Nuudelisoppa

  • Hide Banshee/Rhythmbox from Sound Indicator

    The dconf key /apps/indicators/sound/blacklisted-media-players /com/canonical/indicator/sound/blacklisted-media-players is a list of players you don’t want listed in the indicator-sound popup. So entering the values [‘banshee’, ‘rhythmbox’] there will hide both said players.

    Edit: The key has moved.

  • Upgrading old hardware with online auctions

    Got a very satisfying hardware upgrade done last night: I’d bought a used 3,0 GHz Pentium 4 processor and 2 GB of RAM, and they went smoothly into the old Shuttle XPC SS56GV3.

    I haven’t been much into online auctions, mostly because old hardware just tends to pile up at my place anyway, despite that I usually have little actual use for it. The Shuttle’s different though. It’s at my secondary place of residence and I use it as a real desktop almost as much as my main desktop, and so being limited to a Celeron with just 1 GB of RAM was starting to get on my nerves.

    The upgrade gave a nice performace boost at a relatively low cost (45 euros incl. shipping), but also left me with a hunger for more good deals. I guess I’m beginning to see why people are drawn to these sites and trade stuff semi-professionally even. And as I’m left with the old bits of hardware redundant from this upgrade, I’m tempted to try and sell them myself.

    For now I’m just mostly into the “get adequate stuff for cheap” side though. I even signed up for Ebay and made another small purchase there. Be interesting to see how that goes.

  • PolKit administration without password

    I’m the sole (super)user of my system which is physically secure from untrusted users. I want to skip entering my password for administration purposes. For sudo I’ve achieved this with a file saying

    jani ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

    in my /etc/sudoers.d/.

    For Policy Kit, according to pklocalauthority documentation, I’ve placed inside /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d a key file I’ve named “90-net.mummila.jani.nopasswd.pkla”. Here’s the content of that file:

    [We don't need no stinkin' passwords]
Identity=unix-user:jani
Action=*
ResultAny=no
ResultInactive=no
ResultActive=yes

    What this translates to is that when I’m logged in and on an active local session (sitting right here), I’m not required to enter my password for administration tasks.

  • Rautaa odotellessa

    Peruin maanantaina syyskuussa tekemäni kiintolevyn tilauksen. Sitä ei näkynyt eikä kuulunut eikä ole mitään tietoa koska kuuluisikaan.

    Harkitsin hetkisen kooltaan kaksinkertaisen mallin tilaamista, mutta se maksaisikin sitten kaksin verroin, enkä minä todellisuudessa niin isoa järjestelmälevyä usko tarvitsevani, että se kannattaisi. Sitä paitsi kun tämä SSD-päivitys kerta näin paljon lykkääntyi, olisi jo järkevintä ostaa suoraan SATA 3.0 -levy. Emolevypäivitys on sekin kohta tuloillaan, ja siinä jäisivät nuo nopeat portit tyhjän pantiksi, jos SSD tukisi vain SATA 2.0:aa.

    Ivy Bridgen tuloa odottelen yhä. Näillä tietämin se ilmestyy ensi vuoden toisella kvarttaalilla, eli suomeksi sanottuna joskus maaliskuun jälkeen.

    Vanhassa koneessa piisaa vielä potkua mutta tämä strateginen odottelu tuntuu silti tuskastuttavalta. Mieluitenhan sitä päivittelisi konetta tasaisesti pienissä paloissa. Mutta ainut todellinen, isompi harmituksen aihe on se, etten hankkinut toista kahden teran levyä ennen kuin niiden hinnat räjähtivät käsiin. Terasetin mukaan pula saattaa jatkua vuodenkin.

  • PAM USB & Polkit-1

    Tried all kinds of tweaks, but in the end all it needed was this bit in the <services>…</services> section of /etc/pamusb.conf:

    <service id="polkit-1">
	<option name="enable">true</option>
</service>

    I only had “polkit” there prior to this, and polkit-1 is subtly but significantly different.

  • chvt over ssh

    The details of why are covered by quack quixote over at Super User, but the short of it is a privileges issue, prefix chvt with sudo and it should work.

  • (Radeon) HDMI audio in Precise (pre alpha)

    I’ve my computer connected to my speaker-equipped monitor through a DVI-HDMI cable. Audio through DVI is a hack, but it used to work until I upgraded from Lucid to Precise; afterwards there was no sound from the monitor. This is a regression introduced in Oneiric, due to the reverse engineered Radeon code causing issues in some setups. Thus upstream have figured it best to play safe and disable Radeon audio by default.

    Luckily, it’s pretty easy to re-enable: add radeon.audio=1 to your GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and run sudo update-grub.

