I came across another easter egg this afternoon I thought I would share before I forgot about it. This one is related to OpenOffice. To find this easter egg do the following:
Start OpenOffice Spreadsheet (Applications > Office > OpenOffice Spreadsheet)
Within an empty field, type: =GAME("StarWars")
Enjoy
This post is published in the hope that it’ll help others solve an issue I’ve been dealing with for the past few weeks. I have searched and searched for a solution and only recently found one workaround for the problem. The bug that I have found is here. Hopefully with some more attention it’ll be properly fixed.
The issue that I have been running into is that no supported PGP passphrase agents were running. In other words I was not able to unlock my PGP keys for email signing and encryption. You will have noticed this problem if you use email signing and encryption with tools such as Enigmail, etc.
The solution that I found, which is also outlined within the bug, is to remove a file that is apparently being loaded when the X session starts. For some reason this file conflicts with the seahorse key caching system, and neither work.
To fix the issue simply move the conflicting file elsewhere:
sudo mv /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90gpg-agent ~/90gpg-agent.bak
Once this file is moved you should be able to restart X and have your key-caching functionality again. If anyone else has a better fix or other suggestions please comment.
I have been trying to come up with some more ways to make this site and the content more helpful for the community. In my searching for new “features” I came across the Firefox feature of “Smart Keyword Search”. This post is two part. One, I’ll outline how to create a Smart Keyword Search item in Firefox specifically for this site and second create Smart Keyword Searches for any website. This will allow you to quickly and easily search this sites contents anytime you need instruction on a topic!
Smart Keyword Search for Ubuntu Tutorials
To create a Smart Keyword Search for this site you’ll need to first right-click on the blog search field. The search field is found on the top left above the Donate button.
The resulting window will ask for a name and a keyword. The name is just for your use, allowing you to organize multiple keyword searches. The keyword field is the keyword you’ll need to use to quick-search the site. In the example below I used “Ubuntu Tutorials Search” for the Name and “ut” for the keyword.
Click “Add” to save the changes. You can now quick-search this site for whatever it is you’re looking for by entering “ut <search term>” in your address bar. To search for posts related to vmware, for example, you’d use:
ut vmware
Searching can be done from any tab, so you don’t even need to pull up the site first. Quickly find the tutorials you need, simply and easily.
These steps work for any search form you can find on the web. Right-click, “Add a Keyword for this Search…”, enter the keyword, and you’re done.
It has been some time since I’ve done a Vim Tip of the Week, but I came across something today that I thought I would share. This tip will allow you to use Vim, with all its syntax highlighting glory, as a pager (similar to less or more).
If you use cat or less or more regularly to quickly view files, but you’d like to keep the same syntax highlighting that you’d get in Vim you can use an included config that makes Vim act as a pager. Setup the following within your .bashrc file, or wherever you keep your shell aliases:
alias vless='vim -u /usr/share/vim/vim71/macros/less.vim'
You’ll then need to re-read that file, which can be done using:
. .bashrc
At this point you can use vless to view a file, which will use the beloved syntax highlighting. Normal pager shortcuts should work. q to quit, / to search, pg-up, pg-dn, etc.
I found a new Gnome Easter egg the other day. Just when I thought I knew about all of them (yeah, I know, some Gnome developer is sitting back in the corner laughing about all the Easter Eggs we *don’t* know about!) I find a few more.
This one will require you to logout and log back in, but its worth the slight hiccup.
At the login prompt, where it asks for a username, enter: Require Quarter
The username and password prompt will then follow as normal, but you’ll get a quick surprise before you’re logged in.
Enjoy
It was pointed out to me recently that the graphical tool for sharing files and folders no longer displayed within the Main Menu. I’m not sure if this is reported as a bug anywhere (I haven’t looked), but I thought I would mention how you can still use the tool, or even better, manually add it to your menu. This tutorial is for anyone that wants to simply share files and folders via samba or NFS.
Sharing Folders with Shares Admin
First, lets take a look at the shares-admin tool. It is a graphical management tool for sharing files and folders by way of NFS or samba. If you’re not familiar with these protocols, samba is generally used for sharing within a Windows network, and NFS for Linux/Unix networks.
To launch the shares-admin tool type:
ALT-F2: shares-admin
You’ll be asked to “Unlock” access for your user, and then you’ll be able to create a share.
Click “Add” to create a new share. Select the folder you want to share, the protocol you want to share it with, and the name you want to give it. It’s that simple!
