For the first time in all the time I have been using Arch I have experience my first major package breakage.
The night before last I ran pacman -Syu and one the packages upgraded was the Qt package. It was upgraded to qt-4.8.1-2. Next time I booted up I was getting a KDE Crash dialog appear noting an error with KRunner. Trying to run krunner from the shell I was presented with a host of errors.
A quick search of the Arch forums I found this post reporting similar problems. Following the advice in the post I downgraded the Qt package and my problems where resolved.
To find out if you can downgrade your package you will need to search the /var/cache/pacman/pkg directory to ensure you have a package to downgrade to. If you do then you can run pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/qt-4.8.0-6-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz (or whatever version you have). If you can not find an earlier package in your cache then you will have to refer here (the Arch wiki) which will provide further details.
(I should mention that I am running 64bit although I have no idea if this effects 32bit).
16 April 2012
15 April 2012
KDE 4.8 Task Manager Launcher Issue.
Of all the great new things that arrived in KDE 4.8 one of the most annoying to me was the inclusion of a browser and file manager launcher in the Task Manager. These are the little icons that appear when the said application is not running.
I tried to remove the launchers with the usual right mouse menu option but everytime I re-booted I ended up with the icons back again.
I have finally figured it out though. For some reason you need to remove the Task Manager from the panel and add a new instance of Task Manager and that seems to solve the problem.
While it is a 2 minute fix it is something that should just work by default I think.
I tried to remove the launchers with the usual right mouse menu option but everytime I re-booted I ended up with the icons back again.
I have finally figured it out though. For some reason you need to remove the Task Manager from the panel and add a new instance of Task Manager and that seems to solve the problem.
While it is a 2 minute fix it is something that should just work by default I think.
22 March 2012
Arch Linux - i3 Graphics Setup
Gonzo has been reborn!
My trusty old Thinkpad has finally died and so I have brought a Fujitsu A531 to replace it. Its not a bad spec for the money I paid (i3 2.2, 8gb, 750gb HDD all for £419).
I have just installed Arch 64 bit on it and had KDE up and running in less than an hour and a half. The first thing I noticed was the graphics acceleration was not enabled and I seemed to be suffering poor framerates. I found that by adding a file called 20-intel.conf to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d directory and adding the following solved my issues :
Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "intel"
Option "DRI" "true"
Option "SwapbuffersWait" "false"
EndSection
Reboot and 3D effects and a good framerate where restored.
My trusty old Thinkpad has finally died and so I have brought a Fujitsu A531 to replace it. Its not a bad spec for the money I paid (i3 2.2, 8gb, 750gb HDD all for £419).
I have just installed Arch 64 bit on it and had KDE up and running in less than an hour and a half. The first thing I noticed was the graphics acceleration was not enabled and I seemed to be suffering poor framerates. I found that by adding a file called 20-intel.conf to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d directory and adding the following solved my issues :
Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "intel"
Option "DRI" "true"
Option "SwapbuffersWait" "false"
EndSection
Reboot and 3D effects and a good framerate where restored.
28 February 2012
Skype & IIS Clash.
As I am working completely remotely these days I have found my use of Skype increase. This is mainly for chatting to my co-dev throughout the day. Not being a massive Skype fan I actually have it configured for use through Trillian which is quite a good multi-protocol IM client.
Today while mid call with my co-dev I found my Firefox instance hanging and so did an iisreset on my local dev box. Killed Firefox and attempted to start debugging again. Only Visual Studio didn't want to play ball. It showed an error dialog with the following message :
Unable to start debugging on the web server. The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseStatusLine.
OK, that was a new one to me! I started to dig about and found that the caused of the problem was Skype. It appears that Skype will try and use ports 80 and 443 as optional ports to connect on. This meant that IIS was not able to listen to either of these ports.
I killed Trillian (which in turned killed Skype) and all was resolved and I could debug again.
It appears you can disable the option to listen to these ports in Skype. You need to go to :
Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Connection
On this option page you need to uncheck "Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections". Restart Skype and you should find you have no more issues.
Today while mid call with my co-dev I found my Firefox instance hanging and so did an iisreset on my local dev box. Killed Firefox and attempted to start debugging again. Only Visual Studio didn't want to play ball. It showed an error dialog with the following message :
Unable to start debugging on the web server. The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseStatusLine.
OK, that was a new one to me! I started to dig about and found that the caused of the problem was Skype. It appears that Skype will try and use ports 80 and 443 as optional ports to connect on. This meant that IIS was not able to listen to either of these ports.
I killed Trillian (which in turned killed Skype) and all was resolved and I could debug again.
