Problems with NetworkManager and DHCP

I have great troubles with NetworkManager not being able to acquire an IP address via DHCP on my home network. By accident I killed it and it restarted and immediately acquired the address. It seems that this might be some sort of startup ordering problem.

The simple solution for now is to kill and restart NetworkManager and all is well.

How to enable MP3 playback with Amarok on Fedora 12

Set-up RPM Fusion repository to get the free and non-free components.

http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

Install gstreamer-plugins-ugly
http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/MP3_on_Fedora_Core

Kubuntu rides again

After installing Fedora 12 and having another round of sound problems after I thought I had it all working with Fedora 10 and 11 I thought I would try Kubuntu because previously everything just works with Kubuntu.

Well, much to my surprise, Kubuntu also has sound problems. So there was nothing else to do but start digging. After a bit of experimentation I was able to work out that I needed to make PulseAudio the default and tell Pulse to set-up an ALSA compatibility module.

To make Pulse the default create ~/.asoundrc with the following content.

pcm.!default { type pulse }

ctl.!default { type pulse }

Then set-up the correct modules for the pulseaudio daemon in the file /etc/pulse/default.pa

### Load audio drivers statically (it's probably better to not load

### these drivers manually, but instead use module-hal-detect --

### see below -- for doing this automatically)

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0

load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:0

load-module module-alsa-card device_id=0

#load-module module-oss device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input

#load-module module-oss-mmap device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input

#load-module module-null-sink

load-module module-pipe-sink

Dyndns client ddclient config

Update to my earlier post about using ddclient to support dyndns access.
I generated the config file using the dyndns.org web site https://www.dyndns.com/support/tools/clientconfig.html. The config generated by the web site works nicely.

Audio on Fedora finally working

After numerous attempts and many wrong turns I finally have audio working on Fedora 10 at work and Fedora 11 here at home.

I use the KDE version and could never get the microphone to record clear audio. I could also never hear audio from any flash movies played within the browser.

Well the key to the puzzle was that I was fiddling with KMix, the KDE audio mixer. This had very little effect. I recently discovered the Pulse Audio Volume Control application and this has solved my problem. By manipulating the audio settings via the Pulse Audio Volume Control I now have perfectly working audio.

/usr/bin/pavucontrol in the pavucontrol RPM.

Cloning a Windows XP partition

The hard disc in my desktop started to log errors, which is a very scary sign. This means time to get a new disc. I didn't want to face up to re-installing Windows, so cloning the partition is the way to go.

1. Boot the old Windows system
2. Defrag the partition
3. Run chkdsk to check and fix any errors
4. Run regedit and delete the values in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices, otherwise XP is confused when it boots on the new partition
   
5. Shutdown and reboot from the gparted live CD
6. Select the old XP partition and select Copy from the context menu
7. Select the empty space on the new disc and Paste, this can take hours
   
8. Select the new partition and choose Manage Flags from the context menu, select boot
9. Shutdown
10. Change the new disc so that it is the first disc on the SATA and then boot the machine
    

Thanks to the people at gparted for a great tool and Michael Dominok for the XP tips.

Getting rid of NetworkManager

NetworkManager failed to get a DHCP connect more than 50% of the time. One solution that seems to work is to get rid of NetworkManager and go back to the way it worked under Fedora 8.

1. Disable NetworkManager

# chkconfig NetworkManager off
# service NetworkManager stop

2. Change the eth0 interface so it is not managed by NetworkManager by deselecting "Controlled by Network Manager" in the properties of the eth0 interface in the system network config

# system-config-network

3. Reboot and test

Attaching an Anrdoid phone to Fedora 10

The file /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules must contain:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb",SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4",SYMLINK+="android_adb",MODE="0666"

After that execute:

# udevcontrol reload_rules

Then attach your device. You should be able to see it reported by the command

# $ANDROID_HOME/tools/adb devices

Thunderbird URL handlers

Even on a KDE system Thunderbird relies on the definition of URL handlers contained within gconf. To edit these look in $HOME/.gconf or install the RPM gconf-editor and edit away.