Archive for May, 2009

To check for installed packages from the command line, use the dpkg command with the –get-selections option. This returns all packages installed on your system (most likely a lot!). So it is best to use grep to narrow down the search results. For example, the following command lists all packages with “fire” in the package […]

Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 13:31 | 0 comments
Categories: Linux

Here’s how to stop the annoying beep (system bell) in VMware Player. These steps were tested with VMware Player 2.5 running a Debian Lenny server (guest) under Windows XP Professional (host). Open the following file in Notepad: C:Documents and Settings<your user>Application DataVMwarepreferences.ini (the drive might be different depending on your setup). Add the following line […]

Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 13:41 | 3 comments
Categories: Windows
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One of the major new features in Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) has of course been the new notification system. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a pretty good, bold piece of work and the notifications look pretty good. The trouble is, as with any new framework, that not all applications out there are using the […]

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at 17:45 | 1 comment
Categories: Linux

I recently came across an article on LinuxLinks with links to a selection of 20 of the Best Free Linux Books available for download. Worth checking out.

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 13:22 | 0 comments
Categories: Books, Linux
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Installing Oracle BI Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) will by default also install the OC4J application server. On Windows machines, it is not installed as a service, instead it runs in a dedicated command shell window. By default, OC4J will start automatically at the session startup, not only bringing up the annoying command line window but also […]

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 15:29 | 0 comments
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My only issue after an otherwise smooth upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) has been with Tracker. After logging in I noticed high disk and CPU usage, and eventually an error came up regarding corrupted index. I have tried several times to re-index, this did not work; also pausing all indexing in the tracker applet has […]

Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 14:04 | 0 comments
Categories: Linux

Here are a few things you can try if you get the BADSIG error in Update Manager: Run the following commands from terminal shell: sudo apt-get clean sudo apt-get update -o Acquire::http::No-Cache=True Change the Ubuntu server from which updates are downloaded: System > Software Sources > Ubuntu Software tab > change the selected server in […]

Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 15:56 | 0 comments
Categories: Linux

nautilus-image-converter is a helpful package which adds two entries to the Nautilus context menu for resizing and rotating images. It works for selections of multiple images, too, and has options for creating copies or editing the images in place. To install from command line: sudo apt-get install nautilus-image-converter

Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 12:57 | 0 comments
Categories: Linux

In a half-unofficial way, Microsoft offers a driver and a small utility to mount ISO CD-ROM images as a drive in Windows XP and Vista. It can be downloaded from a posting on Microsoft support site (here is the link directly to the self-extracting archive). The instructions are included in the “readme.txt” file. Although the […]

Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 15:00 | 0 comments
Categories: Windows
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To prompt the user for a value when running SQL statements in SQL*Plus use the & symbol. The query below will prompt for variable “name” twice: select ‘Hello ‘ || ‘&name’ from dual union all select ‘Goodbye ‘ || ‘&name’ from dual; To prompt for any given variable only once and use the entered value […]

Saturday, May 9th, 2009 at 10:02 | 0 comments
Categories: Database
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