Category: Computers

I’ve worked up some python scripts for working with uzbl. They are available for download from here. They are both wxWidgets programs.

The first one, wxuzblAbar.py, is an address bar of sorts for a uzbl instance. It can be bound to a key press with something like the following in the uzbl config file:

 bind     a  = spawn $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/uzbl/wxuzblAbar.py

When launched, it has a text field to enter an address as well as a drop down list for favorite links. In order for that to be useful a file name “favorites” needs to be added to $XDG_DATA_HOME/uzbl. The file format consists of two double-quoted text fields separated by spaces:

"Mutt"     "www.mutt.org"

The other file, addFavorites.py, actually makes the “favorites” file that the first script uses. Bind it to a key like this:

bind      f   = spawn $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/uzbl/addFavorites.py

When the key is pressed, a text box will appear allowing the name to be edited. The next time the address bar is invoked the new link will be in the drop down list.

At this point the only dependency, I think, is socat which is required for wxuzblAbar.py to work. Also, the wxWidgets libraries might come in handy.

One limitation of the address bar program is that is must be launched for each instance. Based on the way uzbl created sockets, it might be possible to scan for all opened uzbl sockets and put them in a list so that a single address bar instance can control multiple uzbl instances. Of course, that might be a bit kludgy from UI perspective, but it’s something to try. Something else that might be more useful is a dropdown list for a history of links. I’m just not sure what would be involved with parsing the history file.

I’ve installed uzbl on my EEE today and have to say that I really like it.

Now, uzbl isn’t for everyone. If you like you’re full featured browser that manages all things browser, then stick with what you got. If you want a minimal browser that renders pages fast, fast, fast, then you might want to give it a look. By the way- when I say minimal I mean minimal. No buttons. No menus. No bookmarks. No address bar. No scroll bar. Barely a status bar.

I’m currently running Opera but I’ve also tried Iceweasel, Epiphany, Chrome, Safari and a few others that I’ve forgotten. Opera has been the best one for me to date, but uzbl is so much quicker than Opera on my EEE, I’m going to have to spend some time getting to know it. Even though the uzbl home page claims alpha status, the functionality is a very high level. It easily handles most of the sites I go to. The only trouble I ran into is accessing a site with ssl where a link opens a new page. That may just be a config issue- something I’ll look into.

The novelty of a minimal browser has me hooked for the moment. We’ll see how long it lasts.

I have Charter Internet service and I had some strange things going on from late last night until about noon or so today. 

It LIVES!!!

Well, I suppose it was more like a bad black eye than being dead.  As it turned out, shortly after posting that the display wasn’t supposed to arrive until Monday, FedEx showed up with the display.  I had some trouble getting the brackets off of the old display and onto the new one, but managed it eventually.  The other trick was putting the bezel back on because it covers part of the hinges as well.  Once I managed those two tasks, I was able to test fire it and complete the reassembly.  This post was written and posted from the EEE.

If you’re wondering what’s involved in the process, I have some details after the jump

UPDATE:  I’ve completely rewritten this post.  Previously, it was written in such a way as to convey myself as an expert or authority (at least I thought it did).  This is most decidedly not the case.  The new version below is a writeup of how I went about the upgrade.  The main info is identical to the previous post but readers should get a better sense about how knowledgeable (or not) I am.

I wanted to correct my statements from a previous post regarding upgrading to the ext4 file system.  In that post I commented that I had problems running fsck.ext3 on certain partitions.  This was incorrect.  In fact, my problem was with unmounting certain partitions.  When I put my desktop system together, I created partitions for a number of different main mount points such as /usr, /var, and /home.  The process that I was following from a Debian Admin article went as follows- unmount, fask.ext3, tune2fs and fsck.ext4. 

Well, for now anyway.

I left it out yesterday and one of the kids must have dropped it or stepped on it.  I went to power it up last night and the screen has a big spider crack through it.  I can see enough to tell that it boots properly but, alas, it is completely unusable beyond that.

I can’t really blame anyone but myself for this one.  I should have known better than to leave it where I did.  I’ll be ordering a replacement screen today and attempting to fix it.

Add this to the sourdough starter that can’t start and the gardens that the dogs tore up and I’m sincerely hoping we’re done with this sort of disappointment…

UPDATE:  Add 1 trackball to the steadily growing list.

