I’m using Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat and I had been having a problem related to sound. Every time I started the computer, the volume was muted and I had to un-mute it as well as increase the volume. When I searched for a solution, it was brought to my attention that Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and 10.04 Lucid Lynx also had this problem. I solved it by simply removing the buggy package alsa-utils which was responsible for this. Removing also-utils also removes ubuntu-desktop meta-package, but it does not matter since it is just a meta-package. To those who do not want to remove alsa-utils or ubuntu-desktop, some people in the Bug report have said that removing the line

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mute_and_zero_levels "$TARGET_CARD" || EXITSTATUS=1

from /etc/init.d/alsa-utils (to open, use gksu gedit /etc/init.d/alsa-utils) fixed the problem.

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.

DISCLAIMER: Please use the information at your own risk. I do not take responsibility of whatever damages you do to your Ubuntu installation, data or anything else by using the information in this tutorial.

First, it is not a good idea to downgrade. If you are experiencing problems, you should try asking in ubuntuforums for help. You may wish to file a bug report too to help the developers fix it.

Prerequisites:
Make sure you have the Human Theme set as your current theme and not one of the light themes that comes by default on Alpha 3 or any. You may also use a theme that you have installed manually to ~/.themes (from Appearance Preferences>Install)
Backup critical data, just in case.
Make a list of applications that you currently use, in case you are forgetful

Procedure
I inserted the Karmic Koala CD-ROM into the drive and selected “Install Ubuntu”. Then, I just selected my country and region. Then when the partitioning slide comes up, I selected “Specify Partitions Manually (Advanced)”.

Image: Specify Partitions Manually

Then, I could see my parititon layout. I had installed Ubuntu in a single partition (with a separate swap partition though).

If you had selected a different physical partition for /home, you can simply choose to format the root (/) partition, and install Ubuntu over there. Even if that is the case, you should change the partition containing the /home directory to be mounted as /home so that it is not created in the same root partition. Also, select the same filesystem type you had (instead of “Do not use”). Also, if you wish to format, make sure you have backed up everything that has been saved to the root (/) partition. /var/www and MySQL databases are on the root partition, for example and not in the /home partition. Hence, these will be lost if you choose to format. There may be other files if you use other programs too, so make sure you know what you are doing.

If you had installed everything in the same partition i.e. no separate partition for /home or /etc or others, you should not mark the root partition for formatting as I have done. However, you must change it from “Do not use the partition” to the corresponding type you have used.

Image: Prepare Paritions 1

Image: Preparing Partition 2

Review your partitioning setup and make sure of the formatting options (checked or unchecked as explained above, but the safe bet is to leave for not formatting in either case).

Image: Preparing Partition 3

Now, this part is crucial. You must enter the same username that you previously used while installing (or any other user capable of using sudo or gksu i.e. in listed in the sudoers file may be used). You may choose to enter a different username and import user configuration later, but I haven’t tried how it works, so I recommend you to use the same. I even chose the same password, but any other password should work.

Image: Entering User Information

Now, you should see a “Migrate documents and settings” window that lists the users that are on the system. You should not choose to import any of them if you have entered the same username in the previous step. However, if you haven’t, you may choose to import settings. Again, as I have not tried this one, I cannot assure all other application settings will be restored.

Image: Import Application settings

Now, you can go ahead and continue the installation process.

If everything goes right, you must be able to boot into Karmic Koala and install the applications you were using with the same settings and data as in Lucid Lynx. It is highly recommended that you should upgrade to the latest packages using the update manager or Synaptic Package Manager.

Hope this helps.

Please do share your results.

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha on a system with Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L with Intel GMA 3100 onboard graphics. I upgraded to Lucid from Karmic Koala (9.10) and it was always showing these errors on boot:
“error: mountall Could not Connect to Plymouth”
“mountall main process (x) terminated with status 1″
Also, I could not experience Plymouth. I thought it was a problem with Plymouth and believed updates will fix it, but that did not happen till date. Today, I decided to fix it and went looking around for a fix and got it working.

I found this thread on Ubuntu Forums and was able to fix it by following it.
I checked by boot options and noticed that there was only “quiet” specified, and no “splash”. I added “splash” and it worked.

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.

