Gnome online accounts and google gmail two step verification

If you are stuck in authenticating your gmail (google) account with Gnome's 'Online Accounts', here's the quick solution to resolve it.

Prior to that you have to create an application specific password for this authentication.

Follow the following steps OR use this link directly.
Manage your application specific passwords

1. Go to https://www.google.com/settings/account
2. Select 'Security' from left.
3. Scroll down to '2-step verification' and select 'Manage your application specific passwords'.

Then

• Enter a name for in the field and 'Generate password'
• Keep the generated password copied somewhere or in the memory.

• Go to 'Online Accounts' in Gnome and add your google account using your login password (not the generated one).
• Now go to 'Passwords and Keys' application (also know as Seahorse).
• Search for 'GOA google' and your specific account you just added above.

• Get properties and click show password.

• At the end of that string, you can find your password as "'password': <'your password'>". Replace 'your password' with the generated password above.

• That's it. You're done with the authentication.

As a last note, if 'Online Accounts' is still trying to connect without success try logging out from your Gnome session and logging back in.

Have fun!

Windows XP on Linux Mint (Virtualization)

Most of the time the inability to move totally on to Linux is that some softwares aren't working well even in WINE on Linux (yet). But it is really annoying to move on to Windows and back to Linux when we want to run certain softwares on both of the system. But how if it's possible to run windows inside Linux?

That is possible using the process called "Virtualization". This method is not very new but still is developing. There are bunch of virtualization softwares but some use lot of resources while others do a petty job with less resource eating.

VirtualBox is one of the nice low weight softwares used for virtualization. So I though of using it for a while on my Linux Mint machine and see how far windows can go inside Linux. Still doing some configuration stuff. So I'm leaving here showing you the first welcome note from Windows XP running inside Linux.

How To Change Root Password Of A Linux OS If You Have Forgotton It

Someone can say that "Root is the god of the system", where it bears the literal meaning regarding the root user of a Linux system. Because he has the full access to each and every corner of the system and can change or modify it as he wishes. As a matter of fact, if the root user does something wrong with what he is doing, the system may stop working.

Anyway, if you have forgotten the root password, what can you do? It will make the system less operative since you need the root password to configure and change lot of things in a Linux System.

Assuming that you have access to BIOS, there is a possibility to change the password using a Linux Live CD.

Stuff Needed:

1. Change the first boot device to the CD Drive or to the DVD drive. You can do this from the "Boot Settings" menu under the "Boot Sequence" sub menu. These entries change according to the BIOS system you have and the above is in general.
   
2. A live CD or DVD of Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux Mint, etc (For this explanation Linux Mint Live CD has been used)
   

Method:

1. After changing the first boot device put the live CD or DVD in the drive and boot up the computer.
   
   
2. 
   Now when it is finished loading the desktop, right click on the desktop and from the menu select "Open in Terminal". In the terminal you get, you have to give all the commands as shown and explained in the following figures. (Every command is without quotes)
   
   
3. "sudo fdisk -l" From this you can identify the disk partition in which you have installed Linux. In this case it is /dev/sda2.
   
   
    
     
4.  Now create a new folder using the command, "sudo mkdir /media/temp". Then you will get a folder named temp in /media.
   
     
5. Now what you have to do is to mount the partition at temp folder. Use the command, "sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/temp"
   
   
6. Then you have to tell the system to identify this partition as the root partition. Use the command, "sudo chroot /media/temp"
   
   
7. Now it's the final stage, where you have to change the password to a password you prefer. To do this, as in the figure, type "passwd root". It will ask you two times for the password and put the same password correctly. When it's done you will see the message "passwd: Password updated successfully".
   
   
   

Now restart the machine and when it comes to the login prompt, use the password you put just now. Using this method, one can change not only the root password but also the password of any existing user.

"Still waiting for the root device" problem

This is an annoying message given by the startup process of linux and I got in to the same situation after installing Linux Mint.

Linux mint is a reconfiguration of ubuntu so that it make ease of use for the beginners to Linux. You have everything installed out of the box such as flash plugin for Firefox and MP3 decoding.

After sometime, I got this annoying problem when I was going to do a cold boot (starting up the computer after a shutdown) and later I figured it's not only happening even after a hot boot (reboot). I had been searching a lot about this problem and there were so many posts in forums saying to change the label of the root partition and adjust the grub->menu.lst and etc->fstab. Some had said to use the UUID of the device as the value for the root parameter for the kernel. But all of them didn't work in long term for me.

After all time I though there would be a problem with the bootloader itself. Having that thought I removed the default bootloader for Linux Mint, the grub-gfxboot bootloader and installed the legacy grub bootloader. Here we go, it has fixed the problem for me (so far).

So according to my experience with this I think the grub-gfxboot bootloader sometimes forget how to find the root device no matter how the parameter value is given. So if you also have this "still waiting for the root device" problem and couldn't figure out a solution, it's time to go back to the good old (legacy) grub bootloader.

Cheers

How to check UUID, Label & Filesystem type in Linux

First there should be a little clarification what these things are.

1. UUID - Universally Unique Identifier
This is a kind of an identifier that you can give to a device. Since it is a universally unique identifier, the identification of the device is easy.

2. Label
Label is another way to identify a device but it's not unique. Like in Microsoft Windows you can have more than one device with the same label.

3. Filesystem
It is the method for storing files in a computer system. Different operating systems use different types of file systems such as,
* EXT3/4 - Linux
* HFS/HFS+ - Mac
* NTFS - Windows

In Linux there is a method how you can find these things with a single command.

* Open up a terminal and issue this command without quotes "sudo blkid"

The output will be like this,

How to mount a Mac (iAtkos - mine) dvd on Linux

use the command with the specific filetype

Mount DVD: sudo mount -t hfsplus /dev/hdc /media/test
Mount ISO: sudo mount -t hfsplus /media/hdc1/iAtkos.iso /media/test

(here the strings /dev/hdc and /media/hdc1/iAtkos.iso should be replaced according to your filesystem)

if you simply mount this without -t option you will not see all the files on the DVD

Further: More

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope is still in the Alpha 5 stage. But couldn't prevent installing that because of the curiosity I had towards it. :)
So finally upgraded the system from Hardy Heron to Jaunty Jackalope. Following commands were used.
1. Alt+F2 -> gives the 'Run Application' dialog.
2. There entered 'update-manager -d'
3. After the processing it showed that a new system is there to make an upgrade.

Everything went okay except compiz as I can see for the moment. But it is a minor problem. Display problem with lower graphics went okay after removing the following lines from xorg.conf and rebooting the system,
1. Driver "fglrx"
2. Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
2. Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"

System seems to be having smaller icons than the previous systems. But I am not 100% sure about that, but I feel like that. Have to try a little bit more to find out what's new. It's still alpha. :)

Cheers

Nautilus Scripts

Nautilus scripts are scripts embedded to nautilus file manager which is the official file manager in GNOME. These scripts can be run from the menu you get by right clicking somewhere, probably on a file so that you can fire an instant command on that file.

There were lacking some scripts for linux earlier but now it is not true anymore. These two scripts will be very useful to anyone who works with images and videos frequently.

1. nautilus-image-converter
You can just run this command on the command line
sudo apt-get install nautilus-image-converter
2. nautilus video converter
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=193754
Click on the link and follow the instructions given by the author carefully.

Enjoy the scripts.

Cheers

Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu

If someone is not quite sure what he/she is doing, then installing Ruby on Rails on Linux could be tricky. I found this documentation in official Ubuntu website and it seems really useful for a Ruby on Rails beginner.

Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu

Enjoy.