adb not detecting adroid device

OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
Kernel: 2.6.32.26-generic
Date: December 30th, 2010

 I'm sure there must be tons of posts on this particular issue, however I had hard time finding solution so here it is.
 I got my android phone and can't be happier well after first few days wanted to tinker with it, so I got an android SDK extracted and ran android from tools directory to pull all required features. Then time to enter few udev rules so the USB device can be detected (consider it as installing drivers in windows system) Developer page explains how-to and provides Vendor-IDs for each device.

for e.g. I've Samsung Epic 4g and command lsusb provides following output

• lsusb:
• Bus 002 Device 006: ID 04e8:681c Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd
• 04e8 is my vendor ID

however even after following all directions for adb devices output is

• adb devices
• List of devices attached 

          ???????????? no permissions

 which is not very helpful

so the workaround is starting adb server with super user permissions. as follows:

• adb kill-server
• sudo adb start-server

and then 

• adb devices
• List of devices attached 

          D70029974153 device

yey I got it detected and working

Converting RAW Nikon camera files to jpg

OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
Kernel: 2.6.32.26-generic
Date: December 29th, 2010

Hi everyone,
 If you are wondering how to convert raw image files from Nikon cameras to jpg files, then here is a trick.

•  Install ufraw sudo apt-get install ufraw
• ufraw or ufraw gimp plugin can be used to manipulate the image, however just for conversion,
• convert [filename].NEF [filename].jpg is sufficient

I've not tested it on raw files by any other camera but I assume it should work as long as raw file format is supported by ufraw

Ubuntu detecting less RAM

OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
Kernel: 2.6.32-24-generic and 2.6.32-24-generic-pae
Date: Sept 4th, 2010

Hey everyone,
 We bought new 2gig RAMs (2 modules) for my room mates laptop, we were pretty excited. BIOS detected it well, however Ubuntu showed up with 2.92GB RAM, even if he had shared video memory it would never be 1GB.
 So I looked around and found out that if you are using 32 bit OS over 64 bit hardware (processor), Generic kernel can't detect any more than 3GB of RAM.
 So solution for using 4GB RAM (more than 3GB) is to have 64 bit OS for 64 bit hardware or else use PAE kernel instead of generic.

• Just search for PAE kernel in synaptic and install proper kernel package, restart the computer and you are good to go 

Enjoy

This solution was posted at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1402138 last checked Sept 4th, 2010

Acrobat Read out Loud

OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
Kernel: 2.6.32.42-generic
Date: August 19th, 2010

Hi,
 I need to read through a lot of pdfs or papers and if its a day long reading on computer screen, it gets pretty annoying and stressful for eyes after a while. So I've been looking for 'Acrobat Read Out Loud' like feature. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything out there and Acrobat read out loud wasn't working out of the box.
 So here is how I get it working:

• Install eSpeak speech engine
• Install libgnome-speech7
• Install libgnome-speech-dev
• At this point you may need to restart, I am saying "may" because I rebooted computer and don't know what would be result without reboot
• Open Acrobat Reader -> Edit -> Preferences -> Reading -> Driver Choose espeak, I tried festival and failed, 
• I'm currently looking for more voices, I don't like robot-like voice but its good as for now.
• Extra: If you like to continue reading from last point, you may want to check Edit -> preferences -> Documents -> Restore Last View ......

Hope this helps you,

Complete installation of Xilinx ISE suite

OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
Kernel: 2.6.31.22 - generic
Date: June 11th, 2010
 
Installing ISE is probably pretty simple but I found getting every aspect working is bit of a work
 So here is procedure which I followed and got everything to work as per my requirements.

 Some prerequisites and heads ups are:

• I used iso image of Xilinx ISE (i.e. I didn't try webinstall) and if you want to use cd/dvd there is particular way to mount it, you will have to check about it.
• My installation directory is /media/WorkSpace/Xilinx (default is /opt/Xilinx). Here I'll assume /path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx
• On windows machine (or probably other linuxes as well) path for ISE components is /path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx/10.1/ however I found it to be simply /path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx so if you find any path mismatch please correct it according to your requirements.
• My system is 32-bit and I used 10.1 version of Xilinx ISE so the guide suppose to work with them.

