Archive for January, 2012
Monday, January 16th, 2012 My sister, experience some programs running with wine (Windows Emulator) to crash on her Ubuntu 11.10.
As she is quite new with Linux, she has no idea about the existence of CTRL ALT BACKSPACE key combination to restart a hanged GNOME, KDE by directly killing the Xorg server.
I felt obliged to explain her it is better to use CTRL ALT BACKSPACE X kill switch instead of restarting the whole Linux kernel (which basiclly is working) and that it is just the display keeping blacnk.
Pressing the would kill Xorg and therefore all applicatins previously running on top of it will die. In Ubuntu Xorg is configured to run via gdm, so once killed it will automatically reload the GDM (Gnome Display Manager).
I was about to explain her that its better she use CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE instead of restarting the whole system but suddenly I realized this is not working.
In UBUNTU 11.10 and I guess in all UBUNTU's after 9.04 CTRL ALT BACKSPACE is substituted with the key switch combination ALT PRINTSCREEN K, I've explained her about that.
This change is actually a change implied by most Linux distributions nowdas and is some kind of change in Xorg newer versions…
To enable back the CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE , I've issued cmd:
stanimira@ubuntu~:$ echo' setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp' >> ~/.xinitrc
An alternative way to set setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp to run on Ubuntu user login is by setting it as a startup application using;
stanimira@ubuntu:~$ gnome-session-properties
Press the Add button and type in the box to appear;
Name: setxkbmap
Command: setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
Comment: setxkbmap
Reverting the Xserver kill switch back to the classical Ctrl+Alt+Backspace should also be running fine on older Ubuntu Linuces – 11.04, 10.10, 10.04 etc.
Tags: add button, Alt, Auto, backspace, Button, change, Comment, Ctrl, Display, Draft, existence, GDM, Gnome, kde, key switch, kill, kill switch, Linux, linux kernel, login, most linux distributions, ocelot, option, Press, printscreen, Reverting, session properties, setxkbmapCommand, startup, startup application, switch combination, type, Ubuntu, wine, wine windows, xinitrcAn, Xorg, xserver
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | No Comments »
Saturday, January 14th, 2012 Mounting ISO files in Linux is easy with mount cmd, however remembering the exact command one has to issue is a hard task because mounting ISO files is not a common task.
Mounting ISO files directly by clicking on the ISO file is very nice, especially for lazy people uninitiated with the command line 😉
Besides that I'm sure many Windows users are curious if there is an equivallent program to DaemonTools for Linux / BSD*?
The answer to this question is YES!
There are two major programs which can be used as a DaemonTools substitute on Linux:
These are FuriousISOMount and AcetoneISO
AcetoneISO is more known and I've used it some long time ago and if I'm correct it used to be one of the first ISO Mount GUI programs for Linux. There is a project called GMount-ISO / (GMountISO) which of the time of writting this article seems to be dead (at least I couldn't find the source code).
Luckily FuriousISOMount and AcetoneISO are pretty easy to install and either one of the two is nowdays existing in most Linux distributions.
Probably the programs can also be easily run on BSD platform also quite easily using bsd linux emulation.
If someone has tried something to mount GUIs in Free/Net/OpenBSD, I'll be interesting to hear how?
1. Mount ISO files GUI in GNOME with Furius ISO Mount
FuriousISOMount is a simple Gtk+ interface to mount -t iso9660 -o loop command.
To start using the program on Debian / Ubuntu install with apt;
debian:~# apt-get install furiusisomount
The following extra packages will be installed:
fuseiso fuseiso9660 libumlib0
The following NEW packages will be installed:
furiusisomount fuseiso fuseiso9660 libumlib0
…
To access the program in GNOME after install use;
Applications -> Accessories -> Furious ISO Mount
When mounting it is important to choose Loop option to mount the iso instead of Fuse
After the program is installed to associate the (.iso) ISO files, to permanently be opened with furiusisomount roll over the .iso file and choose Open With -> Other Application -> (Use a custom command) -> furiusisomount
2. Mount ISO Files in KDE Graphical Environment with AcetoneISO
AcetoneISO is build on top of KDE's QT library and isway more feature rich than furiousisomount.
Installing AcetoneISO Ubuntu and Debian is done with:
debian:~# apt-get install acetoneiso
The following NEW packages will be installed:
acetoneiso gnupg-agent gnupg2 libksba8 pinentry-gtk2 pinentry-qt4
0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 35 not upgraded.
Need to get 3,963 kB of archives.
After this operation, 8,974 kB of additional disk space will be used.
...
