Category: Linux & FOSS - CombatWombat Speaks

Clone linux to smaller SSD

by cw

I am running Debian Wheezy, and needed to clone a running installation to a smaller SSD drive, so that the SSD can be used in another laptop. My current Harddisk is 500 GB, the SSD is 128GB. As you may be aware, most disk cloning softwares, including my… more »

XFCE Bluetooth

by cw

Wow, looooong time no post, eh? I am here to tell you that I am on Debian Wheezy, running on a Dell Inspiron 17R (n7110) laptop. I use XFCE 4.8 for my DE. Thunar is the default file manager in XFCE, and is fast and easy... but doesn't natively handle… more »

VNC remote Helpdesk

by cw

Because things keep changing on the VNC landscape, I've found that latest versions of Linux cannot run with xtightvncviewer any longer for providing a remote listener to UltraVNC's SC help software. I'm now running Archlinux on one machine, and Ubu-Ja… more »

Google OS a reality?

by cw

For years there has been speculation of Google making it's own OS...the news today is that it's true, and should be here mid 2010. "So what", you say? Well, this bodes really well for my favourite OS...as Google, which is based upon Linux, takes of… more »

Lost hours of work in Firefox?

by cw

My wifey lost 3 hours of work last night, after typing furiously into a textarea window for a site she runs on Drupal6, clicking submit...and SERVER NOT RESPONDING...aaaarrrrggghhhh. Back-clicks didn't bring it back... everything was gone. So I awoke to… more »

Funny quote

by cw

A great funny quote today, when talking to a chap recycling old computers: Me: "So you use load OpenOffice on these then?" Him: "NO! I HATE OPENOFFICE!" Me: "Oh really? What about it do you hate?" Him: "Oh, I've never used it." And he was dead s… more »

The shocking state of Bitweaver

by cw

Some time ago I posted a review of Bitweaver CMS. Today I wish to retract that, and highlight the shocking state that the project is in at the moment. Basically it is a CMS for DEVELOPERS by DEVELOPERS. Users need not apply! The Story: On the 4th o… more »

Free Antivirus for Linux

by cw

That's right folks, you can get an antivirus for Linux. Free (if you are a home user). I tried out BitDefender's new product on my home laptop. Go to their site for download and Evaluation license. Works a treat in scanning. I even threw some known vi… more »

Fix for TSCLIENT hang in Ubuntu x86 Jaunty

by cw

This is a fixed DEB file for the i386 version of Ubuntu Jaunty, so that TSClient doesn't hang. If you don't have a clue what I'm on about then you needn't worry. As usual, to install do sudo dpkg -i tsclient_0.150-1ubuntu6_i386.deb And Bob's yo… more »

Jaunty jitters

by cw

Over this last weekend I got adventurous, and upgraded an Asus Z9000 laptop with Hardy Xubuntu, through Intrepid, to Jaunty Beta. Overall it's very polished as far as the entire system goes. But these are the gotchas that I found: Adobe Flash refus… more »

New project : FOREX

by cw

It is my pleasure to bring you news of a new project called FOREX. Forex is a PHP/Ajax set of scripts that can be used to calculate Foreign Exchange quickly and efficiently. All details are in the README. Download here: http://combatwombat.7do… more »

Excel Macro to test network

by cw

Today I have something different for you. A client has had problems with XP saving to a SAMBA PDC. Main symptom would be that it apparently didn't save their (Word/ Excel 2003) file changes - even though they knew they had saved them, and there were n… more »

Long time no post

by cw

Hello to all of my (3) regulars! I have been nuts over our summertime, with work, both professionally, and scraping/repainting our house. More on that later. Here is a little gift for you if you run Ubuntu 64 bit; the latest Geany package. http://comb… more »

time to get Zeven

by cw

Yesterday I downloaded the Bittorrent ISO image for ZevenOS 1.0, a new take on the Ubuntu range.It was purported to mix BeOS with Ubuntu. Today I ran it in a KVM on my main machine. Liking it's clean looks and smooth function, I installed it on an anc… more »

Resizing KVM hard disk image file

by cw

Today I had to do as the title suggests, as an XP Terminal Server I look after was running very short of room on a 20GB Disk image. The reason? XP's updates, and gobs of email for all the users. So I had to create a new virtual hard disk, clone the old t… more »

KVM adventures

by cw

If you've been following the adventures I've been having with KVM then you may be interested in what I found tonight: XP has been losing time in KVM as a guest. KVM-81 is supposed to improve the time-keeping. Also, pass -localtime to the KVM guest… more »

