he1ix' blog

Linux and Out-Of-Memory

ever ran into a (x)sane-message claiming an error to scan via hplip like this?

"failed to open device hpaio:/net/HP_LaserJet_M1522nf_MFP?ip=192.168.12.34"

well, it turned out that on my system (currently ubuntu 9.04) HPLIP was installed fine and even downloading and installing HP’s proprietary code for scanning was done right by HPLIP. what actually was missing is a link on “libhpmud.so”, issuing the following command solved my problem and everything works fine now:

 sudo /bin/ln -s /usr/lib/libhpmud.so.0 /usr/lib/libhpmud.so

for more information, see launchpad bug nr 357801

Today I had a brand-new Sony VAIO VGN-Z41WD on my desk and was asked to set it up with Win7. After creating recovery DVDs with the installed Vista, I tried to enter the BIOS – and failed. This machine is not equipped with ston-aged 8-bit BIOS code but finally manufacturers seem to make the move towards EFI.

Well, F2 is the key to press when the InsydeH2O-logo appears on the boot screen. Pressing other keys along with it seems to confuse the machine (and makes it ignore all of them, which is why I probably failed to enter the EFI-setup at first).

Unfortunately, the Insyde locks out the user from most options available in a classic BIOS setup. Currently it seems like this restriction can be removed, for more information see those blog entries:

http://feature-enable.blogspot.com/2009/07/enable-vt-on-insydeh2o-based-sony-vaio.html
http://marcansoft.com/blog/2009/06/enabling-intel-vt-on-the-aspire-8930g/

it took me hours to figure out why amarok (2) didn’t want to give a damn tone out of its entrails on my jaunty system. checked if phonon has an appropriate backend installed (xine and gstreamer available, tried all combinations), switched around the settings in KDE’s control panel “systemsettings” (i’m a gnome user, so i had to install this first). strangely enough, the latter played the test-sound without any problems, so it seemed to be impossible to be a general sound-server problem.

what else? well, the other KDE sound app named “juk” didn’t play mp3s as well – it just skipped any song and proceeded to the next one, until the end of the playlist was reached (just as amarok did). now i figured out why: they just had no possibility to decode them, since the appropriate xine-lib was missing! a simple command fixed the issue:

sudo aptitude install libxine1-ffmpeg

as far as i can see this is indeed a deficiency in debians package format, since this kind of dependency cannot be mapped. speaking in human words, this means: if you install amarok and want to use it with phonon-backend-xine and want to play MP3s, then you have to install libxine1-ffmpeg

more useful greasemonkey-scripts for geocaching.com are linked on cachews.de

hopefully, groundspeak will have a look at their functionality and pimp geocaching.com…

simply shut down the gpm-daemon, you probably don’t need it anyway…

By default, even the Administrator can change only the XP-style that is used when he’s logged on, but the logon-screen still uses the (more than ugly) default XP-style (Luna iirc). To force the logon-screen to use the Windows Classic Style, change the value of the key “ThemeActive” to “0” at the following paths in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ThemeManager
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ThemeManager
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ThemeManager

used to the usability-power of the default mouse-behaviour on X11? tired of ctrl-c / ctrl-v orgies? want your focus on the window you’re pointing at, and not being forced to raise that specific window above all others?

while focus-follows-mouse is a simple registry-setting in windows (that even can be done using TweakUI from Microsoft’s Power Tools), the copy-on-select behaviour requires an additional helper:

True X-Mouse Gizmo

list packages owning a file:

rpm -qf /bin/vi
dpkg -S /bin/vi

lost in a rpm-based distribution?

list files containing “bin” in their path of an installed package:

rpm -ql postfix | grep bin
dpkg -L postfix | grep bin