AcetoneISO supports:
- conversion between different ISO formats
- burn images to disc
- split ISO image volumes
- encrypt images
- extract password protected files
Complete list of the rich functionality AcetoneISO offers is to be found on http://www.acetoneteam.org/viewpage.php?page_id=6
To start the program via the GNOME menus use;
Applications -> Accessories -> Sound & Video -> AcetoneISO
I personally don't like AcetoneISO as I'm not a KDE user and I see the functionality this program offers as to rich and mostly unnecessery for the simple purpose of mounting an ISO.
3. Mount ISO image files using the mount command
If you're a console guy and still prefer mounting ISO with the mount command instead of using fancy gui stuff use:
# mount -t iso9660 -o loop /home/binary/someiso.iso /home/username/Iso_Directory_Name
Tags: AcetoneISO, Auto, BSD, cmd, custom, debian gnu, Draft, emulation, exact command, file, Files, Free, GMount-ISO, Gnome, graphical environment, gtk interface, guis, image files, ISO, iso file, iso files, iso9660, libumlib, long time, loop command, most linux distributions, nbsp, Open, OpenBSD, option, platform, roll, someone, something, source code, substitute, time, Ubuntu, windows users, YES
Posted in Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video | No Comments »
Friday, January 13th, 2012 scrot and import are two commands, which can be used to take screenshot in terminal on Linux and FreeBSD:
To use scrot cmd to take screenshots on Ubuntu and Debian the scrot package has to be installed:
noah:~# apt-get install scrot
...
scrot should also be available on most other Linux distributions in the main repositories, I'll be glad to hear if someone has used it on Fedora, SUSE etc.
On FreeBSD, there is a port called scrot , to install on FreeBSD:
freebsd# cd /usr/ports/graphics/scrot
freebsd# make install clean
...
Scrot has plenty of nice arguments one can use to make a screenshot. Maybe the most handy one in my view is after a preliminary set delay before screenshot is taken.
To take screenshot with it after lets say 5 seconds delay before the screenshot:
hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ scrot -t 20 -d 5
To put an year, month and day and year followed by screen resolution with scrot :
hipo@noah:~$ scrot '%Y-%m-%d_$wx$h.png'
Another way to take a screenshot of screen with command is by using ImageMagick's – import image manipulation package.
To take screenshot of the current screen via terminal using import , type in xterm, gnome-termina or Gnome's Run Application (ALT+F2)
hipo@noah:~$ import -window root ScreenShot.png
To make import command to save the taken screenshot in a format (minute:hour:day:month:year)i :
hipo@noah:~$ import -window root $screenshot_dir/screenshot-$(date +%M_%k_%d_%m_%Y|sed -e 's/^ *//').png
Taking a delayed screenshot is also possible via The GIMP via menus File -> Create -> Screenshot
Now here is an interesting question, what if I would like to take periodic screenshots of what I do on my Desktop to take random movie scenes from a movie I watch with totem or vlc??
This task is quite easily achiavable with a little bash shell script, I wrote:
screenshot_dir='Screenshots';
seconds='60';
if [ ! -d "$screenshot_dir" ]; then
mkdir $screenshot_dir;
fi
while [ 1 ]; do
sleep $seconds;
(import -window root $screenshot_dir/screenshot-$(date +%M_%k_%d_%m_%Y|sed -e 's/^ *//').png) &
done
This script will take screenshot automatically to Screenshots/ directory every (1 min – 60 seconds)
You can also my downloads take_screenshot_every_60_secs_import.sh here
To use take_screenshot_every_60_secs_import.sh just issue the script inside xterm or gnome-terminal, after that simply use your computer as you normally would.
The script will take snapshots every minute and store all taken screenshots in Screenshots dir.
If you prefer to use scrot to take automatically the screenshots every lets say 5 minutes, you can use a script like:
screenshot_dir='Screenshots';
# 300 secs (5 mins)seconds='300';
if [ ! -d "$screenshot_dir" ]; then
mkdir $screenshot_dir;
fi
while [ 1 ]; do
sleep $seconds;
(scrot $screenshot_dir/'%Y-%m-%d_$wx$h.png') &
done
You can fetch take_screenshot_every_60_secs_scrot.sh here
The script using scrot is better in terms of efficiency, the system load scrot will put on your machine will be less.
Using some of this scripts will be handy if you need screenshots to Movies, Programs and favourite Free Software games.
Hope this is educative to someone 😉
Tags: Alt, Auto, bash shell script, Desktop, Draft, fedora, freebsd, GIMP, Gnome, gnu linux, handy one, hipo, How to, image manipulation, ImageMagick, import, import command, import image, import window, linux distributions, manipulation package, multiple, noah, package, png, quot, repositories, root, screen, screenshot, Screenshots, scrot, Shell, someone, SUSE, terminal, totem, type, Ubuntu, wx, xterm, year
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, System Administration, Various | No Comments »
Thursday, January 12th, 2012 
Christmas has just passed away. As a Christian I was curious what is the reason in so many Christian countries, we decorate Pine trees and I did a quick research on the topic. In this small article, I'll present my findings.
