However, when not using one of the monitors, Gnome does not know what to do with the panel normally displayed on that monitor and places it on the default monitor, resulting in two gnome-panels on one monitor. This is not so useful!

To circumvent this default Gnome behavior use the following procedure:

• Download gnome-panel-switch.sh script and put it somewhere you like:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Auto adjust the number of pannels based on the number of
# connected monitors.
#
# Author : Amain 2010
# Website: blog.zoomeren.nl
 
# Monitor states:
#   - connected 1440x900+0+0  ( connected and used )
#   - connected               ( connected not used )
#   - disconnected            ( disconnected       )
#
NR_OF_MONITORS=$( /usr/bin/xrandr -q | /bin/grep " connected [0-9]\+x[0-9]\+" | /usr/bin/wc -l )
 
# Second panel name
#
# note: retrieve the panel name using gconf-editor
#
SECOND_PANEL_NAME="panel_0"     
 
case $NR_OF_MONITORS in
        1)
                # Disable external monitor ( setting screen to -1 )
                #
                gconftool-2 --type int --set  /apps/panel/toplevels/$SECOND_PANEL_NAME/screen -- -1
        ;;
 
        2)
                # Enable external monitor ( restart is needed after setting screen to -1 )
                #
                gconftool-2 --type int --set  /apps/panel/toplevels/$SECOND_PANEL_NAME/screen 0
                /usr/bin/killall gnome-panel
        ;;
 
        *)
                # no action
        ;;
esac

• sudo chmod +x gnome-panel-switch.sh
• sudo mv /usr/bin/gnome-display-properties /usr/bin/gnome-display-properties.bin
• sudo vi /usr/bin/gnome-display-properties and paste the following script ( don’t forget to adjust the path in line where gnome-panel-switch.sh is called! ):

#!/bin/bash
#
# Auto adjust the number of pannels based on the number of
# connected monitors.
#
# Author : Amain 2010
# Website: blog.zoomeren.nl
 
# Open gnome-display-properties dialog
#
/usr/bin/gnome-display-properties.bin
 
# Auto enable/disable gnome-panels
#
YOURPATH/gnome-panel-switch.sh

• sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/gnome-display-properties
• Start gnome-panel-switch.sh every time Gnome starts to auto disable/enable the correct number of gnome-panels per display. Use Gnome Startup in the System Settings menu and add the invocation for this script.
• Important note: when /usr/bin/gnome-display-properties is replaced during a Ubuntu upgrade one looses the changes!

post-up /usr/sbin/ethtool -s eth0 wol g
post-down /usr/sbin/ethtool -s eth0 wol g

Write down the MAC-ADDRESS. Powerdown the computer. Only when the computer is powered down to S3 or STR(Suspend to ram), the computer can be woken up. A sudden power-failure might mess with everything so the computer might not respond then to WOL requests. For STR some additional action are necessary, because STR in Linux might/will totaly power-off the ethernet device. See this link for more info on that subject.

On another computer install a wake-on-lan package:

dpkg -i wakeonlan

and wake up the sleeping computer:

wakeonlan MAC-ADDRESS

note: create a small shell script in for example ~/bin/wol_dev.sh to make life easier and to not forget the MAC-ADDRESS:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Wake on lan server: dev
#
# dev eth0 00:02:44:57:dc:33
# dev eth1 00:10:4b:0e:ce:13
 
wakeonlan 00:02:44:57:dc:33

That’s all!

Links:

• http://xlife.zuavra.net/index.php/60/
• http://linux-tipps.blogspot.com/2008/11/fixing-wake-on-lan-in-ubuntu-810.html

• Press CTR-ALT-. ( The . / ALT key on the numeric keyboard )
• On a laptop without numeric keyboard: CTRL-ALT-PrintScrn
  ( note: on my laptop that is: CTRL-ALT-Fn-PrintScrn )
• CTRL-ALT-INS is reported to work but, didn’t work for me
• Using VNC
  • Add the following lines to the VMWare .vmx config file:
    

     RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = "TRUE"

     RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = "5900"

     RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = ""

  • Restart Guest OS and connect with vncviewer to the screen of the Guest OS
  • Press F8 and choose from the menu ‘Send CTRL-ALT-DELETE’

There are more options, but these seem to me the best working.

ID 046d:08ad Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Communicate STX

It seems that Ubuntu recently switched from V4L to V4L2 causing some trouble with some devices. Fortunately there is a solution:

sudo apt-get install ld.so.preload-manager

sudo ld.so.preload-manager /usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so

alternatively (note the lib32. You need to set that on 64bit systems because Skype is still 32 bit ):

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so exec /usr/bin/skype

And now vlc, mplayer and kdenlive work perfectly:

• mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video0
• vlc v4l:// :v4l-vdev=”/dev/video0″ :v4l-adev=”/dev/audio” :v4l-norm=3 :v4l-frequency=-1 :v4l-caching=300 :v4l-chroma=”" :v4l-fps=-1.000000 :v4l-samplerate=44100 :v4l-channel=0 :v4l-tuner=-1 :v4l-audio=-1 :v4l-stereo :v4l-width=320 :v4l-height=240 :v4l-brightness=-1 :v4l-colour=-1 :v4l-hue=-1 :v4l-contrast=-1 :no-v4l-mjpeg :v4l-decimation=1 :v4l-quality=100
• kdenlive works fine with default options

Links:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Webcam

The project  you need to mount the iPhone in Linux is called iFuse. iFuse is a module for the FUSE(Filesystem in Userspace) system. The project contains libiphone, which is used to access USB and does the lower level translations. Unfortunately, I could not find howto’s on the projects main website. But with some googling, I found the answers.

edit: iFuse is now providing DEB and RPM packages on there website now: iFuse. See /usr/share/doc/ifuse/README of their ifuse package for usage instructions.

1. Install libiphone (as root)
   1. git clone git://github.com/MattColyer/libiphone.git
   2. ./autgen.sh
   3. ./configure
   4. make
   5. make install
2. Install iFuse (as user)
   1. git clone git://github.com/MattColyer/ifuse.gi
   2. ./autgen.sh
   3. ./configure –prefix=/
   4. make
   5. make install
3. Generate keys (as user)
   1. /usr/local/bin/libiphone-initconf
      (This will generate some keys required to connect with the iPhone over USB)
4. Mount the iPhone’s root filesystem including the Media partition (as user)
   1. mkdir /mnt/iPhone (make sure you have write access to the mount mount)
   2. mount.fuse.ifuse –afc2 none /mnt/iPhone/ -s
      (The -s options seem to be related to threading/locking issues and is a workaround)
5. Or mount the iPhone’s Media partition only (as user)
   1. mount.fuse.ifuse none /mnt/iPhone/ -s
6. Or mount as root
   1. mount  mount none -t fuse.ifuse /mnt/iPhone
7. Unmounting (as user)
   1. fusermount -u /mnt/iPhone
8. Umounting (as root)
   1. umount /mnt/iPhone

I have been testing this on Ubuntu Intrepid. It would be nice to see GNOME GVFS to automount the iPhone over USB.  After some investigation of this matter I must conclude that UDEV, HAL, DBUS, GVFSD, GVFSD-backends are used to do the automounting in GNOME – which is quite complicated – I could not find any scripting-hooks (or configuration options) in GVFSD to do some BASH magic and auto mount the iPhone in GNOME.

The performance, using Nautilus to copy data from/to the iPhone is:

• Write (computer-to-iPhone): ~750 KB/s
• Read (iPhone-to-computer): ~2.9 MB/s

Not bad – although writing is a bit slow compared to the avg-read time. The iPhone 2.0 seems to be connected over USB 2.0 (480 mbit/s):

T:  Bus=03 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 27 Spd=480 MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  3
P:  Vendor=05ac ProdID=1292 Rev= 0.01
S:  Manufacturer=Apple Inc.
S:  Product=iPhone

Alternatives:

• Mounting using SSH/SFTP over ADHOC wifi connection
• iTunnel using modified libiphone