Mailwasher Pro 6.3 on Linux

by cw

It is possible to get Mailwasher Pro 6.3 running in Linux using the following: Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" Mailwasher Pro 6.3 -- a Windows only program that has a cost. Used for pre-checking email accounts before download to email application. Thunde… more »

How to auto start Virtual Machine on Linux

by cw

Using a mixture of CRONTAB and shell scripting, this technique can be used to control a VirtualBox or KVM (and VMware, I guess)... Create a starter script for your VM. eg for KVM: gedit, and enter: #/bin/bash kvm -hda /home/cw/mnt/xppro2.img -m 1… more »

Intrepid Journeys

by cw

I upgraded to Intrepid (Ubuntu 8.10) today. What a long day. It took ages, but was really painless to do the upgrade. WELL DONE UBUNTU TEAM !!! The only hitches I have had so far: On a fresh install (another PC), Synaptic wouldn't search properly.… more »

New baby Ubuntu

by cw

The latest Ubuntu, Intrepid Ibex, version 8.10, is hitting the streets right now, overloading servers, etc. Go ahead and get it if you want. No, no links just yet. Don't be so impatient! I'll stick with Hardy for now. Why? It works, and the update… more »

MySQL Latin1 and UTF8 issues

by cw

In working with Bitweaver, I have come across a nasty side affect of using MySQL- it's handling of encoding is sucky.I have posted into the Bitweaver Wiki about this, and am sure that it applies to many similar softwares ( I did a quick search and f… more »

OpenOffice version 3 is released!

by cw

At last! The most feature-full free open source Office suite is available. 13 Oct 2008: Following three years of continuous improvement, OpenOffice.org has now reached the landmark version 3.0, with a host of new features including native support for… more »

Be Enlightened on Hardy 64

by cw

*** FOR Experienced Users ONLY *** I like Hardy now, its very...ummm...Hardy. But I get bored occasionally. Today I decided to check out e17 Enlightenment's current state. Rather than download elive, I thought there must be a way to add e17 into my cur… more »

How to buy a new computer...Part 2

by cw

<< part1 Ok, so you know you need a new computer... 5. Money! How big is your budget? Should you be mortgaging the house, selling the kids, auctioning organs? A lot of people wander into the nearest "big-box" store, and are wowe… more »

Bitweaver

by cw

::EDIT:: Before you read this old post, read this. Today I want to introduce you to Bitweaver, which is an amazing Open source project for creating full-blown community websites, with a Wiki, Image Galleries, Forums, Blogs, and more. It is a mature CM… more »

Bits + Pieces of Virtualisation

by cw

NEWS: RedHat has bought QumraNet, the company behind KVM virtualisation.VirtualBox has gone to version 2.Pieces:The post here on the Vbox forums is an interesting read if you wish to mount your VDI files directly within Linux. Some bright soul has gone t… more »

Virtualbox to KVM Migration

by cw

After a system update I am now able to run KVM, taking advantage of multiple cores on the CPU. So I thought it would be an interesting exercise to migrate my Virtualbox XP Pro Terminal server installation over to KVM. Why? The benefits of KVM :- SMP (mul… more »

Redirect IP addresses

by cw

With our server we have been getting thumped by denial of service attacks and SQL injections; prats trying to break into B2Evo. So far it has weathered the storm well (thanks Francois Planque!). The logs let us know what URL the attacker attempted to clo… more »

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

by cw

Found a good site today for web statistics; Marketshare.They glean the standard information available from your browser when you visit a website, and develop statistics with such.Interesting stats usage for OSes that show Linux hugely under-used in compa… more »

Migrating linux computers

by cw

Hopefully I can help someone with this tip:If you want to update your computer installation, move harddrives around, or whatever, and you want your linux experience to be the same as the machine you are currently using, then follow this:To migrate a comp… more »

How to Buy a New Computer

by cw

Today we will deal with an issue the most computer neophytes( or newbies ) dread. "How Do I Buy A New Computer?" To start with, I will qualify myself; I have been using computers since 1983, and buying/selling them since 1994. I am a professional "Integr… more »

Open source LAN messenger

by cw

For one client I have, there is an OpenFire server, running the Jabber protocol successfully. Pidgin on the desktop interfaces with this nicely. It's clean, fast, and works. But They want more. I need to find some way of sending a message to multiple rec… more »

