Refilling ink cartridges

I guess, I still haven't gotten the knack of refilling colour ink cartridges. I was careful not to inject too much ink and I also let the cartridge stand for a while before inserting it back into the printer. However, I think I didn't insert the needle deep enough when I was injecting the magenta and cyan into the cartridge. As a result, my printer now prints black, yellow and purple. Sigh...

I found a website where one can download videos of how to refill ink cartridges. Very informative and useful.

Udev

Usually when I plug in a usb drive, it will be allocated a slot at /dev/sda* (* denotes number 1, 2, 3 and so on). However if there were 2 usb drives or more, the drives will be allocated slots (nodes or slots? I don't know the correct terminology.) at /dev/sd* where * denotes the alphabet a, b, c and so on. This is troublesome as I mount my devices manually using the rules at /etc/fstab and it is a bother changing the rules everything to suite the alphabet sd*. Therefore now I use udev to customise the naming of device nodes. This was done by following instructions at the Gentoo Wiki.

1. My udev rules are kept in the file /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules

2. Examples of rules in the file are: 

BUS=="usb", SYSFS{serial}=="00000000000000000182", KERNEL=="sd?1", NAME="%k", SYMLINK="pdrive"
BUS=="usb", SYSFS{serial}=="000000899406", KERNEL=="sd?2", NAME="%k", SYMLINK="ipod" 

3. The serial number in SYSFS{serial} is obtain as follows:

a. udevadm -a -p /sys/path/to/hardware/info - which for my pendrive and ipod is actually /dev/sda. Therefore:

i. $ udevadm -q path -n /dev/sda
That will result in /block/sda
ii. $ udevadm -a -p /sys/block/sda

b. (i) and (ii) can be combined : udevadm -a -p 'udevinfo -q path -n /dev/sda' 

4. My rules used to read 

BUS="usb", SYSFS{serial}="00000000000000000182", KERNEL="sd?1", NAME="%k", SYMLINK="pdrive" 

Note the single equal sign. That used to work until udev was upgraded to udev-103. After that the double equal signs have to be used or else the udev rules will not load with errors of 'invalid rules' and 'subsystem' not found (something like that).

Ubuntu - Gripes

1. I can't bloody see anything during bootup. Just the Ubuntu word and a progress bar.
- to rectify by editing /boot/grub/menu.lst and removing the words 'quiet' and 'splash'

2. A whole load of modules and processes which are not needed.

3. Slightly messed up xorg.conf; the wacom and the font thing

4. Gnome login problems

5. Gnome login problems

6. Gnome login problems

7. Gnome login problems

8. ...

9. ...

10. ...

Ubuntu - Installation

I installed Ubuntu 6.10 on the old computer yesterday. Pentium III 667Mhz, 128 RAM with a 3dfx Voodoo graphic card and Soundblaster-I-forgot-the-model sound card. Dual-boot with Windows by the way. I encountered the paradise of problems - GDM, gnome and X server. I did this, did that, got nowhere, created new problems and the list goes on. So I reinstalled Ubuntu again today. And here goes the log:

1. No problems during installation. I had to use the text-mode installation method using the alternate-iso-cd because the other live-desktop-whatever-it-is-called-i386 iso needs 192 MB RAM.

2. Rebooted after installation. Arrived at login screen of gdm. Entered username and password. Gnome started. Halfway-through the startup, the login screen appeared again. Entered username and password. Gnome started, this time without a problem. But why do THREE Nautilus windows have to be started??

3. Update package manager popped up a screen with 2 new updates; imagemagick (I think) and something else. Updates completed without problem.

4. Checked .xsession-errors. Had to edit xorg.conf to:
a. remove all entries which had anything to do with wacom, stylus, cursor and can't-remember (something to do with tablet pc)
b. edit the Font paths in which 'X11' and 'fonts' were in reversed position

5. Checked all the other log files: Xorg.0.log, dmesg, faillog, ... no apparent errors.

6. Ran gdmsetup. Made sure 'Accessible login' was not enabled. Read somewhere that enabling this can cause some kind of errors.

7. Edited startup programs. Later saw some error messages which said that the autostart file cannot be edited. Have to check to see if ~/.config/autostart is under root.

