Krutant.com

Starting with Android Development - Setting up development environment

2012-02-02T20:00:00.000Z

With the rise of smartphones and tablet computers powered by Android, Android Developer is an important skill to add your resume. I have just started this journey and so far I have learnt how to setup the development area which is what I am going to show you.

I expect you already know about Android and use a Linux distrubition. A foundation on Java Programming or any other programming language will also help. I suggest you read a little about Java Programming if you have no programming experience, mainly on the syntax, Object-oriented programming and using API documentation.

Requirements:

Install Eclipse from Ubuntu Software Center

This is a very simple step, providing you have Ubuntu installed, go to Ubuntu Software Centre and install Eclipse.

Add Software links for Indigo and ADT Plugin

Once you have eclipse installed, click on Help > Install New Software > click Add button

Name: Indigo
Location: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo

Name: ADT Plugin
Location: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/

Wait until Developer Tools option appears under Name, Tick it, Click Next and follow on screen instructions. Once installed, it will ask to restart so do it.

Install Android SDK

Once eclipse is running again, you should see "Welcome to Android Development" message

Make sure "Install new SDK" is selected, two tick boxes are ticked and select location where you want the android sdk installed. Follow the the wizard and finish installing the sdk.

Create Android Virtual Device

An Android Virtual Device (AVD) is an emulator configuration that lets you model an actual device so you can test your application for different hardware and android versions.

In eclipse go to Windows > AVD Manager > New > give it a name > target 2.1 and click on create AVD

All Done, we are ready to make our first application.

I would suggest to have a look at below sample tutorial as a starting point. Download the zip folder and extract it into your /home/yourname/workspace folder

http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/notepad/index.html

click on File > New > Android project > Create project from existing source > point the location to /home/krutant/workspace/Notepadv1

Make sure you have the correct AVD setup for a sample project import. Earlier, We setup an AVD with target 2.1 which will not run for the Notepadv1 project as it requires target 2.3

Turn off Google autocomplete and suggestions

2012-01-10T19:31:00.001Z

Are you tired of dropdown box that appears with every letter you type? Search pages also appear as you type. It is not a big problem on faster PCs but really ruins the browsing experience on netbooks, ipads and android devices. I really liked the simple old Google that let me type and search for what I wanted without interrupting me all the time.

I will show you two ways to go back to old Google search.

One way one to control the autocomplete feature is by signing into your google account but this means you have to be logged in all the time.

The easiest and fastest way is to set this as your homepage:

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0

Similarly bookmark the below link for image search with autocomplete off.

http://images.google.com/images?complete=0

Spice up ubuntu desktop with a new theme

2011-09-14T21:00:00.000+01:00

Lets be honest, the default Ambiance theme is too depressing and I am tired of Human/Clearlooks that we have used for years.

There are many themes available here: www.gnome-look.org

One of the best themes I have found is Equinox Evolution theme.

It goes really well with Nautilus elementary. Here is a screenshot of what the theme looks like with nautilus elementary.

If you want to try it out, Copy paste the following commands in Terminal:

Add theme and nautilus elementary PPAs.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tiheum/equinox
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:am-monkeyd/nautilus-elementary-ppa

Update apt

sudo apt-get update

Install Equinox Evolution theme

sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-equinox equinox-theme faenza-icon-theme

Go to System > Preferences > Appearance and select "Equinox Evolution Light" Install Nautilus Elementary

sudo apt-get install nautilus nautilus-data nautilus-open-terminal nautilus-actions

Restart nautilus

nautilus -q

Thats it, Enjoy the new theme.

Install Gnome 3 on Ubuntu 11.04

2011-08-12T19:50:00.007+01:00

I believe Gnome 3 is way to go and the future for many Linux distributions. I will post shortly on my experience on Gnome 3 and Unity. Until then, here is a complete guide on installing, configuring and making most of Gnome 3.

Before we continue, i would like to warn you that installing Gnome 3 on Ubuntu 11.04 will break Unity and your system might become unusable. Your graphic card drivers must be properly installed. This is not for the faint hearted, so backup and be prepared for the worst.

I have followed these steps on an Asus eeepc netbook and a Dell Precision desktop and everything is working great.

Installing Gnome 3

Open Terminal and copy / paste the following commands

Add gnome3 PPA to the list

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

Update the aptitude list

sudo apt-get update

Upgrade distribution (This will take some time)

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Install gnome-shell

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

To prevent theme issues, remove and install the standard theme

sudo apt-get remove gnome-accessibility-themes
sudo apt-get install gnome-themes-standard

Install gnome tweak tool, this will let you tweak some settings

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

Thats it, Reboot and at login select "Gnome" rathen than "Ubuntu", Ubuntu option is for Unity.

Removing Gnome 3

Install ppa-purge

sudo apt-get istall ppa-purge

Revert back to standard Ubuntu

sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

Configure Gnome 3

Add Minimize and Maximize buttons

Press ALT+F2 and type in: gconf-editor and press Enter.

Navigate to: > desktop > gnome > shell > windows

button_layout should be: :close

Change it to: :minimize,maximize,close

press ALT+F2, type r and press enter.

Reduce icon size in applications

Open gnome-shell.css file in gedit

sudo gedit /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/gnome-shell.css

Change the following values:

/* Apps */

.icon-grid {
    spacing: 2px;
    -shell-grid-item-size: 118px;
}

.icon-grid .overview-icon {
    icon-size: 48px;
}

Add shutdown to menu

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu

ALT+F2, type r and press Enter.

Tweak Tool

Open tweak tool: ALT+F2 > gnome-tweak-tool > press Enter

Navigate to Interface > GTk+Theme > Select Adwaita

Navigate to Windows > Current theme > Select Adwaita

Add a taskbar panel called tint2

sudo apt-get install tint2

ALT+F2 > type tint2 and press Enter.

Add this panel to startup applications

ALT+F2, type in: gnome-session-properties and press Enter

Click on Add >

Name: 	 tint2

Command: /usr/bin/tint2

Commend: tint2 panel

Thats all the tweaks for now, I will add some more as I learn more about Gnome 3. Below are two screenshots of my Ubuntu 11.04 with Gnome 3 working perfectly.

Transform Ubuntu desktop into Mac OSX

2011-07-06T19:36:00.003+01:00

One of the best things about OSX is the user interface, Apple has done a brilliant job at it. This is a simple guide for people who use Ubuntu but really like OSX look and feel.

This is best of both worlds, Ubuntu system with OSX look without the premium costs, It just can't get any better! There are many guides, themes and icon packs to achieve this but this is a simpler and a complete package that transforms login screen, sounds, effects, icons and everything else in one go.

Macbuntu

Mac OS X Transformation Pack. Macbuntu is an open-source program, designed to transform Linux’s appearance and layout into a Mac OS X environment. Although Macbuntu is dedicated to Ubuntu Linux OS, it could be used in other OS based on Debian/GTK

source (http://sourceforge.net/projects/macbuntu/)

I have tested this on Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and 11.04. It worked fine on 10.04 and 10.10 but had some issues with desktop effects on 11.04.

Step 1 - Download Macbuntu from Here

Extract the folder by right clicking and selecting "Extract Here"

Open Terminal and CD to the Macbuntu-10.10 directory and type

./install.sh

On ubuntu 11.04, you will see an error like below:

Attention!

Script significantly changes the desktop.

Not compatible with Ubuntu Netbook Edition.

If a previous version of Macbuntu-10.10 is installed it will be overwritten.



Checking Ubuntu version...

Failed. System not supported, script will end here

To ignore their compatibility with current OS try ./install.sh force

Exiting...

Try again with force option:

./install.sh force

To uninstall:

./uninstall.sh

and for Ubuntu 11.04

./uninstall.sh force

Spotlight for Ubuntu

Deskbar-applet is equivalent of Spotlight in OSX. To install

sudo apt-get install deskbar-applet

Saytime periodically

Install saytime, gnome-schedule, sox etc ...

sudo apt-get install sox libsox-fmt-all saytime gnome-schedule

Launch gnome-schedule

sudo gnome-schedule

Add the following the following command for every hour:

saytime -v 3 -f Pl

Resize and watermark images in Ubuntu

2011-06-23T21:33:00.002+01:00

In this post i am going to show you how to resize and watermark images in bulk for free, without additional software and through bash script that will work on majority of linux distributions. This is very useful for anyone who has to regularly resize and watermark pictures for websites or catalogues.

You will need ImageMagick, most linux distributions already have it installed.

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

If it is already installed, you should see this:

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

imagemagick is already the newest version.

What is ImageMagick

It allows you create, edit and display images from command line.

It can read, convert and write images in a large variety of formats. Images can be cropped, colors can be changed, various effects can be applied, images can be rotated and combined, and text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves can be added to images and stretched and rotated.

(source: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ImageMagick)

Shell script

Create a file called "watermark.sh" and open it in your favourite editor.

The first line we want to add is

#!/bin/bash

This means that the script should be run in the bash shell.

WATERMARK="watermark.png"

resize=450

These are our global variables.

