My ping is slow

Today my speedtest ping was 121ms. :(

Oh crap, now 126ms. :( :(

Let's re-visit rysnc, shall we?

I covered the "rsync" script in an earlier post (located here). But recently my wife and I have evolved into a Mac family and I once again searched for a good syncing utility. Much to my great relief, Mac OS X, a Unix based system INCLUDES the amazing rsync utility. The command is the exact same and it works beautifully. M$ Briefcase take this:

rsync -avuz /Your/Inferior/Win/OS/ /Oober/Awesome/Times/Infinity/

Where, of course, "/Oober/Awesome/Times/Infinity/" then receives any new files from the local directory "/Your/Inferior/Win/OS/" without erasing any extra files not in the "from" directory.

Once again the traits of a superior operating system.

Getting sound to work on Toshiba w/ Linux Mint

To setup the sound correctly on your Toshiba running some sort of ubuntu follow the steps on the following link.

From website:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto

More specifically make sure your module parameters at correct. On my computer "options" was only "option" and "model" was only "mode" which cause the module not to load correctly.

Manually Specify Module Parameters

First you must find which model of sound card you use, so run this command:

cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#* | grep Codec

It will return model of your sound card(s), for example: "Codec: Realtek ALC260", so your sound card is ALC260.

You should open a file in ALSA documentation. This file is here (replace KERNEL_VERSION with your kernel's version!):

/usr/src/KERNEL_VERSION/Documentation/sound/alsa/ALSA-Configuration.txt

If you didn't have this file, for version 2.6.22, you can check out this link or you can find ALSA-Configuration.txt in the subdirectory /alsa-kernel/Documentation/ of the alsa-driver-1.x.x directory you created.

Search for your model, and take a look at its types, for example I found the following lines for ALC260:

hp              HP machines
hp-3013         HP machines (3013-variant)
fujitsu         Fujitsu S7020
acer            Acer TravelMate
basic           fixed pin assignment (old default model)
auto            auto-config reading BIOS (default)

Read all of them and try to find the one which is more similar to your sound card, for example if you have a laptop, you can choose "acer".

Open /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base with the following command:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

Then paste the following line at the end of the file (change MODEL with the type of sound card's model, in our example it should be "acer" (without quotation marks)):

options snd-hda-intel model=MODEL

Reboot

Webcam on Linux Mint (Ubuntu) Quick and Easy

With thanks to binselam of Ubuntu Forums, I was able to get my webcam working in no time flat. Below is his post originally located on Ubuntu Forums.


November 20th, 2006
binselam
5 Cups of Ubuntu
Join Date: Nov 2006
Beans: 15
Thanks: 0
Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts

[How to] Logitech Quickcam IM/Connect webcam on Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)
I have been trying to install Logitech Quickcam IM/Connect webcam on Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft). So, I have searched the ubuntuforms and how-to's. Although, what I have found in both sites was very helpful, but it was not specific to my webcam and step by step approach. I wanted to contribute to community by posting this.

I followed the ubuntu-community`s Spca5xx documentations and Yoriko post with little modifications.

It worked for me. I hope this helps you.



STEP 1: First, I have used lsusb to find out:
1) Vendor Id and Product ID
2) to see do I have usb support, and check the driver files for device support. The supportted device list is available at the Michael Xhaard's homepage ("http://mxhaard.free.fr/ ").

This list shows the lsusb result.
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 046d:08d9 Logitech, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 045e:0039 Microsoft Corp. IntelliMouse Optical


STEP 2: Download latest Spca5xx source code to your home directory from Michael Xhaard's homepage. At the time of writing this installation guide, the latest source code version was spca5xx-20060501.
NOTE: There might be a newer version of the driver by the time you install. Please check the web page :" http://mxhaard.free.fr/ ".
Latest driver is:gspcav1-20070508.tar.gz (swejuggalo indicated that works fine on Ubuntu 7.04). Make sure you substitue correct driver name in the following steps, if you use a different driver.
(You can see the instructions for the new driver in following post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...09418#poststop).

cd ~
wget http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca50x/Downl...01.orig.tar.gz


