New Tab Jumpstart and Tab Mix Plus interference

New Tab Jumpstart is a pretty nice experimental extension for Firefox. If you have Tab Mix Plus installed, it will quite possibly interfere with the functionality of New Tab Jumpstart. If the jumpstart page doesn't show on startup, new tab etc, but works when you press the toolbar button (or manually enter the url: chrome://jumpstart/content/tabView.xul), try changing the settings for Tab Mix Plus: open the Tab Mix Plus options and under Events, Tab Opening, change "Load on new tabs" to "User Location" and put the New Tab Jumpstart url (chrome://jumpstart/content/tabView.xul) in the "Location" field

Also, you cannot open the options window for NewTab Jumpstart 0.5a3 from the extensions window, since the developer made a typo (experimental, you know). Instead, access the options window from the "Tools" menu.

about:config XML Parsing Error in Firefox 3

So, suddenly about:config won't load, but results in an error:

XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: about:config
Line Number 1, Column 1:


^

Accessing the configuration using the URL chrome://global/content/config.xul works perfectly though. How curious.

Speeding up Firefox 3

Edit 2009-03-09: removed setting that was included by mistake, added ipv6 and nglayout settings

I have been a bit disappointed by the sluggishness of Firefox 3 since I moved to Kubuntu. Some of the missing speed seems related to the flash plug-in, and disabling and re-enabling it usually makes a huge difference. Even with the flash plug-in disabled, I was not satisfied; sometimes I've had to wait 10+ seconds for a ctrl+w or ctrl+tab to take effect.

Reading up on different tricks to speed FF up have so far landed me with these modifications to the config (at the end are some that are not speed related):

Config entry	Value	Comment
toolkit.storage.synchronous	0	See mozillazine kb
browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML	true	Nice if shutting of sync causes problems
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory	/dev/shm/firefox-youruser	Keep cache in ramdisk
browser.sessionstore.interval	60000	How often to store session
network.http.pipelining	true	Pipeline requests
network.http.proxy.pipelining	true	Pipeline proxied requests
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests	20	Max pipelined requests
network.http.max-connections	96	Max connections
network.http.max-connections-per-server	32	...per server
network.dns.disableIPv6	true	Speeds up DNS requests on non-ipv6 compatible networks
nglayout.initialpaint.delay	0	Start drawing page immediately
browser.search.openintab	true	Show search results (from search box) in new tab
browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll	true	Click in the url bar selects all text
browser.urlbar.autofill	true	Suggestions auto fill when typing an address in the url bar
browser.backspace_action	0	Backspace goes back one page (1 is Page up, 2 is do nothing)
extensions.getAddons.maxResults	10	List 10 results for addon search

References and resources:
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=51581
http://startupmeme.com/the-coolest-firefox-aboutconfig-tricks/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/http/pipelining-faq.html
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries#Toolkit..2A

Bluetooth and WLAN annoyances solved

...though not by me, really. Lots of updates lately, and kbluetooth4 v0.3 seems to have solved the issue. Package versions I needed are:

• kdebluetooth 0.3-0ubuntu2~intrepid~ppa1
• bluez-4.12-0ubuntu5
• kdebase-workspace-4.2.0-0ubuntu7~intrepid1

To get kbluetooth to actually find and want to manage my mouse, I had to

1. remove the bluez-compat package (containing hidd)
2. stop kbluetooth4 (right click on the applet in the panel -> Quit)
3. stop the bluetooth daemon (sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth stop) and manually kill a related python prog
4. remove the contents of /var/lib/bluetooth/, where details of my mouse were cached. The cached data stopped kbluetooth device manager from discovering my mouse, since it was already known.
5. restart bluetooth daemon (sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth start)
6. restart kbluetooth4 (just type it on a command prompt)
7. search for a new device: right click on the kbluetooth applet in the panel, choose Device Manager, Click New... and follow the wizard.

Voila! My mouse is found and so far reconnected on boot and wakeup.

When or how the WLAN annoyances were solved is more of a mystery; since a day or two, it just works. I blame recent updates!

