Lord of Ultima is EA’s popular browser based strategy game that simulates an immersive medieval civilization.

Okay, so it is a browser-based game. It looks like Age of Empires. It is FREE. How can you complain?

So what happened?

In a nutshell this is what I did:

1) On my Acer 4750 notebook, I had Windows 7 give up as much as space as it will allow with the 600+GB disk it was sitting on. It gave me about 200+GB of unused space after shrinking.
2) I rebooted and proceeded to install Ubuntu using a LiveCD (actually it’s a USB using UNetbootin application).
3) As I’ve done countless times, I selected GRUB to be installed on the disk MBR.
4) Waited for the install to finish, rebooted, and removed the USB thumb drive. Went out to get a can of soda.
5) When I came back, I was greeted with the Windows 7 login screen.

Shocked! This was the first time in my countless Ubuntu installs that it ever failed to write correctly to the MBR. What made it even worse was that the Wifi, despite having entered the correct password, was not working during the Live session install. I had to reboot to Windows to look for solutions to my case.

Just to be sure, I redid the whole install process (which only takes a few minutes granting you turn off the Internet connection during the installation). Still no luck. Without GRUB on the MBR, there was no way I could boot into Ubuntu unless I let Windows do the loading.

Supposedly this can be done by following the steps at this page – Using Windows 7 Boot-loader. Yes it is for ArchLinux, but the steps should work on most Linux distro. However, I have not had much luck with this alternative. It didn’t work when I tried it and I was left staring at a blank screen with a blinking cursor at the upper left side of the screen. Of course before I followed the instructions on that page, I first reinstalled Ubuntu and placed GRUB on /dev/sda5.

Another way to edit Windows 7 boot loader and add entries for Ubuntu is by using EasyBCD. It is a Windows application. Search for it on Google.

After trying the solutions above I was still left with an unbootable Ubuntu install. I knew I had to find a way to get GRUB to manage the whole disk. So I had to resort to re-installing GRUB which should have been the first thing that I should have done. An officemate of mine who is an ArchLinux user did suggest the above. Using the same Ubuntu Live CD, we can fix GRUB with a few easy steps.

But first, let’s take a look at how my disk looks like after the Ubuntu installation.

1) /dev/sda1 is a hidden partition (recovery files)
2) /dev/sda2 Windows 7 boot loader partition
3) /dev/sda3 Windows 7 partition – C:
4) /dev/sda5 Ubuntu
5) /dev/sda6 swap

To re-install GRUB, follow the 3 simple steps below on Gnome Terminal:

1) Know what partition your Ubuntu is installed using fdisk.

sudo fdisk -l

The above command will result in something like below,

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    30722047    15360000   27  Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2   *    30722048    30926847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        30926848   682250927   325662040    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       682252286  1250263039   284005377    5  Extended
Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5       682252288  1242263551   280005632   83  Linux
/dev/sda6      1242265600  1250263039     3998720   82  Linux swap / Solaris

2) Then mount that partition to an empty directory. In this example we’ll put it in /mnt and /dev/sda5 is my Ubuntu partition as indicated with the highlighted line above. It may not be the same for you so make sure you get the partition right.

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt

3) Now issue the install command for GRUB.

sudo grub-install –root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda

Take note that /dev/sda is correct as we are targetting the disk where Ubuntu is installed and not the partition.

After doing the 3 steps above, reboot and you should have the GRUB menu greet you promptly in a few seconds.

So over the course of the past 2 weeks no ugly boot messages were showing and I wondered if there was a plymouth update I didn’t know about. Sometimes I just let the Ubuntu Update Manager run without looking at the list. I was like, “Maybe they finally fixed the stupid thing?”. The only caveat is that the default Ubuntu plymouth splash animation does not show on shutdown. During the shutdown process there was only a blank, black screen.

At first I did not bother with it. However I logged out of the desktop one time and was greeted with nothing but a blank, black screen too. I waited for several minutes for LightDM to show up but that never happened. I could not even transfer to another console after hitting CTRL + ALT +F* keys (or ALT + F* keys). I had to force reboot Ubuntu so I could log back in. I tried this about 3 times to make sure it was not a random occurrence, and it was not.

I ran update manager again to see if there were updates that may help this problem, but there weren’t any. All my system files were up to date. As far as 2 weeks back, I cannot remember doing anything to the system by hand that could have caused this problem.  So once again I headed out to the Internet to get answers.

