TW Blog Post
November 5th, 2007
Using a new feature from TiddlyWiki, I can write blog posts offline in TiddlyWiki and then automatically upload them by clicking on a single label. Post uploads automatically into TwH Blog. Nice feature!!
Upgrading WordPress to 2.0.5
November 17th, 2006
I just finished upgrading this blog software - WordPress - to version 2.0.5 and looking at some different themes to use. I really like three column themes and finally decided on the one you see here called AndyBlue. I’m also using a new editor called ChenPress, to write this post. It has a lot of features and is highly recommended. I got it because the description said it would be easier to upload images, something I want to do more of. I uploaded the image below as a test and the editor worked like a charm. Very clear and easy way to upload images. Will write more about it as I explore more of its features. BTW, it’s based on the FCK Editor, so is a well-known editor.
Meanwhile enjoy my favorite picture of my two daughters - Jessie and Alyssa.
Getting Back to Linux
October 26th, 2006
After several months during which we made a long journey to Vietnam to adopt our second daughter, I’ve finally been able to get back to working with and learning more about Linux. I plan to chronicle my experience on my wiki - TwH Wiki. On the wiki, I’ll include an in depth look at how I’ve set up Linux, what problems I encountered along with their solution and a description of the software that I’m using on my Linux boxes.
As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, my goal is to try and convert from Windows to Linux as much as possible. That means, I’ll be searching for Linux software that replicates the Windows software I’m currently using. The ultimate objective is to see if I can eliminate the need for a Windows machine although that may require using a Windows emulator on Linux for a couple of programs. But, that is what this exercise is all about. So let’s see what happens.
I plan to use my blog to talk about what I’m doing and planning on implementing, but to not go into great detail here on the blog. That will be reserved for the wiki. The blog can be used as an overview to see what’s happening with the wiki.
For now, I’ve been working on setting up a basic network that works equally well with Linux and Windows boxes. I’m running one Windows machine and two Linux machines. Using Samba, I want to have a reliable network that includes all three machines. I’m also figuring out which support programs are needed on the Linux boxes for I can more easily keep track of things about Linux that I’ve learned and also save important information such as links to valuable web sites about Linux.
The bottom line: I’ll be working on the wiki to describe how I set up Samba and also talk about two programs that I find essential — BasKet and Synergy .
AmaroK 1.4 - Music Player
June 7th, 2006
I love to listen to music when I run, but haven’t been a big fan of listening to music on my computer. With AmaroK that has started to change. AmaroK is a music player that is styled much like Windows Media Player, but I find it easier to use. I really like its interface, which is able to retrieve a lot of info about the song that is playing.
I first started by using the version (1.2) that came loaded on my Debian distribution. But, I quickly discovered that it wouldn’t play MP4 files. Fortunately, version 1.4 is available. You can get it at http://amarok.kde.org/.
I downloaded the latest AmaroK Deb package and used Kpackage in start the install. It didn’t install at first because there were six or seven dependencies that needed to be resolved. I wasn’t sure how to do this automatically. In fact, I thought that was what packaging was all about - the package would install all of the dependencies, if I said OK. I couldn’t figure out how to do an automatic update of all of the required dependent packages so I did it manually. I either checked my distribution DVD for the correct package or downloaded the updated package from the AmaroK site. I just kept trying to install AmaroK until all of the dependency problems went away.
That was working fine until the last three dependencies. Then it became apparent that the last three were interdependent. One wouldn’t install without the other being present. I finally did an apt-get install package1 package2 package3 and that solved the problem. All three packages installed at once and AmaroK worked! I was really surprised that this technique was successful, fully expecting to have some dependency problems.
The lesson from this exercise is that I need to become more familiar and comfortable with apt. Kpackage works well, but sometimes, you have to dig a little deeper and be able to execute the commends from the command line with specific options.
