Kubuntu

If you are using Skype on Linux and run into the error message "P2P connect failed" while trying to sign in, then your configuration file is very likely corrupt. The fix is to just delete the .Skype directory from your home directory and restart Skype. If you have anything worth saving inside this directory, you can simply rename it instead or alternatively, back it up elsewhere prior to deletion.

The version of Skype on my system is 2.0.0.72 and it was installed (and upgraded) from the Medibuntu repository. I'm pretty certain that the previous version was working fine.

If you follow the posts on this site, you'd have noticed my issues with the recent Hardy upgrade. While I thought they'd been fixed in my fstab, this was apparently not the case. When I rebooted the machine next, I couldn't even get to the shell as I encountered the message - Unable to execute /bin/sh - Permission Denied.

The Flash plug-in for Opera in Kubuntu has been FUBAR-ed and it seems that it's caused due to an Opera bug w.r.t Flash player 9.0.115 which is fixed in the 9.50 betas. However, since Kubuntu etc. are still using 9.27, the only way to fix this issue is to go back to 9.0.48.

Yesterday, I decided to upgrade my Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 install to the latest 8.04 Hardy Heron. While I didn't have any specific feature that I thought I might need, I really wanted to see if an upgrade would help me access my digital camera which isn't terribly well supported in 7.10.

If you are experiencing speed issues with your CD or DVD drive, here are some tips that might help:

1. Make sure that you use an 80-conductor data cable and that it is fine.

I have a Gigabyte board with an nForce 430 chipset that supports RAID. I was hoping to use it to create a simple RAID1 mirror using two hard drives to protect my previous MP3 collection. The system in question is an updated Kubuntu Gutsy box.

Before we start, this is the first time I am playing with RAID and the information below might very well be wrong. Please feel free to correct me :)

Twice over the last couple of weeks, I've added a new drive to my Kubuntu box and run into the error hal-storage-fixed-mount refused uid 1000 when I attempted to access any existing partitions via Dolphin or Konqueror. The first time this happened was with a Windows drive with NTFS partitions and the second time with a drive from another linux box with reiserfs partitions.

If you constantly see a gnome_screensaver_control error dialog when you open Mplayer in Kubuntu, you can fix it by unchecking the "Stop XScreenSaver" option in Mplayer preferences (under the Misc tab). The preferences and other menu options can be reached by right-clicking on either the video or controls windows.

Looks like a packaging issue.

This is something of a personal reminder of the stuff I do after a fresh installation of Kubuntu:

• Install the following apps:
  1. synaptic
  2. firefox
  3. pidgin
  4. whois
  5. traceroute
  6. sun-javaX-jre
  7. sun-javaX-plugin
  8. sun-javaX-fonts
  9. vlc
  10. mplayer
  11. vim
  12. vim-gtk
  13. msttcorefonts
  14. qcomicbook
  15. flashplugin-nonfree
  16. unrar
  17. unace

If you ever find yourself running into a monotonous

"The following packages have been kept back"

error message when you run sudo apt-get upgrade, then the "fix" is to either run apt-get dist-upgrade which is quicker, but sounds more ... dangerous or to run apt-get install [package list] where package list is a list of all packages that have been kept back.