Tagged: ubuntu
Well... They did it... not sure what their real goal is... but Unity is unusable in my mind. Its not that it doesn't "work"... its that it won't work for what I do. I can't find the 5+ different windows of the same app I'll have open on multiple desktops. I upgrade to 11.10... and after a week of using it... found that I'm more frustrated that ever with it. This is the same reason... I can't work with MacOSX. Windows 7 with my limited uses of it... does seem to actually have a method which might possibly work with this new design for desktops... but I have no way of knowing for sure... since I've yet to see multiple desktops on them. Gnome Shell might not have the same flaws as Unity in this respect... however with Ubuntu going full steam into their Unity desktop. I split the jobs I have at hand between 5 desktops on my current laptop. Work Email + Random simple tasks on desktop 1, development tasks on desktops 2 and 3 (separate projects), Music/entertainment stuff on Desktop 4... and whatever else comes along for desktop 5. This is what works for me... and forcing me to change... means I'll find something else that won't. So... I reinstalled my desktop yesterday to ubuntu 11.04... I will stay there until I find a suitable replacement... which will probably be Straight up Debian again. (I ran Debian Unstable on my desktop back in high school) But... I hate to say it Ubuntu/Cannonical... you probably will loose any and all recommendations from me. My laptop is not a Tablet, nor a Phone, I still have a laptop because I need to really work on it. My phone is NOT a replacement for it, and won't be for the foreseeable future... eventually probably... but not yet. That is all.
Since my only desktop is my work Lenovo ThinkPad running Ubuntu 11.04, and the bulk of the articles out there reference Windows... I did find a few articles articulating how to root the T-Mobile G2x, but I thought I'd do a full write up here over what exactly I did to root my G2x and will do a followup with flashing a CyanogenMod Nightly to it as well.
First, I downloaded the latest Android SDK from Google
I extracted the tarball and renamed it to androidsdk in my home directory:
$ tar -zxvf Downloads/android-sdk_r11-linux_x86.tgz
$ mv android-sdk-linux_x86 androidsdk
I then added the following to my .bashrc file and load it into your environment variables
$ export PATH=${PATH}:$HOME/androidsdk/tools:$HOME/androidsdk/platform-tools
$ source .bashrc
The directory, platform-tools, will not exist yet, and you will need to download the Android SDK Platform-tools. To do this, you will run the command
$ android
This will startup a GUI, click Available packages -> Android Repository -> Android SDK Platform-tools, revision 5 (Revision may be updated... this was the version when I did this)
Click Install Selected wait till finished and close.
Now, we need to update udev to setup the proper device permissions for when we connect our phone.
$ sudo echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="1004", MODE="0666"' >> /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
the idVendor string is unique per manufacturer, there is a list of them on Android Development here, But I've used the LG one here, since they're the maker of the G2x.
Then you need to restart udev
$ sudo service udev restart
Now... we're almost done. I first attempted to use the SuperOneClick root... which wasn't working for me. I then found a shell script that was a simple root to... thought I'd give it a go, and it worked easily, which can be downloaded on xda
I will note that... at this point, you should be able to connect your phone via USB, turn on USB Debug Mode. Settings -> Applications -> Development -> USB Debugging. Then run: adb devices. Should return this... or something similar at least... not sure what the hex number is... serial#?
$ adb devices
List of devices attached
02884207417fe4d7 device
After Downloading the G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5.zip and unzipping it.
mitch@kraven:~$ mkdir g2xroot
mitch@kraven:~$ cd g2xroot/
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot$ unzip ../Downloads/G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5.zip
Archive: ../Downloads/G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5.zip
creating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/
creating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/files/
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/files/adb_linux
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/files/adb_mac
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/files/busybox
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/files/psneuter
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/files/shared.sh
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/files/su
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/files/Superuser.apk
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/Readme.txt
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/root.command
inflating: G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/unroot.command
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot$ ls
G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot$ cd G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5/
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot/G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5$ ls
files Readme.txt root.command unroot.command
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot/G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5$ less Readme.txt
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot/G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5$ ./root.command
Checking for connected device...
Pushing temporary root exploint (psneuter) to device...
