Google Android on Dell Mini
Posted by Nuggy in Uncategorized on July 20th, 2009
So there is a Google Code project, http://code.google.com/p/live-android/, that has a downloadable ISO that can be used as a live CD or installed on a desktop/laptop/netbook to run Google’s Android OS (for Mobile Phones/Smart phones).
I have had it running mostly in Virtual Box – save destroying my install to have a play with it. I have only used it once or twice, but it looks interesting.. Check it out if you’re interested. More to come after I have had a play with it.
Creating a Bootable USB with Windows 7 RC1
Posted by Nuggy in Windows (Shudders) on June 7th, 2009
OK, so I am getting ready to install Windows 7 RC1 on my Dell Mini 9 when I get my new solid state drive. I have had a lot of trouble trying to get my USB to boot with the Windows 7 setup, so this is the process I followed. Thank you to the Technet Blue blog for most parts of this walk-through.
You need to make sure that you have the Windows 7 ISO downloaded and opened via a live ISO mounter (Such as MagicISO, daemon tools, etc), or have the DVD burnt and in the drive. You need atleast a 4GB USB key.
OK, here we go:
Plug your USB drive into your computer.
1. Right click on Command Prompt and choose “Run as Administrator”
2. At the prompt we are going to type “Diskpart“
3. We need to know the number of our USB Drive so we type “List Disk” The disks will be listed by number and by size. Mine happens to be DISK1
4. We select our disk by typing the command “Select Disk 1”
5. Clean all files from the disk with “clean”
This will remove all files from the disk.
6. To create a new partition we type “create partition primary“
7. Next we select the partition by typing “select partition 1“
8. We mark it as the active partition by typing “active“
9. Finally we need to format the drive and create a file system. We type “format fs=ntfs“
10. Finally we will complete the formatting by typing “assign” to give the drive a letter. In our case the letter assigned was E:. Type “exit” to close diskpart.
With the drive formatted we are ready to proceed to the step of making the USB drive bootable.
1. I put the Windows 7 RC1 install disk in the DVD drive. (make a quick mental note of the drive letter of the DVD drive and the drive letter of the USB drive.)
2. From the command prompt we change to the boot directory of the RC1 DVD “cd D:\boot“
3. We add the boot sector with the command “bootsect /nt60 e:” (where E:is the assigned letter of the USB drive)
4. Lastly we copy all of the files from the Windows 7 RC1 DVD to the USB drive.
Boot the computer with the USB drive in the computer, and away it goes.
I have used this process a few times, and it has worked really well. Leave your comments and let me know how you go.
Dell Mini – Ubuntu 9.04 Beta
Posted by Nuggy in Linux (ubuntu) on April 16th, 2009
After my last post I spent some time working out various issues with getting hardware to work in Ubuntu 8.10. After getting sick and tired of trying to get things to work I decided to try out Windows 7. This seemed to work pretty well after getting some of the XP drivers from M$’s website.
After playing with that for a bit, I was amazed at how well it worked on the Atom Chipset.
I then set about downloading and installing the new Ubuntu 9.04 Beta. Everything on the Dell Mini worked straight away after getting the latest updates. I have been using it with the inbuilt 3G for a few weeks now and have had hardly any issues.
The only thing I need to find is a decent program that will show me the signal strength and network I am connected too..
Dell Mini 9 Netbook
Posted by Nuggy in Uncategorized on February 21st, 2009
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS NOT LONGER NEEDED FOR UBUNTU 9.04
So I decided to buy myself one of the Dell Mini 9 Netbooks…
Unfortunately, due to purchasing in Australia, I could only get the version with Win XP home on it.. Of course, this was not good enough, so I dumped that and started again with Ubuntu 8.10. Everything I had read said it worked pretty well straight away out of the box, and apart from the built in 3G Modem (Through Vodafone only), it did. Although there were a few tweaks needed to get the sound working properly.
So this is a short run down of what I have had to do to get everything working (Webcam, sound, 3G).
First of all, lets tackle the sound and the webcam – seeing as they were both the easiest to fix… For the webcam simply download a webcam viewer (for me it was Cheese, available in the repos, however Gabz mention xaw-tv as well). Once installed open it up and away you go…
For the sound, simply add this line “options snd-hda-intel model=dell” to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base then reboot and you should have sound (Make sure after reboot you go into the Sound Control (double click the sound icon) and turn the speaker volume up, this got me for a few minutes!
OK, on to the 3G, I must mention this is for Vodafone AUSTRALIA only – well it might work elsewhere, but I don’t plan on travelling to test it..
First of all, make sure you have wvdial installed.
Then, place this into your wvdial.conf “sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf”
[Dialer Defaults]
New PPPD = yes
Stupid Mode = 1
Modem Type = USB Modem
#[Dialer PIN]
#Init1 = AT+CPIN=
[Dialer signal]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
Init1 = AT+CSQ
Init2 = AT+COPS?
[Dialer gps]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM2
Init1 = AT*E2GPSCTL=1,2,1
Init2 = AT*E2GPSNPD
[Dialer on]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
Init1 = AT+CFUN=1
[Dialer off]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM1
Init1 = AT+CFUN=4
[Dialer connect]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM1
Init1 = AT
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT +CGDCONT=1, “IP”, “vfinternet.au”
Baud = 460800
ISDN = 0
Phone = *99#
Password = web
Username = web
Close and save this.
