minicom setup and acpi questions

you need the string for the modem

AT&F1E0Q0V1&C1&D2S0=0

for the aceex modem check out later information

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Fix_Common_ACPI_Problems

has page for averatec laptop info for corrected DSDT for it read more about this issue
also more about sleeping
http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/view.php?manufacturer=Averatec&name=3250HX-01

debian, nvidia driver Linux Kernel 2.6.2x with paravirtualization

just to remind us
take a look
http://grizach.servebeer.com/nvpatch/

where he discusses what to do.

issue - i would rather not recompile the kernel.
maybe with the next 2.6.22 kernels we will be ok.

at leas,t according to this thread

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=93059

saving sound from internet

vsound will capture sound
Description: Virtual loopback sound recorder and real audio converter
This program allows you to record the output of any standard OSS
program (one that uses /dev/dsp for sound) without having to modify or
recompile the program. It uses sox to convert and save the raw data
into the desired file format and can help to convert real audio files
to some other non-proprietary format.

you can probably use

mplayer -v -dumpstream rtsp://linktoaudofile.rm -dumpfile audio.rm
Replace the rtsp://linktoaudofile.rm with the corresponding link you want to
download.

screenshots in linux

I believe the Gimp has a pretty straightforward tool for this.
And there is "import" that comes with ImageMagick.
It is a commandline app and works very well, in my experience. The online documentation has a

Try "scrot", it’s extremely small but still provides a lot of functionality.


I use ksnapshot, don't know how big it is, but it does a good job,
allowing to save in a number of different formats. I will try
"scrot", by the way, as I keep taking screenshots quite often.



nice import command from imagemagick

import -frame ~/Images/Screenshots/image_of_the_window_or_frame.jpg

display ~/Images/Screenshots/image_of_the_window_or_frame.jpg

What a great bunch of knowledgable and helpful people - I'd say
Imagemagick and scrot are the handiest - xwd and xwud to display have
the advantage of being on my machine already ( but they do put out HUGE
files). The Kseries suffers from the same problem as Gnome...I don't
run either so aptitude wants to pull in dozens of libraries.
Thanks to everyone!

I'm glad you asked, as I'd been wondering about this too. From the
advice you got I found my answer. I've added the following to my
.fluxbox/keys file, and I'm all set.

Mod4 s :ExecCommand /usr/bin/import -window root ~/screenshots/scrshot$(date +%s).png

gimp. open File -> Acquire -> Screenshot,
choose Single Window or Whole Screen, then click Grab. Now your next
mouse click will capture the window or screen clicked on as an image
in the GIMP. Crop and resize the image as necessary, using the
instructions at http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Lite_Quickies/#crop

My favorite program for screenshots is ksnapshot. But that might be heavy
for you.

There's always xwd in the xbase-clients package (which is probably
installed already).

Cons:
- It writes in .xwd format. Only. not png or even jpeg. xwd only. But
gimp and others should have no problem reading it.
- Command-line only. No GUI.

Pros:
- You probably have got it installed already
- scriptable from the command line
Not a real issue. You can always use

xwd | convert - screenshot.jpg


What's the point of using xwd, then?

import -window root screenshot.png

(since if convert is installed, then import is installed).

alsa problems

I have noticed that sound goes silent sometimes. i dont know why
i have been
redoing alsaconf and alsactl store
and speaker-test

what is wrong?

i noticed on debian-user

> Sound works OK from a variety of applications, including alsaplayer,
> realplayer, and mplayer. However, when any application changes a mixer
> setting, sound goes silent until alsa is force-reloaded. Any thoughts?
>
> joehill:/var/log# lsmod

I have the same motherboard and i was facing same problem. after
searching through google and various linux-related site, I found two
steps to solve this problem.

NOTE: install alsa-oss, alsa-utils packages
1. edit: /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
Add the following line at the end of the file,
"options snd-hda-intel position-fix=1 model=3stack" (withour
quotes)

After step 1, force-restart alsa module and see if it works or not.

2. edit: /boot/grub/menu.lst
add "noapic" option at the end of the kernel options.
reboot the machine. everything should work fine.

Thank you! This worked fine. There was no need for step 2 -- just the
above fixed the problem.

Andy

**************
now i dont have that mother board
but what is reloading alsa
/etc/init.d/alsa force-reload
i will try that next time.