There were lots of suggestions and answers I found regarding this matter but the one that worked on my end was a very simple one. It was all about the screen display resolution. My laptop has a standard 1366 x 768 (16:9) resolution. For some reason this was changed to 1360 x 768. I believe some application modified the resolution but did not change it back to the original after exiting. Running games on Linux are known to do this a lot, because game handling on Linux literally suck. The change is very minor but this, in fact, was the cause on why I get a black/blank screen when I logout and also the same reason why Plymouth animation on shutdown did not show. After restoring to the original resolution, everything is now back to normal and working as it should be.

Note that I am trying to run Flash apps through a Red5 video streaming server on a VPS with CentOS 6. Please do not confuse this issue with Flash not working entirely because it does. The issue only arises when a Flash app needs to access the cam and/or mic.

The work around for this problem is to explicitly set that particular site to have permission to access my laptop’s devices. It can be done in 2 ways:

1) Adobe site’s Flash Player Settings Manager found at this location: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html

2) Adobe Flash Player Preferences. This is the app that comes with the Adobe Flash installation on your Linux distro. On Ubuntu 11.10 this app can be accessed through Dash and typing in the word “adobe”.

Remeber to Add the website if it is not yet in the list.

As of this writing the latest Adobe Flash version is 11.1.102.62.

The document is available on Google Docs entitled – Gnome 3 System Settings changes. Click on the link above to view it.

In a nutshell what you will see there are changes that have been proposed and are currently being worked on for the next Ubuntu LTS release which is version 12.04 Precise Pangolin. This new LTS comes out end of April 2012. Already 2 Alphas have been released and the upcoming 2 Beta releases are next, if I’m not mistaken.

Among the new things are a new Shutdown dialogue. See the image below. The dialogue will reflect what is enabled under Power Settings, such as Suspend and/or Hibernate, and will not be shown if either or both are disabled. Hibernate will only be enabled by default only for Ubuntu certified hardware. Don’t worry you can force it if you want to. It is included in the options.

On 12.04 we will also be seeing options for the Application Menu to be either integrated to the global menu bar or with the individual windows (which was what  used to be pre-Unity). I am sure a lot of people will be happy with this new option. Many people don’t like the global menu bar, especially those with big screens, but on my 1366 x 768 laptop, it is a very welcome feature. It means more screen real estate.

Another great thing that we will see on Precise Pangolin is more options to configure Unity directly from the System Settings. Right now one needs to install CCSM (CompizConfig Settings Manager) in order to do that.

Other interesting things are more options for the Privacy settings and Display Settings which includes support for multi-monitors. Read the document for the entire specifications.

All-in-all Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin is shaping up quite nicely and I cannot wait to upgrade come April.

Okay so the fix can be found on this page – http://ubuntu.igameilive.com/2011/11/temporary-problematic-bluetooth-fix-in.html. Please follow the link to read about the fix. I do not want to repeat the same steps when you can just read it directly from the source.

The steps above can be done easier. If you hate memorizing the commands to mount and unmount, and  the thought of having to type on a terminal every time you want to access your device via bluetooth does not appeal to you, then you can add it to your Unity Launcher.

I am fairly comfortable with using a terminal but for those who are not, below is an example of what I did to easily mount and unmount my phone via Obexfs.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Obexfs Mount
GenericName=Bluetooth mounter
Comment=Mount-Unmount My Bluetooth
Exec=obexfs -b BLUETOOTH:DEVICE:ADDRESS /PATH/TO/MOUNT/DIR/
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
MimeType=text/plain;
Icon=preferences-system-bluetooth
Categories=System;Utility;

X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=UnmountMyBlue;

[UnmountMyBlue Shortcut Group]
Name=Unmount My Bluetooth
Exec=fusermount –u /PATH/TO/MOUNT/DIR/
TargetEnvironment=Unity

Use your favorite text editor to create a similar entry and save it with a .desktop extension inside /home/USER/.local/share/applications, where USER is your username. In my case I simply named it obexfsmount.desktop. The file does not need to be executable so you don’t have to change permissions.

Once the .desktop file is saved drag it to Unity Launcher. Click on the icon to mount. Right-click it to access the shortcut to unmount.

Of course the above can be improved to include a prompt to enter the desired bluetooth device address. Right now I only hard-coded to one address for example’s sake. I will update this post once I’ve made the script to easily change the address to allow other phones. I think it can be done via a simple bash script and gtk-dialog or whatever.

