XPD259 Installs - Linux Mint
Today I installed Linux mint 12. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu which in turn is built on Debian so has a strong base to to built upon.
The install takes about ~45 minutes and has no complex questions and is very beginner friendly and launched from the live CD so it can be tested before install and uses the Ubiquity installer from Ubuntu which allows the installer to be run from the live CD with out rebooting in to a separate installer.
Linux Mint is mostly a collection of FOSS software and some proprietary software such non free drivers, non free firmware and other widely used software such as Adobe flash and RAR compression. Linux mint doesn't strive to software freedom and focus more on usability.
sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint
www.Linuxmint.com
Dick Thomas' Blog
The New Adventures of Mr Dick Thomas
Sunday, 18 March 2012
Monday, 12 March 2012
Building Debian Retroshare
I've just found retroshare and it looks like a smart idea, I like the idea of secure messaging, file transfers and forums between me and my friends, They don't supply a 64bit Debian Package by default so I had to build my own. This is how
Dependency installation
aptitude install libgpg-error-dev libupnp-dev libssl-dev libgnome-keyring-dev libxss-dev subversion gnupg-agent libupnp3 libqt4-dev g++ libgpgme11-dev
Getting the Source
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/retroshare/files/RetroShare/0.5.3b/RetroShare-v0.5.3b.tar.gz/download
mv download retoshare.tar.gz
tar xvf retoshare.tar.gz
Building
cd trunk/libbitdht/src
qmake
make
cd ../../libretroshare/src
qmake
make
cd ../../retroshare-gui/src
qmake
make
making deb
cd ../../build_scripts/Debian/
installing deb
dpkg -i RetroShare_0.5.1b._debian_amd64.deb
Bugs
there seems to be a bug where the launcher creates a link to /usr/bin/retroshare not /usr/bin/Retroshare
this can be easily fixed with alacarte
sources
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
cd ../../build_scripts/Debian/
sudo ./make.sh
installing deb
dpkg -i RetroShare_0.5.1b._debian_amd64.deb
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| Create a Profile |
Bugs
there seems to be a bug where the launcher creates a link to /usr/bin/retroshare not /usr/bin/Retroshare
this can be easily fixed with alacarte
sources
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
Labels:
64bit,
debian,
FOSS,
retroshare
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Debian Wheezy, Xorg & Nvidia Dualhead
I just bought a new 2nd monitor to dual-head with and while it works out of the box with nouveau open source drivers the opengl rates are not the best leaving game play out of the question.
so this is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file that gets it all working with gnome 3 (Debian wheezy)
of course it will be different for your machine but this will give you a hit on what to do, the main things I expect to be different are red
If you are wanting one screen spread over two screens, not two screens uncomment
# Option "Xinerama" "true"
if you are running Debian Squeezy and want to run Debian Wheezy, I have made a video for installing
Wheezy
sources:
http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
http://wiki.debian.org/Xorg?action=show&redirect=ConfigureX
so this is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file that gets it all working with gnome 3 (Debian wheezy)
of course it will be different for your machine but this will give you a hit on what to do, the main things I expect to be different are red
If you are wanting one screen spread over two screens, not two screens uncomment
# Option "Xinerama" "true"
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
Screen 1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
FontPath "built-ins"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dri"
Load "dri2"
Load "extmod"
Load "record"
Load "glx"
Load "dbe"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
BoardName "GT218 [GeForce 210]"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "twinview" "1"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor1"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Modes "1680x1050"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
# Option "Xinerama" "true"
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection
![]() |
| Debian Wheezy Dual Head running Gnome 3.2 |
if you are running Debian Squeezy and want to run Debian Wheezy, I have made a video for installing
Wheezy
sources:
http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
http://wiki.debian.org/Xorg?action=show&redirect=ConfigureX
Location:
Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Pantalla
Pantalla Screen Caster
*BETA*
Pantalla is a application for screen casting using ffmpeg and pulse audioit has the following features:
- Full screen mode
- Windowed mode
- Record from microphone
- Record from loopback (microphone and system sound)
![]() |
| Pantalla Screen Caster |
it requires a ffmpeg with lib264 support from debian multimedia repo or other such location
code can be downloaded from
and installed with the install script
Features coming:
automagical upload to youtube
Requires Gnome and pulseaudio
tested on Debian testing (Wheezy)
Source Code
https://github.com/xpd259/pantalla
Features coming:
automagical upload to youtube
Requires Gnome and pulseaudio
tested on Debian testing (Wheezy)
Source Code
https://github.com/xpd259/pantalla
Labels:
bash,
FOSS,
OSS,
pantalla,
pulse audio,
screen casting,
script
Location:
Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Friday, 27 January 2012
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
BRING ON THE SPAM!
