, purely by accident, and frustration that if I use the mozilla offshoot "Seamonkey" instead of the Ubuntu approved and supplied "FireFox" I have no issues at all. And, after verifying support apps, I find that they are both running the same flash version. I have gone through the typical troubleshooting as outlined on the firefox site, but no plugin or other add on appears to be the culprit. Simple fact is though, it breaks in FF and it works in Seamonkey. go figure.
The very well. Again I wanted to see about pushing the video card a little bit. I wasn't looking to find a FPS game to prove things out, I just wanted to see something that had 3D graphics, and would allow me to interact with the environment. And, since it was/is a test I don't want to have to pay for it.
A little bit of searching, and I stumbled on Secondlife. And found, I didn't have to fiddle with a windows installer under Wine. Not saying anything bad about wine, but if there is a native client for anything, be it game or other app, it should be better than forcing it through a secondary system. So, install this application is as simple as extracting the tar.bz file and then executing the startup script.
And, everything seemed to work right off. Except. (there always is an expection) It was apparently written specifically for RedHat, or at the very least a system that had KDE and not Gnome. First things first, setup of your account is done through a web page, and not the viewer client. So that done I start the client script and I see several errors flying by, a little worrisome, but the login is there. Pressing on, I actually get into the system, and it appears that everything is rendering fine. Since this is essentially a huge 3D rendered environment made for user interaction and chatting I wasn't really sure what to check out. So, I went through the supplied tutorials, and found right away that my system would not play in game video's or in game sound. (heavy sigh)
Referencing their secondlife wiki, and since this client is still beta release, I guess I shouldn't be too upset. I verified that all the pre-requisite support software was loaded (for example minimum gstreamer 0.10) But in the end I find that there is a simple script setting commented out because it is still unstable. Basically, review each of the known problems and solutions in the wiki. For me just "uncomment the 'LL_BAD_ESD' line in the 'secondlife' script" and then going into the environment setup of the client to allow the streaming video and audio to flow through was enough.
The Disturbing. And now to what I consider a disturbing, and as yet unexplained issue. In facebook, there are a lot of games. Most of them flash based, some of them interesting enough to play. I had been having issues with them for as long as I could remember, and always just chalked it up to poor programming on the game writers part, or incompatibility with the supplied linux flash program. The crux of this happens in FireFox, while accessing any flash game that opens a sub menu within the game itself. Be this simple things like the poker games, or the farming games, or any of the various others. If you go to open this sub menu, you get a cut-off weirdly truncated view with no active boundaries. They just plain do not work.
I have found, purely by accident, and frustration that if I use the mozilla offshoot "Seamonkey" instead of the Ubuntu approved and supplied "FireFox" I have no issues at all. And, after verifying support apps, I find that they are both running the same flash version. I have gone through the typical troubleshooting as outlined on the firefox site, but no plugin or other add on appears to be the culprit. Simple fact is though, it breaks in FF and it works in Seamonkey. go figure.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Et Tu Printerus?
Printing under Ubuntu (under any flavor of Linux I'm sure) is not always as expected. If its your local machine, with a directly attached printer, not that bad. Like any other OS, you need to have the proper drivers, and luckily with the current state of driver development, many printers are supported. Thought I think I would probably check for fully supported printers before purchasing my next one.
I have the Epson All In One printer NX-400, and as a printer it works just fine. But, as a scanner, it is unrecognizable. So also, is its faxing capabilities from the computer. Stand alone, it appears to be fine, also plugged into a Windows XP system it all appears to be fine. But, hooked to my main system running Ubuntu 9.10, it has its sore spots.
First off the scanner portion is totally unrecognizable. Trying several driver options, and settings, gets nothing to see. Good thing I still have an old flatbed scanner that I use, and it works flawlessly. All I really wanted from this NX-400 was a printer, so I am not totally upset about the scanner/fax.
So, all is happy in whooville? Of course not. As soon as I have the printer working, I get requests from everyone else in the family to be able to print to it. Sigh. So that's three Windows XP systems, and a Windows Vista system I need to get printer sharing out to from my Ubuntu workstation. Maybe its time to deploy a home centered server solution (another day).
Some of this has been lost in a haze, and I'm a little bit reluctant to hear the cries and gnashing of teeth of our new printer going offline. (If I were to disable everything and start over verifying each step that actually worked) From what I recall I took the first step of getting my printer working locally, and for that I assumed it needed to have the latest CUPS installed. Fairly easy procedure under Ubuntu
Clicking the New Printer icon, you go through the simple dialog steps of configuring your printer, and if luck holds your printer is known by Ubuntu, and can be chosen from the pick list (If not, then a round of searching for apropos drivers will be needed, or buying a printer that is more linux compatable). Anyway, I find my NX-400 in the list, and go to add, and Apply the changes. (The install option in these dialogs is for installing a driver from a download, or external media. but, most modern printers are already available and this step is typically not needed) So, now I have a local printer, it shows as "Ready" in the Printers display, and all looks good.
