Tech-Bytes

There has been a couple of things that’s been bugging me since i got my iPhone about a month ago and one of them is this: itunes only allows you to sync your favourites from either Internet Explorer or Safari.

Sure I could just start using Safari (there’s no excuse for using Internet Explorer. No excuse.) but I like many others love using Firefox and probably won’t consider switching web browsers. This is where Xmarks comes in handy.

Xmarks started out as a Firefox extension that would enable your bookmarks to be backed up online and downloaded to any computer you use running Firefox. A couple of good examples where this would be useful are, being able to acess your bookmarks at work or on a system running multiple operating systems.

Recently Foxmarks has been renamed Xmarks and along with this name change came new versions of the software that would support web browsers other than Firefox.

Unlike the Firefox version Xmarks for Internet Explorer isn’t actually a plugin , it’s a little application that sits in the system tray and copies your Firefox bookmarks from your Xmarks account into the Internet Explorer favourite list without actually ever having to launch IE. (which is always a bonus)

All you need to do now is make sure that you have got syncronise Internet Explorer favourites selected in iTunes and next time you sync your iPhone all your bookmarks will be copied into the iPhones Safari favourites list.

Well that’s about it for this post. I don’t think there’s anything more to really say except this:

It’s been a while since I made any posts here, it’s been fairly difficult to find the time as meatspace seems to have the habit of getting in the way of writing/posting new stuff.   Hopefully that will change in the new year (since i’m going to try to procrastinate less and just get on with things)

So for now i bid you all a Merry Christmas and All the best for 2009, see you in the New year.

If like me you dual boot Windows and Linux, no doubt you will have come across the odd time when you have needed that über important document you need to work on urgently only to realise that it is saved on your Linux partition and you are logged in to Windows.

A while ago that type of situation would have forced me to reboot and login to Linux (which isn’t a bad thing), Luckily now with Ext2Ifs my Windows XP install can read my Linux partition. Despite it’s name Ext2Ifs is able to read both Ext2 and Ext3 (albeit with a few limitations).

According to the Authors (Stephan Schreiber) website EXT2IFS installs a pure kernel mode file system driver Ext2fs.sys, that actually extends the Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating system to include the Ext2 file system.

Once you have downloaded and installed EXT2IFS any Linux partitions that it detects will show up in Windows explorer exactly like any native Windows volumes you have attached.

Supported Features

• Complete reading and writing access to files and directories of volumes with the Ext2 or Ext3 file system.
• Allows Windows to run with paging files on Ext2 volumes.
• UTF-8 encoded file names are supported.
• The driver treats files with file names that start with a dot “.” character as hidden.
• Supports GPT disks if the Windows version used also does.
• Supports use of the Windows mountvol utility to create or delete drive letters for Ext2 volumes (except on Windows NT 4.0).

Unsupported Features

• Access rights are not maintained. All users can access all the directories and files of an Ext2 volume.
• The driver does not allow accessing special files at Ext2 volumes, the access will be always denied.
• Alternate 8.3-DOS names are not supported.
• Currently the driver does not implement defragging support.
• This software does not achieve booting a Windows operating system from an Ext2 volume.
• LVM volumes are not supported, so it is not possible to access them.

For more details about Ext2Ifs including download links head on over to www.fs-driver.org

MS-DOS has been around for many years now. Whilst I started working with PCs towards the end of the MS-DOS era many of the first PC games I can remember playing  were run in MS-DOS.

Many old DOS games simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems and this is where DOSbox helps, DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC along with everything necessary for running many old MS-DOS applications.  In this guide we will setup and configure DOSbox and install a couple of sample games.

DOSbox runs on a variety of different hardware/software including: Windows, Linux, Mac OS-X, BeOS and even the Sony PSP.

1)    Installing DOSbox

Installing DOSbox will vary depending on the operating system that you are running.  Installation may be as simple as running an executable file or you may have to resort to compiling the source code.  For further information please refer to the authors website : www.dosbox.com

2)    Mounting Drives

The first thing you will need to setup to be able to install and run your old games and programs is to set an area aside on your hard drive for DOSbox to use.  Create a folder in the root of your C: (or your Home folder in Linux) drive called DOSGAMES.  Then within DOSbox type: -

MOUNT C C:\DOSGAMES

This mounts the folder C:\DOSGAMES to the new drive C: This is where all our installed games will reside.

