I use Pidgin as my primary chat client. Up until now I was forced to update my Twitter feed through SMS or a Firefox plugin.

A new plugin for Pidgin, microblog-pidgin, allows you to update your Twitter feed within Pidgin. Installation is straightforward.

Now start Pidgin, enable the plugin and add a Twitgin account.

If you run Ubuntu and you suddenly discover that your /tmp is running out of space then open up /etc/mtab

Look for the entry that defines /tmp and put it in comment.

Don’t forget to do a reboot afterwards.

After the upgrade to Ubuntu 9 I was unable to use the numeric keypad on my external keyboard that’s connected to my laptop. I’ve switched every possible option in the keyboard preferences on and off and found out that you have to disable the Pointer can be controlled using the keypad option. That’s under System, Preferences, Keyboard and Mouse Keys.

My upgrade to Ubuntu 9 resulted in quite some frustration (ipv6, cryptodisk, …) but there’s one nice though … installing Google Earth is very easy.

Then double click on the .deb file that’s the result of the above.

Found on http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Jaunty#Google_Earth

I’ve recently set up some new msql-servers that had to fetch their data from a shared mountpoint. I changed the mysql configuration so that it was no longer looking in /var/lib/mysql but in /mounted/mysql. Unfortunately mysql failed to start because of insufficient permissions( type=1503 operation=â€?inode_permissionâ€? requested_mask=â€?rw::â€? denied_mask=â€?rw::â€? name=â€?/mounted/mysql/ibdata1″ pid=7588 profile=â€?/usr/sbin/mysqldâ€? namespace=â€?defaultâ€?

This is caused by apparmor. You need to edit the file /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.mysqld and then look for the lines /var/lib/mysql. Replace this with your path and restart apparmor and mysql.

I’ve been running Ubuntu on my laptop for a while. When I work at home I connect it to an external flatscreen (ViewSonic VP181b).

Since the upgrade to Ubuntu 8 I’ve lost the 1280×960 resolution every time the folks at Ubuntu released a kernel update. The wrong graphics module, a crappy X-org config file or bad karma … you name it.

This is my hardware

After the recent upgrade to kernel 2.6.24-21 I had to do these tricks:

Install the i386 kernel.

Adjust your xorg.conf file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf)

After disabling the “cloning” of screens in the “Screen Resolution” settings of Ubuntu you should be all set.

My employer recently gave me a HTC TYTN2 Smartphone.

This smartphone is HSDPA/3G enabled so in theory it should be possible to surf the net with your laptop connected to this smartphone. This is the procedure that I used with Ubuntu 8.

Before you start make sure that your phone is NOT connected via the USB-cable to your laptop.

Install subversion

Now download the the source code, compile and install it.

Create the config file.

Enter this in your editor (hit ‘i’ for Insert, Save with “:w”, Quit with “:q”) :

Make sure that you have Internet Sharing activated on your smartphone. “Connect” to the Internet with your smartphone. Now connect the USB-cable to your laptop. Your dmesg should look something like this:

You’ll notice the last name where it says “renamed network interface rndis0 to eth4″. The eth4 can vary on your system, it might be eth1, eth2 or something else but you should see a new interface.
Now try to get a DHCP lease from your phone.

You should get something like this :

That should be all.

Although I like the eyecandy of a Gnome desktop there’s nothing that can beat the strength of the command line. My desktop is often cluttered with a number of gnome terminals.

I’ve recently discovered Terminator, a terminal container that allows you to have all terminals “catched” in one window. Simply hitting Ctrl and Shift and O (or E) splits your current terminal and gives you a new terminal.

After my upgrade to Ubuntu 8 I was unable to start the VMware server console. I always go these errors :

If you look into the directory where the libraries of the server console are installed you’ll find a file libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1. Just remove and fire up the console again.

A colleague showed me a new tool that is very useful if you need to connect to a number of machines that have a similar setup (say, a cluster of x-machines).

With clusterssh you can enter commands simultaneously in the different windows.

It’s available for Ubuntu with