Fedora 20 update broke BCM43227 wireless on Acer laptop

I have an Acer laptop with an AMD Quad-Core processor and a Broadcom Corporation BCM43227 802.11b/g/n wireless adapter.  I had not performed updates for a while so tonight, I ran a manual update and a new kernel and lots of other packages got installed (over 100 for sure).  A reboot of my laptop and subsequent login found me with no wireless.

To make a long story short, I did some Googling on my cell phone and noticed a number of posts about having to install package akmod-wl.  The posts indicated that if rpmfusion was installed, this package should fix it.  Installing and a reboot was all that I needed to get wireless back and running.

This is one of those cases where using additional repositories might get you into trouble.   Hope this helps someone else and hope I don't need to use it again.

Configuring wake-up-on-lan on Red Hat

I have a T61 laptop in my office that I use for the following reasons:

1. have access to remotely because it is running the IBM Open Client and in case my laptop running Fedora 20 dies, I still have another alternative.  
2. When people have questions about IBM Open Client I have an place to go.
3. I know I can put IBM Open Client in a KVM but what if my laptop dies?
4. Backup my IBM Notes mail via replication.

Having this computer running full time does not make sense.  I have figured out how to set up the Wake-On-Lan feature on a Windows 7 server at home and it works very well.  The remainder of this blog post describes how I configured the Lenovo T61 running IBM Open Client (RHEL 6.5) to support Wake-On-Lan, a CLI command to put the T61 into suspend state and how to wake up the T61 from a remote server.

Here is a web page that describes how to install and configure WOL for Red Hat. 

The summary of steps (T61):

1. Make sure ethtool is installed: sudo yum install ethtool
2. Write down the interface hardware address (mac address):  Here is a sample of the ifconfig command and associated output.  The HW address is highlighted.

   # ifconfig eth0 eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1B:FC:80:27:17             inet addr:9.10.87.237  Bcast:9.10.87.255  Mask:255.255.255.0           inet6 addr: fe80::21b:fcff:fe80:2717/64 Scope:Link           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1           RX packets:110770824 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0           TX packets:215059219 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000           RX bytes:10476527981 (9.7 GiB)  TX bytes:321033506529 (298.9 GiB)           Interrupt:16

   
   
3. Verify wake-on-lan is enabled: sudo ethtool eth0.  You should see a value of g in one of the fields from ethtool.  If you do not, use the URL above to fix it.
4. To force server to go into suspend mode: sudo pm-suspend

Note: pm-suspend will hang a terminal ssh session.  I tried doing  "pm-suspend;exit" but that still hung my ssh terminal session.  Perhaps "pm-suspend &; exit" might work better.  Not sure.

From a remote server (not the T61 silly, it should be suspended):

1. The remote server must be on the same IP subnet.
2. Make sure ether-wake command is insalled: sudo yum -y install net-tools
3. Using the hardware address written down from step 2 in the previuos summary, send a wake-up message to the T61: ether-wake -i eth0  00:1B:FC:80:27:17
4. Wait approximately a minute for the T61 RHEL server to complete resuming from suspend mode.  Use ping to verify connection and if ping is successful, ssh or any other remote operation should be operational. 

Some notes on KDE4 in Fedora 19

I finally found some time to play with installing KDE4 themes in Fedora 19.  I was using my normal userid kurtis and was using the Login settings from the System Settings app.  This Login settings app would let me view themes on a server but when I clicked the install button, no error message or sudo password prompt would appear but when I went back to enable the theme, it was not there.  After doing some Google searching, I learned that in order to install themes, you must sign into KDE as root user.  The themes will download and install plus you can then use them.

I also discovered where the themes are stored.  The path is:

/usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/themes

Thanks all for now. It's getting late and my eyes are getting very heavy...

How to: Flash player on google-chrome-stable and Fedora 19

I upgraded my old AMD single core system to Fedora 19 via fedup a couple of days ago.  The AMD system was running a fresh install of Fedora 18 and I did not have the flash player working.  Of course, the Fedora 19 upgrade did not give me a flash player either.  I tried a couple of web sites and got the following to work:

1. Installed autoten
2. Ran autoten from the command line (prompts for root password, nice!) and uninstalled previously installed codedec's and anything else it said was installed.  I noticed that Calligra and VLC got removed but that's OK for now.
3. Rebooted system (probably not needed).
4. Rand autoten again and installed codedecs and flash player (there were a lot of packages not found but it must have installed enough packages for VLC and flash player to work).
5. Tried viewing video in google-chrome-stable and got the error about unable to load plugin.
6. Did more Googling and tried a few things.  The one that worked was to delete .config/google-chrome directory in my home directory.
7. After running this, videos now worked from YouTube!
   