# "*****************************************"

# "* Image Resize and Watermarking Script  *"

# "*         By Krutant.com                *"

# "*****************************************"

The above is the disclaimer, please keep this in the file.

read -p "Watermark with file \""$WATERMARK"\" & resize all images to width "$resize"?  " prompt

Prompt user of the filename used to watermark and the size.

if [[ $prompt == "y" || $prompt == "Y" || $prompt == "yes" || $prompt == "Yes" ]]

then

If the user keys in y or yes then

for each in *{.jpg,.jpeg,.JPG,.JPEG}

 do

for each jepg or jpeg file

echo -n "Working on "$each" ..."

Output the file name to be resized and watermarked.

convert -resize $resize "$each" "$each" >> /dev/null

Convert command to resize the file to the width specified.

composite -gravity center -dissolve 100 $WATERMARK "$each" "$each" >> /dev/null

Composite command to place the watermark in center of the image.

echo "[Done]"

done

  echo ""

  read -p "Press Enter to exit ..."

else

 exit 0

fi

Above is the end section where we output "done", wait for user to press enter before exiting.

Save it to your home directory, right click on the file, click properties, permissions tab and tick "Allow executing file as a program"

or type this in terminal

sudo chmod a+x ~/watermark.sh

To run it, copy watermark.sh and watermark.png file into any folder with images and then double click and select "run in terminal" or open terminal and type "./pathtofile/watermark.sh"

When you run it, you will see few errors because the script will try to resize and watermark file name ".jpg". To fix this, add below line just above the "for each loop" to ignore nulls.

shopt -s nullglob

Thats it! This is very simple script but it does the job. There is alot of room for improvement such as adding more image types, ignoring the watermark.png file so it does not resize the actual watermark file and so on. The main commands are convert and composite, typing them in terminal will bring up many other options.

Here is the complete code:

#!/bin/bash

WATERMARK="watermark.png"

resize=450 

# "*****************************************"

# "* Image Resize and Watermarking Script  *"

# "*         By Krutant.com                *"

# "*****************************************"


read -p "Watermark with file \""$WATERMARK"\" & resize all images to width "$resize"?  " prompt 

if [[ $prompt == "y" || $prompt == "Y" || $prompt == "yes" || $prompt == "Yes" ]]

then

 echo ""

 shopt -s nullglob

 for each in *{.jpg,.jpeg,.JPG,.JPEG}

 do

  echo -n "Working on "$each" ..."

  convert -resize $resize "$each" "$each" >> /dev/null

  composite -gravity center -dissolve 100 $WATERMARK "$each" "$each" >> /dev/null

  echo "[Done]"

 done

  echo ""

  read -p "Press Enter to exit ..."

else

 exit 0

fi

Batch resize and rotate with Nautilus

In Terminal:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-image-converter

Once it is installed, restart your computer or restart Gnome

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

Browse to the folder where you have your photos, right click the photos and you will see the options to "Resize Images" and "Rotate Images". Once you select resize or rotate option, You will get options to perform the operations.

How to surf the web anonymously

2011-06-16T19:02:00.004+01:00

If you think you are anonymous on the internet then think again, by simply connecting to the internet you share information about your computer, your geographical location and even web sites you have just visited.

Some of the information you have already given away:

What will anyone possibly do with this little information? but if you combine this with say your Facebook profile where you have given away your name, date of birth, email address and also your browsing habits i.e what websites you often visit, what you like to buy on internet etc, you have pretty much given it all away. Ever wondered how the ads on websites you visit relate to a recent search or purchase?

Before i tell you how to be anonymous, it is important to understand what an IP adress and proxy server is.

What is an IP address?

Internet Protocol (IP) address is a unique number assigned to devices connected to public Internet. Your internet router is assigned an IP address when it connects to Internet service provider. So your ISP can identify internet requests made by your router and can route the data to it. Similarly, your devices such as PCs and laptops connect to your router and are assigned a local ip address so the router can identify which device is making the request and where to route the data. So it is your internet router that is connected to the internet, has the public IP address that gives away the above information and shares this internet connection with all your devices.

What is Proxy Server?

An anonymous proxy serves as a middleman between your web browser and an end server. Instead of contacting the end server directly to get a Web page, the browser contacts the proxy, which forwards the request on to the end server. When the end server replies to the proxy, the proxy sends the reply on to the browser. No direct communication occurs between the client and the destination server, therefore it appears as if the HTTP request originated from the intermediate proxy server. The only way to trace the connection to the originating client would be to access the logs on the anonymous web proxy (if it keeps any). So an anonymous proxy server can protect your identity by stripping a request of all identifying information.

(Source: www.publicproxyservers.com)

I could not have explained the above any better so credit where its due.

How to be anonymous?

