RSS feed for InstantSpot site Conrad's World

MythTV Sound Woes

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:16:00 GMT

Problems I am having with MythTV

How to fix your /etc/sudoers permissions

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:54:20 GMT

So you decided to be brave and mess with your /etc/sudoers file but you end up just breaking it. Or maybe I am the only one who did that.

I was trying to find a way of running the Ubuntu update-manager without having to put my password in. I read that you have to edit the /etc/sudoers file to do that, so no problem, right. First I sudo gedit /etc/sudoers but it tells me that I don't have permissions to do this, no problem, just change the permissions. So I sudo chmod 0640 /etc/sudoers which changes the permissions, what I did realize that sudo does not work unless it has a permission of 0440. So now every time I try and sudo anything I get the message " sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0640, should be 0440" so I cannot sudo chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.

The Fix:

After some more pain and searching for how to fix it, I find that I can just go into recovery mode from the GRUB menu and then chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers and reboot. So once again I avoid a reinstall of Ubuntu

Google Desktop for 64 bit Linux

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 00:26:31 GMT

I recently went to a fully 64 bit installation of Ubuntu Feisty. The only problems I had were that since I was running 64 bit Java I could not use my old CFEclipse installation anymore and had to download the 64 bit version, also I had to reinstall the my personal finance program, Moneydance , but everything worked fine there once I reinstalled.

I also had problems when I realized there is no 64 bit version of flash and I had to go back to 64 bit FireFox.

Today Google announced the release of Google Desktop for Linux, and while this is not something I typically install onto windows systems, I do know the pain that searching for files in Linux can be so I decided to check it out. After a few minutes of trying to install the program I find that it is not compatible with my 64 bit install.

I read of a few people running the --force-architecture switch when installing, but with a few bugs. I would rather wait on a fully developed product than install a buggy product. I may play with it on a VM so I don't break the rest of my system.

I will update if I play with this and get anything to work, till now I will wait.

The wonders of MythTV

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 15:18:59 GMT

For anybody who does not know about MythTV , it is a wonderful thing, when it is working properly. I have been toying with setting up a media box with my computer and hooking it up to the TV, but raising twins and planning a wedding somehow takes up more time that you would think.

If you don't know about MythTV it is a media center program that run on Linux. It is seperated out with a frontend and a backend so you can run it on multiple computers on the same network. It will play your music, DVD's, live TV, recorded TV, radio, and much more.

Right now I have it setup but it is not working correctly and I have not had time to work on it more. When I get some time I will be reinstalling it and doing a complete writeup on how to set it up and how cool it is.

The first one

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:59:58 GMT

Here I am a blogging away. This is my first step into a larger world. I am not sure what I am going to focus on in this blog, but I am going to start by just putting up everything I can think of. From there I will maybe decide a direction to go with it, or perhaps not. We shall see.