I have a HTC Droid Incredible running the custom ROM CyanogenMod 7.1.x. For the most part it runs great, but there are moments when it feels like the Armageddon of 2012 is happening to my phone. No matter what application I open it will frustratingly crash in mere moments. What I’ve noticed is the catalyst to this crash-o-thon starts with some sort of “google framework” crash. Makes sense, break the framework and everything else should be coming down with it. Once that happens I will start to feel the instability of my rooted device.

The simple solution, yet temporary, is to clear the cache. I’m guessing there is some executed code or data that got corrupted, which in turn causes the apps to crash. The two types of cache that I clear are:

• cache partition
• Dalvik cache – a decent explanation of what this cache is can be found in the reference section below.

Assumptions

I’m constantly making assumptions about things — it’s become quite a skill. And I will continue my assumptions by stating that this process is for rooted users. I’m going to assume that since your device is rooted, it’s most likely that you have a custom ROM, which also means you have ROM Manager installed. The recovery section of this post is based on ClockworkMod (it’s a part of ROM Manager).

Cache-clearing Process

1. Hold down the power button of your device to get the “phone options” prompt.
2. Click “Reboot”, then choose “Recovery”. Click “OK”.
3. Your phone will reboot and you will soon be in the recovery screen.
4. Choose the option “wipe cache partition”. If that option isn’t there then head to “mounts and storage” and choose “format /cache.”
5. Next choose “advanced” (from the main screen) and then click “Wipe Dalvik Cache”.
6. Once that’s finished you can reboot the device.

I’ve noticed that once I reboot the device it seems to get stuck at the point where its trying to load the custom ROM. I would give it about 5 minutes. If nothing changes, remove the battery and boot the device again. Whatever the device tried to initialize the first time should be there and the device will boot just fine.

I mentioned earlier that this is a temporary solution. I don’t know the cause of the framework crash; it may be a combination of things, but at least you have a way out now.

Let me know if this process works for you OR if you have a better process. At this point I’m just a tinkerer of Android so I might be talking crap about the whole cache and corruption. I’d love to know.

References

1. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3844295&postcount=5
2. http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/76110-what-dalvik-cache.html#post710236
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)

I always struggle with quickly enabling MP3 playback on a fresh install of Fedora. There are legal reasons (which I’m not interested in) as to why Fedora doesn’t ship with MP3 support right out of the box. So; that’s what third-party repositories are for. Simply install the RPM Fusion repository and then install the “Ugly” GStreamer Plugin.

# yum localinstall –nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

# yum install gstreamer-plugins-ugly

If you need other support you can always install all the plugins for GStreamer…

# yum install gstreamer-plugins-*

Another method is simply installing VLC. This media player is bursting at its seams with codex goodness.

# yum install vlc

You’re welcome!

Good ol’ Secure Shell or SSH — who would want to live without them!? To give you a text-book definition; SSH is a network protocol that allows data to be exchanged using a secure channel between two networked devices. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let get down to business. You’ve got a fresh install of Fedora 15, with that wonky GNOME 3 desktop, and need to figure out how to enable SSH. This article is simply a barebones way of getting started. There’s a better method to make the SSH session more secure, but I haven’t researched that yet.In order to run some of the commands you’ll need to have the root account’s password.

Enable SSH Daemon

First things first, let’s make sure that the ssh daemon is running. Without that we’re not using this service at all. Open gnome-terminal and type:

$ su -
Password:
# systemctl start sshd.service

Now that it’s started you’ll need to keep it going in case you reboot your machine. Run the following command to have it start on-boot:

# systemctl enable sshd.service

After executing that command I received the message below. Tomasz Torcz was kind of enough let me know that the above command will redirect to chkconfig until systemd unit file is shipped with sshd.

sshd.service is not a native service, redirecting to /sbin/chkconfig.
Executing /sbin/chkconfig sshd on

Verify Firewall Setting

By default port 22 is open in the firewall, but it’s good to double check. Open system-config-firewall. You can either type in that name or navigate to Activities | Applications | Firewall.