Test by running wvdial connect – it should all connect happily, press Ctrl+C to drop the connection.
For ease of use at the moment (and because I am too lazy to work it out at the moment) I am using gnome-ppp to dial and connect. Set this up by installing gnome-ppp running it, then closing it, copy the config from /etc/wvdial.conf to /home/<user>/.wvdial.conf save that, open gnome-ppp and enter any password and it should connect.
I will eventually clean this up – just wanted to get my thoughts out before I forgot how I did it! I will also post how to get this all working under an app that lets you send SMS.
Connecting to a Bigpond/GA Ubuntu Repository
Posted by Nuggy in Linux (ubuntu) on April 5th, 2008
So, this is probably old hat to most people, but just incase there is anyone out there starting out on Ubuntu and is in my situation (Crappy Internet, low cap etc etc) this might useful.
Bigpond has finally put an Ubuntu Repository on its Game Arena servers, which means it is available as free download for Bigpond users (except Cable Users I think)
They mirror everything by multiverse for Hardy Heron and Gutsy Gibbon (Commonly known as 7.10 and 8.04) and as far as I can tell they haven’t got mirrors for any other distributions.
Alright, what you need to do is get the Bigpond/GA Server address it is:
http://mirror.gamearena.com.au/ubuntu/
Below is a sample of my sources.list file, found in /etc/apt. Open it up in your favourite editor (make sure you use sudo when you do). Follow the two commands below to create a backup of your existing sources.list and then to open the file in gedit:
#sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.backup
#sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Here is my sources.list for Hardy Heron:
deb http://mirror.gamearena.com.au/ubuntu/ hardy-security main restricted
deb http://mirror.gamearena.com.au/ubuntu/ hardy-security universe
deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-security multiverse
deb http://mirror.gamearena.com.au/ubuntu/ hardy-updates universe main restricted
deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates multiverse
deb http://mirror.gamearena.com.au/ubuntu/ hardy main universe restricted
deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy multiverse
And here is my sources.list for Gutsy Gibbon:
deb http://mirror.gamearena.com.au/ubuntu/ gutsy-security main restricted
deb http://mirror.gamearena.com.au/ubuntu/ gutsy-security universe
deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-security multiverse
deb http://mirror.gamearena.com.au/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates universe main restricted
deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates multiverse
deb http://mirror.gamearena.com.au/ubuntu/ gutsy main universe restricted
deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy multiverse
Once you have saved your sources.list file, you can update the apt list on your computer by running:
#sudo apt-get update
And you’re away…
Upgrading WordPress to 2.5
Posted by Nuggy in Uncategorized on April 4th, 2008
I’ve just upgraded Wordpress to hopefully stop the impending threat of SPAM! I used a funky aut-updater cos I was lazy..
Happy Gab? I did it finally.
Upgrading to 8.04 Beta
Posted by Nuggy in Linux (ubuntu) on March 23rd, 2008
I just ran an update on my laptop to 8.04 Beta. It works pretty well, I am getting a few language packs failing on install, but that’s OK, I don’t really need the Japanese etc language packs.
Everything working out of the box, Tablet Pen, SD Card slot, tablet mode, etc etc etc.
Will post more if I run across any issues.
Tablet Pen Working In Ubuntu 7.10
Posted by Nuggy in Linux (ubuntu) on December 1st, 2007
I finally had time to get around to working out how to get the Tablet Pen working in Ubuntu 7.10, and it was a heck of a lot easier then it was in 7.04.
First of all, I apt-get’d the wacom tools
#sudo apt-get install wacom-tools
Open xorg.conf in vim
#sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Go to the bottom you need to add the following:
If you’re lucky (Like I wasn’t), you should have the following in xorg already, and just commented out.
#Tablet Functions
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection
After that, save and exit vim, and then restart X. And wham, you have the Tablet Pen working.
Now, on to trying to get the SD Card Slot to work…
I Must Be Install Mad
Posted by Nuggy in Linux (ubuntu) on October 21st, 2007
I have just done an upgrade to my Toshiba M400 Tablet PC. The update actually worked out OK. Not many issues. The main things (wireless, video, touchpad, USB) all still work OK. The only thing that is now broken is my Tablet Pen does not work anymore! I tried what I did for 7.04 with no luck, and Google seems to be out of answers.
When I work it out, I’ll post the solution for anyone who might be interested.
~!Nuggy
Ubuntu 7.10
Posted by Nuggy in Linux (ubuntu) on October 20th, 2007
This morning I installed Ubuntu 7.10… I am rather impressed by some of the new features – although I am having issues with Bluetooth at the moment. I had a few install issues, mainly caused by Apt screwing up – for some reason, during the install it had commented out all the source addresses in /etc/apt/sources.list causing Ubuntu to try to apt-get everything from the 7.10 CD. Once I removed the comment tag from the deb.. lines in the sources.list everything seemed to work OK.
I have also had some issues with Nvidia drivers, and with Compiz – Compiz comes installed as default in 7.10 getting it to work properly is proving difficult though. Once I get it working properly, I will post here again with the solution – that’s if I don’t give up before then.