Journal of Tormod Haugen

I needed to install a Java plugin for Firefox under Ubuntu 9.04 (beta). This didn’t happen by itself when I installed sun-java6-plugin, but a quick search showed me what Eirik Hoem found out a year ago.

Or, as Karl Trygve said in a comment; messing about in /usr is usually not a good idea - the link could be made in /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/plugins, and the plugin would then be available for all users on the computer.

Linking the java plugin to Firefox (paths might vary a bit, depending on Java versions):

cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/.default/plugins
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

I didn’t have Icedtea installed, but I do use OpenJDK for development. Works now, at least.

I’ve begun making some small changes to the Simpla Theme, in order to get something looking *just* like I want. I’ll share my changes, and also the code if somebody asks for it. For now this is filed as work in progress. And there will be progress.

Here are the things I did to change the theme as it looks now (2009-01-04T20:59:12+01:00). Increase / change font size and screen real estate. Flip the sidebar to the left. Fix logout from near comment field. I’d love to hear if you like / dislike the changes.

Change font size

First order of business is to increase the text size, because I’ve seen what it helps on some devices. The code changes are from:

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body{   
        background:#fff url(./images/bg.png) repeat-x;
        border-top:5px solid #333;
        color:#555;
        font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
        font-size:62.5%;
        line-height:1.5;
        margin:0;
        padding:0;
        text-align:center;
}

Change relevant line to the following:

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        font-size:12pt;

Then remove lines 30 and 36 from the following block:

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#wrap{  
        margin:0 auto;
        text-align:left;
        width:76em;
}
content{
        font-size:1.2em;
        float:left;
        padding:1em;
        width:40em;
}
#sidebar{
        font-size:1.1em;
        float:right;
        padding-top:2em;
        width:20em;
}

That is, these line should be removed:

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        font-size:1.2em;

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        font-size:1.1em;

These font-size changes means that we have to redistribute a bit of space in the content area. Change line 24, 33 and 39 from above to the following:

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        max-width:80em;

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        width:70%;

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        width:25%;

Flip sidebar to the left hand side

Next step is to flip the sidebar to the left hand side, just because I can. Change line 30 (or 31 if you didn’t change the font-size like above from the first block of code) to the next line:

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#content{
        float:left;
        padding:1em;
        width:70%;
}

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        float:right;

Minor fixes needed for Wordpress 2.7

Logout link in comment.php needed updating because of the new security measures in Wordpress. If this isn’t done, you won’t be able to log out from the link beside the comment field. Find and replace first block of code with the second block of code:

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<p>Logged in as <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-admin/profile.php"><?php echo $user_identity; ?></a>. <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-login.php?action=logout" title="Log out of this account">Logout &raquo;</a></p>

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<p>Logged in as <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-admin/profile.php"><?php echo $user_identity; ?></a>. <a href="<?php echo wp_logout_url(get_permalink()); ?>" title="Log out of this account">Log out &raquo;</a></p>

Or something like that. For once someone told me to look it up on Google. It was a Linux query, and since I’m not that knowledgeable on Linux, I deferred it to my brother. He asked me if he should shuffle me away from the computer, or if I would look it up on Google myself.

My error message was something in the neighbourhood of this (source):

* Starting System Tools Backends system-tools-backends invoke-rc.d: initscript system-tools-backends, action “start” failed.
dpkg: error processing system-tools-backends (–configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
system-tools-backends
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

and the fix is (source):

***TEMPORARY WORKAROUND***
After the upgrade has failed, you will get an error every time you run dpkg or apt-get saying that system-tools-backends is not configured. “sudo dpkg –configure -a” will not fix this. To recover, please perform the following 2 steps:

1) sudo invoke-rc.d system-tools-backends stop
2) sudo dpkg –configure -a

It seems like the problem is with installing while switching users. Now fixed. Yay!

I’ve been doing something that I should have been doing a long time ago. As I haven’t been using my desktop much since my last hard disk crash, it has sported only a Windows XP install. Yesterday I set down to install Ubuntu on it; completing another backup, clearing space and getting the actual iso image written to a CD. Everything went a-OK up to and including the install.

Now, getting on teh intrawebz was a bit harder. After setting the wireless up nicely in the graphical network manager and then turning it on a few times, I suddenly noticed that there was no wireless card installed. Which kind of explained why I didn’t connect to my router. Selecting troubleshooting from the Help prompted me to install ndisgtk from the Synaptic Package Manager. Where I couldn’t find it. Which was fixed by inserting the Ubuntu CD again, and adding it to the package repositories from within the package manager.

Now the troubles began. I was prompted to install a Windows driver ( a *.inf file ) for the card. Checking up what was installed in Windows I found an oem driver - which didn’t work under Ubuntu, probably because it was filled with different values and references to packaged files residing elsewhere and on Windows CD’s. Next I went to the manufacturer’s webpage and downloaded what turned out to be the wrong driver. Which installed, but didn’t find the hardware. Now I dug into Howto documents and man pages. They pointed me in direction of the NDISwrapper compatibility list. Which doesn’t exist any more, and when I dug up a more or less recent version on archive.org it didn’t contain my card.

The fix was easy. I just had to get the correct driver from the manufacturer - or rather from the people who branded the hardware. My card is a Jensen Wireless High Speed USB dongle. Running lsusb yielded:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1435:0210 Wistron NeWeb

for my card. This card can be used through ndiswrapper with the driver downloadable from Jensen Scandinavia.

Starting my computer to sync my iPod this morning brought on instant Apple hatred. iTunes told me that my iTunes Library were damaged, and just like that my podcast subscriptions were gone. Pffft - not there any more.

I then vented at twitter, being rewarded by someone else having that same problem. iTunes complaining about library file on Windows, and podcast subscriptions being lost.

With a flash of insight and a bit of luck, I browsed to where my iTunes library file were located. Taking backup of the new (empty) file, I renamed the one marked with (Damaged) back to it’s original name, and it all looked just like before when I restarted iTunes.

The files was located in the My Music/iTunes folder - actually /Users/MYNAME/Music/iTunes/ on Vista. The relevant file is the one named something with (Damaged). don’t blame me if it doesn’t work. Backup the defunct file first.

Still, I am more and more inclined to try and get my iPod updated without iTunes. Next time, perhaps.

Today I updated iTunes for Windows Vista to version 7.6.1.9. Upon completion iTunes crashed and did not start again. The error message I received was:

iTunes cannot run because it has detected a problem with your audio configuration

This was fixed by uninstalling QuickTime, then reinstalling it from a stand-alone installation (not the one with iTunes bundled in). See Apple’s full support article on the problem.