Mostly smooth installation, I'd even say Ubuntu 10.04 was by far the easiest ever. My machine (a Thinkpad T60) is much faster than before, dual screen works out of the box and I even had sound right from the beginning (can you believe it?). Still, a couple of problems persisted:

1. System beep – Solved

My computer beeps when plugging the a/c in, when unplugging the power, when suspending and when waking up from sleep. What did work

1. The bios settings

What didn't work

1. muting alerts in System → Preferences → Sound
2. blacklisting speaker driver through adding blacklist pcspkr to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist suggested here and elsewhere
3. adding setterm -bfreq 0 to ~/.bashrc (suggested here).

2. Latex – Solved

2.1.: Kile

I downloaded kile 2.0 again and locked it in Synaptic (Package → Force Version).

2.2.: eepic

Error:

Solution: Removed \usepackage{eepic} from preamble

2.3.: Language Support

Error:

Solution: Download »texlive-lang-greek« (search for »LGR« in synaptic)

Also don't forget to install »texlive-lang-<yourlanguagehere>«

3. Trackpoint Scrolling on Thinkpad – Solved

Doesn't get boring, but at least easy thanks to thinkwiki.

4. Auto Lock Screen – Solved

Under System → Preferences → Screensaver disable »Lock screen when screensaver is active«.

5. Restricted Formats

Almost forgot to install the codecs https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

I have phases in my work cycle, where I want to limit internet access to myself. Thus, I created a »work-user« and in the user's properties I unticked the boxes 

• Connect to internet using a modem
• Connect to wireless and ethernet networks
• Use modems

I thought that should do the trick, yet it didn't restrict internet access to this user. I tried various other things to deny access to network and web and finally found something useful at ubuntuusers.org (German):

create a file in /etc/init.d (filename doesn't matter)

sudo touch /etc/init.d/iptab-filter.sh

Open the file you created:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/iptab-filter.sh

and paste the following code:

#!/bin/bash iptables -A OUTPUT -m owner --uid-owner USERNAME -j DROP

Replace USERNAME with the desired user's user name, save, close and run

ln -s /etc/init.d/iptab-filter.sh /etc/rc2.d/S99iptab-filter

Done.

Result:

The script that prevents user USERNAME to access the internet runs at start up, so user USERNAME is denied access to the tubez for good. 

I was somewhat flabberghasted when I found out my mobile phone (Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot) was unable to play .mp4, .flv, .avi and what else I tried. It refuses to play all video formats save .3gp.

I was unable to convert to this with avidemux. Google quickly told me that ffmpeg could do the trick. But being unfamiliar with bitrates and stuff I was happy indeed when I found Mobile Media Converter, which is a neat and lean GUI for ffmpeg (Mac, Linux and Win). It even sports convenient batch process via drag & drop. Have fun.

I couldn't resist, I did it again. Everything was working ok until Friday, so I thought I had to change that and went from 8.04LTS to 9.04. Here is my account.

All credit and gratefulness goes to the original posters, I merely repost in brevity in case something happens to the sources.

Home Encryption (Solved)

Something I long wanted to do because I know a few people with a few stolen laptops. Everywhere it says that 9.04 can encrypt your home folder. During install I didn't see an option like that although I went back a couple of times. Even Google only showed me how not to encrypt it until I found a home encryption tutorial. Basically install and

sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils

Then boot into recovery and

Hit ctrl+d

Data Encryption (Solved)

I installed truecrypt and just fumbled my way through to encrypting my data partition. Hope I won't forget my very strong password, though.

Scrolling with the track point (Solved)

I used to follow the Thinkwiki guide I once found at the ubuntu forums but now this »solution« solely produced funny behaviour on rebooting. The way to track point scrolling in Jaunty is creating the file mouse-wheel.fdi through

sudo gedit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi

and then copying the following content into it:

Save, reboot, enjoy

Musik (Solved)

I am clearly not ready for Amarok 2 yet but there is no alternative. The way to go for me was use the old Amarok 1.4 in Jaunty:

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/amarok.list

Paste

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bogdanb/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/bogdanb/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

and

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com \ 0x1d7e9dd033e89ba781e32a24b9f1c432ae74ae63

Then

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove amarok
sudo apt-get install amarok14

Yakuake (Solved)

Yakuake suddenly was white text on black background, which I don't like. Morfeusz knows that Yakuake gets the background from konsole. So tweak konsole and pick that profile in Yakuake.

Sound (Partially Solved)

Strangely the volume buttons on my Thinkpad T60 and the ones on my external keyboard control two different volumes. So a few grey hairs and some broken items later I pumped up both volumes. In between I followed the sound solution guide. Don't know whether it did good or harm. Skype settings are HDA Intel (in), pulse (out), pulse (ringing)

Still no sound in Gmail, though.

Kile (solved)

Kile 2.1 no dynamic word wrap? Come. On. Switched back to 2.0 following the hints of the Random Thoughts.

Graphics (solved)

3D rendering was practically non existent after upgrading, Desktop effects that previously ran smooth as baby skin no jerked and jumped all over. Also, media software crashed (kaffeine, vlc, totem) when I opened a movie file and had the virtual Desktop set to something larger than 2048px width. Help comes from here:

1. Reverting Jaunty Intel Driver
2. Troubleshooting Intel graphics performance issues
3. Ubuntu 9.04: New Intel Graphics Drivers

Flash (Not Solved)

Some videos are working, some aren't. But I am not alone.

I have an external harddrive. This is where my backup goes. Suddenly it bacame read-only. I had this all-of-a-sudden read only problem once before, so I find it's time to share the solution.

