Yearly Archives: 2009 - Page 2

OpenDNS kills Google

Posted by on May 13, 2009 No comments

Yesterday I was having problems getting to Google. The rest of the internet worked fine, but I couldn’t connect to Google. It struck me as unlikely that Google would be down and check with Down for Everyone confirmed that it was just me.

After much digging and a bit of thinking, I discovered google.com was not actually resolving to google.com. It was resolving to an OpenDNS service. Apparently they do some proxying of Google to make sure some of their advanced features keep working. To fix the problem, I just had to turn of the proxy and everything was golden.

To turn of the proxy:

  1. Login to OpenDNS
  2. Go to Settings
  3. Go to Advanced Settings (the link is on the left)
  4. Turn of the proxy
  5. Enjoy

Adobe Air in Jaunty (Ubuntu 9.04)

Posted by on April 24, 2009 1 comment

I just finished reinstalling Ubuntu 9.04 and was trying to install my air applications. Not terribly difficult…

  1. Download the installer from: http://get.adobe.com/air/
  2. Install ia32-libs
  3. Install lib32nss-mdns (from http://tr.im/jCFs )
  4. Install your apps

I got stuck on the third step when I was going through things. I could install Adobe Air applications, but they had no network access. Installing that library corrected the problem.

Arch Linux

Posted by on January 26, 2009 No comments

I decided that I would like to try a Linux distro that was less “do it all for you.” After consulting with the people I consult with on things like that, I decided to try out Arch Linux. So far I am pretty impressed. It is definitely a DIY distribution, but they have documentation to help you through just about everything.

I am running it on an Acer 5672 laptop. I will post here with possible problems I find and any solutions…

  • Special keys (Play/Pause, Stop, Volume, Mute, etc)
  • Card Reader
    • Run the following command: sudo setpci -s 09.0 4c=0x22
  • Webcam
    • Add gspca_vc032x to your modules list in /etc/rc.conf. You can also just modprobe it to test. If compiz is enabled, the picture will flicker unless you modify  your xorg.conf.
    • Section "Device"
      ........
      Option "VideoOverlay" "off"
      Option "OpenGLOverlay" "on"
      Option "TexturedVideo" "off"
      .........
      EndSection
  • No Automounting in Gnome
    • Make sure your /etc/fstab file does not contain entries for the cd/dvd drives. Removing those had it working immediately for me