I'm sure I will regret this but... I've disabled comment moderation as I was always clicking delete by accident
BRING ON THE SPAM!
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
recording desktop audio with pulse audio
Recording desktop audio with pulse audio
It proved to be harder then I thought but the answer is quite simple
in a terminal enter
$ pacmd load-module module-loopback latency_msec=1
and you should head your voice (or feedback) on your speakers/headphones.
Now to record output and the microphone, Install pavucontrol with your preferred app install method.
Start recording and then load pavucontrol and set the Recording tab the output to "monitor of "
![]() |
| Setting Monitor set to monitor of SB Audigy |
$pacmd list-modules
then look for index: <number> <module-loopback>
$ pacmd unload-module <module number>
this should unload the module returning your audio to normal till it is loaded again
Souces
www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/Modules
http://blog.stebalien.com/2009/03/howto-ones-linux-computer-with.html
Labels:
Audio,
debian,
gnome-shell,
gnome3,
linux,
pulse,
screen casting
Location:
Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Debian, Nvidia Geforce Cards with HDMI and no audio
Debian, Nvidia Geforce cards with HDMI and no audio
The Problem
I recently upgraded my system to include a second graphics card so I could dual head
this card was a Nvidia GeForce 210 from Dabs.com, While the card worked perfectly I did notice that my audio no longer worked on 9 of 10 boot's and then only on GDM not the desktop
After much investigation I narrowed the problem down and fixed it
It was quite hard to diagnose but thankfully I knew what should be in my system as I had only just built it
and when I did lsmod there were a lot of refernces to snd_hda_intel.
Knowing I didn't have an Intel sound device and it wasn't there when I removed the graphics card it was obvious that the HDMI port on the graphics card must be interfering with my audio some how
Also when I use alsamixer this also reported a Intel card under the card listings when I pressed F2
![]() |
| alsamixer showing 3rd device |
so I had to blacklist snd_hda_intel
The Fix
If you have an Intel sound device this will do nothing as it will stop your
snd_hda_intel driver from loading stopping the sound device from working altogether
sudo echo blacklist snd_hda_intel >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base-blacklist.conf
and reboot
the output of lspci -v for the graphics card gave the following
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [GeForce 210] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: CardExpert Technology Device 1401
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
Memory at fb000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at de000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at cf00 [size=128]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at d0000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [b4] Vendor Specific Information: Len=14 <?>
Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?>
Capabilities: [600] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=024 <?>
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Sources
www.dabs.com
Friday, 30 December 2011
Debian Gnu/Linux 6.0 Graphical installation guide
Debian Linux Graphical installation guide
using Debian 6.0.3
Net install CD image
"Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux."
This was installed in virtual box on Debian Linux, recorded using ffmpeg and edited using Kdenlive and Blender
sources
http://www.debian.org
http://www.virtualbox.org
http://www.xpd259.co.uk
http://www.kdenlive.org
http://www.blender.org
sources
http://www.debian.org
http://www.virtualbox.org
http://www.xpd259.co.uk
http://www.kdenlive.org
http://www.blender.org
Labels:
debian,
FOSS,
installation guide
Location:
Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Monday, 26 December 2011
FFMPEG Desktop Recording (update)
FFMPEG Desktop Recording (update)
as I posted a few week ago I wrote about how to record the desktop on Debian Linux, I have since improved my scripts
Monday, 19 December 2011
Debian 6.0 and Windows Dual boot install guide
Debian 6.0 and Windows Dual boot install guide
Location:
Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Debian 6.0 Squeeze Text Mode Install Video
This is my Debian 6.0 install guide for 32/64Bit Text mode install
after reading http://wiki.debian.org/GoogleCodeIn2011/Applying I thought I would make a vblog about it
This is my first Video-Blog so be nice :)
sources
www.debian.org
www.virtualbox.org
http://wiki.debian.org/GoogleCodeIn2011/Applying#Create_a_video_showing_how_to_install_Debian_in_your_language.2C_and_upload_it_to_YouTube
after reading http://wiki.debian.org/GoogleCodeIn2011/Applying I thought I would make a vblog about it
This is my first Video-Blog so be nice :)
sources
www.debian.org
www.virtualbox.org
http://wiki.debian.org/GoogleCodeIn2011/Applying#Create_a_video_showing_how_to_install_Debian_in_your_language.2C_and_upload_it_to_YouTube
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Screen casting, ffmpeg , Debian and Virtualbox
Screen casting, ffmpeg , Debian and Virtualbox
Labels:
bash,
FOSS,
OSS,
script,
transcoding
