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ejdougherty.com

Connecting Windows 7 Home Pro to Linux Samba shares

Monday, 08 March 2010 11:38 administrator
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Interestingly enough, it looks like Windows 7 Home Pro has issues connecting to Linux Samba shares (good 'ol Microsloth).  After a little Googling, I found a resolution for Home Pro which modifies the LAN manager authentication level using the Windows registry utility.

Using regedit, create a new DWORD key \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\LmCompatibilityLevel and set the value to 1. Reboot, then try again.  Good luck.

 

Making the Switch to Ubuntu - Outlook attachments

Wednesday, 17 February 2010 14:02 administrator
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Continuing with the move to Ubuntu at work, I recently came across an issue with folks forwarding RTF e-mails with attachments from Outlook. In Evolution the attachment came over in an unrecognized format named winmail.dat. After a little Googling I came across some discussions about a Microsoft proprietary attachment format called TNEF (Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format) which is sort of like a file archive and not really neutral. Using the Package Manager I found an Evolution experimental plug-ins package which included TNEF attachment support. Shortly after installation and a system reboot I was able to access the underlying Word attachment.

 

Side note: I also installed the ytnef command-line utility which can extract the e-mail body and attachment from a winmail.dat file.  This works just as well if you are concerned with the 'experimental' aspect of the plug-in.

 

 

Xbox 360 RROD

Wednesday, 13 January 2010 15:35 administrator
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Right before the Christmas holidays my kids received a nice gift from Microsloth ... the Red Rings of Death (RROD).  The RROD indicates a general hardware failure commonly due to the overheating of the CPU/GPU in combination with bad solder joints on the motherboard.  I previously experienced the RROD over a year ago and I was able to resolve with the "3 penny" fix.  This time around I figured I'd try the "x-clamp" fix which is only a little bit more work than what I did previously.  A complete kit and a nice tutorial about the "x-clamp" fix is provided by LLamma at http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/repair/ring_of_light_x-clamp_fix.htm.  Since I needed to remove the heatsinks I decided to upgrade to the new GPU heatsink (http://secure.llamma.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=73_89&products_id=918) that is installed on the elite systems.  The "x-clamp" fix worked like a charm as I was able to boot-up however, my DVD drive is now not working which I need to look into in more detail.

 

Making the Switch to Ubuntu

Friday, 22 January 2010 17:38 administrator
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So, I recently purchased a new Acer Aspire laptop to do some Semantic Web development.  I installed Ubuntu Linux and opted for dual booting between the pre-installed Windows 7 64-bit and Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) 32-bit.  While the system was installing I was thinking why not try and consolidate the three laptops I am currently using for personal use (Mac OSX), work (Windows XP Pro) and now development (Ubuntu).  I know the toughest part will be the work laptop as unfortunately Microsoft appilcations are the norm the capability with non-Microsoft applications can be tough.

After coping over the files from my work laptop, I exported my Outlook data to Outlook personal files (*.pst) which I then imported into Evolution.  Next up I copied over the Berkely mailbox files (*.mbox) from the Thunderbird directory on my Mac and imported them into Evolution.

During the process my wireless connection on the new Ubuntu laptop would drop after 30 or so minutes.  I noticed in the system logs that there were a lot of "ath9k: Unable to reset channel..." After Googling a bit I found a recommendation for the ath9k driver for the Atheros wireless device to install the following backport linux modules:

linux-backports-modules-karmic

linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic

So far this change is working like a champ (phew!).
** update: seems like version Ubuntu 10.04 fixes the wireless and microphone issue on my Aspire 5542

Here is an initial list of applications that I am planning to use as the Linux counterpart to Microsoft:

MS Outlook -> Evolution

MS Office -> OpenOffice

YahooIM -> Pigin (the cool thing with Pigin is that it supports many IM services)

MS IE -> Firefox

Dreamweaver -> KompoZer  (was actually surprised that Dreamweaver did not have a Linux version - only Mac and Windows)
** update - not a fan of KonpoZer - ended up just making content changes in Eclipse IDE

MediaPlayer -> SMPlayer

 

 

 


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