Observing the Christmas Pine Tree tradition has been quite ancient and probably according to many sources dates back to the XIIth century.
The first written records of a Christmas tree are of an anonymous Frenchman who visited Strasbourg, Germany in 1601. His description of the decoratd pine tree says like "wafers and golden sugar-twists (Barley sugar), roses cut out of many-colored paper, apples, gold foil and sweets."
Later in the 1800s, the local German Christmas pine tree tradition was spread across America by German emmigrants.
In UK the Pine tree decorating tradition appeard in 1841, where a royalty (Prince Albert) decorated his castle (Winston Castle).
A little later after the Queen Victoria adopted the pine tree, United Kingdom citizens started to decorate pine trees for themselves, folliwng the highly regarded Queen.
Usually the pine tree has historically been decorated with gifts as well as an Bright star is put atop.
One of the Christian interpretations for the Christmas tree is that it represents the same Cross (tree) on which Christ was crucifixed. Then after Christ's resurrection because of (or through that) tree, the humanity received the Lord big spiritual blessings. These blessings are represented by the gifts decorated on the Fir tree. The pine tree itself is in Christianity a reference for the symbol of Salvation that we received came from the Holy Cross, where our saviour was crucified.
The Fir is decorated with lights to represent the joy and the lights of Christmas (that burns in our hearts), the star atop the tree is a reminder of the Star that rised in the East during the night of Christ's birth as we read in the gospels.
Decorating Pine trees is commonly observed mostly in Roman Catholic Church and often followed by some protestant denominations and less used in Orthodox Church (though this is changing nowdays).
In Eastern Europe, the Christmas tree appeared quite 
late and the whole concept was unknown in the Orthodox Christian countries, just until the end of the 19th century.
With the recent severe globalization the pine tree was silenty adopted in almost all parts of the world, including even communist countries and even sometimes in muslim ones.
Unfortunately, the relation between the Fir tree and our Christian faith is little known today and with the years to come it will be less and less associated with Christianity.
Here are few interesting legends which I found explaining, some of the possible roots of the Christmas tree decoration:
1. Legend of the Pine Tree Saving the Holy Family
When the Holy family was pursued by Herod's soldiers, many plants offered to provide them with shelter.
One such plant was the Pine tree. With Mary too weary to travel any longer, the family stopped at the edge of a forest to rest.
A gnarled old Pine which had grown hollow with the years invited them to rest within its trunk.
Then, it closed its branches down upon them, keeping the family safe until the soldiers had passed.
Upon leaving, the Christ Child blessed the Pine and the imprint of his tiny hand was left forever in the tree's fruit… the Pine cone.
If a cone is cut lengthwise, the hand may still be seen.
2. Pine tree and Easter Legend
There is a legend that pine trees "know" when it's Easter.
The pine trees start their new growth in the weeks before Easter.
If you look at the tops of the pine trees two weeks before Easter you'll see the yellow shoots.
As the days get closer to Easter Sunday, the tallest shoot will branch off and form a cross.
By the time Easter Sunday comes around, you will see that most of the pine trees will have small yellow crosses on all of the tallest shoots.
This really happens we live where there are lots of pines,
and each year this actually happens, it is amazing to watch,
and the process of the new growth appears as crosses on the ends
of each branch.
I've not personally observed that, but according to people who live in pine tree forest areas this is a fact.
3. Legend about M. Luther and the Pine tree
Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant religion, was taking a stroll through the woods late one night.
The sky was clear and many stars were shining through the branches of the trees,
giving the impression of twinkling lights.
Luther was so captivated and inspired by the beautiful brilliance of the sight
that he cut down a small evergreen and brought it home.
He recreated the stars by placing candles upon the tree's branches to imitate
their radiance and presented it to his children.
This story explains why, the pine tree become so wide spread initially in the "western world", as it gives some connection between the Pine tree and Protestant Christianity.
4. The Children Legend of the Fir Tree (Kids Story)
On the night of the Christ Child's birth, all living creatures, both flora and fauna, traveled to Bethlehem bearing gifts.
The Olive tree, for example, brought its fruit and the Palm tree its dates.
But the little Fir tree had no gift and was so tired that it was unable to resist when the larger trees pushed it into the background and hid it from view.
But then, a nearby Angel took pity and commanded a cluster of stars to descend and rest upon its delicate boughs.