The external drive is FAT 32, because I need access from Linux, Windows and Mac machines, so neither chmod nor chown works. Here is what works:

1. Determine the mount point through

   mount

   mine is /dev/sdf1

2. Unmount the volume
3. sudo fsck /dev/sdf1 -a
4. Remount

Thanks to this, it fixed it for me.

I feared it, but I had to do it. I finally switched from ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) to Hardy Heron (8.04). I was happy enough with the Gibbon, but there were two main reasons for swapping: a) 8.04 is an

• Dual Screen

  Seems much easier now (less uneasy than on 7.10 anyway). With the i810 driver I could just specify the external screen and it worked out of the box. But the i810 doesn't support desktop effects, so I replaced it with the intel Experimental modsetting driver. I had to edit xorg.config

  sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

  and change Virtual 1024 768 to Virtual 2048 768. I also added "2048x768@60" to »Modes« section. Logged off and on again, and it now even detects automatically if there is a second screen plugged in or not. The only thing is that the items on the panels are often a bloody mess when booting after plugging the external screen in or out.

• LaTeX

  funny, but letterspace.sty causes trouble now. When I run it with \usepackage{letterspace} I get

  [LaTeX] finished with exit status 1
  /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex/microtype/letterspace.sty:237:Undefined control sequence.
  
  \MT@ProcessOptionsWithKV{MT}
  
  /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex/microtype/letterspace.sty:237:Missing \begin{document}.
  
  \MT@ProcessOptionsWithKV{MT}
  
  /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex/microtype/letterspace.sty:237:Undefined control sequence.
  
  \MT@ProcessOptionsWithKV{MT}
  
  /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex/microtype/letterspace.sty:237:Undefined control sequence.
  
  \MT@ProcessOptionsWithKV{MT}
  
  /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex/microtype/letterspace.sty:237:Undefined control sequence.
  
  \MT@ProcessOptionsWithKV{MT}

  Other than that: fine

• Evolution

  Beautiful. I used Evolution's backup tool before I erased 7.10 and on opening Evolution for the first time in 8.04 was promted with the question whether I wanted to import settings. I did and everything was good.

• Suspend/Hibernate

  It suspends alright, but it won't wake up from sleeping again. I just see an underscore blinking in the top left corner.

  I tried sasha's suggestions on kalaj.org: 

  sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support

  and set

  POST_VIDEO=false
  RADEON_LIGHT=true
  ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true

  However, after doing this, my panels were gone and they only came back after reverting to the original settings and rebooting. I'll have another fiddle with it and maybe I'll also try the suspension script at thinkwiki.
  I haven't tried a hibernation yet.

• The Printer

  My old Samsung ML-1410 (same make as ML-1510) worked straight out of the box. No more unified driver hassle.

• Skype

  I had to do the Mic-thing again. The camera image didn't split anymore on the one call I made, but I can only see the buttons when not receiving a video. Hmmm.

• Trash on Data Partition

  As I have dual boot set up, I have a data partition formatted in fat32. When I try to move stuff to the trash from there it said »Cannot move files to trash«.
  Thankfully I was not alone and with noyanc's help I solved it in no time:

  sudo gedit /etc/fstab

  Add
  

  uid=1000,gid=1000

  as options to the partition's fstab entry. Create a directory named ».Trash-1000« in the partition's root. Reboot. Done.

• Sound

  I had some twitches:
  Sometimes Amarok and Kaffeine played, I would hear sound of .mp3, .flv and .vob files in VLC. But then I didn't get the »ping« of a new chat message in Gmail and Skype says there is a sound problem.
  At other times Amarok and Kaffeine hang and then crash. VLC progression indicator is moving forwards but I have no sound. But then I could hear the gmail ping. I couldn't hear sound of .flv in VLC but could hear sound on a random youtube video.
  Thanks to cozmicharly I solved it following the ubuntugeek. I did the flash thing mentioned in the comments and had to set skype to »pulse«. Several TeX-Packages were removed on nspluginwrapper, but so far LaTeX still runs fine. Hm.

Want to install MS true type fonts? Solution first, then rant.

1. Solution:

sudo nautilus

copy fonts to

/home/USER/.fonts

where USER is your username, chmod if necessary, done.

Thank you, ubuntublog.

2. Rant

I needed two Windows fonts for a project I'm currently working on. I had tried

sudo nautilus

and copying them to

fonts:///

They didn't show, so I tried to copy them again. Nautilus said, they were already there. I still couldn't see, let alone use them. I thought it was easiest to boot windows, create the image and go back to ubuntu with the file.

No. Windows chooses to install ALL my fucking peripherals each time I boot: mouse, keyboard, webcam, external harddrive and usb hub. Would not be so bad if they had one window popping up saying something like:

Disovered mouse, keyboard, webcam, external harddrive and usb hub. Want to install them all/none/some?

But it's not called Window, it's calles Windows. So I need at least four clicks in four windows for each item. It sucks. Big time. Hateithateithateit. So, thanks ubuntu, for making almost everything and life easier.

I bought a webcam. I wanted to do the right thing. I checked for compatibility first. I got the »Logitech Quickcam Deluxe for Notebooks«. Alas! Logitech apparently changed something, as my ID does not read »046d:08a9« as stated in the compatibility list but »046d:09c1« instead (Note: I could not determine the ID from the outside of the package. Only when I plugged it in and had a look at the Skype settings I saw it to be different).

It did work out of the box with Skype, but after 10-13 seconds the lower half or lower third of the image froze and went into a loop. Have a look at noobin's screenshot to see what I mean. Luckily I was not the only one with that problem. I followed bschlarman's suggestion and updated the driver following the UVC help page.

I just did everything they say plus reboot (logging out and on again was not enough) and I'm sending a good, complete, steady image now. Thank you.