Test the Connection

The easiest way to test is run the ssh command in your terminal. Another method is installing an SSH client on your Android device (ConnectBot) or installing PuTTY on your Windows machine. If you’re going to test the connection on the same machine, simply open gnome-terminal and type:

$ ssh user@hostname

For instance my username is “marc” and my computer is 10.0.0.2 (I could never figure out how to configure my hostname properly). So; I type in ssh marc@10.0.0.2. I’d get a warning message saying:

The authenticity of host ’10.0.0.2 (10.0.0.2)’ can’t be established.
RSA key fingerprint is [some long identification number in 2-digit sequence]
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

Once I typed in “yes”, I was then able to type in my password for “marc” and continue on. That’s it. Have fun SSHin’ into your machine from remote places.

Ever wanted to run a command normally executed by the root user account, but didn’t want to log in as root? Hell ya! I know I have. The easiest solution to this problem is to add your user account to a file located at /etc/sudoers and you’re good to go. In this example I’m running Fedora 14 x86_64 (Gnome desktop) in a non corporate environment. The catch is you need to already have root access.

Open gnome-terminal and type the following:

$ su -
Password [type in the root password here]

Your bash line will change from $ to # indicating that you are now using the root account. At this point you’re going to use a text editor to modify the file /etc/sudoers. My preferred graphical editor is gedit.

# gedit /etc/sudoers

Once the document is open you will scroll down until you see:

## Allow root to run any commands anywhere
root            ALL=(ALL)     ALL

Simply append that section with your user account and save the file. You will need to log out so that the sudoers parameters propagates the system. Let’s pretend that your user account is epicman.

## Allow root to run any commands anywhere
root            ALL=(ALL)     ALL
epicman     ALL=(ALL)     NOPASSWD: ALL

That “NOPASSWD” at the end is a pretty convenient setting. It’s self explanatory, but it pretty much allows you to execute “$ sudo <whatever command>” without having to type in a password. Pretty sweet.

References

1. http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/man/1.8.1/sudoers.man.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo

I’m somewhat taken back by the lack of understanding towards Google’s Chrome Web Store from various hosts on technology podcasts that I listen to, such as: Buzz Out Loud and Tech News Today. The general consensus is, “Why do we need yet another marketplace?” And “How many times will a developer have to create an application?” It’s almost as if they can’t see the future coming. In my tiny/little world I’m not afraid of marketplaces because they remind me of the software repositories available to us in Linux. Also with the semantic web meaning something to web developers, we’re finally clearing the jungle of web applications not working on multiple browsers.

Where is Google Taking Us?

Before I continue I’m going to make some assumptions, and of course we know that assuming things will make you look like an ASSumption. We should all be aware that Google more or less acts as a catalyst to what’s coming in the world of technology. The company is stacked to the brim with very smart engineers and forward thinkers; the “pathfinding” is an inevitable result. We all know that Google is horrible (simply horrible) at marketing. So; whenever they launch a product or service it may not make sense to us now, but when it all comes together you’ll be glad that Google did it and not some other mega corporation; looking at their bottom line.

Segmentation

The big debate for the podcasters is them trying to understand why Google has both the Android OS and Chrome OS. To me, it’s pretty simple. Android isn’t ready to be on devices such as a Tablet, Notebook, Netbook, or a Desktop. Instead of forking Chrome OS to work on small devices such as a smart phone, Google focused on a “small device OS” and happily named it “Android.” As for the other devices, with the operating system becoming a thing of the 90′s, Google is focusing on a platform that can interface with the increasing number of applications hosted on the Internet.

So; What About the Web Store

This web store is kind of greasing the pipes for us that already live on the Web. For those of us that have an understanding that Chrome OS is still alive and the Internet will continue to expand our abilities to be productive… the web store is giving us a glimpse into life using Chrome OS.

For one; it only works if you have a Chrome browser. While using the browser on your desktop, try using ONLY web applications. Figure out what applications you currently use and then pick the equivalent app in the Chrome Web Store. Below is a comparison table for desktop applications and their web-based counterparts.

Chrome Notebook

I signed up to the pilot program for a Cr-48 Chrome notebook. Normally; I didn’t think it was possible for a lone web developer, such as myself to get one of these, but while listening to these short-sighted podcasters — I’m optimistic. I’m a perfect candidate, I practically live on the web anyway. My biggest challenge would be web development. My most intense developing situation would be a PHP application connecting to a MySQL database, but for the most part I develop simple, yet web standards compliant web sites [INSERT SHAMELESS PLUG FOR DIGITAL ALIAS HERE]. If Google provides me an enhanced version of Notepad+ or Bluefish, I think I’d live.