Now that AmaroK is working I find that I’ve been using it quite a bit. It has a clean interface and I love the capability to search for and display info about the current song that is playing. I highly recommend that you give it a try!
klik - An Easy Way to Check Out Linux Software
May 24th, 2006
While perusing a Linux forum yesterday, I found an interesting capability for Linux called klik. By following some simple install instructions (wget klik.atekon/client/install -O - | sh) you can install klik. Then you use the klik software to access the klik website where you can select a 'package' to download. The package is actually an image file that contains all of the necessary software to run the program. But, it is downloaded and installed as a single file, which you can execute using the klik software. The downlod and execution is much like a Windows download and install. It's a nice way to try software before installing it.
Although the concept is great, I did find that it didn't work in all cases for me and I had a couple of problems getting the basics of klik to work. When I tried to install klik as root, it didn't work. I think it was looking for certain files connected to a browser, but can't be sure because the error messages were pretty cryptic. But, I had no problems installing klik as a 'normal' user and then it seemed to work fine. I was able to download packages and try them on my system. The packages are all stored as a single .cmg file in /home/user/desktop so it's real easy to delete them when you want to get rid of them.
Another feature is that klik automatically inserts the programs that it 'installs' in the Kmenu so you don't have to go looking for them. As I said, it's clearly patterned after a Windows install. I had a problem with one app that needed to be run as Root. But, it was easy enough to open the menu editor, find the path to the klik app and open that user the Run as Root command. I also noticed that klik automatically creates desktop icons for each program that it installs. Again, very similar to a Windows install.
Setting Up Sound
May 9th, 2006
Since I had installed Debian sound hadn't been working. Every now and then a dialog box would pop up saying something about sound, but I had been ignoring until I had more time to explore what was wrong. Yesterday, I deciided to see if I could get sound to work on my Linux box.
My initial research indicated that the best way to get sound was to use ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). I checked Kpackage to see what was installed on my system and saw that some of the basic ALSA packages were already installed. I also saw a package that wasn't installed whose description said it was only needed for kernels before 2-4.*. I mistakenly thought that I had a 2.6 kernel so figured that I didn't need that package. (More on that later.)
The first thing I did was determine exactly which sound card I had on my system. I had the info from what I had found using Windows, but I also wanted to find out how to get that kind of info using Linux. Turns out the command lspci will do that. For my sound card, it listed "Multimedia audio controller: Aureal Semiconductor Vortex 1 (rev 02)." I wanted the Linux terminology because I've discovered that sometimes there is a difference and I was about to go searching for a sound card driver. The ALSA Project has a web site that is very comprehensive. The site has a link to a driver database and I was able to determine that my sound card was supported. Following this quick install guide , I started to see if I could install the driver for my sound card. It was during this process, when some of the commands didn't work, that I finally figured out that I didn't have the 2.6 kernel, but rather a 2.4 kernel.
This revelation took me back to Kpackage to install the ALSA package whose description said it ws needed on Linux installs before the 2.6 kernel. The package, ALSA-Modules-2.4.27-3-686, installed with no problems. Once it was successfully installed, however, I didn't know what to do. This is another one of those 'Linux things' that drives Windows converts crazy. Something gets installed but there is no indication of what happened, no desktop icons installed, nothing added to menus, etc. I reverted to the most logical step - reboot.
Rebooting was exactly the right step in this case. After signing in, when the KDE splash screen was displayed, a beautiful (at least to my ears at the time) sound played. And that was it. Sound was now working. The only other point I want to make is that my CD drive is not mounting automatically. I know this because once the sound was working on my Linux box, I immediately tried XMMS, the media player. At first, it didn't want to access the CD drive. I opened Konqueror to see if I could access the drive and list the files on the CD. When I did that, the drive mounted and all was well with XMMS.
So, I need to work on auto-mounting drives — CD, various hard drive partitions, shared network drives, etc — on boot up. But before I do that I want to figure out how to get read/write access to my NTFS partitions.
Printing from Linux to a Windows Shared Printer
May 7th, 2006
After a couple of weeks of trying various configuration combinations, I finally was able to print from my Linux box to a shared printer on my Win XP box. It took a long time and I'm still not entirely sure what I did to make it work. As I've mentioned before, this continues to be one of the disadvantages of Linux — it's very hard to get everything configured correctly. That said, I'm working on an eight year old Dell so that may be some of the problem. Also, my printer a Canon i960 didn't have a Linux print driver, which further complictes the problem. But, that is still the main difference between Windows and Linux. Windows provides a tremendous range of support for hardware and it generally automatically finds and sets up the hardware. Linux isn't there yet, but is improving. Anyway back to my printer problem.
