An Easy Way To Boot ISO Image From Your Hard Drive

With grml-rescueboot there is an easy way to boot an ISO image from your harddisk to test other linux distributions.
Out of curiosity I downloaded the iso from elementary OS ( elementaryos-stable-amd64.20130810.iso ).

First install grml-rescueboot as root :

apt-get install grml-rescueboot

Then move the ISO image to /boot/grml/ as root :

mv elementaryos-stable-amd64.20130810.iso /boot/grml

Update Grub 2 with the following command as root :

update-grub

Reboot and you will see a new entry in your booting list.

Links :
http://ubuntuportal.com/2013/08/heres-an-easier-way-to-boot-iso-image-from-your-hard-drive-in-ubuntu-13-04.html

http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2011/01/07/booting-iso-images-from-within-grub2/

Happy 20th Birthday, Debian

One day too late.....

http://bits.debian.org/2013/08/20-birthday-debian.html

Copy.com : Cloud Storage Service With 20 GB Free Storage

Just recently found out about this cloud service : copy.com .

You can get 15GB free storage by going directly to the website and register or you can get 20GB free storage by using my referral link .

To celebrate Copy's launch, earn 5 GB of extra free storage for yourself and whoever you refer each time you introduce someone new to Copy. This is a limited time opportunity to rack up huge amounts of extra free storage while we build the initial buzz around Copy!

Error Dependency Is Not Satisfiable : Libc6 Google-Music-Manager

I downloaded Google-music-manager from here : https://play.google.com/music/listen#/manager.

Installing with gdebi showed the following :

Error : Dependency is not satisfiable : libc6 ( >=2.15 ).......

After some Googling I found an older version from this link ( google music )

Installed without trouble...

To have it work properly (  the "Upload" menu item missing and the "Options" item not doing anything ) I had to delete the ~/.config/google-musicmanager directory and start the manager again ( link ).

Additional link for download ( version 1.0.60.7918-r0 ) : here. ( google-musicmanager-beta_current_amd64.deb ).

Liberate Your Hardware

LibreStickers

We honor the project trademarks and guidelines to the letter. We only manufacture and sell stickers if we have received an approval from the project / trademark owner. 

Disable The Universal Access Accessibility Menu In Gnome 3

Edit as root the file /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/panel.js

Look for the following line, (line 37 in my case):

'a11y': imports.ui.status.accessibility.ATIndicator,

Comment it out, so it will look like this :

// 'a11y': imports.ui.status.accessibility.ATIndicator,

Restart gnome-shell :

Press ALT + F2 and type in r and hit Enter to restart the gnome-shell.

Done....

Enable Autologin Gdm3

As root edit the file /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf  :

nano /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf

Look for the lines :

#  AutomaticLoginEnable = true

#  AutomaticLogin = user1

Remove the # signs before each line and replace user1 with your own username.

So in my case ( username = eric ) these lines will look like :

AutomaticLoginEnable = true

AutomaticLogin = eric

To see it working switch to tty1 :

CTRL + ALT + F1

Login as root and then :

/etc/init.d/gdm3 restart

Install Pepperflash In Chromium

Go to the Google Chrome Webpage and download the web browser for your processor architecture.
Unpack the deb package ( I used file-roller ) and go to the directory /opt/google/chrome/ .

Select Pepperflash and Extract.

Inside the directory Pepperflash there is a file libpepflashplayer.so .

As root :
mv libpepflashplayer.so /usr/lib/chromium/plugins

As root edit the file default in /etc/chromium and add this line :

CHROMIUM_FLAGS=" --ppapi-flash-path=/usr/lib/chromium/plugins/libpepflashplayer.so"

The whole file will look like this :

# Default settings for chromium. This file is sourced by /bin/sh from
# /usr/bin/chromium

# Options to pass to chromium
CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--password-store=detect"
CHROMIUM_FLAGS=" --ppapi-flash-path=/usr/lib/chromium/plugins/libpepflashplayer.so"

Restart chromium.

Check the setting at chrome:plugins in the address bar ( check +Details ) :

A Minimal Gnome 3 Installation

Download from Debian.org a Small CD ( here ). No businesscard CD image any longer...