It appears you can disable the option to listen to these ports in Skype. You need to go to :
Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Connection
On this option page you need to uncheck "Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections". Restart Skype and you should find you have no more issues.
22 February 2012
Column Editing Mode For Visual Studio & (G)Vim.
I have been a heavy Visual Studio user for 10 + years. I was re-factoring some code today when I found that it has Column Editing capabilities. This was caused by me getting a keyboard short cut wrong and not noticing as I typed. From a quick Google this appears to be something that has been available for sometime. Usually when I need to do Column Editing in bulk I switch to (G)Vim and have often wished it was available in Visual Studio.
To edit columns in Visual Studio you simple have to hold SHIFT+ALT after selecting the start point with your mouse and then drag to select the columns you wish to edit. Start typing and your columns will all receive the edit.
As a side note Column Editing in (G)Vim is very easy. Simply hit CTRL+V to put you into column editing mode and then select the columns to edit. Once selected hit SHIFT+i to put you into insert mode and start making your edits. Once done hit ESC to exit column editing mode.
To edit columns in Visual Studio you simple have to hold SHIFT+ALT after selecting the start point with your mouse and then drag to select the columns you wish to edit. Start typing and your columns will all receive the edit.
As a side note Column Editing in (G)Vim is very easy. Simply hit CTRL+V to put you into column editing mode and then select the columns to edit. Once selected hit SHIFT+i to put you into insert mode and start making your edits. Once done hit ESC to exit column editing mode.
3 January 2012
SQL Server Express - How Not To Install It!
So new year, new job and new laptop. This is a great way to start the new year.
Working for a new company has meant installing a new Microsoft based development environment, part of which is the freely available SQL Sever Express. Installing it should have been a breeze using the free to download installer (or I believe you can also install using the Web Installer). However, as I had already installed the ASP.Net framework stack it turned into a rather long process.
SQL Express does ship with Management Studio which I think is brilliant considering it's all free! However, when I installed SQL Express there was no option to install Management Studio. I, wrongly, assumed this would just be installed by default. When the install finished I looked for Management Studio but realised it was not installed. After much reading and research I found out that if you install SQL Express as part of the .Net framework installation you are unable to then install Management Studio tools as part of a subsequent instance installation.
That's really not very helpful!
The short version of the rest of the story is that you need to uninstall all instances of SQL server Express and then re install it again. Once you restart the installation you find you have the option to include Management Studio Tools.
Now don't get me started about not being able to change the servers default collation ....
Working for a new company has meant installing a new Microsoft based development environment, part of which is the freely available SQL Sever Express. Installing it should have been a breeze using the free to download installer (or I believe you can also install using the Web Installer). However, as I had already installed the ASP.Net framework stack it turned into a rather long process.
SQL Express does ship with Management Studio which I think is brilliant considering it's all free! However, when I installed SQL Express there was no option to install Management Studio. I, wrongly, assumed this would just be installed by default. When the install finished I looked for Management Studio but realised it was not installed. After much reading and research I found out that if you install SQL Express as part of the .Net framework installation you are unable to then install Management Studio tools as part of a subsequent instance installation.
That's really not very helpful!
The short version of the rest of the story is that you need to uninstall all instances of SQL server Express and then re install it again. Once you restart the installation you find you have the option to include Management Studio Tools.
Now don't get me started about not being able to change the servers default collation ....
21 December 2011
Google Video Chat Fix
My wife and I tend to communicate through gtalk and recently the video chat. However, a couple of nights ago her laptop stopped allowing her to invite people to video call.
After realising it was something to do with the flash plugin I installed the latest version and applied all of the updates to no avail.
After a little Googling I found the answer to be the following and I thought I would post it here in case it's useful to anyone else.
Basically, go to your GMail account settings and find the Labs tab. Scroll right down to the bottom and there should be a Lab for Video Chat Enhancements. Click "Enable" for that lab and then save your settings. It worked a treat and she is now back up and running.
This issue seemed to effect both Chrome and Firefox although other people I have read about only seem to be effected if you use Chrome. Either way that solve her problem.
After realising it was something to do with the flash plugin I installed the latest version and applied all of the updates to no avail.
After a little Googling I found the answer to be the following and I thought I would post it here in case it's useful to anyone else.
Basically, go to your GMail account settings and find the Labs tab. Scroll right down to the bottom and there should be a Lab for Video Chat Enhancements. Click "Enable" for that lab and then save your settings. It worked a treat and she is now back up and running.
This issue seemed to effect both Chrome and Firefox although other people I have read about only seem to be effected if you use Chrome. Either way that solve her problem.
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