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sudo pppoeconf

After that I just answer a series of questions, which include my username and password. I leave all the other values to defaults as they work for me. If they don’t work for you, you may need some tweaking. You should look for help elsewhere as I am not aware of other connection types/settings.
Now, I can connect from my terminal using:

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sudo pon dsl-provider

and disconnect using:

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sudo poff -a

Now, I have verified that it works and am ready to move on. But disconnect does not disconnect me immediately. pppd does not terminate immediately after I use sudo poff -a so I had to write a small script that helps me disconnect immediately. To achieve that, I created a killpppd script and placed in /usr/local/sbin/. To do so, launch nautilus as root. To do so, press Alt+F2 and type in:

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gksu nautilus /usr/local/sbin

Create a new text file and copy/paste or type in the following:

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#!/bin/sh
#kill pppd brutally
for i in `ps -eaf | grep "pppd" | tr -s " " | cut -f2 -d " "`
do
sudo kill -9 ${i}
done

Then I made it executable (Right Click on the file>Properties>Permissions>Allow executing file as Programs). Now, we can just run

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killpppd

from terminal and the pppd dies and connection is lost.
I have created yet another file that tries to disconnect using poff and also kills pppd with killpppd. I have named it dcon and it contains the following text:

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#!/bin/sh
sudo poff -a
sudo killpppd
sudo poff -a

Then I made it executable. This script first tries to disconnect gracefully and tries to kill pppd if that was not successful. I have made this like this because poff gives

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/usr/bin/poff: No pppd is running.  None stopped.

if no pppd was running. So, I will get to know if pppd was running or not and if it did stop.
Now, I need a connect script that only connects if the connection has been lost and does nothing if it has not. To achieve I use a small script by AT-HE and place it with name “connect” in /usr/local/sbin/. Here is the script:

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#!/bin/sh
# adsl-reconnect.sh by AT-HE (at_he hotmail) nov 2008. 
# Modified by _khAttAm_, March 2010
 
IFACE=ppp0
DOWN=dcon
UP="pon dsl-provider"
LOG=/var/log/dsl-reconnect.log
 
PTP=`ifconfig $IFACE 2>&1|grep P-t-P|cut -d : -f 3|cut -d " " -f 1`
RECV=`ping -c 1 $PTP 2>&1|grep received|cut -d , -f 2|cut -d " " -f 2`
 
if [ "$RECV" != "1" ]
then
echo "connecting..."
echo ----- >>$LOG
date>>$LOG
$DOWN >>$LOG 2>&1
#wait for kill
sleep 3
echo "hopefully killed"
$UP >>$LOG 2>&1
fi

Then I made it executable. I have named this one connect and placed at /usr/local/sbin. The script uses our dcon script to disconnect and pon dsl-provider to connect. It checks if the IP of our server (placed at PTP variable) is ping-able. In that case, the connection has not terminated and it does nothing. However, if the IP of the server is not ping-able, it disconnects (which has probably already been disconnected but pppd may not have died, so we need to kill it otherwise the connection is made with interface ppp1, ppp2 and the script will not work) and then tries to connect. This must be run as root so I created another file named con in the same directory (usr/local/sbin/) with contents:

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#!/bin/sh
sudo connect

Now, we can just run:

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con

from the terminal.
Now, we have four files in /usr/local/sbin namely con, dcon, connect and killpppd. They can all be used from the terminal. Basically, only con is required as it does everything. It connects to the internet if there is no connection and re-connects if connection has been lost.
Now, I needed to run the “con” script periodically. I have chosen to run it every minute. I have used cron to do that. To do that, I ran

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sudo crontab -e

. If you are running it for the first time, you will need to choose an editor. I just chose nano. Now, we need to write in the following line at the end of the file that opens in nano. You can use Shift+Insert to paste the following line:

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* * * * * /usr/local/sbin/con

. Remember, the line needs to be exactly the same with all the asterisks in place. That makes cron run the script “con” every minute.

Hope this helps others too.

