Chris Jean :: Page 10

Compiling POV-Ray in Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit

I wanted to play around with POV-Ray, a program capable of creating ray traced images. Basically, this program can create some amazing photo-realistic scenes. Check out their Hall of Fame to get an idea of what some people have done with the tool.

I first checked out POV-Ray years ago and tested it out on an ancient 386. I just happened to remember it, and wanted to try it out again to have some fun.

As with many software packages out there today, a 64-bit binary version is not available. So, here are some instructions on how to compile it for yourself quickly and easily.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Amazing Formula 1 Video

I’m not exactly a racing fan, but I have enjoyed watching races now and again. Out of all the motorsports, I find Formula Racing the most interesting. Thus, I was very interested when I saw this video.

New rules are going into effect for Formula 1 starting this year with changes that will continue through 2011. Red Bull Racing put together this video to highlight the changes that they are making to their vehicles to comply with these new regulations.

Even if you aren’t a racing fan, I suggest that you watch the video. The special effects are incredible.

Categories Random Ramblings, Videos
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Generating MIME Type in PHP is not Magic

I’m working on a project where I needed to generate a MIME type given a file name. Not only did I need to create a solution that worked, I also needed the solution to be compatible with PHP 4/5 and not require any additional software to be installed on the host. I thought this would be a simple matter of finding a PHP function that does this. Unfortunately, things were not as simple as this.

Categories Development, Tips 'n Tricks
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Navigate in Ubuntu Nautilus Using the Mouse Back/Forward Buttons

I’m used to my back and forward buttons on my mice being able to move backwards and forwards through file browsers. However, this function doesn’t work in Nautilus for Gnome, which is the default file browser for Ubuntu. Naturally, I started to dig into the problem.

I found out that I’m not the only one who is irritated by the lack of back/forward navigation via the mouse. On the Ubuntu Brainstorm site where people share ideas on how to improve Ubuntu, there is an idea topic and three duplicate topics all talking about adding this feature.

I have also discovered that there is a way to add this functionality. It isn’t pretty, but it does work.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Easily Burn ISO Files in Ubuntu Linux

An iso image is an uncompressed archive file that contains an ISO 9660 or UDF file system. These file systems define the format of data as it is recorded onto media such as CDs and DVDs.

So what are iso files good for? Here are a few ways that iso files can be used:

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Repartitioning Ubuntu and Mothballing Windows

Since I have officially been using Ubuntu on my office laptop for more than a solid month without once booting into Windows, it’s time to mothball the Windows partition in order to give Linux more room to breathe.

I seriously considered removing Windows entirely as I don’t believe that I’ll have any legitimate need for it in the future. However, I think that I can get the Windows partition down to a manageable size and then forget about it.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Mount Dell Studio 17 Card Reader in Ubuntu

I’m using Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit, Intrepid Ibex, but these instructions should work for users of other distros (such as Linux Mint, Fedora, Sabayon, etc) as well.

This morning I needed to pull some images off of my camera’s SD card using my Dell Studio 17’s built-in card reader. I plugged the card in, got sidetracked for a few minutes, and then realized that I couldn’t find a mount point for my card.

Usually when I plug in the card, it is automatically identified and mounted. Then Nautilus would show a listing in the left-hand pane for the card allowing me easy access to the contents. However, that didn’t happen today.

I thought about rebooting in order to see if it was just a fluke, but I didn’t want to save all my projects, close out all my applications, reboot, and load everything back up. So, I thought I’d see about mounting the device manually. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult at all.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Getting Rid of Tilde Files in Ubuntu

If you are looking at file listings (ls) in Terminal on your Linux system, you may have seen duplicate files that end with a tilde (~). Such as having two files, notes.txt and notes.txt~, in the same directory.

I have found these to be quite annoying and have to manually remove them before I package up the files. I also didn’t know exactly where they came from until today.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Case-Insensitive Tabbing in Ubuntu Terminal

Using the Linux terminal is a fantastic thing. It gives you access to hundreds of great commands and programs, can make navigating through complex directories quick and easy, and offers tools like tab auto-complete that make doing all this a breeze. However, there is a caveat for some people: Linux is case-sensitive. Personally, I love how Linux is case-sensitive, but I know that not everyone will agree with me.

There are ways to create case-insensitive partitions, but doing this has its own technical and functional limitations. If anyone is interested, drop me a line, and I’ll work on a post on this topic.

For those that don’t like how everything in Terminal is case-sensitive, there is a solution that will relieve some of the pain. You can configure your system to make tab auto-complete case-insensitive even on a case-sensitive file system.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Forcing a Device to Unmount in Ubuntu Linux

I recently ran into an issue where a mounted SSHFS filesystem refused to unmount.

I tried to unmount it from inside Nautilus by right-clicking the mount and selecting Unmount, but this failed with an error message. The error told me that it couldn’t unmount the device and gave a reason of “mount disagrees with the fstab”.

I then edited the fstab (sudo vi /etc/fstab) and commented out the entry for the device. I tried to unmount in Nautilus again, but this time it told me that I couldn’t unmount the device because I wasn’t root and the device was not listed in fstab. I then uncommented the previously commented line and saved the file again.

Time to get dirty. I tried to manually run umount, but it failed:

[chris@home ~]$ sudo umount /mnt/share
umount: /mnt/share: device is busy.
        (In some cases useful info about processes that use
        the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))
[chris@home ~]$

This was getting personal now as the previous messages said nothing about the device being in use. I closed out every application and tried again. Same error message.

I followed the instructions and ran man lsof followed by man fuser to find out more about those recommended commands. fuser was the winner.

fuser allows you to find out detailed information about processes that are using specific files or sockets. In addition to getting information, it allows you to kill processes accessing the file or socket. This was exactly what I was looking for.

After reading up on the fuser syntax, I ran the following:

[chris@home ~]$ sudo fuser -km /mnt/share
/mnt/share/: 9004c
[chris@home ~]$

This command basically translates into “find every process that is accessing the /mnt/share mount point and kill it”. Since I was unsure of the ownership of the processes that would be killed, I ran it with sudo to make sure that any processes could be killed.

The /mnt/share/: 9004c response means that a process with an ID of 9004 was terminated.

Again, I ran:

[chris@home ~]$ sudo umount /mnt/share
[chris@home ~]$

This command cheerily replied with nothing, which is a good sign as it means that the umount command succeeded.

Finally, the mount is unmounted. Now if only I could remember what I was trying to do when this problem happened…

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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