Monthly Archives: April 2008

Disable Evolution notifications in Ubuntu

17-Apr-2008 Posted by Sonia Hamilton under
3 Comments

Update 17-Apr-2008

The steps below don’t seem to solve the problem. For the moment the easiest way to get rid of the Evolution letter icon (which appears in the notification_area) is to create a new panel, drag across the stuff you want, and delete the old panel (package update notifications will then appear on the Panel Menu – TODO check update-notifier is removed). I can see notification_area in gconf-editor at /apps/panel/applets, but can’t yet work out a way of deleting it – right clicking etc doesn’t work. Will play with gconftool and RTFM.

End Updates

I’ve just started using Evolution to access the hExchange server at work, and it keeps on popping up new email notifications (even though I’ve disabled it in Evolution and restarted X) – too much like Winblows for my likings. Other crap keeps popping up and annoying me too – here’s how to disable it all:

First, disable the update-notifier via: “System > Preferences > Sessions”, under “Startup Programs”; remove “update-notifier”. Also check that it isn’t being started up in the saved session by first killing it (ps ax | grep update; kill 12345) and saving a new session.

Then, run gconf-editor (from the shell) search on notification, and disable:

  • /apps/evolution/mail/notification

See also:

Dell Latitude D830 No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found

15-Apr-2008 Posted by Sonia Hamilton under ,
No Comments

Solution:

Gutsy Intel HD Audio Controller, “Method G”

In a nutshell:

  • enable backports
  • sudo aptitude install linux-backports-modules-generic
  • sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
  • add options snd-hda-intel model=dell-m42 to end of file
  • reboot ($DEITY, that sounds so Window$)

howto rip Real Audio streams to mp3 on Ubuntu

14-Apr-2008 Posted by Sonia Hamilton under ,
7 Comments

I enjoy listening to podcasts during my commute, and most podcasts can be easily downloaded using my favourite podcasting tool (currently customised bashpodder, but I’m writing my own). But unfortunately some broadcasters (for example a large British one) persist in using weird proprietary formats like “Real Audio”. Bah! By the curse of RMS’s Beard!

There seems to be conflicting advice (see links below) on how to rip Real Audio to mp3, here’s how I got it going on Ubuntu 7.10:

First of all I installed Real Player using instructions here and here, and checked I could listen to a stream using the GUI tool – a quick sanity check for firewalls, etc.

  • add repo deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu feisty partner
  • sudo aptitude install realplay

Then I installed mplayer and lame: sudo aptitude install mplayer lame. I got the source for a stream by right clicking a link, saving it as file, extracting the rstp:// url out of the file, and tested downloading:

$ mplayer rtsp://xyz.net.uk/foo.ra -ao pcm:file=audiofile.wav -vc dummy -vo null

And it failed with these errors:

Opening audio decoder: [realaud] RealAudio decoder
Error: /usr/lib/win32/sipr.so.6.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: sipr.so.6.0, /usr/lib/win32/sipr.so.6.0, /usr/local/lib/win32/sipr.so.6.0

So I located the sipr.so library, and based on the error message and digging around in mplayer using strings I linked the installed realplayer codecs to /usr/lib/win32:

$ sudo find / -type f -name “sipr.so”
$ strings /usr/bin/mplayer | grep usr
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/realplay-10.0.9/codecs /usr/lib/win32

I repeated the above mplayer command (which worked) then converted to mp3:

$ mplayer rtsp://xyz.net.uk/foo.ra -ao pcm:file=audiofile.wav -vc dummy -vo null
$ lame -h -b 128 audiofile.wav audiofile.mp3

Now, all this works for pages that have a direct link to a .ram file. But some sites (for example the BBC) have an embedded Real Player that hides the links to the .ram file – here’s how to find the .ram file:

  • click on the link and start playback the embedded Real Player in Firefox
  • a file called ~/.realplayerrc will be created – towards the end of the file there will be a section like this:
    • [recent_urls]
    url0=file:///tmp/foo.ram
  • cat the /tmp/foo.ram file, and copy the rstp:// link – ignore the part after the ? (the UID, etc)
  • follow the above instructions for ripping :-)

Links

Ubuntu Repositories Explained – gutsy-security, gutsy-updates, etc

01-Apr-2008 Posted by Sonia Hamilton under
No Comments

Copied verbatim from Jeff Waugh’s post on SLUG:

> But anything worthy of going into ${ubuntu_release}-updates is surely
> worth putting straight into ${ubuntu_release} ? Or is it just me?

Post-release, that archive is never touched. It means that users get to
choose how much damage they're willing to accept:

* release: Don't touch it, I like consistency, even with my bugs.

* release-security: I'll accept patches to existing versions (and very
rare version upgrades if absolutely necessary) in the process of keeping
my system secure.

* release-updates: Okay, some bugs are worth fixing, and I trust you this
much (holds up two fingers like Maxwell Smart).

* release-backports: I have something akin to technology ADHD, needing
the latest of everything I can possibly get, but I'm a sooky little
wuss-fart because I can't handle running the development branch.

* devel: I can take it. Seriously. If you break my X, I shall become more
powerful than you could possibly imagine. I'll file and maybe even fix
the bugs and I'll do it even if power management is not so much 'managed'
as vomited all over the wall. Come get some.

* debian: We do the work so you don't have to.