Next we will require a CD or DVD drive mapping, just incase we require to install software from CD, to do this type the following into DOSbox.

MOUNT D E:\ -T cdrom

In the above example this creates a cdrom drive in DOSbox called D:\ that uses my existing drive E: in Windows.  Below is an example of the same command for Linux users.

MOUNT D /media/cdrom0 -T cdrom

3)    Mounting ISO Disc images

Perhaps like me you have backed up some of those aging DOS cdroms to CD images to preserve them from the gradual wear and tear.  The following command will mount a disc image that we have copied into the root of our DOSbox C:\ drive as a CDROM drive labeled D:\

imgmount d C:\MyISO.iso -t iso

4)    Making these settings permanent

As you may (or may not) have noticed the mount point(s) that we have set up for your hard drive and cdrom will disappear once you quit.

First we will need to create a configuration file to do this type the following into DOSbox:

config -writeconf dosbox.conf

This file will be saved where you installed DOSbox to in Windows, If you are running Linux it will be saved in your “Home” folder

To make these settings a little more permanent we will have to edit the “dosbox.conf” file we just created, open it in your favorite text editor (I use gedit), look right at the bottomof the file and you will see the following:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.

Under this add the command you used to mount your DOSbox C:\ drive and cdrom for example:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
MOUNT C C:\DOSGAMES
MOUNT D E:\ -T cdrom

Save and exit the text editor, now next time you load DOSbox your mount points will be ready for you to use.

5)    Further reading
If you are new or unfamiliar with MSDOS then please pay a visit to the following link for a quick crash course in the basics of using MSDOS

Don’t worry if all this seems a little complicated at first there are various frontends for DOSbox as well as other ways to launch your old games but we’ll cover those in more detail in another post.

Ever wanted a terminal similar to the consoles that you would see in computer games such as Quake and Unreal Tournament? You know the type where you press the tilde (~) key and a console will slide down from the top of the screen and when pressed for a second time it slides back up?

If you answered yes then you are in luck, because this effect is fairly easy to achieve and only requires minimal tweaking once you have installed the appropriate packages. If you have apturl installed just click the following link (install Tilda) or go and download the latest release of Tilda from here. (Tilda is also available in the Ubuntu repositories)

How to compile from source

1. Type ‘./configure’ to configure the package for your system.

2. Type `make’ to compile the package.

3. Type `sudo make install’ to install the programs and any data files and

documentation.

Now that we have tilda installed all we need now is to to make tilda load when we log in. To do this go to System > Preferences > Sessions, you should now be faced with the “Startup Programs” tab, click Add and fill in the details as follows.

Next we need to launch Tilda and configure a few of the preferences these are entirely optional but in my opinion add to the authenticity and more closely mimic the consoles found in Quake and other games.

1. In the “General” tab untick “Show Notebook Border” this will get rid of the ugly border.

2. In the “General” tab tick “Start Tilda hidden” and “Always on top”.

3. In the “Appearance” tab adjust the width to 100%

4. In the “Appearance” tab tick “Enable Transparency” and adjust it to about 55%

5. In the “Keybindings” tab click “Grab Keybinding” and press the Tilde (~) key.

And that is about it, don’t forget to play around with the settings until you are happy with them as the ones above are just my own personal preference. Hopefully now when you press the tilde key you should have a terminal appear just like I have in the screenshot below. (Click for fullsize image)

For those of you that use KDE and would like to acheive a similiar effect you could try installing Yakuake.

Now let’s focus on adding that Mac like feature which will enable us to mount an image with just a few clicks of the mouse (without adding any extra software).

Download these two scripts here and here, move these into your bin folder by running this command in the terminal:

sudo mv iso-* //bin/

The two scripts that we have just moved will need to be made executable, so to do this in the terminal type:

cd //bin/

then

sudo chmod +x iso-*

Close the terminal and locate one of your .ISO files within the file browser (Nautilus).

