wget -r -l1 -H -t1 -nd -N -np -A.mp3 -erobots=off http://www.danosongs.com/

This is of course done with wget, a powerful command line utility for Linux. To tweak the command all you need to do is replace the URL with the page you’d like to scrape and then replace “mp3″ with whatever file you’d like to grab. So you could easily scrape a page for all .png files or .docx files if you wanted.

Enjoy

Error: DBus error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus) Please select another viewer and try again

My first instinct was to reinstall Samba, and that didn’t fix the issue. I played around with the config file a bit and then gave up and forgot about it for some time. Today I ran into the same issue again and decided a more aggressive approach was necessary. Simply uninstalling it leaves behind many config files and in order to completely start over you need to purge your existing install. To do so run these commands:

sudo apt-get purge samba
sudo apt-get install samba
sudo dpkg-reconfigure nautilus

After purging my installation and starting over I was then able to browse to my network shares again.

The Arduino Playground does a pretty good job of directing users on how to install Arduino on Debian based distributions but there were a couple of spots where I found it was lacking, and had to go out to do my own research. The main thing it lacked was instructions on how to set up a launcher for your desktop or Gnome menu. I will outline those at the end of this guide, but first I will give you a quick overview of the installation process from the start as I performed it on both my Linux Mint laptop and my Ubuntu 9.10 desktop. Although this guide was written with Linux Mint users in mind, there is absolutely no reason this will not work on other Debian based distros.

Open up your console and run the following commands to install some necessary prerequisites. If you know for a fact you have them installed you can skip installing them again. You will most likely be prompted to enter Y before the installation will begin.

sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jre
sudo apt-get install gcc-avr
sudo apt-get install avr-libc

Now that you have the prerequisites installed you will need to download the newest version of Arduino. You can save it to your desktop for now. After it has finished downloading open up the folder and extract it to your desired location (such as your home directory) or you can do it in your console as well:

tar xvzf ~/Desktop/arduino-0017.tgz ~/Arduino

At this point it is safe to delete the tarball on your desktop.

At this point Arduino is installed and ready to use. This is also where the Arduino Playground leaves you hanging, no one wants to open up their console every time to launch a program or browse to it with their file explorer. I initially tried creating an installer just as I normally would, by pointing it to ~/Arduino/arduino) only to find that the program did not launch when I clicked it. So I then created a bash script which called the same file and made sure it was executable. Still nothing! So that’s when I realized that I had to do things a bit differently. Nothing too fancy, just a slightly different way of approaching it.

First create an empty bash file and make it executable.

touch ~/Arduino/runArduino.sh
chmod a+x ~/Arduino/runArduino.sh

Then open it in your favourite text editor (e.g. emacs or pico), and add the following contents to your bash script:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/Applications/Arduino && ./arduino

Save the file and close your terminal. Right click the Gnome menu and select Add to Panel. Select Custom Application Launcher and hit Add. Enter Arduino for the name, and in the path put /home/username/Arduino/runArduino.sh. You can also select an icon for the launcher, which is another place Linux users were left out in the cold as the tarball does not contain an SVG file. Fortunately, I did manage to dig up a PNG version to use. Save this icon to your install directory and select it by clicking the “spring” icon and navigating to your install directory. From there click close to save the settings and add the launcher to your panel.

This project is also a lockbox, but it does not have a GPS for it to unlock at certain locations, rather it unlocks at certain time periods. The project will be housed in an old cash box I’ve had since I was a kid, and will make use of a DS1302 clock chip to track the time, a servo to unlock the box, a button to query the system to unlock, and a simple piezo buzzer for audio feedback. At this point I am undecided on adding an LCD panel, but I do have an old Nokia screen that I pulled out of my first cell phone. I also need to set up some sort of charging port or just drill a hole for the power adapter to plug into the side of the Arduino, but I’ll worry about that later.

Even though the Protoshield makes things quick and easy I still wanted to draw it out first as up until now the most I’d ever done was create simple circuits with one component at a time. I decided to try out Fritzing as it was free and worked in Linux, though I didn’t expect much with it being in Alpha. Turns out it’s a really solid program that makes designing circuits a breeze.

Here’s a sketch I made of the Arudino + Protoshield, a buzzer, servo, DS1302 clock chip and a crystal. I was quite surprised it had all of the components I needed, with the exception of the clock battery and holder which were strangely absent and the crystal was of a different design than what I had to work with.