Things To Note

One of my phones has a 16GB micro SD card. Nautilus cannot seem to display the contents. In my experience it caused Nautilus to freeze thus I had to force-close the application. However accessing the mounted card on a terminal is okay. I can access the phone that way.

On the other hand my other phone, an old Nokia which is just an ordinary cellphone with bluetooth, accessing the files on  Nautilus is okay.

I do not know the reason behind this “bug”. Perhaps the 16GB size is too much for Bluetooth + Nautilus? The card is only 1/4th full. Out of the 16, only 4GB+ is used. I will try with a smaller card, I have an extra 2GB micro SD on hand, and will be updating this post.

Another Fix

One of the members on a thread on the Ubuntu forums suggested that reverting to an older kernel appears to have fixed his bluetooth problem on Ubuntu 11.10. Maybe installing kernel versions 2.6.38.*, the one used for Natty, may work. I did not try it. If it works for you, please leave a comment below.

I got stuck at the part – rake db:migrate. One error would come out after another, it was overwhelming for first timers like me.

However, I could have saved a day of searching on the Internet and trying to figure out what all the errors and warnings meant. I have tried installing Ruby from the distro repositories to compiling Ruby from source with different versions, to installing different RubyGem versions, together with different gem combinations. In the end, it is all about satisfying dependencies.. . and these are all written down in an inconspicuous file. Definitely it is not the README file although I hoped it would have mentioned something about it there.

One of the answers for avoiding errors is right inside a file called environment.rb. This is a small file under the config directory of Webistrano. Open the said file and scroll down where you see a list of config.gem requirements. These are the gem versions you need to install using the gem install command. Below is an example:

config.gem ‘net-ssh’, :version => ’2.0.15′, :lib => ‘net/ssh’
config.gem ‘net-scp’, :version => ’1.0.2′, :lib => ‘net/scp’
config.gem ‘net-sftp’, :version => ’2.0.2′, :lib => ‘net/sftp’
config.gem ‘net-ssh-gateway’, :version => ’1.0.1′, :lib => ‘net/ssh/gateway’
config.gem ‘capistrano’, :version => ’2.5.9′
config.gem ‘highline’, :version => ’1.5.1′
config.gem ‘open4′, :version => ’0.9.3′
config.gem ‘syntax’, :version => ’1.0.0′

To install specific versions of the these gems do like so,

gem install net-ssh -v 2.0.15

Note that you do not have to uninstall a version if one is already installed. 2 versions of the same gem can co-exist.

Another answer in getting around those errors is to not use the vendor/rails that comes with the Webistrano package. Delete that directory or simply rename it. But watch out! Once you do so you will need to specify the Rails version to use or have the same one that is in the.. . yet again.. . environment.rb file. Below is an example:

# Specifies gem version of Rails to use when vendor/rails is not present
#RAILS_GEM_VERSION = ’2.3.5′ unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION
RAILS_GEM_VERSION = ’2.3.12′

The last advise I can give you is to not have an exclamation mark (!) in your password for your webistrano mysql user. For some reason it conflicts with how the file is read in config/database.yml, thus you will get an error. I don’t know if quotes can be used for the password line. Maybe that is possible. In most examples I have found they never used quotes, nor was it mentioned that quotes can be used. Typical example of a portion of the database.yml content is,

production:
adapter: mysql
database: webistrano_production
username: webistrano
password: PASSWORD
host: localhost
port: 3306

I suppose quotes can be employed, but after a long day of trying to get Webistrano to run I was too annoyed to experiment further. Maybe some other time. Right now I’m just glad that Webistrano is running on port 3000.

Oh, don’t forget to open up said port on your firewall. Otherwise nothing will happen.

Due to some very unfortunate circumstances, I had no choice but to upgrade to Oneiric. Not that I despised the upgrade. However I have always heard of network upgrades going awry, which made me wary of doing so. I can’t afford to not be able to use my laptop for more than a day because I need it for work. Thankfully do-release-upgrade went fine… except for one.

My laptop’s touchpad was not functioning. I re-logged and rebooted with the same effect. Touchpad was definitely dead. The weird thing is that the touchpad works partially on Guest Session. I searched the Internet for answers, tried a few other “fixes” I found with no effect. The only one that really worked was the following:

modprobe -r psmouse
modprobe psmouse proto=imps

My touchpad went alive immediately after I entered the second command. If you have a similar problem, issue the commands through a terminal such as Gnome Terminal or Guake. Then enter the commands above one by one. To make this fix work after every boot, place it in your rc.local file. Using your favorite text editor, add the two commands above to /etc/rc.local. Make sure you use sudo or gksu for the modifications to be saved. This is a crude hack but it works. If anybody knows the proper fix, please don’t hesitate to comment below.

