Blog
General articles and random thoughts that don’t fit into the knowledgebase.
Latest Blog Posts
Automatically Backing up a USB Drive with RSYNC (KDE)
USB Drives of all kinds need to be backed up and the best backup is an automatic one (it’s the only way to make sure that it gets done!). So here is one recipe for doing just that using RSYNC and some BASH scripting magic. I’ve split this into two files. You don’t have to do this of course and one may well be better for you. I used two because I can run the second one manually as well.
Windows Mobile applications I use
To round off my mini-series about software I use, I thought I’d do one on Windows Mobile (AKA Pocket PC or PPC). Pocket Informant Keepass PPC Microsoft Reader MobiPocket Reader PIM Backup Pocket Navigator (Memory Map) Laridian Pocket Bible WeatherWatcher Google Maps Tombo Tom Tom Navigator SuperDoku Bejeweled2 There are one or two other small utilities I also use and I have a bespoke WM6 installation that includes some tools. (NB: I’ll add some links and explanations in when I get time).
Windows applications I use
Following on from my post about [what stops me from dropping Windows altogether][1], I thought that I would put together a more complete post about the Windows applications I find myself using. [Memory Map][2] – If ActiveSync is installed, the standard license allows you to push a copy of the Windows Mobile version to a handheld along with extracts of (or whole) maps, POI, routes, etc. It is also best to plan routes and add new POI on the desktop as its easier than the small interface on the handheld.
Enabling VirtualBox access to USB ports (OpenSUSE 11.0)
By default, OpenSUSE 10 & 11 come preconfigured WITHOUT usbfs active. Unlike Ubuntu, everything is ready to go but the fstab setting is “noauto” so it doesn’t seem to get loaded even when VirtualBox wants it. The fix for this is simple and is listed in the [VirtualBox User FAQ][1]. In “/etc/fstab” change the line for usbfs to: usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,busgid=XXX,busmode=0775,devgid=XXX,devmode=0664 0 0 Where XXX is the group id of the vboxusers group which can be discovered in YAST or from the command line: grep vboxusers /etc/group That’s it, no other changes should be needed.
Font sizes and DPI
This seems to be a problem that won’t go away. It seems inordinately hard to get a good looking set of fonts of the correct size. It is not that there aren’t some nice fonts available; there are, at last, some fonts under Linux that often look superior to the Microsoft ones. It’s just that it is difficult to get the whole look and feel correct. This is especially true when mixing Gnome based applications (Firefox and Thunderbird for example) and KDE.
Thoughts on OpenSUSE 11.0
Here are my experiences installing OpenSUSE 11.0 on my desktop PC (I had already successfully installed it on a VM). I opted for a KDE 3 desktop – I don’t like Gnome especially and KDE 4 is not ready for day-to-day use as far as I am concerned. <span style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE 2008-07-17</span>: This may, in the end, have been a hardware issue – I reseated the cables and everything is stable at the moment However, it is easy if you follow the instructions in my previous blog entry.
Linux Applications I use
Finaly got round to installing OpenSUSE 11.0 on my desktop so I thought this would be a good opportunity to keep track of the software I actually use. I’ll edit and update this entry over time. System VirtualBox (virtual machine, cross platform) Wine TurboPrint (paid for printer driver) Makes having a Canon inkjet printer worth-while again! Rather expensive for what it does but it brings the features you would expect from a good, proprietary printer driver.
Flashing the BIOS from Linux (Phoenix BIOS)
I haven’t looked at the BIOS on my ageing ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard for ages – in fact not since I switched it fully to Linux – so how do you update the Phoenix BIOS without DOS or Windows? I don’t bother with a floppy disk any more and creating a DOS boot CD just for this once every x years job is a faff! Well there is an [article here][1] that might help.
VirtualBox, sharing a Linux hosts file system in a Linux guest
When you want to access the hosts file system from a guest OS in VirtualBox, you need to mount the virtual share. However, the default mount: sudo mount -t vboxsf <VBox-share-name> <mount-location> Will mean that only root can write to the shared folders. You need to tweak things to get a system that an ordinary user can write to. Here is the script I use:
#!/bin/bash echo " " echo "Script to mount the host disk under VirtualBox" echo " " USR=whoami SHARE=‘Host-Root’ MNT="/home/$USR/VBoxHostRoot" echo " Mounting $SHARE to $MNT .
Development Virtual Machine (VirtualBox)
I’ve been thinking ahead to a change of job recently. Knowing that I’ll be getting a new Windows based laptop and needing to have development capabilities and having developed a taste for Linux 😉 I’ve used my favourite VM tool [VirtualBox][1] (now owned by Sun) to create a sparlkly new OpenSUSE 11.0 virtual machine complete with Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc. as well as office tools such as Open Office, mind/concept-mapping and diagraming applications.
Keeping information secure but accessible across platforms
One of the issues with Linux is that I can’t use it under all circumstances. In particular I usually have to work with Windows at work. So I need cross-platform tools, especially now that I also make extensive use of a smartphone/PDA. So here is a timely post – with the number of people in UK government departments carelessly loosing private or secret information, how do we keep this stuff secure while still being accessible from different platforms?
Changing backspace to go back through history (FireFox for Linux)
Us old-time Windows bods get used to our keyboard shortcuts I’m afraid. One of the most useful is using the backspace key in the browser to go back through the browsers history. Unfortunately, this is not the default under Linux (alt-left arrow is the default). FireFox has an easy way to fix this. Put “about:config” in the address bar and “backspace” in the search entry. You should see the entry “browser.
What did I install? (For OpenSUSE)
One thing that I didn’t get around to doing since I moved from Ubuntu was to work out how to make a note of what has been installed. This is slightly complicated by the fact that you can install stuff straight from an RPM file as well as through YAST (from the repositories or 1-click links). Well, I finally got round to working it out and here is a summary. To see what you have done with the YAST installers, just look at the log!
What Linux system files might need editing?
Whilst great strides have been made by the Linux community to provide GUI’s for many tasks, it is still a command line driven OS at it’s heart. This, of course, is one of its strengths as everything can be scripted too. However, for none IT techies, it is very daunting. Here I’m listing some of the system files I’ve had (or at least wanted) to change by hand. It’s a very quick reference, largely for my own benefit should I need to rebuild my system.
Showing a less than symbol in a Blogger post
This took me ages to sort out so here is a reminder. If you want to post a less-than symbol in a Blogger entry (for example in some code or a math formula), you cannot use the standard HTML entity “<” as Blogger cannot cope with it for some reason. Instead use the hexadecimal equivalent “& # 60 ;” (NB: I’ve put spaces in so that Blogger doesn’t turn it back into a symbol!
