add to rc.local:
modprobe -r psmouse
modprobe radeon
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
exit 0

The first line in the above turns off the touchpad, which I never use. If I needed to use it I could:
sudo modprobe psmouse
The second line loads the open source ATI Radeon driver, the third line turns off the ATI card so it doesn’t suck power. The Intel graphics card is plenty powerful for my needs.

set brightness:
echo 2000 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness
The brightness keys don’t work. I haven’t yet assigned a command to the right keys but I’ll update this when I do. Replace 2000 with a value you want; look at /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/max_brightness for the max value.

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:
# fix mic on dv7
options snd-hda-intel model=dell-s14 power_save=0 power_save_controller=N
(enable subwoofer but break mic:options snd-hda-intel model=ref)
#Fix dropping networking on resume from suspend
/etc/modprobe.d/iwlagn.conf:
options iwlagn bt_coex_active=0


Make sure proprietary radeon drivers are blocked
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-local.conf
blacklist fglrx

Optimize SSD (if you have an SSD that is):
/etc/fstab:
add noatime,discard to main drive
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,nosuid,size=1g,mode=1777 0 0
/etc/rc.local:
echo deadline > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
echo 1 > /sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/fifo_batch

Fix video mode error on boot:
sudo chmod a-x /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme
also https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/699802 #24

So it was obviously a permissions issue, and here’s what the permissions looked like on that file:

-rwxr----- 1 root svn 0 Aug 12 18:00 txn-current-lock


Oops – I could only read but not write that file. Looking further it turns out the entire repo only had root write permissions, even though it was owned by the ‘svn’ group – I’m not sure how that happened, possibly a stupid mistake on my part. I had already set up a ‘svn’ group and added the users I wanted to have access to the repo to the ‘svn’ group, so I just had to make the repo writable by the group.

The fix was simple:
sudo chmod -R g+w /var/svn/foo/*
(where foo is the name of the repo)

I have an improved solution. I wrote a quick BASH script that scans all the videos it finds in the Matroska (.mkv) format in the current directory as well as any subdirectories it finds, removing all compression from .mkvs it finds and saving a new mkv with “fixed” appended to the filename.

#!/bin/bash
#
# This script will traverse all subdirectories looking for Matroska (.mkv) files
# When an .mkv file is found, it will be checked for compression
# If compression is found, create a new file without compression with "-fixed" added to name
# (e.g. badmovie.mkv -> badmovie-fixed.mkv)
#
# Run from the root directory that you want to begin scanning from (e.g. /home/foo/Videos or /media/USBdrive)
#
#
# 1/22/2012 v2
# better handling for files with spaces; removes all compression, not just track 1
# remove the need for a command line parameter
#
start=`pwd`/
echo $start
find -type d | while read directory
do
cd "$start${directory#"./"}"
for file in *.mkv
do
if mkvinfo "$file" | grep ompress > /dev/null
then
file_length=${#file}
cut_len=$(($file_len - 4))
prefixedfile=${file:0:$cut_len}-fixed.mkv
fixedfile=${prefixedfile// /.}
mkvmerge -o "$fixedfile" --compression -1:none "$file"
if mkvinfo $fixedfile | grep compression > /dev/null
then
echo "$fixedfile still has issues"
exit
fi
fi
done
cd ..
done


Note, I edited this post on 1/22/12 with the current version of this script which handles filenames with spaces and removes all compression, not just the first track.

So to disable it, set StartServer=false in .config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc:

[QMYSQL]
Name=akonadi
......
StartServer=false

It might still load if you use KDE-dependent apps, or it might cause your system to blow up. But that should do the trick.

Here’s the error that the script threw:
NameError: global name 'OPENOFFICE_BIN' is not defined

All I did was to locate where LibreOffice put itself and add that to the script. In my script there’s a section that looks like this:

# Find OpenOffice.
_oopaths=(
('/usr/lib64/ooo-2.0/program', '/usr/lib64/ooo-2.0/program'),
('/usr/lib/openoffice/program', '/opt/openoffice.org/basis3.1/program'),
)


See that first instance of /usr/lib64/ooo-2.0/program? I replaced it with /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program and now the script works perfectly. Never in a million years would I expect this with an upgrade from a proprietary vendor. Once again, free open source software just saved me lots of time and money.

New script looks like this:
# Find OpenOffice.
_oopaths=(
('/usr/lib64/libreoffice/program', '/usr/lib64/ooo-2.0/program'),
('/usr/lib/openoffice/program', '/opt/openoffice.org/basis3.1/program'),
)


Anyway, once in a while the WD refuses to play a video in the Matroska “mkv” format, particularly those using the H.264 codec encoded with the mkvmerge utility. When this happens the WD basically shows a black screen and more or less locks up. Once that happens on the WD you can only eject the HD and reboot.

The fix for this is to remove video compression on the mkv in question, which sounds daunting but really is only a one-line command that takes a couple of minutes to execute and doesn’t change the quality of the video. You need the mkvmerge program which is part of the mkvtoolnix package in Ubuntu. mkvtoolnix is also available for Windows if you’re stuck there.

Here’s the command:
mkvmerge -o output.mkv --compression -1:none input.mkv

Where input.mkv is your original file and output is the fixed file.
(Edited: I changed the command to remove /all/ compression in an mkv)