References:
http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/schedule_tasks_on_linux_using_crontab/
http://geekhut.blogspot.com/2007/05/auto-reconnecting-lost-dsl-connection.html

Related posts:

1. [SOLVED] DSL PPPoE not able to Connect in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
2. Configuring CDMA Wireless Modem in Linux
3. [SOLVED] “error: mountall Could not Connect to Plymouth”, “mountall main process (x) terminated with status 1″

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progname=gnote; RGBA=on
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: cannot register existing type `gtkmm__GtkTextBuffer'
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: cannot register existing type `gtkmm__GtkTextBuffer'
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: cannot retrieve class for invalid (unclassed) type `<invalid>'
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_class_find_property: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT_CLASS (class)' failed
(gnote:13961): glibmm-WARNING **: Glib::ConstructParams::ConstructParams(): object class "(null)" has no property named "tag_table"
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_type_class_unref: assertion `g_class != NULL' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_newv: assertion `G_TYPE_IS_OBJECT (object_type)' failed
(gnote:13961): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_buffer_get_tag_table: assertion `GTK_IS_TEXT_BUFFER (buffer)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: cannot register existing type `gtkmm__GtkTextBuffer'
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: cannot retrieve class for invalid (unclassed) type `<invalid>'
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_class_find_property: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT_CLASS (class)' failed
(gnote:13961): glibmm-WARNING **: Glib::ConstructParams::ConstructParams(): object class "(null)" has no property named "tag_table"
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_type_class_unref: assertion `g_class != NULL' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_newv: assertion `G_TYPE_IS_OBJECT (object_type)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
(gnote:13961): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_buffer_get_end_iter: assertion `GTK_IS_TEXT_BUFFER (buffer)' failed
(gnote:13961): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_buffer_get_start_iter: assertion `GTK_IS_TEXT_BUFFER (buffer)' failed
(gnote:13961): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_buffer_delete: assertion `GTK_IS_TEXT_BUFFER (buffer)' failed
(gnote:13961): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_buffer_get_start_iter: assertion `GTK_IS_TEXT_BUFFER (buffer)' failed
(gnote:13961): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
zsh: segmentation fault (core dumped)  gnote

The bug has been filed here but we are yet to see any improvements.

So I thought I should move back to Tomboy. I needed to get my notes that I created in Gnote back. To do that, I just had to copy the .note files from /home/MyUserName/.gnote to /home/MyUserName/.local/share/tomboy. After that, I had to quit and start Tomboy again and I can access the notes again with Tomboy.
If I had to move these back again (i.e. from Tomboy to Gnote), I could delete the .gnote altogether (so that it asks for import) or copy .note from /home/MyUserName/.local/share/tomboy to /home/MyUserName/.gnote.

Let me know when Gnote starts working again.

Related posts:

1. [SOLVED] Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “gnomenu-panel”
2. [HOWTO] Make Docky 3-D Style in Ubuntu
3. [HOWTO] Installing Kernel 2.6.33 on Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04) without compiling

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progname=deluge; RGBA=on
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/deluge", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('deluge==1.2.1', 'console_scripts', 'deluge')()
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/deluge/main.py", line 121, in start_ui
    UI(options, args, options.args)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/deluge/ui/ui.py", line 128, in __init__
    ui = GtkUI(args)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/deluge/ui/gtkui/gtkui.py", line 216, in __init__
    self.torrentdetails = TorrentDetails()
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/deluge/ui/gtkui/torrentdetails.py", line 116, in __init__
    state = self.load_state()
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/deluge/ui/gtkui/torrentdetails.py", line 432, in load_state
    state = cPickle.load(state_file)
cPickle.UnpicklingError: could not find MARK

Deluge would just crash and would not show up at all.

I tried searching for a solution, but did not find any. I tried upgrading to the ppa version of deluge with no luck. Then I just removed all the .state (not to be mistaken with state directory) files (peers_tab.state, files_tab.state, torrentview.state, tabs.state, dht.state, session.state and any other file containing .state at the end) from /home/MyUserName/.config/deluge and was able to launch deluge again. You should not remove the state directory because you will lose the torrent list if you do.
After that, you will be able to launch deluge. It is a good idea to recheck (Right click on a torrent file and select Force Recheck) all torrent files after you do this.

Hope this helps.