Note: Deleting the directory .config/google-chrome caused me to loose all my configuration.  I have Google synch activated so this was not a real problem.

Using x86 Android VM instead of ADT emulator

I have been trying to learn how to develop Android applications in my free time.  I have started the activity many times but never got very far each time.  One of the reasons is how slow it is to load the Android Developer Toolkit device emulator.  It seems to take forever to load and just as long to test the program.

I recently ran into a project called AndroVM (I think it now is a commercial product so I don't know if you can still get it for free).  This contains an Android x86 virtual machine that runs Android 4.1 (Jelly-Bean?). It runs real fast and nearly any application you can download from the Google Play Store works in this environment.  

The AndroVM is to be used with Oracle's VirtualBox free software.  There are instructions on how to install it and here they are <insert URL here>.  

In order to use the AndroVM you must start it and the Eclipse ADT.  The order is not important.  What is important is determining the IP address of the Android VM and connecting it to the ADT.  This is done by installing the Terminal Emulator from the Google Play Store.  This gives you a command line interface to the Android OS.  The command netcfg will show the IP address you need.  Here is an example:

The IP address of eth1 (this is the ethernet port of the NAT'd address) and this is the one we need to run a command in a Linux terminal.  I am not sure why a Bridged and a NAT'd ethernet devices are needed but both are for some reason otherwise the virtual machine is unable to connect to anything.

Open up a Linux terminal and switch to the sdk/platform-tools sub-directory of the location the ADT bundle file was uncompressed into.  Run the following command to connect the Eclipse ADT to the AndroVM device:

Now all you need to do is run your Android application from the Eclipse ADT and it should load and run in the AndroVM instance.  I am impressed on how fast apps load and run in the virtual machine.  So much faster than the ADT emulator.

Here are some other adb commands that I need to investigate:

adb shell

adb kill-server

July 8, 2013: Here is a where you can download Android 4.2:

https://code.google.com/p/android-x86/downloads/list

Here is a web site that has some directions on how to install under VirtualBox:

http://xmodulo.com/2013/05/how-to-install-and-run-android-x86-on-virtualbox.html

Workspace Switcher gone after upgrading to Ubuntu 13.04

I spent most of this evening (at least my Acer Aspire One did) upgrading my laptop from Ubuntu 12.10 to Ubuntu 13.04.  I normally try to avoid doing an upgrade from one Linux version to another (this aversion goes back to my days running OS/2 Warp) but I decided I would give it a try since I did a complete re-install after a failed attempt at getting IBM Notes 9 installed.

After about 2 hours of downloading and installing updated packages (over 1300 of them), I was able to reboot and have Ubuntu 13.04 running.  The system appears to be noticeably faster and the Unity desktop a bit cleaner and crisper.  The only thing I noticed right away was the Workspace Switcher was gone from the left launcher.  The rest are some notes on how I got it back.

1. Installed the unity-tweak-tool package which has the setting I need to restore the switcher.

sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

2. Started the unity-tweak-tool by using the dasher search button.

3. From the Overview panel, I clicked on the Workspace Settings

4.  Click on the Workspace Settings tab if not already there and be sure to set the Workspace switcher to ON.

5. Now check to see if the Workspace Switcher is in the launcher

1. 
   
   

Solved: Belkin router getting WAN IP from Ubee Modem (Charter ISP)

Here is Rochester, Minnesota we have only one cable service provider and that is Charter Communications. I wish there was at least one other alternative available just to keep pricing in check but the service we have been getting the past 12 years has been excellent.  Cable TV is good, clear and crisp with lots of HD channels and the internet service is almost always available and fast.

Tonight, after I tucked my lovely wife into bed at approximately 11pm, I decided to log onto my old Dell Inspiron 1300 (Pentium M w/ 2GB memory) running a 32 bit Fedora 18 LXDE desktop.  I was doing some Googling as usual and all of a sudden I got a page error when I did a search from the top Google result page.  I did not think nothing of it but I could not obtain an IP address from any of my 3 wireless routers (one is primary the other two are just glorified access points).