Now to make my workstation serve out this printer as a sharable resource. Going back to the Printer Configuration dialog window, then on the menu bar selecting server and then settings to open up the basic server sharing configurations.
Since this is my workstation, and not a dedicated server, I decided to choose the two options Show printers shared by other systems and Publish shared printers connected to this system and then under the printer properties page I made sure the option Shared was set and click Apply.
On each of the Windows computers in the house network I ran through the following simple setup.
The fix in this case was to install Samba
Installing samba was nothing more than installing the following through the synaptic manager, and then modifying the conf file to allow for printer sharing.
System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager And then enter in samba for the search term and apply to install.
So once complete, open the /etc/samba/smb.conf and look for the section on printers:
sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf
[printers]
comment = All Printers
browseable = no
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = yes
create mask = 0700
# Windows clients look for this share name as a source of downloadable
# printer drivers
[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers
path = /var/lib/samba/printers
browseable = yes
read only = yes
guest ok = no
And then restart samba
sudo /etc/init.d/samba reload
From here the Windows workstation is able to see the printers again, and has not had any problems losing configurations.
The whole ordeal to get the CUPS system working with a Windows client is weird and yet satisfying once its working.
Installing CUPS on Ubuntu
Installing SAMBA on Ubuntu
I have the Epson All In One printer NX-400, and as a printer it works just fine. But, as a scanner, it is unrecognizable. So also, is its faxing capabilities from the computer. Stand alone, it appears to be fine, also plugged into a Windows XP system it all appears to be fine. But, hooked to my main system running Ubuntu 9.10, it has its sore spots.
First off the scanner portion is totally unrecognizable. Trying several driver options, and settings, gets nothing to see. Good thing I still have an old flatbed scanner that I use, and it works flawlessly. All I really wanted from this NX-400 was a printer, so I am not totally upset about the scanner/fax.
So, all is happy in whooville? Of course not. As soon as I have the printer working, I get requests from everyone else in the family to be able to print to it. Sigh. So that's three Windows XP systems, and a Windows Vista system I need to get printer sharing out to from my Ubuntu workstation. Maybe its time to deploy a home centered server solution (another day).
Some of this has been lost in a haze, and I'm a little bit reluctant to hear the cries and gnashing of teeth of our new printer going offline. (If I were to disable everything and start over verifying each step that actually worked) From what I recall I took the first step of getting my printer working locally, and for that I assumed it needed to have the latest CUPS installed. Fairly easy procedure under Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install cupsys cupsys-clientSo now, right or wrong, I think I have the printer ready. In order to configure my specific printer I have to start the Printer Configuration Tool which can be found under System ->; Administration ->; Printing.
Clicking the New Printer icon, you go through the simple dialog steps of configuring your printer, and if luck holds your printer is known by Ubuntu, and can be chosen from the pick list (If not, then a round of searching for apropos drivers will be needed, or buying a printer that is more linux compatable). Anyway, I find my NX-400 in the list, and go to add, and Apply the changes. (The install option in these dialogs is for installing a driver from a download, or external media. but, most modern printers are already available and this step is typically not needed) So, now I have a local printer, it shows as "Ready" in the Printers display, and all looks good.
Now to make my workstation serve out this printer as a sharable resource. Going back to the Printer Configuration dialog window, then on the menu bar selecting server and then settings to open up the basic server sharing configurations.
Since this is my workstation, and not a dedicated server, I decided to choose the two options Show printers shared by other systems and Publish shared printers connected to this system and then under the printer properties page I made sure the option Shared was set and click Apply.
On each of the Windows computers in the house network I ran through the following simple setup.
- Control Panel -> Printers -> Add Printer
- Use the Add Printer Wizard
- Add a network printer
- Choose connect to printer on the internet and type in the following format http://PRINTSERVERNAME:631/printers/PRINTERNAME (where the printservername is the IPaddress or DNS name for my Ubuntu workstation sharing out the printer and the printername is the name of printer being shared)
- On the next screen choose the correct driver for this printer. (In my case, Windows did NOT know what driver to use and I had to go download it from the Epson site, and come back to this step)
- Print Test page
The fix in this case was to install Samba
Installing samba was nothing more than installing the following through the synaptic manager, and then modifying the conf file to allow for printer sharing.
System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager And then enter in samba for the search term and apply to install.
So once complete, open the /etc/samba/smb.conf and look for the section on printers:
sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf
[printers]
comment = All Printers
browseable = no
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = yes
create mask = 0700
# Windows clients look for this share name as a source of downloadable
# printer drivers
[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers
path = /var/lib/samba/printers
browseable = yes
read only = yes
guest ok = no
And then restart samba
sudo /etc/init.d/samba reload
From here the Windows workstation is able to see the printers again, and has not had any problems losing configurations.