A rough explanation on what the commands above does. The first one removes the kernel module psmouse. That is what the “-r” option does. The second one re-inserts the module back to the kernel with the the option “proto=imps”. There are other options like raw, base or exps, but the suggested one is imps.

My laptop runs on Intel® Core™ i5-2410M CPU, or what they nickname Sandybridge, with an Elantech Touchpad.

<span class="command"><strong>do-release-upgrade</strong></span>

May more bugs be squashed. More innovations made (or copies made better). Prettier designs. Lastly, may Linux and Ubuntu have more new years to come.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Posted from WordPress for Android

The main reason I failed in my previous attempt is because I did not bother to identify the device on my machine. The thing is, you have to know the name/version of the specific devices you’re trying to make to work.

The device is RTS5139

My laptop manufacturer (MSI) IDs the device as rts5139, and from their website one can download an updated driver. Unfortunately, there is no driver available for Linux. It is only for Windows. At least I now know the specific device version.

Searching on Google again, I found this interesting thread on the Ubuntu forums – http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1797202.html.

Running `lsusb` I compared the results with my machine against the thread above

Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0bda:0139 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

BINGO! It is a match and at this point I was pretty sure I was on to something. As luck would have it, one user claimed that he got the source from Realtek by email (Please read the thread above.), and my heart was already pumping hard from all the excitement. Saved me from having to look for it on Realtek’s website. It looks like I may have found the answer after all. And I did.

The source can be downloaded from http://ubuntuone.com/p/153B/ or you may download it directly here. If you want to make it work right away, just extract the package and follow the steps in README.txt. It is that simple.

Note: I am assuming you already have all the compile tools and kernel headers necessary to build from source.

However, that method is kind of lacking. Once you install  (update) another kernel the module will no longer work because it is compiled against a specific kernel. You can re-compile it, or, the solution here is to build the module using DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Support).

Steps to Build With DKMS

1) Download the source package above

2) Extract and copy to /usr/src (This is arbitrary. You can save it anywhere, including in your HOME directory. However, /usr/src is a very likely candidate where you don’t accidentally delete the source code. It is needed in future builds against a new kernel version.)

3) Rename the directory to rts5139-0.0.1 (The 0.0.1 is arbitrary. This is for personal versioning purposes. You will understand why this is important because if you use PACKAGE_VERSION, like below, DKMS will look for a directory with the PACKAGE_NAME +  VERSION to find the source.)

4) Using your favorite text editor, create the dkms.conf file. Copy the contents below, and save it to /usr/src/rts5139-0.0.1

PACKAGE_NAME=”rts5139″
PACKAGE_VERSION=”0.0.1″
CLEAN=”make clean”
BUILT_MODULE_NAME[0]=”rts5139″
DEST_MODULE_NAME[0]=”rts5139″
MAKE[0]=”make KERNELDIR=/lib/modules/${kernelver}/build PWD=$dkms_tree/rts5139/0.0.1/build”
DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[0]=”/kernel/drivers/scsi”
AUTOINSTALL=”yes”

5) Time to build the module. Follow the commands below one at a time:

sudo dkms add -m rts5139 -v 0.0.1
sudo dkms build -m rts5139 -v 0.0.1
sudo dkms install -m rts5139 -v 0.0.1

(OOPS! Almost forgot. Load the module with modprobe. You may need to reboot after.)

sudo modprobe rts5139

Issue the command modinfo rts5139 to see information about the module.

Everything should have worked up to this point, as it did with mine. However, yours could be a different case. Cross your fingers that the build is successful.

Try out if your DKMS build is working by installing a kernel. Click on details to see what is happening during the install. See image below.

If you’re the type who updates frequently then chances are you may have updated to the latest kernel version. Don’t worry, you can still use the older kernel versions for testing. These should be readily available from the Ubuntu repositories. I suggest you install the kernel through a terminal so you will see the installation process and if it re-builds the module for that particular version. However the surest way to find out if it is working is to reboot and use that newly installed kernel.

Building with DKMS is one of the best ways to compile from source. This way you are guaranteed that your device will work properly on future kernel updates.

I suggest you read about DKMS at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DKMS and the manual (man DKMS).

Disclaimer: Source package is not signed. Use at your own risk!