My first course of action was to go down and recycle the cable modem, primary wireless router and the 8 port Linksys switch.  That took only about 10 minutes and when I got back up stairs I was connected to the primary router (a TP-Link TL-WR841N) that I purchased 2 of a couple of years ago at Amazon (the second one is out in my workshop as an access point).  I was able to continue my Google searching and after about 30 minutes, my connection to the primary TP-Link router failed again.  Another recycle fixed it but then after the third time, it was time to replace the router.

I had a cheapo Belkin wireless router that I purchased a couple of years ago and my daughter was not longer using.  I thought I would replace the problematic T-Link router with the Belkin router and figure out if the TP-Link was dying or just needed a firmware update.  I was not expecting problems but of course there was one pesky problem I had to overcome.

Here are the steps I followed thinking it would only take at most 20 minutes.  It ended up being almost 2 hours.

1. Connected Belkin router to my Fedora 18 laptop with ethernet cable and no wireless.
2. Changed the private subnet from 192.168.2 to 192.168.0 (there are other servers and wireless devices like our Tivo and Internet radio device just to name a few).
3. Created a new SSID similar to the old one with a 2 at the end and gave it the same WPA/WPA2 passphrase.
4. Tested the wireless connection and all worked.
5. Unplugged the TP-Link router from power, cable modem and all 4 ethernet cables going to various other devices in our home (office, shop, third router, bedrooms).
6. Plugged the cable modem into the proper RJ-45 port on the Belkin router (yellow female RJ-45 port vs 4 white colored ports).
7. Unplugged the cable modem and Linksys 8 port switch and waited a couple of minutes then powered on cable modem and then the Belkin router and switch after the cable modem likes came on.
8. Laptop could access the Belkin wireless and give me an IP address and I could ping the router and all the other devices on the home network.
9. I could not access the internet.
10. The Belkin router web gui showed a message at the top indicating Internet connection was not available.
11. Checked the router settings and there was no WAN IP address, network mask or DNS servers listed. Everything was 0.
12. Tried switching from Dynamic (DHCP connection to cable modem) to static IP but nothing seemed to return a WAN IP address and the rest.
13. I checked the Router logs and I did find the following message many times:
    
    DHCP Client: [WAN]Could not find DHCP daemon to get information
    
14. Looked like to me that the Ubee wireless modem that we rent from Charter Communications was not doling out DHCP addresses. 
15. I remembered something a Charter technical support person told me in order to get a more complete reset of the cable modem.  The trick was to unscrew the coax cable from the Ubee machine and wait 5 minutes and recable and power on the cable modem and router.  Of course, this did not solve the problem.
16. Good my employer provides me a Verizon Android phone that has a built in Wifi hot spot.  I used it to connect my laptop to the Internet so I could Google issues with the WAN and the DHCP message above.
17. I found that one person thinks Charter is blocking certain routers and of course Belkin was one manufacturer that was supposedly being blocked.  The solution was to use the Belkin web gui to clone the MAC address of my laptops ethernet port to the router.  The MAC address/ID identifies the manufacturer so I thought this would be my solution.
18. Cloned my laptop ethernet port to the Belkin router and rebooted the router.  Still no WAN info in the Belkin web gui and I still could not access the internet from my laptop that was back connected to the Belkin router.
19. Searching for the DHCP error message above and adding Belkin to the Google search argument, I came a cross this web page that said some cable modems only issue on DHCP address.  I checked the Ubee cable modem and it had a reset switch so I gave it a try.
20. I unplugged the ethernet cable to the Belkin router and pressed the reset button in for about 30 seconds.  The Ubee cable modem shut off all but one light and then it took about 3-4 minutes before all 5 lights were one (one was orange instead of green but I think that is normal).
21. Re-connected the wireless on my laptop to the Belkin wireless SSID.
22. I opened the Belkin router web gui and low-and-behold I now had a WAN IP address, network mask and DNS servers.
23. I could now ping www.google.com and all was good.

I am not certain if it was a combination of cloning the MAC address of my laptop ethernet port onto the Belkin router AND the Ubee modem reset button that got the DHCP address to be handed out from the Ubee router.  I think I would have be OK if I would just had pressed the reset button on the Ubee cable modem.

It late so now that I got this information saved somewhere safe, I can now go to bed.  Tomorrow, I will try to resurrect the TP-Link router.

Bluetooth headset stopped after Android upgrade

The other day Verizon released an OTA (over-the-air) update of Android for my work Motorola Droid 4 smartphone.   I installed it when the noticed arrived and the reboot appeared to work just fine.  I had a Plantronics Voyager HD headset that I purchased about a year ago on Amazon paired with the phone prior to installing the Android upgrade.