When the Baby Jesus beheld this lovely lighted tree, he smiled and blessed it,
declaring henceforth that Fir trees should always be filled with lights at
Christmastime to please little children.
When Christianity first came to Northern Europe, three personages representing
virtues were dispatched from Heaven to place lights on the original Christmas tree.
These personages were Faith, Hope and Charity.
Their search was long, since they were required to find a tree as high as hope, as great as love and as sweet as charity.
In addition, the tree had to bear the sign of the cross on every bough.
Their search finally ended in the forests of the North where they found the Fir.
Lit by the radiance of the stars, it became the first Christmas tree.
The triangular design of the Fir has also been usedto describe the Holy Trinity of God the Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit.
Eventually, converts began to revere the Fir as God's Tree…as they had once revered the Oak.
By the Twelfth Century it was being hung, upside-down, from ceilings at Christmastime
in Central Europe, as a symbol of Christianity.
5. The Paradise Tree Legend
A very old and delightful European custom centers around decorating a Fir tree with apples and small white wafers which represents the Holy Eucharist.
These wafers were later replaced by small pieces of pastry cut into the shapes of stars, angels, hearts, flowers and bells.
Eventually additional pastries were introduced bearing the shapes of men, birds, roosters and other animals.
During the middle Ages, around the Eleventh century, religious theater was born.
One of the most popular plays …
The German mystery play concerned Adam and Eve and their fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden, represented by a Fir tree hung with apples.
This tree was symbolic of both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Discernment of Good and Evil, which stood in the center of Paradise.
The play ended with the prophecy of a coming Saviour. For this reason, it was often enacted during Advent.
The one piece of scenery, the "Paradeisbaum" or "Paradise Tree" become a popular object and was often set up in churches.
Eventually it also found its way in private homes and became symbol of the Saviour.
Since the tree was representative not only to Paradise and the fall of man, but also the premise of salvation.
It was hung not merely with apples, but with bread of wafers (Holy Eucharist) and often sweet to represent the sweetness of redemption.
In some areas of Bavaria, fir branches and little trees decorated with lights, apples and tinsel are still called "Paradeis".
According to some other Christian legends, it was a Fir tree that grew as the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.
When Eve plucked its fruit, the foliage and flowers shrank to nothing but needles.
Only on the night of Nativity would the Fir tree bloom again a moment marked perhaps by the Christmas tree we Christians use.
Of course these are just legends and as with every legend there is plenty of romantism included.
Nevertheless I consider most legends similar to proverbs contain deep truth and contain truthful facts. Moreover knowing the legends of our forefathers connect us to who and what we are and from antropological point of view is precious knowledge, we should try to sustain and spread to our children.
Tags: Auto, birth, Bright, Catholic, center, Child, Christ, christian countries, christian interpretations, christmas christmas, christmas pine, christmas time, christmas trees, city, Cross, custom, Customs, Decorating, description, Draft, East, emmigrants, fir point, fir tree, foil, forest, german christmas, gold foil, height, Herod, hill, img, imprint, kingdom citizens, legend of the christmas tree, Lord, muslim, nbsp, pine trees, prince albert, protestant, queen victoria, quot, radiance, reason, resurrection, rised, Roman, roman catholic church, Salvation, saviour, Search, shelter, spiritual, spiritual blessings, story, sugar roses, symbol, symbol of salvation, time, topic, tree, tree tradition, XIIth, xiith century
Posted in Christianity, Everyday Life, Various | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
I remember GNU / Linux, 11 years from now, times when ALSA was not standardly shipped with Linux.
Back then ALSA still lacked good support for many SoundCards and was still a "baby project".
In that time what we used to have sound on Linux was OSS – Open Sound System. OSS emerged right after the first ever Linux sound system VoxWare (formerly known as the Linux Sound Driver).
Back in those days OSS was used for multimedia support on both GNU / Linux and BSD based free OSes. It was few years later when I heard and used ALSA for a fist time and it wasn't really a love from first sigth.
One can easily find out by the name ALSA it is a system especially built for the Linux kernel and that's one of the reasosn why *BSD systems has their custom separate sound system.
There is plenty of reasons why OSS was substituted with ALSA. Main reason was its commercial like license, OSS wasn't completely "open source" GPLed (free software), there was resctions on use of OSS for commercial goals.
With its emerge ALSA started to push away OSS slowly. Somewhere in 2003, alsa has officially entered the Linux kernel source and until 2005 it was the default standard for all GNU / Linux operating systems.
As of time of writting ALSA has become the only sound system to have support for multiple sound card devices for Linux.
My experiences with ALSA, however ain't so nice if I take a look in my past experiences.
Since the very beginning of using ALSA, I had plenty of troubles with configuring properly my sound card not to mention, even after configuring it the MIDI support was not there.