8. Rebooted again. Say hello to 'PROBLEMS'.

7. Login screen keeps on appearing after I have entered username and password for Gnome Session.

8. Nautilus and nothing else pop up after logging into Gnome Failsave. Couldn't even find a way to bring up a terminal. I think I got an error message about Gnome Settings Daemon and dbus.

9. Login into Terminal Failsave successful but there was no detectable error messages.

10. Decided to call it a night.

List of Installed Packages

$ equery list

Cannot access websites

Today I cannot access websites like google, yahoo and lycos with firefox. However when I ping www.google.com, there is 0% packet loss. I did notice though that the website being pinged is www.l.google.com. (notice the extra 'l'?) So I entered this web address in firefox, and I can access google again. Strange, isn't it? The same with yahoo. Address entered is www.yahoo.com, but address being pinged is www.yahoo-ht2.akadns.net. And again, I can use yahoo by entering the second address in firefox.

Eject works only with root

Had a strange problem. Couldn't eject my Ipod. Got this error:

$ eject /mnt/ipod
$ eject: unable to open `/dev/ipod'

The same thing happened with my usb flash drive. I know, some people say that we don't have to eject a flash drive; umount will do. But ejecting a flash drive makes the LED light switch off. I like seeing that... hehe

Anyway, this has never happened before and I don't know why I suddenly cannot eject as a normal user. With root, I get this message:

$ eject -v /mnt/ipod
eject: device name is `/mnt/ipod'
eject: expanded name is `/mnt/ipod'
eject: `/mnt/ipod' is not mounted
eject: `/dev/ipod' can be mounted at `/mnt/ipod'
eject: `/dev/ipod' is not a multipartition device
eject: trying to eject `/dev/ipod' using CD-ROM eject command
eject: CD-ROM eject command failed
eject: trying to eject `/dev/ipod' using SCSI commands
eject: SCSI eject succeeded

I solved the problem temporarily by doing chmod +s /usr/bin/eject

I read this in this bug website:

That's an eject bug because it opens for read-only.

From "strace eject -s /dev/sdb1":
open("/dev/sdb1", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK) = 3

EDIT: I searched through my old posts, and found the post titled 'Ipod Works Under Gentoo' where I have already encountered this problem with eject! Why do I even note down these things if I'm not going to look through them first?!

Another day ...

This blog is not meant for this., maybe I'll delete this post some day... but I just have to let it out: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Yet another discouraging and disappointing day. *&#@!! Puh-leasee remind me again why I chose to do this and why the heck am I still doing it?! Yargh!

I think I'll go and have a haircut. Nah, I'm not shaving the head bald, have a punk haircut or anything like that. I'm not that traumatised ... yet. Will just have the fringes and the back part trimmed slightly. Not at all adventurous ... Maybe if someone were to pop out of a bank and hand me a wad of cash, I might have my hair dyed. Hmmm... then again, I think I'll probably take the cash and buy either another set of graphic novels or another ipod! 'Hair' is not on top of my priority list at all!

Kernel compile and kernel sources

I didn't know that everytime the package gentoo-sources is updated, the symlink of /usr/src/linux still points to the first original sources, from which the kernel was compiled. Therefore, although I compile a new kernel everytime there is an updated version of the source, it is actually not compiled using the updated version but rather the old version. I found this out while trying to compile the new ATI-drivers and found that there were errors because they were using the old kernel source. Am I making any sense? Ah well, as long as I know what I'm saying... Anyway, I got this from the Gentoo Linux Documentation regarding kernel upgrade:

Three ways in order to make the /usr/src/linux symbolic link point to the sources of the kernel you are running.

1. Portage can update the symlink automatically when you emerge new kernel sources. All you have to do is add the symlink flag to the USE variable in /etc/make.conf

(Add the symlink keyword)
USE="symlink x86 3dnow 3dnowex X aac aalib adns alsa apache2"

2. Use app-admin/eselect to modify the symlink.

Install eselect if you don't have it)
#emerge eselect
(See the list of available kernels)
#eselect kernel list
Available kernel symlink targets:
[1] linux-2.6.9-gentoo-r1
[2] linux-2.6.9-gentoo-r2
(Select the correct kernel)
#eselect kernel set 1

3. Manually update the symlink
# cd /usr/src
# ln -sfn linux-latest-version linux

Firefox and Mouse 2

Another thing I noticed about Firefox: Scrolling up and down a page very quickly with the mouse wheel will trigger the command 'Go Back' and 'Go Forward' respectively.