STEP 3: Become root. To do that, you need to open a terminal window and enter following command(Please enter user password when it is prompted. In each terminal window, you just need to enter sudo
command and password once (for the first time).

sudo -s
Password:########

Note: Prompt should change to: root@yourmachine:


STEP 4: Download the necessary packages. The following packages are needed from the Ubuntu repositories for compiling.
1. linux-headers-`uname -r`
2. linux-restricted-modules-`uname -r`
3. build-essential

uname -r
Identifies the version of running kernel. Exp: 2.6.17-10-generic

apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` linux-restricted-modules-`uname -r` build-essential


STEP 5: Compile the spca5xx source code. The linux stuff (drivers/programs) is installed under /usr/src. The downloaded driver files need to be placed to proper directory under linux. So, please type following commands to change directory, move downloaded source files, unpack the source files and change into directory. (NOTE: This step assumes you downloaded the driver file to your home directory.)

cd /usr/src
mv ~/spca5xx-220060501.orig.tar.gz .
tar xfvz spca5xx-20060501.orig.tar.gz
cd spca5xx- 20060501


STEP 6: Set the environment variable CC for spac5xx Makefile. In my case, Ubuntu Edgy Eft uses gcc 4.1 as kernel compiler. (NOTE: your system might use gcc-4.0. if you use version gcc4.0, you need to modify the command as "export CC=gcc-4.0" So, please make sure of your compiler version.)

export CC=gcc-4.1


STEP 7: Set a link back to source code(headers).

ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r` /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build

STEP 8: Now, we need to compile spca5xx source code, remove the old driver(from memory and hard drive), install the new driver and load the new driver. Please enter the following commands in the order given.

make
modprobe -r spca5xx
rm -rf /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/usb/media/spca5xx*
make install
modprobe spca5xx

If everything went accordingly, there should be no error messages. When you type dmesg, you should get something like shown above.

[17191980.272000] usbcore: deregistering driver spca5xx
[17191980.276000] drivers/media/video/spca5xx/spca5xx-main.c: driver spca5xx deregistered
[17192035.756000] Linux video capture interface: v1.00
[17192035.768000] /usr/src/spca5xx-20060501/drivers/usb/spca5xx.c: USB SPCA5XX camera found. Logitech QC IM/Connect
[17192035.768000] /usr/src/spca5xx-20060501/drivers/usb/spca5xx.c: [spca5xx_probe:5480] Camera type JPEG
[17192036.860000] /usr/src/spca5xx-20060501/drivers/usb/zc3xx.h: [zc3xx_config:558] Find Sensor HV7131R(c)
[17192036.872000] /usr/src/spca5xx-20060501/drivers/usb/spca5xx.c: [spca5xx_getcapability:1765] maxw 640 maxh 480 minw 176 minh 144
[17192036.872000] usbcore: registered new driver spca5xx
[17192036.872000] /usr/src/spca5xx-20060501/drivers/usb/spca5xx.c: spca5xx driver 00.60.00 registered
root@eagel:/usr/src/spca5xx-20060501#


GOOD LUCK!
_____________

OpenSUSE and Compiz Fusion, woah.

First off, since I'm using an intel chipset, I am using AIGLX instead of XGL.

This is the OpenSUSE how-to on AIGLX.

More specifically, you will need to disable XGL (but enable 3D in YaST->Hardware->Monitor) and add two entries to your xorg.conf file.

Again, I have an intel chipset so I had to use the following addition to my xorg.conf file from compizfusion's troubleshooting wiki page otherwise my windows would freeze/not render:

Windows Don't Update

When using the intel or ati driver with AIGLX, you may notice that all your windows seem to be frozen even as you interact with them. Nothing in any window updates until you rotate the cube or otherwise switch viewports.

Adding the following line to the Device section of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file should fix the problem:

Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"

Finally, go to OpenSUSE's Compiz Fuzion how to page and completed the following steps:

1. Test if composite is enabled: running grep Composite /var/log/Xorg.0.log as root should show Extension "Composite" is enabled

2. Clicked the "One Click-Install button" for KDE.

3. Clicked the link right under the those buttons for the main install - labled: If you would like to setup autostart of compiz install Compiz Manager: Click here to install compiz-manager

And then I had a fully functioning 3D desktop.