I suppose thats all for now will add if I remember something else or if I get a feedback asking for something

Now procedure to get it installed:

• Mount iso image in home directory under some folder (or anywhere where use have full rights else installation will fail).
• Open termianl then cd to image mounted folder and run setup script (./setup).
• Follow the steps to complete installation. Write down installation path somewhere, even Xilinx installation window shows all paths, you can copy and paste those to some text file or write them down on a paper.
• Assuming installation competed successfully, here are steps just to start ISE with a single command (I called it startise, you can call whatever you feel like).
• echo "export DISPLAY=:0 >> /path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx/ISE/settings32.sh
• echo "exec ise" >> /path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx/ISE/settings32.sh
• chmod +x /path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx/ISE/settings32.sh Now you can run ISE from this particular settings32.sh however for system wide access use following command
• sudo cp /path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx/ISE/settings32.sh /usr/local/bin/startise (You can replace startise by whatever name you like)

Well thats installation and starting ISE however if you have noticed chipscope, xps and some other compatible programs will not just work.
Follow the steps to setup your environment. Again my installation folder is /media/WorkSpace/Xilinx, Here we are using path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx
I setup environment as I need it (through a simple shell script), however uf you want, you can just add these lines to .bashrc (in home folder) so as to get it setup on startup

• export PLATFORM=lin
• export XILINX=/path/to/installation/folder/XILINX/ISE for e.g. export XILINX=/media/WorkSpace/Xilinx/ISE
• export XILINX_EDK=/path/to/installation/folder/XILINX/EDK
• export CHIPSCOPE=/path/to/installation/folder/XILINX/ChipScope
• export XILINX_PLANAHEAD=/path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx/PlanAhead
• export PATH=$PATH:${XILINX}/bin/${PLATFORM}:${XILINX_EDK}/lib/${PLATFORM}:${CHIPSCOPE}/bin/${PLATFORM}: ${XILINX_PLANAHEAD}/bin/${PLATFORM}
• export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${XILINX}/lib/${PLATFORM}:${XILINX_EDK}/lib/${PLATFORM}:${CHIPSCOPE}/lib/${PLATFORM}: ${CHIPSCOPE}/xilinx/lib/${PLATFORM}:${XILINX_PLANAHEAD}/lib/${PLATFORM}
• Thats seems enough for getting everything running (not sure if Xilinx have any more features).
• Probably the last piece of installation is to get programming USB cable working:
• Prerequisites, Install following programs:
• sudo apt-get install gitk git-gui libusb-dev build-essential libc6-dev fxload
• I would assume you want USB drivers to be at /path/to/USB/driver/folder for e.g. /media/WorkSpace/Xilinx/ in my case and get USB drivers lib
• git clone git://git.zerfleddert.de/usb-driver
• Compiling USB drivers:
• cd /path/to/USB/driver/folder/usb-driver
• make
• Now you need to link these compiled drivers with impact tool. This step can be added to setting up environment step (script or .bashrc)
• export LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/USB/driver/folder/usb-driver/libusb-driver.so

At this point USB driver installation and linking is done, however you will still need to add few tweaks to make it work without giving an error for root user.
Basically we need to copy /path/to/installation/folder/Xininx/ISE/bin/lin/xusbdfwu.rules to /etc/udev/rules.d with proper name and by replacing TEMPNODE by tempnode however procedure is as follows (I didn't just copy pasted it but went through procedure you can try it the other way).

• sudo sed /path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx/ISE/bin/lin/xusbdfwu.rules -e 's:TEMPNODE:tempnode:g' > /etc/udev/rules.d/50-xusbdfwu.rules
• I used 50-xusbdfwu.rules as a new name to maintain consistency with naming convention in rules.d directory, however I suppose any name would be fine.
• sudo cp /path/to/installation/folder/Xilinx/ISE/bin/lin/xusb*.hex /usr/share
• sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart
• If you do lsusb after connecting powered ON board through a USB cable, lsusb should show Vendor id as 03fd and product id as 0008 for Xilinx cable (This one didn't work for me right away I needed to Restart my machine)

After install steps:
Xilinx complains about missing gmake utility while compiling hardware, simply add soft link to make to get it working

• sudo ln -s /usr/bin/make /usr/bin/gmake

As you can see it was pretty lengthy process and I needed quite a while to get everything working. Along the way I found many tutorials and to-do's, I'm really thankful to all of them for taking efforts, all links I followed are mostly listed at the end of this page. I'm sure I must have missed some pieces, if you find any missing link in this guide please mail me, I'll try to solve it at my best

Links followed (Last Checked June 5th 2010):
http://www.george-smart.co.uk/wiki/Xilinx_JTAG_Linux
http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~listarch/microblaze-uclinux/archive/2007/03/msg00101.html
http://forums.xilinx.com/t5/EDK-and-Platform-Studio/EDK-10-1-sp3-Ubuntu-8-10/m-p/27344
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=255573
http://heilubuntu.blogspot.com/search?q=xilinx
http://www.xilinx.com/support/answers/11630.htm

Thats all for Xilinx installation.

Few Notes

Hey,
 Its Summer again :) Got some time to document my struggle with Xilinx and got my site up and running.
 So from now on most of the posts which appear here will be available at: ubuntu section of my website.