I connected the bluetooth headset and was able to listen to my favourite radio station via the TuneIn application I purchased some time ago.  Sound was just fine and the headset connected right away.  I received some phone call while the headset was connected and noticed I could hear the phone ring through the headset but I could not carry on a conversation using the headset.  I had to switch back to the smartphone. 

I used my wife's phone to make calls to my cell phone.  After about a half a dozen attempts I decided to delete the headset bluetooth profile and re-discover and pair it again.  Once I did that, the bluetooth headset could be used for both music and phone calls.  Who would have known.  I also am glad to report that my headset also connects more consistently with the new Android version.

All contacts are missing on HTC EVO 4G phone

My wife has an HTC EVO 4G phone that all of a sudden appears to have lost all the contacts.  Since this phone is running Android, I was pretty sure my wifes' contacts were safely stored in the Google cloud somewhere (I set up her phone and created her Google account and set it as the default for the phone).

I was leaving on a business trip later in the morning so I did some Googling and found a post where someone said to clear the Contacts application cache and restart the phone.  I noticed right away when I looked at ALL applications from the system settings why her contacts were missing.  There was a button at the top right that said Enable.  After talking to my wife, I discovered that her son had tried to move apps to her SD card to free up space (the HTC EVO 4G has little internal storage).  The Android Contacts app had the Move to SD card  button disabled and I am almost certain that my step-son accidentally disabled the contacts when he meant to move the app to the SD card.

The moral of the story: if there are no contacts, make sure the Android/Google contacts app is enabled.

Adding Brother HL-2270DW printer to Ubuntu 12.10 x86_64

I needed to print some tax forms on my Acer One 0725 the other day.  I thought I would just use the same steps as I did for my other computers running Ubuntu 12.10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 and Fedora 17 x86_64.  That process was to go to the Brother web support site and download the lpr/;lpd drivers for the distribution and then use the OS printer setting utility to add the printer.  I know the IP address of the Brother laser printer (HL-2270DW) so I thought this would be a simple task.  That was far from the case.

The problem I kept running into was the printer utility on Ubuntu 12.10 does not provide access to hardly any printer settings.   The root cause was the IP address of the printer was not an IP address but something strange.  

I finally gave up using the built-in utility in Ubuntu and tried the CUPS web interface.  I searched Google and found out if I opened my browser to http://localhost:631 then I was able to configure a printer that would successfully print to my beloved Brother laser printer.  The rest of this post describes how I was able configure a new printer using the CUPS web interface.

CUPS home page

The above page is displayed when the url http://localhost:631 is entered into your browser.  The notebook tabs at the top of the page interface with the printer configuration on the Ubuntu machine.  The links in the body of the Home tab is basically local documentation for this web site.

Start by clicking on the Adminstration tab.  The following is a sample of the tab body that should appear:

Click on the Add Printer button on the above page.  An authentication pop-up will most likely appear.  The userid and password should be for the person that wants a printer defined.

On the next page select an LPD/LPR host or printer as shown.

On the next page, fill in the connection string shown below with a different IP address.  The lp1 at the end of the uri is needed before pressing the Continue button.  The value lp1 was just a guess and is probably not necessary.

The next page will need a printer name, a description and location.

Now the manufacturer of the printer needs to be specified.

Now the final piece of information is the specific model of the printer.  The list shown below contains may printers.  Installing the deb file from the Brother printer support web site did not add a driver for the HL-2270DW so I chose the one highlighted below.

Clicking the Add Printer button should result in the following page.

Not quite finished I guess.  Clicking the Set Default Options button will now finish the configuration.  Note that the setting on this print driver were not the same as the printer created. I think the driver is not correct for TEST1.

The page above does not stay very long.  Here is what the page changes to after about 1 minute of idle time.

It is a good idea to print a test page.  From the page above, click the Maintenance drop down and select Print Test Page

A page similar to the following will appear briefly. 

When the above page goes away, notice the print job at the bottom of the next page.  

The print job list will go away after a while.  This concludes this step-by-step process.  Now I can print from my Acer One 0725 running 64 bit Ubuntu 12.10.  Hope this is of help to someone.  If not, at least i have is documented.

