Posting from Ubuntu USB

Creating a USB distro from Ubuntu Live CD was damn easy. I have a 2GB USB-Ubuntu 7.10 key and posting this entry from a PQI USB key (which I got as a prize for a graffic design).

Here is steps to create the Ubuntu USB key.


From: Victor_Lowther at Dell.com
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2007 4:11 PM
To: linux-users at insidelists.us.dell.com
Subject: Speaking of Ubuntu..

Here is a neat little trick that makes the install process go much
faster:

1: Get a 1 gig USB memory key
2: Copy the contents of the Ubuntu live cd to to the memory key
3: Create a directory named "grub" on the memory key, and copy the
contents of the /boot/grub directory to it.
3: Install grub on the memory key. From a preexisting Linux install,
these commands should do the trick:
root at local# grub

grub> root (hd1,0) # or whatever your hard drive is. This
happens to correspond to /dev/sdb1
grub> setup (hd1)
grub> quit

4: Modify the /grub/menu.lst file on the memory key to look like this:

timeout 3
# This will be the memory key if you boot to one on every system I have
tried it on.
root (hd0,0) # first hard disk.

title Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD
kernel /casper/vmlinuz quiet splash file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed
boot=casper
initrd /casper/initrd.gz
quiet

title Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD (Safe Mode)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz quiet splash xforcevesa
file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper
initrd /casper/initrd.gz
quiet


# if you don't have memtest86, you can omit these lines
title Memtest86
kernel /casper/memtest86+.bin
quiet

##END OF FILE

Now install should be a little faster, and using the live system will be
much faster.

Enjoy!

Victor Lowther


Firefox link navigation

I have been using vimperator firefox extension a lot and I find it very useful. However, I was wondering how can I click on links ( slashdot page links) without using Mouse. Searched the net and found something interesting that I have overlooked in firefox for quite a long time now.

Firefox has a simple trick: press ' (single quote) and you can search through the links from a page by typing a string in the small box from the bottom of the window. So you could type the first characters from the anchor and when the link you want to open has focus, press enter.

(or press CNTL + Enter for opening in a new tab).
btw, while using vimperator, you might have to Escape all keys ( i) and then do the ' to search the link using keystrokes.

This all got started when after being with mutt for some 2 hours, I got reluctant to open firefox thinking that, damn, I will have to use that mouse again.
At last, figured out a way with firefox.
Ah, mouse less existence is a bliss.

getaddrinfo error due to proxy settings

>>> import urllib2
>>> 
>>> data = urllib2.urlopen('http://www.google.com')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in ?
  File "C:\Python24\lib\urllib2.py", line 130, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\urllib2.py", line 358, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\urllib2.py", line 376, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\urllib2.py", line 337, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\urllib2.py", line 1021, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\urllib2.py", line 996, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
URLError: 
>>> import socket
>>> print socket.gethostname()
WXP-GQ86K1S
>>> print socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())
121.241.134.194

This was really weird. I was thinking if that was a problem with the network or my machine. Tried on a different Linux machine and found it worked properly.

See the documentation for urllib.urlopen:

"""
In a Windows environment, if no proxy environment variables are set,
proxy settings are obtained from the registry's Internet Settings
section.
"""
Remove Proxy configuration under IE and try again
(don't use Ie anymore ;0)

Yes, that was the issue. Reset the proxy settings in the IE and found it working again. Is it a good idea to take the environment settings from the registry?
- If we are taking the settings from the registry, Should not the active browser ( firefox) update the registry settings? should it depend on IE only?