Right click your .ISO file and choose “Properties”, in the page that appears choose the “Open With” tab. Click the arrow next to “Use a custom command” and type in the following in the text field.

//bin/iso-mount.sh

repeat this but add

//bin/iso-unmount.sh

make sure that iso-mount.sh is selected as default like in the diagram below.

Now all you need to do to mount your .ISO files is to double click them (and enter your admin password), to unmount the .ISO right click the .ISO and choose “Open With iso-unmount.sh”

Thanks to animacide and Nightwish for the two scripts used in this tutorial.

In this tutorial we will cover how to mount ISO files as a virtual drive, this will have pretty much the same effect as if you were using Alcohol 120% or Daemon tools in Windows.

MAC OS-X has a fairly neat feature built into the operating system that I have pretty much fallen in love with recently, and it is this: all you need to do to mount an .ISO is double click the .ISO file and it will automatically mount it for you. Later on in this guide we will cover how to replicate this function within the GNOME desktop environment.

OK lets begin, first things first we need to create a new folder (mount point), open up a terminal and type the following command, this will create the place where we will mount our images.

sudo mkdir /media/virtualcd

Enter your root password when prompted and your new mount point will be ready to use. From within the terminal navigate to the directory where you .ISO images are stored and type the following (replacing fakk2.iso with the name of the .ISO you wish to mount):-

mount -o loop -t iso9660 fakk2.iso /media/virtualcd

Now that your CD image is mounted in the /media/virtualcd directory lets break down the above command and explain the switches and options that we used.

-o : Applies the options that follow.
-t iso9660 : This defines the file system type as iso9660 which is the standard for CD-ROMs
fakk2.iso : The .ISO file you wish to mount.
/media/virtualcd : The mount point we created earlier.

For further details regarding this or any of the options that can be used just type: man mount into the terminal to view the manual for the mount command.

Once you have finished using the mounted .ISO image just type: - umount /media/virtualcd, this will unmount the disc and leave the mount point ready for next time. Right, so that has covered how to handle virtual CD drives via the terminal in the next part of the tutorial we will cover setting up Gnome so that you can mount .ISO images with just the click of the mouse.

Network printers can be fairly expensive and are not usually something a normal home user will consider buying. Hopefully this simple guide will enable you to print over the network from your Linux or OS-X machine to that cheap inkjet printer you have connected locally (either USB or Parallel) to your PC running Windows XP.

For this tutorial we will assume that you already have your printer connected to your Windows XP machine and that you are able to print to it from Windows.

You will need to make a note of the IP address of the Windows the machine that the printer is connected to, to do this click “START” then “RUN”, type in CMD to launch the command prompt. Once you are in the command prompt type IPCONFIG/ALL, this will display your current IP address and should start 192.168 (this should be on the 6th line or so down), make a note of this as we will need it later.

The first step we will need to take is to install the “Print Services for Unix” to do this go to the Control Panel and select “Add or Remove Programs” then select “Add/Remove Windows Components” on the left hand side, once this has opened you will be presented with a list of components that you can install. Scroll down this list until you see “Other Network File and Print Services” (Click the thumbnail to the right for details

Click the Details button and select “Print Services for Unix”, click OK then next you may be prompted to insert your Windows CD and restart the computer.

We now need to go into the “Printers and Faxes” folder and right click the printer you wish to share and choose “Sharing” from the drop down menu. On the page that appears next click the link that says that you want to turn on printer sharing without running the wizard. This will open up the “Sharing” tab, tick the “Share this printer” box and enter a Share name below. Try to keep this as short as possible and without any unusual characters, make a note of it for later.

SHARE TAB IMAGE

Now to access the share in Linux (I’m currently using Ubuntu 7.10 but these steps should be fairly similar for different distributions). Open up “Printer Configuration” from the “System -> Administration” menu.

Click on “New Printer” then select “LDP/LPR Host or Printer” then fill in the hostname with the IP address of the Windows Machine, fill in the printer name with the Share name that we created earlier.

____

Click forward and select the manufacturer of your printer, after that select forward again and choose the model number. Next you will need to give the printer a unique name and description. Click Apply and print a test page to make sure that the paper settings and print settings are correct.