Besides all the troubles main problems were stemming from the many applications still written to use OSS as sound system and hence with those sound was impossible with ALSA.The most problematic thing about apps written with OSS in mind was all of them tried to stream sound via /dev/dsp (OSS Digital Sound Processor), since alsa did not used /dev/dsp those programs was soundless.
On the other hand OSS was creating issues as well, one severe problem with OSS was the inability to stream multiple sounds simultaneously, because each sound stream required to pass voice through /dev/dsp and usually there was only one /dev/dsp.
The message;
/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy
and the proceeding irritation that used to annoy us in the early GNU / Linux days had of course some raw workarounds hacks but generally the workaround did not fix problems always.
Introduction of alsa free us from /dev/dsp issues but on the other handy has created a whole ocean of new BIG problems …
ALSA has modular structure and this imposes a great problem nowdays. The modular architecture is generally a good idea, however the way this was implemented within ALSA is far away from clear and easy to understand by the end user and therefore makes it very unintuitive and obscure.
Alsa misses simplicity which somehow was partially in the days of OSS. Thinking over the general situation with Linux multimedia nowdays, I believe it was exactly ALSA Project responsible for the so delayed mass Desktop Linux adoption.
Many long year standing Linux users had certainly had the alsa troubles during new system installs (correct me if I'm wrong).
The only fix to multiple soundcard initialization problems was to download alsa source and compile from source and hence made it hard and discouraging for people giving Linux a try.
This kind of ALSA "brokenness" pattern continues even to this very day (in Debian) Linux and probably building the alsa system from source is among the good practices to have a functional Linux sound system…
With all said the historic reason why ALSA was not quickly adopted and still is not a preferred default system for many applications ported to Free Software OSes by commercial company vendors is clear. Its simply not working out of the box …
Hope some ALSA developers will read this post work on changing the crazy structure of ALSA over complexity. ALSA needs automate way to solve issues with itself, the configuration should be more trivial and unified if Linux has to become more attractive for Desktop adoption.
Anyways, after the few words of history and indicating my pesonal observations on ALSA. I will proceed and explain few things on how ALSA can be configured to support and play nice with OSS dependant programs as well some basic explanations on common incompatibility between esd and pulseaudio and how this can be fixed;.
To assure nowdays OSS API built programs and games would work with Alsa its necessery to have installed;
ALSA wrapper for OSS applications
On Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and most Linux distributions the Alsa OSS compatability layer comes under a (deb / rpm) package named alsa-oss
To install OSS compatability on Debian, Ubuntu and the like Debian based distributions issue:
debian:~# apt-get install alsa-oss alsaplayer-oss
...
On Fedora and other rpm based distributions install is with:
[root@fedora ~]# yum install alsa-oss alsaplayer-oss
...
alsa-oss provides with a command called aoss that should be used to work around some issues with old applications still depending on OSS:
hipo@debian:~$ aoss programName
Using aoss is helpful especially in situations if you have to run programs which deal with MIDI and others which somehow want to use /dev/dsp
There is also alternative way to enable alsa native support for MIDI and OSS by loading 3 kernel modules:
debian:~# modprobe snd-seq-oss
debian:~# modprobe snd-pcm-oss
debian:~# modprobe snd-mixer-oss
Note! The three modules has to be separately build using kernel source at most cases and does not come with most Linux distributions, so on many installations (including my current), they will be missing. If for you they load properly or you have customly build them add them also to load on system boot, like so:
echo 'snd-seq-oss' >> /etc/modules
echo 'snd-pcm-oss' >> /etc/modules
echo 'snd-mixer-oss' >> /etc/modules
The Linux sound situation becomes even more messy when ESD enters the scene. Many of the novice new Linux users certainly don't remember (Enlightened Sound Daemon) . ESD historically preceded PulseAudio . Hence it will be good to mention ESD was used for few years in GNOME and in around 2006-2007 it was substituted by PulseAudio.
Many applications, however who was ported or written for Linux especially (the proprietary ported ones) was already built to work with ESD and even though newer GNOME releases was fully using pulseaudio, this (non free software apps and games) were still depending on ESD.
The situation was partially fixed by creation of module for pulseaudio which added emulation support for esd . This was done by a module library for pulseaudio called libprotocol-esound.so
The package for almost all Linux distributions which does the esd emulation via pulse is pulseaudio-esound-compat . In latest Fedora Linux pulseaudio-esound-compat is installed by default.
