Nozell, rhymes with Oh Hell

Last Thursday’s Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group topic was “SELinux for Dummies” by Red Hat’s Dan Walsh. I took some notes but had to leave at 9pm and they were still going strong. See http://nozell.dyndns.org/wiki/index.php/SELinuxForDummies

I’ve been using f-spot since it showed up in Ubuntu/Breezy and have been keeping all my photos in a directory structure like this:

/PHOTOS/Photos/2006.06.30/
/PHOTOS/Photos/2006.07.01/

But sometimes I’ve forgotten to unclick the “Copy file to the Photos folder” box in the photos import dialog and end up with photos under ~/Photos/. Recently I checked and found there were almost a gigabytes worth of photos under there.

So this is what I did to move them to under /PHOTOS/Photos/ and keep all the tags and metadata correct.

• Back up /home and /PHOTOS to an external USB. I love rsnapshot.
  $ rsnapshot daily
• make an extra backup of the f-spot database
  $ cp ~/.gnome2/f-spot/photos.db photos-backup.db
• Start poking around the f-spot database and updating it.
  $ sqlite3 ~/.gnome2/f-spot/photos.db
sqlite> .schema photos
CREATE TABLE photos ( id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
time INTEGER NOT NULL,
directory_path STRING NOT NULL,
name STRING NOT NULL,
description TEXT NOT NULL,
default_version_id INTEGER NOT NULL
);

• See how many photos are in ~/Photos…
  sqlite> select count(*) from photos where directory_path like '/home/marc/Photos/%';
260

• Take a look at a few of them to see the path names…
  sqlite> select directory_path from photos where directory_path like '/home/marc/Photos/%' limit 0,10;

• Update the pathname to my prefered one. I’ve added an ‘a’ to the end just so I won’t overwrite an existing directory.
  sqlite> update photos set directory_path = "/PHOTOS/Photos/2006.06.22a" where directory_path = "/home/marc/Photos/2006/6/22";
sqlite> .quit

• Make the directory and move the files to the new location…
  mkdir /PHOTOS/Photos/2006.06.22a
mv -v /home/marc/Photos/2006/6/22/HPIM117* /PHOTOS/Photos/2006.06.22a


Repeat for each directory. I did it all within emacs’ shell so cut-n-paste made it a snap.

Mark Pilgrim has compiled his list of Ubuntu essentials — time to add some KDE goodness to ‘My Ubuntu/Dapper Configuration‘ page…

I’ve posted some extensive notes on all the post-installation configuration steps needed to make an Ubuntu/Dapper standard install the way I like it — dual head, personal & corporate email, network manager, f-spot, etc

Check it out: My Ubuntu/Dapper Configuration

This is a follow on to last week’s post about Dual Monitor on Ubuntu/Dapper

I’ve been using the xorg.conf-ati.20060621 configuration at work with two monitors, but when at home the laptop didn’t degrade down to working with the one LCD monitor of the laptop. So, here is a new configuration that lets you switch between a single monitor mode (1024×768) or one large one (2048×768) that can be ’slid over to’ by using the mouse. The key press is Control-Alt-+ (the + over on the side where the number entry is). On the laptop, it is Control-Alt-blue_Fn-?

Here the is xorg.conf file:

xorg.conf-ati-works-with-one-monitor.20060624

I’ve noticed a number of people asking about dual head support in dapper on #ubuntu, so here is my setup:

This hp/compaq nc6000 laptop/notebook that has an ATI card:


$ sudo lspci|grep VGA
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]


I have two head monitors working with both the ‘ati’ and the closed source ‘fglrx’ drivers.

Here are the configuration files:

Before you start hacking around with your xorg.conf, save a copy somewhere safe.

I just picked up a Creative Webcam Live! which does a reasonable 1024×768 snapshot and 640×480 video resolution for $49. At first it looked like I’d have to build the spca5xx kernel module for Ubuntu/Dapper, but it is now included in the default kernel & modules packages.

Just plug it in and start using one of the many video capture packages like camorama, webcam, camstream, motion, gqcam, etc and start playing around!

FWIW here below the fold are my loaded kernel modules:

(more…)

My November 2005 copy of the Linux Journal arrived Monday with the
Reader’s Choice Awards results — HP ProLiant wins Favorite Server category!

Favorite Server

1. HP ProLiant
2. Monarch Empro Custom Rack Server
3. Unisys ES7000 Family

A note to HP: please take this first-place win here, where second-place votes were less than half of what you received, as proof that we like
your boxes, so you can cut out the pointless marketing poo-flinging at
Sun, already.

---

Photo of DL380 and sidebar: “Last year, the HP ProLiant BL20p G2 won the
Editor’s Choice Award for Server Hardware. Now the readers are singing
the ProLiant’s praises.”

Yay team!

I finally got around to hooking up a second monitor to my Ubuntu/Breezy laptop and convinced xorg.conf to ‘do the right thing’.

The compaq nc6000 notebook has the “ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 9600/9700 M10/M11 (RV350 NP)” video card
and has a video out at the back.

Here is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf with Xinerama (move windows from one screen to another). The aging Compaq monitor sits to the left of the nc6000 laptop.

Here is a copy of my configuration: xorg.conf-dual-head-xinerama

In Ubuntu ‘hoary’ it appears that it isn’t possible to set up a printer separator (sometimes called a burst page or Job Sheet) for a CUPs print queue. The Ubuntu print gui, (System->Administration->Printing) just doesn’t expose that option. Usually it can be set in though the web interface to CUPs (localhost:631), but that is disabled.

To enable a JobSheet, edit the file /etc/cups/printers.conf to look
something like this:


# Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.1.23
# Written by cupsd on Thu Aug 4 11:03:47 2005
<defaultprinter LaserJet-9000>
Info LaserJet-9000
DeviceURI socket://zko03018.americas.cpqcorp.net:9100
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets unclassified none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</defaultprinter>

The unclassified refers to a file in /usr/share/cups/banners/ that is just a chunk of PostScript that gets prepended to the print jobs. If you feel like hacking PostScript, you can create your own burst page.