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coverup

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Posts posted by coverup

  1. I had a similar problem with volume control (the buttons did not work) using 2008.0 on ThinkPad T61. It appeared that volume was to be software controlled, so I defined all keycodes and mapped them to the keys. Interestingly, I did not have to do anything special in Ubuntu to get the volume working

     

    The window you see looks exactly as the one I see when I press volume buttons. In my case, volume is controlled by kmilo, the KDE plugin for ThinkPad special keys. Check the KDE control center whether you have kmilo installed. Disable or uninstall it.

  2. Many (as in most) people like an unbloated default OS which comes with minimal stuff installed (the definition of minimal may be different for each individual - even in the linux world). So Ubuntu comes with their version of it but still have the most common tools/apps its people use. You may not agree with the choice, but it's easy to install/uninstall what you want.

     

     

     

    ...and the assumption you can do/mastering a whole different OS from the beginning without a little bit of learning? I don't buy that, nor do I think you do if you give it some thought.

    You'll have exactly the same problem if you put a person behind Windows who never used Windows before. The person have to learn how to do things in Windows.

     

     

    Offtopic: I have crossover. Click the .deb and it's installed and running - I don't see the problem here.

    Mm... maybe you're right... I am spoiled by mandriva since I always use DVDs and powerpacks which have all the goodies...

     

    With crossover, it installs with some some warning messages, as a result of which MS Offcice 2000 becomes unusable. Apparently a common problem, since it has already recevied some feedback on cxoffce forums. It now works for me after tweaking sysctl.

  3. The whole idea about Linux is to be able to have a system that is stable, powerful and works.

    Ubuntu has not quite achieved it... On one hand, I was able to connect to work via VPN using Ubuntu, Mandrake/iva always failed there.

     

    On the other hand, Ubuntu 8.04 still has several annoying problems: Flash drives do not automount, third party products (matlab, crossover office) need tweaking. Install gives you a very basic system which has only a handful of apps. While many applications are available for download, If you are a beginner, you would not know about them.

  4. The thing that surprised me is it has trouble auto mounting usb drives, I've had it give up on fat32 and ext3 external usb drives.

     

    Other than that, pretty good release, would be nice to get network manager with cdma support like Fedora 9 has.

    modprobe -r ehci_usb before connecting the usb drive. Then the drive will automount but the connection will be slow USB 1.

  5. After using Ubuntu for two days, I found Ubuntu a bit annoying compared to Mandriva (sorry, Ubuntu users). It's more like using Mac - everything works but all bolts and nuts are hidden away, are strictly guarded and controlled. To Ubuntu's credit, for the first time in years, I was able to connect to VPN server at work from a linux machine (never had any luck with mandriva). On the other hand, perhaps I would prefer Mac to Ubuntu. But in the Mac vs Mandriva competition, Mandriva was a winner for me.

  6. My ThinkPad has an RF switch too. I keep WiFi on all the time. I guess unless you are on a plane, you don't need to worry about it. As for getting WiFi to work, open the terminal, login as root using su, and you won't need sudo anymore. Simply disregard it in all Ubuntu commands that you are trying.

     

    Search this forum (possibly, tips and tricks?) to find how to configure ndiswrapper for using with Mandriva.

  7. I never had this problem. I'm using an IOMEGA Storcenter which is network-attached though, so it's not USB attached. Access is via Windows Shares or FTP (even better for Linux). I can't comment if the USB device will work the same or differently.

    Do you have to type in an ftp login/password every time you want to access the drive? Also, does the drive have to have an IP address assigned to it? In that case this solution does not suit me.

  8. Thanks for the replies.

     

    The drive will be used with desktop, therefore an AC powered option would suit me.

     

    Apparently using such drives with linux poses another challenge. From numerous articles on the web, it appears that the power management logic on those drives does spin them down after about 10-15 min of inactivity (that's what I want!), but waking them up from standby may be a problem. The drive can be put back to service by unplugging then reconnecting the USB cable, but this is not a solution since the backup script runs at 4am in the morning, when there is nobody there. The standby option can be disabled, but I want it to be functional to protect the drive from wear and overheating.

