Ubuntu : Fix for Firefox to download picasa albums

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There is a simple guide to install the latest picasa 3.8 (as of this writing) in Ubuntu as shown in this post..

However, I have noticed that, atleast in Ubuntu 11.04, that the “Download to Picasa” option doesnot work under Firefox. We would get the popup message as shown below.

Which says “Firefox doesn’t know how to open this address, because the protocol (picasa) isn’t associated with any program.”

Most searches resulted in the following solution:
Open firefox tab and type about:config
set network.protocol-handler.expose.picasa to false
set network.protocol-handler.external.picasa to true
set network.protocol-handler.app.picasa to either /usr/bin/picasa or /opt/picasa/bin/picasa (/usr/bin/picasa is a symlink to /opt/xxx)

If the above doesn’t work for you then try the method which was mentioned in this post. It was originally meant as a fix for chrome, but works fine with firefox too.

Open the file ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list (remember to back it up) and add the following under [Added Associations]

x-scheme-handler/picasa=picasa.desktop

Thats it. Now choose “Download to Picasa”, you will get a popup to choose the picasa application, here browse until the location of the picasa binary. /opt/google/picasa/3.0/bin/picasa in my case

Netgear wireless adapter WG111v3 driver for Windows 2003

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For some odd reason, the netgear wireless usb adapter WG111v3’s driver does not install under Windows 2003. And the experts reason this being a “server”, so it should not have wireless feature!!

A little search online lead me to this post, which provides a workaround to use the the driver installed on an Windows XP machine and to use the same under the Win2k3 machine.

The solution stated is as below.

1. install the Netgear WG111v3 USB Wireless to a WinXP Workstation
2. Verify that it fully works and connect to your WLAN
3. Open Windows Explorer and Go to <%WINDIR%>\Inf\WG111v3
4. Open the file called SetDrv.ini with Notepad and take note of the value of the field called ‘FileName’. You will need this file and corresponding PNF file
5. Copy the entire contents of WG111v3 and the file SetDrv.ini is pointing to and its corresponding PNF file to a flash drive.
6. Also copy the entire folder called WG111v3 under c:\Program Files\NETGEAR to your flash drive

SERVER SIDE
7. Install the driver again this time to your Win 2K3 Server until the point where it fails.
8. Copy the two files that SetDrv.ini was pointing to the folder in your server called <%WINDIR%>\Inf
9. Copy the two WG111v3 folders on their corresponding folders on your server
10. Open Device Manager and attempt to re-install the driver and point to a specific location (<%WINDIR%>\Inf). At this point the device should start to work.

Ubuntu: VMware and mount.ntfs high cpu usage fix

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If we run VMWare player on Ubuntu to run guest OS, and if the virtual machine files are stored in a NTFS partition (like a large External HDD), then chances are that you would notice mount.ntfs taking up almost 100% cpu usage once the Vmware’s Image is started. This will most certainly leave your system unusable until you are able to get the vmware down.

The old remedy of changing the .vmx file and adding mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE" does not work any more. As per this post, the solution is to provide a non-ntfs location for storing the vmware suspend and snapshot files as a working directory. The same can be edited in the vmplayer’s option screen as shown below or added as a line in the .vmx file as workingDir = “../../../opt/vmware”

Ensure the directory provided has write permissions for the user configured to run the vm.

Python error in strftime ValueError: Invalid format string

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Using python 2.7.1 interpreter on windows with the below format of string using strftime will lead to this error “ValueError: Invalid format string”

eg:- strftime(“%a %b %02d %H:%M:%S %Y”, self.gmt) will work fine on Unix machines but to make it work on windows you have to change it to this.

strftime(“%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y”, self.gmt) i.e remove the 02 from %d

Ubuntu : Convert video for Nokia Mobiles in MP4 format

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Most Nokia handsets feature symbian s60 platform v9.0 and upwards. Natively they have option to record and play MP4 files with MPEG-4 part 2, which is h.263. Higher end Nokia mobiles like N8 will support mp4 files with MPEG-4 part 10 H264 codec. This means that most videos you find on the internet viz. youtube will play on these devices.

