The _khAttAm_ blog

Archive for March, 2010

GIMP 2.7.1 added Single Window Mode and GIMP 2.7.x can now be installed via PPA. It is available here for Jaunty, Karmic and Lucid. I have Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx installed and I installed GIMP 2.7.3 unstable. Here is how you can do it, but if you use it for production, you might want to wait for final stable release.

GIMP 2.7 in Ubuntu

Launch Synaptic Package Manager and click Settings>Repositories>Other Software and then Add

ppa:matthaeus123/mrw-gimp-svn

. Reload the software list and mark for upgrades. That will install GIMP 2.7 and you can enable the Single Window Mode by navigating to Window>Single Window Mode.

I upgraded my packages in my Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 1 installation and it required a restart. I did not realize that there was no space left on the root partition (I have two partitions, root / and /home). I restarted and was not able to login. I got a message saying something like

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The configuration defaults for GNOME power manager have not been installed correctly. Please contact your computer administrator

in the Login window. I tried logging in again, but I again got blank screen and was logged back out. Nor did the message make any sense.

I pressed Ctrl+F1 and logged in there and then tried to upgrade the packages using

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

There were upgrades available and installed them I saw mandb complaining about the lack of disk space. I then freed some space by deleting some files I had kept in the root directory and pressed Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart and it booted in without problems. If you face this problem and want to free some space, you can use

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sudo apt-get clean

which will free the space used by package archives cache which are located at /var/cache/apt/archives and it should boot without problems.

I am building a Java Applet which needs to connect to foreign host to operate. I created it and it runs good on OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.8pre) installed on my Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta. But it does not run with Sun Java Runtime Environment 1.6.0_18 on Windows. I don’t know if it also does not work with Sun JRE in Linux. Also, as far as I know, OpenJDK/OpenJRE for Windows does not exist.

The applet shows somewhat this kind of when run in Windows under Sun JRE:

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java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.net.SocketPermission host connect,resolve)

and the page just stalls.

When I searched for help on the internet, I discovered that unsigned files do not run in Windows. So, I needed to sign it. The Certificate can cost at least a couple of hundred dollars for a month. If you are using it for commercial purposes, I advice you to buy a certificate. However, I just wanted my code to run in Windows and to do that I bundled the code inside a Jar file (I was just using the class file i.e. code=”Classname.class”. Now I need to use code=”Classname” archive=”JarName.jar” for applet in the HTML file.). So I am sharing what I did to make it run.

After building the Jar File (Netbeans IDE that I am using builds the Jar file automatically inside the dist sub-directory of the Project directory), I used the command

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keytool -genkey

and entered the details. You can choose your own password for keystore. You can either use the same password for key password or choose a different one. Now a keyfile named .keystote is created in the home directory. I need to certify the key. Since I have not purchased a security certificate, I needed to certify it myself using the following command:

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keytool -selfcert

. Now a key named mykey is created for me to use. This should only be done once.

Now, I changed my directory to the dist directory and executed the following command to sign a MyJarApplet.jar:

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jarsigner -storepass KeySorePassword -keypass KeyPassPassword MyJarApplet.jar mykey

Here KeyStorePassword is the password used while creating the keystore and KeyPassPassword is the password used in the key mykey.

Now, the applet asks for authentication instead of showing nothing at all in Windows too.

Hope this helps.

References:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lsiden/tutorials/signed-applet/signed-applet.html
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/tooldocs/solaris/jarsigner.html
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/tooldocs/solaris/keytool.html

After update the indicator-session applet stopped appearing in my Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. I don’t know how it happened, but I saw that the indicator-session applet had been uninstalled. I marked indicator-applet-complete in synaptic and installed it. Then it started appearing after restart.

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 1 and got the following set of warnings while updating my package lists

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W: A error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used.GPG error: http://archive.ubuntu.com lucid Release: The following signatures were invalid: BADSIG 40976EAF437D05B5 Ubuntu Archive Automatic Signing Key <ftpmaster@ubuntu.com>
 
W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/lucid/Release  
 
W: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

This was preventing the package list updates and hence preventing package updates. I don’t know what caused this or when exactly I started to get these, but I guess it was after I changed my packages server from np.archive.ubuntu.com to archive.ubuntu.com.

Anyways, I managed to fix it by (re)moving all the old package lists and updating again. This can be summed up in the following three lines of terminal commands:

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sudo mv /var/lib/apt/lists /var/lib/apt/lists.old
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/apt/lists/partial
sudo apt-get update

This did it for me. Hope it does it for you too.

Just letting you all know that Ubuntu Lucid Lynx Beta 1 has been released a few hours ago. Get it here. If you have been using Lucid Lynx Alpha, you can simply update your package repositories and you will have the Beta 1.

Also, Kubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 has also been released. Kubuntu also has a Netbook remix now. Get them here.

Lets not forget Lubuntu 10.04 Beta 1, Xubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 and Edubuntu 10.04 Beta 1. Find Lubuntu here, Xubuntu here and Edubuntu here.

Enjoy the new themes and features.

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx in my PC. The Ubuntu Design Team has decided to move the Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons to the left of the title bar. Not exactly like Mac OS X, which looks like the following:

Close, Maximize, Minimize in Mac OS X

while Ubuntu button layout is as follows:

Maximize, Minimize, Close in Ubuntu Lucid

The difference is the order in which they appear.

UPDATE April 2: The button order in Lucid will now follow Mac OS X style.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was wondering if we could downgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. So I decided to put it upon test and I succeed. So, I am sharing this with those who wish to keep using stable Karmic Koala till the final version of Lucid is out.

Please note however, that all the installed applications will be lost, however the settings and files in your home directory will be preserved. So, for example if you have a huge list of saved sites on your Filezilla client, Filezilla will be gone, but when you install Filezilla on your Karmic, the settings should work. Also, your Firefox browsing history, preferences and other settings will also be preserved. Read the rest of this entry »

I had enabled the ppa

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ppa:erik-b-andersen/rgba-gtk

and upgraded and installed nautilus, murrine-themes , gtk2-module-rgba and gtk2-engines-murrine to enable rgba transparency in my Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha. That looks really cool. It was supposed to be coming with Lucid, but was dropped due to bugs. The programs started crashing for me too. I was done with adding exceptions to /etc/profile.d/gtkrgba.sh because almost every new program crashed. So I decided to remove the rgba module altogether. Just removing the repository does not help. So, here are the removal instructions. Read the rest of this entry »

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha. I have a dsl connection (WiZoom, Wireless via ubnt but wired to my PC) from Worldlink Pvt. Ltd., Nepal. I need to connect via pppoe. I occasionally keep my PC to download overnight while I sleep or even when I am away. It works well with torrents (with deluge as my torrent client, I haven’t used transmission torrent client much) but sometimes it disconnects from the internet. So, I had to configure it to auto re-connect on disconnect. It should also connect on logon. Since network manager does not meet my requirements, Read the rest of this entry »