    Obviously, you’ll then run the risk of encountering the aforementioned issues.

    Edit: Briefly after enabling, the HDMI audio again stopped working.

    Edit 2: It’s actually flash audio that’s not working through HDMI as other audio is.

    Edit 3: The flash problem was due to having an old flash package installed instead of one from the (Oneiric) partner repo.

  • Hiding username (“Me Menu”) indicator applet in Precise (pre alpha)

    There’s no actual Me Menu anymore, but there’s a similar menu bound to your username, and it is integrated within indicator-session. There’s a configuration key that allows for the user switching portion of indicator-session to be hidden. Indicator-session uses dconf for storing its configuration, so you’ll need the tools to tweak dconf:

    $ sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

    Start dconf-editor and untick /apps/indicator-session/user-show-menu. Log out, login.

  • Binding screen locking to Scroll Lock in Precise (pre alpha)

    $ gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 -t string 'Scroll_Lock'
$ gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 -t string 'gnome-screensaver-command -l'

  • Hard Disk Password feature for the Asus M4A78-EM (under Ubuntu Linux)

    The Asus M4A78-EM’s native AMIBIOS, like most desktop BIOSes, lacks support for ATA security features. Under such a BIOS, disks with built-in encryption that relies on ATA security can only function as normal hard disks.

    The ATA Security eXtension BIOS is a BIOS extension that provides what the name says: the ATA security features for a BIOS previously lacking them. It can be added onto the M4A78-EM’s BIOS; I did it, and I figured I might as well document the process in case someone else is considering doing the same.

    Flashing firmware is never a simple task, and if you screw it up, you might end up with your motherboard in need of costly repair. So please, do not attempt this if you’re in the slightest unsure of what you’re doing. And if you do attempt this, make sure you do know what you’re doing each step of the way.

    I did this using Ubuntu 10.04.1, with Wine 1.2.3 from the Ubuntu Wine Team’s PPA. The steps shouldn’t differ much if you’re using another OS, just as long as you can run the necessary (Microsoft Windows) apps.

    The general steps are

    1. get your existing BIOS ROM file either from Asus’ website or by other means
    2. download and unpack the extension package
    3. download and unpack MMTool
    4. configure the extension
    5. run MMTool and replace the existing ethernet ROM with the extension
    6. flash the resulting BIOS ROM file onto the motherboard

    The specifics for each step are:

    1. Download the BIOS you want to add the extension to. I was running the latest currently published revision 2101 (dated 31.12.2010) for the M4A78-EM from Asus, so I grabbed that and unpacked the .ROM file from it.
    2. Download the ATA Security eXtension from the official website. I used v2.11 (dated 8.8.2006), the latest at the time. Unpack it.
    3. Download MMTool. I used 3.19 (dated 19.1.2009), the latest at the time. Unpack it.
    4. Configure the extension. For this, in Ubuntu, you’ll need to use DOSBox.
      1. Using the command-line, change to the extension’s directory and run dosbox .
      2. Inside DOSBox, run BROMCFG.EXE ATASX.ROM
      3. Answer Y to change configuration.
      4. Answer P for PCI-ROM.
      5. Answer 10EC for Vendor ID. (This is Realtek’s ID.)
      6. Answer 8168 for Device ID. (This is the M4A78-EM’s Ethernet adapter’s ID.)
      7. Answer 020000 for PCI device type. (This is an Ethernet device.)
      8. Answer questions about default and setup password as well as delay for Ctrl+S according to you needs.
      9. Exit DOSBox by typing exit
      1. Start MMTool (with the help of Wine).
      2. Select ‘Load ROM’. Select the BIOS ROM file you acquired at step 1.
      3. Go to the ‘Delete’ tab. From the list at the bottom, select the PCI Option ROM with ‘RunLoc’ 10EC:8168 (the Ethernet ROM).
      4. Select ‘Delete’. The list should refresh itself.
      5. Go back to the ‘Insert’ tab.
      6. Select ‘Browse’. Select the ATASX.ROM file configured at main step 4.
      7. For ‘Module ID’, enter 20. For ‘Offset/VID’, enter 10EC. For ‘Seg./DID’, enter 8168.
      8. Select ‘Insert’. The list should refresh itself again. Make sure that it again has a ‘PCI Option ROM’ with the ‘RunLoc’ 10EC:8168.
      9. Save the new BIOS ROM file with either ‘Save ROM’ or ‘Save ROM as…’.
      10. Exit MMTool.
    6. Flash the BIOS ROM file you saved in MMTool with your flashing tool of choice. I used Flashrom.

    Final note: once you have the new ROM file in, you’ll need to enable ‘Onboard LAN Boot ROM’ in your BIOS settings for the extension to kick in during boot.