I decided it was time for my laptop to receive a fresh install of Kubuntu. For some reason the old install wouldn’t start any more and with version 13.04 Raring Ringtail just released I figured why not do a nice fresh install.

My usual modus operandi is download the new version, add the ISO to a Multisystem boot USB stick. This didn’t work this time how ever. Adding to the USB drive worked fine booting for the USB drive worked fine. Installing seemed to work great as well. It wasn’t until a reboot into the freshly installed system that I noticed a problem, Kubuntu 13.04 wouldn’t boot. It would go through all the motions, Grub -> Starting screen Kubuntu then blank screen. No login no KDE desktop as expected. After thinking about it for a while and trying different things I came to the conclusion that the generic ATI driver must be broken.

I repeated the process with Ubuntu and Xubuntu 13.04 both ended up with a blank screen. I solved the problem by taking a Xubuntu 12.04 cd and installing from that, then upgrading to 12.10 and from 12.10 to 13.04. This gave me a working Xubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail install on my laptop. I might have been able to fix it but I couldn’t even get to a terminal window.

Weird this had never happened before with any of the new releases, they always installed fine and worked out of the box. After some research it seems that some how the ATI packages got broken. My graphics card in this Laptop( a thinkpad edge 14″) is product: RS880M [Mobility Radeon HD 4225/4250]. This is older hardware and ATI in all of it’s wisdom decided to not support older chip-sets any more in it’s legacy driver.

Gallium is the open source driver used to circumvent that but for some reason it doesn’t seem to be working right. For me this is a problem, I would like to upgrade my HTPC which currently runs Kubuntu 12.10. But I am not sure if the problems with the legacy drivers will affect my dual boot, I run that box on both my tv and a lcd monitor. Until I read reports that this is fixed, or until I get a new graphics card for my HTPC I think I will hold of on upgrading that box.

It used to be a pain to get Grub working again having to run some terminal commands, great for advanced users but not so much for the n00b who just started using Ubuntu, Xubuntu or Kubuntu. There is a solution for that. To repair Grub we can now use the boot-repair application developed for those of us who can not wrap our heads about running terminal commands(don’t worry terminal is still my favorite way of doing everything).

Installing and using boot-repair is really just two simple steps:

Start by downloading, or grabbing your Ubuntu, Xubuntu or Kubuntu live cd or Live USB. Start op Ubuntu, Xubuntu or Kubuntu using the live CD/USB. Open terminal and type the commands below.

Ubuntu to get terminal: hit the application search(top button in the left bar) and type terminal then hit enter.
Xubuntu to get terminal: Right click on the desktop and click “Open Terminal Here”.
Kubuntu to get terminal: hit atl>F2 type terminal en hit enter.

Step 1, add the boot-repair repository:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update

Step 2, install and run boot-repair:
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (sudo boot-repair &)

That’s it boot-repair will start and you can hit the top button to start the process. In most cases it will just repair your Grub, restart and done working Grub again.

XBMC logo

It is time to say good bye to yet another piece of software that I have been using for a while now.  This time it’s Boxee, I found out after upgrading my HTPC to Kubuntu 12.04 that Boxee was not working anymore. I figured I would check Boxee.TV to download the new version, this is what I had to do in the past to get Boxee to work again.

Only this time I found out Boxee stopped all support for anything but the Boxee box, iPad and iPhone.  Basically screwing over longtime supporter’s of their software, the people that helped debug the very software that we are now not able to use anymore.  Well that said they do still offer the source code so you could compile from scratch.  But when you have a HTPC you don’t really want to be doing that, since the whole family is using it.  So it just has to work.  There is nothing worse then a wife or child bitching at you because an update of the system broke Boxee.

So it is back to XBMC for me.  Since I last left XBMC behind for Boxee they have really grown up.  XBMC now makes for a pretty solid media player for the HTPC.  Some of that might be because of the wide spread use of Boxee that was once the norm.  Boxee was based on XBMC and I am sure that they did contribute to some of the development and perhaps redevelopment of XBMC.

The nicest thing I found is that XBMC has a solid remote control app for Android devices. Making it easy to use my Android tablet to control the XBMC running on my HTPC.  I am still figuring out what add-on’s to use for playlists or watch lists.  But as I use it more I will figure that out too.

For more information about Boxee Click Here
For more information about XBMC Click Here
For more information on Kubuntu Click Here

This blog is a labor of love.  If anything on this blog helps you or even makes you crack a smile then please donate donations of any size are accepted.  This blog would not exist without donations from readers like you.  Thanks for donating.