The only trouble is that now I can either see »Myself view« with a crooked image from the other party or see the other party's image with no »Myself view«.

update

I can see everything just fine now, only I have to redo all above steps each time there is a new skype version.

I always found that Synaptic Package Manager's list of available packages for GnomeSword has been a bit short in Ubuntu. Thanks to Eric Fleming I now know how to change the highly selective variety of modules Ubuntu provides:

1. Change the Source
   Open GnomeSword, go to → Edit → Module Manager. Here pick »SWORD«, then »Configure«. Change the source from »local« to »remote« and then click »Refresh«.
2. Install a shitload of Modules
   Still in the Module Manager, under »Modules« pick »Install«. You should now see an extensive, exhaustive list of biblical texts, commentaries, dictionaries, and general books available in GnomeSword. Just tick the ones you want, click »install«, wait, close the module manager and you'll have enough to read for many a cold winter's evening.

[This is merely a reworded and slightly amended version of Fleming's guide at associated content.]

Update 13.3.2008: For reasons irrelevant to this post I was forced to move my laptop into another room. I didn't want to take my external screen with me, so I thought I'd dump the i810-driver for the time I was exiled and go back to the intel driver in order to enjoy desktop effects again. When I went back to ThinkWiki's page on Intel Media Accelerator 950, I was surprised. It seems that something happened to the intel-driver, because now dual screens are mentioned extensively under the intel driver. Here is what I found out:

1. About i810

i810-driver does allow desktop effects, but only as long as you don't connect an external screen.

2. About how to switch drivers

You can GUI-switch between drivers at System → Administration → Screens and Graphics → Graphics card. It took some attempts until it stuck to the intel driver, but once it did, nice things were ahead

3. About how to use dual screen with the intel driver

Both thinkwiki and Intel have pretty straightforward instructions.

I am scared shitless of xorg.conf, so I went for the xrandr variant. I typed

xrandr --output VGA --left-of LVDS

in a terminal and – sure enough – had an error message:

xrandr: screen cannot be larger than 1024x768 (desired size 2048x768)

So I still had to edit xorg.conf. In a terminal type

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Search for Virtual 1024 768 and change it to Virtual 2048 768 (or whatever you need)

Log off and on again, type xrandr --output VGA --left-of LVDS once more and you should be as happy as I am.

The only thing people might consider a disadvantage using the xrandr way is that you have to run xrandr --output VGA --left-of LVDS each time you log on or restart. I consider it as an advantage, because the way I had it before, I sometimes had programmes open on an unconnected external screen (when I forgot to bring it to the library for instance). Also, you can add a custom launcher to a panel and do it with a click.

And there is one thing a bit funny. That's the panels. By default they appear on the external screen. I prefer them on the inbuild one. When I drag them over, sometimes items switch from horizontal to vertical, the window list disappears and the desktop switcher doesn't show which desktop I'm using. I found it helps when you move the panels to the side of the screen and then back to bottom or top of the screen.

Update 26.8.2008: I had quite some fuss a while ago. After experimenting with a different screen I had a strange area, 22px in height, at the top of the screen. All movement of objects that passed through this area left a trace. I got so annoyed that I built a stand for the external monitor to go above the inbuilt one, but I had a sore neck all the time. Today I put it next to the other screen again and later I changed the desktop background. After which the annoying bit is gone. Even after changing it back to the old background.

Update 27.8.2008: Rubbish. It doesn't have to do with the background. It's the panels. I have one at the top and one at the bottom of the screen. I put them both to the top, logged out and on again and toggled dual screen mode. Sure enough, now the funny area had a height of 44px. So to get rid of it, I have to put both panels to the bottom before toggling dual screen mode. Afterwards I can put the panels wherever I want. Quite annoying but at least my shoulders don't get sore.

There's not much to say on Buetooth save: Read this.

If you own a SonyEricsson: Read this. And for a Thinkpad go here.

Should you decide to add a new user, and should you decide that the new user should be able to hear, see and access things, make sure you tick the relevant boxes. Either → System → Administration → Users and Groups → select the user in question → Properties → User Privilieges or

and then select the user in question → Properties → User Privilieges

Thanks to kirtimaan_bkn

You can connect to the internet through Firefox? You can't convince synaptic package manager (ubuntu) or YaST (openSUSE) to update due to a timeout? Maybe you use a DLINK Router? Then probably Wille Faler has something rather helpful to offer when he recommends OpenDNS!

Update: I don't understand the stuff I did, but I know this: After I followed the instructions at OpenDNS, I had something like »no such device« on

Still, everything worked fine until after a reboot. Then the network manager applet freaked and my wireless connection didn't work any more. I would see the two dots indicating nm trying to connect, but the whooshy thing going round in between the two dots froze before I could even say »huh?«. Also, network-settings took its time before showing. I could see the frame of the window instantly, but the content would only show after maybe five minutes.

1. I removed 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
2. $ sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf.auto /etc/resolv.conf
3. $ sudo gedit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf
   
   remove
   
   prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;
4. reboot

You can't imagine how surprised I was, when after that I could not only connect through Firefox etc., but I could also still connect through synaptic. Again, I don't have the faintest idea what I did there, but I won't touch it as long as it works.

A piece of luck came my way, and I invested it into a new notebook. The new notebook shipped with XP preinstalled and as I feared without an XP-Cd.

I had various small issues to solve before I could kick off:

1. Resize Partition:
   The 80 GB were devided into 5GB for something I don't know at the end and 75 for XP at the beginning. You can use Gparted (System -> Administration) on the Ubuntu Live CD to resize the 75 GB. Make sure you either don't boot into XP at all before using Gparted, or if you do, shut it down properly. When I first switched on my machine, I wasn't fast enough with the live CD, so XP started booting and I panicked and pulled the plug. Don't.
2. New partitions
   After resizing XP's lair to 15 GB and having the 5 mysterious GB at the end, I still needed three other partitions: one for ubuntu, one for swap and one for data. No matter what I did to devide the 70 GB up, as soon as I had specified th 4th partition, the remaining space was marked as "unusable".
   Apparently one can only have four primary partitions, so I made my swap a logical one after a glance at the forum.

