Annoying command “ssh -t USER,PROJECT@shell.sourceforge.net create”

I don’t know why (maybe performance issues?) but since some months sourceforge forces one to create a new shell every time you want to access it, which takes up to 2 minutes. This is really annoying.

Let me explain this in more detail. If I try to log in:

ssh USER”at”shell.sourceforge.net

normally one could directly access the shell and one was productive (some months ago)!

But sourceforge forces me to always execute:

ssh -t USER,PROJECT”at”shell.sourceforge.net create

before any other command is possible. So I posted a new ticket at sourceforge, but maybe I am to stupid to explain myself or sth. else goes really wrong …

😦

Or is there a trick to avoid that?

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Is it Windows 7 or Kde4?

Today I discovered an old but funny video at zdnet.

Where they show Kde4 to the people on the street and say: “This is the new Windows 7 …”

Lasst uns unseren Kindern Linux beibringen, anstatt sie von Microsoft-Produkten abhängig zu machen

Die Grünen werden von vielen als die Ökopartei belächelt oder sogar beschimpft. Doch mich überzeugen viele Ihrer Handlungen und Meinungen. (Nicht so 100% allerdings die Kandidaten, aber man wählt ja keine Personen sondern eine Partei, oder? 😉 )

Ein Artikel bei Heise.de fand ich wieder einmal recht erhellend. Auch die Idee der Kulturflatrate finde ich gut, obwohl damit wohl Änderungen des Urheberrechts verbunden sind. Bei dem Artikel stach besonders die Aussage von Herrn Spitz hervor:

“Lasst uns unseren Kindern Linux beibringen, anstatt sie von Microsoft-Produkten abhängig zu machen”

Ein wenig zweifelhaft ist dagegen folgende pauschale Aussage im Programm der Grünen:

“Wir unterstützen die Anwendung von Open Source, Freier
Software, Freien Funknetzwerken, Offenen Formaten und
innovativen Lizenzen. Sie müssen stärker als bisher Einzug in
Bildungseinrichtungen und die öffentliche Verwaltung finden,
weil sie kostengünstiger, energiesparender und grundsätzlich
sicherer sind”

Ich glaube nicht das zur Zeit z.B. Linuxlaptops energiesparender sein können, als solche mit extrem angepassten MS-Windows-Sytemen.

Okay, es gibt mind. eine Ausnahme, aber generell vertrauen Hardwarehersteller lieber auf einen Softwaregiganten und bekommen auch eine gewisse Garantie von diesem anstatt auf ein ebenbürtiges, preiswertes Betriebssystem zu setzen wo nur kleinere bis keinere Firmen dahinter stehen.

Allerdings untestütze ich persönlich auch Open Source Software – vorallem im Bildungssektor. Ganz nach dem Motto:

Freiheit für unsere Kinder!

Dell Latitude E6400 – The Perfect Linux Notebook? Or is Ubuntu The Perfect Linux?

GraphHopper – A Java routing engine

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Some weeks ago I got a Dell Latitude E6400 with Quadro NVS 160M from nvidia. It has vista and a xp downgrade included, but I went the linux way. So I installed ubuntu 9.04 and … installed it 😉 Nothing more. What can I say? Even a newbie could have been done this installation.

Nice! All things worked like expected.

Update: Upgrading to 9.10 works like a charm.

Update 2011: Upgrading to 10.04 worked again really great.

Update 2012: Upgrading failed. Fresh install of 11.10 was horrible. Major problems with the graphic card [Quadro NVS 160M] and my Logitech USB Headset.

Update 2013: Installation of 12.04 xubuntu worked like a charm again (using nouveau or the nvidia driver) – except the easy to fix pulse audio problem

• dsl Internet without setup and WLAN worked out of the box
  • btw: you can easily select through which network device you want to connect (more intuitive then any other OS I know …)
• bluetooth works with my mobile (samsung b2100): sending + receiving files … but only with kbluetooth4
• External Nec Monitor
• External Fujitsu Siemens USB keyboard
• Logitech USB Headset (skype)
• Trackpad (with scrolling!) and trackpoint
• webcam (tested with cheese)
• … all the rest hardware simply worked like my Canon printer and my Epson scanner
• After 1 hour + 1 hour for the windows installation within VirtualBox I could use WinXp under linux – very cool!
• all the time ‘sudo apt-get install xy’ was my friend.
• Some days after the initial installation I tried my bamboo tablet. And… you can guess it – it was strange – it works 🙂 !
• video, sound worked too out of the box with the help of medibuntu and gstreamer-plugins

I never did a smoother linux installation and this even on a laptop. I have now sound, videos, mp3s, … with less effort even compared to any windows installation I did so far. Before the external monitor can be used I installed the nvidia driver. This was a ‘one clicker’ – I do not even remember what I exactly did. After this I disabled the laptop screen and enabled the external. I can post my xorg.conf if someone is interested. Even going to hibernate and standby are working fine. I tried to work with kde, but it looks like the plasma stuff is crashing regularly on this laptop (or because of my hardware config). So, I will have to stay with ubuntu as long as I can make WindowMaker, Enlightenment or the future of WindowMaker (Azalea) useable.

Okay, so far, so good.

But I would’nt post this stuff if things haven’t at least one drawback. The most annoying thing about this Dell Latitude E6400 is that the fan is always on. It is okay (not loud), but not as quiet as I read in some reviews :-(. It would be okay if the fan goes on on load – but it is always on. If you are in “battery mode” the fan sometimes switches off (Wow! This is silence!) I think this is a BIOS settings. Hopefully dell will turn this on in a later BIOS version for “network mode” too .

And then there is a very high cheeping, uhm! (of the harddisc ?) For other (more silent?) notebooks you should take a look at Lenovo T400 (or the recently published T400s) first or the previous version of E6400: the Dell Latitude D640.

The good thing is that the fan volume stays the same even on heavy load. Only if the heavy load remains for several minutes or it is relative hot in your room then the pc will increase the fan speed.

So, what I did with this ‘loud’ box? Dell don’t offer a 14-days-ship-back guarantee for business customers (this has nothing to do with Dell – it is normal here in Germany). So, I will use this ‘loud’ box and maybe I will tune here or there with some linux utilities.

But it seems to me a very good laptop for linux. Or maybe ubuntu is the true king here!!?

Device / Parts

• The whole (Regatta Blue) case of the Latitude looks stable and at the moment nothing is bouncing or looks cheaply processed. I choosed a blue color (matt) and this surface looks robust, too.
• The 14” display is very good (matt) and the resolution of 1440×900 is nice. There is an auto dimming function enable, but you can disable this as well. It can be used in bright outside even if you dimm the display a bit.
• The black keyboard is stable and for a notebook keyboard useable.
• An external button can enable/disable the WLAN+bluetooth to save energy.
• some other devices/connectors: 3 USB, 1 SD card, 1 audio in + 1 out, sata, dvd burner, webcam, …

I know that a picture is sometimes more worth than 1000 words (hopefully not in this post):

Applications for Ubuntu

Hopefully at least one of the listed tools can be of use for your linux installation. The following application normally do not need a lot of configuration:

• opera – the most innovative browser
• kate – the best graphical editor. Even with block selection (enable/disable via CTRL+SHIFT+B)
• kdirstat – get an overview of your hard disc usage
• liferea –  a better blogbridge?
• kpowersave – worked for my Dell E6400 (save to disk and save to ram)
• gnome-power-manager – can show the enery usage and battery state over time! really useful!
• VirtualBox – hosts windows xp like a charm
• amarok – mp3, podcasts, internetradio, …
• totem – watch videos and search youtube videos with this application
• gimp and inkscape for your graphics
• k3b, grip and k9copy for your cd/dvd burnings
• openoffice and latex (with kile) for your documents
• and last but not least: TimeFinder 😉 an open source timetable optimizer for universities and schools

Now I list some apps where you can tweak a little bit:

• WindowMaker – my favourite window manager. Some things should be enhanced to be usable by a wider audience.
  • you will need to configure a shortcut for hiding all windows
  • you have to tweak a lot of things… maybe I should put this into a separate post 😉
• konqueror
  • I changed the view to details and saved this for all folders
  • To change that konqueror selects a folder on the first click (double click to  open it) you can change it in the following dialog even under gnome: kcmshell4 mouse
  • if you type fish://user@123.123.123.123 you can use it as a graphical scp client

