WiredRevolution.com » intrepid

How to fix unresponsive Flash player on Ubuntu

Ryan — Sat, 15 May 2010 15:40:28 +0000

For a long while going back to Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10, and even the latest 10.4 lucid, there has been a nagging issue with the Adobe Flash player being unresponsive to mouse clicks. This bug stops you from interacting with Flash buttons or controls for example those in video players or games which is obviously very frustrating. Being such a high profile issue which affects many users it’s amazing that it has taken this long come up with a fix.

Here is the official bug on launchpad which concerns the flashplugin-nonfree package and mentions a couple workarounds.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/+bug/410407

So here is the bug and workarounds.

For example on youtube, whilst it recognises my mouse moving over various buttons, actual mouse clicks are not recognised. I can navigate using ‘tab’ but this is very painful. I can also right click. The problem doesn’t occur with other flash players, e.g. swfdec-mozilla.

WORKAROUND 1: Disable compiz
WORKAROUND 2: Remove flashplugin-nonfree / flashplugin-installer and install from adobe
WORKAROUND 3: Open a terminal and enter:

gksudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer

Then add: export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 before the last line of text

Note: Chrome & Chromium are now working fine without workaround

These workaround’s have been verified to work for some users. We don’t need verification of whether or not they work for you.

To my knowledge it is still unclear what the underlying cause of this issue really is. But these workarounds are your best shot at resolving the issue until an official fix is released. The last workaround is the easiest and has the least impact on your system so I would give that a try first, it worked for myself.

Setup the PS3 Bluetooth Controller on Ubuntu

Ryan — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:25:49 +0000

The PS3 Sixaxis and DualShock3 bluetooth controllers are a great for gaming on your PS3 but will work just as well under Linux. With this guide you will be able to configure them to work on your Ubuntu Linux 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) PC in USB as well as wireless bluetooth mode.

There are a variety of solutions out there but they are either overly complex, or because of the ever changing state of Linux bluetooth support, they are somewhat outdated. The advantage of this solution is that it is simple, and requires only slight modification to the default versions of the bluez-utils packages (bluez-4.12). This minimizes possible conflicts and eliminates unneeded configuration.

This guide specifically covers Ubuntu Linux 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) but I’m sure similar steps can be taken for other distributions.

Enable HDMI output on Dell XPS M1530/M1330 with Ubuntu

Ryan — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:45:15 +0000

Hardware support in Linux, specifically Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) for the Dell XPS M1530 and M1330 is very impressive. However in certain cases the process is not as straight forward as it could be, and it takes a bit of tinkering in order to get it to work. In this article I will go through how to enable audio and video through the HDMI output.

The first step is making sure that the HDMI cable is connected between the computer and external monitor, HDTV, etc.

Video Support

To enable the video you need to go to your NVIDIA X Server Settings manager. This of course assumes you are using the NVIDIA driver on your system.

System -> Administration -> NVIDIA X Server Settings

Select the X Server Display Configuration. Click the Detect Displays button and you external monitor should be displayed. Click on the external screen so that it becomes selected and click the Configure button and select the TwinView option.

Once this monitor is enabled a Position dropdown box should appear. It is best in most cases to select Clones.The screen output will be duplicated on both devices.

Select the Apply button for these changes to take effect.

If your external monitor has a lower resolution than your laptop screen it may help to disable the laptop screen so that maximized video won’t go beyond the borders of your external monitor. To do this click the laptop screen so that it becomes selected, click the Configure button, and select Disabled.

Audio Support

Open the Volume Control manager, usually ou can click on the volume applet on the top GNOME panel.

Make sure your device is set to HDA Intel (Alsa Mixer).

Select the Switches tab and put a check mark next to IEC958. Selecting this enables audio output over the HDMI connection.

If you want to disable audio output through your laptop speakers you can disable them. Go back to the Playback tab and mute the Front channel.

Bugs

1) Enabling the laptop screen as well an external monitor through HDMI can cause X to freeze with certain Compiz-Fusion effects such as desktop switching. Disabling Compiz-Fusion or disabling the laptop screen while operating in this mode fixes this issue.

