My laptop is BenQ S41 and the mic worked out of the box in 9.10. After installing lucid it just didn’t work.

This is the solution.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install linux-alsa-driver-modules-$(uname -r)

The mic should be working at the next boot.

Generating keyboard and mouse input without actually pressing them can be done by command ‘xautomation’.

There are 2 commands to run xautomation: xte and xdotool.

Examples:

Move the cursor to a certain position (x,y):
xte ‘mousemove x y’
or
xdotool mousemove x y

Press a button on the keyboard:
xte  ’key a’
or
xdotool key a

Type a string:
xte ‘str abcd’
or
xdotool  type abcd

Click mouse left button:
xte ‘mouseclick 1′
or
xdotool click 1

Get current cursor position:
xdotool getmouselocation
(xte has no command).

Sending scheduler request: Project initialization.  Requesting 1 seconds of work, reporting 0 completed tasks
Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
Scheduler request failed: Peer certificate cannot be authenticated with known CA certificates
Internet access OK – project servers may be temporarily down.

This error messages appeared when my world community grid project was trying to connect to the server after I installed Ubuntu 9.10.
According to this forum, they suggest replacing a new file called “ca-bundle.crt” in

/var/lib/boinc-client/

with this new one.

Just that. It works for me .

What you will need: startup sound in ogg format.

Step 1:
Go to System -> Preferences -> Starup Applications
Look for “GNOME Login Sound” in the list. If you don’t want to hear anything at startup, uncheck this box.
If you want to change the sound, press Edit button. Then in the command field you’ll see

/usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play –id=”desktop-login” –description=”GNOME Login”

Change “desktop-login” to the name of the sound file you want, without file extension.
Click Save and close the startup dialog.

Step 2:
Now you have to copy this new sound (.ogg file) to

/usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/

You need  root permission to copy the file into this directory which can be done by running nautilus as root.

$sudo nautilus

Then browse to that folder and paste the file there.

Step 3:
Log out and login to listen to the new startup sound.

You have to install a package called ‘bchunk’ then run the following commands.

$bchunk image.bin image.cue image.iso

Download dictionary glossary files from this website.

http://reciteword.sourceforge.net/stardict/babylon.php

Extract and put them in

/usr/share/stardict/dic

Restart stardict.

Check the partition number by running

$sudo fdisk -l

Create a new file

$sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/11_Windows

Add this to the file with the number corresponding to the partition number of windows.

#! /bin/sh -e
echo “Adding Windows” >&2
cat << EOF
menuentry “Windows XP″ {
set root=(hd0,1)
chainloader +1
}
EOF

Save and run

Change permission of the file.

$sudo chmod a+x /etc/grub.d/11_Windows

Update grub.

$sudo update-grub

Reboot the system.

credit:http://erickoo.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/how-to-add-vista-partition-to-grub-2-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala/

“Error loading operating system.”

This error appeared on the screen where the grub menu should be. As far as I can remember, all I did was deleting and creating an empty partition that I had prepared for installing windows. However, I couldn’t manage to install it because this partition was in an extended part of the harddisk and Windows can be installed only on primary partition. So, I quit the installation … and saw this message after restarting.

After googling hopelessly for a long time, I found the solution.

Boot the system with live cd then open the terminal and type

$sudo fdisk -l

Check where the root and boot partition of linux are.

Mount the root partition. In my case it’s sda1

$sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Mount the boot partition, if there is any.

$sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

Bind them.

$sudo mount –bind /dev/ /mnt/dev    (Note: there are two ‘-’ before bind)

$sudo chroot /mnt

$grub-install /dev/sda

$grub-install –recheck /dev/sda

Unmount. LIFO.

$sudo umount /mnt/dev

$sudo umount /mnt/boot (if you mounted it)

$sudo umount /mnt

And reboot the system.

This method works with grub 1 only. If you have Ubuntu 9.10 installed, go up and see the next post.

Run ubuntu from live CD (or usb), open terminal and type

#sudo grub
grub > find /boot/grub/stage1

This will give you the following result which x and y represent disk and partition number

(hdx,y)

Then type the next command, replace x and y with numbers from the result above.

grub > root (hdx,y)
grub > setup (hd0)
grub > quit

And that’s it

After upgrading new kernel for my ubuntu, my virtualbox just stopped working and showed 2 errors messages.

I have to search for the solution every time the kernel is upgraded. So, this time I would like to put it on my blog so that I don’t have to google for it again.

By running these 2 commands virtualbox should work as before.

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup