Category Archives: Tech

Hibernate for Ubuntu

Since the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS the hibernate icon disappeared as possible option at the shutdown. It is not a big loss if you are not used to use (or overuse) it as I often do. Personally I think that the hibernate feature is really useful when you want to freeze your computer maintaining all the windows -and the work- you are working on at a precise moment.

Ubuntu decided to “cut” this particular command from its GUI because it registered a remarkable number of problems caused by hardware conflicts in modern computers.

If you use Ubuntu and you think that hibernate could till be useful for you (especially during busy working days), it is possible to insert again this specific feature as GUI on your Desktop.

First of all you have to test if your computer contains the right hardware for “hibernate” so open Terminal and type:

sudo pm-hibernate

The computer will hibernate itself but you have to reboot it to understand if hibernate worked properly in your case.

I hope (as it was for my PC) that all has gone well. In this case you can start to create the dedicated icon on your upper bar.

Before of starting it’s necessary to understand that the hibernate command will use the SWAP partition to save your temporarily data. Usually it is recommended to have a SWAP partition with, at least, the double of space of your RAM.

So I suggest to install Gparted to check the SWAP space and, only if necessary, increase your SWAP partition reducing the primary partition. Please, do this only after you safely backup all the data in your computer because this procedure could be risky if you are doing it for the first time and you have not enough experience:

sudo apt-get install gparted

Open a Terminal and install gedit and gksu (if you don’t have them already installed on your machine) typing:

sudo apt-get install gksu && sudo apt-get install gedit

Then type:

sudo gksu gedit /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla

Now a blank gedit document, named enable-hibernate.pkla will appear on your screen.

Copy and paste the following text to “compile” it:

[Enable Hibernate]

Identity=unix-user:*

Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate

ResultActive=yes

Save it and reboot your computer.

A new icon will appear on the right corner of the upper bar. When you click on it, a Terminal window will appear asking for the system password. Type it and click on Return and your PC will immediately hibernate.

Good busy working days!

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References:

http://www.howtogeek.com/113923/how-to-re-enable-hibernate-in-ubuntu-12.04/

http://askubuntu.com/questions/49095/how-do-i-add-more-swap-easily-so-that-i-can-hibernate-my-laptop#49162

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

http://askubuntu.com/questions/29783/so-what-is-the-reason-behind-the-claim-that-you-need-at-least-as-much-swap-area#29809

Blogilo: the Linux blog client to create new posts on your local computer

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Yes, I know! Talking about Blogilo is not an hot news but the “recent” version 1.1 (according to the Help Menu in Blogilo software) has added some new features and something has changed. Some years ago, when I tested Blogilo, I thought that this software was a good “concept” but it lacked of too many features as compared with e.g. online WordPress.com platform. With version 1.1 these lacks have been reduced and now Blogilo becomes interesting if you are looking for a software that could be used daily for offline posting.

Blogilo now has less bugs than in the past and it is possible to write posts with just few seldom crashes. The user interface is intuitive and after the installation you spend just few minutes for adding and setting your blog. The positive thing is that Blogilo works with all the main blog platforms and it could be considered as one of the most complete blog client for Linux.

The matter is that blog platforms evolve quickly and Blogilo, as all its competitors, seems to be slower than many of them. In fact, it could happen that some up-to-date features are immediately not supported and you have to manually modify your post and adding them directly through the host website (e.g. WordPress).

One of the most annoying problems I continue to have with Blogilo is about wrapping text around the image/picture I am used to put at the beginning of every post I write. It is a simple matter to solve but at every post I have to manually change the html code.

As for my experience you have two different ways to solve this isssue.

The first is to edit the image/picture after you inserted it into the post and add the value “allign” selecting the right options in the Advanced Menu (why the Advanced Menu is not available when you insert a new image/picture?).

The second (faster) is to go to the Html Editor tag into Blogilo and add this code at the end of the image <img> tag:

align="left"

For example writing this post I added:

<img src="http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o158/galigio/blogilo_logo_zps3pmqrnq1.png" align="left" width="160" height="105">

Simple to solve but really annoying when you have so little time to dedicate to your blog….

To sum up it is possible to affirm that Blogilo really contains all the features to write a blog but if you need something more professional you have to spend some hours, after the installation, to learn how to find the right solutions for your specific needs.

———–

References:

http://blogilo.gnufolks.org

http://www.echoecho.com/htmlimages08.htm

Update from Fedora 18 to 20 or 21 in few simple clicks and without (I hope) problems!

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Fedora 21 Sometimes simple things become hard problems. This happened to me when I discovered that my Fedora 18 OS was obsolete (very old indeed) and I tried to upgrade it to the Fedora 20 version.