I’d love to know what you think of the Chrome Web Store and where our Internet gods are taking us!

Some of us have experienced  a problem getting the Fedora 14 Live to work correctly on a USB drive. Well; today I finally found that solution and I’d like to share that knowledge and help heal the wounds. There are a couple routes to take in order to  prepare your USB drive to boot Fedora. The more popular method is LiveUSB Creator. It was brought to my attention that Fedora 14 Live uses syslinux version 4.02. I’m guessing the website is dishing out their package with syslinux version 3.9.2. What to do!?

1. Method 1: Grab the Correct Version of Syslinux. Visit the FAQ page for LiveUSB Creator and you’ll see a link for the appropriate syslinux RPM. Located here at http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/14/Everything/i386/os/Packages/syslinux-4.02-3.fc14.i686.rpm
2. Method 2: Use UNetbootin. You can use another program called UNetbootin. This is the method that I used. Worked like a charm.

The Source of the Solution

I can’t finish this post without giving props to the forum thread that saved my bacon. The entire discussion can be found here at LiveUSB not booting Fedora 14.

Last night I watched Parasite Dolls on Netflix. Wow; what a bad Anime. I gave it two stars, but during the scenes when the hacker was working on his computer I felt a deep loss in my heart. It’s been about 2, maybe 3 months since I last logged into my Fedora partition. I fear that I may miss out on Fedora 13 by time I get it working. It’s a very long story to tell, but one of these days I’m going to take some time out of my busy schedule and fix my computer.

In the meantime if anyone has a motherboard that’s similar to a BioStar TA690G AM2 5.x – contact me. I think I broke mine. :’(

I think I’ve earned some FOSS badges of honor this past week or so. I’ve become very efficient at flashing my USB key and getting it ready to either boot Fedora or Ubuntu Live.  There is a way to totally customize your USB key by not having to use Pendrive or LiveUSB Creator, but I’ll leave that for the advanced post. However, in this post, I’ll talk about the basics of getting your USB key ready to test the latest versions of Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.04. It looks like a pretty intimidating list of what needs to be done, but they each have very short executions:

• What’s Needed
• Getting Your ISO’s
• Getting the USB Software
• Preparing Your USB Key
• Boot via USB key

As a side note, I’m a little embarrassed to say that I did this in Microsoft Windows.  At the time, I couldn’t get into my Fedora 12 x86_64 install. It was a simple GRUB issue, but I didn’t make the effort to correct it. Quite the irony (-5 HP).

What’s Needed

I’m going to primarily reference the Fedora Project, but the concept is basically the same for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. You will need:

• A USB Flash Drive with at least 1 to 2 GB of storage (here’s a list from Newegg).
• A Linux distribution’s “Live” ISO file (ex: fedora-13-x86_64-Live.iso, ubuntu-10.04-Live.iso, scrappydolinux-x86_64-Live.iso, etc)
• Software to convert the Linux distribution’s ISO file into a working bootable format. The two most popular are:
  • Pendrive [software] [article] – the information architecture for this web site is horrible (just an FYI).
  • Fedora LiveUSB Creator [web site]

Getting Your ISO’s

So; you’re ready to get your ISO file. All (or most) Linux distributions have a list of additional servers that are hosting various files. Since they “mirror” what’s on the main web site, other people can get to that data quicker. If the main server is bogged down with users trying to get the latest distribution release then the mirrors can take some of that stress.  All that to say – download the ISO file that you want to put onto your USB key. In this example, I’m going to download Fedora 13 x86_64, which can be found at:

• http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/ – this is the starting point. From here I can go into whatever directory your heart desires.
• http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releases/13/Fedora/x86_64/iso/Fedora-13-x86_64-DVD.iso – it’s a pretty ugly URL, but whatcha’ gonna do!?

Download the ISO file onto your computer somewhere for safe keeping. You’re going to reference it later.

Edited after Peter’s comment below. Fedora also has alternative versions of its distro, which are tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets. For instance in my original post I used Mobiln as an example of “mirror site”. In fact Moblin is something specific to mobile users (ex: netbook) and it’s really awesome. You can find out more from their Spin site.