 Another news: Blogger came up with new layouts, yippie. That means you will have to put up with periodically changing blog design -- Sorry about that in advance.
 
Anyway enjoy.

Upgrade Issue (Especially for someone using edgers ppa), Broken upgrade

OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
Kernel: 2.6.31.22 - generic
Date: May 29th, 2010

Hey guys,
I was pretty excited about 10.04 and new social networking support. I wanted to get it as soon as possible but alas I couldn't here is an error which I received:

An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade:

E:Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

This can be caused by:

* Upgrading to a pre-release version of Ubuntu

* Running the current pre-release version of Ubuntu

* Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu

If none of this applies, then please report this bug against the

'update-manager' package and include the files in

/var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bug report.

Restoring original system state

Looking around a little I came to know its an issue with third party softwares. 

So there was option of clean upgrade where I was supposed to remove all third party softwares which included edgers driver for x server (if you have followed previous post about installing drivers for 3D games) and in term UI and all. Which is really scary :s.

 Luckily I found a roundabout way to do it, Here are steps:

 

Deactivate all third party repositories:

•  System --> Administration --> Software Sources --> Other Software

Untick all repositories --> Close.

If you have already executed update to new distribution:

cd to /var/log/dist-update then cd to latest directory (for each upgraded try there will be a directory created with date as its name)

• cat main.log 

Around the end of this file - main.log you will see conflicting repository (mostly xorg repository)

Look for packages related to this repository in synaptic

• Select package --> Package (tab) --> Force Version and force it to downgrade to package available in Ubuntu repository

Now you are set to go retry upgrade and it should work without any issue at all :) 

Have fun hope that works for you as well.

This solution was posted at : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1488156 last checked May 20th, 2010

Upgrade to 10.04

Hi Everyone,
 This one is not much of a work around but a stumbling stone.
 So I explained adding edgers-ppa for Video driver in one of previous posts, however it turns out that third party installations are preventing me to upgrade to 10.04 Lucid. My speculation is edgers-ppa as other third party softwares shouldn't really cause any issue for upgrade. I will still try one method mentioned at (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CleanUpgrade) but it can wait till I finish up with my finals.
 I don't really think anyone is following here to get the solution but if you are then put a comment if you are upto trying the link mentioned.
Regards :)

Rose painting

Hi,
 Here is one more painting,

 I didn't use any gimp effects for this one as it looks just good as it is :)

Intel graphics card and 3D games (Regnum, HoN)

OS: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
Kernel: 2.6.32-020632-generic
Date: March 29th, 2010


 Hey everyone I purchased my laptop a year back with following configuration:
 Model: Inspiron 1525
 CPU: Intel C2D 2.4 GHz
 RAM: 4GB 1333 MHz
 Pretty awesome huh? but here is a catch 
Graphics card: Intel X3100 (Intel 965 chipset)


Now even if I've state of the art processor and RAM I couldn't play few games like Heroes of Newerth (HoN), Regnum Online until now even though Alien Arena and compiz were working just fine. 
 Reason: Not pretty good implementation of 3D drivers either by intel or open source community (as they say in many discussions).
 However I managed to get them running (still Savage2 is exception :-/)
Here is what you need (I would say MUST) to do for your Intel graphics card

• Open synaptic package manager or Software sources
• System --> Administration --> Synaptic Package manager/ Software Sources
• If you opened synaptic then Settings --> Repositories
• Click on Other Software --> Add and input following apt line
• ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
• Add Source then Relaod
• sudo apt-get update

 Now I'm enjoying pretty much everything which can be done on windows as far as 3D graphics for 965 (X3100) chipset goes.

EDIT[April 19th, 2010]: HoN gets stuck when hero moves to particular spot on map - near neutral creeps (my assumption as otherwise game runs properly)
 Regnum Online: After recent update characters seem to have lost cloths :P I'm waiting for edgers update to fix it. Other issue seems to be, game can't be exited properly and gets stuck on exit screen.

This solution was posted at http://forums.savage2.com/showthread.php?t=18339 (not exactly though)

Last checked March 29th, 2010

No sound for Amarok

OS: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

Kernel : 2.6.32-020632-generic

Date: March 6th, 2010

Hi,

The other day it happened that I had perfect sound everywhere on my system - web browsers, media players etc. but Amarok, it was a bit weird everything else was working properly but amarok (I couldn't even add songs to playlist).