Abandon ship!

by cw

...this signals a change in the tide. Other developers will jump to open source because it is open, easy to work with, and can pay the bills.., more »

Use Linux? Watch this!

by cw

Greg Kroah-Hartmann, one of the Linux Kernel devs, gives an interesting Q&A to Google about Linux Kernel Development. Very interesting to see the rate of development particularly, and the KVM virtualisation. [video:youtube:L2SED6sewRw]For those that… more »

Webmin Filesystem Backup spaces

by cw

When working with the wonderful Webmin tool, I found that the Filesystem Backup module wouldn't let me do backups of directories with a space in the filename, even though it separates the directories with new lines. But I figured out a workaround that di… more »

Smart school Principal

by cw

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/A000A8F459252EDECC25747F00172D28?opendocument&utm_source=topnews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=topnews more »

The new hate MS revolution

by cw

I'm in fighting mode right now. I've been wondering why the stats for my blog continued to be full of crap from search.live.com - search results that were consistently one word, eg "email" or "contact", that had the same user environment and browser, and… more »

Free First Person Shooter on Linux

by cw

I've been playing a bit of Urban Terror lately, which is a free GPL'd first-person shooter game that runs on Linux, Windaz, and Mac. It is using the open-sourced Quake 3 engine, so graphics are good, but more importantly, the game is highly playable. ***… more »

FireFox record

by cw

"We did it!We set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. With your help we reached 8,002,530 downloads.You are now part of a World Record and the proud owner of the best version of Firefox yet!Don't forget to download your v… more »

Free Wallpapers

by cw

Some free wallpapers, created in Gimp and Fyre. Good for use in dark themes.Free to use in all works with attribution.BaubleBauble 2560 widthStargateStargate 2560 width more »

Open Fyre

by cw

Looking for a graphics application that is simple, and produces beautiful fractal / chaotic images like gradient waves? Look no further than Fyre. It is easy to use, and fun to play with.In Hardy Heron, this package is broken so that you cannot save the… more »

Microsoft Titanic at the bottom of the ocean

by cw

So long Mr Gates, and good riddance to Microsoft. Bill Gates, the founder and visionary behind Microsoft, the world's largest convicted monopolist, has retired. He's not stupid. He saw the end coming. He saw the writing all over the wall, and the wall is… more »

Firefox turns 3, Wine turns 1, MS turns in their grave

by cw

Another great day in Open Source land! Firefox has released version 3.0, and Wine has released version 1.0(at last!);" The Wine team is proud to announce that Wine 1.0 is now available. This is the first stable release of Wine after 15 years of developme… more »

Firefox 3 waiting in the wings

by cw

Get ready to download Firefox 3 tomorrow. Mozilla is aiming for a world record. With your help they might just do it! more »

Thunderbird Email Signatures Background Problem Solved

by cw

An issue with Thunderbird had been bugging me for a while, niggling at the back of my brain; How do I get Thunderbird Email to work with an HTML signature, where there was an image in the background? The problem is that Thunderbird overwrites the BODY ta… more »

VirtualBox kernel driver not installed on Hardy

by cw

A recent update to Hardy Heron's kernel borked the Virtualbox 1.6 installation I had and resulted in the usual message to run '/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup' as root. That's easy to do, but then it came back with an unusual issue: * Stopping VirtualBox kerne… more »

Back from Holiday, updates

by cw

Arrived back from my holiday at Pauanui today. Holidays are too short!! Anyhow, had a great time with the family, and even managed to do some reading...But I promised to chip in regarding the ATi driver update to 8.5. Well... "nothing to see here, move a… more »

New ATi driver released...8.5

by cw

As the title says, there is a new Catalyst Driver as of today. I will be installing it on the HP zd8000 running a X600 chip from ATi, with Linux Mint 4 (ubuntu 7.10), for testing.You will hear from me in a week or so. Time for a holiday! more »

VirtualBox 1.6 Networking problems

by cw

After upgrading your VirtualBox to 1.6, now administered by Sun Microsystems, you will find that Host networking is broken for systems that used to work, based upon the AMD PCNET III card. This means that where you have a network using TAP devices, it wo… more »

Migrating from horrid Windows apps

by cw

I just moved a friend onto Linux, Hardy Heron Ubuntu 8.04, from XP. This would have been a relatively simple job, had it not been for her choice of apps to run in XP; Incredimail for email, and Hallmark Card Studio v1 for events. To compound it all, she… more »

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