Vlogcanic

Every now and then something will happen to your Ubuntu system that will break your xorg.conf file: module updates, a recovery session gone bad, things of the sort, so that the next time you boot your Ubuntu system you find your monitor’s resolution to be configured to 800×600 instead of the 1680×1050 pixels you actually want.

At this point your choices are: to edit the xorg.conf file manually (which is on the tricky side of things, specially now that Ubuntu’s xorgs are “minimal” and a bit more touchy), to reinstall your system or to run an update on your xorg.conf. This last option may or may not solve your problem, depending on what the actual problem is, but is quick and much less risky or time consuming than the other two.

Open a terminal and type

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

enter your password, wait for the thing to be done, restart the Xorg session (reboot will do the trick or Ctrl+Alt+Backspace) and see what happens.

By the way: once you have a fully funcional system, keep a copy of your xorg.conf file somewhere safe and at hand so that you don’t need to do this stuff again.

Typical nuisance: your machine has Windows XP and a Linux distro sharing a hard drive with dual boot. Whenever you are using your Linux system (say, Ubuntu 7.04 or something alike) your NTFS partitions get mounted automatically without any hassle (unless you left them hibernating) BUT the day you are working (or trying to work) in Windows and need some file from your Linux filesystem you either have to reboot or have had to copy that file to an USB pendrive or the NTFS partition beforehand.

There are tools that allow your Windows to read ext2 and ext3 partitions out there (if, on the other hand, you have SuSE or used ReiserFS, or any other file system… you’ll need to wait for another post) with varying degrees of functionality.

The one tool I can recommend to suit your ext2/ext3 partition reading from Windows is Explore2fs because of the very simple reason that is the one free program that actually worked in my computers. It’s free, very small in size, simple, efficient, it has a GUI, needs no installation and it does the trick.

There are a couple of catches, of course. Explore2fs does not integrate into Windows Explorer (which means you won’t see your ext3 partition by clicking in “My Computer”) and any file you want to retrieve must be imported into the NTFS partition (no previews, thumbnails, direct access and things of the sort).

In  order to get Explore2fs all you need click in the official website link and download a binary version for Windows ( explore2fs-1.08beta9.zip is the one I’m using). Unzip the file, and double-click on the Tux icon in order to get it started.

It’s that simple.

As you probably already know, Ubuntu’s default desktop environment is GNOME. I like GNOME. It’s simple, intuitive, usable, things just work –when they work… this is Linux, anyway– and still retains quite a bit of versatility. And yet there’s stuff I like about KDE: its visually more impressive and some KDE applications (Amarok being probably the most obvious example) are simply better than their GNOME cousins.

Ubuntu’s Synaptic Package Manager makes it simple enough to install any KDE application you would want to use, but for those who like to walk an extra mile to have more choices (being able to run a KDE session in Ubuntu as well as GNOME in this case), here’s how to do it. How to make your GNOME-abled Ubuntu capable of running KDE sessions as well.

You’ll need to be connected to the internet or have a Kubuntu CD close at hand — unless you already have the CD I suggest you do it over the net… the download is about 193 MB which is much less than the CD’s 700MB download. You’ll also need 584MB of disk space.

So, open a terminal and type

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

type your password and then sit back and relax. You’ll be downloading almost 209 packages. Those are not exactly dependencies because kubuntu-desktop is not a package but a meta-package –something that calls for a bunch of other packages to be installed.

After the stuff is downloaded, apt-get is going to install and configure it automatically and at some point is going to ask you to choose a default desktop manager (gdm or kdm), go ahead and choose what you want. The thing will continue with the configuration task and once it’s done you can reboot. Just make sure you don’t interrupt the whole thing while it’s going on.

After reboot you’ll be able to choose between KDE or GNOME by clicking on “Options” at login and then clicking on KDE or GNOME.

Whatever desktop environment you want to use will give you all the default Ubuntu apps for both desktops and, also, future KDE application downloads will be much quicker as your dependencies will be much closer to being satisfied –or completely satisfied already.

The downside to all of this is the extra disk space you’ll need and longer, bigger updates, as you’ll have more packages installed.

Enjoy!

