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Problemucci con il touchpad

Durante queste ultime settimane ho avuto un sacco di problemi con il touchpad del mio portatile: per qualche oscuro motivo dopo l'aggiornamento di gnome (versione 2.28) ho "perso" le funzionalità di "scrolling" e "tapping" (sul mio computer ho una Debian testing). Oggi mi sono messo d'impegno e ho trovato una buona soluzione per far tornare tutto alla normalità (grazie a Google e al forum di archlinux).

Per prima cosa bisogna copiare il file /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/11-x11-synaptics.fdi nella directory /etc/hal/fdi/policy/:

cp /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/11-x11-synaptics.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/

In seguito è necessario modificare il file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/11-x11-synaptics.fdi aggiungendo la descrizione delle funzionalità che vogliamo abilitare. Io ho preso spunto dal file di esempio presente sul wiki di archlinux.

Infine, un riavvio di X metterà fine a tutti questi noiosi problemi!

Well done!

:)

Using "citext" in PostgreSQL for case insensitive comparisons

I think its new in PostgreSQL 8.4, there is a new field type called citext, which stands for case insensitive text.  Currently on Ubuntu 9.10 its in the PostgreSQL contrib package, which often serves as a testbed for features before they are adopted into PostgreSQL proper.

Using citext ensures that all comparisons are case insensitive, which includes referential integrity on inserts, updates and deletes, and SQL queries for lookups for example, which I think will work well for those fields that should always be compared case insensitive.

Although citext (and probably many other modules) are not listed on the contrib page, they are included, you can see them in the complete file list.

Steps to install on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala):

# Install the contrib package
sudo apt-get install postgresql-contrib-8.4
# Add the citext module to a database of your choice
psql [username] -d [databaseName] -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/citext.sql

Where in this case /usr/share/postgresql/8.4 is the PostgreSQL SHARE_DIR folder.

Now you can use the field citext instead of text.  If you'd like to use citext on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty (which only includes PostgreSQL 8.3), then check out Mark's post about installing PostgreSQL 8.4 on Ubuntu 9.04.

My "Must Have" apps for Android

One Day One GNU/Linux Command (NETCAT)

nc -- TCP/IP Tool to read and write data across network connection

Summary:
netcat(nc) is a simple utility which reads and writes data across network connections, using IP, TCP or UDP protocol. It is designed to be a reliable "back-end" tool that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts. It is a feature-rich network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost any kind of connection you would need and has several interesting built-in capabilities.

We can use netcat with-in local system. But just for better understanding, I use two systems A and B. IP of A is 192.168.1.1 and B is 192.168.1.2.

Examples:

 
(A) $ nc B 21 -- Connect to port 21 on B 
 
(B) $ nc -l -p 5000 -- Listen on port 5000 in B. 
 
(A) $ nc B 5000 -- Connect to B on port 5000. Whatever typed
in A will goto B and vice-versa. 
 
(A) $ nc -o dump.txt B 5000 -- Same as above. But all traffic
will be dumped in the file in hex format. 
 
(B) cat fileB.txt | gzip -9 | nc -l 5000 -- Send the file through
port 5000 and on-the-fly compress it. 
 
(A) nc B 5000 > fileA.gz -- Receive the file from B and save it in A. 
 
(A) $ echo "Hello" | nc -w 1 B 5000 -- Connect to B on port 5000 and 
pass "Hello" message to it. 
 
(B) nc -l -p 5000 -e /bin/bash -- Listen on port 5000. If anyone 
connected this, provide the bash shell. (Simple way to open a 
backdoor). 
 
 
(A) $ nc -zv B 10-100 -- Simple TCP port scan on B. Option -z make nc 
not to wait for any response from B. 
 
(A) $ nc -zvu B 10-100 -- Simple UDP port scan on B. 

Ubuntu-n00b: Day 2

So installation of Ubuntu 9.10 in dual-boot with Windows went fine, but I did encounter some problems on my first workday. For good solutions, feel free to comment.

• We're using Exchange 2007 for email, contacts and calendars, and I think I have tried every combination of servers and domains available in Evolution with no luck. I'm sure there is a solution, but it is certainly not easily found. This could be what makes me drop Ubuntu alltogether if there is no solution.
• Dual screens posed quite a problem, and it's still not solved completely. I use a 24" Dell via HDMI and a 17" IBM via VGA from my laptop, and after some fiddling, I managed to get them to work. However, I can't shut the lid on the laptop without all screens going blank.

On a positive note, installing a Dell 3115cn printer via WLAN was completed without a hitch, and OpenOffice seem to to the job so far.

More to come, have a great weekend!

google chrome in ubuntu 9.10

edit the apt sources file

add in

then add in the apt key

then update apt and install chrome

Oder gibts bei Windows so eine schöne Wallpaper

Wer braucht da noch Windows? Das neue Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala ist draußen

http://www.ubuntu.com/

A day late and a buck short

I've been directed to Write Something, You Miserable Fuck, so here I go. As I ran out of time and Adderall (prescription, you degenerates) yesterday, I promise to devote twenty minutes to tonight's post.

(Much later: I have been dedicating at least ten, nay, twenty minutes a day to writing, and I still have yet to crank out an actual post. It becomes clearer now why I opted for this particular exercise instead of nanowrimo)

I am writing this on an Asus EeePC 900 running Arch Linux. Its name is Fizzgig and it goes just about everywhere with me; strangely, flipping open my netbook for a quick game of Nethack is, in most social situations (dinner out, movie night, conversation, sexual encounter, etc), considered rude, whereas iPhone owners seem completely impervious to these tacit rules of decorum and, with much fanfare and no protest, will whip theirs out every eight seconds to tweet notes to Remember the Milk which will later show up on some sort of specialized app for just such things. Behold the power of Apple!

Anyway. The Eee. With its small hard drive, small screen, and processing power relatively equivalent to that of a hamster on a wheel, it is perfect for a little bit o' that hip Linux minimalism. If I lean in real close, I can actually hear its faint whisper: "Noooo! Not Eeebuntu!" And I'm not just being snobby about Ubuntu's efforts to actually be accessible and friendly to non-geeks -- let me point you toward the fresh Kubuntu-karmic install on that big hulking desktop over there -- it has just never been my experience with Ubuntu that I could install a package without, say, suddenly needing to download like 500MB of GNOME dependencies. Seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if 10.4 somehow managed to work GNOME dependencies into fdisk.

Will be attentive to the flow of content here and save my GNOME-hate for another post. (Not hate, actually. Using it just... makes me mad. Which, I have heard, is nothing compared to developing with Gtk...)

So I went for Arch, which is magnificent. In faithful Hip Lightweight Linux Geek style, I'm rockin' a tiling window manager that is usually just managing terminal windows, plus firefox and some other graphical goodies. (But just to be obnoxious I've uploaded a screenshot o' text-fu. Yep, that's w3m showing graphics in a terminal.)

Next time: more Trends In Geekdom! Among them: Haskell, forking dwm, and the emergent Vile Frat Boy culture of Ruby hackers. Until then... I'm going to go hack on dwm.

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