• Chmod
  I chmodded a little bit too fast. This forum entry prevented me from reinstalling my entire system after I had changed sudoers-permissions to 777 (which one apparently wants to avoid)
  ...and I did it again. This time I set my whole home/user directory to 777. No good. home/user wants to be 755 and ~/.dmrc wants to be 644.
• Fancy (Translucent) Terminal
  Want a terminal that beams down from the top of your screen when you hit a key (and beams up again when you hit the key again)?
  
  $ sudo apt-get install yakuake
  If you want it to be translucent, you'll need compiz fusion. If you have compiz fusion, go to System → Preferences → Advanced Desktop Effects Settings → General Options → Opacity Settings → Add
  For »Opacity Windows« type title=^Yakuake and play around with the degree of transparency.
  The ^ in title=^Yakuake is a regular expression meaning »begins with«. If you use title=Yakuake instead, the opacity settings will apply to every window that has »Yakuake« anywhere in its title, like a browser window after a Google search for »Yakuake« for instance. More general information on compiz settings and more information on window matching  at CompizWiki.
  To start Yakuake on  boot,  System → Preferences → Sessions → Startup Programs → Add → command: yakuake, the rest (name, description) is up to you.

Finally, after one and a half years of hassle, of swearing, cursing, weeping, of begging, pleading and throwing tantrums I succeeded: Ubuntu finally connects to the internet without a wire! Yee-ha!

I tried all sorts of stuff, the breakthrough came from wieman01's HOWTO: RT2500, etc. wireless cards

It worked for both the Belkin Wireless G F5D7010 ver6000uk (I used rt61.inf from the windows cd) and the Dlink DWL-G122 H/W Ver C1 usb dongle (get the driver here, unzip the file and use dr71WU.inf in

/D-Link DWL-G122.B1V2.04 G122.C1V3.10 Build 60719 S0012/Drivers).

I blacklisted all drivers mentioned in the howto, and Feisty does not freeze any more when I insert my belkin card.

• Windows/Linux:
  One Profile to bind them all
  Update: The article doesn't seem to be available any more. Anyway, after setting up a dual boot machine for someone else, I came up with another solution. Just copy the complete profile to a location, which is accessible through both operating systems. Then edit profiles.ini for both operating systems to point to this location. The original one looks like this (where the »bla« in path is some random string):
  

  [General]
  StartWithLastProfile=1

  [Profile0]
  Name=default
  IsRelative=1
  Path=bla.default

  
  Change it to:
  

  [General]
  StartWithLastProfile=1

  [Profile0]
  Name=default
  IsRelative=0
  Path=your/absolute/path/bla.default

  
  This way you don't even have to backup your bookmarks, add-ons, skins, etc. and you only have to setup everything once. And the same technique works for Thunderbird, too.

• Connection speed/accessibility
  Could not access Google and a few other pages at first (the others mostly due to Google Ads or Analytics). Disabling IPv6 in Firefox fixed it:
  Type about:config in the firefox address bar
  Now ipv6 in the filter
  You should be seeing network.dns.disableIPv6
  Change the value false value to true.
  Close down firefox and restart it.

I had a terrible week, first trying to upgrade to ubuntu's Gutsy Gibbon; then trying a clean install twice, then installing openSUSE and finally reinstalling Feisty Fawn (twice). I did not receive much help from the community, neither here nor here, but that is not what I want to say. I want to say this:

For a backup or migration of Evolution, follow the instructions Migrate Evolution to new Computer. I had a bit of trouble at import, so here is what I did:

1. Never start Evolution on the new system
2. Follow the migration instructions carefully
3. Open a terminal:
   
   sudo chmod -R 777 ~/.evolution
   sudo chmod -R 777 ~/.gconf/apps/evolution
   sudo chmod -R 777 ~/.gnome2_private/Evolution
4. Open Evolution for the first time
5. Create an account with correct username and stuff – I didn't see any of my mail and nothing of my folder structure yet
6. Click on »Mail« – I saw my mail, and the folder structure

I had a lot of trouble because without the chmodding evolution would only fire up as sudo.
When I clicked on the desktop clock the panel went berserk and had some of the icons (battery & network for instance) dance a polka, chmodding ended this dance.
Update (27.11.07): Just did it the second time, successfully. This time I also obeyed my own instructions and was happy after step iv.

Troubleshooting

If anything goes wrong and you want to start from scratch, a reinstallation through synaptic won't help. What does help brainwashing Evolution is:

1. In a terminal type
   
   gconftool-2 --shutdown
   evolution --force-shutdown
2. Now delete
   
   • ~/.evolution
   • ~/.gconf/apps/evolution
   • ~/.gnome2_private/Evolution

• texlive I switched to texlive. Packages seem to dwell in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex. Don't forget
  sudo texhash
  to update the index after changing packages
• Packages
  That took a while. I tried various things. Nothing helped until I found this forum entry.
  Strangely it only works if I keep the complete MiKTeX package repository (.../Programme/TeX/MikTeX/MiKTeX 2.5/tex/latex) in two directories at the same time:
  1. /usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex
  2. HOME/texmf/tex
  I'll fumble with that, because it seems only pgf is causing problems and Kile insisting on having the whole repository twice does appears a bit odd to me.
• teT_EX
  Guide from Cambridge University
• KDE spell check under gnome
  TuXFaTHeR knows how to do it...knew how to do it. Site seems to be offline, recovered the how-to from google's cache. Hope Tuxfather doesn't mind me providing it here for the time being.
• Internationalisation
  Trying to convert my documents from ISO to utf-8 because somebody said this would make the spell check work. Open terminal and type
  iconv --from-code=ISO-8859-1 --to-code=UTF-8 ./filename.xxx > ./newfilename.xxx
  (Command via Kriyayoga Love Blog)

