anl4u

Scratch: simple editor by elementaryOS devs

Admin — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:57:07 +0000

elementaryOS is quite in news now a days and well it deserve that spot. It is one of those OS which really need praise and backup. The guys behind this OS are simply awesome, they are not full time developers but still managing it quite well. Luna is on its way, still in beta stage. What elementaryOS make different from other distributions is easy to use interface, clean UI, fast and reliable and finally some of their newly created apps. One of them is a text editor and called Scratch. It is very simple text editor but very nicely done by the devs with having nice UI and simple to use menu.

From the preferences, one can easily change the settings like show line numbers, highlight current line, enabling some extensions like file manager, terminal etc. Quite useful if some one want to work with it.

Another nice feature is, if you open a system file which you can’t edit/save under normal user, you can easily save it any where and check it out.

One more nice feature is to compress the file from the editor. You can directly compress it from the save menu at the right hand side.

And the most impressive one i should say is the auto save feature, when ever you type some thing it will automatically save the changes to the file.

Well, there are more nice and simple features which depends on user needs. Did i miss some thing?

Give it a shot, you will not be disappointed.

Thunderbird: Auto select latest message on startup

Admin — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:14:07 +0000

When you start Thunderbird client normally will see the Mozilla page which can be changed from the preferences. But what about the message?, it will not automatically select the latest read or unread message. If you have thousands of mails in your inbox and think that scrolling up is pain. To me Thunderbird should have this feature by default, when start it 1st time it should automatically select the 1st latest message. But it is not.

No worries, there is an add on for this which do the job very well.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/auto-select-latest-message/

Open Thunderbird, go to Add on and search for ‘auto select latest message‘ without quotes and click to install it. Restart Thunderbird and you will see the change this time.

And that should be it.

Facebook: How to create and add an app to a page

Admin — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:26:22 +0000

I will try to make it very easy. No extra steps or configuration here, just the basic stuff which will get you going.

1- Go to developer page, and click on create app button, and follow the onscreen instructions to create a new app.

2- Edit the page tab section with appropriate details. Also check out the App details section for privacy links and app icon if you wish to add one.

3- Enable sandbox mode for testing the app 1st.

4- Disable social discovery in Advanced section.

5- Add new testers and admins from Roles sections.

6- Now create a facebook page if don’t have yet OR use existing one to add the app to it.

7- Use the following URL to add the app:

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=YOUR_APP_ID&next=YOUR_URL

Change YOUR_APP_ID and YOUR_URL, and hit enter. Select the page from the dropdown and click Add button. You are done, your newly created app will be on the page in tabs section.

YOUR_APP_ID : Your newly created app id, can be retrieved from the settings.

YOUR_URL : The url to your app, hosted some where.

If everything is cool and want to go live, just disable sandbox mode and enable social discovery and your app will be live for users.

Artha: offline dictionary for linux

Admin — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:02:15 +0000

Artha is nice and well written dictionary application for Linux. The good thing about it is that it can work offline, which means it will pull the database during installation so that it can work offline. So next time if you are not connected to internet and want to search some word meaning, Artha will do the job well.

How to install it in elementary/Ubuntu, fire up terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install artha

How to install it in openSUSE, type in terminal after became root by su - :

zypper install artha

And there you have it.

Facebook: App not showing in the tabs list

Admin — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:27:04 +0000

If you have ever worked on Facebook apps as a developer, you will have a bitter experience with facebook because of their changes now and then to the API’s.

Let’s say you have created an awesome app for one of your clients. Hosted the app, everything is working good. Now when you add the app to that client page who has more than may be 15 or 20 apps listed in the tab zone. By logging as Admin/Developer you will see the app in the tab list.

But now let’s say that you added testers to test the app while it is in sandbox mode. The testers don’t see the app listed in the client facebook page. It is suppose that he/she should see it. For that there may be other reasons like SSL issue, app not properly setup in the developer area etc. But in case everything is good and still app is missing from the tabs list for testers.

The common reason for this is that facebook only allow 12 tabs at a time on a page, so a new tab for that app will not be there. But if the tester access the app directly through url, he can see the app.

