Dropbox is great and their support is phenomenal.  Recently I have been having issues after upgrading to Lucid Lynx.  It’s been a large bother on me because I use Dropbox a ton in my personal use.  On my development server, I’m running Ubuntu 10.04 64 Desktop version, and I rely on Dropbox to keep my files in sync, including my programs that I write.  However, after upgrading, I noticed that Dropbox was ‘missing’.  It no longer appeared in the notification applet in the menu system.  It was still in the Menu, but when I clicked it ‘nothing’ occurred!  Well I solved the issue, with a little help from the Dropbox forums.

First, I noticed that when I accessed by System Monitor application (Menu->System->Administration->System Monitor), Dropbox was running, and in fact it was running very hard (heating up my machine in the process).  Yet, nothing was visibly happening; no gui, no sync.  Killing the process was the next step, and then running Dropbox again from the menu resulted in the same scenario; nothing visually occurring.

I tried uninstalling, reinstalling via the ‘apt’ commands.  Did not help.

I tried uninstalling forcing a complete removal and reinstalling after adding back in the sources.list commands via ‘apt’.  Did not help.

For awhile I considered that the issue was Lucid Lynx, so I sat on it for a week.  After about 4 or 5 updates to the OS, I tried all of the previous steps, still nothing helped.

Finally a Solution!

I searched Google, and came across a very similar situation, occurring months ago on Suse Linux (http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=19094&replies=24#post-120769).

In this was the key, to do this just follow these steps.

Open your terminal.
#cd ~
#rm -rf .dropbox* Dropbox
#wget  http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/dropbox-lnx.x86-0.7.110.tar.gz
#tar xzf dropbox-lnx.x86-0.7.110.tar.gz
#.dropbox-dist/dropbox

Step by Step:

1. cd ~ : Navigate to your home directory

2. rm -rf .dropbox* Dropbox : Delete all folders starting with .dropbox and also remove the Dropbox folder (Warning, your Dropbox folder may have changes that will be deleted! Rename or make a backup first in this case.)

3. wget http…. : Download the newest stable version of Dropbox (this is a newer version than what is in the repository!)

4. tar xzf … : Unzip/Unpack the downloaded file

5. Run Dropbox!

At this point you should find that the Dropbox opens up the installation information.

Follow the Dropbox instructions, and when finished, you will have the Dropbox notification icon in the notification applet in the menu.  Right click on that applet, click on stop Dropbox.  Close your terminal, and then navigate to the Dropbox menu item to start it up again.  That’s all, it should work great now like it does for me!

Before you root, you should probably upgrade to 2.01, as that will ‘break’ your new root access. You can get that download from here, if you have not already received it OTA (Over the Air). You need to follow the directions below, to apply the 2.01. The directions for each download it exactly the same, except for the ADB access.

This ‘root’ is strictly for developers. It’s not going to give you any ability to do anything to your phone yet, unless you really know your *nix commands well enough not to screw something up on your phone. So continue only if you really want this ability (the ability to really screw up your phone).

You can follow the direct postings here.
I’ve downloaded the file (best link is here). You should also download this file, as it will be needed.

md5sum of the boot partition:
3e49d99b320cf5c20bedf09343c1155c /dev/mtd/mtd2

Here is the `how-to` that embeem posted, I will add to it where I see fit, just to help some of those out as to what is going on.

Download the zip file

You can find the link at the top of this post.

Rename to “update.zip” and copy to the sdcard

It is currently named `droid-root.zip`, `update.zip` is required as that will be used internally by the script in the program.

Power off the DROID and power back on while holding the X key
When you see a “/!\” symbol, press both vol+ and camera

This isn’t magic, it’s simply a rescue mode. Slide the keyboard out to start. It’s very easy to figure out what is going on here. You have to press and hold the volume Up key then press the camera button.

Use the onscreen menu to install update.zip

You must use your d-pad to do this. just choose update.zip from the menu.

Once installed you will be able to run “su” from your adb shell.

This one is the kicker, best explained by syntrix

you have to attach your droid in debug mode in eclipse and use adb from the sdk. Again, I’m holding off on this, it’s my only phone.

But once you get this access, you can run commands natively, and copy files to the sd and pull them off the droid.

ADB is only ran from the SDK developers tools. In other words, you are running command from your computer, not the phone.