As it happens with the whole Linux and WiFi thing, getting the Encore ENUWI-G2 to work properly with Ubuntu Edgy Eft takes a bit of work but it’s not that hard.
I’m dividing this post in two parts:

1. Getting it to work with open access points.
2. Getting it to work with WEP access points.

I have a good reason for such division: I’m using this WiFi adapter in a very old machine with no ethernet, modem or other LAN device; since most of the first part can be done by installing packages from the LiveCD and downloading the drivers elsewhere and then transferring to the computer in question. The second part needs some other packages not in the LiveCD with a lot of dependencies so trying to install them all without an internet connections is really really unpractical.
The procedure is to blacklist the native module, and then install the Win98 driver through NDISWrapper –why the Win98 driver and not the WinXP driver, I hear you ask? Because the former is the one that works. That’ll get you going in keyless accesspoints.
The next thing is to install the RutilT gadget, the GUI wireless network manager for ralink chipsets. That will get your WEP working.

The WiFi adaptor: Encore ENUWI-G2. The Chipset: Ralink RT73, Realtek RTL8187

This is a USB adaptor, very small and cheap. The range is not exaclty great but it delivers good value for the approximate $15 it costs.
The chipset is Realtek/Ralink RTL8187/RT73. Ralink is one of the companies notably supporting Linux by publishing kernel modules themselves. In fact, Edgy Eft’s default kernel supports the chipset via a native module. The thing is that it doesn’t work, at least with this particular adaptor.

Enabling ENUWI-G2 WiFi adaptor to associate with open access points in Ubuntu Edgy.

You’ll need to start by downloading the chipset Windows drivers from this page. Unpack them in you Ubuntu system and keep them handy.
Also, install NDISWrapper (the program that will let you use a Win drive in Ubuntu). Launch your synaptics package manager look for ndiswrapper-common and ndiswrapper-utils-1.8 and install them. These are available from the LiveCD so you don’t need an internet connection, just to add your LiveCD as a repository in your Synaptics’ Edit>Add CD menu.
Next step: get rid of the module that is not doing its job. Open a console session and type

sudo rmmod r8187

and black listing by opening the module blacklist file

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

and adding the following line

blacklist r8187

Save and close.

Note: if in prior attempts to make the WiFi card work you installed other drivers you have to blacklist them as well.

Now open the network interfaces configuration file

sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces

and search for wlan0, you will find something like this

auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

if you don’t, add it at the file’s end and then add

wireless-essid ******

substituting your access point’s SSID.
Save and close. Once it’s done, find the directory where you unpacked the Win98 driver and, from there, type in your console:

sudo ndiswrapper -i Netrtuw.inf

then

sudo ndiswrapper -m

and then

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

What you are doing is: installing the Win98 driver to NDISWrapper, creating an alias and insterting it into your system.
At this point you should be able to connect the USB device, and having it scan succesfully

iwlist scan

but maybe it won’t connect. Patience, we are not done yet. In order to have ndiswrapper load itself with every boot type

sudo gedit /etc/modules

and add the line

ndiswrapper

save and close.
That’s it. Upon reboot, you system will connect succesfully to the open access point you specified in the network interfaces file. You can also try to restart the network devices, but USB adaptors, more often than not, need a full reboot.

Note: I am more or less assuming that you are working on a fresh installation as I was. If you are not and you already installed packages like the gnome network manager I’m sorry to tell you they are in the way. Uninstall them –these are not the things you need if you have this WiFi card, anyway. Go to your Synaptics Package Manager, find this packages: network-manager, network-manager-dev, network-manager-gnome and get rid of them.

Installing RutiliT in Ubuntu Edgy: enabling the ENUWI-G2 to associate with WEP access points.

And now for the WEP.
Goto http://cbbk.free.fr/bonrom/ and download the latest Rutilt version. It’s v0.15 in my case. Unpack it and open the directory.
Lanuch your Synaptics Package Manager. Find the following packages and install them

• libgtk2.0-dev
• g++-4.1

in case you haven’t set the g++ compiler also type in your console

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Once all that is done, it’s time to go the directory where RutilT source code was unzipped and become a root there

sudo bash

and run the configuration script by typing

./configure.sh

and compile the source code (a tiny bit of patience will be useful at this point)

make

then install

make install

and now you can run it by typing

rutilt

That’s it. Once it’s running you can go to the Site Survay tab click on the access point you want to use. You’ll be asked the WEP key and if you want to use dhcp. Now the ENUWI-G2 is fully functional.