So the solution to this will be to swap the newly created app within the 1st 12 apps. While logged in as Admin/Developer, go to the client page and list all the tabs by clicking on the button right hand side the tabs. That will show all the tabs. Now mouse over on the newly created app and click on the pencil/setting icon and swap it with any position you like but within the 12 tabs. Once you are done with that, check the page with tester account, and you will see the app listed there in the tabs. Facebook magic!

How to add TXT(SPF, DKIM) records for sub domain in Route 53 on Amazon

Admin — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:58:15 +0000

If you already followed this article and created a Route 53 record for your sub domain, that means we can proceed to add TXT records now. Please note that i assume that you use three different services for all this like Amazon for hosting, Godaddy/Name/NameCheap etc for domain, MailJet/SendGrid/ElasticEmail etc for emails send out.

Now for example, i want to send my users a welcome email when they join my blog [no-reply@blog.anl4u.com]. As you can see blog.anl4u.com. Now if you try to insert a SPF record for blog sub domain in TXT section of your hosted domain DNS area. Most probably it will throw an error, saying that there is already an entry for blog in CNAME section. Considering that you are using load balancer and added blog sub domain in the CNAME section for that load balancer.

So to overcome this issue, simply create a Route 53 record for your sub domain and attach your load balancer to that sub domain. Follow this article to create a Route 53 record.

Let’s add SPF record 1st, click on the Create Record Set button. Leave the name field as it is(it will show your sub domain). From the Type select TXT, in the Value field paste the text you get from the Email provider for SPF with quotes and save the entry.

Create a DKIM entry now. In the Name field add this ‘mailjet_domainkey’ without quotes. As you can see, i am using mailjet. You can change that to yours. Choose TXT from the Type drop down. Input the long line in the value field with quotes and save it. Now you will have 5 records NS, SOA, A, 2 TXT.

I assume you already added the NS records for your sub domain by following the article mentioned above. Now go to your Email sender service and validate the SPF and DKIM entries.

And that’s it, happy sending emails.

Create Route 53 record for load balancer on Amazon

Admin — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 16:04:38 +0000

So you have few instances attached to a load balancer on Amazon and want to create a Route 53 entry for it to use the Name Server(NS) entries instead of the load balancer long A record which is not accepted by A record in domains DNS managers. Login to your AWS console area and click on Route 53 from the services dropdown menu. Click on the Create Hosted Zone button. Input your domain or sub domain name in the Domain Name field and save the entry by clicking Create Hosted Zone button.

Once created, click on Go to Record Sets. And there you will see two records are created by default SOA(Start of authority) and NS(Name Servers).

Now click on the Create Record Set button and leave the Name field as it is. Select A record from the Type drop down. Select Yes from the Alias tab and choose the load balancer you want to attach and save the record. Now you have three records, SOA, NS and A record.

Next copy the NS records and add them in the NS section of your domain. If you have added any CNAME for load balancer, you can safely remove that. Wait for the DNS propagation and check back your site later. You can use dig command in terminal to get the information about the domain.

In the next article i will show you how to add TXT(SPF and DKIM) records for a sub domain in route53. Stay tune.

Update (20-03-2013) : Check out this article for how to configure/add SPF and DKIM.

openSUSE 12.3 is OUT!

Admin — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:08:40 +0000

And the news is that openSUSE 12.3 is out a while ago. What more i would say than go and get it while it’s HOT. Let’s summarize some of the key features it have:

Kernel 3.7.10
KDE 4.10.00
Gnome 3.6.2
Enlightenment 17
UEFI support for x86_64 hardware and experimental support for Secure Boot enabled hardware.
MariaDB an alternative to MySQL
Improved notification system
Virtualbox 4.2
Complete packages for OpenStack
Faster and more stable Nouveau NVidia driver, supporting newer hardware
Rewritten zypp PackageKit
LibreOffice 3.6 stack

Read the announcement page for more..

Download it from here. Before writing it, please check the md5sum of the downloaded ISO file. Fire up a terminal and type:

md5sum /path/to/downloaded_iso_file

And compare it with the md5sum in the download page.

