One click broadcom(BCM4306) WiFi driver installation

I had to reinstall Ubuntu today and I was dreading the WiFi driver installation, fortunately I found this Ubuntu forum entry. The script allows you to detect and install the driver automatically. It saved me a lot of  time and frustration. I think this should be included in Gutsy Gibbon when it is released.

DIY Laptop stand from an old suitcase

I had a lot of time on my hands today and decided to do some cleaning. I found this old suitcase that I had to throw out. I decided to make a laptop stand from the stuff I scavenged off the old suitcase. I ripped out the retractable handle and the wheels, I also ripped out the plastic legs that were on the suitcase. I then assembled all of them except the wheels into a triangular shaped stand with some wood screws. Here are the results of my half hour of work .

The suitcase.

The finished stand.

finally done!!!.

Del.icio.us link checker

Being a Internet pack rat has its downsides, you squirrel away all these links in your del.icio.us account over time and then you check on a link one day and find out that it is dead.

Fresh delicious is a neat tool that remedies exactly such a situation. Fresh delicious is written in Java and runs on any platform that supports JVM. Once you enter your username and password fresh delicious will check each and every link in your collection and report back on pages that have been moved. This is the best tool that I have seen so far that allows you to organize your bookmarks and weed out ones that don’t work anymore. The official del.icio.us Firefox extension should have a feature like this.

PC games that would look good on the Wii

The Nintendo Wii with its new controller scheme is all set to blast the competition into oblivion. Now that Resident evil 4 has been re-released for the Wii maybe other game development companies will follow . There are a few games that really capture your imagination and stick in your mind, Here is a list of such PC games that would really jazz up the Wii.

1. Commandos

2. Diablo II

3. Blood II

4. Carnivores

5. Doom (This game is here to answer all the questions about “but does it play doom?”)

6. Sanitarium

7. Call of Cthulhu

8. Unreal

9. Half life

10. and the old favorite Quake.

cant wait for the summer releases am sick and tired of playing Redsteel .

Howto fix “E: Archive directory /var/cache/apt/archives/partial is missing” error.

I was running low on disk space so I went and downloaded baobab a visual tool to show how muh space is being occupied by various directories on the file system. I saw that the /var/cache/apt/archives was using up a lot of space and since most of the directory  contents were .deb files I decided to delete this files, the next day I tried running apt and got the error

“E:Archive directory /var/cache/apt/archives/partial is missing.”

To fix this error make sure you recreate the archives folder as well as the partial folder. open a console window and type

1. cd /var/cache/apt

2. Type ls check to make sure archives folder is displayed in case you dont see the archives folder create the folder

 sudo mkdir archives if you already have the archives folder then skip this step.

3. type cd archives , create the partial folder by typing sudo mkdir partial

4.   type sudo apt-get autoclean to make sure apt is working properly.

Thats it you should now be able to get apt to work properly.

How-to fix errors with the .dmrc file

After using Ubuntu over the last 30 days without any errors or problems I encountered an error “User’s $HOME/.dmrc” file is being ignored. This prevents the default session and language from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permission. User $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writable by other users” after logging in today.

I tried googling for a fix, most sites asked me to change the file permissions to 644 as stated in the error message. I tried this fix and it did not work. After some more searching I came across this French site which had the solution.

To fix this error try the following

1. open a console window and at the prompt type the following to change the file permissions and hit enter

chmod 644 ~/.dmrc

2. type the following command to change the ownership of the file and hit enter

sudo chown your_login_name /home/your_login_name/.dmrc

3. The final step is to assign permissions on the home directory such that it is accessible only to you ( this step is very important)

sudo chmod 700 /home/your_login_name

This should fix the problem and you should never see the error message again.

Using a CanoScan LIDE 25 with sane and Ubuntu

In fiesty fawn support for CanoScan LIDE 25 is broken. The scanner gets identified properly and goes thru the motions of scanning and has an progress indicator on the xsane window but the scanned image results in a blank window. This is a documented bug and might be fixed with the next release.

a work around to this is to use the command line version of sane, here is how to do it

1. plug the scanner into the USB port and run the following command “sane-find-scanner “
you should see the follwing lines as pat of the output

found USB scanner (vendor=0×04a9 [Canon], product=0×2220 [CanoScan], chip=LM9832/3) at libusb:001:002
# Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by
# SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend’s manpage.

2. type in “scanimage -L” at the terminal. you should see the follwing lines as part of the output

device `plustek:libusb:001:002′ is a Canon LiDE25 USB flatbed scanner
3. you can now use the following command to get a scan

“scanimage –format=tiff –mode=Gray –depth=16 –resolution=100dpi -l 0 -t 0 -x 215 -y 215 >> test”

you can set different options for the mode, depth and resolution to get better quality scans. to see the various options available try the“scanimage –help” command.