Related posts:

1. [SOLVED] Deluge not working (Menus and Buttons Greyed Out) Problem after Upgrade
2. [SOLVED] Unable to get Exclusive Lock Problem While Launching Synaptic, /var/lib/dpkg/lock – open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable) Error
3. A better Torrent Client For Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

If you want to try this, you must have compiz enabled. You may also want to install mplayer and codecs for videos you want to use as desktop background.

First of all, I downloaded Shantz XWinWrap from here. I extract it and installed it. You can use the deb files for your respective architecture. I chose i386 as I have 32-bit version of Lucid installed.

Once it is installed, you can open up the terminal and then try running the following command to see how it works:

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xwinwrap -ni -argb -fs -s -st -sp -nf -b -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -window-id WID

You can exit it by pressing Ctrl+C in terminal.

Then, I tried with mplayer. First, you may want to set mplayer to play on loop by default, otherwise mplayer will exit when it is done playing the video and so will XWinWrap. To enable repeat mode in mplayer by default, edit /home/Your_User_Name/.mpalyer/config and add

loop=0

at the end of the file. To do that, press Alt+F2 and then type in

gedit .mplayer/config

, add

loop=0

at the end and save it.

After that was done, I tried the following in terminal:

xwinwrap -ni -o 0.9 -fs -s -st -sp -b -nf -- mplayer -wid WID -nosound /full/path/to/video.mpg

Notice the option “-o 0.9″, this is the opacity of the video wallpaper. If you do not use opacity option (use -o 1.0 or omit -o option), you will not be able to see icons on the Desktop. If you have set it to be transparent, you may want to blank the Desktop with a solid color. Black background works good for most of the videos, but I recommend you tweak the color and opacity values so that it looks good enough.

You can find videos for wallpaper at Dreamscene.org

If you want the video desktop to be retained when you next log on, you will need to enable it at startup. You can do so by adding the command you used in System>Preferences>Startup Application.

Please share your “Wallpaper as Video” experience.

Related posts:

1. What’s new with Ubuntu 10.04 Ubuntu Lucid Lynx – Download Daily Build
2. [HOWTO] Installing Kernel 2.6.33 on Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04) without compiling
3. xVideoServiceThief – Youtube Video Downloader for Ubuntu Linux

I found a similar application for my Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha. It has similar interface and features. It is called bleachbit and can be installed via Synaptic (universe repos need to be enabled) and can be accessed from Applications>System Tools>Bleachbit. It is also capable of wiping the data so that it is impossible(or lets say difficult) to recover. It can also clean backup files (those hidden with ~ at the end of the filename, .bak, .tmp and more) with Deep Scan.

Related posts:

1. [HOWTO] Make Docky 3-D Style in Ubuntu
2. [HOWTO] Add multiple rapidshare, megaupload downloads in a Queue in Ubuntu with Tucan Manager
3. [HOWTO] Video Wallpaper on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx with Shantz XWinWrap

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Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "gnomenu-panel": libgnomenu-panel.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "globalmenu-gnome": libglobalmenu-gnome.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

However, the gnomemenu-panel works fine, I wanted these messages to not appear.
I opened up /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules and found that the plugin had different files than listed in the error message. To fix the problem, I just created symbolic links to the existing files. This is how I did it from the terminal:

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cd /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules
sudo ln -s libglobalmenu-gnome-panel.so libglobalmenu-gnome.so
sudo ln -s libglobalmenu-gnome-panel.so libgnomenu-panel.so

and the messages are gone.

Hope this helps.

Related posts:

1. [SOLVED] ‘Murrine configuration option “scrollbar_color”, “gradients” is no longer supported and will be ignored.’
2. [SOLVED] Unable to get Exclusive Lock Problem While Launching Synaptic, /var/lib/dpkg/lock – open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable) Error
3. [SOLVED] LTSP, “error: LTSP client installation ended abnormally”

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/usr/share/themes/balanzan/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:89: Murrine configuration option "scrollbar_color" is no longer supported and will be ignored.
/usr/share/themes/balanzan/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:93: Murrine configuration option "gradients" is no longer supported and will be ignored.

Seems like the theme I’m using has some depreciated configuration options after Murrine update. I opened the /usr/share/themes/balanzan/gtk-2.0/gtkrc file (as root) using the following command from Alt+F2

gksu gedit /usr/share/themes/balanzan/gtk-2.0/gtkrc

and then removed the lines in question (89 and 93 in my case, those that contain depreciated options) and saved it. The messages are gone.
Hope this helps.