1262 KB/s (585731 bytes in 0.453s)
Running psneuter on device...
property service neutered.
killing adbd. (should restart in a second or two)
Waiting for device...
Remounting /system read/write...
remount succeeded
Pushing su to /system/bin/su...
635 KB/s (26324 bytes in 0.040s)
Pushing busybox to /system/bin/busybox...
1253 KB/s (1062992 bytes in 0.827s)
Installing Superuser.apk android application...
1283 KB/s (196521 bytes in 0.149s)
Removing psneuter from device...
Rebooting device...
Once device has rebooted you should be rooted.
Press Enter when you're ready to quit:
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot/G2xRootMacLinux_v0.5$
And that was it. Phone is rooted.
Many Thanks to jnichols959 for the scripts!
Next up CyanogenMod Nightly
Its been almost 5 years since I last used fedora... especially on my desktop... I've become jadded by the age of RHEL/CentOS and the lack of up-to-date software packages which pushed me to Ubuntu... however... the latest releases of Fedora look intriguing. That paired with my latest projects at work and the sheer cool factor of func and how much easier it would make things...
I probably will need to give it a try...
March 19, 2009 Posted by mitch |
ubuntu |
Its no secret that I prefer linux on my desktop... I've been using it since 1996 in one form or another, and its been my primary desktop for atleast the last 4 years, and as a server... is there anything else? Not to say I'm a linux bigot, but I really have a hard time understanding why people like windows... I kinda get the desktop thing, it still just seems to be alot of work, but as a server? In times past the common argument for not using linux on the desktop was that people wanted to get "work" done, instead of the constant tinkering that seemed to happen on linux desktops alot. I will admit that in times past... that was a very real argument. However, over the last three years of using Ubuntu on my desktop... I can honestly say that the tables have turned. Who's "working" and "tinkering" now? I've had to deal with some desktop issues over the last month or two, and they were all a result of Internet Explorer and Windows being unusable by anyone other than someone with Administrator privileges. Spyware, trojans, anti-virus software, and malware removal tools... WHY? Why is it windows guys find this acceptable? Why do you just accept this as "normal"?!?! Are you that naive to think that's just the way it has to be? It ridiculous! I switched my wife to Apple a year or so ago, and I haven't looked back. Its been smooth sailing... I run updates and backups for her and she doesn't have many other problems out side of that. Linux has also gotten incredibly easy to run as well. Things just work, and when they don't (ie: some process gets hung or whatever...) people are "reboot" trained for desktops that they would just reboot a linux desktop and everything would work again. Not that a reboot is required, but to someone thats not linux savy its still simple enough that's what they would try first.
Anyway, what I really wanted to post about was that I upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) to the latest Alpha for Jaunty Jackalope. I know I was taking a risk since I did have a few problems with 8.10 originally when it was released even... but this release seems to be alot more stable even in its alpha stage. I've also removed gkrellm in favor of screenlets with the SysMonitorPlus Screenlet. I never liked the gnome desklets before,as they seemed to eat alot of system resources and didn't really offer much. However, these seem to be much more efficient. I'll post a screen shot when I get my desktop cleaned up.
I did run into one issue with the application Gnome-RDP. That was easily fixed by dumping the database and reimporting it after the new sqlite3 database was created. I will write about any new issues as they arise, but so far so good.
January 14, 2009 Posted by mitch |
ubuntu |
I held off for a couple months and just upgraded my laptop to 8.10, only to find out the wireless is still having issues. I have the Intel 4965AGN mini-pci express, and its really not supported in 8.10 with known issues. All of which are a pain. And a new one I didn't recognize before... Network-Manager will not work on a WPA2-Enterprise network... I've added notes to a bug report regarding the issue... but nothing so far.
However, even with installing the backports modules that is recommended on thinkwiki and other places. It still seems far less stable than 8.04. However, I thought I'd try something else instead of rolling back yet again.... I installed the 2.6.28 kernel from the upcoming Jaunty Jackalope release. While it hasn't fixed my issues with WPA2-Enterprise, it has made 8.10 more stable overall for me. And for that, I will stay on Intrepid Ibex until Jaunty goes beta 2 or so.
