the empty quarter

Sometimes you may want to log in with a different user account in Terminal without logging out from your X session or switching to an unused virtual console. There are two different approaches to do this in Ubuntu: interestingly, it is possible without even knowing the other user’s password. Approach 1: if you know the […]

Here are two quick and simple changes which I always make on a fresh Firefox install. They are both accessed through the about:config URI. Simply type about:config to the Firefox address bar and accept the disclaimer. This reveals a lot of “hidden” settings which cannot be changed directly through the preferences dialogs. To make backspace […]

The property which controls text wrapping (line breaks) in table cells and other objects in BIRT is accessed in the Properties Editor window under Properties > Advanced > Text > Whitespace. Simply set the value to “No Wrapping” and the contents of the cell will be displayed on a single line.

In a previous post I detailed steps on how to disable touchpad tapping in Xubuntu 8.04. Unfortunately the package gsynaptics-mcs-plugin which provides the Xfce Settings Manager plugin is obsolete in Xubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) and therefore the annoyance of touchpad tapping and scrolling is back after upgrading from Hardy. Also, it turns out that the responsibility […]

Here are a few useful commands for finding version information of various system components. Linux distribution name and version lsb_release -idrc System information, including kernel version uname -a X.org version X -version Java version java -version Package version dpkg -s <insert package name>

UPDATE: These steps work fine for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty). For more recent Ubuntu versions you should take a look at this later post which has the correct steps. The Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combination which restarts X is by default disabled in X version 1.6 (and hence in Ubuntu 9.04). Follow the steps below to re-enable it. […]

Most CD-ROM downloads come as ISO images which can be burned onto a CD. They can also be mounted as drives without actually burning them onto a disk by using the mount loopback command. The command below mounts the image foobar.iso in user’s home directory as /media/cdrom: sudo mount -o loop ~/foobar.iso /media/cdrom This assumes […]

Wine adds a menu entry “Browse C: Drive” in the Applications menu. By default, this doesn’t work and produces an error message in Xubuntu 8.04. Here’s how to fix it. Run the following command to open the configuration file which controls what the menu entry does: sudo mousepad /usr/share/applications/wine-browsedrive.desktop Replace the line Exec=xdg-open ~/.wine/drive_c with […]

Update: The technique documented in this post is applicable for alternating styles of detail rows. For a way of achieving the effect in a table consisting of summary rows only, please refer to this later post. To set different styles for alternate table detail rows in BIRT: Select the detail row – hover over the […]

Oracle Database XE (Express Edition, sometimes also referred to as Apex) comes with an embedded web interface for administration. By default the HTTP port of this web interface is 8080. This can be checked by running the query below when logged in as system: SQL> select dbms_xdb.gethttpport from dual; In order to change the port […]