In Debian and other Linux distributions it might need to be installed via apt with;
debian:~# apt-get install pulseaudio-esound-compat
...
pulseaudio-esound-compat solves some of the ESD app incompability but not always …
Handy tool also worthy to mention in solving PulseAudio, OSS incompatibility issues is padsp
padsp is helpful in solving obsolete issues with OSS applications (trying to access /dev/dsp) and therefore unable to communicate with Pulseaudio
padsp – is a PulseAudio OSS Wrapper.
An example where padsp is helpful is in case of /dev/dsp errors like:
/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy
Could not open /dev/dsp
Another common problem with sound on Linux is when running windows applications (running windows games with wine).
Quite often sound fails to work since wine tries to directly communicate with alsa and fails because alsa sound channel is taken by pulseaudio.
To workaround wine issues with pulseaudio, one of the solutions is to temporary stop pulseaudio, before running the wine emulated application:
hipo@debian:~$ pulseaudio --kill
Later on when the windows wine emulation is completed, pulseaudio has to be started once again in order to make Pulseaudio applications produce sound again, e.g. one has to issue:
hipo@debian:~$ pulseaudio --start
Alternative way to workaround wine sound issues is by using a script to kill pulseaudio every second. Here is fix_pulseaudio_wine_sound_probs.sh script
This script was reported by many people as fix to problems with wine games failing to play sounds and music, anyhow I personally prefer using the stop / start pulseaudio method.
The picture below is taken from Wikipedia and illustrates, clearly the intergalactical complexity of sound systems on Gnu / Linux and BSD
I just hope one day this (OSS, ALSA, esd, Pulseaudio) mess will be over! In the mean time I hope my suggested work arounds helps someone. If someone has a better more unified script or solution please share in comments
Tags: alsa, apps, baby project, BSD, bsd systems, card, commercial goals, custom, Desktop, Driver, dsp, experiences, fist time, free oses, GNU, GPLed, Linux, linux kernel source, linux programs, love, midi support, multimedia support, nbsp, Open, open source, operating systems, pulseaudio, quot, reason, right, software, sound card, soundcards, structure, support, time, Ubuntu, wine, wine games
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 Since I've blogged about my recent skype issues. I've played a lot with pulseaudio, alsa, alsa-oss to experimented a lot until I figured out why Skype was failing to properly delivery sound and record via my embedded laptop mic.
Anyways, while researching on the cause of my Thinkpad r61 mic issues, I've red a bunch of blog posts by people experiencing microphone oddities with Lenovo Thinkpads
Throughout the search I come across one very good article, which explained that in many cases the Thinkpad sound problems are caused by the snd-hda-intel alsa kernel module. snd-hda-intel fails to automatically set proper sb model type argument during Linux install when the soundcard is initialized with some argument like options snd-hda-intel model=auto
Hence, the suggested fix which should resolve this on many Thinkpad notebooks is up to passing the right module argument:
To fix its neceessery to edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf .
debian:~# vim /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
Find the line in the file starting with:
options snd-hda-intel model=
and substitute with:
options snd-hda-intel model=thinkpad
Finally a restart of Advaned Linux Sound Architecture (alsa) is required:
debian:~# /etc/init.d/alsa restart
...
At most cases just restarting the alsa via its init script is not enough, since the ssnd-hda-intel kernel module is already in use by some program or something, so its best to do a reboot to make sure the module is loaded with the new model=thinkpad argument.
My exact laptop sound card model is:
debian:~# lspci |grep -i audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
After changing the module and using alsamixer and aumix to make sure mic is unmuted and its volume is high enough, mic sound rec works fine.
Tags: Advaned, alsa, alsamixer, architecture, argument, audio controller, aumix, Auto, blogged, card, card model, cause, confFind, Draft, file, init, init script, intel corporation, kernel module, laptop, microphone, model auto, model type, modprobe, new model, oddities, pulseaudio, Reboot, script, Search, snd, Solve, something, sound architecture, sound card, soundcard, ssnd, substitute, thinkpad notebooks, thinkpad r61, thinkpads, type, type argument, Ubuntu, vim
Posted in Linux, Various | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 I've experienced plenty of problems with Pulseaudio and Skype output sound hell crappy. This stupid proprietary program Skype is a total crap … Anyways again thanks to ArchLinux's wiki, I've used the two mentioned steps to fix all this Skype in / out problems …
1. Fix problems with Glitches, voice skips and crackling In file /etc/pulse/default.pa its necessery to substitute the line;
load-module module-udev-detect
with
load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
2. Resolve Choppy sound in (Pulseaudio) -> Skype
In /etc/pulse/daemon.conf two lines has to be also substituted:
; default-sample-rate = 44100
Should become;
default-sample-rate = 48000
3. Change /etc/default/pulseaudio to allow dynamic module loading
It is a good idea to the default settings from DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=1 to DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=0 .This step is not required and I'm not sure if it has some influence on solving sound in / out problems with Skype but I believe it can be helpful in some cases..
