So, the first step was to make sure that SMBFS was installed and up to date:

sudo apt-get install smbfs

Once the installation was complete, rather than store the connection details in plain sight, I wrote a text file which would contain the details

sudo gedit .nascredentials

The text file includes the user name and password to connect to the NAS (which are different from my Linux username and password):

username=mynasuser
password=mynaspassword

To make sure that the file was then restricted, I changed the access permissions for the credentials file so that only root user could read it

sudo chmod 600 .nascredentials

The next step was to create a mount point folder, which was accessible to any user on the system

sudo mkdir /media/nas

sudo chmod 777 /media/nas

After this, I edited the fstab file to include the mounting commands (note that the text should all be on one line, but I’ve had to include line breaks here for formatting reasons!)

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

//<NAS IP Address>/backups /media/nas cifs
  credentials=/home/myuser/.nascredentials,dir_mode=0777,
  file_mode=0777,umask=000,uid=myuser 0 0

This does rely on the NAS drive having a fixed IP address, and “backups” is the name of the samba share name.

Finally, rather than reboot, I only had to execute the following command to mount the new share

sudo mount -a

If the NAS is not switched on when the computer starts, then the drive won’t be mounted – if that happens, then I just need to run the last command to mount the folder again.

In an ideal world, there are two main ways to do this.  Quite often, a company might choose to sell the software that they produce for a client, delivering a (hopefully!) working application and the source code.  Typically in this scenario, there is no major reason for the company to retain any rights to the code they wrote for the client, because the software has been customised to such an extent that it is only useful for one client.

In some other situations, though, companies might choose to license the software to the client.  The company retains all ownership of the software, and they might provide regular bug updates and patches in exchange for a licence fee.

The third example, which I have unfortunately seen in a number of places over the years, sort of merges these two models together.  The client pays for the source code, receives a “working” application and the code, but it is written in such a poor manner that if anyone other than the original developer worked on it, they would rapidly go insane!

Sadly, I’ve seen that third model occur more often than I would like to!

I’ve since made some changes to the WordPress code which should allow me to attach the files, but have struggled to make it so that my changes won’t get wiped out when I upgrade the blog next time.

The way that I’ve got round this is to make a quick change to the file functions.php within the theme that I’m using.  By adding the code below to the existing PHP that was already in the functions.php file, my blog now allows me to upload text files with different extensions.  This can be extended further (if I need / want to) by adding different extensions and different MIME types to the code:

add_filter('upload_mimes', 'addExtraMimes');

function addExtraMimes($mimes)
{
  $mimes = array_merge($mimes, array('sql|pkg|pks|pkb|pkh|wft' => 'plain/text'));

  return $mimes;
}

Hope you find that useful – at least I know where to come back to if I need this on my other blogs!

Just a quick follow up to my April post about switching sound on on my old TravelMate 3000 on Linux Mint…..

The hard drive crashed last week and had to be binned, so I replaced it with an old one I had kicking about (which may not last too long, either!).  I downloaded Linux Mint 9 from the official site and installed it from the DVD.

And the sound worked fine with no need to do anything else!

Top work from the Mint guys – saved me from hacking about again to get sound working

Firstly, I downloaded the 32-bit version of Linux Mint 8 from their website, as the version I used to build this laptop was the 64-bit and the old laptop doesn’t support 64-bit architecture.  I burned the image to disc using Brasero, stuck it in the external DVD drive that came with the laptop, and booted it up.

As I’ve found on every system that I’ve built with Linux (Mint or Ubuntu) apart from the Foehn & Hirsch one, there were no problems – or certainly no obvious ones.  The screen resolution was fine, the wireless network connected immediately (including the light on the front of the laptop working correctly), everything I checked was fine – so I reformatted the hard drive and replaced XP with Mint.

I then went off to work (I was away for a couple of days), and the girls told me that there was no sound working – the children want to watch childrens programs on iPlayer, play on CBeebies and watch YouTube and the like.  I thought that it would be something really obvious like the speaker just being muted, but there was just nothing working.  So, when I got home, I thought “this will be straight forward and take a couple of seconds…”

After about half an hour, I managed to track down the problem – the modem seemed to be conflicting with the soundcard (I think).  Here’s how I found the source of the problem and resolved it.

Looking at the sound preferences, I checked the hardware tab and found that there was no hardware device listed there.  Instead of something that indicated a sound card (my Toshiba says “Internal Audio Analog Stereo” for example), it just said “Dummy Output”.  The sound was pseudo-showing – although there was no sound coming out of the laptop, there were bars showing where the sound would have come out.