Links:

• http://brandy25.blogspot.com/2009/02/mount-iphone-in-linux-via-usb.html
• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPhone

A small script to mimic a bit the GNOME GVFS auto mounting function:

#!/bin/sh
 
mntp=/home/johan/mnt/iPhone
 
if ! ( mount | grep $mntp ); then
   mkdir -p $mntp
   mount.fuse.ifuse -afc2 none $mntp -s
   notify-send -u normal "iPhone Mounted" "The iPhone is now mounted."
   nautilus $mntp
else
   fusermount -u $mntp
   rmdir $mntp
   notify-send -u normal "iPhone Un-Mounted" "The iPhone is now un-mounted."
fi

With NetworkManager (which uses WPA supplicant) it’s not possible to do so. NetorkManager tries to connect to the selected Ad-Hoc network, but fails.  Analizing logfiles, I concluded that this is because the mode change from “Managed” to “Ad-Hoc” does not work. WPA supplicant is instructed by NetworkManager to do so (using DBus communication).

Ubuntu 8.10 and 8.04 both have compiled WPA Supplicant with a limited set of drivers. 8.10 was compiled with:

• wext = Linux wireless extensions (generic)
• atmel = ATMEL AT76C5XXx (USB, PCMCIA)
• wired = wpa_supplicant wired Ethernet driver

NetworkManager instructs (at least for my card) to use the wext (Linux Wireless Extensions) driver to communicate with the hardware.  Using iwconfig manualy (part wext) give an error:

root@jvz:~# iwconfig ath0 mode Managed
Error for wireless request “Set Mode” (8B06) :
SET failed on device ath0 ; Invalid argument

So it’s not strange for WPA Supplicant to fail to change the mode. ath_pci is the driver I’m using for my Atheros wireless card. See WifiDocs on ubuntu documentation for some more info on this driver.

Following the MadWifi UserDocs changing the mode of and MadWifi based card the following commands should be used:

wlanconfig ath0 destroy
wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode adhoc

Possible Solutions:

1. Use ath5k new MadWifi driver, but I have tested it and the link stability was not good, but it works out of the box with NetworkManager
2. Recompile WPA Supplicant to support the madwifi driver extensions and patch NetworkManager to use madfiwi instead of wext as commandline parameter for WPA Supplicant – not my favorite option!
3. Create a sudo script which stops NetworkManager and issue the above madwifi wlanconfig command from the script and connect manualy

I choose to use the third option. Here is my adhoc.sh bash sudo script:

#!/bin/sh
 
if [ "$1" != "sudo" ]; then {
    exec sudo "$0" sudo "$1"
} fi
 
function reload() {
	/etc/init.d/NetworkManager stop
	ifconfig ath0 down
	rmmod ath_pci
	modprobe ath_pci
	wlanconfig ath0 destroy
	wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode adhoc
	sleep 2
	iwconfig ath0 key s:11111
	iwconfig ath0 essid J3G
	iwconfig
	sleep 10
}
 
function dhcp() {
	dhclient ath0
}
 
function mail () {
   netstat -pan 2>/dev/null| grep ":25" | grep "tcpW" | grep LISTEN | grep ssh | awk '{print $7}' | sed 's!/ssh!!' 
      | while read pid; do
  		echo killing ssh: $pid
   		sudo kill -9 $pid
        done
   echo -n "Starting SMTP tunnel...."
   ssh -N -f -L 25:mailserver:25 user@domain.tld
   echo "done"
}
 
function stop() {
	ifconfig ath0 down
	rmmod ath_pci
	modprobe ath_pci
	/etc/init.d/NetworkManager start
}
 
if [ "$2" == "mail" ]; then
	mail
 	exit 0
elif [ "$2" == "all" ]; then
	reload
   	dhcp
	mail
elif [ "$2" == "dhcp" ]; then
        dhcp
elif [ "$2" == "stop" ]; then
 	stop
else
	echo "usage: $0 all|dhcp|mail|stop"
        exit 1
fi