Correcting a Misaligned VGA Image on your Monitor or TV in Xorg, e.g. when you see a black border or frame, the image badly aligned to one side of the screen

When I wanted to connect my TV via VGA out to my netbook, the image displayed started with a black frame on the left side and was missing a part on the right side. It only occurred in FullHD resolution (1920x1080), during boot and in other resolutions it was fine. Just for fun I contacted the TV manufacturer, but of course they didn't know any help but "try to install the newest driver for your graphics card".
Read more »

More about → Correcting a Misaligned VGA Image on your Monitor or TV in Xorg, e.g. when you see a black border or frame, the image badly aligned to one side of the screen

Fixing USB Playback Issues for Video Files on LG, Samsung and other TVs - e.g. "Invalid File"

If your file won't play and the TV reports "Invalid file", the thumbnail is not created instead a one with a warning arrow, then your TV won't eat the file.

The problem is likely one of these issues:
1. unsupported format (check the supported list, e.g. LG)
- especially note the restriction of 30 fps for FullHD
- video codecs are usually divx and h264 (up to profile 4.1), no GMC
- audio codecs are usually mp3, ac3, aac.
2. Badly muxed file
3. Mkv with header compression
Read more »

More about → Fixing USB Playback Issues for Video Files on LG, Samsung and other TVs - e.g. "Invalid File"

What to do if asm/errno.h asm/ioctls.h and others are not found anymore in Ubuntu or Debian

It turns out you need to now install gcc-multilib. It's not clear why yet. A bug is already filed, but he maintainers seem to see no problem in suddenly changing this behavior...

Read more »

More about → What to do if asm/errno.h asm/ioctls.h and others are not found anymore in Ubuntu or Debian

What to do if sshfs / fuse freezes your system?

Two things you can do. If it's generic fuse:

fusermount -u -z (mountpoint, don't tab to get the directory, you have to enter it exactly.)

If it's sshfs, you can reduce the timeout to have your system return from the ice age sooner and automatically next time:

echo ServerAliveInterval 15 >> ~/.ssh/config

And don't bother, this bug is know and has been reported before.

More about → What to do if sshfs / fuse freezes your system?

Fixing - at least some - Skypephone S2 Battery Issues

My 3 Skypephone S2 at some point started to run out of battery after being on for about 20 hours or less. And this is not because a Java program crashed, which can be a reason, too. It was after a full charge over night and switching it off and on. Eventually it turned out the problem was that I had still activated the USB Modem setting in Connections. Once I turned it back to blue tooth mode and turned off bluetooth after that the problem was gone and the battery lasted a *lot* longer again. Anyways, the battery delivered with the phone seems to be not very good in any case, so you might want to get a new one. The big question is just: where?

Update: It works! The only problem is you need to leave out the battery at least over night afterwards.

If you like this, why not order a Three UK Sim with my agent link (or send the link to friends). You get an extra 5 quid or so AFAIK.

More about → Fixing - at least some - Skypephone S2 Battery Issues

Immediate Fix for Slow Open and Save Dialogs in Ubuntu OpenOffice

I'm using KDE and I think it's somehow related to that. Anyway, you need to execute the following command to fix it:

echo -e 127.0.0.1 \\t $HOSTNAME localhost $HOSTNAME.'(none)' | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

Hope this helps. Found in the Ubuntu Forums here.

More about → Immediate Fix for Slow Open and Save Dialogs in Ubuntu OpenOffice

Fixing Suspend for the MSI Wind U110 in 2.6.34 and 2.6.35

The MSI Wind U110 suddenly stopped going into suspend more in newer kernels starting at 2.6.34. A kernel developed found where the issue is located. Actually the system did go into suspend mode, but it came right back immediately.

The issue is very easy and quickly solved, though, with a single simple command:
echo LID | sudo tee /proc/acpi/wakeup

Now I can go into suspend again, and the system still comes back from suspend as expected, nice! :)

Unfortunately for some reasons this does still not mean that suspend is working in Ubuntu 10.04 for me. Probably an issue related to the updated Xserver in 10.04. Though I can suspend and resume now, X crashes and restarts after resume.

More about → Fixing Suspend for the MSI Wind U110 in 2.6.34 and 2.6.35

Mobile Internet with the Skypephone S2 in Ubuntu

It does not (yet) work out of the box. There is a little trick you need. You need to manually load the usbserial module supplying the vendor and product ID. You can find those IDs via the lsusb command. Just add an 0x at the beginning and then load the module:

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1614 product=0x0407

The support should be automatic in one the next upcoming Linux kernels, though. You can of course automate the module load with an entry in /etc/modules:
usbserial vendor=0x1614 product=0x0407

Then the module is always loaded in the right way at boot time and you just need to plug in the mobile phone for it to pop up in Network Manager (with the help of Mobile Manager). Once that's the case in Gnome with nm-util you can use an easy wizard that should already include your settings. In Kubuntu 9.10 the KDE support for connecting was broken, though. But it's fixed now in Kubuntu 10.04. Too sad many of these changes are never backported...