I upgraded to Intrepid Ibex long before I should have... Hardy Heron(8.04) is an amazing release, where 8.10 seems to have a lot of fine tuning still needed. I reinstalled back to Hardy yesterday on my laptop because of some issues with wireless (Intel 4965 - 802.11n), suspend wasn't as great any longer, and vpnc wasn't working. I also had upgraded my Mythtv/Router box as well... and now I wish I could take that back, however that ones not an easy reinstall, so I'll work with it for now.
anyway, after my reinstall back to hardy, my vpn is still not working, and I get the error: vpnc: receiving packet: Message too long
After some googling and not turning up anything, I decided to launch wireshark on my laptop and watch while I ran my vpnc-connect. Turns out the Message too long is a rather obscure way of saying that it was getting an ICMP fragment error... the IPSEC packet was set not to fragment and the packet was to large for some MTU setting on my uplink some where. I thought I'd check my router box... which has three nic's in it... one for wireless, one for wired lan, the third is my internet(eth0). Since it was doing the same thing on both wired and wireless, I checked eth0 which is where it plugs into the cable modem. Sure enough the MTU size on eth0 was set to 576 bits. I ran "sudo ifconfig eth0 mtu 1500" and tried my vpn connection again and it connects. My cable has been up and down all week (Thanks Comcast!), it could be an issue with the cable modem or it could just be the new kernel in intrepid ibex... so, for now, I'll add the following line in /etc/rc.local
ifconfig eth0 mtu 1500
this sets the MTU to 1500 on boot(if it wasn't DHCP I could add an mtu 1500 line for the interface in /etc/network/interfaces)
Last night i decided that running the server kernel for the PAE mods isn't really a good fix on my new ThinkPad T61, so I installed the 64bit version of Ubuntu.
I had a few issues with getting the Cisco VPN client installed but found these instructions to help.
1. Untar the VPN Client
# tar xzf vpnclient-linux-4.8.01.0640-k9.tar.gz
2. Download the patch #1
# wget -q http://projects.tuxx-home.at/ciscovpn/patches/vpnclient-linux-2.6.24-final.diff
3. Download the patch #2
# wget -q http://projects.tuxx-home.at/ciscovpn/patches/cisco_skbuff_offset.patch
4. Change to the vpnclient diretory
# cd vpnclient
5. Apply the patch #1
# patch <../vpnclient-linux-2.6.24-final.diff
patching file GenDefs.h
patching file interceptor.c
6. Apply the patch #2
# patch <../cisco_skbuff_offset.patch
patching file frag.c
patching file interceptor.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 646 (offset 16 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 685 (offset 16 lines).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 807 (offset 16 lines).
patching file linuxcniapi.c
patching file linuxkernelapi.c
7. Open your "Makefile" and rename the CFLAGS line to EXTRA_CFLAGS
8. Now the patches have been applied and you can safely install the client
#./vpn_install
My boss decided I should have a company purchased laptop, instead of using my own. Since we had another guy starting at the same time, he wanted us to purchase one for each of us. I went with another Lenovo, but this time a ThinkPad. A ThinkPad T61 with a Core2 duo 2.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, and the WSXGA+ screen, and 250GB drive. I went with the 15" one just for the screen res. I also ordered it preloaded with SuSE. It was $200 cheaper than the one with windows, and I just wanted to add to the tally of the demand for Linux Pre-Loaded. I will be reloading it with Ubuntu once I get it, but not a big deal.
The great news is that it was saying it wasn't going to ship until the 16th of June, well I just got an email saying it shipped today! I ordered 2 Business day shipping which is what I did for my last lenovo, and it came from Hong Kong in 2 days. So, I should have it by thursday, or friday at the latest.
I've been shutting down and booting my laptop since the day I got it, and to be honest, the one thing I like the most about the mac is its ability to hibernate, and just "be there" when you want to use it, otherwise you can shut the lid and leave it for hours or days without plugging it in.
Well, I was up at 3:30 this morning not able to sleep and I thought about it, as I had immediately grabbed the macbook instead of my Lenovo 3000 n100. Even when I was getting up to read more of the online version of the Django book, I knew I wouldn't be doing any actual testing or playing with any django code, unless I installed it on this web server and "tested" it from here. The reason I find it interesting is because I've yet to like to do any form of coding on the Mac, other than the couple times I've played with the new iPhone development tools in XCode. So, I ask myself... why?