UPDATE March 29: When I upgraded my system, the kernel was updated to 2.6.32-16 and the same error started appearing again. It was working fine (and still does) with kernel 2.6.32-15. Hope they fix it in the next kernel build. I am getting this with Plymouth 0.8.1-1ubuntu1

UPDATE March 30: Kernel updated to 2.6.32-18 and Plymouth to 0.8.1-1ubuntu3 but the problem still persists. Please follow bug 551062 at Launchpad to find out when it is solved.

Please share your Plymouth experience.

I upgraded deluge recently to version 1.2.0 and then started it. The “Add Torrent” and several other options were greyed out and the torrents I was downloading were not there anymore. Here is how I got around the problem and how you can do it if you are facing the same.


You will need to goto ~/.config/ (i.e. /home/Your_UserName/.config). It will be hidden, so View > Show Hidden Files in nautilus. And then just rename the deluge folder to something else (say deluge_backup). Now, launch deluge again. You will see the options are not greyed anymore. But the torrent files are still missing. To get around that, just quit deluge and then from deluge_backup (or the directory you renamed earlier) copy the directory “state” to the newly created (by deluge program when you launched it) deluge directory. Now launch deluge and it should show the torrents you were downloading. You may also copy other directories like “plugins”, if you had plugins installed. But in my case there were none. So it was not a problem.

I was too lazy to find out exactly what caused the problem (which particular file or directory). If anyone does, please do share.

Hope this helps.

xVideoServiceThief is a Desktop based video downloader for Linux, Windows and Mac. It is capable of downloading videos from Youtube, Google, Yahoo and various other sites. You can even queue the videos and it downloads with resume support (if the server supports it). It can resume Youtube videos.

It can be downloaded from:
http://xviservicethief.sourceforge.net/index.php?action=downloads#Linux

To install it in Ubuntu, all you need to do is extract it and run install.sh (double click and “Run in Terminal” or open terminal and execute ./install.sh). It will be installed to your home directory (eg /home/khattam/xVideoServiceThief). To run it, just double click the xvst executible. If it fails to run, make sure you have installed libqt4.

Hope this helps.

As you know, Linuxmint is based on Ubuntu. So I thought, it might be possible to take Ubuntu as a base and turn it to Linuxmint with available Linuxmint software. Thats what I did.

I used Ubuntu Karmic Koala and turned it into Linuxmint Helena. You might use other Ubuntu base and turn it to respective Linuxmint distro, but you may need to follow different (yet similar) steps. Here is how I did it.

Please note that I am not trying to create Linuxmint Helena installation disk from Karmic Koala installation disk. What I am doing is turning a Karmic Koala installation to Linuxmint Helena Installation. However, after this is done, you may use mintconstructor to create Live+Installer CD/DVD for Linuxmint.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any kind of loss (time, data, your pet penguin.. whatever) you might face due to the instructions in this tutorial. Please proceed at your own risk.

Installation of Ubuntu:
First of all, I installed Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. If you are reading this and have reached so far, I’ll assume that you know how to install Ubuntu so I’m skipping the details. Just a standard Ubuntu Karmic Koala installation, nothing more nothing less. You may also use your existing Ubuntu Karmic Koala installation.

Addition of repositories:

Launch Synaptic and navigate to Settings>Repositories. In the other software tab, add the following lines one by one:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ helena main upstream import backport
deb-src http://packages.linuxmint.com/ helena main upstream import backport #Added by software-properties
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ karmic partner
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ karmic free non-free

Now, Reload the package list by clicking on Reload.

When reloading is complete, search for package mint-meta-main and mark it for installation. This will select most mint software. Also, search for xsplash and mark it for removal. Now apply the changes and wait.

When the installation is complete, reboot. After you are back, you should get a mint-like system with softwares, theme and boot screen of Linuxmint.

More:
You can add mint-menu to your panel by right clicking the panel>Add to Panel and select mintmenu. You can change the panel layout for it to look like Linuxmint.
You may also create Linuxmint installation disk with the mintconstructor wizard (you will need to install mintconstructor first).

Hope this was helpful.

I want to build my college project on J2ME platform. I use Ubuntu and want to use NetBeans as my IDE.