I had been playing with it for a couple of nights before I even started playing with the Schematic and PCB screens but couldn’t stop playing with them once I noticed the Autoroute button. The designs aren’t always 100% aesthetically pleasing but it does an impressive job and I love how you watch it figure it out step by step. The Schematic screen will be especially handy later on down the road when I finalize the design and build a bare bones Arduino with just the necessary components.

In the past I’ve tried a few other programs such as Eagle and found myself lost. I’m overwhelmed with options and for someone who’s new to the electrical engineering side of things it’s quite scary. Fritzing manages to keep it simple while giving you the power to do what you need to do without all that other crap interfering. Fritzing is an absolute must have if you are doing any sort of work with either the Arduino or Picaxe platform.

WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
  foo bar baz
Install these packages without verification [y/N]?

I hit y but the install still failed. I did a quick Google and found this solution to the problem.

sudo apt-get install debian-archive-keyring
sudo apt-get update

After running those commands I got the same error, and once again I said yes. This time it installed successfully. So I went back and ran the sudo apt-get install alpine command again, and was prompted with the same question. Thinking it didn’t work I hit yes and to my chigrin it installed perfectly this time. Now, to figure out how to use Alpine to read my Gmail…

Lack of interest from the development team: Debian was an excellent server operating system and could even be modified at a desktop solution for those who were truly dedicated, but the development team eventually failed to release any new packages. This update failure would go on to effect updates to the X11 window system and even reduce filesystem support. One great example would be the lack of support for EXT3 which is now the standard for nearly all Linux distributions.

Along with being irritating, this left Debian quite vulnerable to hackers or other individuals that wished to circumvent its once robust infrastructure. This of course was not the only thing that led to the downfall of Debian. Next we will explore the complicated installation process.

Complicated Installation: The installation for Debian has always been text based, and as a result many could not quite figure out how it worked. In addition to that some of the options were downright confusing, ultimately leading to what appeared to be a Russian Roulette type install where success was hit or miss. For power users this was generally no problem, but for those unfamiliar with the operating system or Linux in general, it could be a nightmare.

Luckily there was a revival for the Debian operating system and it came in the form of Ubuntu. This new operating system provided a simple, graphical driven installation that allowed users to easily partition their hard drive (a nightmare in the old days). Though Ubuntu was and is still a fairly amazing operating system, and there are still quite a few arguments regarding Debian vs Ubuntu, there are a few derivatives, one of which is Linux Mint.

But what is Linux Mint? Other than being a clone of Ubuntu and a bit green, what are its features? The most noteable feature is that it IS green and it does provide a very nice aesthetic alternative to Ubuntu. The other thing to take note if is that as of 2008 Linux Mint began to share the same development and release cycle as Ubuntu, which is to say that it adopted the same version numbers (month and year) as Ubuntu.

At this point you might be wondering just what the difference is, and there is one difference that tends to sway many people from the thought of actually using Linux Mint. That difference of course is that Linux Mint does not use the same repositories as Ubuntu. This seems like an inconvenience when you consider that the majority of Debian based distros use the same packages.

To put it quite simply, Linux Mint is Ubuntu for the Linux Purist. That is to say that the repositories are filled with open source software.
There was a time when Linux was quite literally nothing but open source, but as more and more developers took an interest in the open source scene, proprietary software began to pop up, the first of which was Cedega (WINE with DirectX). Later on other developers such as Adobe would follow, and their involvement in the open source scene would cause arguments, debates, and even turmoil due to individuals who believed the open source community should remain open source.

Like its Ubuntu sibling, this Debian variation focuses largely on user friendliness. It allows a user to test out the operating system with the Live CD first, and if it seems suitable it can be installed via a shortcut on the desktop. The installer will deal with hard drive partitioning, going so far as to clearly mark any partitions you may wish to avoid.

There are a few pieces of software that were developed specifically by Linux Mint for it’s users. For instance you have the software manager which will permit you to run .mint files which are exclusive to the Linux Mint operating system. Though it could probably be an easy workaround, .mint compatibility is a serious argument in the Linux mint vs Ubuntu argument.