VMWare Server 2.0

I currently use VMWare Server 2 to run my old laptop image (Win XP). This is not something I do very often, partly because I obviously managed to back up most of the stuff I need, partly because of the lousy performance of (at least my installation of) VMWare Server 2.

Anyway, when first accessing my windows guest os, I was unable to log in. Ctrl-Alt-Del did not work, and there was no menu option to send it. Some searching revealed that the key mappings get screwed up on Kubuntu 8.10, and that Ctrl-Alt-PrntScrn does the trick of sending Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Still, this didn't mean that the keyboard worked as expected on my guest OS. Editing /etc/vmware/config (sudo vim /etc/vmware/config) and adding the following lines did the trick for me:

xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu
xkeymap.keycode.107 = 0x54 # PrintScr

Sources/References with more info:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/177321?tstart=0
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do... (shortened url)

Cisco VPN startup scripts

Just a short note: by default, the startup scripts for the vpnclient are installed in /etc/rc3.d, /etc/rc4.d, and /etc/rc5.d. Since [K]ubuntu starts in runlevel 2, this is not really sufficient and will force you to manually start the vpn subsystem using sudo /etc/init.d/vpnclient_init.

Since links for the startup script already exist, update-rc.d will refuse to be useful, but nothing stops you from manually creating the missing link: cd /etc/rc2.d; sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/vpnclient_init S85vpnclient will do the trick.

Cisco VPN - curious happenings

Since I upgraded to the 4.8.02.0030 release of the Cisco VPN client, I have successfully connected to my corporate network from several locations. For some reason it was plain impossible to connect from home, neither wireless nor wired connection would allow me to connect. All I got was this boring error message telling me that "Peer is no longer responding". Yadda yadda.

I verified that I could in fact reach the remote servers, assumed that someone would be pretty upset if all the vpn servers around the world were down, double-checked that no iptables rules were in effect (sudo iptables -L -v produces an empty list) and decided that the firewall in my router had to be the villain.

My router is a D-Link DIR-635 with just slightly modified firmware, and the firewall settings provide a checkbox for allowing IPSec (VPN) to pass through.



This has always been checked, and vpn has always worked. It seemed reasonable that this one should be checked, but I decided to actually read the documentation, which said "Some VPN clients support traversal of IPSec through NAT. This option may interfere with the operation of such VPN clients. If you are having trouble connecting with your corporate network, try disabling this option."



Oh. I unchecked the IPSec (VPN) option, saved and restarted the router. VPN up and running. I have no clue if this is related to the new version of the vpnclient or if my company pushed new settings.

(Configuring the client to use TCP instead of UDP also worked, but I prefer UDP.)

Cisco VPN Client on Kubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27

Update 2009-02-24: added links, improved language

Cisco VPN client (Oracle edition debian package) worked perfectly OOTB until the latest kernel update. Suddenly any attempt to connect to vpn more or less froze my machine: sudo hanged, ifconfig hanged, shutdown hanged etc. Horror!

I tried reinstalling, and then compiling from the latest source I had access to - 4.8.01.0640 - and failing miserably. The compiler errors were

/usr/src/vpnclient/GenDefs.h:113: error: conflicting types for ‘uintptr_t’
include/linux/types.h:40: error: previous declaration of ‘uintptr_t’ was here

Google was moderately helpful, with several blog entries and forum discussions providing patches and modifications for earlier versions of either the kernel or the vpn client (including shutting down one processor/core).

Finally I found an article at Arun's Blog where comment #42 told about a newer version of the Cisco VPN client that should work: 4.8.02.0030. True enough, this version compiled and installed perfectly. Happy days!

Getting this version from Cisco might be a problem, since they are not too fond of allowing people to download their software. However, the file name you're looking for is vpnclient-linux-x86_64-4.8.02.0030-k9.tar.gz, and who knows - google might be able to help you find a download location?

Comparing directories using diff

Nice use of diff: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070408062023352

Summary: use diff -rq dirA dirB to get a list of files that are in dirA but not in dirB, and files that differ between dirA and dirB.