Have fun!

Split and Join file in Linux via terminal

Admin — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 12:29:21 +0000

Have ever want to split a big file or may be a normal file into multiple parts and later join them. Well, in Linux i would say that is quite easy by using split and cat commands in terminal.

Let’s try it with an example. Open terminal. If you want to read more, the easy way is the Linux man pages. Just type this, and you will get all the help related to split command. Same goes for other commands too.

split --help

Let’s say i have a file V-for-vendetta.mkv size of 367 MB in location /backup/Downloads/V-for-Vendetta/. 1st of i want to split this file into 100 MB each part.

cd /backup/Downloads/V-for-Vendetta

split -b100M V-for-Vendetta.mkv vendetta.mkv

M represents megabytes, K represents kilobytes and B represents bytes. Even can use G for gigabytes and T for terabytes etc. Read help of split for more.

The 1st is the name of the original file (V-for-Vendetta.mkv) and the second one is the new file name. It will split it into 4 parts like vendetta.mkvaa, vendetta.mkvab, vendetta.mkvac, vendetta.mkvad.

Check the images for the commands and results.

Now is time to merge all the parts into one file again.

cat vendetta.mkv* > vendetta.mkv

Cat command will do the bits here, nothing fancy here to explain, its self explanatory. Read more about cat from man pages in terminal. Just note the * here, as we removed the aa, ab, ac, ad etc from the original parts name.

And that’s it.

Happy splitting and joining.

Upgrade to KDE 4.10 in openSUSE 12.2

Admin — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:19:33 +0000

KDE 4.10 is out and some users waited for it eagerly might had already updated to it, but if not yet it’s time to upgrade.

http://kde.org/announcements/4.10/

This how to will cover openSUSE 12.2, there are no repos for 12.1 at the time of writing this.
Open terminal, become root by su - and type to add the following repos.
Before adding the repos, please disbale the other KDE repos like KDE 4.9 etc.

zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Release:/410/openSUSE_12.2/ KDER410
zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Extra/KDE_Release_410_openSUSE_12.2/ KDE-ExtraR410

Now run ref to refresh the repos:

zypper ref

Upgrade by either:

zypper dup

zypper dup --from KDER410
zypper dup --from KDE-ExtraR410

And that’s it.

Setup Git user name/email for github/bitbucket on your machine

Admin — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:54:19 +0000

So you have github or bitbucket account and repositories setup already. But the problem is if you did not set the user name and email on your machine, most probably you will see ‘Author not mapped‘ with question mark sign. It is because your account is not synced with github or bitbucket. But no worries, it’s quite easy to do that. Open terminal, if haven’t installed git yet, install it 1st and proceed with the steps below.

Method-1: Setting name and email globally:

This method will set your name and email globally which means that you will not need to set it for each repo you create next time.

git config --global user.name "YOUR_NAME"

git config --global user.email "test12@gmail.com"

Change to your name and email address above.

Method-2: Setting name and email for specific repository:

Here we apply it to a specific repository. Change directory to the root of the repository.

git config user.name "YOUR_NAME"

git config user.email "test12@gmail.com"

Change to your name and email address above.. Just to verify it in config file:

cat .git/config

That’s it.

Boot Chromium OS on your laptop

Admin — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:30:18 +0000

Chromebooks are quite hot now days as the big brands are offering different spec machines with Google ChromeOS installed on it. Ever wondered to give this a try?, i am sure you have that itch feeling to test this out. But wait, ChromeOS is not available to use, so what?. Long live open source.. We have an open source version of ChromeOS called Chromium OS. That’s the beauty of open source. Let’s give this a go.

1st of all you will need to download a build. We will use USB build. So go to this site and download a build of your choice (USB version).

After download, extract the img file inside. Plug in your USB and follow these steps to write the build img to USB. The only difference is, that it has .img extension but that does not make any difference. Just follow the steps and you will be good to go.