Update : I found a better method of fixing the scanner issue on this site

While the solution provided fixes any scanner broken during an update from previous versions to feisty the solution also works for fresh install of feisty as well.

here is how you fix the scanner in a nutshell

1. install scanbuttond using apt
2. list usb devices : lsusb
3. run scanbuttond : scanbuttond -r 1000000
3. list available imaging devices : scanimage -L
4. Test basic scanner operation : scanimage -T -d (Append output of scanimage -L here)

for e.g for my scanner the command looks like this “scanimage -T -d plustek:libusb:001:002″

5. Test gui scanner operation : xsane

The above link gives you more detailed instructions, you should refer to that site if you didn’t understand the 5 steps above.

Disabling drive mount icons on the Ubuntu desktop

The ubuntu desktop features icons of all the mounted drives and removable media, while this is a great feature it becomes an eyesore when you have lots of partitions or if you have several removable devices plugged int your computer. The desktop begins to get cluttered and begins to look unsightly, as a work around you can disable the mount icons. Here is how you do it

1. open terminal and type in “gconf-editor” and hit enter.

2. on the screen that pops up, look for a key called “apps” (this will be the first item on the left). Click on this item to expand it.

3. look for a key called “nautilus”, click on “nautilus” to expand it. click on the key called “desktop”.

4. on the right hand side of this window look for an entry called volumes_visible, uncheck this item and you are done.

Here is a screen shot of what the above procedure looks like

How to enable SD slot on a ZV6000 laptop running Ubuntu

I recently switched from fedora core 6 to Ubuntu and over the past few weeks have had no problems with the installation except with the SD slot. I found a link on the Ubuntu forum that has a small script that would enable the SD slot.

Here is how to enable the SD slot on any laptop that has an SD slot based on the Texas Instruments PCI6411/6421/6611/6621/7411/7421/7611/7621 chip-sets.

1. Create a file name sdhci.sh on your desktop with the following code

#!/bin/sh# from:#http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1614392#post1614392## Get lsb functions

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

LSPCI_ADDRESS=`lspci | grep "FlashMedia" | cut -d " " -f 1`

case "$1" in

start)

log_begin_msg "Configuring card reader"

modprobe fakephp || return 1

setpci -s ${LSPCI_ADDRESS} 86.b=90

setpci -s ${LSPCI_ADDRESS} 4c.b=02 # FlashMedia SD disable

setpci -s ${LSPCI_ADDRESS} 04.b=06 # SDHCI Mem+ BusMaster+

setpci -s ${LSPCI_ADDRESS} 88.b=01 # SDHCI DMA enable

modprobe sdhci || return 1

log_end_msg $?

;;

stop)

log_begin_msg "Shutting down card reader"

modprobe -r sdhci

lsmod | grep -q sdhci && return 1

setpci -s ${LSPCI_ADDRESS} 88.b=00 # SDHCI DMA disable

setpci -s ${LSPCI_ADDRESS} 04.b=07 # SDHCI Mem- BusMaster-

setpci -s ${LSPCI_ADDRESS} 4c.b=00 # FlashMedia SD enable

setpci -s ${LSPCI_ADDRESS} 86.b=d0

modprobe -r fakephp

log_end_msg $?

;;

*)

log_success_msg "Usage: /etc/init.d/sdhci start|stop"

exit 1

;;

esac

exit 0

2. make the file executable using the following command

chmod +x sdhci

3. Execute the file in a terminal using the following command

sudo ./sdhci.sh start

If every thing works fine and you will see a message ” * Configuring card reader [ OK ]”

4. To start this script automatically move the script into /etc/init.d use the following command to accomplish this

sudo mv sdhci.sh /etc/init.d

5. finally add the script to be executed during boot sequence by executing the following command

sudo update-rc.d sdhci.sh defaults

you should see the following message on screen

Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/sdhci.sh …
/etc/rc0.d/K20sdhci.sh -> ../init.d/sdhci.sh
/etc/rc1.d/K20sdhci.sh -> ../init.d/sdhci.sh
/etc/rc6.d/K20sdhci.sh -> ../init.d/sdhci.sh
/etc/rc2.d/S20sdhci.sh -> ../init.d/sdhci.sh
/etc/rc3.d/S20sdhci.sh -> ../init.d/sdhci.sh
/etc/rc4.d/S20sdhci.sh -> ../init.d/sdhci.sh
/etc/rc5.d/S20sdhci.sh -> ../init.d/sdhci.sh

That’s it you are done , you can now start fooling around with the card reader.

Switching to ubuntu

I downloaded a copy of Ubuntu 7.4 today , The install was a breeze and everything except the WiFi got configured out of the box. all I had to do to install WiFi was to install the windows drivers using the windows wireless drivers application and everything works fine.