Firebug with Firefox 3 in Ubuntu Hardy Heron
Browsers, UbuntuThat all changed this morning! I was looking through packages and discovered that there is a Firebug package in the Ubuntu repos. I promptly uninstalled Firebug from the extensions settings in the Firefox and closed my browser. I went to terminal and typed:
$ sudo apt-get install firebug... I then opened up Firefox 3 and BAM! It works exactly like it should. I have no idea what the difference is in this version of Firebug, but for whatever reason, my problems are solved.
CF8 error after upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 Hardy Heron - libstdc++.so.5
ColdFusion, Ubuntu, Linuxjikes: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Jikes! Well fortunately the fix is quite simple. Go to a terminal and install libstdc++5 like so:
$ sudo apt-get install libstdc++5Restart your application and carry on! I am not sure what changed between the distros, but apparently the libraries that ColdFusion uses for invoking webservices depend on this package.
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Adding spell checking to Evolution mail client
Ubuntu, Tips and TricksI am not sure why I have never pusued this until today, but I for some reason have never spent the time to figure out why I didn't have spell checking in my Evolution mail client. I knew that Evolution used the packages aspell and gnome-spell, which I already had installed, so why wasn't it working?
When I went into my composer settings in the Evolution preferences, I saw a big empty box that was the list of dictionaries that Evolution was using. You would think there would be some method of adding them from there, but unfortunately it isn't quite that obvious. To add the English dictionary I had to install the package aspell-en. Once I added this I reopened Evolution and Bamn!
There it is. For the copy/paste inclined, try the following:
#sudo apt-get install aspell gnome-spell aspell-enPlaying with my new webcam under Linux - watch me work!
Ubuntu, Fun, LinuxI made an impulse buy this past week ordering a Tripp-Lite clip-on webcam for my laptop. My wife and I are leaving next weekend to go on a week-long cruise without our kids, and I thought it might be fun to post some video blog entries for them while we are gone so they (and ultimately you as well) can see what we are up to.
I chose the Tripp-Lite camera due to pretty consistently positive cost/value reviews, although I was a bit worried that I couldn't find a single instance of anyone on the internet actually using one under Linux. Why should that stop me, huh? When it arrived I plugged it in and... nada... nothing! Although my laptop could see the device, I couldn't seem to get the drivers to work. After doing some digging around I found that it uses the Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. ZC0301 WebCam chipset, which seems to be very common in the cheapo-Chinese-made webcam space. There is an unbelievably awesome project out there where a guy named Michel Xhaard has written drivers for tons of webcam chipsets, and although mine was included I just couldn't seem to get it to work, no matter what I did.
Eventually it hit me that since I am using an Alpha version of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron), perhaps I should roll to a release version and see what happens. Given how easy it is to swap distros in Linux, I decided to roll back to a 7.04 (Feisty) remaster disc that was laying around. Upon plugging in my camera on the new distro it just worked natively! YAY.
So, now I am playing with the apps a bit. I found Camorama which does video captures and can FTP them to a server at regular intervals. I thought it might be fun to create a custom pod on my blog that shows a current picture of me working - or zoning out... picking my nose... whatever. So, the pic of me you see on the left is the most recent of those. The timestamp text is a little small when I resize the pic, but if you view it in full size (or pull out your magnifying glass), you can see the date.
As for recording video in Linux, I created a launcher that allows me to record AVI files with audio using mencoder. For those interested in doing that, you will first need to install mencoder:
$ sudo apt-get install mencoderI then created a shortcut icon that starts the recording:
mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video0:forceaudio:adevice=/dev/dsp -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64:mode=3 -o /home/dshuck/Desktop/webcam.aviThen I have another shortcut icon to stop the video:
killall mencoderLook for pointless videos in the near future...
`c->xlib.lock' failed error on Java applications
Ubuntu, JavaI am currently using the Alpha 3 release of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. Considering the fact that it is an alpha release, I tend to not get worked up over little errors that might occur. However, I have found one that I just couldn't get around. I use Aqua Data Studio for my database client and since loading Hardy Heron, I have been unable to run it.