However for little older models like Nokia e63 ,71,e72,5800 mp4 files with MPEG-4 part 2 (h.263) codec are only supported.

To convert media files to be played nokia mobile phones Use Handbrake, a GUI tool to convert media files to be used for Apple products like iPod, iPhone and the iPad.This is an cross platform tool that works on Mac, Linux and Windows.

 

Launch handbrake, and choose Normal preset shown on the right of the screen.

Container: MP4

Video Tab:
Video Codec: MPEG-4 (FFmpeg)
FrameRate: Same as Source
Avg Bitrate: 240 or 320 (Depending on the quality you want, for small screens such as e63,
a 240 kbps bitrate looked fine.
Audio Tab:
Audio Codec: AAC
Mixdown: Stereo
Bitrate: 96
Subtitles: Add subtitles if any.

Picture Settings:
Anamorphic: Off
Size: Choose 320 as the width , select keep aspect ratio so the correct height is selected.
Generally its 320×240 or 320×176

Save the preset and give it a name like ‘nokia mp4’.

To encode video files for Nokia mobile phones the best option in Ubuntu is by Far Handbrake. Although you can compose few scripts using mencoder to encode video files, but still the best transcoder for movie files is still Handbrake.

For more info on MPEG-4 codecs check this post here.

Ubuntu 11.04 : Uninstall Gnome3 and revert to Gnome 2.x

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Ubuntu 12.04 Update:

In the latest Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04 LTS, the classic option is back. All you need to do is install gnome-panel like this.

sudo apt-get install gnome-panel

Logoff and choose classic from login screen. A Note: It is still believed to be in work in progress, not 100% ready yet I believe.

Ubuntu 11.10 Update :

If you are coming here to revert or remove gnome3 or unity from the latest Ubuntu 11.10, then the original solution in this page (found below) is not for you. To get a gnome classic like(not exactly gnome2) experience in Ubuntu 11.10, you would have to install the gnome fallback session as shown below. This infact is a fallback of the gnome3 shell.

sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

Logoff and choose gnome classic from LDM. Also to add applets in Oneiric Ocelot, you would have to do a Alt + Right Click on the panel instead of simple Right Click as it was in Gnome2 (God how I miss it).

A little more detailed info to give gnome3 a ‘classic’ look and feel is provided in this post

For Ubuntu 11.04 users to recover from a broken desktop post installation of gnome3, the solution is given below.

If you installed gnome 3 from ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3, it disables or breaks all other desktop logins be it Ubuntu Classic or Ubuntu default (Unity as in case of Natty). For a sec, I panicked as I use a shared computer, and trust me gnome3 is not yet ready for a newbie user. Although, I was surprised to note that removing gnome3 did prove tricky. However thanks to this post It was a simple task.

Follow the below steps to remove gnome 3 and revert to Gnome 2.x.

sudo apt-get remove libgtk-3-common
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo apt-get install gnome-panel

Reboot and you should be back to good old classic gnome. In case you don’t find gnome back again. try this.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install gnome

I would try to lookup a post which allows us use gnome 2.x and 3.x together. If there is a choice I would always go for gnome3 > Unity.

Update 1:
Linus Torvalds hates Gnome 3, calls it a unholy mess!! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/05/linus_slams_gnome_three/

Also he had demanded that there be a fork for gnome2, and this one looks like one of them.

Update 2:
omgubuntu.co.uk (OMG! Ubuntu) has confirmed that development for Gnome2 fork ‘Mate’ is underway. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/08/gnome-2-forked/

Update 3:
The Mate(gnome2 fork) is installable in Ubuntu 11.10/12.04, the instructions are given in this article here.

Update 4.

Another suitable alternate to Unity/Gnome3 classic for 11.10/12.04 is Cinnamon. I am currently evaluating it. For instructions to install check this article.

Oh and another alternative is to try LXDE

sudo apt-get install lxde