Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

December 28, 2009

How to set different backgrounds for each desktop in KDE4

Filed under: Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related — Suramya @ 11:52 PM

As some of you know, linux allows you to have different virtual desktop when using either KDE or Gnome (I haven’t really used any of the other environments). Which is quite useful when you are working on a lot of things and want to reduce the clutter on the screen. I usually separate the windows by task type and then put each task in its own desktop. Makes it easier to work.

In KDE3.5 you could have different background image for each of the virtual desktop which made it easier to identify what desktop you were on currently. In KDE4 that functionality was initially missing for some reason. (Probably because it had to be coded in). Now in KDE4.3 (Maybe 4.2 also. Not sure) this functionality is available again though its not as easy to find as it was in KDE 3.5.

To configure it follow these steps:

  • Click on the desktop cashew located at the top right corner of the screen.
  • Click on ‘Zoom out’ in the drop down menu
  • Choose “Configure Plasma” from the toolbox that appears on the top right corner of the screen
  • In the screen that comes up check the “Use a separate dashboard” option.
  • Check the “Use Different activity for each desktop” option
  • Click on OK
  • Click on the magnifying glass at the bottom of the applets to zoom back into the desktop

    • Now you will be able choose individual backgrounds for each desktop by Right click on the desktop and clicking on ‘Desktop Settings’ . After that change the background like you usually do. But now this background will only be applied to the current desktop and you can repeat this process on another desktop to choose another background for it.

    Thanks to http://userbase.kde.org for the nudge in the right direction.

    Hope this helps.

    Update (12th Jan 2010): Added one step that I had forgotten to include earlier. Thanks to Sebastian for pointing that out.

    Update (19th Sep 2011): These steps no longer work for KDE 4.6.5. New instructions are at: How to set different backgrounds for each desktop in KDE 4.6.5

    – Suramya

    December 27, 2009

    Stop Gnome Applications from looking ugly in KDE4

    Filed under: Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 3:28 AM

    Since I have been using KDE (even in v3.5) I have noticed that Gnome applications look ugly in KDE. (see screenshot below) In KDE 3.5 I had to install the Gnome theme controller application and apply a theme and it fixed the issue. (I can’t recall the name right now, but it was something gnome-theme-something) but in KDE4 that didn’t work so well.


    Firefox without GTK Themes

    Did a little research and tried various options but none of them worked that well and caused loads of issues. Finally I found a way to get the applications to use the current GTK theme in KDE even after I rebooted the system without any manual intervention.

  • Open a shell prompt or open the Run dialog by pressing Alt-F2
  • Type gnome-settings-daemon and press enter

    • Once you do this all running GTK applications, as well as any more you launch, will switch to your GNOME theme and will look a lot nicer (See screenshot below)


    Firefox with GTK Themes

    As you can see the program looks a lot less ugly with the themes applied. However if you reboot the system without configuring the gnome-settings-daemon to auto start, the applications will go back to the default no-theme state.

    To set the daemon to autostart create a text file called theme.desktop (Actually This can be anything you want as long as you keep the .desktop extension) in the ~/.kde/Autostart directory with the following contents:

    [Desktop Entry]
    Exec=gnome-settings-daemon &
    Name=GNOME Settings Daemon
    Type=Service
    X-KDE-StartupNotify=false
    OnlyShowIn=KDE;

    Once you create the file and save it, KDE will start the Gnome settings daemon everytime it starts.

    Note: On some systems the autostart directory is located in the ~/.kde4/share/autostart folder.

    Hope this helps.

    Source of the tip: Tombuntu.com

    – Suramya

    December 26, 2009

    Installing Nvidia Video drives on Debian Testing (Squeeze)

    Filed under: Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related — Suramya @ 3:15 AM

    The default VGA drivers in Debian Testing worked fine for normal use, but when I tried to activate some of the effects like Fade, Shadow, Translucency etc the system told me that it couldn’t do it. I thought that this could be because I have an Nvidia video card and hadn’t installed the Nvidia driver yet.

