Tag: open source

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Solved: Ekiga (Ubuntu): Registration Failed: Forbidden (Rekisteröityminen epäonnistui: Estetty)

It looks like they’ve really screwed up the account management over at Ekiga.net: I was allowed to create an ID with a password using special characters, but then the Ekiga client failed to log in with it (giving me the error message I titled this entry with) and I couldn’t even log in at the website.

After requesting my password via e-mail (at the login website) as if I had forgotten it, I got an email not with the password but with a URL which, when clicked, gave me a new password. The new one was a measely five characters long; is that how insecure they expect them to be? Well I changed it to yet another one, still 20 characters long but this time containing only numbers and letters, and it seems to have solved the issue: I’m now able to login with the client.

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Solved: Ubuntu: cannot save KeePassX database / saving disabled

This is probably the dumbest user error made in the history of computing, and thus probably useful only if you want to have a laugh at my expense. Go ahead, I fully deserve it.

I had successfully switched my Windows storage drive to NTFS-3G and thought I would now have write-access to KeePassX‘s database. But despite having write-access to other files (such as images) on the drive, the Save button was still disabled in KeepAssX after opening the database file from it.

I tried copying the database to my home directory and opening it from there, but it remained unsavable. I checked, and all the access bytes were as they should be in order to allow for modifying the file. I tried creating a new database, and that seemed to work. I even contemplated exporting the old database to another format in Windows and then importing it in Ubuntu…

…until I realized I hadn’t actually made any changes in the database prior to trying to save it.

That’s right. After creating a test entry into the database I could save it just fine, even onto my NTFS drive. Doh!

I fully understand the reasoning behind disabling the saving function when no changes have been made in the data (KeepAssX is hardly alone in this choice of logic), but in this case my intuition seemed to work massively against that logic, so I guess that qualifies the issue as one of accessibility.

In my defence I can say that I did change the order in which the entries are shown in KeePassX (for some reason they seem to default to reverse alphabetical in Ubuntu) before trying to save, and that’s why my subconscious mind fully expected saving to be enabled. Apparently the listing order is not among the data saved in the database, but if it is, the Save button not reacting to it is an obvious bug in KeePassX.

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Ubuntu: how to cut MPEG2 streams

I went looking for a Cuttermaran equivalent for Ubuntu, for cutting the MPEG2 streams recorded in MythTV. First I tried GOPchop, but despite indexing the file, it didn’t show it in its file listing after opening it and so I couldn’t really do any editing with it.

Then I found Avidemux. Despite the unfortunately limited -sounding name and repository description I decided to try it and boy, am I glad I did. It’s quite capable of cutting MPEG files as well as dealing with many other codecs, so I highly recommend it. It’s even available for Windows.

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Ubuntu: can't drag windows between workspaces in Workspace Switcher

Looks like I’ve run into Bug #15069. What’s strange is that, I’m pretty sure I remember that prior to activating the Extra settings (with the default setup after installing Ubuntu), I did have some of the fancy stuff that’s apparently provided by compiz, such as the simple Viewport Switcher (or Desktop Wall), but now I have to go back all the way down to None to make dragging windows work. Either the default setup uses some clever hack which was lost when I turned on Extra visual effects, or my memory is failing. There’s a Workarounds utility in compizconfig settings manager, which would seem like a fitting place for a fix for the issue, but there’s none at the moment.

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Solved: jerky picture with live MythTV (non-free ATI drivers)

I had a problem with the live (Watching) TV picture stuttering badly in MythTV. The recordings worked just fine when played back with Totem, so the problem was not with the signal but with MythTV’s playback.

The solution for me turned out to be uninstalling the non-free binary drivers for my ATI Radeon display adapter. I had installed them right after installing Ubuntu, but after uninstalling them I can now safely say that it was a mistake installing them in the first place.

Apart from Miro now playing back FLVs with the colors all wrong, I’ve had no problems, MythTV no longer suffers from jerkyness and I get to enjoy all the nice desktop effects which didn’t work either with the proprietary drivers.

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MythTV: how to start/stop recording

When watching live TV in MythTV, press R to start recording. Now, I have yet to find a simple hotkey to stop the recording right then and there – pressing R again does stop it, but it also deletes the recording (or cancels it).

To stop the recording, you first need to exit the watching mode by pressing Esc. Next, from the main menu, go to Manage Recordings and then Upcoming Recordings. From the list available there you can then select the program currently being recorded with the up and down arrows. When selected, pressing Enter finally gives you the choice of stopping the recording (again, selectable with up and down arrows and the Enter key).

When I began to look for the solution for this problem, I was amazed (and truth be told, extremely frustrated as well) that Google didn’t have a direct answer to what seemed to me to be a pretty obvious question. However, it looks like the operating logic behind MythTV is based heavily on using program guides and scheduling instead of on what is perhaps a little old-fashioned way, controlling the start and stop of recording manually.

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Solved: Ubuntu: Miro 1.1.1 crashing on start

This one was pretty easy, as the working solution for me was available directly from Miro Forums. After shutting Miro down (or rather, after it has shut itself down), do:

cd ~
rm -rf .miro
rm -rf .gconf/apps/miro
sudo apt-get remove sun-java6-plugin

Obviously, this is not a good solution if you need to use Java on the web. For me it’s not a problem, since I like to have the Java plugin disabled anyway, for security and speed.

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Notes and a workaround: Firefox 2.0.0.11 (Ubuntu) Segfaults at restart, & Stylish problem with userstyles not being applied

I began migrating my Firefox extensions from Windows to Ubuntu by installing Extension List Dumper in Windows’ Firefox, and then working my way through the list generated by it in Ubuntu. However, at some point I discovered that Stylish‘s userstyles were no longer being applied, and that Firefox could no longer restart itself using the Restart button which becomes available after installing an extension.

What’s worse, using the command-line to start Firefox I discovered that it did attempt to restart when told to, but it only resulted in a Segmentation fault.

I initially suspected that there was some sort of a conflict between the beautiful NASA Night Launch theme and Stylish, but after starting with a new, clean profile and installing extensions one by one instead of en masse, I finally traced the problem back to Colorzilla, one of my favorite extensions. Without it, everything seems to be working, and with it, Firefox segfaults two, sometimes three times in a row before finally restarting. So the workaround to the problems listed in the title is to uninstall Colorzilla.

The problematic version of Colorzilla I was using was the one currently available from Mozilla’s Add-ons page, 1.0. A new Beta version is available from Colorzilla’s official home page, which also mentions problems with Ubuntu and FC5, and suggests a solution which, if it works, should allow you to keep using the non-Beta version of Colorzilla. I haven’t tested either of these solutions.

I haven’t come across these issues with Colorzilla under Windows.

When tracking down this problem, the Restart Firefox extension turned out to be quite handy.