(bogus) error messages

dedoimedo just posted some great advice I'd like to re-post, because it's very useful. Besides offering step by step instructions how to handle the
Natty & Nvidia driver not in use error he also advised: what to do, when greeted with an error message:

...
What's the lesson of this short howto? First, don't sheep-panic. Second, don't blindly follow online advice. Someone has a similar error message to yours, that does not mean they have the same problem, if at all. In this case, this is clearly a bogus error. But most importantly, you need to know how to approach and troubleshooting issues like this one.

This article teaches you how to follow the train of logic and fix your problems without going overboard with fear or despair or random copy & paste of online solutions. For example, we learned this was a bogus error message.
...

So true in so many ways.

time to replace Dropbox

Now that Dropbox changed it's term of use allowing US agencies access to data saved on dropbox server, it's time to check out replacements. Not that I save sensitive data on their server but I don't comply with such methods.

More information (in German) can be read at: neues-feature-bei-dropbox-backdoor-fur-us-behorden

One of the replacements I'm looking into is spideroak, aerofs and tahoe-lafs.

spideroak also released an iOS app, so I decided to install the application too.
There's also a openSUSE project page for it: en.opensuse.org/SpiderOak.

Unfortunately the version downloadable at the spideroak website is not compatible with openSUSE 11.2 anymore and the Factory link at the openSUSE page is empty too. Oh well, openSUSE will be out of support soon anyways and unless I'm going to stay and use the Evergreen version, I need to update soon.

I have an openSUSE 11.4 VM and downloaded the current openSUSE rpm from:
the spideroak download page and installed it with "rpm -ihv". It installed fine and now I only need to setup the service.

I/O usage per process

statistics of I/O usage per process can be found in /proc/pid/io.
There's also a great utility 'iotop' available on openSUSE collecting the data and displaying it in a nice table/graph like top does.

Linux Mint (8, codename Helena) in VMware Workstation 6.0.0 no network

Despite installing vmware-tools; network manager just doesn't want to activate eth0.

The Virtual Machine Setting for Network Connection is set to "Bridged"

In Linux Mint open a Terminal:
# ifconfig eth0 _any-IP-in-the-network_ netmask 255.255.255.0
# route add default gw _IP-of-Router_ eth0

create /etc/resolv.conf and add nameserver:
# vi /etc/resolv.conf

search example.com
nameserver _IP_
nameserver _IP_


# ifup eth0

network and online connection is working

Hyperlinks in Spreadsheets

This was driving me nuts. Whenever I entered a URL in the spreadsheet it became gray/blue and was recognized as a hyperlink. Sometimes Format - Default Formatting helped, but sometimes it didn't. And of course it was annoying too, to fiddle around with the Default Formatting.

I found a solution at:

How to remove gray background from links in cells?

In short:

Turning off Automatic URL Recognition

If you do not want OpenOffice.org to automatically recognize URLs as you are typing, there are several ways of turning off this feature.

Undo URL Recognition

1.When you are typing and notice that a text has just been automatically converted into a hyperlink, press Ctrl+Z to undo this formatting.
2.If you do not notice this conversion until later, select the hyperlink and choose the menu command Format - Default Formatting.

Turn off URL Recognition

1.Load a document of the type for which you want to modify the URL recognition.
If you want to modify the URL recognition for text documents, open a text document.
2.Choose Tools - AutoCorrect Options.
3.In the AutoCorrect dialog, select the Options tab.
4.If you unmark URL Recognition, words will no longer be automatically replaced with hyperlinks.
In OpenOffice.org Writer there are two check boxes in front of URL Recognition. The box in the first column is for later post-editing and the box in the second column is for AutoCorrect as you type.

opensuse11.2 - Amarok - mp3

Just so that I remember:
YaST - Software repositories - Add - Community Repositories - add the Packman repository -
Software - switch the libxine1 from openSUSE to Packman (can be controlled under the "Versions" tab in the Software install dialog, add libxine1-codecs! I missed it the first time and Amarok still couldn't play mp3 files.

ssh connection refused

tried to scp or ssh from one openSUSE 11.2 (host A) to another openSUSE 11.2 (host B).

On host A I get the following:

# scp -vvv file.pdf user_name@192.168.1.7:/tmp
Executing: program /usr/bin/ssh host 192.168.1.7, user user_name, command scp -v -t /tmp
OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8k 25 Mar 2009
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to 192.168.1.7 [192.168.1.7] port 22.
debug1: connect to address 192.168.1.7 port 22: Connection refused
ssh: connect to host 192.168.1.7 port 22: Connection refused
lost connection

On host B nothing in the logs, for testing I turned off the firewall to make sure it's not the culprit, although port 22 was already opened anyways. Didn't help.

Solution - on host B (192.168.1.7) :
---------

# rcsshd start

starting application after su _another_user_

While I'm logged in as user_1, I'd like to start an application for user_2 but I get a D-Bus session error:

username_1@hostname:~> su username_2
Password:
username_2@hostname:/home/username_1> /usr/bin/kmail
(25123)/: Cannot find the D-Bus session server


KDE4 Troubleshooting documents a solution to it:

"If you get
KUniqueApplication: Cannot find the D-Bus session server
make sure you can access the display, e.g. type
xclock
then a clock must appear on the screen. If it does and the error persists, start your shell using
start your shell using

dbus-launch xterm

and start your program in there."

VmWare-Workstation 7 - Windows 7 installation

After you enter the license key, Windows 7 Setup loads and then stalls and produces the following error:

Install Windows
The unattend answer file contains an invalid product key. Either remove the invalid key or provide a valid product key in the unattend answer file to proceed with Windows installation.

The suggestion at:
social.answers.microsoft.com resolved the problem.

Solution: "disable the floppy disk option"

HowTo disable the floppy disk option:

Create a New Virtual Machine, once it's created the new VM-name (Windows7 in my case) is displayed in the Sidebar under Favorites.
Right click on it and select "Settings" at the bottom.
Under Device select Floppy
The "Device Status" - "Connect at power on" needs to be _deselected_
For Connection change to "Use a physical drive:" not that this should matter, when it isn't allowed to connect, but I changed the default option to use the floppy image to use the physical drive, just in case.

Then save the settings and Power on the virtual machine.

VmWare-Workstation 7 - Could not open existing VM

After the installation of VmWare Workstation 7 I had to adjust something:
I just tried the following:

- Open a virtual machine or team

- Pointed it to an existing WinXP.vmx

- The Tab for the VM was created but when I tried to start it I got the following error:

Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory.
Please make sure that the kernel module `vmmon' is loaded.

# lsmod | grep vmmon
returned nothing, so I had to load the module:
# modprobe vmmon

After the module was loaded:
#lsmod | grep vmmon
vmmon 87308 0

- I was able to start the WinXP Virtual Machine