    I tried installing it using synaptic but for some reason when I added the nvidia driver it told me that I would have to remove pretty much most of my xorg (the GUI backend) install. So I aborted it. Did a little search on the web and found the following instructions to install the driver at pendrivelinux.com:

  • Log in as root

  • Type apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) (to install the Linux headers)

  • Type cd /usr/src (Change to the source directory)

  • Type ln -s linux-headers-$(uname -r) linux (To create a virtual link ‘linux’ that points to the latest linux-headers downloaded)

  • Type wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/100.14.23/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.23-pkg1.run (Download the NVIDIA installer)

  • Type /etc/init.d/gdm stop (to stop gdm and drop to a terminal)

  • Type cd /usr/src && sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.23-pkg1.run (to launch the nVidia installer script)

    • I ran all the commands above but the installer kept telling me that the kernel-headers were missing. Tried a couple of things that didn’t work.

    Finally ran NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.23-pkg1.run –help to see what command line parameters are supported by the installer. Noticed that they had a –update parameter that was supposed to update the installer to the latest version. I ran the installer with –update and it downloaded the latest version of the installer. After the download completed it automatically ran the installer which updated my system without any errors.

    So if you are trying to install the nvidia drivers using the installer and it keeps complaining about the headers missing even though you have them installed try running it with the –update option.

    Now I have all the effects I wanted to enable working fine.

    – Suramya

    November 11, 2008

    Fix Unresponsive or Frozen Linux Computers

    Filed under: Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related — Suramya @ 4:43 PM

    If you are ever stuck on a Linux system that is completely unresponsive try the following key combination to get access back:

    Alt PrintScreen r s e i u b.

    When you type the command the system executes the following commands:

    * r – takes the control of the keyboard back from X.
    * s – writes the data from the disc cache to the hard disk.
    * e – sends SIGTERM to all processes except init.
    * i – sends SIGKILL to all processes except init
    * u – remounts all the filesystems readonly (basically a measure to help you reboot safely)
    * b – reboots the system

    Please keep in mind that this is a last ditch method, that is to be used only when everything else has failed to get you access to the system. Normally you should be able to switch to a virtual terminal (F1-F6) and kill the offending application.

    Source: Fix Unresponsive or Frozen Linux Computers using Shortcuts | MakeUseOf.com

    – Suramya

    September 23, 2008

    SugarCRM Silent upgrade issues and fixes

    Filed under: Computer Software,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 5:59 PM

    The past few weeks I have been working on the SugarCRM Silent upgrade script that upgrades the CRM from ver 4.5.1 to Version 5.0 and I hit some issues that took ages to fix. So I am sharing the fixes/solutions here for others who might have hit these issues and are looking for a solution:

    1. The upgrade fails suddenly with the following error message in the upgradeWizard.log file:

    Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:28:20 -0500 [UpgradeWizard] - *** ERROR: could not copy file: /home/suramya/public_html/CRM/include/SugarFields/Fields/Address/DetailView.tpl

    To fix this issue you need to extract the upgrade zip file that you downloaded and then copy the SugarFields folder from the includes directory into the include folder of your CRM. Once you do that the CRM upgrade will continue normally.

    2. Upgrade fails with the following error message:


    Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/suramya/public_html/CRM/include/dir_inc.php on line 135

    This one was an interesting one to fix. I had already migrated a couple of test installs on that server so I knew the server supported the upgrade script and I was migrating the same install again so I knew that the install could be upgraded.

    Finally figured out that if you rename the upgrade zip file to another name it will fail with that error message. Which is kind of silly because we give the installer the name of the upgrade zip file when running it…

    Hope this helps someone else out there.

    – Sur

    April 21, 2008

    Getting my wireless card working in Debian

    Filed under: Computer Tips,Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 2:03 AM

    As promised here are the steps that I followed to get my wireless card working on my Comaq Presario V3000 in Debian:

    1. Install ndiswrapper

    In my case I allready had the ndis wrapper installed. If thats not the case with your system run the following command as root to install it:

    apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils ndisgtk

    2. Disable the “bcm43xx” driver on your system

    Run the following command at a command prompt as root :

    echo 'blacklist bcm43xx' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

    3. Download the Windows driver for your card

    My system uses the Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 card and I had to download the Windows driver for it from the Dell site. For some reason the driver I found at the Compaq site refused to work. You can download it from here.