After reading some websites, I've found out that this is not a Firefox bug (therefore the title of this post is actually not justified) but rather a problem with xorg or something like that. Apparently this will occur in all applications with a horizontal scroll bar.

To prevent this from occuring in Firefox alone:

set mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 0 in about:config

Or edit the xorg.conf:
For my case, I edited this line:

Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"

into

Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

## Note the absence of 6 and 7. Why they were there in the first place, I don't know. I only have one mouse wheel. At least, I think that 6 and 7 represent the second wheel (for horizontal scrolling?)

Firefox and Mouse

Well, I'll be! I can be so dense sometimes. I've just discovered some enlightening stuff about my mouse. I've been using a Microsoft mouse for more than a year now and only today(!) I've noticed that the scroll wheel can actually be depressed and it can act as a middle mouse button! (My current mouse setting is '3 Button Emulate' or something like that.) No wonder sometimes other webpages load when I'm scrolling through a page. That was reeeeeeeally annoying! The discoveries that I've made:

1. Scroll wheel can act as 3rd button. If it is pressed, firefox will search for the term currently in the clipboard and display a page based on that. To prevent that from happening, go to 'about:config' and change the value for 'middlemouse.loadContentURL' to false. I'm so glad I've finally solved this mystery!

2. Recently, ever since I've installed Firefox 1.5.0.4, I've been having trouble with copy and paste. Everytime I try to paste some text using the 'middle button' (pressing left and right buttons together), this little weird sphere would appear with little arrows and the whole page would move up and down when I move the mouse, and I couldn't paste the text!! It was so annoying and I was cursing away at Firefox. The poor thing didn't deserve all that. Hehe. It was actually my own ignorance. Autoscrolling was enabled by default in the new version. Du-uh... yes I know! As I've never used autoscrolling before, I didn't know what was going on until today. So, I disabled it and can now cut and paste in peace with another new bit of information tucked safely away.

Nimbus Roman No 9 L

OpenOffice Writer: The characters of this font will be displayed overlapping each other when the text is in bold. Weird. The printed text is normal though. Anyway, I installed 'urw-fonts' and the problem was rectified.

Great song!

I first heard this song while listening to the podcast 'Filme und So'. The song is called 'Tom Cruise scares me' by David Ippolito. I'm not sure if I will be offending anyone / breaking some rules / doing something wrong by posting the direct link here, (These things are soooo sensitive nowadays - sheesh!) so I'll just post the link to the main website. It's a great song and I love it!

http://www.thatguitarman.com/

EDIT: Just as well, that I didn't post the direct link. I read through the 'Legal, Terms of Service and Usage' part of the website, and apparently they don't allow direct link to 'images, sounds or executable applications'.

Users and Groups

I hate searching for this every time I have to add a user to a group. I keep forgetting the commands!

1. To view the list of groups and their users: $ cat /etc/group

2. Create new user: $ useradd

3. Create new group: $ groupadd.

4. To list all groups to which the user is a member: $ groups <user id> ## This is the one I keep forgetting!!!!

5. Add user to group z.B. cdrom: $ usermod -G <comma separated group list> <user id>
### Be sure to list all groups as this is an absolute list and not an addition. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Use the 'groups' command and then enter all the groups in addition to the new one under usermod.

EDIT: No need to list all the groups. I just found out that you can append the user to a supplementary group by using the -a option. Meaning:

usermod -a -G wireshark user

This will add 'wireshark' to the user's groups in addition to the other groups that the user already belongs to.

or

gpasswd -a username group


This is a usefule website.