That being said, this distro is useful for just about anyone from the power user to the standard everyday office user. There are other alternatives to Linux Mint however, some of which are not based on Debian at all. Naturally you will have the Fedora alternative, and you will undoubtedly have the option of using something like Slackware if you happen to be a power user. That being said there are a number of different distributions for you to check out, and there is without a doubt one out there that will give you the satisfaction you crave in open source software. Only time will tell which operating system you choose to utilize, just know that Linux Mint is without a doubt one of the better choices for everyone.

Download Linux Mint: Debian Edition

Will Google’s Android succeed in beating RIM in the smartphone race?

Only time will tell, but at least for now, the iPhone is eating its dust.

According to the latest market research conducted by The NPD Group, handsets equipped with Google’s Android operating system have snatched second place in the U.S. market, leaving iPhone behind in third place. The figures for the first quarter of 2010 show that Research in Motion’s BlackBerry holds 36% of the market, the Android phones hold 28%, and the iPhone comes in third with 21%. So, how did the Android OS manage to overtake iPhone?

Continue Reading…

At one point in time these bindings were enabled by default, however they were eventually disabled in the default configuration. This was supposedly for the intent of simplifying Gnome. To re-enable these key bindings hit F2 and enter gconf-editor or you can also enter it into the shell. For those not familiar with gconf, it’s similar to Windows Registry but a lot less temperamental and cluttered. Navigate to /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme and change the entry from Default to Emacs and close gconf-editor. The change should be immediate, however some applications will pick up the change immediately. To test it out, start up Firefox and try doing a kill (c+k) and then yank (c+y), it should work just as it would within emacs.

I am one of those people who loves a clean desktop, I hate it when files and up scattered upon it and do not like how some icons are “glued” to the desktop by default in every operating system. So when I went to remove these icons from my desktop I found that I couldn’t just delete them as I had expected. I even tried doing it through the terminal, expecting to find symlinks in the ~/Desktop/ directory but it was empty. At that point I figured I’d have to bust out the gconf-editor, having done so in the past to remove the mounted drives from the desktop. It turns out there is a more simple solution in Linux Mint.

After digging around I found the Desktop Configuration Tool. If you are using the MintMenu then you can find it under

• MintMenu
• Preferences
• Desktop Configuration Tool

Once it is loaded you will see that it is a very simple utility, on your first tab all you have to do is uncheck Computer, Home, and Mounted Volumes. From there just click Apply and close the window, and you’re done!

sudo useradd -d /home/username -m username
sudo passwd username

I had thought for a long time this was sufficient. It created their home directory with the -m parameter and specified that location with the -d parameter. After that I set the password and the user was now able to login to the system with basic privileges. But after a while I began to notice some quirks with those users. They didn’t act like the initial admin user that was created by the installation process.  I found that the prompt was a bit less informative.  It also lacked a history, and the ability to hit tab to complete a directory as you typed it.  I even found myself copying over the root .bashrc and trying to figure out what ws different between the users.  Then I typed in the following command just to make sure it was using bash:

echo $SHELL

I looked at the response.

/bin/sh

*face-palm*

No wonder .bashrc didn’t do anything, I was using a completely different shell for my subsequent users.  I had never taken the time to learn the difference between the various shells, most systems use bash by default so that is what I learned and got used to.  So I never even realized they were using sh instead of bash.

To quickly change the shell for an established user to bash just run the command:

chsh -s /bin/bash username

Since then I’ve adjusted my create user command to include bash as my default shell.

sudo useradd -d /home/username -m username -s /bin/bash

There are many more parameters that you can add on to this command. If you’d like to read up on those then just type man useradd and read through the documentation.  Or if you want a very verbose and easy to use command to create your users you can always try adduser.  Instead of passing in which parameters you want to specify it will prompt you on every possibility.  Great for if you don’t know which options exist, but also somewhat overwhelming in the beginning.

mradmin@microsoft$ sudo adduser username
Password: ******
Adding user `username’…
Adding new group `username’ (1337).
Adding new user `username’ (1337) with group `username’.
Creating home directory `/home/username’.
Copying files from `/etc/skel’
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for username
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
Full Name []: Example User
Room Number []: 0
Work Phone []: 604-6122
Home Phone []: 604-6222
Other []:
Is the information correct? [y/N] 

The choice of which two methods to use is a mater of preference. In the long run, what matters is that you educate yourself on what all of the available options do. And remember, man useradd and man adduser are your friends!