We now understand what IP address is and what proxy server is so all we need to do is hide our IP address by using a proxy server so all the websites see the IP address of the proxy server that cannot be traced back to us.

There few ways of achieving this:

1) VPN

This is a paid service which lets you connect through a VPN to a server. Here is an example: http://www.hideipvpn.com. There are many other websites offering similar service, whichever website you decide to buy from, ensure there are no logs kept by the server and all the data is encrypted.

2) Web Proxy

This is very simple, go to proxy website such as www.hidemyass.com/proxy/ or www.anonymouse.org and then typing the website you want to access in their search box. The only disadvantage is that there are ads above the website.

3) IP Proxies

First go to http://hidemyass.com/proxy-list/ and find an IP address with good speed, connectivity and high anonymity level. Set the IP address and the port in your internet browser.

Firefox: Edit > Preferences > Advanced

Internet Explorer 8

Google Chrome: Options > Under the hood > Network > Change proxy settings > LAN settings > Use a proxy server > Advanced > HTTP

Opera: Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Network

You will have to regularly update this with an IP address that provides good connection and speed. There will be country specific restrictions e.g. if you set an IP from China, you will not be able to browse websites blocked in China.

If you need to anonymous for life threatening reasons than stick to VPN solution, otherwise use Web or IP proxy.

Remember, your IP is your ID!

Geany - A Perfect Web Development IDE

2011-05-26T19:37:00.005+01:00

One of my favourite editor is Editplus. I have really liked this editor over the years because it is simple, lightweight, custom code completion is very easy to setup and you can modify remote files without having to upload / download through FTP.

Since moving to Linux, I've been looking for an alternative. I wanted it to be light-weight, easy code completion and remote file editing. I found many choices in the Linux world and majority of them open source. I tried gedit, kate, Quanta, Eclipse, gPHPEdit, BlueFish and Geany. All of these have their advantages and disadvantages and someone is bound to like one over the other. I won't go into reviewing all of them and would suggest to try them out yourself. I preferred gedit and geany over the others.

gedit

gedit is fast and it does pretty much everything you want from an editor. It lets you edit remote files without any hassle. It is also a default text editor on many Linux distributions. I found a lot of problems with Code Completion. gedit auto complete files in XML format e.g. in /usr/share/gedit-2/plugins/snippets/html.xml is the snippets file for HTML. It was not an easy job converting my current snippets into an XML type. The following code is an example of what you would need in there to auto complete "br" tag.

<snippet id="br">

    <text><![CDATA[<br />

$0]]></text>

    <accelerator><![CDATA[<Shift><Control>space]]></accelerator>

    <description>Br</description>

  </snippet>

After spending over an hour setting up the XML snippet for HTML, CSS and PHP, I found that if you try to autocomplete PHP code when you have a HTML file open it would not work. So I merged the 3 xml files into /usr/share/gedit-2/plugins/snippets/global.xml. Adding autocomplete code in this file will work for any file type including unsaved and empty files.

So I migrated my autocomplete file from Editplus format to gedit xml file. After all the tedious work, I found that the auto complete would not always work and it was unreliable. I had to restart gedit many times to get it working.

Geany

This is one the the best editors out there, The more i used it the more i liked it. It is a very light-weight with many plugins and features.

It auto completes XML/HTML tags by default. In preferences > editor > completion, you can auto-close quotes and brackets:

Brackets ()

Curly brackets {}

Square brackets []

Single quotes ''

Double quotes ""

To add custom snippets, go to tools > configuration files > snippets.conf and it will open in another tab. This is the only file you need to modify for all your needs, the snippets are added into different sections. Anything under [default] will work on any file type and adding code in [PHP] section will work for php files only.

Here is an example adding br tag to autocomplete for HTML files:

[Default]

[PHP]

[HTML]

br=<br />

How easy was that? The word before the "=" sign is what you will type and on pressing "tab", everything after the "=" sign is what will be replaced with. Save and test it out in a new document. This is alot similar to Editplus and easier than gedit xml.

At present, there is no direct FTP support in Geany and there is no plug-in available. For linux users there is a way, if you go to tools > plugins manager > Tick File Browser and click on View > Tick "Show Sidebar. On the sidebar, click on "Files" and navigate to "yourhomedirectory. Right click and Tick "Show Hidden Files" and navigate to ".gvfs" directory which will show your ftp folder. You can now modify remote files locally.

I found this is a perfect alternative to Editplus and even better. It works on many platforms and its FREE. For Linux its easy download from Software Packages such as Ubuntu Software Centre and for windows Download Here.

Download Geany snippets and extras.