The whole ordeal to get the CUPS system working with a Windows client is weird and yet satisfying once its working.
Installing CUPS on Ubuntu
Installing SAMBA on Ubuntu
Friday, January 15, 2010
Far and away
I have spent the last couple of weeks adding and getting some frustrations to adding new applications to my Ubuntu 9.10 desktop system. The following have been installed and met with varying degrees of success.
To start in this posting, I'll hit one of my high points. Installing GuildWars MMORPG. Ok, I knew this was a Windows released game, had some higher level graphics requirements, some networking needs, and did periodic system updates while ingame. I expected some pain. I also knew this would require either a vmware solution to run under a copy of Windows (not a viable solution in my list), or purchasing the Cedega or Codeweavers solution that's been tuned for gaming on linux, or the repo included Wine solution. Since I didn't want to mess with virtual machines, and the inherent problems there, and I didn't want to begin this endeavor by paying for a subscription service, I decided to try Wine.
So, Wine, install simply and easily via the Ubuntu repository using the Synaptic manager. I have to say, that everything I've found so far is extremely simple to install and update if its in a subscribed repo. Basically startup Synaptic, do a quick search for what I want, hit one checkbox marking for install, then apply.
Once the base Wine updates were completed, I went out to the winehq site and did a quick check on the status of GuildWars. According to the DB there, this application is listed at a "platinum" level for all major linux distro's. Which according to Winehq Platinum is "...Applications which install and run flawlessly on an out-of-the-box Wine installation..."
Now on to the real fun, seeing if this commercial Windows game would really install. Inserting the install CDrom media, and using gnome gui browser to locate the setup.exe application. Once found, a right click on the program opened a menu option allowing to run under wine. This initiated what appeared to be a typical installation session. At the end, I have a new desktop entry, and a shortcut in the wine/applications menu.
Launching this proved to hold no surprises, an initial installation of this game requires patience as it first will download all patches since the install media was released. Plus any world updates. This alone took over an hour, but would be the same whether this were Windows or not.
But, once completed, I was able to load and play the game without any problems. I had full sound effects, and was able to adjust the various display options without any snags. And, running at a high level for graphics appears to have no slowdowns of FPS loss that was noticeable.
I just wish my other forays into setting up commercial games was as successfully easy to do. I will hit on the highpoints and lowpoints to the installation of those in a later posting.
winehq - Run Windows applications in Linux, BSD, Solaris, and Mac OS.
Quick link to the GuildWars installation instructions within winedb.
Ubuntu Linux
Cedega Transgaming application
Codeweavers cross over games application
- Online games
- GuildWars
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Eve Online
- Secondlife
- facebook browser flash games
- seamonkey
- gpodder
- Kodak digital camera
To start in this posting, I'll hit one of my high points. Installing GuildWars MMORPG. Ok, I knew this was a Windows released game, had some higher level graphics requirements, some networking needs, and did periodic system updates while ingame. I expected some pain. I also knew this would require either a vmware solution to run under a copy of Windows (not a viable solution in my list), or purchasing the Cedega or Codeweavers solution that's been tuned for gaming on linux, or the repo included Wine solution. Since I didn't want to mess with virtual machines, and the inherent problems there, and I didn't want to begin this endeavor by paying for a subscription service, I decided to try Wine.
So, Wine, install simply and easily via the Ubuntu repository using the Synaptic manager. I have to say, that everything I've found so far is extremely simple to install and update if its in a subscribed repo. Basically startup Synaptic, do a quick search for what I want, hit one checkbox marking for install, then apply.
Once the base Wine updates were completed, I went out to the winehq site and did a quick check on the status of GuildWars. According to the DB there, this application is listed at a "platinum" level for all major linux distro's. Which according to Winehq Platinum is "...Applications which install and run flawlessly on an out-of-the-box Wine installation..."
Now on to the real fun, seeing if this commercial Windows game would really install. Inserting the install CDrom media, and using gnome gui browser to locate the setup.exe application. Once found, a right click on the program opened a menu option allowing to run under wine. This initiated what appeared to be a typical installation session. At the end, I have a new desktop entry, and a shortcut in the wine/applications menu.
Launching this proved to hold no surprises, an initial installation of this game requires patience as it first will download all patches since the install media was released. Plus any world updates. This alone took over an hour, but would be the same whether this were Windows or not.
But, once completed, I was able to load and play the game without any problems. I had full sound effects, and was able to adjust the various display options without any snags. And, running at a high level for graphics appears to have no slowdowns of FPS loss that was noticeable.
I just wish my other forays into setting up commercial games was as successfully easy to do. I will hit on the highpoints and lowpoints to the installation of those in a later posting.
winehq - Run Windows applications in Linux, BSD, Solaris, and Mac OS.
Quick link to the GuildWars installation instructions within winedb.
Ubuntu Linux
Cedega Transgaming application
Codeweavers cross over games application
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)