• thunderbird
  • you should install enigmail and lightning. The latter one you can install via sudo apt-get install lightning-extension
  • import/export mails
  • open urls with opera via adding or changing the following lines in a file ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/<profile>/prefs.js user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.http”,”/usr/bin/opera”);
    user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.https”,”/usr/bin/opera”);

• firefox download some plugins: all-in-one-sidebar, scrapbook, firebug, live http headers, FoxyProxy

Here are some applications for development

• kdesvn – the best subversion client I ever used. Works even for large repositories (>2GB) … unlike Tortoise for win.
• netbeans – the best IDE, install java before
• squirrel-sql – the best database editor
• konsole – the best command line
• joe – the best command line editor (but not on every linux box available unlike vi)

BTW: ‘best’ does not mean that there are other good tools. Feel free to post your application stack as a comment or you can create your stack here.

Configure “Move Between Windows With Popups” (ALT+TAB) in Gnome

From my favourite window manager (WindowMaker) I am used to switch applications via ALT+TAB and then select the icon via mouse or arrow keys.

In gnome I couldn’t find a way to configure it with arrow keys (compiz enabled), but I found a way to switch via mouse.

First do:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Then execute ccsm. Now you should go to the configuration of the “static application switcher”. Under Behaviour (in German ‘Verhalten’) you should see sth. like activate mouse selection (‘Erlaube Mausauswahl’). That’s it

Happy application switching! And tell me if you find a way to switch with arrow keys!

Export from and Import to Thunderbird

Yesterday I wanted to backup some mails of my thunderbird, but I realized that I hadn’t installed the great tool. But how was it called?
I finally found the name: ImportExportTools and the link! So here it is as a mnemonic.

Linux – Kill a Process by Name

Update: Please read the comments or just use killall <appname>

If you know the command

ps -A

then tou will probable also know

ps -A | grep firefox

now you can manually kill this via

kill -9 <ID>

Where <ID> is from the last output. But how to do this in one line? If your ps command knows:

ps opid= -C firefox
(should print the <ID>)

Then you can simply do

kill -9 $(ps opid= -C firefox)

Installation of Miktex – a latex package manager – for Ubuntu

GraphHopper – A Java routing engine

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Did you ever have hassle with manual installation of packages (.sty files) in latex under linux? If yes the following procedure will help you a lot to make the windows-latex-packagemanager called miktex working under linux. With this manager it is one command or one click to install a package without any websearches!!

1. Download the .deb file from here.
2. sudo dpkg -i ~/Download/miktex-tools-2.8_beta_2-1-i386-linux.deb
   Sometimes a sudo apt-get install libcurl3 was necessary

3. initexmf --help

4. sudo initexmf --admin --user-install=/var/lib/texmf/

5. Now try to install the fltpage (and include it via \usepackage[rightFloats]{fltpage} into the .text source)

   sudo mpm --install=fltpage

6. Sometimes I needed (sometimes not) to run the following command after I installed a package:
   sudo texhash
7. to update all installed packages simply run

   sudo mpm --update

8. to find a package you can use the following command

   sudo mpm --list | grep a0

   => a0poster

Thats all! And it is nice! A lot better than manual installation.

Deploy Content To Sourceforge

First of all you have to create a shell:

ssh -t USER,PROJECT@shell.sourceforge.net create

Every time you want to deploy something you need to do this (Is there a workaround?) – this is strange …

File Release

Please look here for the official documentation. Or do:

scp FILE username@frs.sourceforge.net:uploads

After this you can add the file to a release.

Deploy Homepage

If you use maven for your project it is relative easy to deploy the content to sourceforge (although it was easier before the create-shell stuff):

1. add the following snippet to the <project> node of your pom.xml:
   <distributionManagement>
   <site>
   <id>website</id>
   <url>scp://username@shell.sourceforge.net/home/groups/t/ti/timefinder/htdocs/</url>
   </site>
   </distributionManagement>
2. mvn site:site
3. mvn site:deploy

Or copy directly with scp:
scp *.jar username,timefinder@shell.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/t/ti/timefinder/htdocs/files

Userweb

To copy sth. to your personal website do:
scp FILE peat_hal@web.sourceforge.net:/home/users/p/pe/peat_hal/userweb/htdocs