When I would start it from a terminal, I would get a dump that looked like this:
#0 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0x90d00767] #1 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0(xcb_xlib_unlock+0x31) [0x90d008b1] #2 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6(_XReply+0xfd) [0x9039429d] #3 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0x9063e8ce] #4 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0x9061b067] #5 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0x9061b318] #6 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so(Java_sun_awt_X11GraphicsEnvironment_initDisplay+0x2f) [0x9061b61f] #7 [0xb4cff3aa] #8 [0xb4cf7f0d] #9 [0xb4cf7f0d] #10 [0xb4cf5249] #11 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0x637338d] #12 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0x64fd168] #13 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0x6373220] #14 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so(JVM_DoPrivileged+0x363) [0x63c90d3] #15 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/libjava.so(Java_java_security_AccessController_doPrivileged__Ljava_security_PrivilegedAction_2+0x3d) [0xb7d1096d] #16 [0xb4cff3aa] #17 [0xb4cf7da7] #18 [0xb4cf5249] #19 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0x637338d] java: xcb_xlib.c:82: xcb_xlib_unlock: Assertion `c->xlib.lock' failed. Aborted (core dumped)
Considering the fact that I used the Ubuntu sun-java6-jdk package from the Ubuntu repository, I decided that I would try the self-extracting bin that is available on http://java.sun.com. After swapping to that JVM, I still received the same dump and abort. After doing a bit of searching, I came across a patch in one of the bug reporting forums that effectively patches your JVM and prevents this error from occurring. I ran the patch and now everything works as it should. If you are receiving this error, create a shell script with the following content and run it. Assuming that it runs successfully, you should then be able to open the Java application that was failing.
#!/bin/sh # S. Correia # 2007 11 21 # A simple script to patch the java library in order # to solve the problem with "Assertion 'c->xlib.lock' failed." # see bug http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6532373 LIB_TO_PATCH=libmawt.so for f in `find /usr/lib/jvm -name "$LIB_TO_PATCH"` do echo "Patching library $f" sudo sed -i 's/XINERAMA/FAKEEXTN/g' "$f" done
Big thanks to "S. Correia" for getting me back on my feet!
Installing the JRE plugin in Firefox on Ubuntu
Ubuntu, Linux, JavaI have now been using Ubuntu for about 2 years, and oddly enough one thing that has always evaded me is how to properly set up the JRE plugin in Firefox. It *seems* like that ought to be an easy process, but it is one of those annoying little things that just hasn't worked for me, although it has never been important enough for me to chase down.
Yesterday I had to do a Webex presentation that required the JRE plugin, so I decided it was time to hack my way through it. One thing that I was thinking my be a factor is that I use Swiftfox instead of Firefox. I decided to take that out of the equation just to make sure, so I went ahead and removed it. When running Firefox and hitting about:plugins in the address bar, I could clearly see that the Java plugin was not in the list. I looked in ~/.mozilla/plugins, and saw a libjavaplugin.so in there, but it was obviously not doing its job.
So, after a lot of floundering, here are the basic steps I took that got me going...
- First, I completely uninstalled Firefox:
$ sudo apt-get --purge remove firefox
- I then reinstalled it:
$ sudo apt-get install firefox
- Next, I had previously installed the sun-java2-bin package, so I wanted to wipe all evidence of that and reinstall it. I did the following:
$ sudo apt-get --purge remove sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
- To reinistall it I did:
$ sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
- After doing this I opened Firefox and put about:plugins and still didn't see the Java stuff. At this point, I went into my ~/.mozilla/plugins directory. From earlier attempts I had some libjavaplugin.so and libjavaplugin-[something I don't remember].so. I decided to kill those off:
$ sudo rm libjavaplugin*
- At this point looking around I found a file /etc/alternatives/firefox-javaplugin.so that seemed like a decent candidate, so I did a symlink like this:
$ ln -s /etc/alternatives/firefox-javaplugin.so ./libjavaplugin.so
At this point I restarted the browser, hit about:plugins and was thrilled to see an entirely new section for Java!
Now, take the steps above with a grain of salt. I certainly don't want to infer that this is by any means the right way to get it working, but it is the series of steps that finally got it working for me. Hopefully someone else might get something out of it as well.
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