Ubuntu Tutorials

I’ve been doing some research this week on getting a better, native driver installed for wireless on my MacBook. Some of you may remember my previous post about getting wireless to work under ndiswrapper, which has been working great so far, but I have been hoping for more.

Digging through the Ubuntu Forums today I ran across a command that I never knew about and thought I would share. It’s helpful in finding and recognizing detected pci hardware on your machine. After running it and listing my pci hardware again things are better recognized and with more detail. The command is:

update-pciids

This will, as the title says, download a newer version of the PCI ID list and give you better output on your recognized hardware. This is particularly helpful for those of you that do work with drivers or, in this situation, try to see if your recognized hardware will be compatible with native drivers or not.

I hope to have a write-up done today or tomorrow on wireless support (including WEP/WPA) for a MacBook without using ndiswrapper. w00t! In the meantime check out that command and see the difference. It’s a tiny app, but cool nonetheless.

I wanted to post a note and show my support, yet again, for the Open Discussion day on May 19th.  Last year I took part on a personal level and made the switch to Jabber only for IM purposes.  I gave some notice to my contacts and even wrote up a quick outline of how they would still be able to communicate with me.  Since that time I have only used Jabber and don’t miss any of the other proprietary platforms.  I’ve also been able to recruit quite a few people with me.

I invite everyone to take part in this years Open Discussion day, even if it is just for the day, to help raise awareness for open protocols.  People won’t know unless we take the time to tell them and it all comes down to you.  Remember the power that one person has in the free software community.  Whether its creating programs, raising awareness or building community we all play a part.  Please do what you can this May 19th, Open Discussion Day.

Resources:

Open Discussion Wiki

Open Discussion Background

I’m still working out a few minor bugs on my Apple MacBook running Ubuntu 7.04 “Feisty” before I write-up my end-all tutorial for Ubuntu on the MacBook.  While perusing the Ubuntu Forums this morning I found a nice little hack / script / tool that can help you disable your touchpad while typing.  I’m sure many of you have run into the problem of having your touchpad move your cursor while you’re typing and really screw things up.  I know it has been a minor annoyance of mine for a while, but this fix seems to do the trick.

note: I have only tested this on my MacBook but I don’t see why it won’t work on any type hardware meeting the minimal requirements.

1. You’ll need to have your touchpad enabled
2. You’ll need to have “SHMConfig”     “on” set in your xorg.conf

If you meet these requirements (pretty simple requirements, I know… and, yes, you should be able to simply add the SHMConfig line if you need to) you’re just about there.

The tool we’re going to use for this is called syndaemon.  You may want to “man syndaemon” for more details, but my basic command below should do the trick.

syndaemon -d -t -i 2

• the -d flag tells syndaemon to run all the time and monitor the keyboard
• the -t flag tells it to only disable tapping and scrolling, not pointer movement
• the -i flag is how long (in seconds) to disable the touchpad *after* the last keypress

Basically, if you didn’t follow all of that here is what this does.  It launches syndaemon as a daemon to continually monitor input activity.  It only disables the tapping and scrolling, but not motion activity (ie; you can still move your mouse but you can’t click or scroll text).  Lastly it unlocks that input after only 2 seconds.  Update the “2″ to your own preferences if you like.

You could try adding that command to your gnome sessions (System > Preferences > Sessions) to have it load at gnome login, or create a boot time script.  I wont go over the boot time script setup here however.

I’d be very interested to know how well that works on other hardware.  I don’t see why it wouldn’t but, again, I have only yet tested it on my MacBook and it works just fine.  Enjoy.

Screen.  What can I say about it?  It’s not very well known to many people I mention it to but its one of those programs that you just can’t stop using once you’ve started.  Yes, I use screen on a regular daily basis and it’s really easy to use.

I know someone who says the only reason they invented X was so that you could use more virtual terminals.  I think the real solution behind great command line multitasking is screen!

Here are some basic usage tips.  To start a command line based program within a virtual ‘screen’ prefix that command with screen, such as:

screen irssi

Once that has loaded you can detach the virtual screen for later use by pressing ctrl-a d.  To reattach that screen type screen -r (or, if the screen was somehow not completely detached previously you would use screen -dr).

Now, ok, I can start applications within screen and detach them.. that’s cool I guess but couldn’t I just background the process or something similar?  I suppose so, but here is where it gets interesting.

Create a new screen instance within screen with ctrl-a c.  Do this as many times as you might need, based on the number of apps you’re using.  To later switch between these screens use ctrl-a 0-9, ctrl-a n,p (for next or previous) or to see a visual list, use ctrl-a “.

To close a screen you no longer need you can simply type exit which will take you to the next screen or exit screen completely if it is the last one.