Drivers

I use Samsung's ML-1410 (which apparently is identical to ML-1510 but just got renamed for a Saturn marketing scam). I downloaded the unified drivers from Samsung (they have (or had anyway) a funny flash thing going that covers half the page for me – including the link to the driver.
In case this is happening, the .tar.gz should be accessible through this.
The path is: home → support → download centre → select model → driver (hard to spot due to blue text on grey background) → linux.
I had some problems installing the drivers (I went for the wrong file all the time), the breakthrough came from here. For me it was sufficient to perform steps one to three.

Update: For gutsy (ubuntu 7.10) also do

• Lack of Automatisation
  Neither Automatix nor Easy Ubuntu are working, so I have to load everything manually. I use this list.
  Don't forget the w32-section (when it's legal in your country). Get:
  
  1. w32codecs
  2. libdvdcss2
  3. libdvdnav4
  4. libdvdread3
• commandline dvd-backup:
dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -o /media/backup_path -M
Options are as follows:

-i device    where device is your dvd device
-v X	     where X is the amount of verbosity
-I           for information about the DVD
-o directory where directory is your backup target
-n name      (optional) set the title (useful if 
	     autodetect fails)
-M           backup the whole DVD
-F           backup the main feature of the DVD
-T X         backup title set X
-t X         backup title X
-s X         backup from chapter X
-e X         backup to chapter X
-a 0         to get aspect ratio 4:3 instead of
	     16:9 if both are present
-r {a,b,m}   select read error handling:
	     a=abort (default), b=skip block, 
	     m=skip multiple blocks
-h           print a brief usage message
-?           print a brief usage message

-i is mandatory
-o is mandatory except if you use -I
-a is option to the -F switch and has no effect 
 on other options
-s and -e should preferably be used together 
 with -t

(type dvdbackup to view them in the terminal)

• Mic:
  I could hear people, they couldn't hear me. Chances are good you find »Fixing the Errant Microphone« helpful. Credit apparently goes to Keneth P. Turvey.
• SMS:
  Skype development for Linux is unfortunately quite far behind compared to Mac and Windows. As of version 1.4 it is still not possible to send text messages from the GUI, but there is a way to do so nonetheless – which is quite handy if your mobile provider (O2) choose to charge texts to China with a ridiculous £ -.50 but at the same time choose to not deliver.
  A bloke called Vincent Oberle (who actually works for Skype) wrote a bit of Python script, so it is really easy, too (at least it was for me). Here is what to do:
  1. Download Skype for Linux >1.4 (works only with ubuntu 7.04 feisty, don't know about other Linux distributions; repository here)
  2. Download SkyTools0.3 from Mr. Oberle
  3. Unpack the skytools pack into a convenient directory. ~/skytools might be right.
  4. Open Skype
  5. Open a terminal and maneuver into the skytools directory (for me: cd ~/skytools)
  6. Type ./sk_send_sms.py PHONENUMBER Hello world
  7. Voilà.
  8. If it does not work, try again
  9. If it still does not work, try again.
  10. And again. 
  Works for me.

• I use scim for CJK input. It comes with the distribution, so it is already in place. However, setting it up is not quite self-explanatory. These two sites were specifically helpful: 1. help.ubuntu and 2. mrbass.

• Settings
  The fonts always look a bit odd, I find that for me the best setting is probably this:
  System > Preferences > Font > Details
  - Resolution: 83 dpi
  - Smoothing: greyscale
  - Hinting: slight
  - Subpixel order: RGB
• Smooth them
  There is a technique to make the fonts look much better. It is being described at  howtogeek.com and goes like this:
  
  gedit ~/.fonts.conf
  Paste in
  
  <?xml version="1.0″ ?>
  <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
  <fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
  <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
  <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
  </match>
  </fontconfig>
  The problem with ubuntu 6.10 (edgy) was that after I did that, the fonts indeed looked a lot better, however, all the üs lacked their two dots, thus looking like us. Thus this doesn't seem like a real option for a German.
  
  ubuntuguide.org offers a similar solution. Only the text to be pasted is slightly different:
  
  <fontconfig>
  <match target=”font” >
  <edit name=”autohint” mode=”assign”>
  <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
  </match>
  </fontconfig>
  
  
  I tried the second version (with the above settings) for 7.04 (feisty) and can't see the slightest difference. All Umlaute were still there, though.

This post is probably going to be of no interest whatsoever to most of the dear visitors at the Brasserie. However, some might find it helpful and it will be useful to me.

Some two weeks ago I did a clean install of ubuntu Feisty Fawn (the upgrade feature in Edgy Eft never worked). No problems at all &ndash; until yesterday.

It started with a strange message while booting. It read somewhat like this:
last write time in future - fixed

And then the real problem started: After logging on, my screen completely froze. Sometimes immediately after logging on, sometimes after a minute. The only button still working was the power switch when held down for five seconds. When I start in recovery mode, the critical part reads:

I googled for this, found several bug files, a handful of other people with the same problem, and finally came home with two suggestion. None of them worked.

1. System time/local time bug
   I didn't really understand the problem but people were saying that system time should be set to UTC in bios. There was no option "UTC", so I just googled for UTC and found it was actually an hour behind my local time. Tried it nonetheless, as expected without results.
2. fsck issues
   First suggestion: as root fsck -y in terminal. Got a scary warning so I aborted the mission
   Second suggestion:
   sudo gedit /etc/default/rcS
   then change FSCKFIX=no to FSCKFIX=yes.