Issues are now fixed and the expected speed is back to what it was.  As I believe I have explained before the speed of this blog can be contributed to W3TC(W3 Total Cache) a WordPress plugin and Memcached a general-purpose distributed memory caching system made by Danga Interactive.

I am making plans to do some blogging again on this blog so I needed the speed to be awesome once again.

For my HAM adventures this would be the section of my blog you need to check.

Here is a link to my page on QRZ.com.

Here is a link to my ARRL profile page(you need to be logged into the ARRL website to view this page).

If you have any questions feel free to send me an email using the info on QRZ, this info is always up to date.

pyFollowBack.com My Twitter follow back service is going well.  Everyone who join’s the service loves it.  My own combined twitter account are now close to 200,000 followers, my own account @madberry has 21,509 followers and is growing strongly each month.

This blog is now a PR3 blog so I am happy about that.  Thanks everyone for linking back and helping me to grow this blog.

I will be adding new sections soon.  I have decided to pick two of my old hobbies back up.  Electronics has always been my absolute favorite thing to do, it is extremely cool to be able to have a problem and design a circuit that solves it.  I am looking forward to playing with some Arduino’s that will be coming in soon.

An other longtime hobby of mine is broadcasting, back home in the Netherlands I used to DJ with a pirate radio station(a station broadcasting without the necessary license)  I did that for eight years.  While I was doing this I had fun building studio’s and putting antennas on ten story buildings for this station.  At this point I would direct you to a website with the history of the station, but the only website that exists about the station is in Dutch.  I will be translating most of the information to English.  When this is done I will place a link here so every one can read about it.

One of the drawbacks of working at a pirate station is the possibility of the Dutch FCC(RCD) coming in and taking your station of the air.  The do this by confiscation of all station equipment, including antenna’s and expensive transmitters.

But there is also a way to becoming licensed to broadcast, okay you can’t broadcast music or any other entertainment but you are allowed to talk on the radio.  You might have heard of the term HAM, no not the back-end of a pig, HAM’s do an exam to become a amateur radio operator.  This exam gives you privileges to talk on certain frequencies to other HAM’s.  It isn’t a license you get with a packet of gum in the store.  You actually have to study for this one.

I won’t bore the ones that don’t care to read about it.  In short HAM’s talk to other hams in this country and all over the world.  Read more about this in the future category that will be created here.

Keep an eye on this blog for more Linux articles as well.  I have a couple of ideas for articles and I need to get back to a regular schedule when it comes to posting on this and some of my other blogs.

I joined VPS.net in November of 2009 and I have been with them since.  As I said they where a young start-up when I joined and there where some bugs that they needed to fix.  The easy of which you can add and remove nodes, VPS.net uses nodes to describe a section of server resources allocated to you, was unbelievable.

The service provided by VPS.net has overall been good, there where a couple of situations where they could have handled there stuff better.  Most recently I got migrated from Chi-C to Chi-A because the Chi-c cloud didn’t provide the service any more that VPS.net wants for it’s customers.  This wasn’t entirely without cost for me, I am talking some extra costs for nodes etcetera.

There have been issues with servers going down, sometimes because of scheduled downtime, which I found out about to late.  A couple of times the server went down because of SAN issues.  I expect that this will be better in Chi-A, all of those problems where in the Chi-C cloud.

I haven’t had any problems getting a response back from support, or even a manager, when I started a ticket.  I know some people have complained about this, but they might just have started a ticket when there was already an on going issue with a cloud.  Checking status.vps.net helps when trying to find out if there is a service issue.

One of the things I really love is that they have a bunch of licenses that you can use for your server.  This makes it really easy to get a cPanel license for a server for instance, or an R1Soft Backup license.

I love having complete control of all of the aspects of my server.  I use VPS.net’s DNS servers which are hosted by Softlayer.  They even provide a DNS plugin for cPanel to easily add domains to the DNS.  One of my most favourite features are the FREE Comodo SSL certificates you can get via VPS.net, all you have to do is start a ticket.

In conclusion has there been downtime yes, but every time that has happened they either limited the downtime or compensated for prolonged downtime.

The ability to make your server scale automatically is golden.

In my opinion you can’t go wrong with the nodes from VPS.net.

1. Back-up the original kmail files/folders:
   ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail
   ~/.kde/share/apps/korganizer
   ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc
2. Remove the following files:
   ~/.kde/share/config/kmail-migratorrc
   ~/.kde/share/config/kmail2rc
3. Then run: kmail-migrator –interactive which you can do in terminal or by hitting alt->f2

That is it, the migration should now run and finish like planed.

