/usr/NX/bin/nxserver –keygen … Please, I want the last two hours of my life back!

As good as Nomachine’s NX is … the documentation is seriously confusing  and all over the place with some documents more complete than others.

I tried to check out their new 4.x preview just yet (oh, and no, it’s definitely not ready for production), and as I always do, generate my own keys to go with it. But after the usual /usr/NX/bin/nxserver –keygen, a restart failed with

NX> 500 ERROR: Cannot start service: nxserver
NX> 500 Authentication as user nx using the NX SSH key-pair failed.
NX> 500 This may be due to the configuration of your SSH server. Please
NX> 500 ensure that the location and file name of the SSH authorized
NX> 500 keys is the same in both the SSHD and NX server configuration
NX> 500 files and that the nx user is listed among the accepted users
NX> 500 in the SSHD configuration file.
NX> 999 Bye.

Got seriously frustrated, because all seemed well according to documentation. Well, it seems like there is one important step missing – renaming or copying

/usr/NX/share/keys/default.id_dsa.key

to

/usr/NX/share/keys/server.id_dsa.key

If you don’t do that, nxserver will happily continue to use its prior key (which makes sense I guess, you aren’t going into production with new keys the second you generate them) while the nx user will already have the new keys in place.

So basically the procedure is:

# /etc/init.d/nxserver stop
# /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --keygen
# chown nx:root /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/authorized_keys2
# chmod 0644 /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/authorized_keys2
# chown nx:root /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/default.id_dsa.pub
# chmod 0644 /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/default.id_dsa.pub 
# cp /usr/NX/share/keys/default.id_dsa.key /usr/NX/share/keys/server.id_dsa.key
# /etc/init.d/nxserver start

Of course, your client(s) will also need to import the new server key.

If I had one wish this year…

… it would be Spotify officially available in Germany. The software (hello wireless iPhone syncing!) and the service is so good, it’s hard to live without once you experienced it. Maybe Apple will introduce something reasonably priced… it will still come with the monster that is called iTunes. And it sucks.

Installing NoMachine NX on ArchLinux

Pain in the butt… if you don’t know you need to specify redhat as system. From then on it’s smooth sailing. Download from nomachine.com and then:

# switch to root
cd /usr
tar xfvz <nxnode-whatever is current version now>
tar xfvz <nxclient-whatever is current version now>
tar xfvz <nxserver-whatever is current version now>
ln -s /etc/rc.d /etc/init.d
/usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxnode –install redhat
/usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxserver –install redhat
rm /etc/init.d

That’s pretty much it. You might want to create your own keys instead of the default NoMachine keys by doing /usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxserver --keygen, but it’s not required.

(Yes, I know – there is FreeNX in the Arch repositories. It works… kind of. Resuming a session from Windows to Linux and vice versa might work, but usually does not. Hence for personal use I prefer the original NoMachine distribution – the two connection limit is usually more than enough. PS: Did I say I love NX? It’s an awesome product in so many ways.)

Fullscreen Flash Videos not playing in Ubuntu/Fedora/Debian/Chrome/Firefox/insert-whatever-here when Compiz Fusion Effects are enabled

If the headline seems familiar to you… try this:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/adobe
sudo echo "OverrideGPUValidation=1" > /etc/adobe/mms.cfg

(source)
and restart any open browsers for it to take effect.

Adobe blacklists anything with SGI as GLX vendor string for GPU acceleration. Intel cards/drivers report this though. In combination with Compiz desktop effects = bad. So using above snippet fixed any fullscreen issues on my Lenovo Thinkpad T500 with Mobile 4 Series Chipset.

ext2read now supports ext4 with extents

Finally! The ext2read application now supports ext4 extents – which makes me finally able to get access to my Linux partition from my Windows-XP-employer partition again. Awesome. Read Only, but that’s fine by me. I just hate doing some work at home, forgetting to put it into my Dropbox and then having to do the reboot-savetonet-reboot-juggle. Work XP is encrypted/usb disabled/younameit. /rant. So thanks ext2read!

“reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3″, your syslog and what fixed it for me

If you use external USB drives (be it SD-Cards, Hard Disk or Thumbs) and your drive(s) seem to hang from time to time while spitting out ”[...] reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3 [...]” in your syslogs, the following fixed it for me.