Sound on Aspire One 725 and Ubuntu 12.10

I tried running VLC to listen an internet radio station for the first time on my new Acer Aspire One 725 today.  I plugged my headphones into the jack but I did not have any sound.  My first debug tool is to run alsamixer from the command line.  I was surprised to see the following output in alsamixer:

This did not look like it was going to work.  Pressing F6 showed the following devices:

After doing some Googling, I found the aplay and lspci commands that would show the information below:

kurtis@acer725:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC271X Analog [ALC271X Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
kurtis@acer725:~$  lspci -vnn | grep -iA5 audio
00:01.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Wrestler HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6250/6310] [1002:1314]
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0740]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46
Memory at 90244000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities:
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
--
00:14.2 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Hudson Azalia Controller [1022:780d] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0740]
Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 32, IRQ 47
Memory at 90240000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities:
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

From this information I selected the second device from the F6 list in alsamixer.  The reason I chose this device was because aplay had it listed as card 1 and it was an analog device.  Here is what the initial settings in alsamixer showed for this device:

Notice that the Master and the Headphone properties have MM listed at the bottom of the volume indicators.  The MM means the property has been muted.  The tab key allows for movement between properties and pressing the M key unmutes a property and replaces with a number representing a volume level.

The following screenshot is the properties that now work on my laptop.

Acer Aspire One 725-0687 $160 at Walmart

I found a fantastic deal on an Acer netbook on December 23 while shopping at one of the local Walmart stores.  The netbook has 2GB of memory, 4-cell li-ion battery, 32GB hard disk drive and an AMD dual-core C70 processor.  It also has a VGA and HDMI port, 2 USB 2.0 ports and one USB 3.0 port and of course, an SD card reader.  One of the surprising features was the system was preloaded with Windows 8.

The primary reason I wanted to purchase the laptop was actually the color but for $160 I could not resist.  The cost of Windows 8 is about $80 so for the cost of 2 copies of Windows 8, I now have a brand new netbook laptop.

Stay turned for a review of the system, Windows 8 and installing Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit in dual boot configuration.

Apps on Droid 4 gone when USB connected

I have been an avid fan of Android since I got my HTC EVO 4G back in July of 2011.  I now have a company supplied Motorola Droid 4 that I use exclusively because it is faster (dual-core) and has more storage. 

On my last business trip, I had the stock cable (USB tethering won't work if you don't) connected and noticed that some of my apps where not available.  Turns out that the default setting SD sharing setting is as a mass storage device.  A quick Google confirmed that a mass storage connection unmounts the SD card so Android cannot access anything on it because I suppose the OS will have exclusive access to the SD card.

The solution?  After connecting the USB cable, a notification message appears indicating how the device is connected.  Opening the status message allows the device to be connected as a media device (MTP).  This setting does NOT unmount the SD card and allows apps and music that are on the SD card to be accessed by both the tethered computer and Android.

Thank goodness for Google!

Another long hiatis

It has been a long-long time between my blog posts.  Guess I am not cut out to be a writer I guess.  Anyway, I will make yet another attempt to impart some words of wisdom in the field of computers and computer programming.   Thanks...

Creating a lock screen icon on GNOME desktop

I did some Googling the other day to find out how I can add a shortcut on my GNOME desktop that would lock the screen.  This turned out to be a bit of a challenge but being the persistent person I am, I was able to find a solution.

Here is the command I associated with a short-cut on my GNOME desktop to lock the screen. 

gnome-screensaver-command --lock

This works on Fedora 14 as well as Ubuntu 11.04.  I expect this command to also work on any workstation running a GNOME desktop.

It has been too long...

I see I am not doing a very good job posting stuff on my blog. I am going to work on making posts on a regular basis. I change my "Picture of the moment" in honor of our loyal dog Jake who had to be put down 2 summers ago. I miss my friend.

Shoutcast for Amarok 2.2.0

The holidays have given me some free time to search the internet for Linux Ubuntu issues I have on my many computers. The lack of Shoutcast plugin in Amarok 2.2.0 which comes with the Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) repository is an issue I just learned about today. I did a quick Google search and found the following URL with a temporary solution.

http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/?content=116823

There are not any directions for installing the script so I played around and discovered that the Tools menu has a Script Manager item which supports loading the tar file from the above web site. You have to then make sure that the Shoutcast checkbox is checked after the tar file has been successfully loaded.

Adding RPMForge Repository to CentOS

Even though I am a big fan of Ubuntu for the desktop, I prefer a Red Hat distribution for runnig my servers. I do not want to pay for them so I tried Fedora to run on the two (now three) servers at home. I finally decided upon CentOS 5.1 and have successfully upgraded one of my three servers to CentOS 5.3. My newest aquisition is a Proliant ML370 G2 (1 Pentium III 1.4Ghz CPU, 1.2GB memory and 6x37.4GB SCSI hard drives) and it is running CentOS 5.3 installed from DVD. I use the extras that comes with CentOS at install time but I like packages on the RPMForge repository.