After 11 am I did another boot and everything just worked fine. I followed the second suggestion from the fsck slot and changed FSCKFIX=no to FSCKFIX=yes. Worked until 4pm without a freeze. Did a reboot at around 6.30 pm without any problems. I noticed that the result of FSCKFIX=yes seems to be that my strange message now changed. Lines 1-3 are as above. Line 4 reads:

I am not 100% sure on the beginning of line 5, but it now does not simply end saying FIXED but

I thought that meant progress, but alas! when I booted this morning I was back to freezing. Only this time ubuntu allows me to work for five to fifteen minutes and then completely dies. On one occasion I shut down properly and after rebooting did not have the last write time in future-thing and thought maybe the power-button-business was not much appreciated and caused the problem. But shortly after logging on: Freeze!

However, while shutting down I briefly spotted two messages. Everything was very fast, so it is just what I remembered when I managed to grab pen and paper:

1. bogl init failed
2. screen ini failed

Now, I did more googeling and found several people with the same problem. The post »Finally Fixed My Feisty Freezes« seemed promising, but he solved through downgrading to Edgy Eft again.

Grumpymole has similar problems. There are two links to ubuntu forum threads in the comments.

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=412125
• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=75281

Update: Grumpymole solved his problem by replacing his leaking motherboard. I do hope I have a different problem.

I browsed through a million forum posts following the above two links. All similar problems but still varying to a significant degree. One person fixed the problem by simply removing the wifi card. Did that, too. Problem solved for now. And thinking about it, I have indeed spotted some error messages concerning network manager on shutdown occasionally. I'll try running like this for a while and then, when the problem does not reoccur, I might (or might not) reinsert the card and see if I can reproduce the error. Hope this is fixed.

My checklist

Backup:

• run bckp.bash: This should take care of pretty much everything
• Home: Not much there except Skytools
• Evolution: already included in bckp.bash. Consider »File → Backup Settings« though
  Anything one could possibly want to know about Evolution (and Warren Buffet), Evolution's own backup tool, how to backup, backup script
  
• LaTeX: Packages (/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex)

Programmes to Fetch

• Opera
• scim (helpful: help.ubuntu and mrbass)
• Skype
• sound converter
• sound juicer
• svn
• texlive
• VLC
• Xampp
• Yakuake (for settings, see here)

Programmes I used to Fetch

Today I found a second way to achieve in LaTeX what is done by »line-through« in css (strike out text).

1. ulem

\usepackage{ulem} in the preamble and \sout{text to be striked out}

The problem is that ulem affects some bibliography styles where otherwise italicised text is then underlined.

2. cancel

\usepackage{cancel} in the preamble gives you four different modes of striking through

1. \cancel{text to cancel} draws a diagonal line (slash) through its argument
2. \bcancel{text to cancel} uses the negative slope (a backslash)
3. \xcancel{text to cancel} draws an X (actually \cancel plus \bcancel)
4. \cancelto{〈value〉}{〈expression〉} draws a diagonal arrow through the 〈expression〉, pointing to the 〈value〉 (math-mode only)

You can get cancel at ctan.

In short: To avoid the standard pixel bitmap fonts and go for smooth, scalable post script ones, use one of the following:

\usepackage{palatino}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage{bookman}
\usepackage{newcent}

or, for standard post script fonts

\usepackage{pslatex} or
\usepackage{ae,aecompl}

Be warned: the latter killed my Umlaute.

The more interesting stuff on fonts in LaTeX can be found here.

In css there is the handy absolute positioning. Today I found out how to do it in LaTeX:

In the preamble

\usepackage{textpos}

In the document

The arguments are as follows:

\begin{textpos}
    {<width>}
    [<left handle>,<top handle>]
    (<leftmargin>,<topmargin>)

Width: width of the box. Height is determined automatically.

Handle: Where the box is being grabbed. Default is [0,0], which means left/top corner; [0.5,0.5] would be the center of the box and [1,1] the right bottom corner.

Margin: Where the box will be positioned on the page.

For more detailed instructions (on the units of measurement for instance), refer to Norman Gray's textpos doc. The textpos bundle can be found at tug.

I left biting marks in the table on this one. I don't know if it's a general issue or just my document. Anyway:

I wanted to have footnotes from inside sections, subsections, and subsubsections. They work similar to footnotes in tables, you need to address them similar to this:

Only, when I did it like this, it worked on some occasions, but not on others (reason for me biting the wood).

I finally found out that it did not work on all occasions where I did it exactly like in above example, but always rendered

TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [input stack size=5000]

However, it did work on all the occasions where I specified the (optional) short title for section/subsection/&c:

The optional shorter title appears -- as far as I know -- in the table of contents and in left-/rightmark. Also, Kile uses it to display the document structure, too. So if you have rather long titles (like I do) it is a good idea specifying a short one anyway. If not, I guess you can just as well repeat the full title in the optional argument if you need a footnote.

When using the starred variant (\section*{My merry section}), don't provide a short title.

By default LaTeX starts the footnote counter at zero for each chapter when you use the class {book} or {scrbook}. If you want to avoid that and have a continuous enumeration, here is how it works:

Create a folder <remreset> in your local package repository. Save the file remreset.sty into this folder.

Open your preamble and add

Should you get an error message like this

or like this

embrace the stuff with \makeatletter and \makeatother:

Voilà.

There are various possibilities to include Greek text in your LaTeX document. The three ones I found are these:

1. $\Gamma\rho\varepsilon\varepsilon\kappa$ gets you Γρεεκ allright, but it looks clumsy and lacks all the accents etc.
2. betababel. It does not work with my customised control sequences, and I am too lazy to change them and learn them all anew.
3. polutonikogreek. Neat, slim, worked straight away.

