I am using Ubuntu “Daily builds” for some time inside Suns VirtualBox. Unfortunately the daily builds are not longer booting inside VirtualBox for more then 2 weeks now. Christian told me about a new feature of Grub2. You can boot ISO images directly from your hard disk without burning them on CD or USB. Awesome feature and I had to try it today. Here is the description on how to do it with Ubuntu 9.10.

First I am using this tiny script to update all daily builds with the zsync tool. It transfers only the changed parts of the ISO so you and the Ubuntu teams save a lot of traffic.

zsync http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/lucid-desktop-i386.iso.zsync
cd kubuntu
zsync http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily-live/current/lucid-desktop-i386.iso.zsync
cd ../netbook
zsync http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-netbook/daily-live/current/lucid-netbook-i386.iso.zsync
cd ../xubunutu
zsync http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/daily-live/current/lucid-desktop-i386.iso.zsync
cd ..
rm `find ./ -name "*.zs-old" `

This script keeps all my daily builds up to date.

Next Step is to enable the grub menu. In Ubuntu it can be done in “/etc/default/grub“. Change the following lines

GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=false

With this change you will see a 10 seconds count down when booting up. With the shift-key you get access to the grub boot menu. Next is to add the ISO images to the grub menu. Change to the “/etc/grub.d” dir.

Here you can find the grub menu entries and configuration files. Add your ISO images starting with 50 here. For example my entry for the normal Ubuntu ISO image (50_ubuntu) looks like this:

echo "Adding $(egrep menu[e]ntry $0 | cut -d'"' -f2)" >&2
 cat << EOF
menuentry "Ubuntu 10.04 Daily Build" {
       loopback loop (hd0,3)/ansi/software_and_config/ISOs/ubuntu/lucid-desktop-i386.iso
       linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/ansi/software_and_config/ISOs/ubuntu/lucid-desktop-i386.iso file=(loop)/preseed/ubuntu.seed quiet splash bootkbd=sg --
       initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

My ISO files are stored on sda3 under /ansi/software_and_config/ISOs/ubuntu/. In order to change it for your needs there are 3 elements to change. The loopback line contains your hard disk in grub style (hdx,y  x=0->sda x=1->sdb aso) and the path. The third element to change is in the linux line. Store this file as “50_ubuntu” in “/etc/grub.d“, make it executable with “chmod a+x 50_ubuntu” and activate the changes with “ubdate-grub“. After a reboot you should be able to activate the grub menu with the shift-key and select the new entry. Have fun.

I found some pages on this topic but the description there was not working for me so I changed it. But take a look on your own:

• http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/lucid-lynx-ohne-cd-brennen-auf-realem-system-/#post-2326751
• http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/GRUB_2/Konfiguration

I just run through several Chrome Extensions and here is my list of extensions I can recommend. Please write some comments if you have additional  recommendations.

• Read It Later, very usefull to store webpages for later reading: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bkikpncfbjndhfkipijhdoddiadaipaa
• Gmail Notification: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mihcahmgecmbnbcchbopgniflfhgnkff
• Use Gmail as default mailer: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/pgphcomnlaojlmmcjmiddhdapjpbgeoc
• Forecastfox: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ihffmkcfkejomlfnilnmkokcpgclhfeg
• Delicious: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/anlkjppofaicbdanhhpbbogknfodfhfm
• Last.fm: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nbjfhhdfhoccglhllgdfcknjgjbifcjk
• TwitterBar: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/pbadgdglepgngpoeijdgicjccomadekm
• Page reload: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/njoipeaphfnaplplihpbgndfojhdhmjo
• Google Latitude: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bhencimpdjidjlgopdgofmkeojbiacie
• Remember the milk: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/chieodlkhimccchlojdmiondhiggkhmf
• Youtube with HTML5 instead of flash: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kchoimdlcbapmcdnheaahjcdpdjdpfco
• Beautify Facebook: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ipnenhkngeiigfbhacdhadcnjjklhblm
• Facebook Extention: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hfdhelbngglkahnmlggcbjlkbddhkffm
• RapidShare Download Remover: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/iciefpkfldmhehakpkphbclofdhiojih

Onlinetvrecorder disabled the good old RSS where I can get the list of my torrents of recorded movies. Unfortunatelly the new RSS link requires a session cookie what is not so easy with a bash script. Here is a small solution how to enable the automatic download of the RSS stream in order to download the feeds automatically.

First get an session cookie for www.onlinetvrecorder.com and store it into a local file.

wget \
    --save-cookies ~/.cookies/onlinetvrecorder \
    --keep-session-cookies \
    --post-data "email=name%40provider.com&pass=whatever&checkbox_remember=checkbox_remember&btn_login=Login&do=login" \
    -O - \
    http://www.onlinetvrecorder.com/index.php \
    > /dev/null

With this command you store the onlinetvrecorder session key to a file what you can use later on to download the RSS feed. “keep-session-cookies” are important because the key is only valid in the session. Replace “name”, “provider.com”  and “whatever” with your personal data. the “%40″ is url code for @.

wget -o /dev/null -O - --load-cookies ~/.cookies/onlinetvrecorder "http://www.onlinetvrecorder.com/rss/rss.php?hash=hashcode&userid=id"

Also replace “hashcode” and “id” with your personal data. You can see it in the browser when you check the RSS feed in your browser. Thats all. I think the uTorrent or other trackers can deal with a local file to parse. So just use a cronjob to store this file from time to time to local disc and let uTorrent do the rest.

1. ssh -X server #as normal user
2. xterm #for testing if export display as normal user works
3. echo $DISPLAY #write it down
4. xauth #enters the shell of xauth
   1. list # find the line with the display number from step 3 for me it was “wpsvm054/unix:12 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 071df2e12cfff0ed75fd0af5869665f7″ remember the first part of it
   2. quit #to leave the shell
5. xauth extract filename system/unix:12 # the line from step 4.1
6. sudo su – # to become root
7. xauth merge filename # filename from step 5
8. export DISPLAY=:nummer.0 #Displaynumber from step 3 resp. 4.1
9. xterm #for testing

Hope it works on other systems too.

Nice feature is to add Text on a picture like a watermark:

convert -font \
/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType/luximri.ttf \
-pointsize 160 -fill black -draw "text 0,590 'Text auf Spike'" \
P1020049.JPG spike.jpg

or make a border arround a picture

convert -border 10x10 -bordercolor "#000000" P1020049.JPG spike2.jpg

Nothing special but was nice to play with it.