Fedora 18 doesn’t support the automatic OS upgrade so I had to spend some hours to find information on Internet and create the right DIY solution for my case. At the end of my little (sic!) research I discovered that I was able not only able to upgrade the PC to Fedora 20 but I also found a good “trick” to upgrade to the latest Fedora 21 following in just a couple of steps with the help of fedup and some other escamotages.

This is how I succeed…

First, you have to open a Terminal and type:

su

init 3

but you will immediately leave the Fedora GUI and so it’s better if you write the below commands on an -old style, paper notepad- to be sure to have all the right information in you hands and correctly manage the upgrade from Fedora 18 to Fedora 20

sudo su -

yum update

yum install fedup

fedup-cli --network 20 --nogpgcheck

It’s better to add –nogpgcheck because often you are not able to complete your upgrade for the “old”, “bad saved” gpg key in your system.

reboot

Now, at the boot-up menu (GRUB 2 menu) you have to choose “System Upgrade (Fedup)”.

Then just to be sure you really have an up to date OS, in Terminal, type:

Yum update

If you have problems with one or more of your “old” repositories don’t forget to deconfigure them. In my case I had to launch this command line in Terminal due to skip an old repository and proceed with the upgrade:

yum-config-manager --save --setopt=home_moritzmolch_gencfsm.skip_if_unavailable=true

At this point, to upgrade from Fedora 20 to Fedora 21 you have to open (again) the Terminal and type:

su

fedup --network 21 --product=workstation --nogpgcheck

fedup --network 21 --product=server --nogpgcheck

(if your Fedora version is the server one)

fedup --network 21 --product=cloud --nogpgcheck

(for the Fedora cloud edition for generic virtual machines or Container)

Take it easy and go to bed for a long snap because, in my case, the download took some hours as for 2,577 files to be upgraded…

At the end, as before, you have to Reboot and select “System Upgrade (Fedup)” at the boot-up menu (GRUB 2 menu) and all the necessary files will be installed. Again, take a good book to read while you wait the installation.

Good luck and remind you MUST backup all your data before you start any upgrade because unforeseen risks are always around the corner!

References:

https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/37247/upgrade-fedora-18-to-fedora-20-via-yum-or-fedup/

http://tecadmin.net/steps-to-upgrade-fedora-19-to-20-using-fedup-tool/

http://www.unixmen.com/upgrade-fedora-20-fedora-21-using-fedup/

https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/39558/how-to-remove-a-repository-from-my-system

Teenagers are leaving Facebook. Why? Because their parents are on it. [The Guardian]

by Rob Beschizza.

This brief article is interesting because it analyzes a new trend between 16-18 years old EU citizens who prefer alternative social media to Facebook. Moreover, the article describes a new “mood” between young European who “feel embarrassed to even be associated with” Facebook because it is considerate a conservative choice strictly related to their parents relational behaviour. Something to reflect on over the new year!… Tempus fugit!

GrooveDown vs. GrooveOff: my personal experience using Grooveshark

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Grooveshark is an online music service, very well-known and common especially in Europe. The quality of its mp3, offered just for listening is higher than what you find on YouTube and some programs were developed to allow listeners to search and listen songs without visiting the Grooveshark website. Some of these software let you save sample of songs for a later listening but this habit doesn’t complain with the copyright laws in many countries so we discourage this kind of practice.

Today we would like to just endorse the ability of a single developer (www.caleta.fm) who was able to modify one of these programs, GrooveDown, and adapt it to the new website requisites.

This developer, using wireshark, was able to identify the misconfiguration between GrooveDown and the Grooveshark’s server and to positively update the data (client version and password) exchanged.

More in general I think that GrooveDown is the best client to listen to Grooveshark also because it is more powerful, fast and easy to use than its competitors. In particular, during some tests I did, I was positively impressed by the results I obtained using GrooveDown because I received better and more complete search results than using, for example, GrooveOff which is too a good software but, for my personal experience, gave back less impressive results.

Last but not least I want to underline that the caleta.fm development of GrooveDown is really stable and it was developed in two different versions just to be used with Java6 or Java7 platform. Recommended!

Once again about cookies, supercookies and Flash cookies… How to better protect Firefox, your Linux OS and.. you!

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In a previous post I already suggested to use HTTPS Everywhere and HTTPS Finder to better protect your privacy on the web. Today I would like to focus your attention on the privacy risks caused by cookies.

Some of them can track your internet activity also when you have logged off from the websites that created them. In few words, some cookies can actively support the creation of a quite punctual profile of your interests and share these information with third parties without you know if your data will be anonymised and correctly stored.

Internet tracking is actual and silent and antivirus software are not the best solution to manage them because every day new types of apparently harmless cookies and supercookies are created and spread into our computers. Cookies usually don’t directly affect your internet browsing but they are a real risk if you want to protect your privacy. A good VPN service (e.g. one that does not link your payment to your “new” assigned VPN IP) could be the best solution but flash cookies, evercookies (a particular type of zombie cookies which are able to geometrically clone themselves outside the original folder where they were stored) could reveal your IP and your habits, just after you disconnect your OS from the VPN shield.