After getting the Linux and XP boxes networked together using Samba, I embarked on the task of trying to print to a shared printer on the XP box from the Linux box. Most of the documentation made this sound easy, especially since I was planning on using Samba and CUPS, the defacto standard printing system for Linux.
At first, the set up went normal. I used Debian and Windows Shared Printing mini-HowTo to get started. Everything was going fine. Samba was able to recognize the shared printers on my XP box and I figured it would be quite simple to use CUPS to set up a shared printer. Then I ran into printer driver problems. Since there was no designated driver for the Canon i960, I guessed at a couple just to see if they would work. Nothing.
So, I searched the web and found this reference for getting a useable printer driver for the Canon i960. Once I'd downloaded the driver, I had to figure out how to get CUPS to recognize it. That took me into the world of Foomatic and Gimp-print. But, I wasn't real successful at figuring out how they work. Eventually, I was able to insert the Canon PPD file into the correct place (/usr/share/cups/model) so I could set up the printer in CUPS using this driver. After doing that, still no luck at printing a test page over the network.
I decided that maybe the print driver wasn't correct and the only way to check that was to connect the printer to the Linux box and install it locally. So, I made the big shuffle, installed the printer and tried to print a test page. At last, a small success. The test page printed. Now I was on the right track. I had the correct printer driver. Samba could see my printer shares on the Win XP box. Everything should work, right? After reconnecting the printer to the Win XP box and reconfiguring Samba and CUPS to recognize a Win XP printer, still no luck. I'd print a test page in CUPS and everything would look fine. The CUPS job page showed the job being completed and there was no indication that the file being printed was not being transmitted over the network.
In my several days of frustration, I also tried using KDEPrint, which you can access at Menu, Settings. It's called Printing Manager. YOu can also get to it from the KDE Control Center under Peripherals. When configuring printers under KDEPrint, there are a lot more choices for printer drivers than with CUPS. But, I still wasn't able to print to the XP shared printer.
Much online research turned up any number of variations on how to configure CUPS and Samba for printing from Linux to a Win printer. I kept fiddling with the setting until finally after about a week of trying, it worked. Unfortunately, I can't say what was the exact setting that made this happen. I had hoped this blog would be more definitive, but in this case it was just not possible. I suspect others end up in the same situation because when searching online, I found many post in numerous forums where setting up printers was a problem. About all I can do for anyone who is looking for answers is post my /etc/samba/smb.conf file at the bottom of this post.
Based on my experience, I can only offer two pieces of advice. First, if you're running Linux and in the market for a new printer, do some research first and find out which one is best supported for Linux. The second is to be prepared to spend some time learning about printers and printer drivers if you're using a printer that doesn't have a lot of Linux support. I hope my configuration 'holds,' but I expect there will be more problems in the future. That is normally the case when a problem gets solved, but there is no apparent reason for the solution. But, heh, that is why I'm spending this time to learn about Linux and all of this troubleshooting and research is helping me feel much more comfortable with Linux. Next, I want to delve into file systems and see if I can't figure out how to read and write from Linux to an NTFS partition. Also, sound isn't working on my Linux box so I'll have to research that, too. Stay tuned! Will let you know what happens.
My smb.conf file:
# Global parameters
[global]
workgroup = HOME
server string = %h server (Samba %v)
obey pam restrictions = Yes
passdb backend = tdbsam, guest
passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
passwd chat = *Enter\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n .
syslog = 0
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 1000
printcap name = cups
dns proxy = No
wins support = Yes
panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d
printing = cups
print command =
lpq command = %p
lprm command =
[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/spool/samba
printer admin = root, @ntadmins
create mask = 0700
guest ok = Yes
printable = Yes
browseable = No
[print$]
comment = Printer Driver Download Area
path = /etc/samba/drivers
write list = @ntadmins, root
guest ok = Yes
[canon-local-working]
comment = CANON BJC-8200
path = /var/spool/samba
printer admin = root, @ntadmins
read only = No
create mask = 0700
guest ok = Yes
printable = Yes
printer name = canon-local-working
use client driver = Yes
oplocks = No
share modes = No
Using Samba in File Managers
April 28th, 2006
In my last post, I described how I set up and configured Samba. Now it is time to see how to use Samba, both on the Windows and the Linux boxes.