Source: wiki.ubuntu.com/OneiricOcelot/Final/Kubuntu/Kmail2

I had this problem on a server of mine. In my case it was kdevelop that was held back. I removed the held package and the upgrade went through as expected.

What is dd?

dd is an application to make bit for bit copies of a hard drive, or anything else you need a bit for bit copy of. One of dd’s downfalls is that it doesn’t have a progress bar. Instead you are just staring at a blank screen, waiting for dd to finish copying your drive.

Today I ran into this problem again, I am copying a 80GB hard drive bit for bit.  I need this copy to turn the server it was in into a virtual server.  Saving me electricity and hardware.

Yeah so how do you do this with a progress bar?  Especially since the newer versions of dcfldd don’t have a progress bar anymore?

The solution is quite simple we just have to pipe through another application to get the progress bar.  Before we do anything install this application.  Here is the code:

sudo apt-get install pv

Now we have that application installed we just need to change the dd command to include this application:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdd | pv | sudo dd of=/home/username/path-to-iso.iso

That’s it I can’t make it any easier than that.

Google yields a lot of results for different subjects and keywords, when you are looking for a result that can really be daunting. This is where +1 comes in. You friends and family can click the 1+ button on websites they like and this way recommend sites to you. In return you can do the same.

Check out +1 one these URLs:

Get the +1 button now
More info on the +1 button
+1 button API

Click my +1 button over there –>

When I have done all of that, then I can concentrate on creating new content.

I knew about Google Apps, I had even played around with it before.  Although it seemed like a good product, I wasn’t really interested in using it.  Recently I decided when I bought another domain to use Google Apps for it instead of my own mail server.  I must say I like it, I like it so much I am now transfering e-mail for several domains to Google Apps.

This will enable me to easily setup the same e-mail prefix for all domains.  I just point the domains DNS records MX part to Google’s MX servers and that’s it all domain mail will now go to Google Apps.  Google Apps doesn’t only provide Gmail with you own domain, it also provides many other services.  You can use Groups, Docs, Gtalk, Google Calendar and many more.

There is a free Google Apps version that will allow you to have up to 50 e-mail account with 7GB each.  This should be enough for most, but if you need more you can always get the business solution they offer.  It will cost you $50 a year per user, you will get 25GB space per user.  The also offer additional apps. for business  users.  Like Google Video for Business, Google Groups for Business, BlackBerry and Microsoft Outlook interoperability and much more.

For more information check out this website.

Note: I am in no way affiliated with Google or Google Apps. I am not receiving any payment for writing this.(although Google if you are reading this, feel free to use the donate button).

To start we need to install update-manager:
sudo apt-get install update-manager

Then we simply run:
sudo update-manager -d

Before running the distro-upgrade we have to install all of the security updates found by update-manager. It is important to not skip this step:

Let this finish, if it prompts you to restart do so. Then run update manager again. Now hit upgrade to start your upgrade to Ubuntu / Kubuntu Natty Narwhal 11.04.

See the images below for a step by step:

[flickrset id="72157626853231482" thumbnail="thumbnail" photos="" overlay="true" size="medium"]

sudo apt-get install getlibs ia32-libs

This getlibs package can do a lot more then you would expect go here for more information.  In our example you could use it to install Skype or Adobe Air, how ever the below described method can be used for any 32 bit deb package.  To force dpkg to install the 32 bit dependencies we have to use --force-architecture .  Run the code below to now install the package.

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture adobeair.deb

There are many talks on the website here are some of my favorites:

• Temple Grandin She gives us an inside few of how it is to live with autism.  She can give parents of children that have autism hope.  She is a successful engineer, designing new ways to approach animal herding.
• Clifford Stoll Clifford is a brilliant mind caught in a hyper over active body.  You might know the name, he is the builder of maybe the most famous Acme Klein Bottles.
• Einstein The Parrot As an owner of an African Grey(Max short for Maximus) I can tell you what Einstein does if quite common,  if you spend enough time with your bird he or she will start talking in no time.  As you can see from this TED talk with Einstein with some training these birds can be taught to say just about anything
• James Cameron If you are interested in the tech. behind Avatar this is the video to watch.
• Julia Sweeney Very funny and gives insight into Julia’s childhood.

These are only a few examples, there are so many videos to explore.  From tech. talks to performances, you will always find something that will inspire you.

