Rhythmic Eyecandy

Today, quite by accident, I discovered a plugin for Rhythmbox called RhythmArty: it lets you browse music by album art and it looks really cool!



You can download it from the RhythmArty page at SourceForge. Download it and use your package installer to unzip and install it to Rhythmbox.

Once installed, (in Rhythmbox) go to Edit > Plugins and check the RhythmArty check box.



It may take a while to download the album art, but it's worth the wait. You can toggle the browser window from the new toolbar button.

Enjoy!

Absolute Power

My power problems with Karmic on the DELL Inspiron continue!

Just to recap: when I plug my ac power cord into the laptop when the battery runs low (or I receive a low/critical power warning), I get a critical battery status message and, after a few seconds, my laptop suspends.

Despite spending several hours trying to find a solution, it seems that there are multiple causes of this phenomenon and none seem to fit the the profile of my power issue. During my research, I did come across a cryptic thread in the Ubuntu Forums asking for guidance on how to prevent the power manager from taking any action when the battery level reaches critical. The Power Management editor (System > Preferences > Power Management) doesn't give a nothing option by default in the when battery power is critically low drop-down box, but alesserfate (the OP in the Ubuntu Forums) found a way to encourage Ubuntu to add the option! This prompted me to think that this might offer a workaround, if not a solution, to my problem: I reasoned that, if my laptop takes no action when the power cord is plugged in (regardless of the reported battery state), then I can at least continue what I'm doing uninterrupted.

Using the Configuration Editor (Applications > System Tools), navigate to /apps/gnome-power-manager-actions and click in the critical_battery value dialog.



Simply type nothing as the value and close the editor. If you don't have the Configuration Editor in the Applications menu, you can add it by right-clicking the menu and editing or, open a terminal and type:

sudo gconf-editor

Last night and again this afternoon, I've tested the theory!



When the status indicator dropped below 30%, I plugged in the power cord and received the anticipated warning.



However, the warning disappears after a few seconds and the Power Manager takes no further action. The battery continues to charge as it should.



Of course, there is a (potential) downside to this workaround: you can't leave your laptop unattended if there is a chance that your battery will completely discharge! However, it does demonstrate just how configurable Ubuntu can be.

MANhunt

Using the Command Line Interface (CLI) on Ubuntu can be a pretty effective way of getting stuff done, but it does require some commitment to master the multitude of commands and their options. One way of finding out how commands work is to use the man pages that come pre-installed as part of the Ubuntu OS (indeed, man pages are installed in almost all Unix based systems). For instance, if you wanted information on the chmod command, you simply open a terminal and type:

man chmod

The output appears in the terminal window.



You can use the Page Dn, Page Up, or arrow keys to move through the document (to exit the man page, hit the "q" key).

However, whilst it's a very useful feature, I also find reading the man pages in the terminal window a little clumsy so I was surprised and delighted, therefore, to find that the complete set of man pages for every release of Ubuntu are available online. The html format is much easier to read and each web page (or man page) has links that are much easier to follow than scrolling through a document in the terminal. There's also a search bar to speed up access to each man page rather than using the file hierarchy.

One thing that is missing is an apropos type search, but I suppose you can't have everything!

SWAT

The swat web interface is a useful way of viewing information about samba: you can access it by typing http://localhost:901 into the address bar of your chosen browser.



However, in order to ensure that you can amend the samba configuration files, access shares, and add resources, you must make sure that you are a member of the administration group and that the group has the necessary permissions. If, when you log in to the swat web page, you only see four boxes (Home, Status, View, and Password), you must change the permissions on the smb.conf file.

Open a terminal and type:

sudo chmod g+w /etc/samba/smb.conf

This command changes the files "mode bits" to execute permission for the group.

sudo chgrp adm /etc/samba/smb.conf

And this command changes the group to Admin.

Now, when you type your user name and password into the login box, you should have full access to samba from the web page. You might even try simply refreshing your browser to see if the changes have taken effect. If you find that your user name still doesn't work, try logging in using root as your user name.

Useful Resources:

• Ubuntu Documentation - Swat
• Ubuntu Manuals - chmod

You've Got Mail

Now that I've restored the desktop version of Karmic to the DELL Inspiron, I've also added Thunderbird as my mail client and finally set up my email accounts on my laptop.

One of the nagging problems that I've experienced since opening a Gmail account is that I've only been able to download Google mail to one device. Of course, this hasn't been a problem with my laptop (as I've not been using it to download mail until today) but it has been with my iPAQ. If I download Gmail when I'm on the move, it doesn't subsequently download to my PC so I'm constantly switching between devices (or logging on to my online account) to find messages. Setting up the mail client on the laptop prompted me to explore this problem to see if there was a solution. As usual, it was only a problem because I didn't know what I was doing and it transpires that the solution is quite simple!

Google has a recent mode for its POP3 mail.

In your POP client settings, replace 'username@gmail.com' in the 'Username' or 'Email' field with 'recent:username@gmail.com'.

Once you enable recent mode, please be sure to configure your POP client to leave messages on the server...

You can follow the instructions at Google's support page if you're having the same problem.

Of course, I could have also set up the laptop as an IMAP client and achieved the same result! However, I've also learned that my personal email account (IMAP) can be forced to sync a certain amount of days worth of email (rather than the whole account which is several hundred messages and attachments) - amazing what you learn when you indulge your curiosity, isn't it?

Back to the Future

Sadly, the grand experiment is over (for now): Ubuntu Notebook Remix was just too temperamental for my taste and I couldn't find a way to adjust the panel. The problems with the interface and power applet continued to plague the setup and I just couldn't be bothered to try and resolve the issues.

So, despite loving the look of UNR, I have restored the DELL Inspiron to the desktop version of Karmic, but I may just start looking at other open source OS to try out on my Christmas present......

Bizarre

Ubuntu Netbook Remix is demonstrating some bizarre behaviour!

The gnome-power-manager, fragile at the best of times in the desktop version, has a life all of its own in UNR: on battery power, the brightness is randomly adjusted without warning and my phantom power-cord crash seems to have returned.

The GUI is also a little peculiar! Earlier, I couldn't scroll to the bottom of the Administration tab in the System Menu and the last three icons were truncated.



When I removed the Language Support icon (to makes some screen real estate available), everything returned to normal!

I love the look of this OS but, twenty-four hours in and it's starting to look a little too temperamental!