Adding Shares-Admin to your Main Menu
If this is something you find you might use often you may want to add it to your Main Menu. This can be done pretty easily, by using the Main Menu Editor. I posted about this recently, Edit The Main Menu with Two Clicks on Ubuntu 8.04.
Have you ever wondered what the actual command is behind the application you’re launching from the Applications Menu? I’ve found it useful a number of times, and I have two three methods of finding out what the command actually is. If there are any Gnome devs reading this, could finding the properties be made simpler directly from the menu itself?
What’s The Command?
There are actually two three ways that I can think of to do this. One includes the Main Menu Editor, which I blogged about yesterday, the second involves a bit of a quick workaround and the third just uses your browser. Do you have any other suggestions on how this might be done?
To find the command using the Main Menu Editor you would simply launch the tool:
System > Preferences > Main Menu
Find the application in the list, and then double-click the entry to find the details. You’ll see something like:
The second method that you can use, and this is the one that I’ve used most often, is quickly adding the application to your panel and then checking the launcher properties. Because the properties are not available from within the menu itself (again, Gnome devs, can this be added?) we can add the application to the panel and then check the properties. To find the details this way we’d do the following:
Navigate to the application through the main menu. Right-click on the application and select “Add this launcher to panel”. This will add the menu-based launcher to your panel. The next step is to right-click on the new panel launcher and select properties. You’ll then find what command and details are being used to launch that application.
Once you’ve found what you’re looking for you can safely remove the newly added launcher via right-click > Remove from panel.
The third method, which was found apparently by accident recently, is simply to drag-n-drop the menu entry into a Firefox tab. It’ll open the .desktop file, which will outline the command and a whole lot more. Look for the “Exec=” line for the command used.
Do you have applications in your main menu that you never, ever use? Would you like to get rid of them? Perhaps you’d like to reorganize some of your menu entries? This can be done two ways, both of which take only two-clicks.
Editing The Main Menu
Method number one is done via right-click + left-click. Bring your pointer to your main menu and right-click on Applications. Within the resulting options you should see “Edit Menus”. Left-click on that and the Main Menu Editor will appear. You’ll now be able to edit the items displayed in your menus by simply checking and unchecking boxes. You can even add new items if, for some reason, your installed application did not create one.
Method number two is probably even simpler, but I outline Method One above because I’ve had situations where the Main Menu Editor did not appear within my menu. Sure makes it difficult to add the Main Menu Editor to the menu when you can’t get there in the first place!
To launch the Main Menu Editor navigate to:
System > Preferences > Main Menu
Either of these methods will launch the same tool and give you the same options. As I mentioned above, I’m glad I know both methods because there have been times when “Main Menu” did not appear within my menu for some reason. This way you’re always able to find it.
I have heard complaints here and there regarding Ubuntu requiring the user to login at boot time. I, personally, prefer this as I feel it ads a level of security to my machine, but I can see situations where it’d simply be annoying. If you are the only user on your machine and you’d like to enable automatic user login at boot time this post will outline how.
Enabling Timed or Automatic Login
I’ll start with the Automatic Login option and then outline Timed Login below. Both are very similar, and they are configured in the same place. To enable Automatic Login you can navigate to:
System > Administration > Login Window
You will have to provide your password for authentication and then you’ll be presented with the Login Window Preferences tool. To enable Automatic Login you’ll want to navigate to the Security tab.
As you see from the screenshot you have the option to Enable Automatic Login by checking the box. You will also need to select a user to be the default account from the drop down list.
For the Timed Login you’ll want to check the second box, select the user and also select the timeout value. If, for example, you want your machine to auto-login after 30 seconds you’d set the “Pause before login:” value to “30″.
<disclaimer>Again, I would warn you that anyone able to get access to your machine will now be able to access all of your files and settings by simply booting the machine as normal. I prefer to enter my username and password as an additional level of security.</disclaimer>
If your computer habits are anything like mine you probably have a set of applications that you use nearly every time you log in to the machine. Let me guess.. Firefox? Pidgin perhaps? Thunderbird or Evolution? You may have more or less, but it is common for a user to use the same applications regularly. Wouldn’t it be nice if those commonly used applications could startup faster? That is possible with a tool called “Preload”.
Installing Preload
The preload service is available through the main Ubuntu repositories, and can be installed by clicking the link below or running the command:
sudo aptitude install preload
A few things to note now about using Preload. First, this will not improve boot time. Preload monitors recurring applications and, after establishing a pattern, will preload those binaries into memory at startup. Given that it also has to establish a pattern you may not see a performance increase immediately. Give it some time though, you’ll start to see a difference soon enough!