How to use Ubuntu at workplace by joining an Active Directory domain

2011-05-25T18:06:00.038+01:00

Requirements:

Computer running Ubuntu (10.04 / 10.10 / 11.04)
Admin rights to join a computer to domain
likewise-open version 6.0.0.8388

Updated : 8^th September 2011

I have updated this guide to use the newer likewise-open version 6.0.0.8388 that works a lot better and is easier to setup.

Preparation

sudo gedit /etc/nsswitch.conf

replace hosts line that reads

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4

with below and save the file:

hosts:          files dns

In terminal, ping your fully qualified domain name (FQDN)

ping mydomain.local

or ping somehost.example.com

If you cannot ping or it is the wrong IP address

sudo gedit /etc/hosts

Add your domain and ip address before the localhost entry

192.168.1.1 mydomaina.local

127.0.0.1 localhost

Save the file and Reboot.

Installing likewise-open

Download Likewise-open 32-bit or 64-bit package from the website:
http://www.likewise.com/community/index.php/download/

Once downloaded, Open Terminal and type the following:

sudo bash Downloads/LikewiseOpen-6.0.0.8388-linux-i3860deb

Answer "y" to the prompts

Once it is installed, you will see the Domain join GUI. Type in your domaina name and click Join. Enter Administrator username and password or an account that has permission to join computers to domain.

You will see a message saying “Restart required”. Before you reboot, add the domain user to sudoers and to login screen user list.

Adding users to sudoers

We will be editing /etc/sudoers file for this:

sudo gedit /etc/sudoers

Look for the following line:

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges  
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

Add a lines as explained below:

If you have set default domain

username ALL=(ALL) ALL  # Allow specific account to sudo
domain^admins ALL=(ALL) # Allow admin group 
domain^users ALL=(ALL) ALL # Allow all domain users

if you are not using default domain then you have to include the domain name:

%mydomain\\yourusername ALL=(ALL) ALL
%mydomain\\domain^admins ALL=(ALL) ALL
%mydomain\\domain^users ALL=(ALL) ALL

Add domain username to login screen user list

sudo gedit /etc/gdm/custom.conf

Add the greeter part at the end of the file. Add your domain username to include section and any other you want to exclude.

[greeter]
Include=username1,username2
Exclude=administrator,guest,nobody

You can then reboot and login with your domain account.

Likewise-open default shell problem, terminal showing $ prompt

When you run a terminal you will get a $ prompt and tab to autcomplete will not work. To fix this type the following in terminal

sudo /opt/likewise/bin/lwregshell

cd HKEY_THIS_MACHINE\Services\lsass\Parameters\Providers\ActiveDirectory

set_value LoginShellTemplate /bin/bash

quit

Reboot once you have done the above.

Troubleshooting older version of Likewise-open:

Problems joining domain

If you see an error as below, it means the domain name entered is not valid

Error: DNS_ERROR_BAD_PACKET [code 0x0000251e]

A bad packet was received from a DNS server. Potentially the requested address
does not exist.

If Domain name typed in is correct but you get the following error:

Network name not found.. Failure to lookup a domain name ending in ".local" may be the result of configuring the local system's hostname resolution (or equivalent) to use Multi-cast DNS. Please refer to the Likewise manual at http://www.likewise.com/resources/documentation_library/manuals/open/likewise-open-guide.html#ConfigNsswitch for more information.

Error code: ERROR_BAD_NET_NAME (0x00000043) Backtrace: main.c:341 src/djmodule.c:330 src/djauthinfo.c:722 src/djauthinfo.c:1146 Edit hosts file:

sudo gedit /etc/hosts

Add the following line after localhost entry

192.168.1.1 mydomain.local

If you still get an error like :

Error: LW_ERROR_ENUM_DOMAIN_TRUSTS_FAILED [code 0x00009ca0]

open /etc/nsswitch.conf

sudo gedit /etc/nsswitch.conf

Change the "hosts" line so it reads

hosts:          files dns

Problems loggin in...

Ensure that you are typing the domainname/username or just the username according to default domain value.

The older versions of likewise-open has a problem where the networking starts after the likewise services. You will not be able to login at all without restarting likewise service and once you have managed to log in, on the next reboot you will be in offline mode. Opening network shares will prompt you for username, domain name and password.

To fix this, in terminal type:
Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 which will take you to tty and login with an account that can sudo.

sudo gedit /etc/rc.local

This will open rc.local file in gedit

Add below code before line "exit 0"

/etc/init.d/lwsmd restart

so your rc.local file should look:

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

/etc/init.d/lwsmd restart

exit 0

Save and Reboot. This will restart the likewise services just before you login preventing the offline mode and authentication problems.