     

    Can anybody confirm/disprove this, or better recommend a drive which has power management supported by linux, or maybe have linux support mentioned on the box?

  9. I consider getting a USB harddrive to do overnight backups. It will be used in my office, and they won't buy from ebay, etc, so it has to be a brand name available through retail. I can format it to ext3, etc, that is not a problem.

     

    Also, I would like the drive to be turned on automatically at around 4am in the morning, get mounted, have backup files written onto, then get unmounted and powered off. If the drive was powered 24/7, mounting/unmounting would be a matter for a simple cron script. Is it possible to power a USB HDD on demand, and what brand does have this feature?

  10. Initially, I had the MDV version which came with the Mandriva Free DVD. I removed it and installed the PLF version with plf in the rpm name. You are right, aRTee, the PLF version is compiled with faad support.

     

    What about iTunes? I have looked at banshee, but could not find how to connect to the iTunes store.

  11. there's nothing from Seagate that actually says that they "aren't supporting Linux". Just a stupid article with no references.

     

    Given the amount of sales in drives for servers and large storage... seagate are hardly going to say to those users "something wrong? oh you run linux, your problem" anyway.

    Well, servers aren't laptops. This article suggests the HDD killer is laptop-mode http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2007/10/2...ive-killer-bug/Is there any substance in this report?

  12. You can try VLC 0.9.0 pre, which has an embedded converter, or some Amarok transcoding script, like AmaKode or transKode.

    Thanks. I tried transKode to now avail. All these pretty programs use third party engines, and what's worse, can't use them properly... One would expect that since Amarok and VLC use xine engine to play m4a's, so should transKode, but no, it uses faad, which does not work :lol2:

     

    Anyway, the solution was to uninstall mplayer, and install the version from PLF which has all the goodies compiled in.

     

    My next problem is to find a client that would work with iTunes.

  13. I am trying to convert an m4a audio to mp3 using MDV 2008.0. Using Ubuntu 6.06 I was able to achieve this by first converting m4a to wav with mplayer, and then compressing wav into mp3. In 2008.0, I get this:

     

    $ mplayer -ao pcm "03.m4a" -ao pcm:file="03.wav"
    MPlayer 1.0-1.rc1.20mdv2008.0-4.2.1 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
    CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU	 T7500  @ 2.20GHz (Family: 6, Model: 15, Stepping: 11)
    CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
    Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
    98 audio & 216 video codecs
    mplayer: could not connect to socket
    mplayer: No such file or directory
    Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.
    
    Playing 03.m4a.
    Quicktime/MOV file format detected.
    ==========================================================================
    Trying to force audio codec driver family libmad...
    Requested audio codec family [faad] (afm=faad) not available.
    Enable it at compilation.
    Cannot find codec for audio format 0x6134706D.
    Read DOCS/HTML/en/codecs.html!
    Audio: no sound
    Video: no video
    
    
    Exiting... (End of file)

     

    Also, using faad command gives this error:

    $ faad "03.m4a"
    *********** Ahead Software MPEG-4 AAC Decoder V2.5 ******************
    
    Build: Oct 26 2006
    Copyright 2002-2004: Ahead Software AG
    http://www.audiocoding.com
    Floating point version
    
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
    
    **************************************************************************
    
    03.m4a file info:
    RAW
    
    Error: Bitstream value not allowed by specification

    All faad files I could think of are installed. I can play the file using VLC and Amarok, but can't convert it to mp3 :wall: Where should I start?

  14. I doubt you have many ports open unless you run servers. To check what ports your computer is listening to, run netstat -tan.

     

    It is a good idea to edit hosts.deny and hosts.allow to deny remote access to all services/ports, except for those you explicitly want to be open, eg, port 22 for secure shell access. Even after that you can add an extra line of defense by limiting the number of unsuccessful (read unauthorized) login attempts from a particular host (read bot), say to 3. Take a look at denyhosts. When run as a daemon, it monitors the security logs. If an IP address attempts to gain an access to your computer for 3 or more times in a row, that address will be added to the hosts.deny file for good. It will never bother you again.

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