February 6th, 2010 Ansi
Moin
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:
Posted in System, Tools | 4 Comments »
December 20th, 2009 Ansi
Moin
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.
Posted in System, Tools, Web2.0 | 1 Comment »
November 29th, 2009 Ansi
Moin
Last week I had some problems with my HTC Hero Android phone. The mobile is awesome no question about that, but there is one funny “feature” which I don’t need at all and what caused me some trouble. The Hero (maybe other mobiles too) has the nice feature to switch from build-in loudspeakers to external earphones (via the jack on top) via software switch and not like other devices via hardware switch. This causes a problem when the process is not responding when you plug in the earphone. First impression is “hardware error” and you want to send back your phone to the repair center. But wait. This is a software bug (although the T-Mobile stores are not aware of that). Thanks to the Androidforum ere are two solutions for that.
- The easy but not always working way
- Turn off the phone by holding down the Hangup button for some time.
- Plug in your earphones
- Turn on the phone (if you see the earphone symbol everything is fine now)
- The not so easy but always working way
- Download the APKatcher App from the Market (market://search?q=pname:nEx.software.Apps.APKatcher)
- Enable 3rd party apps on your mobile in order to accept apps from other locations then the market
- Get the toggleheadset application from google code.
- Send the app to your phone via email
- Install the app
- Add the toggleheadset widget to your phone desktop
After that you can toggle between your earphones and the internal loudspeaker.
Posted in Gadget, Mobile | No Comments »
January 5th, 2009 Ansi
Moin
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. 
Posted in Tools | 8 Comments »