Adding the RPMForge repository requires adding a rpmforge.repo file and installing the GPG key for the repository so packages won't fail rpm/yum install.

Here is where the rpmforge.repo goes:

/etc/yum.repo.d/rpmforge.repo:

Here is the contents of the aforementioned file:

# Name: RPMforge RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise 5 - dag
# URL: http://rpmforge.net/
[rpmforge]
name = Red Hat Enterprise $releasever - RPMforge.net - dag
#baseurl = http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/$basearch/dag
mirrorlist = http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/mirrors-rpmforge
#mirrorlist = file:///etc/yum.repos.d/mirrors-rpmforge
enabled = 1
protect = 0
gpgkey = file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmforge-dag
gpgcheck = 1


I found instructions on the DAG FAQ at the following URL:

http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/FAQ.php#B

The command I used was for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5:

rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/rpmforge/RPMS/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

How I adjusted the brightness of an MOV file

This past Valentines Day (2009), my wife and I hosted our monthly Couples-Club meeting at our house. The men hired a barbershop quartet to come and deliver roses, a card and sing them a couple of songs. I was able to record a video of the event on my 5MP Kodak digital camera. The problem was the video was too dark and some of the people could not be seen. Adjusting the brightness of the video turned out more work than I imagined.

I first thought to use Kino on my laptop but I remembered that application liked to convert everything to some DVI format and resave it into a much larger file. I never took the time to learn how to filter the brightness so I gave up on Kino with not too much effort. I did some searching in the Synaptic Package manager that comes with Ubuntu and found Avidemux.

I thought using Avidemux would do the trick nicely. I was able to figure out the Audio/Video format (copy does nothing to the source, it just makes a copy) and had to play with the output audio because it kept crashing on the audio codedec when I went to save the video. I was able to convert using different video codedecs but all the audio codedecs that did not crash, would create output files that had the audio truncated after about 19 seconds into the 4+ minute video. This even happened when I did a straight copy of the Video and Audio source. This lead me to believe there must be something wrong with Avidemux. I Googled high and low and did not find any solution to this problem so I decided to see if mencoder had an option that would increase the brightness.

After doing some Googles with mencoder and brightness, I came across the following web site that gave me the answer. Here is the command I used to increase the brightness and reduce the size so I could play it on my Nokia N810 Internet tablet:

mencoder 100_1470.MOV -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=1:vbitrate=300 -vf scale=320:240,eq2=1.0:0.8:0.1:0.7 -ffourcc DIVX -ofps 15 -o test2.avi

The eq2-1.0:0.8:0.1:0.7 was how the brightness was increased by 10% (third fractional parameter).

Skype runs now on Acert Aspire 9410

I downloaded Skype the other day at the urging of my daughter (she has a Microsoft Vista Dell Laptop that has a built-in video camera). I had tried using it a couple of years ago on Windows but did not have a reason for using it at the time, all the kids were still home. Now we have two girls in college and one in the US Marines so now I have a good reason to look at it again.

I chose to download it from the Skype web site even though I learned today, I believe I could have just as well installed it from the Medibuntu (I installed it from there on my work ThinkPad T61P). When I used it for the first time with my daughter (she is attending college at Iowa State University, go Cyclones!), video worked fine between the two machines but my daughter was not able to hear anything I said. To say the least, the conversation was a bit one-sided. I told my daughter I would work on getting it fixed so we could have a better experience with Skype the next time. me

I started debugging by looking at the Gnome volume applet and sure enough, the microphone was not listed on the mixer. When I enabled the microphone, it was of course muted. Now I thought this would work but when I tried the Skype Test Call contact, I could hear nothing. I tried a number of other settings in Skype for the audio but they did not work (I am running Ubuntu 8.10 and PulseAudio is what all my audio works with on Skype and other applications). I then tried enabling the Mic Boost in the Gnome volume applet and set it at its highest level. When I tried the Skype Test Call again, I could barely hear my voice so it looked like I was making progress.

I always remember reading about people using the console mode alsamixer control to fix lots of audio problems. I always think it should not work because I am configured to use PulseAudio server and not the Alsa audio server. When I brought up alsamixer, it only showed me one playback device at 100% and one capture device at 0%. I increased the capture device to 78% and when I ran a Skype Test Call, I could hear myself very well. I can't wait to call my daughter, I'm sure she will be pleased to hear my voice!