In my setup I’m running irssi, mutt, bash and snownews within screen 0-3 over ssh to a private server at home.  On my local machine I load screen for rtorrent and an irssi notification script.  Once I get them both going I ctrl-a d, close gnome-terminal and don’t bother with those apps until I need something. At that point I screen -r and there they are again, right back where I left them.. and having continued that whole time.  Like I said, easy multitasking on the command line.

Do you have any magic screen tips to share with the crowd?  You know where the comments go.

I just spent the evening having dinner with some folks from the Georgia (US) Team.  I had a great time and I think Georgia has some great folks on the team.  It was a small turnout but worth the time and talk.  I’m sure this team will continue to grow and become approved before we know it.

If you live in Georgia and want to help Ubuntu grow be sure to check out their Local Team.  Get together with other people in your area, coordinate Ubuntu meetings and make the world a better place   Isn’t that what it’s all about.

For more info about the Georgia Team:

Wiki

Mailing List

Launchpad

Thanks again guys.  I’m sure we’ll meet up again soon and I’m sure you’ll have a lot more to report.

Today has been a personal bug-squashing day for little things related to my MacBook. I am teaching a class this week that calls for quite a bit of lab time from the students so I took the time to look into some of the bugs. The first on the list was activating the keyboard lighting on the macbook, which was simple enough. The second, and basis for this quick tutorial, is setting Ubuntu to be the primary boot within the rEFIt boot loader.

To update your boot loader so that Ubuntu will boot first you’ll need to boot into OS X to edit a config file. (note: I did not try any method of mounting the OS X partition to make the changes, is that possible?).

UPDATE: after typing the above I actually took the time to *try* and it’s already default mounted on my machine. Nothing special there. …what you find when you actually take the time to look huh .  It is mounted read-only however.

Once booted into OS X you’ll want to edit the file “/efi/refit/refit.conf” and update a line near the bottom of the file from:

#legacyfirst

to

legacyfirst

(yes, just uncommenting that line)

At this point the rEFIt boot loader will boot Ubuntu as your primary and OS X as your secondary. I notice the rEFIt config file is oddly similar to a grub.conf. I also update the timeout from 20 to 5. Who wants to wait 20 seconds for it to make a choice? Enjoy.

I realized the other day that the small lights on my MacBook keyboard didn’t work.  I didn’t really give much thought to it, but after booting into OS X for a few minutes I noticed it did work again.  That got me thinking and looking for a solution.

Of course, Google being our friend, I found a solution rather quickly from a launchpad submitted bug (#103375).  The fix, which is very easy and should take immediate effect, is as follows:

sudo aptitude remove mouseemu

Yeah, that’s about all it took for me.  As soon as that package was gone I could see the caps lock light up like I wanted it to.  Yay for open bug reporting and the power of Google.

Look at the random number I came up with today

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Recently I did a lecture on the magical world of vim. Despite having used it for quite a long time I realize there is still far more that I could know about it, but there is also more that I haven’t published on this blog.  Some of you might remember some of my earlier posts on vim [here], [here].  Today I have a few more shortcut keys to tell you about that I sure hope you’ll appreciate as much as I have grown to.  First, some more advanced navigation.

Moving your cursor within vim can be done on per character, per sentence and per parapraph.  Also, remember that you can repeat commands (even movement commands) by prepending it with the number of times you would like it done.

To move your cursor within vim per character you can use the arrow keys or the h,j,k,l for left, down, up, right respectively.

To move your cursor within vim per sentence you can use the (, ) keys to move to the previous or next sentence respectively.

To move your cursor within vim per paragraph you can use the {, } keys to move to the previous or next paragraph respectively.

To move your cursor to a specific line within your text you can prefix the line number with : .  ie; to jump to line 10 you would use “:10″.

You can also jump to the beginning or end of the file with G or gg.

Next, now that you can jump from one end of your file to the other quickly you might want to open multiple windows within vim for, perhaps, comparison, etc.

You have the ability to split a window either vertically or horizontally within vim very simply.  To control, move or split windows you must prefix the command with ctrl-w.

ctrl-w n – create a new window representing a new, empty file

ctrl-w s – split the window horizontally

ctrl-w v – split the window vertically

ctrl-w arrow – move to the window in the direction of the arrow

ctrl-w q – quit the current window (also available is the default :q, :wq)

ctrl-w – / + – increase or decrease the size of the current window.  (also available is increasing or decreasing by X value: ctrl-w 5+ – increase window size by 5.)

Adding these commands to the commands that you already know and now you’re getting efficient with vim.  The only editor you’ll ever need!  …but, like I said, this still isn’t everything.  Not by a long-shot, but it’s a really good start!