After done with the writing to USB, boot your system from the USB. Now the only trick here will be, that you need to press ESC key as your system starts booting. You will see:

aborted.
boot:

Now what you need to do is type this:

boot: chromeos-usb.A root=/dev/sdc3

boot: chromeos-usb.A root=/dev/sdb3

Depends on your USB letter at the time when you wrote the img file into it.

Note: If you did not follow the steps above for booting, normally you will get a screen with Kernel Panic.

After that, the system will repair itself and restart, press ESC key when system restart. And this time it will boot to Chromium OS. A screen will appear asking for different options to set, like most importantly WiFi, Google account etc.

Don’t panic for some time, it will take a while to boot/show login screen etc most probably a min or less.

Congratulations, you have successfully boot to Chromium OS.

[Tested on Samsung Series 9 Ultra book]

Mount Google(LG) Nexus 4 in openSUSE 12.2 Gnome 3.6.x

Admin — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 09:08:39 +0000

In Gnome we will use jmtpfs for mounting, which will do most of the jobs. So we no need to use mtpfs or install its libs.

Download jmtpfs for your OS from here:
http://software.opensuse.org/package/jmtpfs?search_term=jmtpfs

After downloading click on the downloaded rpm file and it will automatically install it for you.

After installation let’s mount the device.

Create a dir anywhere you want like in mnt/ or home/ or any other folder. I mounted it in

/backup/Downloads/nexus4 . If you are going to mount it in mnt/, please set the correct permissions [777].

I will suggest to mount it under home/ or any dir which is under the logged in user. So you will not need any

permissions to set.

Open terminal and type:

mkdir /backup/Downloads/nexus4

Now type:

jmtpfs /backup/Downloads/nexus4/

Note: Before mounting it, unlock your phone. Go to nexus4 dir and you will see the mounted folders.

In files

In terminal

Mount Google(LG) Nexus 4 in openSUSE 12.1 KDE 4.9.x

Admin — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 14:47:08 +0000

Note: This guide will work in openSUSE 12.2 as well. Share your thoughts about openSUSE 12.2 and KDE in the comments section.

1st of just make sure that libusb-1_0-0 is installed, if not just install it from terminal. Fire up terminal and become root by su - ,

zypper in libusb-1_0-0 libusb-1_0-devel

Time to install kio-mtp. I will suggest to use repo rather than installing it from source. I have managed to find few repos and used this one:
~~http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/mlin7442/openSUSE_12.2/~~ [Repo is dead]. If you are on 12.3, it’s available in the default repos.
Just open YaST and add it through software repositories. OR
Choose other repo from here:
http://software.opensuse.org/package/kio-mtp?search_term=kio-mtp

Switch to terminal in root mode and type:

zypper in kio-mtp

Note: Don’t worry about the openSUSE version, it works well with openSUSE 12.1 too.

Now let’s enable Usb debugging in nexus 4. Go to settings, and tap on About Phone, and tap seven times Build Number. Developer mode will be activated, tap on it and enable usb debugging.
Now connect your phone through usb cable and you will be prompted for a device to mount.
WAIT: Before clicking to mount it, please unlock your phone if it is locked.

Hope this worked for you. Share your experience in the comments section below.

I am trying to mount it in Gnome, but have no success so far. Will write another article if got it working.

Mounted it successfully in Gnome: Mount Google(LG) Nexus 4 in openSUSE 12.2 Gnome 3.6.x

Gnome 3.6.2 and openSUSE 12.2 screen shots

Admin — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 09:40:17 +0000

openSUSE 12.2 by default have Gnome 3.4.2, but there are repos available for 3.6.x to upgrade to. As Gnome3 is improving slowly, it was a nice upgrade from 3.4 with many new and nice features. In this article i will share a few screen shots from my current desktop. Before that let me share my desktop configurations.

Theme: Zukitwo

Icon Theme: Faenza

Gtk+ Theme: AdwaitaSUSE

Shell Theme: Boje-Orange

Fonts: Ubuntu

Dock: Docky

Zukitwo, Faenza, Boje-Orange can be downloaded from gnome-look.org. AdwaitaSUSE has a repo:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Golbats_Everywhere:/GNOME-3.6-Themes/openSUSE_Factory/