What is new in Kubuntu 11.04:

Many small improvements and bug fixes are made.  Some larger changes I will discuss below.  There will be things I forget, or don’t even know about, if you have anything to add feel free to leave a comment below.

• One of the things I have been waiting for is better support for Intel, ATI and Nvidia graphics.  I use mostly ATI graphics and better Kernel support, because of the update to Kernel 2.6.38-5.32, is awesome.  They have fixed some of the suspend/resume errors.  Also an black screen on boot was fixed.
• KDE 4.6.0, this also adds some bug fixes of annoying but maybe less critical importance.  HAL will not be used by default any more, instead of HAL upower and udisks will no be used, these are part of the udev package.  If you look in your /dev you see a lot of devices created by HAL.  How ever just a few of those devices are actually hooked up to your box.  To fix this udev is now used, udev creates the /dev directory dynamicly, only creating devices that actually exist.  This is only one part of the improvement that that udev will offer.  Other *Nix distros already dropped HAL, now Ubuntu will follow suit.
• Working SAMBA, okay this is maybe only important for those of us who still have some SAMBA shares to use with windows computers.  Sharing a folder is now as simple as just right clicking on the folder and selecting share, similar to how sharing in windows works. This will make it easier, for those people who don’t want to dig through config files, to share files.
• Support for Ubuntu Server Cloud is also improved with this release. The cloud has been used for years, your web-server for instance could be seen as a cloud.  The Cloud is really a marketing term to re-brand any storage solution, VPS and other online services.
• Better support for iPhone’s, and probably iPad’s, is now build into 11.04 Natty Narwhal.  This is great, like it or not, the iPhone and iPad is are popular so native support is needed.
• Build in support for proprietary programs, think RAR. I am not sure this is an improvement.  How ever some people do like using software they know from the Windows realm.  I wish more people would find the opensource equivalent of the Windows software they want to use.  We have plenty of software that is just as good and maybe better then the proprietary software available.

What I hope for every release of Ubuntu and it’s derivatives is better support for wireless network interfaces.  Although a lot of cards and USB devices are supported by default, to many –mainly Netgear and Linksys devices– are still not supported. Netgear I love you but you need to get into the game.  Opensource your drivers, or work with the kernel team to get native drivers for all of your wireless devices on Linux.

Release schedule for Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal:

03-31-2011 Beta 1 Released
04-14-2011 Beta 2  Released
04-28-2011 Final Release

As always you should not install the Alphas or Betas  on a production computer.  If the computer is important to you and you cannot afford any down time wait for the final release.

I believe the decision to stop SIP services was mainly made because of the system they where using, it was very network heavy and not efficiently design at all.  They obtained Gizmo 5 at one point, they have announced they will be shutting down the service.  This might be because of the newly found Google Voice SIP capability.

There have been no official announcements made by Google about this SIP capability, it is also not a full SIP service yet.  At this moment the SIP service only allows SIP to SIP calls no termination to PTSN landlines or mobile numbers yet.    Although my prediction is that Google will eventually implement this, after which we will see a beta announcement.

This could be very big and could eat into the profits of some major SIP players, potentially putting company’s like Voipbuster out of business.  Granted that to do so they will have to implement a similar payment system, hopefully offering us 120 free days in several countries like Voipbuster currently does.  They currently offer international calling in Google Voice, but having to call a number to get a call back or using an app., or website to do so is unpractical.  Even though prices are lower than Voipbuster, which is the service I would be looking to replace, the free days still do it for me.

I will refrain from writing a how to on using Google Voice SIP until we know for sure the service will remain up.  How ever if you want to try it for yourself here is the SIP address: +1GV#@sip.voice.google.com please replace GV# with your own Google voice number and don’t forget the +1.  You should be able to terminate calls using a softphone to other SIP numbers.

Dixon Rams Ruby vs. Sierra Foothills Rugby

I shot a rugby game this Saturday.  They had a great game and Dixon won.  I have pictures on flickr for those who want to oder some of the photo go to flickr find the photo you wand note the title down and order your prints here.  I did discover a problem with one of my CF cards it caused an error in the camera and I had t change cards to fix it.  Luckily I was able to recover some of the photos taken on the defective card.  We will be attending more rugby games in the near future.  So if I didn’t shoot a photo of your kid this time I might at the next game.  If you have any special requests please let me know, just walk up to the tall guy with the camera, I promise I won’t bite…..

[slickr-flickr tag="rugby" captions="off"]