And now: Enjoy mobile Internet! (And don't miss my next entry on how to save traffic and speed up your new mobile internet.)

If you're in the UK, order your next Three SIM via my agent link, please.

More about → Mobile Internet with the Skypephone S2 in Ubuntu

Quick Fix for Your Multimedia Keys

If your multimedia keys give this warning in dmesg:

atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xf7 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e077 ' to make it known.

then you need to look up the right number in include/linux/input.h e.g.here. E.g.

#define KEY_BRIGHTNESSDOWN 224
#define KEY_BRIGHTNESSUP 225

And use that number with setkeycodes, e.g. for my system:

setkeycodes e077 224 # brightness down
setkeycodes e078 225 # brightness up
setkeycodes 0xee 212 # webcam
setkeycodes 0xe4 240 # touchpad -> unknown
setkeycodes e076 238 # wifi + bluetooth

And now your system (e.g. KDE or Gnome) should immediately recognize the keys. Post the information to your distribution and it should be included in future releases. Just write the commands (without sudo) into /etc/rc.local to make them permanent for now.

If you get stuck, here's a good guide.

More about → Quick Fix for Your Multimedia Keys

Fixing Mplayer's Terminal Abuse, esp. for KDE and Windows

Mplayer updates the information about the amounts of frames it displayed, the played time, the remaining time, etc. every single time it displays a *frame*. This is not only completely unnecessary, it can unnecessarily hog several percent of your CPU in many terminal implementations, especially in current KDE 4 and Windows. The higher the frame rate, the more wasted CPU power.

On my netbook, the difference is 10% CPUand more with a 25 frames per second video - that's as much and more than mplayer uses for a simple Xvid video. And it could easily make the difference between a well playing file and one that's glitchy. (The CPU time is occupied by konsole 4.3.2 though, not by mplayer itself.)

The only way out would be -quiet. But then you wouldn't know what's going on anymore at all. That's why I had written and submitted roughly the following patch to fix this behavior. Unfortunately even after I made all the requested corrections, it was never applied without any reasons provided, or were there?. So I decided to publish it here so people at least know about it. But it also means unless I can convince someone here, you will have to compile mplayer and apply the patch yourself.

There are many guides how to compile mplayer. Before you start the compilation process, just copy this following block into a file quiet.patch and then apply it inside the svn directory with "patch -p0 < quiet.patch", then compile mplayer normally. You can now use the parameter -quiet-time. A value of 1 means a status message no more often than every 100 milliseconds (0,1 seconds). I think a good value is 5. You will notice that e.g. konsole uses less CPU during playback now. Enjoy the power of open source and let me know how it works for you!

Index: DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1
===================================================================
--- DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1 (Revision 29324)
+++ DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1 (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -732,6 +732,12 @@
handle carriage return (i.e.\& \\r).
.
.TP
+.B "\-quiet-time \ "
+Reduce console output updates to n per tenth of a second.
+Values of 5 or more work around slow terminals.
+See \-quiet for more.
+.
+.TP
.B \-priority (Windows and OS/2 only)
Set process priority for MPlayer according to the predefined
priorities available under Windows and OS/2.
Index: mplayer.c
===================================================================
--- mplayer.c (Revision 29324)
+++ mplayer.c (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -81,6 +81,7 @@
int slave_mode=0;
int player_idle_mode=0;
int quiet=0;
+int quiet_time=0;
int enable_mouse_movements=0;
float start_volume = -1;

@@ -1936,6 +1937,11 @@

static void adjust_sync_and_print_status(int between_frames, float timing_error)
{
+ static unsigned last_status_update=0;
+ unsigned now=GetTimerMS();
+ if (quiet_time && now >= (last_status_update + quiet_time * 100))
+ last_status_update=now;
+
current_module="av_sync";

if(mpctx->sh_audio){
@@ -1987,6 +1993,7 @@
c_total+=x;
}
if(!quiet)
+ if (!quiet_time || (last_status_update == now))
print_status(a_pts - audio_delay, AV_delay, c_total);
}