First, to the Windows box. Chapter 3 of the O'Reilly online Samba book offers a comprehensive discussion on how to set up a Windows client for use with Samba. If you're familiar with networking in Windows, this is not a difficult process. Basically, you just have to make sure that TCP/IP is active on the Windows box and then open Windows Explorer and look in My Network Places. Of course, when I first looked in My Network Places, the Linux box wasn't there. Not to worry said the documentation because a common problem is that browsing services are not set up correctly. The simple fix is to select Start, Run and enter the name of the Samba server along with the shared directory. So, I tried that by entering \\debian\shared_data and a Windows Explorer window opened showing a list of files in the shared data directory on my Linux box. Success! I only had to do the Run \\debian\shared_data once. Windows remembers the connection and it now appears everytime I open Windows Explorer under My Network Places as a folder.
Note that you can also just type in the name of the server, ie \\debian, and that will also work. If Run \\debian doesn't work, you can also try accessing the Samba server using its IP address. Just type \\192.168.0.40 in Run and that should work.
OK. Now over to the Linux box to see if I could access my Windows shared directories. I found this to be more confusing, but that's probably because I haven't mastered (even a little bit) the concept of mounting drives/directories in Linux. Back in the O'Reilly book in Chapter 5, there is a good discussion on how to set up UNIX clients when using Samba. One section in that chapter talks about mounting the smbfs file system. After a little experimenting, I was able to mount my Windows shared drive on the Linux box using this command smbmount //windows_box/shared_directory /home/tim/mnt/test. This command takes a directory called 'shared_directory' from a Windows box named 'windows_box' and mounts it on the Linux box in a directory called /home/time/mnt/test. Once the command has run, you can launch a file manager in Linux, navigate to /home/tim/mnt/test and access the files from your Windows shared directory in Linux. One very important caveat that took me some time to discover is that you cannot include a '/' at the end of the names, ie //windows_box/shared_directory/, in this command. If you do, you will get an error message.
Another way to mount shared drives is by using LinNeighborhood. You can access it at Menu, Debian, Apps, Net. When it opens, you may or may not see anything in the main window. If nothing is there, try Add from the Toolbar. You'll get a dialog box asking for machine, group and IP address. To connect to my Windows box, I just type in the IP address and click on Query. After doing that the name of my Windows box shows up in the main windows. Now, right click again, this time on a specific machine name, ie Win_XP, and select Scan as User. This time you should see a listing of your shared resources on Win_XP. Now that LinNeighborhood has found all of the shared resources, you can also use the program to mount the resources.
To mount a drive, highlight the item that you want to mount, right click and select mount. A dialog box pops up with all the options that you can select to mount the drive, the most important being where you want the drive to be mounted. Select your desired options and click on Mount. The mounted drives will be displayed in the bottom section of the LinNeighborhood screen.
To fine tune LinNeighborhood, I suggest you look at Prefs and set them to your liking. When I first started trying to figure out Samba and networking on Linux some of the preferences didn't make much sense to me. I have to admit that the first tab in Prefs, Scan is still a bit of a mystery to me. I input my workgroup name, set the WINS server IP and checked the "always scan as user" option, but left everything else as it was. The Programs tab is self-explanatory and demonstrates that LinNeighborhood is actually just a GUI front-end for the command that I discussed above. The Miscellaneous tab allows you to input a default user and save a password for that user. There are also other options dealing with mounting drives. I haven't explored/tested all of them, but am attracted to the "Memorize Mounted Shares/Remount on nex Startup" option. If that does what it sounds like, then I could set up my shares to be mounted where I want them and check this option and not have to worry about mounting the shared drives again. The last tab in Prefs deals with Post Mount and gives you the option to run a file manager after mounting and, if so, which one.