From a command prompt, I checked the devices that were installed in the laptop:

lspci -v

Amongst the list of devices, the sound card appeared, so at least Mint was recognising that the hardware was there:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family)
     High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0067
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
Memory at d000c000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family)
     High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0067
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
Memory at d000c000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

Next step was to check the drives were there using modprobe:

sudo modprobe snd_intel8x0m

Using pgrep, check whether the simodemd daemon is running or not:

pgrep slmodemd

Since the daemon was running, I then removed it from the laptop using apt-get:

sudo apt-get remove sl-modem-daemon

That was all there was too it – as soon as I removed the modem daemon, the sound started.  I would like to say that all this was the upshot of my Linux knowledge, but it wasn’t   A lot of the suggestions of how to solve the problem can be found here.

I just wanted to write up my instructions so that if it happens again, I’ll know exactly where to find the answer.  I couldn’t find anything that specifically referenced my exact laptop model.  Hopefully, someone else might find this useful.

Quick update – they found that the laptop was faulty when it arrived back and have refunded the cost of the laptop.  I have raised a new customer support note because eBuyer have kept hold of the £9.99 shipping costs for sending the faulty unit out to me, which I don’t believe they should have done.

So far, it has cost £9.99 not to get a working laptop from eBuyer, so the complaint goes on.

After a few days of it, she was mightily impressed – there are some nice features of Mint that she liked over Vista, so asked if the replacement could be one that ran Linux.  No problems – might be a bit cheaper, after all! – so I hunted down a Foehn & Hirsch laptop on eBuyer.com which was cheap, and came with no OS.  Here’s the detailed spec:

Processor

• Intel T3000 Celeron Dual Core Processor 1.8Ghz,
• 1MB Cache
• SIS M672 + 968 Graphics Chipset

Memory

• 4GB DDR2 667MHz
• 2 x SO DIMM
• Expandable to 4GB

Hard Drive

• 320GB SATA 2.5″

Optical Drive

• DVD+/-RW Supermulti

Software

• Operating System: No Operating System

Display

• 15.6” HD TFT
• Resolution: 1366 x 768

Graphics

• SiS M672 Integrated
• Shared Memory Architecture 256MB
• High Preference 3D/2D graphic Accelerator
• Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Compatible
• Super Vertex Shader 2.0 and Pixel Shader 2.0

Audio

• High Definition Audio
• Compliant With Microsoft UAA
• Direct Sound 3D
• 2 x Built in Speaker
• Built in Mic

Input Devices

• Multi Language Keyboard
• Touchpad with Scroll zone

Networking

• 56K Fax Modem
• Built in 10/100MB Base-TX Ethernet LAN
• WLAN: 802.11 b/g

Power Supply

• Full Range AC Adapter 65W
• AC in 100~240V, 50~60Hz
• DC Out 19V, 3.42A / 18.5V, 3.5A
• 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• up to 2.5 hour battery life

Dimensions

• Width 374mm
• Depth 256mm
• Height 25~37mm
• Weight 2.7kg

Interfaces

• 3 x USB 2.0 ports
• 1 x VGA port
• 1 x Headphone port
• 1 x Microphone port
• 1 x S/PDIF output port
• 1 x RJ-11 port
• 1 x RJ45 LAN port
• 1 x DC-in jack

Expansion

• 7 in 1 Card Reader (MMC / RSMMC / SD / Mini SD / MS / MS Pro / MS Duo)
• 1 x Express Card Slot

Warranty / Miscellaneous

• 1 Year Manufacturer Warranty
• 1.3mp Webcam

That should be fine, I thought – keep her in laptops for a while, good spec and should be fine for Linux.  There was nothing anywhere that I could find that said otherwise, apart from a line that said “Please note that this Laptops does not have an Operating System installed, Ebuyer recommends Genuine Microsoft Software”

Then, it arrived, and things started to go badly wrong.
I burned a new copy of Mint onto a CD, using the same ISO that I built this laptop with.  Started the laptop up and it looked OK – I changed the BIOS so that it said that the OS was Linux, inserted the CD and rebooted.  Mint started OK, but had a poor screen resolution – nowhere near the started 1366×768, it was 800×600!!  So, I started to install Mint to see if it would change once the newest and best updates were completed.  First time I tried the installation, I left it to it – came back in the room after a bit to find that the machine had switched itself off.

After that, every time I switched it on, it just kept error beeping for a minute (flashing lights as well) and then switched off.  This included just trying to change the BIOS Settings – crashed while trying to change them, so it was nothing to do with the OS being installed, or the hard drive or anything like that.  Eventually, I gave up, switched it off and left it for 15 minutes or so.

After a break, it switched on fine, so I installed Mint again from scratch.  Interestingly, when I did the install, it told me that Ubuntu was already installed on the partition, but I scrapped it and started again.  CD-ROM was incredibly slow getting to that stage – no idea why, but the performance was abysmal.  Anyway – it got there in the end, I rebooted, logged in and started to configure the network.