Me, I find the switch --ignore-file-name-case quite useful (and self explanatory), at least when dealing with stuff on fat*/ntfs file systems.


Bluetooth and WLAN annoyances

Update: solved! See this entry for more information.

Almost all parts of my system work perfectly no, and apart from the small issue with my 3G modem not integrating with KDE Network Manager, the two main issues are with Bluetooth and WLAN:

1. My bluetooth mouse is not automatically (re-)connected. Ever. The only thing that works so far is using hidd --search, not even hidd --connect works. Only total reconnect from scratch each time. Bah!This is really starting to annoy me. Also, I think that I shouldn't need to use hidd at all any more, right?
   
2. WLAN works most of the times after suspend or hibernate, but the hardware switch makes it confused. If I shut down the wlan using the hardware switch, I have to reload the kernel module using sudo modprobe -r iwl3945; sudo modprobe iwl3945. Then it's back in business and automatic connect works like a charm. This is a minor annoyance, since I seldom use the hw switch anyway.

Any hints on how to get these things working would be appreciated, especially the bluetooth issue; I've scanned enourmous amounts of forum posts and blog entries, but so far found nothing.

(Computer is a Dell D620/4G RAM/Intel 3945 wlan/Dell 350 BT/Intel 945GM graphics)

The Dangers of Running Experimental

Just got an update for various KDE parts, including Plasma, and suddenly all plasmoids were gone. Ugly red crosses and texts saying unknown plasmoid, not found. The horror!

Solution: check for missing plasma related packages:

sudo aptitude search plasma

Any lines beginning with "c" represent a package where you have a config file but no package. For me, the kdeplasma-addons package was missing. Re-installing it fixed the issue.

Before installing missing packages, make sure to check the version (in adept for example). Some packages are old 4.1 versions, and you don't want these.

3G Modem cont.

This is published from a train while passing Arlanda, which means I am online using the 3G modem. Success! Or, partial success at least.

Currently, I have to use the program HSOConnect in combination with HSOLink to connect. KDE NetworkManager fails silently when I try to use it to connect. This means that KDE has no idea that I am connected to the internet, which has some undesirable effects:

• Firefox starts in offline mode, and I have to manually set it to online
• KDE programs have no idea that I am connected to the net, so the RSS ticker in my main panel fails to load feeds, as does the weather gadget. Among others. (For a while, at least)
  
• No auto connect to the 3G network

Also, I would be nice to use a single tool to manage my network connections.

However, it works, which is the most important point. Next step is to get the integration with KDE Network Manager to rock.

To sum up, this is what I've used:

• Kubuntu 8.10 with all availabled updates (including KDE 4.2)
  
• Option iCon 225 3G Modem from Telenor
• HSO driver kernel module included in kubuntu 8.10 with kernel 2.6.27
• ozerocdoff from Option
• HSOLink and
• HSOConnect

These are the steps I needed to take to connect:

1. Download and install ozerocdoff, HSOLink and HSOConnect
2. Plug in the modem
3. Run lsusb and look for the device (named Option). Grab the device id.
   
4. Run sudo ozerocdoff -i 0x<device id>, where device id is the number you grabbed in step 3
   
5. Wait a couple of seconds and check /dev for 2-3 new devices: ttySH0, ttySH1, ttySH2 (ls -l /dev/ttySH* should do it)
   
   
6. Start HSOConnect, from the Programs menu / Internet. wait, wait, wait.
7. Configure the connection: from the Profile menu, select Edit Connection and set the APN and eny other information needed. For Telenor, only the APN (internet.telenor.se in Sweden) is needed. Click ok.
   
8. Click the Connect button
9. In Firefox, from the File menu, deselect "Offline mode"
10. Done!

HSOConnect should ask you for the PIN code if you have your SIM configured to require one, but I haven't had the chance to try that out yet.

Information sources / Credits:

1. http://www.pharscape.org/ - A veritable goldmine for 3G modem users
2. Linuxportalen.se (in Swedish), specifically the section on Telenor mobile broadband. Watch out for old information though: Rezero is now replaced by ozerocdoff, and you will probably not have to install the driver. This is all documented at the Pharscape site.