@@ -1994,6 +2001,7 @@
// No audio:

if (!quiet)
+ if (!quiet_time || (last_status_update == now))
print_status(0, 0, 0);
}
}
Index: cfg-common-opts.h
===================================================================
--- cfg-common-opts.h (Revision 29324)
+++ cfg-common-opts.h (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
// ------------------------- common options --------------------
{"quiet", &quiet, CONF_TYPE_FLAG, CONF_GLOBAL, 0, 1, NULL},
{"noquiet", &quiet, CONF_TYPE_FLAG, CONF_GLOBAL, 1, 0, NULL},
+ {"quiet-time", &quiet_time, CONF_TYPE_INT, CONF_RANGE, 0, 65536, NULL},
{"really-quiet", &verbose, CONF_TYPE_FLAG, CONF_GLOBAL|CONF_PRE_PARSE, 0, -10, NULL},
{"v", cfg_inc_verbose, CONF_TYPE_FUNC, CONF_GLOBAL|CONF_NOSAVE, 0, 0, NULL},
{"msglevel", msgl_config, CONF_TYPE_SUBCONFIG, CONF_GLOBAL, 0, 0, NULL},
Index: mencoder.c
===================================================================
--- mencoder.c (Revision 29324)
+++ mencoder.c (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -131,6 +131,7 @@
//void resync_audio_stream(sh_audio_t *sh_audio){}

int quiet=0;
+int quiet_time=0;
double video_time_usage=0;
double vout_time_usage=0;
double max_video_time_usage=0;
@@ -1420,8 +1421,14 @@
(int)demuxer->filepos,
(int)demuxer->movi_end);
#else
+ static unsigned last_status_update=0;
+ unsigned now=GetTimerMS();
+ if (quiet_time && now >= (last_status_update + quiet_time * 100))
+ last_status_update=now;
+
if(!quiet) {
if( mp_msg_test(MSGT_STATUSLINE,MSGL_V) ) {
+ if (!quiet_time || (last_status_update == now))
mp_msg(MSGT_STATUSLINE,MSGL_STATUS,"Pos:%6.1fs %6df (%2d%%) %3dfps Trem:%4dmin %3dmb A-V:%5.3f [%d:%d] A/Vms %d/%d D/B/S %d/%d/%d \r",
mux_v->timer, decoded_frameno, (int)(p*100),
(t>1) ? (int)(decoded_frameno/t+0.5) : 0,
@@ -1434,6 +1441,7 @@
duplicatedframes, badframes, skippedframes
);
} else
+ if (!quiet_time || (last_status_update == now))
mp_msg(MSGT_STATUSLINE,MSGL_STATUS,"Pos:%6.1fs %6df (%2d%%) %5.2ffps Trem:%4dmin %3dmb A-V:%5.3f [%d:%d]\r",
mux_v->timer, decoded_frameno, (int)(p*100),
(t>1) ? (float)(decoded_frameno/t) : 0,

More about → Fixing Mplayer's Terminal Abuse, esp. for KDE and Windows

Using SMPlayer with hardware video acceleration such as VAAPI - Fixing various crashes etc. with VAAPI

If you've also tried to use VAAPI with SMplayer, you may also have experienced the crash every single time you try to watch anything. These things might also apply to VDPAU and xvmc.

Here's the solution

1. Disable screenshots:

General -> General -> Enable Screenshots [ ] (uncheck)

2. Set to single thread decoding:
Performance -> Performance -> Threads ... [1]

3. Disable subtitles and postprocessing.

Here's what doesn't help:

Upgrading to the current version 0.6.8.

If you want to know how to get VAAPI working SMPlayer in the first place: Select

General -> Video -> Output Driver -> Custom -> "vaapi,xv," and

Advanced -> Options for Mplayer -> Options -> "-va vaapi".

Let me know if it worked for you. Someone should probably inform the author of smplayer and/or mplayer. Excellent programs!

More about → Using SMPlayer with hardware video acceleration such as VAAPI - Fixing various crashes etc. with VAAPI

X Video finally works - Poulsbo and Linux on the MSI Wind U110 - Fix for BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference at 00000000

If you tried to get poulsbo to run on your system and you get a message like this, you should try the fix posted below.

"kernel BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 00000000" (2.6.28)

"kernel BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at (null)" (2.6.31)

Thanks to a post on Ubuntu's bugzilla, the poulsbo video module now finally works on my MSI Wind U110 (full review & installation guide). Download the psb-kernel-source module You only have to comment out the two lines in intel_lvds.c starting with

if (edid)
....

e.g.
/* if (edid)
drm_add_edid_modes(output, edid); */

Then reconfigure the package and it should be recompiled. The next time you start it, it should work instead of creating kernel BUG

Update:

Xvideo actually works better than in Directx video in Windows XP, where I often see blocky video scaling. The CPU usage is not too high, either. Currently it's only working under Ubuntu 9.04 for me. Though I had managed to compile the module with kernel 2.6.30 before, I don't remember how I did that... And I haven't gotten actual video acceleration to work yet.