I just installed netbeans, Sun Java Wireless Toolkit for CLDC and Mobility pack for netbeans. Here is how I did it.

I opened up Synaptic and installed netbeans. It installed openjdk as Java Development Kit. You may choose to install sun-java6-jdk instead. It should run fine (maybe better).

Now, when netbeans was installed, I downloaded Sun Java Wireless Toolkit CLDC from sun website. As it has a text based installer, I had to install it via terminal. Opened up the terminal and then changed the directory to where I downloaded the .sh file. Then ran it as sudo sh downloaded_file_name.sh. It asks a few questions such as path to JDK etc.

Then, I launched netbeans and then navigated through Tools>Plugins. In the available plugins tab, I just sorted by category and installed both packages (Mobility and Mobile Web) packages.Then I restarted netbeans and then navigated through Tools>Java Platforms. Then I selected Java ME MIDP Emulator and browsed for path where I had installed Sun Java Wireless Toolkit for CLDC.

Then I restarted netbeans again. Now I was able to create J2ME projects. While doing so, I had to select the directory where I installed the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit for CLDC.

I successfully ran the Hello World project inside the emulator.

Thank you for reading. Wish me luck for the project.

A few days ago, I had written a blog post about uploading multiple photos to your Facebook account using Windows Version of Google Picasa using Wine. The same can be achieved with F-spot, a great photo manager for Linux.Launch F-spot and import all your photos or those you want to upload to Facebook. This may take some time depending upon the number and size of photos and your Options. You may choose not to copy photos to Photos directory and not to detect duplicates to make the process a lot faster. F-spot may seem to not respond for a while, but that is OK. It should be working on the background.

After you have your photos on F-spot, you must enable Facebook Export Plugin. That is not done by default as of version 0.6.3, the one I am using. So, you must reach for Edit > Manage Extensions and then in Export, select FacebookExport and enable it and then close the dialog box. Then select the photos you want to upload and then click on Photo > Export > Facebook. The first time you use this, it will ask you to login to Facebook. Login and Allow the application. Then you may choose to Allow the application to upload photos by marking “Auto Confirm Photos” so that you need not bother about approving the photos after you upload. Then, select an album or create one and then start upload.

Hope this helps.

I am using Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala on my Desktop with Firefox 3.5 as my primary browser. Recently I was facing problems playing online media (streaming mp3s, non-flash) including FM from my own page on Firefox.The fix was to remove all of the plugins mozilla-plugin-vlc and install only either mozilla-mplayer or totem-mozilla (or both).

Hope this helps.

UPDATE Nov 2, 2008: If you don’t want to get into trouble installing Windows version of Picasa and happy to use F-spot instead, head over to the new article here.

The picasa application from Google repositories with Facebook button does not work for Facebook photo uploads. It ends up with a blank window with nothing but a link. However, I have found an alternative in Ubuntu Forums and it works.

The trick is to install Windows Internet Explorer under wine and then install the Windows version of Picasa. To do this, make sure you have wine installed and picasa removed from your system.
This is how you do it:
Open terminal and then create a directory

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mkdir ielinux

Download ies4linux, the internet explorer installer for linux and run it.

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wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-*

Now run the following command

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./ies4linux

If you do get an error, close the dialog and run it again as long as it is not completely installed.
After it is done, type in the following:

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wget http://www.khattam.info/junk/picasadownloader.sh ; chmod 777 picasadownloader.sh ;./picasadownloader.sh

The installer will automatically be launched. Perform the setup as you would do on Windows.
Now, install facebook button. To do so, run the following command

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wget http://www.khattam.info/junk/fbbtndownloader ; chmod 777 fbbtndownloader ;./fbbtndownloader

Now install picasa launcher. To do so, run the following set of commands

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wget http://www.khattam.info/junk/picasa
sudo cp picasa /usr/bin/picasa
sudo chmod 777 /usr/bin/picasa

Now, launch picasa by running picasa from the terminal or from Run Applications Dialog (Alt+F2).

To upload pictures, select the pictures and click the Facebook button. You will be asked to login, select or create the album and then photos will be uploaded. See your album on Facebook to confirm the pictures.

If picasa stops responding, you can kill it by typing in the following command:

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killall wineserver

Source : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1093761