/etc/conf.d/net

My network connection = Modem --> Router --> Computers

At first, I set my Gentoo system to automatically use DHCP and obtain the IP address. However this resulted in a very slow startup for the computer if the router is switched off. Hence I edited the file /etc/conf.d/net and added this:

###
config_eth0=( "my-ip-address-allocated-by-router netmask 255.255.255.0" )
routes_eth0=( "default gw router's-ip-address" )
###

SCIM

The commands to start scim:

$ export XMODIFIER="@im=SCIM"
$ export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
$ scim -d

I used to put these 3 commands in bash_profile but that did something to my keyboard, whose layout is set to us international, and I couldn't type umlauts and eszett, or something like that. I can't really remember. Maybe I'll try again. Anyway, because of whatever that went wrong, I just type these commands in a terminal everytime I need to use scim, which is not very often. But it is still troublesome to enter all those words. I wonder if it will work if I create an alias for them. Will try later

EDIT: The alias works: alias chinese='export XMODIFIER=@im=SCIM && export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim && scim -d'

Hmmm... the Trebuchet '&' (&) looks ugly.

To use scim with eg. openoffice:
$ LC_ALL=zh_CN.utf8 oowriter2

bashrc vs bash_profile

I was looking for a place to put my aliases and some suggested ~/.bashrc, others suggested ~/.bash_profile. By the way, my aliases are in ~/.bashrc and they are as follows:

# My Personal Alias
alias ipin='mount /mnt/ipod'
alias ipout='umount /mnt/ipod'
alias ipej='eject /mnt/ipod'

Anyway, 'man bash' turned up a mouthful of words which have been nicely summarised by someone from linuxquestions.org:

In other words, /etc/profile is run when a user logs in. ~/.bashrc is run for other shells (Ie opening an xterm)

/etc/profile contains environment variables and startup programs. Environ. var. are persistent - only need to read once. Startup programs are launched once - no need to start them again.

/etc/bashrc is included by ~/.bashrc, and read every time a shell starts up, people use it to include shell aliases and functions. Aliases and functions do not behave like environment variables; they are not passed to other processes.

There - that's why I put my aliases into bashrc ... I think ...

cdda2wav

When I was using SuSE, I used this command to rip CDs

$ cdda2wav -D 0,0,0 andwhateverotheroptioniwant

In order to find out the numerical figures after -D, I ran "cdda2wav -scanbus"

However, on a Gentoo machine, "cdda2wav -scanbus" gives this output:

###
cdda2wav: No such file or directory. Cannot open '/dev/pg*'. Cannot open SCSI driver.
cdda2wav: For possible targets try 'cdda2wav -scanbus'.
Use the script scan_scsi.linux to find out more.
Probably you did not define your SCSI device.
Set the CDDA_DEVICE environment variable or use the -D option.
You can also define the default device in the Makefile.
For possible transport specifiers try 'cdda2wav dev=help'.
###

What in the world does that mean? Anyway, now I use the command "cdda2wav -D /dev/hdb andtherestoftheoptions"

Problems I still have with cdda2wav:
1. I don't know why the -scanbus doesn't work on Gentoo. Not a serious problem, since I can replace the device with /dev/hdb. But why??? And that question is bugging the hell out of me! But I'm too lazy to look it up now.

2. I can't run cdda2wav as a normal user. I get this error:

cdda2wav: Operation not permitted. cannot set posix realtime scheduling policy
percent_done:
0%cdda2wav: Operation not permitted. Cannot send SCSI cmd via ioctl

And it just hangs there until I press CTRL-C. I read this in the linuxquestion.org:

cdrecord and cdda2wav require their controlling user to have access privileges to the scsi bus which are not granted to normal users by default within any sane setup.

3. I still haven't figured out how to rip multiple but not consecutive tracks from a CD.

Die WM

Haha. Es ist unglaublich. Bei jeder WM hat England immer ein Idiot, der etwas Dummes tun muss. Und wie gewöhnlich können ihre Spieler gar keinen Elfmeter verwandeln. Es ist wirklich lächerlich.

Change mouse theme

Edit: /usr/share/cursors/xorg-x11/default/index.theme

OR

1. emerge x11-themes/silver-xcursors

2. vim ~/.Xdefaults and place this entry:

Xcursor.theme: Silver