kondor's IT beetlebum

Linux, Thinkpad, HDAPS: battery mode

2010-06-08T23:41:00.000+04:00

ThinkPad laptops have a lot of amazing features. HDAPS is one of them. HDAPS stands for Hard Disk Active Protection System; it is intended to protect ThinkPad's HDD from damage in case of a notebook drop or other kind of impact while it is running. But HDAPS doesn't work 'out of the box' on Linux by default. On my Debian too. But there is so indispensable website named ThinkWiki with the tons of

APT suggests to remove (autoremove) required packages

2010-06-02T20:52:00.000+04:00

After another packages update (or after my attempts to remove Evolution out from the system, I do not know exactly) on my Debian Squeeze, APT began to suggest me to remove 'non-required' packages using 'autoremove' option like this: The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: totem-common libempathy-gtk28 libaprutil1-ldap vinagre odbcinst

Twitter and my solution for Debian + Thinkpad issues

2010-05-22T08:35:00.000+04:00

Having the latest Debian Squeeze (kernel 2.6.32) I got in some issues (hm... Seems that for some time I'm going to write about Debian and my Thinkpad only :)) with my laptop. The common issues that I (and Google proves that not only my Thinkpad T410 run into them) had were: LCD brightness up/down doesn't work with loaded up ``thinkpad_acpi'' module; ``hotkeys'' module param does not help. Even `

Debian Lenny + Thinkpad T410: network adapter issue

2010-05-20T11:09:00.000+04:00

Since I chose Debian to be my primary and favorite Linux distribution on my new Lenovo Thinkpad T410, I agreed to myself to spend my time to solve various specific issues related to it. So the first issue I met was that the Debian Lenny installation system didn't manage to find my Thinkpad's Intel 1000 ethernet adapter. Google 'said' that appropriate driver for the adapter was 'e1000e'. Manual '

My new laptop: Lenovo Thinkpad

2010-05-06T22:19:00.000+04:00

Today I bought my first Thinkpad -- Thinkpad T410. I know that since 'Thinkpad' trademark was bought out from IBM by Lenovo many people believe that they lost their legendary advantages. I think so also. A bit :). Anyway I still like them and their spirit. Buying Thinkpads in Russia has its own unique peculiarities. First one: you have to do your best to find a laptop w/ tech specs you like/need

'cp' command with a wget-like progress bar

2010-04-28T21:33:00.001+04:00

Can not help re-posting: a tip and trick to make 'cp' command have a wget-like progress bar. #!/bin/sh cp_p() { strace -q -ewrite cp -- "${1}" "${2}" 2>&1 \ | awk '{ count += $NF if (count % 10 == 0) { percent = count / total_size * 100 printf "%3d%% [", percent for (i=0;i<=percent;i++) printf "="

How to return back buttons layout in Ubuntu 10.04

2010-03-16T11:28:00.000+03:00

Ubuntu wants to be more user-friendly than other Linux`es. It is the fact. Each new Ubuntu release always introduces a set of features which make user's life easy. But not all these features are cool. Is the fact too. Upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 also introduces a Mac-like approach when window-control buttons (to minimize, to maximize and to close a window) are placed on the top-left side of the window,

Code snippet: QLabel to show remote pixmap by URL

2010-03-11T15:59:00.007+03:00

Perhaps one of the most often used widgets in Qt is QLabel. It is mainly used to display a plain text as well as rich one (which contains HTML markup). QLabel is also able to show graphics by passing QPixmap instance to it. But what if there is a need to display (using QLabel) a pixmap stored on remote server? There is no such "out of the box" functionality in QLabel. But it can be easily done.

QCryptographicHash: code snippet

2010-02-26T19:43:00.001+03:00

When the guys developing Qt applications find themselves in such a case when they need to obtain MD5 hash of a string or an array of bytes, the first thing most of them do is try to use the already implemented 3rd-party libraries like libxcrypt, OpenSSL and others. The talented ones try to get the output of 'md5sum' command. But the 'true' way is to use built-in tools: not everyone knows that

GMail Buzz: I do not like when it forced

2010-02-11T10:15:00.000+03:00

Only a lazy one doesn't write about Google Buzz. So here are my five cents. When I was fighting for GMail Invite several years ago to get the best e-mail service ever, I really wanted to get the convenient instrument to work with e-mail correspondence. And finally I got it, what really made my day. For all the time I've been using GMail I haven't had anything bad to say about it. Now I have. If

Serna accepted to Debian!

2010-01-31T11:44:00.001+03:00

Thanks to amazing work of Joachim Breitner Serna finally is officially accepted to the one of my favorite Linux distros -- Debian GNU/Linux! Hope it will be in Ubuntu soon as well. Of course, some things may work not as expected or may not work at all :), but it is just a beginning. Please feel free to contribute your patches and bug-reports directly to serna-developers mailing list or to http:/

Sandbox`ed (AppArmor) Skype 2.1 in Linux

2009-10-05T11:22:00.001+04:00

To be able to stay in touch with my contacts and speak for free with people through Skype I agree that my workstation becomes P2P-node. But I do not agree that Skype scans my private files (browser cookies and history). What to do? As far as I am Linux user the solution is simple: to use AppArmor. According to this approach Skype is launched in some kind of sandbox, i.e. in the invironment where

Serna XML editor goes Open Source!

2009-06-19T08:32:00.004+04:00

Amazing news! Accordingly to the Syntext's announce Serna goes Open Source!What exactly is known about:It is going to happen in the course of month;License: vanilla GNU GPL with FLOSS exceptionsOfficial announce is here: http://syntext.com/about/news/open-source/What this means for the OSS community?There will be an extensible and powerful Open Source XML platform to write and maintain various

Serna OSSO Help plugin announce

2009-04-22T08:59:00.004+04:00

This post can be considered as a logical continue of the previous one.I am pleased to announce my implemented vision of solution to make life easier for Maemo help/documentation authors. Since Syntext Serna WYSIWYG xml editor is free (free as beer!) and it is really crossplatform (written using Nokia/Trolltech Qt framework; currently it is avaialble for Linux, MacOS X, Windows, and even Sun

Why help writing for Maemo applications sucks?

2009-04-16T22:53:00.012+04:00

Why help writing for Maemo applications sucks? We like good applications. We can spend a lot of time telling our friends about fantastic applications we met. But application will be more better if one small thing can be improved. Beside a cool functionality, a program must have well-designed User Interface (UI). Good UI can help users not to get lost in the set of buttons and