Of course I'll keep you updated and I'll post a little howto once it's all working. But feel free to ask, anyway. And thanks so much to the person from the Ubuntu bugzilla who helped me to finally get it all working!!!

Update2: Keep checking the page. I will post a link to an archive with a script that will manage the compilation in Ubuntu 9.10. If someone could help me figure out how to, I'd love to create, upload and post a .deb for dkms so it all works automatically... Or ultimately, we could modify the driver to check for the MSI's signature and then skip the edid check.

I've created a package for Karmic that you can use to manually install the driver with the fix already applied: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BB23R7K2. Extract it and execute the script make_psb.sh, then reboot and try to modprobe psb. Let me know when the 10 downloads run out and it it works for you.

Update3: Here is a step by step howto. It explains setting up X and then VAAPI (hardware video decoding) in Kubuntu 9.10.

My script for making the psb module out of the package:

KERNEL=/lib/modules/`uname -r`/

make KERNELRELEASE="$(uname -r)" LINUXDIR="/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build" DRM_MODULES=psb || exit 1;

sudo cp drm.ko $KERNEL/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/drm.ko

sudo mkdir -p $KERNEL/updates/dkms

sudo cp psb.ko $KERNEL/updates/dkms/psb.ko

ls -l $KERNEL/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/drm.ko $KERNEL/updates/dkms/psb.ko

sudo depmod -a

More about → X Video finally works - Poulsbo and Linux on the MSI Wind U110 - Fix for BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference at 00000000

How to Fix "symbol lookup error: ... /lib/libavcodec.so.52: undefined symbol: av_gcd" after installation of ffmpeg

It's actually quite easy once you know what's causing the problem. There are two different versions of libavcodec in your system. In my case I installed a fresh ffmpeg from SVN, now I first had to remove the package "libavcodec51". Then everything worked just fine.

sudo apt-get remove libavcodec51

If you still have problems there might be stale libraries in here: /usr/lib/libavcodec.*. Try moving them somewhere else and see if that helps. Otherwise, send me a comment. ;)

See here for a more elegant work-around that tells the package manager we've got newer libraries available.

More about → How to Fix "symbol lookup error: ... /lib/libavcodec.so.52: undefined symbol: av_gcd" after installation of ffmpeg

Fixing XRANDR Caused High Latency with KDE4 - Display Flickering - Freezing Videos

If you're using KDE4 you might be disappointed by a bug that causes high latencies and or a flickering (second) display. Here's a really easy explanation how to permanently fix that right now.

Go to System Settings, Advanced, System Services.


Then in the bottom uncheck "Detecting RANDR (monitor) changes", then press Stop on the bottom right. The problem disappears immediately now.

You may read more about the bug here and here. Thanks to Electricroo for the fix. By the way, you know you have this bug, if DDC EDID probes ("(II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines, (II) intel(0): EDID vendor") keep showing up in tail -f /var/log/Xorg.0.log and you know it's fixed once they disappear. If you don't have that message in your X log, your most likely don't have this issue.

Note that this will stop KDE from automatically detecting when you plug in an external monitor. But as the configuration doesn't yet work well anyway I think there's no detriment. And of course there will be other causes for latency, but this one was the only real problem for me.

Update:
Unfortunately it seems like the fix does not (currently) work for KDE 4.2. If you don't find the service in the list in KDE 4.1.x, this might be a good sign and show that it's already disabled. If you still find the messages in Xorg.0.log, the please post a comment and let's try to find a way around it. If there's no way to disable it, all you can do is file a bug for your distribution and refer to the here mentioned information.

The bug has already been reported for KDE 4.1 at the kde bugzilla. Please participate there if you see this problem in KDE 4.2. You might also help to get a fix by voting for it. Until that time you can probably use my previously posted dirty hack that works around the kde session management service (ksmserver) by starting the KDE4 environment manually - please let me know if this works for KDE 4.2 as well.

You can also try to manually disable all outputs you don't need in Xorg, but the instructions vary significantly between different graphics cards, setups, distributions etc. And of course that won't help you if you're using a dual screen setup. If you find instructions on how to do that, please let me know in the comments.

Update2:
For KDE 4.2, check your config file:

grep polling ~/.local/screen-configurations.xml

If it says polling false and after upgrading KDE to 4.2 you suddenly get the messages described above in Xorg.log, especially if the fix above worked for you before, then there's a bug somewhere in KDE. If you get polling true, you can try to reconfigure KDE to make it stop polling. (You can just edit the file and change true to false.)

