Intrepid on a stick

November 5th, 2008

If I have got this right you should be able to download this .torrent file which may well automatically start the transmission bittorrent client on your webbook, or you might want to install some other kind of bittorrent client if you have a particularly poorly webbook. Once you have the file which is a fraction over a gig in size you need to write it to a USB stick. Not copy it as a file onto a USB stick, the .img is a complete image of the USB stick including boot sector, partition tables, partition and filesystem so it needs to be placed on the stick in a special way. With a webbook or other linux computer (or perhaps a Mac) you can use the dd command. If you downloaded the image file to your desktop you would open a console, plug in a USB stick (1GB or more in size with nothing on it that you want!) and type something like

alan@webbook:~$ mount|grep disk

/dev/sdd1 on /media/disk type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=07

this is to find out the drive name of your USB drive (the |grep disk bit just filters out the stuff we are not interested in) in this instance we discover it has mounted (opened) /dev/sdd1 which is a device called SCSI Disk D partition 1. We don’t want the drive to be mounted, so we now unmount it

alan@webbook:~$ sudo umount /dev/sdd1

alan@webbook:~$ cd Desktop

alan@webbook:~/Desktop$ sudo dd if=intrepid1.img of=/dev/sdd

and that will start copying the data. The interesting thing is where we are copying it to, /dev/sdd not /dev/sdd1. We don’t copy it into the first partition on the USB drive, we copy it to the drive itself. The .img file contains a 1GB partition. After this is done you should be able to remove the stick and reinsert it and browse the new partition. To use it you need to set the bios settings to Boot from the USB stick an SD card would work just as well as it happens. THIS WILL TOTALLY DESTROY EVERYTHING ON YOUR DISK and drop on a new full disk image. After you change the BIOS settings and boot from it there is no “yes to continue” it is totally hands off from that point, as soon as it starts you might as well let it carry on to the end because everything you had before is gone.

If you have Windows then this dd for windows program might do a similar thing. If anyone has a friendlier way to get an image onto a USB stick I would be interested to hear about it – remember it is not just the files it is the bootloader and an active partition that we need.

If this sounds a bit scary then wait for some of the other penguins to jump off the ice and check for seals first :-)

Posted in Howto | 45 Comments »

Looking good

November 5th, 2008

Earlier, Alan & I were talking on another thread about allowing users to register to the site, upgrading the blog core files, and making it look nice. It’s starting to get a bit hard to follow, so I thought I’d use my new-found powers and write my first post about it.

To summarise, I asked Alan if we could register so that we could follow our own comments easier and suchlike. Within a few hours, he’d agreed and checked all of the boxes to make this happen. For the moment, the link is /wp-register.php, but a site meta box is something I’m hoping to add somewhere to make it easier to login/logout/register.

Then I started talking about what version of WordPress Alan was using on here, was it the stable version, or the very pretty AJAXed beta version that;s due to come out soon. Alan responded by upgrading the blog core, which has lead to improvements such as threaded comments (so you know what comment responds to what) and a better looking dashboard for those choose to register.

A few more hours went by and I noticed a couple of small visual flaws caused by the new features, like a bullet-point appearing next to the comments, and I offered my help to Alan. Now, I’ve been promoted to an ‘Administrator’ level, and I can edit the template files online. I’ve already fixed the bullet-point issue, and have plans to shorten the indents of the threaded comments as well as ensure that the alternate colour shading works as it should.

So, why start a new post?
Well, I figured I wasn’t the only person who could see things on the blog that weren’t quite right somehow. So, if you see something that needs to be fixed, leave a comment down here and I’ll try my best to fix it. When I’m done, I’ll reply to your comment (if it doesn’t look fixed, try pressing Ctrl+F5).

Posted in Blogging | 19 Comments »

So how do you want your Intrepid webbook?

November 2nd, 2008

I am working on a build of Intrepid for the webbook, what would you like on it? I was going to do a default install from the CD then add Tuxpaint, Gnucash, Planner, Inkscape, the Wader mobile broadband client. I was also going to remove mono, which takes out Fspot which doesn’t work that well at 1024×600. Is there anything you would add? Anything you would remove?

Posted in Ideas | 58 Comments »

I reject your reality and substitute my own

November 2nd, 2008

I have been playing with the ARToolkit which is a really amazing piece of software. It allows a real-time video stream from a camera to be mixed with virtual stuff. Here is me holding two bits of paper with special markers on them. The cube and sphere are being added to the image in software and I can wave the markers about and the objects stay ‘attached’ to them. It is quite spooky.

This is running on Ubuntu, but not a webbook just yet. With OpenVRML it should be possible to attach all sorts of objects to the markers.

Posted in Geeky | 6 Comments »

Webbook FAQ

October 31st, 2008

The support team have asked me to put together some flowchart questions and answers for diagnosing and solving common problems folk have with the webbook. I figured it would be best to post them here to help people solve their own problems and chip in with corrections and other suggestions

I keep getting prompted for a keyring password when connecting to my wireless network

Something is wrong with your gnome keyring file, try deleting the keyring file. Open a terminal and type rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/login.keyring

My webbook shows the Ubuntu logo on bootup but then goes to a black screen

This has happened to a few people, I am not sure why.

When precisely does it go black? Before login or after login? Do you hear the drums at the login page and the startup sound after the login page?

Try plugging in an external monitor and see if that works (obviously not a solution, but it would tell us something about what is going on) if the external monitor works, what resolution is it running at? 1024×768 or 1024×600?

Go to the recovery root shell from the grub menu and edit or replace the xorg.conf file.

cd /etc/X11
sudo mv xorg.conf xorg.broken
sudo wget http://webbookblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/xorg.conf

If that fixes things then I would be quite interested in seeing what the xorg.broken file looks like.