Getting the USB Software

For Ubuntu and Fedora the recommended software used to get your USB key ready for booting is Pendrive and Fedora LiveUSB Creator (as mentioned in the “What’s Needed” section). Fedora LiveUSB Creator software will need to be installed, but Pendrive (also known as Universal USB Installer) runs out-of-the-box. In this scenario, install Fedora LiveUSB Creator.

Preparing Your USB Key

I’m expressing a big fat /facepalm as I write this, but in Windows (ugh) you can open Windows Explorer (keyboard shortcut Win+E), right-click on your USB key drive and do a quick format. You can leave the default setting (file system: FAT, Allocation 32 KB, etc) I believe the software does it too, but I haven’t verified that. Once it’s formatted you’re ready to go.

1. Run the Fedora LiveUSB Creator program from the Start Menu.
2. Click the “Browse” button under “Use existing Live CD” section.
3. Locate your Fedora-13-x86_64-Live.iso file.
4. Select your USB key under “Target Device” section.
5. Choose the amount of extra space you’d like to use for miscellaneous storage (totally optional)
6. Click on “Create Live USB”.

For Universal USB Installer, it’s recommended that you use their preset distribution list. I’ve tried it a couple times with “Try Some Other Live Linux ISO” and I end up with errors and a non-working boot sequence.

I’ve rinsed and repeat this process numerous times while testing different devices. It was smooth sailing for the most part (I hope that’s your experience as well).

Boot via USB key

You’re almost there… that sweet-spot of booting Linux (temporarily) onto your existing hardware. The main thing you’ll need to figure out is whether your BIOS supports booting from a USB device. When you boot your machine and you see one of the bootable devices as “USB-ZIP” then you’re good to go! If not, reference your motherboard’s manual and see how to enable this feature.

So; once you make it past the machine boot sequence and choose “USB-ZIP” (or if you set it as the primary or secondary choice) then the rest should be cake. It’ll start like any other normal LiveCD. It’ll give you the options of choosing to run the distro, install it, test it, etc. Have fun whoring-out your system to the array of Linux distributions available in a try-before-you-buy format. Apple and Windows can’t do that! Booyah!

References

• Fedora Project [download] [mirrors] [torrents]
• Live CD
• Mirror web hosting
• Ubuntu Desktop Edition [download] [mirrors]

It’s probably not a real movie, but I love it. I would certainly spent my money to support a movie like this. It’s in a different language so make sure you can read the captions.

Today, May 25th, is known by many devout Star War fans as “Day of the Jedi“.  Yet after doing a little bit of research I now know that today is really “Geek Pride Day“. I like “Day of the Jedi” better! I missed posting something on the epically-coincidental “May the fourth be with you” Day (May 4th) so I made sure not to miss this opportunity.

What is “Day of the Jedi”? For those poor Star Trek souls that don’t know, I’ll shed some light on the subject. Or you can look it up on Wikipedia like I did.

The Profound Meaning of Day of the Jedi

The release dates for the original Star Wars series were Episode IV: May 25 1977, Episode V: May 21 1980, and Episode VI: May 25 1983. So; choose the common denominator (May 25)… and there you go! Now go out side or on the Internet and show Star Wars even MORE love than you already do!

Rights and Responsibilities

What really made me want to write a post were the “rights and responsibilities” of Geek Pride Day. You can find it on their Wikipedia page.

A manifesto was created to celebrate the first Geek Pride Day which included the following list of basic rights and responsibilities of geeks.

Rights

1. The right to be even geekier.
2. The right to not leave your house.
3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
7. The right to be out of style.
8. The right to be overweight and short-sighted.
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
10. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities

1. Be a geek, no matter what.
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a “museum of geekiness.”
6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
9. Never throw away anything related to geekdom.
10. Try to take over the world!

Why is this Post Categorized as Linux-Related?

That’s a very good question. 1.) I put this paragraph (or disclaimer) here because this post will be picked up by Planet Fedora. 2.) I could be over-generalizing, but I’m assuming that there are more Star Wars fans within the Linux community than in Windows, Mac, or whatever non-Linux community is out there. 3.) After posting this I realized that TODAY is the release date for Fedora 13 Goddard! Now that must tell you something about the Fedora Project folks. They know how to release a distribution in style! Enjoy this very special day of the Jedi and go install Fedora!