Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Launch 'em Yahoo!!

Get Yahoo!'s Launch to work with Firefox. As you know Yahoo! is stuck on making LaunchCast work only with Internet Explorer.. Getting it to work with FireFox on Windows let alone FireFox on Linux seemed daunting..

At first I thought that Browser Masquerading was the answer, but that didnt work and even caused FireFox to crash a few times for some reason.. I gave up...

While browsing thru my fav forum linuxforums I stumbled upon a neat workaround..


All you have to do is:
1. Install the Grease Monkey extension for FireFox.. and restart FireFox.
2. Click and open the pklaunch.user.js in FireFox.
3. And install it by clicking on Tools / Install User Script...

Check Out Pooyak for more details..

Yahooooooooooo!

Monday, June 20, 2005

Quake 3: Fragg 'em all!!!

Finally got down to installing Quake 3 on linux... Installed the RPM and linked the pak0.pak file from my dump of Quake3.
Ran quake3 in the Konsole and.... baM! graphics problems..
ERROR:
You are using software Mesa (no hardware acceleration)!
..... (some more things... can't remember verbatim)
Sys_Error: GLimp_Init() - could not load OpenGL subsystem


Mostly means... No 3D acceleration enabled.. googled a bit.. Downloaded the NVidia Drivers and followed the instruction at LinuQuestions Forum

QUAKE 3: 3D Acceleration Solution...
1. went to a shell prompt CTL-ALT and F1.
2. Login as Root and enter the password.
3. at the prompt #init 3 which kills the Xserver.
4. go to the directory that has the NVIDIA installer and run the installer.
sh NVIDIA-Linux-1.0-(number or version).run -q <--this uninstalls previous driver versions and runs the new install
4. after the installer has created the kernel module the next step makes all the difference.
5. modprobe nvidia <--This previous step loads the nvidia driver into memory so sax will run correctly.
6. Then type sax2 -m 0=nvidia (0 is a digit, not a letter!)
7. After sax is done. enter init 5 to restart Xserver.[B]
8. Logout of the Shell and press CTL ALT F7 to be in the Window.
9. Reboot the System.

At step 7 I tried to make sax2 make my system look pretty by fiddling around.. and when i re-booted X crashed and wouldnt come back up... luckily I had made a copy of xconf (/etc/X11) i overwrote it (the mc editor rox!)... i ran the whole process again from step 1 and this time at step 7 I just went with what sax2 suggested,, and all was fine after a reboot!!.. phew!!

Tried to run quake3 again and woo hoo it works.. but no SoUNd!!!! bah!!
ERROR:
/dev/dsp: Input/output error
Could not mmap /dev/dsp"


some more googling and using common sense and I came across this: ALSA Wiki and typed in the konsole..

Quake 3: Sound Solution
(as root)
echo "quake3.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss

echo "quake3.x86 0 0 disable" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0c/oss


and with that... strangly.. sound works!! woo hoo.. but it works only in the Introduction Level, if i tried to play any level in Tier 1 or play in an Arena as soon as it said 'wRaiTh has entered game' the sound and video would hang.. so i had to kill the process by Ctrl+Alt+F1 and as root ps -A and kill (quake process number)

after more googling i tried: artsdsp -m quake3
but got..: artsdsp works only for binaries

more googling and forum posting led me to try: artsdsp -m quake3.x86 in the quake3 directory...

and volia!! it works!!! ... dug up some cd keys from google.. and im fraggin butt!!!!!

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Apache Virtual Directories

Struggling for days to try to setup virtual directories.. And no clue what Im doing.. Like playing in the muck..
Finally, I beleive what I was doing wrong was that after making changes to httpd.conf (/etc/apache2) & other config files, i didnt restart Apache.. I was under the impression that apache re-reads it's config files every so often.. I just realised that Samba does that.. Finally ive got my website up and I can access my windows mounts.. all is good...

To Restart Apache: apache2ctl restart (note: as root)

Changes made to make /windows/ a virtual directory...
... added to /etc/apache2/default-server.conf

# Aliases: aliases can be added as needed (with no limit). The format is
# Alias fakename realname
#
# This is an Alias for my /windows dir that has my
# windows drives that i want to be exposed on my site

Alias /windows/ "/windows/"

Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all


Moral of the story: Restart Service after changes..