Friday, December 28, 2012

Set up / Fixing / tweaking Linux Mint 13 Xfce

This post is a list of the software I need to install and the parts of the UI that I need to tweak.

Control key:

Make the left caps locks (left of the "A") be a control key.

To fix this immediately run:
setxkbmap -option 'ctrl:nocaps'
or
setxkbmap -option 'ctrl:swapcaps'

To fix this at startup everytime:
  1. Menu | Settings | Session and Startup | Application Autostart
  2. Hit the [+ Add] button.  In the pop up dialog:
  3. Make up a "name" and "description" of your liking, such as "Cntl <-> Caps".  For the "command" , copy one of the preceding setxkbmap commands.
The values allowed in the -options flag for setxdbmap
are in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst


Add Google to Linux Mint Firefox search engine choices:

The search bar (the one in the upper right) no longer has Google as an option.  Ugh.
I was using Firefox 17.0.1.
  1. Visit http://www.linuxmint.com/searchengines.php
  2. Click on the Google icon at the bottom.
  3. Go to the search bar and choose Google (which now be an option).
Add Google chrome as a software package

From a google search on "Chrome PPA", I've copied the results from http://www.howopensource.com/2011/10/install-google-chrome-in-ubuntu-11-10-11-04-10-10-10-04/
 and http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppa/google_chrome.

Install the PPAs for google chrome which tell Ubuntu/Mint where to look for new releases. There are three commands.

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list'

sudo apt-get update 



Then choose the distribution of your choice, by choosing one of the following.  Choose "stable" if not sure.

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-beta

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-unstable

UI: move the task panel or task bar

Right click on the panel (not an applet in the pane) and in panel preferences, uncheck the Lock Panel box.  Once this is done, at both ends of the panel there is a small dotted region, which can be used to select the panel itself, rather than an applet.

Select the panel and move it to one of the edges.

UI: focus follows mouse

Adjust the setting in The Menu | Settings | Window Manager | Focus


UI: adjust the layout of your workspaces

If necessary, add the workspaces applet to the "task bar" or "panel", via right click on the panel:
Add New Items | Workspace Switcher | ... | Close "Add New Items"

To adjust the number of rows in which the workspaces are laid out:
Workspace switcher applet (right click) | Properties | Number of Rows


UI:  keyboard shortcuts for the desktop GUI (not application specific)

The settings are at:

The Menu | Settings | Window Manager | Keyboard


UI: How to lock your screen

There are several ways to lock your screen:
 - The underlying command to run is xflock4.  You can run this from a terminal if curious.

- Use the default keyboard short cut cntl-alt-delete.  This shortcut is set in 

The Menu | Settings | Keyboard | Application Shortcuts

 - On the right side of the panel, you should see your login name.  Left-click on this to get a menu.  One entry should be "Lock-screen".

 - Right click on the panel (on the ends) and choose

  Add New Items  || Action buttons  ||  Add  || Close

 Right click on the added Button || Properties  || First button action : "Lock Screen"

Choosing a Linux distro with LT support, a stable and lean 2D UI: Linux Mint 13 Xfce

Summary: The xfce 4 desktop does what I need and Linux Mint 13 Xfce is my distro of choice.

My priorities were
  1. Long term support, so that I continue to get updates and security patches over the next 3+ years.   I've moved to Ubuntu and so the distro choice would likely be their 12.04 LTS release or a derivative there of.
  2. A stable 2D UI.  I cut my teeth on X11 (before Linux) and very early Linux distros (Slackware).  I don't need a fancy GUI environment.  The 3D effects are a waste on me.   In the past, I eventually got used to Gnome2 based environments due to Ubuntu 9.x and 10.x releases, but the recent switch to Unity was not acceptable to me.
I decided to try Xfce which many distros support as their lean, but modern UI option. Since many lean GUIs have been around for years, the fact that many distros have chosen Xfce as their lean UI is encouraging for its long term support.

I compared Ubuntu LTS 12.04 Xfce versus Linux Mint 13 "Maya" Xfce, which is based on the ubuntu release.  Mint came with a newer version of Xfce (4.10 versus 4.08) and just looked better.  And the Mint default system menu was nicely filled out opposed to the more spartan Ubuntu menus.  Easy choice.


Saturday, December 22, 2012

The ASUS R704A 17" laptop is the same as an X75A-104A.


TL;DR: The big take aways are:
  1. I've opened my R704A-RB31 and yes there is a single empty DIMM slot.
  2. The Asus R704A is the same as the Asus X75A-Z104.

I bought this laptop / notebook at Fry's on a great sale ($378), hoping to upgrade the RAM to 8GB, as it comes with 4GB.

Dilemma:
Both Fry's and Newegg web sites said there was one empty DIMM slot allowing upto 8GB.  Good.

Many, many other sites on the internet including microcenter indicated there was one 4GB DIMM soldered to the M/B and that was it.  No upgrading.  Bad.

The ASUS website had no information on the R704A.  No specs.  No downloads.  No nothing.   Ack.

Several weeks later, the ASUS support site still had limited information but I was able to download a user manual, which was labelled X75A-104A, which is another 17" laptop ASUS makes.  And this model has full specs/info on the Asus support site.  And it says there is a single DIMM slot allowing upto 8GB of RAM.  Here's a link to all  manuals and documentation  for this laptop.  Choose other tabs too.

To get at the RAM and hard drive, unscrew and remove the two screws holding the big panel which covers the front half of the bottom.  Pull the plastic toward the front and it should just slide off.

Armed with this knowledge I finally opened the laptop and indeed there is an unfilled user accessible memory slot.

AMD A4/A6/A8 CPUs can only take 16GB of RAM

The motherboards for these CPUs claim upto 64GB of non-ECC RAM but in practice the Asus MBs have only verified 1, 2 or 4GB DIMMS.  With 4 memory slots, that is 16GB total.  In short the M/B only work with upto 4GB DIMMS and this applies to all ASUS FM slot M/Bs.

I tried putting in an 8GB DIMM and it was simply not recognized.  So much for 32GB, let alone 64GB of RAM in a A6 system.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Samba issue: nmbd cannot bind to the broadcast address

I guess I hadn't run Samba on my Linux box for a while as it failed to run.

Checking /var/logs/samba/log.{s,n}mbd I found

2012/12/15 16:34:29.461856,  0] lib/util_sock.c:880(open_socket_in)
  bind failed on port 137 socket_addr = xx.yy.zz.255.
  Error = Cannot assign requested address

[2012/12/15 16:34:29.429656,  0] nmbd/nmbd_subnetdb.c:118(make_subnet)
  nmbd_subnetdb:make_subnet()
    Failed to open nmb bcast socket on interface xx.yy.zz.255 for port 137.  Error was Cannot assign requested address


A quick Google search on the actual error message, "Failed to open nmb bcast socket on"
pulled up various articles that Samba 3.5.x and possibly some of 3.6.x had a bug.

The fix:
Change my interface specifications in my smb.conf file

# Work around for bug
   interfaces = lo eth0
 

# This doesnn't work in 3.5.4 as we can't bind to the eth0 bcast addr !?
#    interfaces = 127.0.0.1/8 xx.yy.zz.vv/mm