By default, standard users are not allowed to access the serial ports on a Debian machine. A workaround is to run that program as root, but this is inherently unsafe. A better solution is to add your unprivileged user account to the dialout group.
usermod -a -G dialout username This allows an unprivileged account to access the system’s serial ports. This is handy with programs such as the Arduino IDE, which require serial port access to program the microprocessors.
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To coincide with World IPv6 Day, dereenigne.org is now available over both IPv4 and IPv6.
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Git is a version control system for managing source code. It is notable for originally being written by Linus Torvalds to manage the Linux source tree.
While Git is arguably one of the best control systems around, there are many projects still using SVN. If you find yourself accustomed to Git, moving backwards to SVN can cause problems. Luckily, Git has a solution. Git is capable of interacting with SVN repositories directly.
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I’ve added support for the BT Voyager 2110 to OpenWrt. A patch has been submitted to the openwrt-devel mailinglist, and has been accepted to trunk. If you aren’t comfortable with compiling OpenWrt from source, I’ve uploaded precompiled binaries based on trunk r26936. Just be aware that OpenWrt does not support the ADSL functionality of this router yet (waiting on Broadcom to release the ADSL driver source code).
I take no responsibility for any bricked devices, although if you manage to do it please tell me!
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Wine is a compatibility layer to allow you to run Windows programs on Linux with near native efficiency. I use Wine to run foobar2000 on Linux. On Windows, foobar2000 supports upmixing stereo tracks into 5.1 surround sound. This was the first thing I missed when I moved my Desktop to Linux full time.
After a good bit of googling, it turns out that it is actually possible to pass 5.1 surround sound from a Wine application to the native Linux sound driver.
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I discovered the other day that Thunderbird supports Unix Movemail accounts. It seems to have supported them for a long while, but it wasn’t very obvious from the Account options. This is dead handy as it allows me to retrieve the various system generated emails from /var/spool/mail automatically.
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Every time I move to a new Debian/Ubuntu installation I can never remember how to remove the Nautilus breadcrumbs bar in favour of the address bar. I’ve decided to write it down so I’ll remember it.
Use
gconf-editor to edit the value of
/apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_location_entry
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I got a Debian based VPS recently, and every so often I find myself needing to reboot the server. I keep forgetting to start my GNU Screen and Irssi windows again though.
Adding the following line to /etc/rc.local allows GNU Screen to automatically run at boot time. This line runs Screen from my unpriviledged account, loads Irssi within that Screen, and then backgrounds itself, ready for the next time I login.
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Having used PDFcreator on Windows for many years, a PDF printer is something that you miss very quickly on a fresh install operating system.
Linux is no exception, and cups-pdf provides a PDF printer for the most excellent CUPS. (I normally despise Apple software, but I have to give them credit for CUPS. :))
To install on a Debian/Ubuntu machine:
apt-get install cups-pdf Once installed, you should now have a new PDF printer showing up in CUPS.
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Multiproxy-Switch is a pretty nifty Firefox addon for quickly changing web proxies.
With the release of each new Firefox version, many older add-ons get culled from the typical profile due to incompatibilities. Multiproxy-Switch is no exception, and no longer seems to be updated.
I’ve taken this add-on on, modified it to be compatible with Firefox 4.0, and will now maintain it on github.
You can download the latest version from github.
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