Ubuntu 9.10 on my Thinkpad T60p GDM + ATI issues at startup

OK - so this T60p is getting a little bit battered looking - screen needs replaced for the second time etc...but it's still working. I've been running Ubuntu 9.04 for the last few months with no problems - even the upgrade from 8.10 was smooth(ish).

Yesterday I ran the upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10. the result was anything but smooth. The system started but wouldn't get past the xsplash screen - where the login is supposed to appear, there was no sound either. I could log in to a tty screen via 'ctrl+alt+F2' - that was good. I noticed a lot of posts regarding issues with ATI drivers, and nvidia for that matter, so experimented with old versions of xorg.conf to no avail. the system would boot to a GUI if I chose 'Safe Mode' - normal boot - login at the prompt and run 'startx' - however performance was poor as the ATI drivers were not in use. end result was poor performance - no sound - and generally poor experience.

I burned a new 9.10 Live DVD and it loaded perfectly - no problems - so the issue must have related to the upgrade from my 9.04 system. Luckily enough I keep my home directory on a /dev/sda3, root on /dev/sda1 and swap on /dev/sda2.

I booted the 9.10 Live DVD, chose install, and formatted the root and swap partitions - leaving /dev/sda3 intact. Once the install was completed I mapped a drive to /dev/sda3 where my original home directory sits - the new path being '/mnt/home/name'. Messana has a simple and good guide here on mounting other partitions. Now that the original home partition was mounted I edited /etc/fstab (make a backup first) and changed my home directory to '/mnt/home/name'.

Once all that was done - I logged out and back in again to find my old workspace in all it's splendour, which was nice.

The simple message is if you have difficulty upgrading - just do a fresh install instead of fixing the issues as there were just too many issues to fix. Make your backups of course.

Searching Domino - a little Omnifind integration

I worked with an IBM Business Partner today to setup the integration between Domino 8.5 and Omnifind Enterprise Edition - also version 8.5 coincidentally.

Ominfind was already setup and working on multiple sources of information - Domino was simply an additional source to crawl. The integration with Domino can be over NRPC (requiring Domino libraries to be available to the Omnifind crawler), or via NDIIOP.

While reading the documentation (rtfm - we actually did it) We enabled DIIOP, setup the Omnifing Crawler for "notes" and were able to search and retrieve results. All in about 20 minutes. You could choose to search all nsf, individual nsf, data directories and individual notes views restricted by a simple selection formula.

We also installed the Notes plugin to place Omnifind in the Lotus Notes search bar - this also required editing to notes.ini to point to the Omnifind server. The end result was a fully integrated search across all the available datasources in the lab - with results available in the notes client.

My only question would be the relative performance of the DIIOP method as opposed to NRPC where a customer has a large amount of data to crawl.

The integration was smooth and really quite easy.

Issues upgrading to Firefox 3.5 on Ubuntu

Upgrading Firefox from 3.0 to 3.5 on Ubuntu proved to be unusually awkward, however I got there in the end.

As 3.5 is now in the Ubuntu repositories I simply selected it in Synaptic Package Manager, clicked "apply" and it installed smoothly, however when I ran Firefox from the icon it actually launched Firefox 3.0 - not the shiny new 3.5 I was expecting. This was fixed by changing the symbolic link to point to the right version.

In the /usr/bin directory I ran "sudo rm firefox" to remove the existing link and "sudo ln firefox-3.5 firefox" to create the new link, allowing Firefox 3.5 to load as default.

So whilst happily launching Firefox 3.5 I now got an error message stating "XML Parsing Error: undefined entity Location: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul Line Number 34, Column 1" and of course Firefox crashed out.

To fix this I deleted the existing profile by running "mv .mozilla .mozilla.old" in the home directory "/home/yourname".

So after two quick fixes it's up and running and appears to be quite good.

I decided to blog this as otherwise I'd end up repeating the procedure and wonder how I fixed it last time :)

Shutter - Screenshot tool on Ubuntu

Screenshots are a necessary evil in order to make various documents a little more accessible. Various tools exist to do this and it all comes down to ease of use and personal preference.

Shutter is a new app for Ubuntu and it's the best tool yet in terms of being able to select the section of screen that I want to grab - and it can be downloaded here

It's a bit strange to take a screenshot of a screenshot tool - so here's a link to the shutter website instead along with a suitable screenshot.

Notes 8.5.1 on Ubuntu - composite applications

We had a recent update to the latest build on Lotus Notes 8.5.1 on Ubuntu. As usual the update appeared to go perfectly.

One of the new capabilities I had looked forward to was the inclusion of the Composite Application Editor (cae). The synaptic package name was "ibm-notes-cae".

When I created a new Composite application - I was given the instruction to use the ..."'Actions > Edit application' menu item to add content." Alas the "Actions" menu was not visible. First I tried removing the ibm-notes-cae package and reinstalling it, however this had no effect.

Ray Davies suggested I shut down Notes and rename the "workspace" directory within the notes/data directory and restarting the Notes Client. After a restart the "Actions" menu appeared and I could edit the composite app.

I did have to recreate the previous widgets I had been using - but that was not such a big deal - and I was back to work in five minutes flat.

Which was nice :-)

Charging a blackberry on Ubuntu - barry

My Blackberry Curve is pretty handy - but it wasn't charging from the USB on the Thinkpad running Ubuntu.

I installed "barry" from here and ran the "bcharge" command from the command line which reportedly ups the USB from 100ma to 400ma.

The Curve seems to be charging now ! lovely.

All thanks to the dapper Martin Owens

Reply to all email storm - don't blame the users

I always thought that reply to all was a bad idea as a default, It's nice that it is no longer the default in Notes, however this story does take it a little further.

An email storm has been created, apparently, by too many people doing "reply to all". However the resolution seems to be to blame the users of the system and ask that they be disciplined for clicking "reply to all" when using large distribution lists.

Maybe they are missing a point and should upgrade to Notes 8.5 :-)