So, it looks like Samba is up and running, at least at the very basic level. I can access files on my Linux box from my Win Xp box and vice versa, which was my goal in this exercise. The key will be to see how long everything "holds" together. My experience has been, that after a couple of reboots on either machine, the network stops working and I have to spend time reconfiguring it. Time will tell. Once I determine that this setup is stable, I want to look into sharing printers across the network. Something else to work on and report about in a future post.
Setting Up Samba
April 25th, 2006
As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the reaons I'm setting up this Linux box is to see if I can make do the normal things that I do with Windows XP. Of course, that means I need to be able to network my Linux box with other Win XP boxes. The easiest way to do that is with Samba.
Samba is generally installed with most Linux distros and mine was no exception. i searched in Kpackage for Samba under installed packages and was able to determine that it was installed. Next step was to configure Samba.
There is plenty of online documentation for Samba. I recommend picking one or two of the more extensive documents and staying with them. They offer step-by-step approaches to installing Samba, starting with basic networking capability and building up as each cabability is checked and confirmed working. Two sites that I used are Using Samba, an online O'Reillly book, and The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide. Either one provides more than enough info to get started.
Both texts have you working from a command line, which I find is common for most Linux documentation. I don't mind doing that, but I do have to admit, that I think it continues to be a disadvantage for Linux since many new users will be looking for graphic interfaces like they are accustomed to in Windows. The interesting fact is that for many Linux functions, there now are graphical interfaces, but it seems more difficult to find solid documentation on them.
I primarily used the O'Reilly book, Using Samba, and followed its approach to get Samba configured. It does a good job of leading you through the various config files that need to be checked to insure Samba will function correctly. My biggest challenge was find the Samba config file. it wasn't in the directory that the book suggested and my efforts at using the Find command from the command line didn't work either. I finally remembered that I had taken some notes from a previous Samba installation and discovered the smb.conf file in /etc/samba/, where most config files are stored. I should have looked there earlier, but the book had me pointed in another completely direction.
One nice feature of Samba is that there is a browser-based graphical configuration program called Swat. You can access it by typing http://localhost:901 in a browser. The first time I tried to access it didn't work, even though I had followed the steps to ensure the config files were properly set. Then i discovered that Swat is not automatically installed with the Samba package and that I needed to install it. Back to Kpackage to install Swat and everything started to work.
I used Swat to set up the basic network configuration suggested in the documentation, which sets up a shared directory on the Linux box and nothing else. I followed the book's recommended steps to check that the network was working. Most of this included command line work that was reasonably straight-forward. I ran across a couple of commands, most notably nmblookup, that never seemed to work the way that the book indicated they should. The problem wasn't the network, but the syntax of the command. In any event, I was able to verify that a basic netwrok connection between my Linux box and Win XP box existed and that both machines saw each other. (You can probably tell that I'm not a real network expert. I know just enough to be dangerous. I should also add that i've had a problem with my Win XP network not being able to see machine names so that coul be contributing to the nmblookup problems. If you have similar problems, just try accessing the various machines using IP addresses. It's worked fine for me and takes one more variable out of the equation.)
I should add here that the documentation also includes a section on setting up the Win XP client so everything you need can be found in a single source.
The key command, in my estimation, is smbclient, which displays shared resources and lets you know if the network is set up properly. My Linux box is named Debian so I tried smbclient -L debian, which should show me all the shared resouces on my Linux box. It did. Then I tried the same thing for my Win XP box, named WinXP. That also worked and it displayed all of the shared directories on the Win XP box. One note here is using passwords. Win XP wants encrypted passwords so be sure to set that option in Swat. Also, you need to configure a password file in Linux, which the documentation explains. If you don't do that, the network will probably not work. The documentation recommends using the same password for both machines, Linux and XP. For a while, I couldn't get smbclient -L debian to work. I found an online reference that suggested trying smbclient -L debian -N, which allows an anonymous access to the selected machine. If you've having access/password problems, I recommend trying smbclient with the -N (no password) option. I discovered later, that the basic Samba configuration file has line in its [global] section the says "invalid users = root." After I commented that line out (by putting a ; in front of it), the smbclient -L debian command worked fine.