Now, to take this a step further, we can also get a terminal emulator running on the phone with root access according to mjxg’s post…

1) download this: http://www.magicandroidapps.com/su.zip
2) push it to your phone

C:\Android>adb push su /data/local
595 KB/s (76200 bytes in 0.125s)

3) C:\Android>adb shell
$ su
# mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
# cd /system/bin
# mv su osu
# cat /data/local/su > su
# chmod 6755 su

4) verify

# ls -l *su
-rwsr-sr-x root root 76200 2008-08-01 05:00 osu
-rwsr-sr-x root root 76200 2009-05-30 11:28 su

5) finish

# sync
# reboot

6) open up a terminal emulator on the phone and run `su` and enjoy

With all this said, this is a remarkable, easy root access. It literally is just adding a file (‘su’) that the user has permissions to. ‘SU’ means, switch user, and by default, that user is root. Giving the user access to this file, means they can run that command, and if that file has the right permissions, which is does in the update, it will run ‘as’ root. And tada, you can now begin to get access to the rest of the system!

Developers will now take over.

The linux desktop over the years has been a large struggle for many users. I hear many complaints from people that have ‘tried’ linux out and they seem to all come to the conclusion that it is difficult or even impossible to use. The unfortunate part about most of these complaints, is that they are reiterating something they read 10 years ago, or something their friend who knows computers becaues he is a ‘gamer’ told him so.

You can also jump right to the gallery to just view the images.
Personally, I prefer Linux. In the past few years I have travelled through many different distributions. Lately (past year or so), I have solely worked with the fastly becoming forerunner, Ubuntu. Power linux users can complain all that they want about how Ubuntu is fancying the wrong crowd, but the simple fact is that if Ubuntu wasn’t doing the things they are doing, we wouldn’t have the incredible developements that Linux distributions now offer. To put some fuel for the fire about how Linux is not usable, or that it is simply not capable of being the powerhouse that real users know it can be, I wanted to walk through my setup.

When nothing is brought up or running

This is my Desktop when I have nothing open. I have 6 virtual desktops… meaning I can have up to 6 `windows` with stuff in them. I can switch between them by either dragging something to another page, or by using ctrl+alt+ left|right|up|down. So how is this usable, where’s the menu? Well, for one, it’s a touch screen (yes it works quite well) laptop (x61t) that has a 1024*768 resolution. So I need realestate, so that is what is the deciding factor in my choices. The menu is on the left, just moving the mouse to the left side of the screen shows it.

The Ubuntu menu

As you can see it’s all there. But I rarely ever use it. Usually , I just hit command+space which brings up my GnomeDo options.

Gnome Do 's native functionality; searching.

So as I type, it highlight in blue… and it has some amazing plugins! Sometimes I need a quick mouse menu… like when I’m browsing… for that moving my mouse to the bottom of the page solves this with GnomeDo’s Docky feature.

This is the settings menu for Docky.

So Docky is good… and looks good, but sometimes I just need some space for things that I generally need from time to time…. for this I have my screenlets. A quick press of f9 will bring them up… sending everything to monochrome behind.

A good view of the Screenlets overlay

Notice… Pidgin, Terminal, another Funky clock, Date, the Current moon, Uptime, Battery, and Places. Over time I’m sure I will add more… Still looking for a killer calculator. So now that I have my machine on and running, I need some music.

Excellent Linux media player with a great skin.

Bring in Songbird. yes this is an actual screenshot of my current playlist. It’s very slick, and easy to use and understand. Now that I have my music up, lets fire up some programming tool.

Excellent Ubuntu programming program; Geany

I love Geany. It’s very easy to use, and it’s completly packed with autocompletion, etc. Notice how it handles all the language, and allows me to set a dark theme. Once again, pay attention to the realestate usage… I use the entire screen.

Sometimes I have small windows open. Ubuntu handles this well.. take a look at what happens when I have more than one open, notice how the previous clicked windows fade out for better attention getting.

Making sure that the other windows fade so that the one you are on gains best focus

Sometimes though… I have things on other virtual displays that I need… and a simple alt+tab won’t get to them. For those I do ctrl+command+space… and wha-laa

Easy window grabbing by putting them all up together.

So what about this Vista I keep seeing… you mean this vista?

The start menu when running Vista in seamless mode.

That can run all these `Windows` *ick* programs on my desktop?

Vista programs running on the Ubuntu desktop; via Virtualbox

There is a lot to offer in such a free package of software eh. It seems that it handles quite alot of ‘usable’ features. Things people never imaged they could have for just a download.

