News for the ‘documentation’ Category

* thunderbird & lightning | contacts, calendar, mail syncing for gmail

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Automatic email setup add-on: Gmail IMAP Account Setup THUNDERBIRD VERSION 3 HAS NATIVE SUPPORT FOR GMAIL.

Manual email instructions: Setup Thunderbird according to gmail’s imap instructions

At the bottom of gmail’s instructions you will see “recommended settings“. Don’t follow the first recommendation, regarding deleting. Instead of actually (permanently) deleting email we can have it moved to the Trash folder, as if you were using the gmail web interface. Gmail has strange folders structure in imap. Here are a few steps to work with gmail folders (Of course, they call them labels :-)

Under Account settings -> Copies and Folders
1. un-check “place a copy in… sent”
2. change  “drafts and templates” to Other -> [your gmail address] -> [Gmail] -> Drafts
Note: Sent and Drafts will automatically show up in their respective folders, as long as you send mail through smtp.gmail.com.
3. Go to Options/Preferences (under tools or edit menu). Go to Advanced -> Config Editor. In the Filter box, type “mail.server.server” and look for the gmail address. Whichever number is in the X place of mail.server.serverX, is what you want to use for the new value.
Right click New -> String “enter mail.server.serverX.trash_folder_name” (X is the number that correlates to your gmail account, from above). Next enter “[Gmail]/Trash”. Restart Thunderbird. Delete something, if it does not go into the [Gmail]/Trash folder restart again. It should work after that. Now you can delete the Trash folder (represented as [Imap]/Trash in gmail)

Contact syncing: A few options.
A very popular and stable add-on Zindus Its great but does not support the address field syncing. (Enter your user/pass under Tools -> Zindus)
gContactSync has support for the address field but is very early in development. If any contacts have an empty email field it adds a @nowhere.invalid email address in Tbird. Thankfully this is not synced to your gmail account!
Also, This looks promising but does not work with Tbird3 Google Contacts.
BACKUP CONTACTS BEFORE SYNCING!

Calendar Sharing: Use the add-on Lightning (aka sunbird as a Tbird add on).  Lightning 1.0b1 does not integrate with Thunderbird 3 toolbar layout very well. It messed up the “file” “edit” and “view” menus. Although, they aren’t really missed by anyone and are sort of accessible if you really need them. Try it for yourself, its not too bad.
For native support follow the Google sunbird instructions for CalDav (recommended)
There is also another plugin called Provider for Google Calendar that can be used..

Posted: December 19th, 2009
Categories: documentation
Tags: , , , , , ,
Comments: No Comments.

* Spoof MAC address in Windows

start -> run -> regedit
make a backup, if you want.
goto:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002bE10318}

look through the list of subkeys (0000, 0001, etc)
DriverDesc keyword will tell you which network adapter. For example, “NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller”
when you find it, right click and add -> new -> string value

new keyword:

Value Name: = NetworkAddress
Value Data: = your new MAC, with no space or : For example, 0019DB71C830

then type:

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /all   (to verify the new mac took)

Now your a l33t Winblows H4|<3r. If you want to go back to your hardware MAC, remove the NetworkAddress key and restart the interface.

FYI, in gnu/linux follow these simple steps to change your MAC address

ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:19:DB:71:C8:30

if you get this error

SIOCSIFHWADDR: Device or resource busy - you may need to down the interface

do this

ifconfig eth0 down

and try to change the MAC again.

Posted: October 13th, 2009
Categories: documentation, networking, wireless
Tags: , ,
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* Linux-Libre and Realtime patch

I wanted to share some notes on patching the Linux Libre kernel with realtime capabilities. The Linux-Libre project pulls out all the un-free bits from standard Linux. Contrary to popular belief, Linux has many non-free parts, small binary or obfuscated pieces of code for various hardware. I have a Lenovo T61 laptop. I removed the Intel wireless pci express card and put in a Atheros AR5008 wifi card using ath9k completely free wireless driver. Now my system (as far as I can tell:-) is completely free.

I make music and the realtime patch makes the latency of my system and soundcard very low. This is a unique advantage that the gnu/linux operating system gives its users. I highly recommend a realtime patch for anyone working with audio and video on gnu/linux.

Start by getting the rt patch http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/rt/ for the kernel version you want to compile.
Then get the corresponding Linux-Libre version http://www.linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/

tar xfvj linux-2.6.29.6-libre1.tar.bz2
cd linux-2.6.29.6
bzcat ../patch-2.6.29.6-rt23.bz2 | patch -p1

Now Linux is patched with realtime
now its time for

make menuconfig

from the RT How to:
* enable CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT
* activated the High-Resolution-Timer Option (Attention, the amount of supported platforms by the HR timer is still very limited. Right now the option is only supported on x86 systems, PowerPC and ARM Support are however in queue.)
* disabled all Power Management Options like ACPI or APM (not all ACPI functions are “bad”, but you will have to check very carefully to find out which function will affect your real time system. Thus it’s better to simply disable them all if you don’t need them. APM, however, is a no-go.) NOTE: Since rt patch 2.6.18-rt6 you will probably have to activate ACPI option to activate high resolution timer. Since the TSC timer on PC platforms, as used in the previous versions, are now marked as unsuitable for hrt mode due to many lacks of functionalities and reliabilties, you will need i.E. pm_timer as provided by ACPI to use as clock source. To activate the pm_timer, you can just activate the ACPI_SUPPORT in menuconfig and deactivate all other sub modules like “fan”, “processor” or “button”. If you have an old pc, which lacks ACPI support, you migh have problems using the high resolution timer.

I personally have not removed my power management options, as I use a laptop and want these features. I don’t notice any problems but have not tried it without them to know what I’m missing.

then compile the kernel, the debian way

fakeroot make-kpkg kernel_image
sudo dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.29.6-libre1-lapkah_2.6.29.6-libre1-lapkah-10.00.Custom_i386.deb

Here is my latest config and the debian package for libre realtime for lenovo t61

~ May your kernel build and your modules have your back ~

Posted: October 11th, 2009
Categories: documentation, music
Tags: , , , , , ,
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