I can’t connect to my mobile broadband connection

What dongle are you using? The E160 does not work so well on Hardy Heron, but it does work much better on Intrepid.

What network?

Prepay or Pay as you go?

If it is pay as you go do you have any credit? (try browsing to three.co.uk, if that is the only site that works then you need a topup)

Have you upgraded to Wader 2.3? Open the mobile broadband application and go to help-about and look at the version number. If it is not 2.3 then do an update and restart the webbook.

Check the profile. If you have connected to a different network in the past it is probably using the wrong profile and trying to roam onto a network for which you don’t have roaming privileges. You should never roam on mobile broadband, if you are abroad buy a local pre-pay SIM card – make sure the thousand pound bills happen to other people. The only exception to this is if you have a Three SIM card you can roam onto Orange GPRS as three don’t have their own GPRS network)

If you do have the wrong profile simply delete it and try to connect, it will pop up a new profile with all the correct details filled in.

For more in depth diagnosis start the mobile broadband client and open a terminal window. Type tail -f /tmp/wader.log now plug in the dongle and watch the messages go by as you connect. The messages do actually mean something although they can be a bit cryptic. If someone has an interesting connection issue I would want to see the contents of /tmp/wader.log.

Please totally ignore and do not use the Windows drivers that are on the pseudo CDROM on the dongle. The installer might sort of run under WINE, but it is not going to connect or do anything productive. Just use the Wader mobile broadband client.

Gcompris doesn’t work

start it with alt-F2 gcompris -x we need to get a patch out to fix this.

I have messed up lots of things

Deleting your home directory and starting again might fix things if you have got corrupted firefox/thunderbird/gnome profiles (you can delete them individually, but it can be simplest to just start again)

I have totally hosed my webbook/I accidentally bought one with XP on it

Ask for a USB webbook Linux restore wristvault. This is a 1GB USB drive with a partition image of a clean webbook build. You need to go into the BIOS to change the hard drive order to boot from it, then back into the BIOS when it is finished to re-enable the SATA hard drive.

So what other FAQs should I add to this list? Any problems I have missed?

Posted in Howto, Mobile Networking | 83 Comments »

Some updates and an update

October 29th, 2008

We took the webbooks and some other Elonex laptops, the ONEt and ONE to the Linux Expo Live event in Olympia last week. I should be getting some photos soon, better than the one from my phone at the Woking event. It was not the busiest show but that was OK because we could have a nice long chat with all sorts of interesting people. I had the pleasure of hosting the speaking sessions on the Friday afternoon and Alan Lord hosted the Saturday sessions. All my speakers were great, but a particular highlight was the talk from David Axmark, one of the co-founders of MySQL telling us the story of MySQL and why he left SUN (in short: he doesn’t like working big companies). Lots of people were interested in the webbook but the star attraction for the geek audience was the ONEt with it’s MIPS architecture processor. The software on the ONEt is all very pretty, but not at all how I would have arranged it. With a Debian based system and the apt/dpkg package manager the ONEt could become a really great little computer.

Coming up soon (tomorrow actually) is the Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid launch party, this will be at Waxy O’Connors in the Dargle bar tomorrow evening, please feel free to join us there.

The other update is a software update to the Wader mobile broadband client. This was released a couple of days ago, if you start the mobile broadband client and go to help-about it should be version 2.3, if it isn’t then do an update and reboot (it should work without the reboot, but just in case . . .). The update adds a cancel button to allow you to interupt it during a connection and also includes a fix mostly for Orange where some SIM cards can take a long time to initialise, this version waits more patiently for the SIM card and network to get it’s act together.

Update:

The party was great, very well attended and my head hurts now.

Posted in Geeky, Mobile Networking | 50 Comments »

Be careful of the kernel update if you installed the VIA drivers

October 16th, 2008

Just as I predicted, a kernel update has been pushed out and if you installed the VIA drivers to get Compiz working then you will boot up to a black screen after letting the update process run and install kernel 2.26.21-generic. You can still boot up from the old kernel by pressing escape just after the bios and selecting the 2.26.19-generic kernel from the GRUB menu. I have asked VIA to compile a new one for us and come up with a more useable long term solution.

Posted in Compiz | 9 Comments »

Pretty fonts with sub-pixel rendering

October 15th, 2008

Here is a little tip for subtly improved font rendering. Go to a terminal window (Applications-Accessories-Terminal) and type sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config.
From the options select Autohinter, Always, and No. If you look carefully the curves of letters should now be just a fraction smoother.
nope, don’t do that! go to System-Preferences-Appearance and click the fonts tab, then select subpixes smoothing from the Fonts tab. Same thing as above really, but no need to go to the command line for it.

Posted in Howto | 3 Comments »

Flash 10 from Adobe

October 15th, 2008

Adobe released the next version of Flash today, it works just fine on the webbook. If you go to http://www.adobe.com/go/getflash it will detect you are running Linux and you can download the .deb for Ubuntu 8.04+ from the menu. Restart Firefox and you are good to go with Flash 10. I think it might be a bit smoother when playing videos full screen but I have not done any scientific tests. Let me know how you get on.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Ibex update

October 14th, 2008

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex is the next version of the operating system on the webbook, it should be released at the end of this month and I have been testing it out. Right now it would not be a good idea to upgrade. The screen goes black and fixing it is an interesting challenge. The external VGA port works fine so you can plug in a monitor, but getting the LCD panel up and running required me to compile the latest OpenChrome drivers and make a little change to one of the source files. I am still talking to the OpenChrome folk about improving the fix, but right now, don’t be in a hurry to upgrade!

Posted in Geeky | 11 Comments »

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