David Baldaro Weblog » ubuntu

Using WebEX, in Mozilla Firefox on Ubuntu 9.04

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:32:50 +0000

We regularly use WebEX within our organisation – and whilst I mostly work under Windows; sometime it would be great to have the other PC on my desk (using Ubuntu 9.04) running the WebEX in the background.

I have always struggled in getting this to work – but now I have a solution.

Firstly you will need to enter:

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5 sun-java6-plugin

followed by added the following two lines into your ~/.profile file:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.66
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Then restart your server all just your X-Server and you should be able to join the WebEX meeting successfully!

NetworkManager in Ubuntu sucks!

David Baldaro — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:10:22 +0000

I recently switched by ubuntu 8.10 server/desktop to using the NetworkManger applet that comes as part of ubuntu. By default it was sat that; but wouldn’t let me change or adjust any of my network settings.

I discovered that in order to make it work I needed to modify the /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf.

david@george:~$ sudo nano /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf

Then change the managed=false line to managed=true

[main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile

[ifupdown]
managed=false

However, once I did this every time that I booted the machine it always come up using DHCP, and not using the static IP address that I had originally set. I discovered that I could always manually change the interface using the NetworkManager to use the static IP opposed to dynamic; but that was a manual task and not great for a machine that is supposed to be acting as a server.

I also noticed that the NFS Server failed to load at boot as well whilst I was using the NetworkManager.

So – today I decided to go back to manual network configuration as it seemed more stable than using the GUI! But that was not as straight forward as I hoped.

Firstly, I reverted back the line in /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf to say false. Secondly I quickly sorted out my /etc/networks/interfaces file so that it was correct.

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 192.168.3.3
        network 192.168.3.0
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        broadcast 192.168.3.255
        gateway 192.168.3.1

auto br0
iface br0 inet static
address 192.168.3.3
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.3.0
broadcast 192.168.3.255
gateway 192.168.3.1
bridge_ports eth0 vbox0 vbox1

Note: I use VirtualBox for virtualisation; hence the need to the Bridge and the vbox references.

All seemed fine – IP traffic was all looking fine; but then I discovered that DNS lookups were not working. After a bit of routing around I noticed that NetworkManager also overwrites the /etc/resolv.conf file – and in my case that was pointing to a invalid entry. So I revert back my /etc/resolv.conf to something more sensible.

nameserver 192.168.3.1

Everything seems to be working again – no more NFS failures on bootup, and all network interface seem present and stable!

Come on Lexmark support Linux a bit more please!

David Baldaro — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:26:00 +0000

Why is it in today’s open market that some suppliers seem to ignore major trends in the market? Take Lexmark and their support of Linux…

A while ago, I purchased an all-in-one Lexmark x4550 printer; it was cheapish, and more importantly wireless so I could plug it in anywhere. Getting it working wirelessly under Windows wasn’t to bad, although scanning back wirelessly is still a bit hit and miss. However recently I tried to install it under ubuntu … and then things got annoying.

No driver, no PPD and no support – there seems to be people screaming all over the Internet that there is no driver and no support from Lexmark. I’m quite happy to install a virtual XP box, and share the printer from that – however I still need a PPD to configure it correctly.

I’m not even asking for full support – just the ability to print a sodding page would be nice! A Page in colour would be even better. But no, the best that I have managed to date is to get a blank piece of paper pushed through. “ohhhh” I hear you shout!

I have to admit that this was one of those impluse purchases that I should’ve checked more on!

Won’t be buying another Lexmark printer any time soon though!

Parental control across a home network – made easy!

David Baldaro — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:02:00 +0000

My son is now starting to independently surf the Internet on his own (admitted on a PC in a public place) but knowing the Internet like I do, I still worry. Having turned on Parental Control in Vista – I am consisently regretting it as it now asks to authorise every page and turn – which is madness.

So whilst I continue in removing Vista from my Home network – I explored a few ideas about how to make the place safer – and I stumbled across www.OpenDNS.com which is a simple solution to what could be a huge problem.

With roughly 5 computers, wireless links, and internet enabled games console securing the lot was a snip – quite simply reconfigure your ADSL router to use OpenDNS’s DNS servers, and then create an account at OpenDNS and turn on the filtering option!

Now, as all the devices on my network route traffic and requests through my ADSL router (as they should) my router is now using OpenDNS to resolve and check the domain names against a set of criteria. So now purposely attempting to visit www.playboy.com returns an OpenDNS blocking page any any device.

Beautiful and yet simple!

Well done OpenDNS!

Finally: Managed HDMI support in ubuntu 8.10 with MythTV

David Baldaro — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:10:00 +0000

Well, it took me some time – so I figured that I would write up the details; so that when I rebuild my HTPC or just in case anyone else is having the same issues!

Firstly; I have MythTV 0.21 running on a Shuttle XPS SG33G5M with Ubuntu 8.10

I have my TV connected by HDMI from the Shuttle – however never been able to get my audio through the HDMI, so always had to run a phono cable from the rear of the Shuttle to separate speakers.

My devices were reported as:

david@Rosy:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC888 Digital [ALC888 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI HDMI]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

… and my outputs shown as …

david@Rosy:~$ aplay -L
default:CARD=Intel
HDA Intel, ALC888 Analog
Default Audio Device
front:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
HDA Intel, ALC888 Analog
Front speakers
surround40:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
HDA Intel, ALC888 Analog
4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
HDA Intel, ALC888 Analog
4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
HDA Intel, ALC888 Analog
5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
HDA Intel, ALC888 Analog
5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
HDA Intel, ALC888 Analog
7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
HDA Intel, ALC888 Digital
IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
null
Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)

Firstly my version of ALSA was not the latest …

david@Rosy:~$ cat /proc/asound/version

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.17a.

After failing to download and install the latest ALSA drivers from http://www.alsa-project.org/ I stubbled across a fantastic script which did it all for me. This Alsa 1.0.18 Installation Script (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=962695) automatically download, compiles, installs and configures ALSA 1.0.18a for you. God bless Google and the Open Source world!

Once this was completed a quick confirmed that I could pass audio through the HDMI cable to the TV …

david@Rosy:~$ speaker-test -Dplughw:0,3 -c2

speaker-test 1.0.18

Playback device is plughw:0,3

Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels

Using 16 octaves of pink noise

Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)

Buffer size range from 64 to 16384

Period size range from 32 to 8192

Using max buffer size 16384

Periods = 4

was set period_size = 4096

was set buffer_size = 16384

0 – Front Left

1 – Front Right

Now I turned my attention to MythTV and in Setup->Gerneral under the Audio Tab I configured my settings to:

Ouput Audio Device: ALSA:plughw:0,3

Passthrough output device: ALSA:plughw:0,3

Max Audio Channels: 5.1

Upmix: Passive

Enable AC3 to SPDIF passthrough: on

Enable DTS to SPDIF passthrough: on

Mixer Device: ALSA:default

Mixer Controls: Master

This then configured my MythTV frontend to pass all the audio straight through to the HDMI cable going to the TV – result!

This seemed fine – providing that whatever media I was watching/listening to was using MythTV internal commands. However as I was using a bespoke mplayer configuration anything that was played using it passed the audio back to the phono output and not the HDMI.

So, I under the Setup->Media Settings->Video Settings->Player Settings I modified …

Default Video Player: mplayer -vo xv -ao alsa:device=hw=0.3 -autoq 1oo -vf pp -fs -zoom %s

and then made sure that any video file type (avi, mpg etc) was set to use the Default Video Player and not the Internal one.

Result!!!