Every time the machine reboots, the wireless needs to be manually enabled again, which is a minor thing (compared with the rest of the faults of the machine!), but I managed to get it setup with our wireless network and set it downloading the 218 updates that were required.  Rebooted again once they were all installed, to see if there was any better resolution – nope, it’s 800×600 or 600×480 (doesn’t even recognize that it’s widescreen!).  There is nothing better than that, which renders the machine practically useless.

When I spoke to eBuyer technical support this morning, they told me that this was a Linux problem, nothing to do with the laptop.  I explained that the same CD had built my Toshiba and was told “yeah, that’s a Toshiba, this isn’t”.  Well, thanks, I am aware of that – but I was then told that if I was using Windows it would be fine.  Well, if it was using Windows, it would already be setup, wouldn’t it – it would be a decent laptop, I wouldn’t be wasting my time with it, and it would run.  But, it would run Windows, which is crap.

Anyway, I left it switched off for a bit longer, restarted it, and all I got was an error message saying “Error loading Operating System”.  The suggestion from eBuyer was that the laptop clearly isn’t faulty, clearly is fit for purpose, it’s just that it needs to be reformatted and have Windows installed on it.

The laptop is back in its box, waiting to be collected by a courier, and we will see whether eBuyer accept that it is faulty or not when it arrives there.  I obviously think that there is something wrong with it (the hard drive fault and the beeping on startup yesterday), they seem to think that Windows is the answer.  Either way, it’s not staying here – I’m off to a computer shop this afternoon to buy a new laptop – hopefully that one will run Linux!

Edit – a few more tries at using the laptop returned it to the status of beeping and erroring on start up.  Here’s two videos which show me attempting to edit the BIOS before the machine switches itself off.

Here’s a video from ZD Net Australia – it’s an interview with Tom about how developers should ask for help:

So, I made a couple of changes to some files and it seems to be working now – so, if anyone is having the same problems, here’s a list of the files that I changed:

• wordpress-flickr-manager/js/wfm-lightbox.php
• wordpress-flickr-manager/js/media-panel.php
• wordpress-flickr-manager/js/wfm-hs.php

In each of those files, remove any ‘@’ characters that are in the files, for example:

this: wfmJS('a[@rel*=flickr-mgr]').each(function() {
becomes: wfmJS('a[rel*=flickr-mgr]').each(function() {

Once you have made the changes, the plugin should work fine.

EDIT – March 15 2010 @1534

I’ve just had a look at the files that I changed to provide a fuller explanation of what I changed.  I can’t see what I have changed in the media-panel.php file (just downloaded the plugin again and can’t find any ‘@’ signs in there now), but the changes I made to the other files are:

wfm-hs.php

Line 13 - wfmJS('a[@rel*=flickr-mgr]').each(function() {
becomes - wfmJS('a[rel*=flickr-mgr]').each(function() {

Line 21 - wfmJS('a[@rel*=flickr-mgr]').each(function() {
becomes- wfmJS('a[rel*=flickr-mgr]').each(function() {

wfm-lightbox.php

Line 58 - wfmJS('a[@rel*=flickr-mgr]').click(function() {
becomes - wfmJS('a[rel*=flickr-mgr]').click(function() {

Line 91 - wfmJS('a[@rel*=flickr-mgr]').each(function(){
becomes - wfmJS('a[rel*=flickr-mgr]').each(function(){

I’ve tested this with WP 2.9.2 this afternoon and it seems fine.

UPDATE – 11th July 2010

I’ve just been looking a bit more at this and have added a few replies to some comments.  I have the plugin working on WP3.0 now – I made no changes to the version I had before though.  The one thing that doesn’t work is trying to add photos from a set rather than just from the stream.

When you try to add a photo from a set, it only finds photos that are publicly available.  If the photos are not public, then it doesn’t find them in the set.  I don’t know whether this is a problem with the plugin, or a problem with the Flickr API though.  I make most of my photos private, so if I want to add from a set then it’s a problem – that said, I have the same problem when adding from Flickr to my photo printing service, which makes me think that the problem lies with the Flickr API rather than the plugin.

Looks like a more in depth examination of the plugin is required – if I get chance to do it, I will, but I am quite busy with work that brings in money at the moment, rather than coding for fun and hobby.

It’s “root”.  EEK!

Couple of minor things there – firstly, I’m not too keen on just running these things as the root user.  Secondly, not everyone knows the root password.  And thirdly, not everyone changes the root password from the default that is generated when you install Ubuntu.

Now, in Windows, any Windows user can log into the VMWare console.  In order to get that to work under Ubuntu (and I guess every flavour of Linux), you need to edit the configuration file which can be found in /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml.

So, modify the file and then restart VMWare using

sudo service vmware restart

and you should now be able to log in as your different user.