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See the word finally? Yeah, right. Had lots of problems to get 10.04 version working. I tried to upgrade my Ubuntu and decided to wait and use Xubuntu. Yes, wait. I waited more than month and tried again, pour me. After upgrade there were no GRUB at all – only GRUB > RESCUE command line. You can read more about that command line here. Unfortunately, it didn’t helped me. I also knew that there is always a way to use a Live CD to repair. Well, but if my CD-ROM is not working? Try a booting from a USB key. You’ll need a UNetbootin program which is available for Windows and Linux.  It is quite easy to create a bootable USB. Again, it won’t worked for me – probably my computer is too old and don’t know about USB booting… Finally, in Ubuntu forum got a suggestion to try boot from network!!! Hopefully, I had a router, a few cables and one more computer. So, I followed the instructions and again had Ubuntu 9.10. If you get errors, that file not found, check the location in the Current directory and Boot file fields.

TFTP screenshot

So, there are four ways to try to repair your computer:

1. GRUB rescue command line;
2. Live CD;
3. UNetbootin with USB;
4. boot from LAN;

Good luck!

P.S. I already tried booting from LAN twice – NICE!

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Still using and happy. And happier because I already blogged one very important shortcut in my previous post The shortcut which I needed again was ALT+F2 which shows command line(like in windows) where I can enter a command which we can execute. That line was xfce4-panel & as my panels disappeared again. Lucky me.

Secondly, I find out that  there is a button with arrow looking up on right on every page near minimize, close, which minimizes the window and shows only the title of the page.

Exaile picture, from http://exaile.org/

Started to listen to radio  and found a nice player, which was already installed,- Exaile. My computer is not freezing anymore like it used to do in WinXP+Winamp. Nice! If you want to listen to radio and get an error, that you need to install decoder then try fluendo or gstreamer depending which file formats you want to listen. You can add those plugins with Synaptic Package Manager by entering the name of plugin.

One more thing – if you want to save your session, keep windows open, when shutting down or restarting tick on Save session for future logins on Quit screen below all choices. It is very useful when you want to turn of your computer and next time run all your  applications from previous session – don’t manually load them again.

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Xubuntu logo

As mentioned yesterday, I installed an older version of Xubuntu instead of Ubuntu.  Firstly, I launched Firefox, Pidgin – internet messaging client, which is easy to configure, updated Xubuntu(not upgraded), downloaded Skype and tried to mount my partitinions.

After update and restart  top and bottom menu bars disappeared. Fun. Even right mouse click not working. Fortunately, Firefox is running from previous session and I can Google. The solution for the problem – ALT+F2, choose  in Terminal and in command line enter xfce4-panel &.

Now we can  use Synaptic Package Manager to add  more software we need. It can be found in Applications > System > Synaptic Package Manager. For example, we type wine in quick search input box, select appropriate package, mark for installation and when all packages we need are selected we can touch Apply and install them.

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Last week, a new version of Ubuntu was published. A lot of people were waiting for it – me too. It’s name is Lucid Lynx and previous version was called Karmic Koala.

It looks like a story is with happy ending. Well, for me it’s not very. I spend  a few evenings trying to understand why my old /etc/fstab was not working and finally made a real mistake in it and was unable even edit it. Sad, but true. And why am I writing? I just remembered my blog where I wanted to put useful information for future Why blog? Its a better place than a simple notebook – you can access it from anywhere, where the internet is available.  So, this time I wanted to put a few commands, which I think will be useful soon…

As follows, after unsuccessful upgrade I decided to try a new version of Xubuntu. Unfortunately, it was not working too and I decided to take a previous version – 9.10. Finally, installation was successful and I was able to login. Configuration didn’t take too much time, as I had just enter my wireless password. So, when I have internet I need some space. Unfortunately, NTFS is not mounted and I can’t find any program to do it. Again, I search for ubuntu mount ntfs and get results:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g
sudo mkdir /windows
sudo mousepad /etc/fstab

In Ubuntu, if you want to edit a file, you can write sudo gedit /etc/fstab. So, when it is open, we have to put:

/dev/sda2  /windows  ntfs-3g    defaults,noatime,rw 0  0

after restart /dev/sda2 will be mounted in /windows directory. We must know which partitions we have and where to mount. To find out our partitinions in Terminal(ALT+F2) we write sudo fdisk -l. As we can see in a picture below, I have lots of partitions…

For example, if we want to mount manually /dev/sda9, we should login in Terminal(ALT+F2) as root: just type SUDO SU and enter your root password. When we successfully entered information, we can try to mount our partition. Firstly, we must create a directory: mkdir /windows2. Secondly, we write the command: mount -t ntfs /dev/sda9 /windows2. I don’t suggest you mount them manually, better edit /etc/fstab and forget – just make a backup first! More information about mounting partitions can be found here.

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Two very important add-ons I use when creating or updating web pages are:

• WebDeveloper – for Firefox . Web developer is very handy and useful, when you create web sites or just pages and need to verify it – menu and a toolbar is for you. When I found it, I add it on every computer immediately   Some functions:
  • links to validate  current page’s CSS, HTML, WAI and etc. ( also possibility to add your tool/link for pages validation).
  • view css, form, image, table and other important information.

Top my 5 most used functions:

1. 1. CSS, HTML, WAI validation
   2. View style information -  click on a page element and style information is displayed in additional frame!
   3. Display form details
   4. Outline Tables> Table Cells
   5. Disable Javascript, CSS styles, Images

• Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar – similar add-on for Internet Explorer.  As ussualy I prefer Firefox, so not very go into this tool, but looks like,  it has less built in functions, but you can choose elements which you want to outline (Find>Select Element by Click) which I like also .

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• One of the most important thing is Microsoft compatibility Pack. It allows users with Ms Office 2003 read documents from MS office 2007. I already installed it for a few users… Sad, but true – it’s almost impossible to live without it, when users have 2003 and 2007 versions of Office.

As they say, you can use this pack even if you don’t have office 2003. Well, never tried, but it was very usefull when I needed to open and view files made with MS Office 2007 as I can’t explain for  every user how to save docs in compatible 2003  format… Still hate those incompatibillity  issues and do not understant why THEY make so many different file versions and everytime people need a new program or plugin.

• One more thing is Save As PDF or XPS. It is very usefull, when you get used to PDF files after using OpenOffice.org or just must provide an alternative format. Unfortunately, this add-on is only for 2007 MS Office users. Just one thing which is not very convenient, as I used to press only one button in OO to save as PDf,  and now I have to navigate to SAVE AS and find this option…