Archive for the ‘Debian’ Category

The QuickCam c500 is supported out of the box in Debian Squeeze by the UVC driver. However, one issue I have encountered is the built in microphone is auto detected by alas and overrides my sound card, forcing me to issue the command (as root):

alsa force-reload

to solve this problem edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and add:

alias snd-card-0 snd_hda_intel
alias snd-card-1 snd_usb_audio

Reboot and hopefully all is well.

NOTE: you may have to change snd_hda_intal to match whatever sound device your computer has.

I recently hobbled together a computer from old parts i had laying around for a year or more. One of the things I decided to do with this Frankenstein was to use it as a file server. I had also upgraded my Windows partition from XP to Windows 7. The last time I tried SAMBA, was many years ago when I was still a green newbie to Linux and do not remember if I ever got it to work then.  This time around things worked smoothly and this is how I did it.

sudo aptitude install samba
gpasswd -a user sambashare
smbpasswd -a user
sudo mkdir /home/samba/share
sudo mkdir /home/samba/share/profiles
sudo mkdir /home/samba/share/netlogon
sudo chgrp sambashare /home/samba/
sudo chgrp sambashare /home/samba/share
sudo chgrp sambashare /home/samba/netlogon
sudo chgrp sambashare /home/samba/profiles
sudo chmod 775 /home/samba
sudo chmod 775 /home/samba/share
sudo chmod 775 /home/samba/profiles
sudo chmod 775 /home/samba/netlogon
sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.back

at the bottom of /samba/smb.conf add (as root):

[sambashare]
path = /home/samba/share
valid users = @sambashare
read list = @sambashare
write list = @sambashare
force group = sambashare
read only = No
create mask = 0774
directory mask = 0775

then start and stop the samba server:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba stop
sudo /etc/init.d/samba start

In Windows 7 open Windows Explorer and you should see your linux computers host name. clicking on it will prompt you to give the user name and pasword created above. Now you should have a blank folder called sambashare, try moving things in there. If you see the files show up on your linux box then everything worked.you will also see your user’s home directory but will not be allowed to write to it.

NOTE: this was done with Debian Squeeze, however the same processes should apply to Debian Lenny.

Firefox 3.6 released to day. There are some major tweaks under the hood that will go largely unnoticed by most users. However the speed of the browser has been improved upon. The most noticeable implementation is the new persona feature which is a new theme framework that overlays an image to the interface, a method I have seen implemented on other browsers in the past as a third party extension.  I made an updated package for Debian 32bit (i386) and placed it in the Oojah!Teach Repository for public use.

There are two kinds of Debian repositories, automatic and trivial archives. The difference between the two is a matter of complexity. Automatic archives are best for repositories which need to manage different architectures. Trivial archives are best for simple repositories which only hold a few packages and in one architecture type.  I only have a few packages all of which are for the i386 architecture, so I opted for the simpler trivial archive structure.

First I copied all my packages tot he location on my public server space where I wanted the repository to be stored. I create a directory called binary and copy the deb files into it.  I issue the following command:

dpkg-scanpackages /path/to/repo/ /dev/null | gzip -9c > Packages.gz

(replace /path/to/repo with appropriate directory)

Now I edited my /etc/apt/sources.list file and entered:

deb file:///path/to/repo

or if it is on a remote server

deb http://example.com/path-to-repo ./

I updated my repositories with apt-get update, fired up synaptic and searched for one of my packages. When I found it I installed it.

NOTE: I found this PDF which explains both and gives details instructions on both

NOTE: I also had to edit the Packages file inside of Packages.gz and remove the paths from my packages filenames when I was using a remote server.

NOTE: you can now use The Public Oojah!Tech Repositories for Debian

as root

apt-get install numlockx

edit /etc/gdm/Init/Default and go to the bottom of the text file where it says exit 0 and add the following lines above it:

if [ -x /usr/bin/numlockx ]; then
/usr/bin/numlockx on
fi