I chose to put the image ( debian-7.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso ) on an USB stick ( see a former post and here ).

This time I decided to go the Graphical install way....

Just follow the instructions....it's easy enough.

In the next screen I deselected everything....

Install the Grub boot loader to the master boot record.....

After finishing the installation reboot and....just press Enter....

Next screen login as root....

A few adjustments to the sources.list....

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add contrib and non-free at the end of all lines....Ctrl+o ( WriteOut ), File Name to Write : sources.list, hit Enter, Ctrl+x ( Exit ).

Then :

nano /etc/apt/apt.conf

Write this line : 

APT::Install-Recommends "false";

Save and exit. First update....

apt-get update 

Install a minimal xserver. My videocard is a Nvidia GeForce GT 330

apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-evdev xserver-xorg-video-nvidia 

I kept an eye on the recommended packages.....

apt-get install nvidia-glx linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Package nvidia-glx will pull in package nvidia-kernel-dkms. Next :

apt-get install gdm3 gnome-session xorg nautilus gnome-terminal gnome-shell-extensions gnome-control-center gnome-tweak-tool alsa-utils pulseaudio gnome-themes 

Next is optional :

apt-get install chromium gthumb gdebi gksu leafpad glipper file-roller nautilus-open-terminal synaptic 

Create a configuration file for the Nvidia card :

nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf   and add these lines :

Section "Device"
        Identifier "My GPU"
        Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Now reboot and login !

Some more tweaks :

Add this .fonts.conf file in your home directory.

Create a directory .icons in your home directory and add these icons.

Find more icons here and here....

Create a directory .fonts in your home directory and add these fonts.

Make adjustments in Advanced Settings.

Chromium Show In Folder Not Working

I ran Chromium in a terminal to find out what was happening.
There was a line saying :

/usr/bin/xdg-open 491 /usr/bin/xdg-open gnome-open not found

The problem was a missing package in my minimal Gnome installation : gvfs-bin ,indeed fixed by installing the package gvfs-bin.

sudo apt-get install gvfs-bin

Enable Video Thumbnails With Ffmpegthumbnailer

To enable video thumbnails in Nautilus we need package ffmpegthumbnailer.
As root :

apt-get install ffmpegthumbnailer

Create a file ffmpeg.thumbnailer in /usr/share/thumbnailers with the following content :

[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=ffmpegthumbnailer
Exec=ffmpegthumbnailer -s %s -i %i -o %o -c png -f -t 10
MimeType=application/mxf;application/ogg;application/ram;application/sdp;application/vnd.ms-wpl;application/vnd.rn-realmedia;application/x-extension-m4a;application/x-extension-mp4;application/x-flash-video;application/x-matroska;application/x-netshow-channel;application/x-ogg;application/x-quicktimeplayer;application/x-shorten;image/vnd.rn-realpix;image/x-pict;misc/ultravox;text/x-google-video-pointer;video/3gpp;video/dv;video/fli;video/flv;video/mp2t;video/mp4;video/mp4v-es;video/mpeg;video/msvideo;video/ogg;video/quicktime;video/vivo;video/vnd.divx;video/vnd.rn-realvideo;video/vnd.vivo;video/webm;video/x-anim;video/x-avi;video/x-flc;video/x-fli;video/x-flic;video/x-flv;video/x-m4v;video/x-matroska;video/x-mpeg;video/x-ms-asf;video/x-ms-asx;video/x-msvideo;video/x-ms-wm;video/x-ms-wmv;video/x-ms-wmx;video/x-ms-wvx;video/x-nsv;video/x-ogm+ogg;video/x-theora+ogg;video/x-totem-stream;audio/x-pn-realaudio;audio/3gpp;audio/ac3;audio/AMR;audio/AMR-WB;audio/basic;audio/midi;audio/mp2;audio/mp4;audio/mpeg;audio/ogg;audio/prs.sid;audio/vnd.rn-realaudio;audio/x-aiff;audio/x-ape;audio/x-flac;audio/x-gsm;audio/x-it;audio/x-m4a;audio/x-matroska;audio/x-mod;audio/x-mp3;audio/x-mpeg;audio/x-ms-asf;audio/x-ms-asx;audio/x-ms-wax;audio/x-ms-wma;audio/x-musepack;audio/x-pn-aiff;audio/x-pn-au;audio/x-pn-wav;audio/x-pn-windows-acm;audio/x-realaudio;audio/x-real-audio;audio/x-sbc;audio/x-speex;audio/x-tta;audio/x-wav;audio/x-wavpack;audio/x-vorbis;audio/x-vorbis+ogg;audio/x-xm;application/x-flac;