Related posts:

1. [SOLVED] Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “gnomenu-panel”
2. [SOLVED] “error: mountall Could not Connect to Plymouth”, “mountall main process (x) terminated with status 1″
3. [HOWTO] Video Wallpaper on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx with Shantz XWinWrap

UPDATE: The final 2.6.33 is out, it can be downloaded from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.33/

I downloaded the following files from: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.33-rc6/
linux-headers-2.6.33-020633rc6-generic_2.6.33-020633rc6_i386.deb
linux-headers-2.6.33-020633rc6_2.6.33-020633rc6_all.deb
linux-image-2.6.33-020633rc6-generic_2.6.33-020633rc6_i386.deb

Then, I installed them one by one (double click and click install) in the following order:
linux-headers-2.6.33-020633rc6_2.6.33-020633rc6_all.deb
linux-headers-2.6.33-020633rc6-generic_2.6.33-020633rc6_i386.deb
linux-image-2.6.33-020633rc6-generic_2.6.33-020633rc6_i386.deb

If you are using amd64 (64-bit) installation, you should download the files with amd64 instead of i386. The latest release till date is v2.6.33-rc6. A later version may be available till you read this. First, check the versions at http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ and choose the latest one.

Although the new Kernel promises better support for graphics (nouveau), I did not find any improvements as such with my onboard Intel GMA 3100 Graphics (actually I didn’t do any benchmarks, I just ran Assaultcube and it looks and feels the same coz it ran pretty well already ). I think Nvidia and ATI users will feel the difference though. Also, the boot up has slowed down and usable desktop shows up very late. I also see a lot of disk activity immediately after the boot up. I don’t know what is causing this. I couldn’t find any errors as such in kernel log. I’ll keep this one for now and see how it goes. I will update when the newer build is out.

Please share your 2.6.33 experience.

Related posts:

1. [HOW TO] Installing Kernel 2.6.30 (or any latest version available) in Debian Lenny or Ubuntu without having to go through Compiling
2. What’s new with Ubuntu 10.04 Ubuntu Lucid Lynx – Download Daily Build
3. [HOWTO] Video Wallpaper on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx with Shantz XWinWrap

Now, just Add the links. You may add multiple links at once. I checked it with megaupload and it automatically processed CAPTCHA so I didn’t need to do anything else. By default, it downloads to your home directory (Places>Home).

You may wish to change preferences and make it close to tray (Advanced Configuration) and make other changes as you please.

I don’t download much from these sites, but someone who needs might find this useful. I haven’t used much of this application as I just tested it and I wont use it much. Whoever does, please do share your experience.

Related posts:

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2. [HOWTO] Make Docky 3-D Style in Ubuntu
3. [HOWTO] Cleaning Ubuntu for better performance and privacy

For that, I just had to do the following:
(Please continue at your own risk)
Launched the terminal (Accessories > Terminal) and typed in sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc. I left the linux command line field empty and hit enter.
In Linux default command line, there was “quiet” already. So I added “splash”(without quotes) after a space.

Then I pressed enter and again enter. I chose the default in Grub Install Devices and pressed enter again.
It gave me:

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Installation finished. No error reported.

and then generated grub.cfg.

Then, I typed in

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sudo plymouth-set-default-theme --list

and pressed enter. It gives a list of installed themes for plymouth. To set, you can use

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sudo plymouth-set-default-theme THEME_NAME --rebuild-initrd

where THEME_NAME is the one listed by the previous command. I chose solar by typing in:

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sudo plymouth-set-default-theme solar --rebuild-initrd

and rebooted. I could see plymouth now. The solar theme looks great.

Your graphics card may not be compatible with Plymouth, so don’t expect it to work, not so early. I hope it supports yours in later developments.

Please share your Plymouth experience.

Related posts:

1. [SOLVED] LTSP, “error: LTSP client installation ended abnormally”
2. [SOLVED] “subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 2″ error
3. [SOLVED] Unable to get Exclusive Lock Problem While Launching Synaptic, /var/lib/dpkg/lock – open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable) Error