Well- I can only surmise that someone “discovered” a bug in the Xserver.  I say this because after updating my desktop the other day, I could not launch my window manager(awesome) using “startx.”  Since updates have crashed it(the WM, that is) before, I started there and after about an hour I concluded that the WM was not the problem.  It seemed that my WM initialization scripts were not getting run and there was a path problem.  Subsequent investigation revealed that an out-of-date script was being used.

Very puzzling, since I hadn’t changed anything.  I continued to poke around and double and triple checked my ~/.xsession file.  Then I discovered that my .xsession file was not being used at all!  It turns out that, way back when I had started using my current WM,  I had setup an ~/.xinitrc file which also launched my WM but used the stock init script.  I recall migrating to the .xsession file shortly thereafter and have had no trouble since.  Well, until last night.

Apparently, the Xserver now checks for a .xinitrc file and runs it if found and does not bother with the .xsession file.  I came to this conclusion because after deleting the .xinitrc file from my home directory, awesome launched without issue.

Ah well- no harm, no foul.

Awhile back I upgraded to grub2 on my EEE.  It looks to be a pretty drastic rewrite from the original, based on all the config files in the boot directory.  Anyway, I had the bootup sequence running in 800×600 mode with the original grub because it was a little easier to monitor the screen with the smaller font- the screen doesn’t scroll as quickly.  The upgrade to grub2 changed how to configure the terminal mode.

For now, add “set gfxpayload=800×600” to the grub.cfg file in the boot directory.  This is the simplest way to do it.  Unfortunately, anytime update-grub is run, this setting is lost.  Ultimately the config files in /etc/default and /etc/grub.d will need to be modified so the gfxpayload setting will get sucked into grub.cfg when update-grub is run.

Incidentally, the old “vga=788” setting still works but it generates a warning during the boot because its been deprecated.  I hate that.  Thus I had to go and figure out how to get rid of it with the gfxpayload setting.  For those interested, put the vga setting in the /etc/default/grub file as part of the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.

It turns out that once the synaptics driver is working, there are many configurable options available.  See the synaptics man page.  I did a little tweaking and I’ll be test driving the edge-scrolling capabilities.  I also tweaked the pointer motion- that would be MaxSpeed, MinSpeed and AccelFactor.  The motion is a little easier to deal with now.  Use synclient (man synclient) to tinker with settings live.

Still keeping an eye out for lost tap detection as noted earlier.  No problems so far.

As I’ve remarked here previously, I have Debian installed on my EEE.  I keep it uptodate with the testing releases, which means I currently have Squeeze running here.  One of the minor annoyances I’ve had with it is the accidental taps on the touchpad while typing- which causes the cursor to unexpectedly jump to a new point and creates a hassle when typing.

I’ve removed slim as my login manager on the EEE and now just have it boot and automagically start X.  It was pretty simple, with a little help from this article from the knowledgeable debianadmin folks.

I’ll roll with this setup for awhile and see how functional it is.  Since I don’t have a need for multiple users on the EEE, I expect it will remain like this a long while.  Below the fold is a recap of what I did from the article.

Since I don’t have a full-blown desktop environment, I’ve been using slim as my graphic login for awhile now.  Unfortunately, I’ve always felt it to be slow and this annoyed me.  So last night I deep-sixed it.  I may go back to a GL later, but for now I’ll be fine with the command line.  Maybe I’ll spend a little time to figure out how to launch X upon login from the console.

The big advantage of using Linux, at least for a guy such as myself(geek) in a position such as mine(see blog title), is that I can make my computer, well, my computer.  That means I can run Gnome or KDE, or neither.  I can have as much software as I want, and no more, on my computer.  More than speed and stability, the ability to customize the computer is the single biggest point in favor of Linux, IMHO.  Of course, as many good things in life, it comes at a price.

When I installed Debian on my EEE, naturally Exim4 came along for the ride.  Even then, I felt it was overkill, but lacking the knowledge I couldn’t find a suitable replacement.  So I stuck with it and set it up to send mail to my local intranet mail server.  This configuration was OK, but it was never really satisfying.  Why did I need a full-fledged mail server on a resource limited laptop?