2) Disabling the laptop monitor will not correctly resize the GNOME desktop to match the resolution of the external monitor over HDMI. However video playback will still be correctly maximized.

3) Audio output over HDMI connection may not work for a specific program even if everything has been configured correctly. Restarting this program usually fixes this issue.

How to SSH into Ubuntu LiveCD

Ryan — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:08:44 +0000

The ability to remotely SSH into a machine running an Ubuntu LiveCD can come in handy in many situations. The LiveCD supports a large variety of hardware and can be used to troubleshoot system problems on a machine where you have limited or no access. A user with limited skills can easily setup remote access and allow a trusted friend to troubleshoot the system from another location.

The first thing to start the process is to open a terminal. Follow these menus:

Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

In the terminal install the ssh server on your LiveCD system.

$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server

The server is started automatically after installing.

To login remotely, you’ll need to set the password for the default ubuntu user.

$ sudo passwd ubuntu
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

You should now be able to login to the system running the LiveCD. But first you need to find the IP address of the machine so you can connect to it.

The ifconfig command will list your network interfaces and along with it your IP address.

$ ifconfig

eth0      ...
          inet addr:192.168.1.1  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          ...

The inet addr entry is your IP address which you need to log into the LiveCD system. As you an see above the IP address begins with “192.168” which indicates that the IP address is only valid on the local network. It was an address assigned to the machine by the router. This is fine if you plan on logging in from another machine on this local network.

If you need to access the machine from outside your local network you have a couple of options. The first is to remove any router between you and the Internet. This should give you a valid IP address which is accessible from outside your local network. You may also be able to access your router’s administration panel and tell it to pass SSH traffic to the IP address of the LiveCD system. You will then use the router’s IP address instead for the next step.

If your IP address already begins with something other than “192.168” then you are safe as well. You should be able to access the LiveCD system from any location, local or not.

Using the IP address from the previous step you can now log into the LiveCD system as the ubuntu user. Use the password you created earler.

$ ssh ubuntu@

Allow sudo access without passwords in Ubuntu

Ryan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:51:28 +0000

To give a specific user access to sudo without having to enter a password you have to edit the /etc/sudoers configuration file. For security reasons you should only edit the file using the visudo command.

$ sudo visudo

In Ubuntu the following lines are placed at the bottom of /etc/sudoers by default. This gives your default user access to sudo as well as any other user in the admin group.

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

If you want to allow sudo access without passwords for all users in the admin group you can simply add the NOPASSWD option to this line and be done.

%admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

If you want to give a specific user sudo access without passwords, you will have to add an additional line for each user. These lines will conflict with the default admin line above so they must be placed at the end of the sudoers file. The reason for this is that sudo will handle contradicting configuration lines by giving priority to the line closest to the bottom of the file.

Add the following line to the end of the file, replace ‘ryan’ with your username.

ryan    ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Add a line for each user that you wish to have access.

For more ways to use and configure sudo have a look here.

Fix Skype audio on Ubuntu with Dell XPS M1530/M1330

Ryan — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:29:32 +0000

To get Skype audio working with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10) and Dell XPS M1530/M1330 requires a few changes to the standard install.

Make sure you have added the medibuntu repository and installed Skype.

You need to enable the embedded microphone. Go to Volume Control by clicking on the volume icon. In Preferences select Digital Input Source. This will enable the Digital Mic 1 option which you should select.

Now launch Skype and go into Options -> Sound Devices. Select “HDA Intel (hw:Intel,0)” for Sound In, Sound Out, and Ringing.

Go ahead and make a test call to verify that everything is working correctly.

Add Ubuntu medibuntu repository

Ryan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:52:18 +0000

The Medibuntu repository (Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions In Ubuntu) contains packages that cannot be included into the Ubuntu distribution for legal reasons. Some of these packages include Skype Acrobat Reader, Google Earth, and multimedia codecs.

Add Medibuntu to your sources.list. Make sure you specify the correct version of your distribution. This example uses Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10).

# wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Then add its GPG key to your keyring.

# apt-get update && apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && apt-get update

Now you should be able to install packages in this repository.