Another very useful place to check out your Samba setup is from the official Samba How-To called The Samba Checklist. You can view it online here or you can also find it in your Linux documentation. In my distro it is located at /usr/share/doc/samba/diagnosis.html. This is a very nicely written diagnostic checklist that takes you step-by-step through a typical Samba setup and tells you how to check to make sure everything is working. If a check fails, the documentation offers detailed advice on what may possibly be wrong and how to correct. I highly recommend it.
So, from the command line, it looks like my network is working fine and both machines can see each other. Now how do I translate that into being able to access the files on the shared resources through 'normal' file managers, both in Linux and Windows? That will be the subject of my next post.
Installing Firefox from a Tar.Gz
April 22nd, 2006
In my last post, I talked about installing Firefox using a Debian package and Kpackage. But, this method provided me with an older version of Firefox than I wanted. So, I went searching for a newer version that was Linux compatible. Once I found it, I then had to learn how to download and install software in Linux that was in a tar.gz format. tar.gz is similar to the familiar zip file format in Windows and all it means is that files have been compressed into a single file.
Finding the new version of Firefox was easy. I just used Google to search and, of course, the first hit was on Firefox's home page. Everything was normal until I got to the download links. Where should I save the download? One thing I always do on my Windows setups is to save all of my downloads in one directory. That way I know where they are and they don't get scattered all over my computer. Once again, I turned to BrunoLinux.com and used his recommandation that download files be placed somewhere in the /home directory. Since I'm logging as tim, the logical directory for me was /home/tim/downloads. That was easy enough and the download using Firefox proceeded just like any download in Windows using Firefox.
Now the question was how to install the new version of Firefox. I used Konqueror in the file manager mode to navigate to my /downloads directory. I double clicked on the file, thinking that maybe a dialog similar to Winzip would open. I did see all of the files contained in the compressed package, but there were listed in the same Konqueror window. At first, I thought that perhaps the files had been extracted in /directory. But, apparently, that is just the way they are displayed because I closed Konqueror and came back to /download and the only file in the directory was Firefox-1.5.0.2.tar.gz, the original download file. Next step was to try a right click. The resulted in a dropdown menu with many choices. Most were the standard - cut, copy, move, delete, properties, etc. But, the one that caught my eye was Ark. What could that be? One thing I love (and hate) about Linux is the names of programs. They generally make sense once you know what they do, but the first time you see them, one is never sure. Anyway, one option was to "Preview in Archiver" so I tried that. After I did that all of the files contained in the package were once again listed in the Konqueror window. There appeared to be slight difference in the way that the files were displayed, but other than that I couldn't discern any difference. Clicking on the "Preview in Archiver" option took longer to execute, however, so I suspect that option was actually unpacking the files where the double click was probably just displaying the file structure in the compressed package without decompressing all of them.
In either case, this still wasn't helping me get the files decompressed and placed somewhere in my directory strucuture where I could execute the new version of Firefox. So, I tried right clicking on the original download file and selecting the Ark option. That caused a new window to open displaying the contents of the download file unpacked. It looked similar to the Winzip I was familiar with from Windows. Under the Action menu was an option to extract. Seemed like I was getting somewhere no. The only question was where to extract the files. Back to BrunoLinux and his file structure tip. From his tip, there were several choices of a directory named /bin. Rather than repeat the tip, here a link to it - The Tree. This has been invaluable to me to help organize my files and keep straight in my mind where everything is stored. It's one of the aspects of Linux that I've found the most confusing in the past.
Using Bruno's advice, I extracted the Firefox package to the /usr/local/bin directory, which is the place that Bruno describes as "programs the user installs himself." Now all I had to do was find the executable file that would start my new version I Firefox. I navigated to /usr/local/bin saw a new subdirectory called Firefox. I looked in that directory and found a shell script named "Firefox." When I clicked on that version 1.5.0.2 of Firefox opened. I was in business. Now all I had to do was open Menu Editior and update the link to Firefox and my access to the latest version of Firefox was complete.
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