So after searching a bit I found out that I need to install libxine1-plugins

• sudo apt-get install libxine1-plugins
• sudo apt-get install libxine1-all-plugins (I went ahead and installed this one as well)

Now its working perfectly

The solution was posted at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1312707 Last checked: March 6th, 2010 I wonder what would have happened without ubuntuforums :)

yahoo messenger

OS: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

Kernel: 2.6.32-020632-generic

Date: Feb 24th, 2010

Hi,

Everyone, for me yahoo messenger is all about IMvironments, webcam chat, smilies, audibles and silly stuff instead of just chatting. It just adds fun to chatting and thats the only reason I like yahoo messenger for a change.

Don't get me wrong here I like Empathy, Pidgin much more however I used to miss yahoo sometimes. There is a yahoo messenger for Ubuntu which provide all those features (maybe not overall but most of them), called "GYachE Improved (gyachi)".

As of recently gyachi was available only through source tar ball, however the other day I found a repository for gyachi.

So if you like yahoo messenger features and want to install it smoothly try following solution.

Open Synaptic package manager:

• System --> Administration --> Synaptic Package Manager

Add gyachi repository

• Settings --> Repositories --> Other Software --> Add

Add following apt line

• ppa:loell/ppa

• (GUI) Close Repositories window and click Reload in Synaptic Package Manger
• OR (Terminal) sudo apt-get update

• (GUI) Search for gyachi and mark for install --> Apply and done
• (Terminal) sudo apt-get install gyachi

And there it is you can start enjoying gyachi from

• Applications --> Internet --> GYachE Improved

I found this solution posted at http://jeysundar.blogspot.com/2009/11/best-yahoo-messanger-for-linux-ubuntu.html on Feb 24th 2010

Icarus Verilog ppa installation

OS: UBUNTU 9.10 Karmic Koala

Kernel: 2.6.32-020632-generic (Reason to have development version of kernel)

Date: Feb 3rd, 2010

Hello,

As of now most impressive open source compiler and simulator for verilog would be Icarus verilog. And they have provided with ppa as well so its very easy to install now. Here are few steps to install on Karmic:

Add ppa to repository:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-electronics/ppa

Update package list

• sudo apt-get update

Install verilog and gtkwave

• sudo apt-get install verilog gtkwave

And you are done

Very brief tutorial (Only if you are familiar with VCS or any other tool for verilog compilation and synthesis else follow User Guide)

To compile:

• iverilog -o [executable file name] [verilog source filename]

To execute:

• vvp [executable file name]

Waveform (considering .vcd or .lxt (dump) are created through test bench)

• gtkwave [.vcd/.lxt(dump) filename]

You can find complete installation guide, User guide and related stuff at http://iverilog.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Last checked Feb 3rd, 2010

I'll keep on updating this post as I'll explore through iverilog more

Once again Webcam issue

OS: UBUNTU 9.10 Karmic Koala

Kernel: 2.6.32-020632-generic (Reason to have development version of kernel)

Date: Jan 26th, 2010

Hi,

I've Inspiron 1525 and Omnivision webcam with it, it seems every time I upgrade my Ubuntu webcam stops responding. Apparently for Ubuntu 9.10 (Kernel 2.6.31.xx-generic) this is a confirmed bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/462336. As a remedy it says I should have 2.6.32.xx kernel which is stable however https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Kernel/Compile says you should not compile from source code to get further updates for kernel and support.

So the only thing need to be done is download a new kernel deb package from ppa http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.32/ and install it, it solved me the problem and now webcam is working smooth as ever. And ohh Ubuntu continues updates and support :)

P.S. I've not added ppa to repository and I'm not sure if that is a good idea so comments are welcome

I got the solution by asking at ubuntu forums http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1378109 Last checked Jan 26th, 2010

Installing ns2 (Network Simulator2) on UBUNTU the easy way

OS: UBUNTU 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

Kernel: 2.6.32.020632-generic

Date: Jan 25th, 2010

Hi,

It seems been ages since last post.

The day before yesterday one of my friend called up asking he have difficulties installing ns and nam on Ubuntu 9.10. So I searched a bit and I agreed that general installation process sure looked bit overwhelming.

However here is very easy way actually there is a ppa available for ns packages which needs to be included in repositories:

Export the key for Wouter Horre's ppa

• sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys B3F334F

Next thing is to add ppa repository to repository list (either by editing repository list with any editor or through Synaptic package manager)

Synaptic Package Manager -> Settings -> Repositories -> Other Software and then click on Add and paste following lines

• deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/wouterh/ppa/ubuntu Karmic main
• deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/wouterh/ppa/ubuntu Karmic main

Reload the package listing through Reload of Synaptic or use

• sudo apt-get update

Select and install ns, nam and xgraph through package manager or through command line with

• sudo apt-get install ns nam xgraph

And you are good to go.

This solution was posted at http://ns2onubuntu.blogspot.com/2009/11/easiest-way-to-install-ns2-on-ubuntu.html Last checked Jan 23rd, 2010