So in /etc/default/pulseaudio Substitute:
DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=1
to;
DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=0
4. Restart PulseAudio server
After the line is changed and substituted a restart of PulseAudio is required. For PulseAudio server restart a gnome session logout is necessery. Just LogOff logged Gnome user and issue cmd:
debian:~# pkill pulseaudio
This will kill any left pulseaudio server previous instances.
Tags: ArchLinux, Auto, Choppy, choppy sound, conf, crackling, crap, crappy, debian gnu, default settings, Draft, file, Glitches, Gnome, gnome user, hell, idea, influence, instances, issue, line, Linux, loading, logout, Module, nbsp, necessery, pkill, plenty, proprietary program, pulse, resolve, Skype, sound glitches, substitute, udev, voice, wiki
Posted in Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video, Skype on Linux | 18 Comments »
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 Once again, I experienced Skype microphone issues!!! Its getting really annoying, since almost randomly I get issues. Skype is a terrible program and depending on a proprietary thing like Skype is a real pain in the ass.
This time it was totally strange as there was no way to record any voice inside Skype Call while testing with (Echo / Sound Test Service)
After a lot of puzzling and getting a bit angry I found this time the issues are caused by some settings which somehow changed in GNOME Sound Preferences microphone to mute:
You see on above screeshot that somehow the stupid thing get mutted 😐
After unmuting and restarting Skype, the microphone started working in Skype again …
Tags: Auto, bit, Call, Debian, Draft, echo sound, Gnome, Linux, lot, microphone, pain, pain in the ass, Problems, program, screeshot, Service, Skype, Sound, sound test, stupid thing, test, test service, testing, thinkpad, time, voice, way
Posted in Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video, Skype on Linux | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 9th, 2012 I've recently had to set up a backup system to synchronize backup archive files between two remote servers and as I do usually with this situation I just set up a crontab job to periodically execute rsync to copy data from source server to the destination server . Copying SRC to DEST is the default behaviour rsync uses, however in this case I had to copy from the destination server to the source server host (in other words sync files the reversely.
The usual way to copy with rsync via SSH (from SRC to DEST) is using a cmd line like:
debian:~$ /usr/bin/rsync -avz -e ssh backup-user@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/home/backup-user/my-directory .
Where the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is my remote server IP with which files are synched.
According to rsync manual, the proposed docs SYNOPSIS is in the format;
Local: rsync [OPTION…] SRC… [DEST
Obviusly the default way to use rsync is to copy source to destination which I used until now, but in this case I had to the other way around and copy files from a destination host to the source server. It was logical that swapping the SRC and DEST would complete my required task. Anyways I consulted with some rsync gurus in irc.freenode.net , just to make sure it is proper to just swap the SRC, DEST arguments.
I was told this is possible, so I swapped args;
debian:~$ /usr/bin/rsync -avz -e ssh . backup-user@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/home/backup-user/my-directory
...
Surprisingly this worked 😉 Anyways I was adviced by by a good guy nick named scheel , that putting -e ssh to command line is generally unnecessery except if there is no some uncommon used SSH port over which the data is transferred. An example case in which -e 'ssh is necessery would be if transferring via lets say SSH port 1234;
rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p1234' /source user@host:/dest
In all other cases omitting '-e ssh' is better as '-e ssh' is rsync default. Therefore my final swapped line I put in cron to copy from a destinatio to source host with rsync looked like so:
05 03 2 * * /usr/bin/ionice -c 3 /usr/bin/rsync -avz my-directory backup-user@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/home/backup-user/ >/dev/null 2>&1
Tags: archive files, Auto, avz, backup system, case, cmd, cmd line, copy, copying, cron, default, default behaviour, destIn, destinatio, destination, destination host, destination server, docs, Draft, example, example case, few words, format, gurus, host, job, nbsp, necessery, nick, option, port 1234, remote server, rsync, scheel, server host, server ip, source host, source server, ssh port, sync files, system, usr bin
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, System Administration | No Comments »
Sunday, January 8th, 2012 I've faced some issues with crappy sound in some of the games I'm playing on my Debian . Also I ometimes, have issues with sound while watching movies with VLC or Totem... Sound issues with Skype are also seldomly occuring during skype calls etc. etc.
Recently I've realized many of this crappy sound issues origins from PulseAudio – the sound server GNOME desktop env uses to manage all sound just before passing it through ALSA.
I've found on the internet many suggested ways on how to workaround these issues. Many of the things suggested as workarounds, however was outdated and referred to old versions of GNOME / Pulseaudio and therefore was unusable on my Debian 6 Squeeze….