My one little 320GB 2.5″ external Western Digital USB hard drive had this issue, while the big ones didn’t – seems like it is somehow related to being powered by the bus itself or using a dedicated power supply. Anyway, the drive seemed to hang on large file transactions (like copying a big file) and then the kernel had to reset it, announcing it via the syslog. Very annoying, especially because SMB transfers always got interrupted and went totally  foobar. The fix was quite simple. max_sectors for the drive was set to its default 240 value, which the drive choked on for no apparent reason whatsoever. Issuing a quick
echo 128 > /sys/block/sdc/device/max_sectors
fixed it. YMMV. Of course replace sdc with the actual node of your drive.

Lotus Notes 8.5 / A gdk Window is being destroyed out of DestroyWindow / Ubuntu 10.4 /

Pretty much works out of the box using the .deb’s. Pretty much, because … well, it’s Notes after all.

If you are experiencing the dreaded “A gdk Window is being destroyed out of DestroyWindow” error when starting Notes in a Terminal (or your basic Mail/Calendar/whatever windows are simply not visible/not appearing), follow this bug report on launchpad.

Cliff Notes:

• Download the four GDK libraries from http://www.freetechie.com/upload/lotus_notes
• Throw them into /opt/ibm/lotus/notes
• …
• Profit!

Don’t forget to change Notes’ default fonts. They suck. Other than that, works beautifully in my environment.

Note to self: if (syslog.contains(‘device descriptor read/64, error -62′) && syslog.contains(‘unable to enumerate USB device on port whatever’)) {

before debugging for like two hours and then thinking your USB harddrive is broken – check whether the damn cable is actually functioning and fully connected. Then keep wanting the two hours of your life back. /rant off }

Turning AntiAliasing on for Java Applications in X11

I’ve always been disgusted with how Java Application fonts look under X11. Been using quite a lot of IDEs lately and have found myself always going back to either Mac OS X or even Windows because my eyes could just not bear the uglyness of the fonts for more than 30 seconds. No good looking, crispy fonts? I’m outta there.
Thanks to this post by Hedayat and knowing I can turn on AntiAliasing by putting this into my environment

export _JAVA_OPTIONS=”-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on -Dswing.aatext=true”

developing in Java IDEs under Linux has become a lot more attractive.

EDIT: If your UI fonts in IntelliJ Idea still suck – switching to the GTK+ Look And Feel under Settings/Appearance/UI Options fixed that for me. Fonts look gorgeous now – and makes the whole application blend in much better with the rest of the system, anyway.

Anyone else noticing…

… annoying slowdowns of GMail during the last couple of days? IMAP fails, even the web interface takes ages to load and/or process stuff. Definately hasn’t happened to me before and it’s really, really annoying not being able to access your mail fast.

Alsa woes

Note to self: Intel’s HDA chip on my P35 motherboard sucks and doesn’t support hardware mixing. Debian’s libasound2 sucks too since the plug:dmix is broken for w/e reason.

Solution: Reactived my trusty old Creative Audigy2. Sweet piece of hardware and does hardware mixing.

Windows Vista is partition nazi

Tried to install Vista today since XP’s install routine simply refuses to work on my new P35-Chipset Mobo. And since I bought a copy back in the day I said… Well, let’s try it. Got to the installer and selected an empty partition to install to. Nada, nope, Mr. Vista doesn’t like to install. Tried everything… Deleting the partition, enlarging it, nothing worked.

Only when I deleted ALL prior partitions on that disc the diva proceeded to install. Way to go Microsoft. Newsflash: Not all of my HD space is belonging to you. Left me with a sour taste in my mouth, will have to restore my Gentoo install later on. :/ And what happens if I have to reinstall Vista in like two weeks? We’ll see,I’m expecting the worst – time to develop a serious backup strategy to an external drive.

EDIT: Fuck off Vista. First try: System goes to Stage 3. Hangs for about 3 hours on Stage3 ‘Completing install…’ looking like it does something – then crashes to black screen. Next try, will change some stuff in BIOS. Thanks for leaving me without an OS at all btw.

EDIT2 : Switching SATA2 drives from AHCI to IDE mode seems to have fixed the install. Still… Why the hell doesn’t Vista support AHCI on an Intel ICH9 board when the Linux Kernel does so perfectly? Yikes Microsoft… I’ll try the install another time injecting the latest Intel driver while installing.

EDIT3: Well, injecting the drivers from Intel doesn’t work either. The install is totally borked when AHCI is turned on on ANY controller, even if there is no HDD attached.