    Save this in the /tmp directory cd into the /tmp directory, and unzip the Windows driver package:

    cd /tmp
    unzip R123456.EXE (or whatever the name of the download is)

    4. Install the Windows driver with ndiswrapper

    To load the driver you need to run the following command as root:

    ndiswrapper -i /tmp/DRIVER/bcmwl5.inf

    The you should verify that the driver has been successfully loaded

    ndiswrapper -l

    The output of this command should look like the following if it is loaded correctly

    Installed ndis drivers:
    {name of driver} driver present, hardware present

    or

    {name of driver} : driver installed
    device ({Chipset ID}) present

    5. Load the ndiswrapper module

    You now need to load the ndiswrapper module. Run the following steps at a command prompt as root:

    depmod -a
    modprobe ndiswrapper

    if the above commands don’t give any errors then the drivers have been successfully installed.

    6. Configure the wireless card

    I have found the ‘netcardconfig’ command the easiest to use when configuring a new card. Run it as root and answer the questions it asks and it will configure the card for you.

    7. Set the ndiswrapper module to automatically load at boot

    ndiswrapper is not started by default when the system starts up so you must configure your system to load the ndiswrapper module at system startup. To do this, edit /etc/modules file as root to add an entry for ndiswrapper at the end of the file.

    vi /etc/modules

    Add ‘ndiswrapper’ (without the quotes) to the end of the file in a new line. Save and exit.

    Now the module will be loaded when the system next starts up.
    —-

    A special thanks to JamesGu from the UbuntuForums for figuring out the solution and posting it there.

    Hope you find this useful. I certainly did. 😉

    Will post about my sound card next.

    – Suramya

    February 12, 2008

    Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet

    Filed under: Computer Tips,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 9:52 PM

    The Regular Expressions cheat sheet is designed to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper and live by a designer or developer’s desk, to make life a bit easier.

    regular_expressions_cheat_sheet.png
    Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet

    Check out this post for a description of what is on the cheat sheet.

    – Suramya

    January 17, 2008

    Projity releases OpenProj ver 1.0

    Filed under: Computer Software,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 5:06 PM

    Version 1.0 of OpenProj (which is a software that I have talked about before) was released earlier this week. This is a big step for the Open Source world as its the first formal release of one of the few competitors of MS Project (That can match it in features).

    According to the information I received OpenProj has had over 25,000 downloads in the first two days after its launch. That means a lot of people are planning to use it or are atleast willing to try it out. Infoworld did a detailed review of the Beta version product last year and they mostly had good things to say about it. Now that new version is out we should be seeing another review from them shortly.

    As most of the readers of this blog already know, I prefer using Open Source applications. That way I know what I am installing on my system and I get to install/use software without having to pirate it, or paying through my nose for it. Hence my recommendation that if you use MS project you should give OpenProj a try.

    That being said; I haven’t installed OpenProj on my system yet nor am I planning to and no Its not because I don’t like the software but rather because I have no need for a project management software. So I don’t want it taking up disk space on my system. But if I ever need a project management software I know where to look.

    You can download OpenProj ver 1.0 from their source forge page. More information on it is available here.

    – Suramya

    December 20, 2007

    PDF Editing & Creation: Open source alternatives to Adobe Acrobat

    Filed under: Computer Software,Interesting Sites,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 12:43 PM

    I personally don’t like using PDF files. They are bulky and need extra software for me to view them. Plus they are a pain to export into html (which I like). But they are a necessary evil especially if you are dealing with the corporate world/goverment where most of the forms etc are in PDF format maybe because they allow the creator to choose the layout/content and make it hard for others to modify without spending a lot of money. Atleast that used to be the case, now there are most than 50 alternatives to Adobe Acrobat that you can try out and use for free. The following site has a listing of all the tools with a brief description of each: 50+ open source/free alternatives to Adobe Acrobat.

    I regularly use Open Office to create PDF’s that look good. I have also tried using the PDF creator but didn’t keep it as Open Office took care of all my PDF creation needs.

    Check out the list. You might find the some tool that will save you a lot of money.

    – Suramya

    December 17, 2007

    Ping Tunnel – Send TCP traffic over ICMP

    Filed under: Computer Software,Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 10:56 AM

    This very interesting application allows you to tunnel TCP traffic over ICMP. Basically if you are behind a firewall that doesn’t allow any TCP data to pass through but allows you to ping systems on the net you can use this to create a tunnel over which you can send any data.

    Check it out here: Ping Tunnel – Send TCP traffic over ICMP

    Sounds very useful and is something to keep in the toolbox.

    – Suramya

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