How to convert CHM files under Linux

http://madphilosopher.ca/2006/09/how-to-convert-chm-files-under-linux/

$ sudo apt-get install libchm-bin
$ extract_chmLib book.chm outdir

where book.chm is the path to your CHM file and outdir is a new directory that will be created to contain the HTML extracted from the CHM file.

After running the utility to extract the HTML files from your CHM file, the extracted files will appear in . There won’t be an “index.html” file, unfortunately. So you’ll have to inspect the filenames and/or their contents to find the appropriate main page or Table of Contents.

Now the HTML is yours to enjoy!

Controlling your X - really deep down

amazing post by From: Andrew Sackville-West
If you want to experiment, there are a few things you can try. I would
start with, as root:

update-rc.d -f gdm remove

this will remove the symlinks to gdm in the your rc levels so that you
can start up your machine without gdm starting up. If you later want
to start up gdm manually, as root do:

/etc/init.d/gdm start

if you later want to redo gdm so it start automatically, then do, as
root:

update-rc.d gdm defaults

to recreate the symlinks for automatic start-up. Will take effect next
reboot, or next time you change run-levels.

Okay, now you can start your machine and log in from the command line
on a VT. edit a new file in your home directory and call it
".xinitrc". The "." is important.

put one thing in that file

x-terminal-emulator

and save the file. now logged in as yourself, type

startx

you should see the usual X screen come up and then it will pop-up an
xterminal for you. you cna play around for a bit and then type exit
from the xterm and you will drop out of X and return to the CLI. Some
fun things you can do here are: 'iceweasel &' in the xterm to start up
iceweasel. you can use this xterm as a sort of session manager by
starting whatever x apps you need from it.

what happened? you started a bare X session, without a *dm and using
~/.xinitrc, told it to run the X app pointed to by
"x-terminal-emulator" (part of the alternatives system, which is
another issue altogether).

you could have easily specified *any* x app. change .xinitrc so that
it has only the line:

iceweasel

and then try startx again. you should get a screen full of iceweasel
only. When you quit, you'll drop back to the CLI again.
onwe more quick lesson and then we'll move on:

edit xinitrc again and put in

x-terminal-emulator &

save it and try startx. It should start an xsession, launch an xterm
and then because the xterm is backgrounded (by the &) then X will move
to the next line of xinitrc, and with nothing there, will kickout and
drop back to the command line. This is proper behavior. X will run
until it reaches the end of your .xinitrc and then it will die. To
keep your x session running, the last program in xinitrc must stay
running in the foreground.

Now have fun. install a few window managers. edit your .xinitrc:

icewm

and run startx. a window manager is just like any other x program. It
keeps your x session going until it exits. But a wm has lots of other
cool features -- it lets you launch other x apps, it helps you contorl
the size and placement of the windows. it provides handy menus, etc
etc etc.

you can put lots of things into your xinitrc... at one point mine
looked like this, which is pretty simple, but give syou an idea

eval `gpg-agent --daemon --sh`
numlockx on
xscreensaver -no-splash &
rox-filer --pinboard=mypinbd
xsetbg -fullscreen /home/andrew/earth2a1.jpg &
icewm-session

this did several things: started my gpg-agent, turned on numlock (must
be on for my sanity), launched the screensaver, started up rox-filer
and my desktop stuff from there (rox-filer daemonizes itself and
doesn't need the &), set my background image with xsetbg and finally
launched icewm-session, which pulls in a whole bunch of icewm
stuff. I used that setup for about a year before moving on to wmii for
a while.

The point of all this is, if you *really* want control of your
desktop, this is a way to do it. have fun
Andrew Sackville-West
***************************

You don't have to uninstall anything. Just install a lightweight window
manager such as IceWm and change the preferred x-session-manager to
icewm-session, e.g.:
# aptitude install icewm
# update-alternatives --config x-session-manager
(Select icewm-session)

what is links2 browser
What will the end result look like? Personally, I don't use any gdm or
any other *dm, I just log into a normal terminal and run startx, which
starts icewm (on my PII) and Xfce on my Athlon. I went with Xfce over
icewm simply because I can edit the tool bar and other stuff with a
simple config applet instead of editing config files for icewm.
However, my PII only has 64 MB ram whereas my Athlon has 1 GB. Xfce
tends to leak memory.