SOLVED: vpnc and resolvconf

I've been using vpnc to connect to a Cisco 3000 VPN Concentrator. Since upgrading from Dapper Drake to Hardy Heron I noticed that after about 20 minutes domain name resolution would fail even though the VPN was still up.

It turned out that /etc/resolv.conf we being overwritten by the DHCP client when the DHCP lease expired (and needed renewal).

The solution was to install the resolvconf package, which manages /etc/resolv.conf.

SOLVED: Thunderbird Lightning extension upgrade

After recently upgrading from Dapper Drake to Hardy Heron I noticed that the Thunderbird Lightning calendar add-on wasn't working. I could see that it was installed but the calendar toolbar was not available.

The upgrade had installed Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 and I had installed the latest available version of the extension (0.8) directly from Mozilla.

Ultimately, I discovered that several files (in $HOME/.mozilla-thunderbird) related to the Lightning extension were owned by root. The fix was simply change ownership to me.

cd $HOME/.mozilla-thunderbird/my_profile_dir
sudo chown -R my_user_id:my_group_id *

Compiz effects causing problems for Java Swing applications

As a Java developer I use IntelliJ's IDEA Java IDE, which is itself a Java Swing application. Unfortunately, after upgrading to Hardy Heron I noticed that some IDEA dialogs weren't being displayed as empty windows. This turns out to be a known bug with Java Swing and Compiz.

I tried two workarounds:

1. Setting the environment variable AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit. This solved the problem with empty Swing dialog windows but introduced a new problem with windows losing keyboard focus.
2. I also installed Sun's JDK6.0 update 10 beta (build24) and used this to run IntelliJ IDEA. Compiz now works correctly with IntelliJ IDEA.

Rhythmbox segmentation faults

After recently upgrading from Dapper Drake to Hardy Heron I noticed that Rhythmbox was intermittently crashing (segmentation fault).

The problem appears to be a known bug.

Meanwhile there is a work-around which involves (re-)enabling the cover art plug-in. This worked for me.

Update 2008-06-06: unfortunately the problem persists. Let's hope the recent update (0.11.5) solves the problem.

Dapper Drake to Hardy Heron upgrade

I took the plunge and decided to upgrade from Dapper Drake to Hardy Heron. I was motivated by the fact that Hardy is a Long-Term Support (LTS) release and finding that fewer third-party software packages were being released in a format compatibly with Dapper.

I kicked off the upgrade with a simple:

sudo update-manager -d

and then clicking the "upgrade" button listed in the update manager. The upgrade notes suggest you can do this via gksu but I found I had to use sudo from a terminal command-line.

I ran the upgrade overnight so am not sure how long it actually took as there were user prompts waiting to be answered the next morning.

After upgrading I had only one major problem:

• the Nvidia video driver wasn't working, which I fixed after a lot of hassle,

and a few minor problems:

1. No sound from the Firefox Flash plugin if another audio application was running
2. No NFS client
3. Thunderbird Lightning extension not working (fix)
   
4. Rhythmbox intermittently crashing (workaround)
5. Java Swing applications, e.g. IntelliJ IDEA, now working with Compiz (workaround)
   

which were easily fixed.

Microphone Audio Capture Very Faint

After installing skype (via Synaptic) I found that audio captured via my microphone (plugged into the external jack) was almost inaudible on playback. Ultimately, I overcame this as follows:

1. From the command-line run alsamixer
2. Select the "Capture" channel and increase the recording levels, e.g. 75/75
3. In skype select Tools > Options... > Sound Devices > Audio System to use: ALSA
   

Flash audio problems in Firefox 2 - Solved

After upgrading to Firefox 2 I had problems with the Flash plugin no longer producing sound when another audio application was running - a problem I'd not previously had with Firefox 1.5.

The fix was fairly simple. I had libflashplayer.so in my .mozilla/plugins directory. This was being used by Firefox 2 for the application/x-shockwave-flash MIME type in preference to Shockwave Flash v9.0 (flashplugin-nonfree package).

After removing libflashplayer.so and flashplayer.xpt from my .mozilla/plugins directory audio playback works perfectly in the Flash plugin in Firefox 2.

Upgrading to Firefox2 using Ubuntuzilla

Since official support for Mozilla Firefox 1.5 expires at the end of June 2007, I decided to upgrade to Firefox 2.0. There are no official packages for Firefox 2.0 for Dapper Drake, so I followed the excellent instructions provided by Ubuntuzilla for installing the latest versions of Mozilla's Firefox, Seamonkey and Thunderbird.

At this stage I was only interested in upgrading Firefox, so I downloaded the ubuntuzilla.py script and ran

python ~/Desktop/ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p firefox

As noted, it is important to not uninstall the existing version of Firefox 1.5.

From now on I can simply use Firefox 2.0's built-in update mechanism to keep Firefox up-to-date.

I noticed two minor drawbacks resulting from the upgrade:

1. Font rendering is not as attractive in Firefox 2.0 as it was in 1.5
2. Sound in the Flash plug-in does not work if another audio application, e.g. Rhythmbox is being used. I must first exit all audio applications and restart Firefox to get sound working in the Flash plug-in. This was not the case in Firefox 1.5
   

Sun Java6

I decided to update my Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and development kit (JDK). I simply installed the following packages using Synaptic:

• sun-java6-bin
• sun-java6-demo
• sun-java6-doc
• sun-java6-fonts
• sun-java6-jdk
• sun-java6-jre
• sun-java6-plugin
• sun-java6-source

I did not have to uninstall any of my existing (1.5, 1.4.2 & 1.3.1) JDKs and JREs.

Adjusting for Western Australian (Perth) Daylight Saving Timezone

Following the sudden introduction of a three year trial of summer Daylight Saving in Western Australia it is necessary to adjust the timezone information for Australia/Perth and Australia/West. This can be done by following the instructions in this useful posting.