Things like pen recognition and pressure recognition…

Pen input, pressure sensitivity, shape recognizer

And it’s amazing what firefox can look like…

Saving real estate by going full screen with firefox

I think I’ve shown my point, that linux doesn’t have to be all drab, it can be pretty slick too.

and I will leave you with my idle screen… Rain

Neat desktop effects, this is the raining effect.

Image Gallery

here are some issues with the power manager in ubuntu and tablet.  There was  alarge discussion you can find here.

But basically to save power and time you should run without atime by following these commands

Make sure you have vim-full installed

sudo apt-get install vim-full

This is a powerful editor, the lite edition is confusing to some, ignore this if you would like to use gedit (think graphical editor) just replace `vi` with `gedit` in the commands

Next,

sudo vi /etc/fstab

Find the line that looks like this,

UUID=65d4f3af-6###-4767-b###-4aa28b61b### / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

Do not copy my line, your likely to have issues if you do so.

Make the line look like this by pressing `insert` and moving the pointer to the place and typing in the text, hit ‘esc’ and then ‘shift + v’  twice

UUID=65d4f3af-6###-4767-b###-4aa28b61b### / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,noatime 0 1

Restart your system or run this command

        sudo mount -o remount /

Most users of linux need not be concerned with updating Wacom.  But there are many out there that should be.  Namely, those that are using tablets or have a tablet PC.  Wacom is probably the number one driver manager for tablet hardware in linux.  Unfortunately, it’s a driver that too often gets fuddled with and not upgraded.

You can check your current version by running this command in a terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal)

dpkg -p wacom-tools  | grep Version

You should get an output of something like this

Version 1:08.1.4-0ubuntu3

If that has 08.2 instead of 08.1.##, then you can disregard updating (Understand that this post is from Dec 08, a new version can be found here when they come out).

To solve this, you should always keep your wacom updated to the newest version.  As with this post, the newest version is 0.8.2 (The Linux Wacom Project).  Intrepid Ibex, the current release of Ubuntu, ships with .8.1-4.  .8.2 adds some new features, like better touch support.  Users with an X61T like me would LOVE to have this back after frying Vista.

First thing you should do it download the newest version here – 0.8.2

**This is a pre-built binary.  If this doesn’t work for you, you should read below.

Download the file to your Desktop and unpack it using the archive manager. You can delete these files when your finished.

Run these commands

cd Desktop/linuxwacom-0.8.1-6/prebuilt

sudo ./uninstall

sudo ./install

The last step is to press ‘ctrl + alt + backspace’ to restart your X11.  This will log you out of X11, so make sure to save anything you have open.

For those users that are unable to follow these steps because of errors. You may need to compile the drivers on your own.  You can find out the information on how to do that here.

Enjoy!

You can learn something everyday it seems.

Yesterday, I had some issues that I hadn’t planned on ever occurring with my local development server. Basically, the issue was discovered when my server suddenly did not have ANY access from the internet. Now, it DID have access to the internet, oddly enough, and I could reach it via hostname through my local network. The first issue I figured it would have been was a router problem. Namely port forwarding was getting messed up. My server is set statically on my network, so the port forwarding should be fine, and Remote Desktop to my XP machine works fine from the outside world. So the router is NOT the issue. Next step was DNS. Maybe my dns is messed up? I checked out my /etc/resolv.conf

> vi /etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 192.168.1.149
nameserver ###.###.###.###

I blocked out the ### because this is uneeded information about my ISP. Normally you want your name servers to be a nameserver, or your access to a name server. The first shows my router, from the inner network, which is what can be here. This explains why my hostname works via my network. But it is not the solution to my issue. So I dugg a bit deeper. What was that I said earlier? Ah yes, my server has a STATIC ip. Which means I should have a static route.

> ip route

192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.129
default via 192.168.1.1 dev eth0 metric 100

OK! There is my issue! My static route is pointing by default to 192.168.1.1 which is NOT my router (192.168.1.149). So a quick update to that and that should fix it!

> vi /etc/network/interfaces

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.129
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
gateway 192.168.1.149

I edited the line in bold. This was 192.168.1.1 and now it is 192.168.1.149

> /etc/init.d/networking restart

Now the networking is reset!

> ip route
192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.129
default via 192.168.1.149 dev eth0 metric 100
default via 192.168.1.1 dev eth0 metric 100

And Wa-Laa! All done. Now I can access my server via the internet from anywhere as it should be always.

Lesson learned I guess. Hope this helps some others stump issues they are having with static networking on linux.