I find the reason is simply that it was more convenient, I could take the MBP and open it up, launch firefox (3 beta 5 - its awesome!) and be reading in 10-15 seconds. Instead of having to wait for my lenovo to boot.
after I had read a couple pages worth of django, it made me curious, because I haven't looked for any information about hibernate for my laptop for a long time. Everything else works (well, that I use anyway, I've yet to test the modem, and I don't much care about the finger print scanner.. that will probably be my next quest or possibly fixing the stupid alsa drivers for the sound)
And sure enough, I found an Ubuntu wiki post about my specific laptop, and to get hibernate working all I had to change was add one line to my grub config and reboot. Heres what I changed:
from the file /boot/grub/menu.lst
# defoptions=quiet splash
to this:
# defoptions=quiet splash locale=en_US i8042.reset
sudo grub-update
and reboot.
apparently the part that makes it work is the i8042.reset line, not sure what the locale has to do with it, but the poster on the ubuntu wiki had his locale set as well, so I figured it couldn't hurt.
Sure enough it works and I updated my power setting to start putting my laptop in hibernate mode when I shut the lid.
On that page, it also has the information about fixing the alsa drivers, as well as the much annoying touchpad while typing fixes, which I've also applied. I've yet to experience any issues with random grazes of the touchpad like I used to when I was typing, so I believe it has worked, but it rarely happened at home and was usually while I was at work for some reason so we'll see on that one.
January 29, 2007 Posted by mitch |
ubuntu |
I'm thinking I'm going to move to Ubuntu server instead of debian... I'm not liking the fact I'll have to resetup my mail server however... I hate mail servers... Honestly... this whole spam situation we have, is honestly a mess. SMTP needs a revamp to remove such crap, or to better implement controls to slow it down and make it better to filter. However, if it wasn't profitable (ie: all you dumb users out there that click on the spam emails and especially those of you that *ACTUALLY* buy something from these monsters)
I hate email servers!!!
Well, I was very supprised that Oracle actually has a .deb package for Ubuntu Dapper Drake believe it or not! I didn't, but I was using google, and noticed a page on oracle.com that had ubuntu listed... was wondering what it was about and, I got to the oracle download page with a package for ubuntu for Oracle XE! I was shocked! I mean... all this time and all I had to do was just go to Oracle website and actually look at what they supported. This is new within the last few months as I don't ever recall it being there.... but it may also just be that I wasn't ever looking for Ubuntu when I was going to download something from oracle. Anyway, It installed without much problem, I was missing one package for X, and my swap space was only 1022MB instead of the package required 1024MB, so instead of going through a new install yet again, I just added a swap file off the root partition and added that to my available swap for the install. After that, everything is working perfectly.
I've been wanting to run Ubuntu for a while so I can see what all the talk is about. First I was saying I would after I got my RHCE, well I did that then I still kept putting it off, then I changed jobs and and put it off even more... Now I finally bought my own laptop and I was still contemplating installing Fedora just because I need Oracle for school. Well, Ubuntu works out of the box with the wireless card on my laptop, and fedora doesn't. As my previous post stated, I was having problems getting it to work. And it was turning into a very hacked up install to get it to "sorta" work. When I could get it to work, it was still alot of command line tweaking to get it running and I really don't want to do that all the time. So.... I checked out and to get Xen working on Ubuntu is just installing a custom kernel, which is no big deal, or VMWare also installs on Ubuntu so... I'm set, I reinstalled Ubuntu 6.06(Dapper Drake) At work today, and got it updated... fixed the minor issue with NetworkManager (which just needs to recache a pix directory in gnome?) And so far so good. I got all the multimedia stuff installed but I still need to test it. And I have a pretty slick theme going I'll post a screen shot in a bit. Anyway VMWare is downloading, and since its free, I should be good to go.
Anyway, all in all, I'm liking Ubuntu. I'm not sure if its because of this latest and greatest release or what... but so far its excelent.
