Virtualbox + USB + Dell + Integrated Webcam

July 3rd, 2009

I currently have a Dell Studio 17 running Fedora 11, but there are times when i do need windows, so for this i’ve Installed my OEM windows that came with the machine into a virtualbox virtual machine. Works pretty good to be honest, but one thing i couldn’t get working was the webcam, the system just didn’t detect it. Virtualbox noticed that there were webcams available but wouldn’t allow me to select it, here’s what i did to get it working [obviously change username to your actual username :) ]

1, create an entry in /etc/groups
usb:x:503:username

2, make sure username is in the vboxusers group
3, add this to the /etc/fstab
none /sys/bus/usb/drivers usbfs devgid=503,devmode=664 0 0

mount -a or reboot [i'm not sure this part is necassary]

This should now allow you to select the usb devices that virtualbox has detected then allow you to install drivers for them within windows. Worked for me…..

The post is bought to you by lekhonee v0.4

Lekhonee

July 3rd, 2009

Now that drivel has been removed from the Fedora11 repos I didn’t have an alternative blog poster, yeah I know i can update it various ways, but i like to use a desktop app. While reading the planet i noticed a few posts with a Lekhonee sig, so further investigation was needed.

yeah as usual yum install lekhonee installed it for me. Seems straight forward enough and i’ve written this post using it now.

The post is bought to you by lekhonee v0.4

To much information…..

July 1st, 2009

I’ve just surprised myself with the amount of email addresses i currently have, i think i need to consolidate them and have one, currently i have

hotmail
gmail
yahoo
own hosted email [about 4 here]

Do i really need this many email addresses :) I think it’s time to close accounts :)

It’s a shame apps i use are linked to these, flickr for instance is linked to my yahoo account….picasa is linked to my gmail, is it time to go totally self hosted?

I’ve probably mentioned this sometime in the past so apologies if i’m repeating myself..

Linux Events

June 30th, 2009

I’ve decided that next year I’m going to attend at least one major linux show, after seeing numerous reports from SELF, LinuxTag, various FUDcons, it’s about time i went to one. Now i’m in the UK so where to go? Europe? the US? who knows, i’ve still got plenty of time to think about it :)

Linux Fests

June 25th, 2009

I don’t know about you, but I can’t get to many Linux Fests, especially ones in the US. I’m in the UK so it’s a bit far to travel. But like many people I would love to see what’s going on, perhaps if you’re at an event and have a spare 10 mins with your laptop and a webcam and you have access to a wired lan port, or wireless, you could stream it using ustream, or livestream? then blog it, twitter it etc

I know I would watch just to see what’s going on, yeah i’m sad :)

I thought of this while watching a SELF stream by ubuntupodcasts Nick Ali

It was quite interesting seeing the amount of people that were around and the stalls, hmmm i’m trying to get to Lug Radio Live this year, I might do it myself there…..

Community

June 24th, 2009

Don’t you just love it :) Yesterday I wasn’t having a good day, long story short it was crap :) Then out of the blue, there are comments on my blog from people telling me to keep my chin up, now some of these I know by reputation only, or from the planets I read. However a few I’ve never heard off, which matters to me not one little bit. It makes me feel good that there are people out there willing to take a few minutes of their time just to make other people feel a little better. And to these folks, I take off my hat! and salute you. FOSS/Community++

TIP#: If you see a post where someone isn’t feeling too hot, go give them a virtual hug, i know I will.

Computers – Funk

June 23rd, 2009

Yes that’s right i said funk. I’m basically at a point where computers are really boring me, i can’t believe i said that, but it’s true. I do use them for a bit of photo editing, email, surfin and have a vps that i run websites on, but yeah whoop de doo! With the latest releases of Ubuntu and Fedora, I should be excited as they are both awesome releases, but lets face it i’m not :(

What next? Who knows. I think I need motorvation.

** UPDATE *** yes i’m just having a very bad day :)

Linux + xbox360

June 15th, 2009

I’ve been playing with media streaming, i did have my wife’s laptop doing it as it’s vista and the xbox360 loves vista for streaming movies and divx etc. However i didn’t like it, i didn’t want to keep the laptop on all the time and couldn’t afford to purchase a media center pc. Luckily i had a spare machine now i’ve moved my websites to a linode. And as it’s running linux, which will keep me happy :)

Enter ushare.

Basically installed it, copied some media files to /tmp and ran ushare -x [this makes it use a xbox 360 compatible profile], i think i tweaked the config file a bit as well but not much.

Et Viola…i can see the server on the xbox and play divx/xvid :) tron, the last starfighter here we come :)

VPS Solutions

June 14th, 2009

I’ve moved my websites to a vps solution, which one did I go with? well after speaking to a friend of mine , thanks lyz i went with Linode.

All mail, web and irssi services have been moved, if you see any sillyness let me know :)

To be honest i’m quite impressed, there are a few things that are niggling at me, but they will be worked out in the end.

On a secondary note, i watched a live stream from Southeast Linuxfest which looked like fun, the stream was setup by the guys that shoot the ubuntupodcast [well i saw nick mainly ;) ] kudos to them :) I also noticed the Fedora guys handing out t-shirts…..damn why am I in the UK :)

fin.

Art Of Community

June 7th, 2009

I’ve just pre-ordered, so should you :)

Art Of Community