Related: Automatically switch to connected External Display on Boot with XRandR shows you how to automatically set up your displays without just a single screen, so that you can disable xrandr.

More about → Fixing XRANDR Caused High Latency with KDE4 - Display Flickering - Freezing Videos

Fixing Wake On LAN in Ubuntu 8.10

I've already spent a few hours to finally get this working again. There are several problems in Ubuntu 8.10 considering Wake on LAN:

1. The network cards' drivers are unloaded during suspend.

This often deactivates your card's wake on lan feature and completely powers it off.
You have to add your network cards driver module to the MODULES_WHITELIST in /etc/default/acpi-support. Also add the network card's interface(e.g. eth0) to SKIP_INTERFACES.

2. The network is not (properly) restarted after resume.

a. NetworkManager overrides settings in /etc/network/interfaces.

The easy way is to simply remove networkmanager: sudo aptitude remove network-manager.

b. The network setup script is not restarted after resume.

You can add the script (networking) to STOP_SERVICES in /etc/default/acpi-support.

3. Wake on Lan is not enabled by default

You need to issue e.g. sudo ethtool -s eth0 wol g. You can do that in an init script and you will likely have to do it again after resume. (I've put it a script to do that into both /etc/acpi/suspend.d/54-wol.sh and /etc/acpi/resume.d/99-wol.sh )

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Workaround for Screen Flickering in Kubuntu 8.10

Okay, I've got a dirty hack for now to work around the flicker problem in Kubuntu 8.10. You can edit /usr/bin/startkde and comment out the line starting ksmserver (kwrapper4 ksmserver).

Then instead write

kwrapper4 krunner &
kwrapper4 plasma &
kwrapper4 kwin

There will be no session management, but also not flickering. I'll let you know when I find a better fix.

Update: Eventually I did find a much better fix. But it doesn't work for KDE 4.2 (yet).

More about → Workaround for Screen Flickering in Kubuntu 8.10

Canon Printer Problem "pstocanonij write error,32" Solved

I just had the error message

"pstocanonij write error,32."

when trying to print something with the Original Canon Printer Driver and my MP610. It turned out I needed to cancel the job. I printed a test page and then I printed the same thing again and it worked just fine. Sometimes it hangs up and I have to turn if off and on again.

But I still have no idea why he's cleaning his inks several times a day currently...

Update:

The error comes up more and more often now and I haven't found a real fix yet. It might be related to certain settings. The printer prints one page and then stops printing.

FIX:

You can either use a different driver (e.g. the gutenprint one), or it may be an incorrect page border setting. In my experience, changing the page border settings back to their original settings (31,75mm) fixed the problems. You may have to reboot your computer and turn the printer off and on again for it to work again.

FIX2:
It might also be that your /tmp directory is full. This happens especially when you're using the special tmpfs on that directory, as some distributions automatically do. Or, of course, if you're main partition is out of space.

More about → Canon Printer Problem "pstocanonij write error,32" Solved

The Knotify4 Wake-Up Problem

Martin Kretz released an alternative backend for phonon that fixes the knotify4 high wake-up problem.

More about → The Knotify4 Wake-Up Problem

Warning: Upgrade from Feisty to Hardy

If you want to upgrade your server system from Feisty to Hardy, make sure you're not running kernel 2.6.22-15-server, as the upgrade will crash with a problem creating your UFT8 locale, localedef will occupy all cpu. The work around is to simply boot 2.6.22-14-server and then do the upgrade. That will save you a lot of trouble.

More about → Warning: Upgrade from Feisty to Hardy

Unknown CMake command "kde4_add_ui_files"

If you get this error

Unknown CMake command "kde4_add_ui_files"

while trying to use cmake, it usually means that

find_package(KDE4 REQUIRED)

is missing from the CMakeLists.txt file. Try adding it to the CMakeLists.txt file somewhere before kde4_add_ui_files is first called.

An example
project(plasma-network)

set(network_SRCS
network.cpp)

kde4_add_ui_files(network_SRCS config.ui )

becomes:
project(plasma-network)

set(network_SRCS
network.cpp)

find_package(KDE4 REQUIRED)

kde4_add_ui_files(network_SRCS config.ui )

See here for more information: http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/CMake:How_To_Build_KDE4_Software#Where_to_find_more_information .g

By the way, the same line helps for problems with "macro_optional_find_package" and most other KDE compilation problems.

More about → Unknown CMake command "kde4_add_ui_files"