After these steps force Nautilus to generate new thumbnails :

rm -rf ~/.thumbnails

And restart Nautilus :

nautilus -q

VPNBook : No Valid VPN Secrets.....

VPNBook is a 100% Free VPN service without any need for registration or sign-up.

In order to set up a VPN connection with pptp or openvpn using a GUI I did the following ( as root ) :

apt-get install network-manager-gnome network-manager-openvpn-gnome network-manager-pptp-gnome

The nm-applet showed an unmanaged Wired connection. Unmanaged devices means NetworkManager doesn't handle those network devices.

You need to edit as root the following files :

(1) /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

Change line managed=false in managed=true

(2) /etc/network/interfaces

Comment out the last two lines
# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

So it will look like this :
# The primary network interface
#allow-hotplug eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

Restart NetworkManager :

/etc/init.d/network-manager restart

Now nm-applet shows a managed connection :

Choose Network Settings in nm-applet and click on the + sign and create a VPN Interface

Choose PPTP and the following window opens up :

Go to VPNBook and look for the PPTP settings. I choose Server #3 : uk1.vpnbook.com (UK VPN - optimized for fast web surfing; no p2p downloading).

Connection name : uk1.vpnbook.com
Gateway : uk1.vpnbook.com
User name : vpnbook
Password : phefra7U ( password changes every one to two weeks ! )
Check Available for all users

Go to Advanced and check Use Point-to-Point encryption ( MPPE )

Now you can go to the nm-applet and choose the VPN connection......but nothing happened....

tail -f /var/log/syslog  ( as root ) showed a message about Failed to request VPN secrets #2: (6) No agents were available for this request.....
After some Googling I found a solution ( link ) :

As root edit /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/uk1.vpnbook.com and under [vpn], change the password flags line to:

password-flags=0

And add the following:
[vpn-secrets]
password=phefra7U

Then again : /etc/init.d/network-manager restart

Now it works...

In order to get OpenVPN working I found a solution at this post http://howto.praqma.net/ubuntu/vpn/openvpn-access-server-client-on-ubuntu

Go to VPNBook and download one of the OpenVPN Certificate Bundles ( e.g Server #3 ).

Unzip the file and choose one of the ovpn files. Follow the instructions in the above link from the line
Open client.opvn in an editor....till....Remove both < key >  tags from client.ovpn.

Insert the following lines in the ovpn file :

ca ca.crt
cert client.crt
key client.key

Activities > Applications >Network Connections > VPN > Import.
Choose your ovpn file and fill in username and password...

As root edit /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/vpnbook-uk1-tcp80 and under [vpn], change the password flags line to:

password-flags=0

And add the following:
[vpn-secrets]
password=phefra7U

Again : /etc/init.d/network-manager restart

Update : I noticed that these OpenVPN Certificate Bundles may change as well, so you have to repeat the procedure above from time to time....

Unofficial debian-multimedia.org Repository Is No Longer Safe To Use

Debian warns on its blog : The unofficial third party repository Debian Multimedia stopped using the domain debian-multimedia.org some months ago. The domain expired and it is now registered again by someone unknown to Debian.....This means that the repository is no longer safe to use, and you should remove the related entries from your sources.list file.


Not sure if you're using the debian-multimedia repository? You can easily check it by running:

grep -i debian-multimedia.org /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*

If you can see debian-multimedia.org line in output, you should remove all the lines including it.

The need of an external repository for multimedia related packages has been greatly reduced with the release of Wheezy, which features many new and updated codecs and multimedia players.

If you're wondering where it went, it moved to deb-multimedia.org......