If you are using Mac OS-X the procedure is nearly identical to what we have done in Linux (just a few of the terms used differ slightly).
From within “Print & Fax” wizard click the plus (+) icon in the bottom left, then on the following screen click IP, on the screen that follows choose “Line Printer Daemon - LPD” as the protocol to use. Fill the address box in with the IP address of the windows machine and in the Queue field change this to the name we used to share the printer in windows (in my example I used HPPhotos). Fill the name and location in as before and select the printer driver to use.

Since both Linux and Mac OS-X both use CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) you can also add the printer via the CUPS web interface by typing http://127.0.0.1:631/ into your web browser, CUPS will be covered more in depth at a later date along with sharing a printer between Linux & OS-X.

Well hopefully everything went as smooth for you as it did for me, if you have any questions or suggestions please feel free to leave a comment.

The first thing we will have to do is make sure that you BIOS will boot from the Ubuntu CD on startup, to get into your BIOS you will have to press either [DEL] or [F2] (there are other keys but those are the most common) when your machine first boots up. You should be presented with something similar to the picture below.

You will have to find the boot sequence settings and change these so that your cdrom drive is the first and your harddrive is second, once these have been changed save the settings and reboot with the Ubuntu CD in the drive.

Once the live CD has loaded you will be presented with the Gnome interface that is standard with an Ubuntu install, with this live CD you will be able to install the operating system onto your hard disc or if you prefer just to play around with it and get a feel for it before taking the plunge.

For this part of the guide I will be working on an 8GB drive that is formatted to NTFS (standard for windows 2k upwards). The tool we will be using will be Gparted (GNOME Partition Editor) which can be found under “System -> Administration” on the tool bar at the top of the screen.

The first thing we will need to do is reduce the size of the NTFS partition, because at the moment it is taking up the entire hard disc and we need to create some space for the two partitions we will create for our linux install.

Right click the NTFS partition and choose “Resize/Move”, a new screen will load up showing the partition, drag the arrow on the right of the screen to reduce the size of the disc, make sure to leave plenty of space for your Windows drive, and then click “Resize”. Once back in the main screen of Gparted click apply.

As you will now be able to see, we have a large gray area that says unallocated, right click that and choose “new”. Create an EXT3 partition that takes up nearly all of the free space, but be sure to leave around 500MB to enable us to create a swap partition for our install. Follow the same process again but change the file system for the last 500MB partition to “Linux-Swap”. Now click apply and wait for Gparted to finish.

Now that we have created the partitions we need it’s now time to go ahead and install Ubuntu to do this just double click on the “Install” icon on the desktop. Once that has loaded select your language type and click next and select the timezone that you are in, ok now select the type of keyboard that you use.

Ok now we should be on step 4 (Prepare disk space), select manual on this page and click the forward button. On the next page that appears select the EXT3 partition that we made and edit it and change the mount point to / in the drop down box. click ok and once back in the “Prepare Partitions” page tick the little box next to it in the format column. Skip the migrate users, unless you want to import you Windows user accounts. Fill out the information on page 6 and now get ready for the installer to copy the files to your hard disk. Here is a little video of me installing Ubuntu.

Once everything is installed and you reboot you will probably be faced with the GRUB boot loader if you had Windows installed, if so just select which operating system you wish to use. If you didn’t have windows or another OS installed Ubuntu will run automatically.

Thats about all for now, if you have any questions please leave them in the comments section and I will do my best to answer them. I hope everything has been explained ok, the version of Ubuntu that was being installed is Feisty Fawn (7.04) several newer versions have been released since I wrote this guide, although much of the process hasn’t changed.

Thanks for visiting Tech-Bytes.

Over the next few months I will be adding Tutorials, guides and general advice regarding Linux, Windows and Mac OS-X (as well as covering more obscure operating systems such as Haiku).

All tutorials posted here will be Simple to follow step by step guides usually accompanied by Images or Screencast videos.

If there are any subjects in particular that you would like to see covered please don’t hesitate to contact me at Admin@Tech-bytes.co.uk