Got a fright at the weekend, after my PC booted to the login screen sans problem I found I couldn't login. Not because my password/user had become corrupt or anything like that but I simply could not enter my username/password as both my mouse and keyboard were dead.
Both are plugged in to the box via USB->PC2 adaptors. I unplugged them and plugged into my USB hub and presto - fully functional peripherals again. :/
So it seems the last update either broke the way the OS talks to PC sockets or Fedora guys have switched off support by default. Took me by suprise that sort of change would be done in an update rather than a major release as it seems a shift in policy (assuming it was switched off rather than broken).
Friday, 15 May 2009
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Hurrah for Nokia!
Here's me, sat at home. Knowing at some point if I am to use my shiny new Nokia N85 for music at the gym etc I am going to have to spend some time fiddling to get my Nokia and Banshee talking nicely.
So I try plugging in that little USB cable to see if Linux recognises a mass storage device. Not only is it recognised but Banshee instantly adds the phone as a writable device for syncing my music.
Wow!
No tinkering at all needed. Not sure who's done the work or whether it's just that Nokia have followed the same protocol standards as the Banshee coders did, but either way I'm very happy I don't have to spend ages getting it to work.
Only ages to sync it all!
So I try plugging in that little USB cable to see if Linux recognises a mass storage device. Not only is it recognised but Banshee instantly adds the phone as a writable device for syncing my music.
Wow!
No tinkering at all needed. Not sure who's done the work or whether it's just that Nokia have followed the same protocol standards as the Banshee coders did, but either way I'm very happy I don't have to spend ages getting it to work.
Only ages to sync it all!
Friday, 20 March 2009
Banshee 1.4.2 problem with flash drive
Since upgrading to FC10, the Banshee install I have has been refusing to write to my generic USB sticks.
When transferring tracks, using the Banshee interface, to my USB drive I was getting an error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object".
While I have a reasonable grasp what the error means from a coding perspective, I don't have the time nor the inclination to dig into the source code. Nor would the average non-coder trying to move to Linux have any idea.
When transferring tracks, using the Banshee interface, to my USB drive I was getting an error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object".
While I have a reasonable grasp what the error means from a coding perspective, I don't have the time nor the inclination to dig into the source code. Nor would the average non-coder trying to move to Linux have any idea.
Turns out that a fix found here:
http://blog.hyperandy.com/2009/01/20/banshee-141-object-reference-not-set-to-an-instance-of-an-object-error-fix/#comment-4224
Sorted out my problem nicely.
I added output_formats=audio/mp3 to the .is_audio_player file on the USB device and I can now copy my tunes for the car and I'm a happy raver once again :)
Apparently this is something to do with telling Banshe the device supports mp3 format audio and not to bother re-encoding for the device.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Streaming Radio1 now works :)
Followed a link from the BBC help pages to get to the rpm download of the latest (11) RealPlayer (http://www.real.com/linux).
Installed as root:
yum installlocal /home/-path to .rpm
Restart my browser and hey presto it works :) Much more succesful than previous attempts with Realplayer10 pluging nonsense!
Installed as root:
yum installlocal /home/
Restart my browser and hey presto it works :) Much more succesful than previous attempts with Realplayer10 pluging nonsense!
Laptop now on FC10
It wasn't without issues but I now have Fedora10 running on my laptop.
I tried installing using ext4 filesystem.
The WiFi setup was a nightmare, using the system admin options for network (as root) simply refused to do what I wanted I was probably using it wrongly!
Finally found some errors around writing to disc in the logs. Something to do with ext4 so I tried a format with ext3 to try FC10 on ext3. Half way through the process the hdd starts making a horrendous squeeling noise. I guess it's dead! Must be something to do with the power issues this laptop has meaning the disc has been clobbered by random power offs!
So, a replacement disc (I had a 20Gb one laying around) and a reinstall of FC10 and things went a bit smoother. I tried installing an ext4 system in the hope the issues I had before were down to bad disc rather than ext4 issues.
Started up ok, but still a real struggle with the WiFi card (PCMCIA). I added the firmware in the right place and everything!
I then discovered a new button on my Gnome panel, options for network can be set per user by that button. After a bit of friggin about I worked.
I tried installing using ext4 filesystem.
The WiFi setup was a nightmare, using the system admin options for network (as root) simply refused to do what I wanted I was probably using it wrongly!
Finally found some errors around writing to disc in the logs. Something to do with ext4 so I tried a format with ext3 to try FC10 on ext3. Half way through the process the hdd starts making a horrendous squeeling noise. I guess it's dead! Must be something to do with the power issues this laptop has meaning the disc has been clobbered by random power offs!
So, a replacement disc (I had a 20Gb one laying around) and a reinstall of FC10 and things went a bit smoother. I tried installing an ext4 system in the hope the issues I had before were down to bad disc rather than ext4 issues.
Started up ok, but still a real struggle with the WiFi card (PCMCIA). I added the firmware in the right place and everything!
I then discovered a new button on my Gnome panel, options for network can be set per user by that button. After a bit of friggin about I worked.
Monday, 26 January 2009
Maybe a format is the answer
I ran the online upgrade process using preupgrade and apparently everything went smoothly upgrading to FC10.
The machine seems to behave itself and everything works as it used to, only when I run an update yum downloads packages marked with fc8 rather than fc10. So it would seem everything is not quite as good as it could be.
I was contemplating doing a format and install of FC10 to take advantage of the ext4 filesystem anyway. Next step - backup all those config files that I spent time working out (eg. httpd/svn/yum.repos.d etc).
Not sure when I'll get time to do it though........
The machine seems to behave itself and everything works as it used to, only when I run an update yum downloads packages marked with fc8 rather than fc10. So it would seem everything is not quite as good as it could be.
I was contemplating doing a format and install of FC10 to take advantage of the ext4 filesystem anyway. Next step - backup all those config files that I spent time working out (eg. httpd/svn/yum.repos.d etc).
Not sure when I'll get time to do it though........
Friday, 23 January 2009
Upgrade in progress...
Yesterday I read about the next iteration of Fedora (11) being discussed as en-route. As I'm still on 8 I reckon it is a good time to take the plunge and do an upgrade.
So after a yum update to make sure my FC8 is up to date, I launched the preupgrade program I mentioned in an earlier post and started it doing its' thing to upgrade me to FC10.
Needless to say, downloading and installing an entire OS and lots of software with it is going to take some time, so left it running overnight, dozy me forgot to check it before leaving the flat this morning.
Needless to say, I ran my backup scripts before running the upgrade stuff as the forum recommendations seem to be for FC8->FC10 best route is a format + install rather than upgrade. Given FC10 supports ext4 filesystem which (from my breif reading of reports and graphs online) seems would give me a performance boost.
So after a yum update to make sure my FC8 is up to date, I launched the preupgrade program I mentioned in an earlier post and started it doing its' thing to upgrade me to FC10.
Needless to say, downloading and installing an entire OS and lots of software with it is going to take some time, so left it running overnight, dozy me forgot to check it before leaving the flat this morning.
Needless to say, I ran my backup scripts before running the upgrade stuff as the forum recommendations seem to be for FC8->FC10 best route is a format + install rather than upgrade. Given FC10 supports ext4 filesystem which (from my breif reading of reports and graphs online) seems would give me a performance boost.
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