What I found most helpful is fixes and workarounds for pulseaudio list compiled by people in the Fedora community on fedorasolved.org's website – http://fedorasolved.org/Members/fenris02/pulseaudio-fixes-and-workarounds
Some of the fixes and work arounds suggeted on the above link, I have already applied, others was not applicable for Debian.
Anyways the things which I found most important and I believe many people who runs Debian need to implement from the list to solve pulseaudio crappy sound issues is concluded in the below 5 steps.
1. Install few packages related to pulseaudio
apt-get install paman padevchooser paprefs pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-module-zeroconf pulseaudio-utils
2. Edit ~/.asoundrc and include
pcm.pulse { type pulse }
ctl.pulse { type pulse }
Quickest way is by issuing:
echo 'pcm.pulse { type pulse }' >> ~/.asoundrc
echo 'ctl.pulse { type pulse }' >> ~/.asoundrc
3. Change in the pulseaudio server configuration file ( /etc/pulse/daemon.conf ):
debian:~# vim /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
Look up for the lines:
; default-fragments = 4
; default-fragment-size-msec = 25
Substitute this two lines with:
default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 5
4. Enable Simultaneous Output in PulseAudio preferences
Navigate to the GNOME menus:
System -> PulseAudio Preferences
Choose the "Simultaneous Output" tab and select:
Add virtual output device for simultaneous output on all local sound cards
5. Log Off Gnome and restart PulseAudio
To load the new changed settings in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf restart of pulseaudio server is required, right after a Logoff from the current opened gnome session;
To do so LogOff with the trivial:
System -> Log Out
Login as root in console;
Press CTRL+ALT+F1, login with root and issue:
debian:~# /etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart
...
N.B.; In some cases it might be necessery to do some adjustments are made in gstreamer properties , to change settings there launch:
Tampering with gstreamer-properties used to fix for me some problems with ALSA and PulseAudio in the past, so it might be worthy to check it out and experiment a bit with it as well.
debian:~$ gstreamer-properties
Now many of the crappy sound games or applications should start working just fine. Enjoy 😉
Tags: alsa, asoundrc, asoundrcecho, Auto, change, configuration file, crappy, debian gnu, default fragment, Desktop, Draft, fedora, file, fragment size, fragments, games, Gnome, gnome desktop, gnu linux, Install, Linux, login, look, msec, occuring, old versions, org members, origins, OutLogin, Output, padevchooser, Press, pulse type, quot, right, root, server configuration, Skype, sound server, tab, type, vim, VLC, work
Posted in FreeBSD, Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
How to enable Ctrl+Alt+Backspace in Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) Linux
Monday, January 16th, 2012My sister, experience some programs running with wine (Windows Emulator) to crash on her Ubuntu 11.10.
As she is quite new with Linux, she has no idea about the existence of CTRL ALT BACKSPACE key combination to restart a hanged GNOME, KDE by directly killing the Xorg server.
I felt obliged to explain her it is better to use CTRL ALT BACKSPACE X kill switch instead of restarting the whole Linux kernel (which basiclly is working) and that it is just the display keeping blacnk.
Pressing the would kill Xorg and therefore all applicatins previously running on top of it will die. In Ubuntu Xorg is configured to run via gdm, so once killed it will automatically reload the GDM (Gnome Display Manager).
I was about to explain her that its better she use CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE instead of restarting the whole system but suddenly I realized this is not working.
In UBUNTU 11.10 and I guess in all UBUNTU's after 9.04 CTRL ALT BACKSPACE is substituted with the key switch combination ALT PRINTSCREEN K, I've explained her about that.
This change is actually a change implied by most Linux distributions nowdas and is some kind of change in Xorg newer versions…
To enable back the CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE , I've issued cmd:
stanimira@ubuntu~:$ echo' setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp' >> ~/.xinitrc
An alternative way to set setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp to run on Ubuntu user login is by setting it as a startup application using;
stanimira@ubuntu:~$ gnome-session-properties
Press the Add button and type in the box to appear;
Name: setxkbmap
Command: setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
Comment: setxkbmap
Reverting the Xserver kill switch back to the classical Ctrl+Alt+Backspace should also be running fine on older Ubuntu Linuces – 11.04, 10.10, 10.04 etc.
Tags: add button, Alt, Auto, backspace, Button, change, Comment, Ctrl, Display, Draft, existence, GDM, Gnome, kde, key switch, kill, kill switch, Linux, linux kernel, login, most linux distributions, ocelot, option, Press, printscreen, Reverting, session properties, setxkbmapCommand, startup, startup application, switch combination, type, Ubuntu, wine, wine windows, xinitrcAn, Xorg, xserver
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | No Comments »