Nos. 2 & 3 use ngerman, so make sure they don't start a fight with german.

update

\titlecontents*{subsection}[3.5em]
   {\vspace{-0.5mm}\itshape\footnotesize}{}%
   {}{\dots\normalfont\footnotesize%
   \thecontentspage.\enspace}%
   [\itshape][\vspace{1mm}]

There are two solutions.

1. Ignore the problem, compile your document, open the .toc-file, delete all \select@language entries and compile again (but only once).
2. Use the following specifications in your preamble:

   \usepackage{ucs}
   \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
   \usepackage[polutonikogreek,german]{babel}
   \newcommand{\gdir}%
      {\foreignlanguage{polutonikogreek}}

   and then put the greek text directly into your document like this:
   \gdir{Πόλεμος}

How it does not work:

When you define a new counter like this

And later use it like this

And then reference it like this:

Then LaTeX still interprets it as something like

So it results in an arabic number. This is not what we want. We want to reference the counter in lower roman (or upper roman or alph or what have you), too.

How it does work:

but then we add

after it, and it works. Thanks to Axel for his help on this.

While working on a somewhat larger scale document I always end up with numerous prints, .dvis, .pdfs and so on and so forth. Once, I lost all my original .tex documents and thus had to copy everything from a pdf and reformat it. In a case like that, it sure is handy to know exactly with which version you are dealing and which one is the latest. So for my thesis I wanted to add a little automatic timestamp to each print. Sure enough I found timestamp.sty. Just go to your local package repository, create a folder called <timestamp> and save timestamp.sty into it. With

Now, I never liked this date format, so if you, too, prefer DD-MM-YYYY, open timestamp.sty and scroll to the very bottom. Replace

\timestamp then produces

However, the version I use looks like this:

Drupals internationalisation (or i18n) module works really well and is fairly intuitive. I had no problems setting up a multilanguage site, save one: translating custom blocks.

If you want multilanguage custom blocks, you have to create one for each language. Then, in in »configure« → »multilingual settings«, pick the language you want the block to appear in (not: »All Languages« and not »All Languages (translatable)«!).

And now the fun started: it didn't work whatever I tried until by sheer luck I stumbled upon the solution after wasting almost an entire Saturday.

Go to »Administer → Site Configuration → Languages«. Here, pick the »configure«-Tab. There are four options for »Language Negotiation«. Fo me »none« was selected. This one is the one that doesn't show translated blocks. So pick anotherone and you're good.

I usually develop locally to an advanced degree and then export the local database and import it on the server. If you do that with Drupal, you might have noticed that the database can easily become risiculously large. Mine had 6MB on a site with hardly any content. In that case truncate all cache tables before exporting the local db (after that mine was down to around 250 KB). That should make things easier.

If you did everything you should to enable FCK-editor with Drupal 6 in a customised theme, but it still doesn't show, switch back to Garland theme. When it shows there, switch back to your theme, open its page.tpl.php and check if it has

<?php print ($closure); ?>

right above the </body> tag. Let me tell you: it's a must have these days...

In Drupal 6 I wanted to use

require_once($base_path.'sites/all/themes/skin/functions.php');

in

drupalinstallation/sites/all/themes/skin/page.tpl.php

but had an error concerning root_path being somewhere completely yonder.

Thus (as marky suggests) I opened

drupalinstallation/includes/common.inc

and added

at the very bottom and now

require_once('./sites/all/themes/skin/functions.php');

seems to work. Only I don't know whether it's smart and safe editing common.inc like that. Thus it works and I have a bad feeling...

I can't seem to get my head around this one. Whenever I use an ftp client (gftp and FileZilla mostly), eventually my wifi connection breaks. I have to disconnect the router from the power supply, wait a couple of seconds and plug it in again. Sometimes network manager reconnects automatically, sometimes I have to reconnect manually and at other times I have to log off and on again before I can reconnect. The symptoms are very similar to this bug, but exclusively happen while I have an ftp connection established.

The only other instance of my problem I could find is afulls04 on tomshardware.co.uk ftping into his x-box.

I use a D-LINK DSL-G624T router (which I learned to hate pretty soon), lspci reports

03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

and I (still) am on ubuntu 7.10.

I also posted this to the ubuntu forum.

Until yesterday I was convinced that wherever an Ethernet cable came through a wall, all I had to do was plug it into my computer. Safe, secure, fast, no user name, no password, no fuss.

Wrong.

When Virgin is supplying the ethernet, it is probably also supplying a Virgin modem. In my case a Virgin cable modem (which made my ADSL wifi router as useless as could be, but that is an altogether different story).

Virgin apparently stores the MAC address of the piece of equipment that is directly connected to the modem. If it is a router, you're good. If it's your computer and you somehow have the strange idea to access the internet with a different machine, you need three to five minutes of patience.

Virgin – in its infinite wisdom – only ever allows one MAC address at a time. So if you want to access the tubes with another computer, you have to power down the modem to have it taste a blow of instant amnesia. Opinions vary how long it takes, three to five minutes is the most frequent estimation for a modem to forget previous relationships.

Then: power it on again. Plug in your different machine. Repeat each bloody time you change machines. Thanks Virgin.

I recently put together a website for a German university department making use of Drupal. Drupal offers a function where you can promote articles to the front page. You can also specify if you want the full content of each promoted article on the front page or just a teaser. My client decided, they wanted teasers of 200 characters in length. After thorough testing the site went live and trouble came rolling in. All of a sudden the little teaser boxes started behaving in a strange way, popping up in strange places, overlapping each other and ruining the entire layout.

What was the problem?