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Debian Linux, Google music and 2 step authentication
If like me you want to use Google music and 2 step authentication, You may of noticed that every time you restart your pc you need to create a new password in auth manager. This is a pain in the ****
a quick simple fix is the following
a quick simple fix is the following
- create a bash script to start google-musicmanger
- alter menu to point to new script
- run and enjoy :)
Labels:
debian,
Google,
google music,
linux
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Saned Networked Scanner & Debian Linux Squeeze
Saned lets you share any image acquisition device over the network as if it was connected to your PC and even put passwords on the device or limit it's access to a limited set of IP addresses
Why would you want this? Well imagine you live or work in an office where more then one person wants access to the photo scanner for the occasional scan It would be a waste of resources to have a dedicated machine for scanning and then there is moving the image to their machine to work with it. this means anybody can scan from any PC
Client
I prefer to use xsane but you any front end that is able to access the network such as Simple Scan will work
edit /etc/sane.d/net.conf and place the server IP address in the file and it should look something like this
apt-get install sane openbsd-inetd
Edit /etc/services and make sure it contains a line like this:
edit /etc/inetd.conf should contain a line like this:
and find your image device and note down the ID
then edit /etc/udev/rules/z60_libsane.rules
this will change the device in /dev to be accessible to all users not just root (as seems to be for my scanner in debian)
Why would you want this? Well imagine you live or work in an office where more then one person wants access to the photo scanner for the occasional scan It would be a waste of resources to have a dedicated machine for scanning and then there is moving the image to their machine to work with it. this means anybody can scan from any PC
![]() |
| Xsane Dialogue box showing net:192.168.0.13 scanner |
Client
I prefer to use xsane but you any front end that is able to access the network such as Simple Scan will work
edit /etc/sane.d/net.conf and place the server IP address in the file and it should look something like this
# gksudo gedit /etc/sane.d/net.conf
# This is the net backend config file.
## net backend options
# Timeout for the initial connection to saned. This will prevent the backend
# from blocking for several minutes trying to connect to an unresponsive
# saned host (network outage, host down, ...). Value in seconds.
# connect_timeout = 60
## saned hosts
# Each line names a host to attach to.
# If you list "localhost" then your backends can be accessed either
# directly or through the net backend. Going through the net backend
# may be necessary to access devices that need special privileges.
# localhost
192.168.0.13 # this is the IP of the server running saned
there more be required for your scanner like mine as it was a HP all in one I had to set up via the hp-setup tool but this is beyond the scope of this howto
Server
apt-get install sane openbsd-inetd
Edit /etc/services and make sure it contains a line like this:
sane-port 6566/tcp # SANE network scanner daemon
edit /etc/inetd.conf should contain a line like this:
sane-port stream tcp nowait saned.saned /usr/local/sbin/saned saned
#lsusb #output edited for length
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 03f0:2f11 Hewlett-Packard PSC 1200
and find your image device and note down the ID
then edit /etc/udev/rules/z60_libsane.rules
#nano -w /etc/udev/rules.d/z60_libsane.rulesEdit SYSFS{idVendor} and SYSFS{idProduct} to match your device (note colours)
SYSFS{idVendor}=="03f0", SYSFS{idProduct}=="2f11", MODE="0777", GROUP="scanner,lp", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"
this will change the device in /dev to be accessible to all users not just root (as seems to be for my scanner in debian)
then access to the scanner should be as simple as running xsane on the client
this should work for all Debian based distor's such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint
SOURCES
http://www.sane-project.org/
http://www.xsane.org/
http://sanetwain.ozuzo.net - SaneTwain is a TWAIN data source supporting SANE
http://www.winsane.cx/ - WinSANE is another TWAIN data source supporting SANE
![]() |
| Xsane Ready to scan |
this should work for all Debian based distor's such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint
SOURCES
http://www.sane-project.org/
http://www.xsane.org/
http://sanetwain.ozuzo.net - SaneTwain is a TWAIN data source supporting SANE
http://www.winsane.cx/ - WinSANE is another TWAIN data source supporting SANE
Location:
Bradford, UK
Friday, 14 October 2011
Evernote and Linux
Evernote and Linux
Evernote is to quote them
"... a multi platform note taking application ..."
it is a note service with image/pdf OCR and search for windows, mac and web browsers
Thursday, 13 October 2011
.htaccess magic
I've spent the last few weeks playing with .htaccess and apache and it can be very powerful but has the potential to break every thing.
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