To improve your privacy you can start to combine your VPN with some particular Firefox add-on as Self-Destructing Cookies (for the regular cookies) and BetterPrivacy which has been developed to “search and destroy” Flash cookies.

To improve your privacy, never forget that you can tune your Firefox Privacy settings also using Secure Sanitizer which wipe the browser cache in a stronger way than Firefox itself.

Last but not least, don’t forget to “waste” some minutes of your time and use BleachBit after every internet session or every time you shutdown your computer. Better to be slow than sorry!

Keep Calibre always updated! Correctly manage your digital library and new e-book formats

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Library As you know, Calibre is a powerful tool that allows you to easily manage your e-book library. It also allows you to back up the e-books that you buy online and to transfer them to other devices when your e-book reader is out-of-order.

Sometimes the problem is that e-book formats evolve rapidly and new versions have been “recently”created. For this reason I personally suggest to update Calibre very often because new version have, obviously, the most updated plugins and consequently support new formats.

The Calibre website has a good download section where you find easy instructions to update your e-book reader on almost any OS. In my experience, usually you spend less than 6-7 minutes to update Calibre and the advantages you have worth the time you spend.

Moreover, if you have problems to read an e-book on the last version of Calibre, check the file format (in my case was .azw3), launch Calibre and go in Preferences → Behaviour. Then, be sure that the file format you are trying to open/read is correctly activated into the list you find there. Enjoy your reading!

How to manually mount USB drives on Ubuntu

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The first time I had this kind of problem was when I was trying to create a bootable USB drive and a pop-up windows appeared informing me that “you must first mount USB drive /dev/sdc1 to a mount-point. Most distributions will do this automatically after you remove and reinsert the USB drive”. I had never had this matter on Linux because, normally, all the USB drives are immediately recognized and mounted but there is always a first time….

After some googling I discovered that a specific program dconf-editor could help me to check the Linux settings and to consequentlyresolve the situation.

First of all you need to install dconf-editor on your Linux so you have to open a Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

After the installation you launch dconf-editor (for MATE environment it’s into the System Tool menu) and navigate it to media-handling:

org –> gnome –> desktop –> media-handling

Now you have to be sure that commands automount and automount-open are both flagged.

If you discover that they are already flagged, its necessary to manually create a mount point using the Terminal.

Open a Terminal and type:

df -H

to see the mounted disks. If you are not able to find the USB drive that you want to mount then type:

sudo fdisk -l

and you’ll see all disks (mounted/unmounted).

Now you are able to know the right drive identity (e.g. sdb1, sdc1, sdd1) that your OS assigned to that specific drive. Memorize it and start to create the mount point:

sudo mkdir /media/newusb

where “newusb” is the mount point name you want to assign to your USB drive.

Then type:

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/newusb

where “sdb1” is the drive identity we found before and “newusb” the mount-point name you choose.

That’s it, now your USB drive has a mounting point and you can use it (in my case I was able to create a bootable USB drive usiing Unetbootin)

You can find some extra useful tips about mounting USB drives at the Ubuntu community.

How to dig more information on Wikipedia using Google

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Wikipedia contains many information about million of topics but each single thematic page doesn’t contain all the possible info or links about that specific subject. In fact some other details about a topic, or related to it, can be in other parts of Wikipedia not linked to the main topic.

In my experience, sometimes you can find some really interesting details about a topic if you simply use a Google query as:

site:en.wikipedia.org “Chet Baker”

Where the topic is “Chet Baker” and it is searched by Google into the entire Wikipedia.org website. If you deeply peep the results you can now find some information not contained in the “Chet Baker” page in Wikipedia.

These tip is really simple but I think it could be useful for journalists, data miners or for all that people who are not satisfied by a simple Wikipedia search.

Do you really need to buy a scanner?

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If you work in an office where many document are daily processed you will appreciate one quick tip about using Google Drive as a on-the-go scanner. As you certainly know you can set Google Drive to always convert documents into Google Formats when you upload a new one. You can also decide to automate the process and Google will automatically convert the files without asking you again about it but, for my experience, it’s more more flexible and useful to define the conversion parameters every time I decide to upload a new document. For this reason I ticked the “Confirm settings before each upload” option in the upload menu.

One, not so known, feature is represented by the internal Google OCR that is able to read text also contained in jpg files. This means that you can simply take a picture of the text you want to modify and Google will convert it into a text file in few secs. During some test we made, a medium quality photograph is more than sufficient to have good results with Google OCR.

To activate this feature don’t forget to put a tick on the “Convert text from PDF and image files to Google documents” option and to specify the document language when you upload the jpg files into your Google Drive.