It was obvious that the trouble came from a post that had a link with the 200 characters ending right inside the <a>-tag. So on the front page, everything following the teaser was considered being inside an <a>-tag as the closing </a> had been cut off.

What was not the solution?

At first my research was not very promising. I got this:

So it's the user's fault. Unfortunately I'm not in a position where I can handpick highly html-literate users for the websites I sell and thus I might have an editor-team on client side who knows zip html.

What was the solution?

Although VeryMisunderstood said

I went for it anyway. Onhand: HTML corrector did solve the problem (I believe it is now included in Drupal 6 by default). You just have to follow the steps in the installation guide:

Step three is key! I had to look around a bit and found that it was in »Administer« → »Site Configuration« → »Input Formats«. Here you have to enable the module for each desired input type (php, full html, filtered html) via the »configure«-links provided.

Firefox has a printing problem. Most people agree on this. What they can't agree on is how to fix it.

Under certain circumstances prints from Firefox only populate the first printed page and are cut off at the bottom of this single page. So when your content is longer than a page, you'll loose it. I'll cover two fixes: One for developer and one for the user.

1. The developer

The problem apparently occurs with tables and floats. I have no experience with tables concerning this problem, so if a table is causing you a headache, I'm afraid you have to look somewhere else for a solution.

As for for floats, ALA suggests to replace all your floats with

float: none !important;

in your printing stylesheet (see the same ALA article on how to create a stylesheet for a printer). I'm sure it works for them, it didn't work for me. Other solutions (that didn't work for me) included:

for the element in question.

After quite a bit of research with no result whatsoever, I started removing section for section from my original stylesheet until the problem didn't occur any more. What I found is this:
The main box has

overflow: hidden;

So in print.css the same box needs

overflow: visible !important;

and the problem is fixed (note: overflow: auto; didn't work). Neither IE6 nor IE7 seemed to be bothered by the hidden overflow.

2. The User

As a user you obviously can't influence the behaviour of a given site, so you'll have to live with what's there. If you come across a page that has this printing problem, try the following:

1. press ctrl + a (to select all)
2. press ctrl +p (to open the printing menu)
3. In the printing menu try and find the options what to print. Usually you get
   
   1. »Print all«
   2. »Pages |__| to |__|« (where you can specify which pages you want)
   3. Selection.
   Pick »Selection« and you should get all you selected all right onto that piece of paper.

At the moment I am setting up the new website for the department of Romance Studies at a south German university. I want it to run on Drupal but had three [update: four] [later update: five] problems:

1. Error 500 »Internal server error«
2. Specify the correct directory
3. The uni's IT department
4. [update] SQL-Version
5. [later update] ./files/.htaccess

i. Error 500

Drupal's .htaccess file apparently can cause conflicts with other server settings. I am not very smart when it comes to servers, so I just copied my local installation to the server. There was no .htaccess in my local installation so I gather it should be save to work without it. If somebody knows more, you're more than welcome to comment on this. Also, there are two threads at the Drupal site that might be of interest: one, two.

ii. Directory

Drupal always wanted to go into a ./php directory which wasn't there. Even when I mirrored ./ to ./php it didn't work. I didn't have this issue with my local installation, so I was surprised to see it still there after my copying the local stuff to the remote server. In order to make the local installation work on the remote server, I obviously had to change the configuration (user, password, database). While doing this in ./sites/default/settings.php, I stumbled over a section called »Base URL«. It reads like this:

Just uncomment the last line by removing the hash (»#«) and write down the URL of your site and you're in business.

iii. The IT Department From Hell

[Rant warning: absolutely no relevant information in next two paragraphs]
I have some experience with this specific IT department, and I always hated to deal with them. They are neither helpful nor competent. It is the second website I am setting up for the university and both times they tried to get me into using their commercial CMS. When asked why I wouldn't want to use it, I said because it doesn't even validate with html 4.01 Transitional. He then terminated the conversation abruptly, close to hanging up in my face.

But what would one expect from an IT department where http://subdomain.uni-something.de/ will get you a time-out and only http://www.subdomain.uni-something.de/ takes you where you want to go?

iv. [Update] SQL Version

I just managed to finally import my database. I run 5.0.45, the University runs 4.0.18. On import (in phpmyadmin) I got the following:

When you export from phpmyadmin, there should be an option called »SQL compatibility mode«. In the drop-down pick the version the moron remote admin picked and you should be fine.

[Rant warning: again, next two paragraphs contain no relevant information]
Just another note: I had to listen to a bleeding sermon for half an hour that I should use their CMS because of vulnerability issues. His CMS gets updated automatically, open source ones don't. This, he said, puts the user of open source ones at risk of having the server hacked when they fail to run the latest version. If hacked, he has to shut down the server.
Now, as I mentioned above, I am not very server literate, but my common IT sense tells me, that running apache 2.0.55 (from 2005 I gather; latest release: 2.2.8) and MySQL 4.0.18 (from Feb. 2004 I understand; latest release: 5.0.51) might by far be the greater risk.

Another perversion is that I can only access their server from the local network. To vpn into this network, they provide a windows client and a Linux howto. The latter dates from 2002. As I don't feel like messing my Gutsy Gibbon up with a six year old piece of gunk, I always have to abandon my own Linux system and boot Windows to then access a remote Linux system.

v. [Later Update] ./files/.htaccess

Drupal insists on having the file .htaccess in ./files. My server insists on going haywire when there is a file .htaccess in ./files.

Bugger.

dman suggests to feed Drupal with the file but leave it empty for the convenience of a server with special needs, and it works for me.

[The usual rant]
If, as dman says, the .htaccess-file in question here actually stops user uploaded files from ever executing, why on earth does a security concerned IT-department does everything to stop the file from doing its job?