There are a couple of different reasons why you might want to have Pidgin beep at you through the PC speaker instead of through your normal audio output device. Both of these scenarios have been applicable to me over the years.

Scenario 1 : You want computer volume down, but want an audible notification of new messages

I have left my headphones hooked up, and walked away only to find out later that a friend had sent me messages wondering where I was. At other times I have turned the computer volume down while listening to music late at night only to be unable to hear Pidgin in the din of day.

Scenario 2: You don’t have speakers hooked up to your computer, but want to hear when a message comes in

This is my current setup, and has been for quite a while. I have a laptop for taking work with me and for watching videos on, but when I’m at my desktop it’s because there’s something so important to do on the computer that I can’t do it while lounging on the couch. Usually that means I won’t have a video or even music going. Basically it’s a work station, and if I need sound I can grab my laptop.

When doing development though, I don’t want to miss a co-worker’s incoming message. And I definitely don’t want to miss a message from my wife!

There is a built in option in Pidgin to use a Console Beep, but if you want more than just a simple beep, you’ll need to follow these instructions. The following instructions apply to Ubuntu Linux 9.10 and may or may not apply to other versions of Ubuntu and/or Linux.

Step 1 : Install the Beep Program

Beep lets you easily play different length and frequency beeps. Go ahead and install it with

$ sudo aptitude install beep

Step 2: Check if You Have Beep Power

Run the command ‘beep’. If you get a beep,  you’re in good shape. If not…

1) Verify that the pcspkr kernel module is enabled

$ lsmod | grep pcspkr

2) If it isn’t, try enabling with modprobe for testing

$ sudo modprobe pcspkr

3) If that works, add pcspkr to /etc/modules

Step 3 : Find a Nice Beep Command

The command I use for my beeps is :

$ beep -l 90 -f  1000 -n -l 200 -f 2000 -n -l 100 -f 1000 -n -l 75 -f 500

-l — The length (in milliseconds)

-f — The frequency

-n — Start a new beep

So my Pidgin alert sound is 4 beeps which go from 1000Mhz to 2000Mhz then down to 500Mhz. It’s different enough that I know it’s an incoming chat message and not some other computer beeping noise.

Step 4: Add Your Command To Pidgin

In Pidgin, open the Preferences page from the Tools menu.

Under the Sounds tab, select Command as your method. Enter your beep command into the command text box. Close the preference pane.

You’re all set, Enjoy!

I ended up frying the touchscreen due to soldering the wrong spot, though I ran Ubuntu Mobile for some time. By now Ubuntu Mobile and the EeePC are several versions beyond what I had at the time. Now I have a non-touchscreen Thinkpad for my laptop and I use my EeePC as a relatively energy efficient home media server and Asterisk server.

Since I’m not even using my EeePC as a laptop anymore, I’m not even up to date on that any more. So when I moved to WordPress, I abandoned my EeePC pages. Keep Googleing, and I hope you find what you’re looking for!

Ubuntu on an external USB HD, which can be plugged in to any USB bootable computer (x86) and run. This entails:

• GRUB on the HDs MBR
• Hardware auto-detection at boot time

Our setup

I worked on this with a friend. We used:

• HP Compaq dc7600 computer
• Western Digital 80 GB USB laptop hard drive (bus powered)
• Ubuntu Edgy (6.10) Desktop install CD

This page is OLD and probably contains errors, out of date information, security flaws or other problems. I am keeping it around because it might be helpful to someone. If you can believe it, back in the day (Ubuntu 6.10) installing Ubuntu on an external drive really was a good  bit of work. In my opinion, making the X server basically always work has been the greatest improvement in Linux Land since 2006.

How to

1. Remove all internal HDs from the computer
   • GRUB by default installs to the first HD. We found this to be the simplest way to make it install to the correct location
2. Boot from the Ubuntu install CD, with the USB drive connected
3. Run the Ubuntu installer
   • You may want to manually partition the drive so that you have a portion of the disk in FAT 32 format. If you do this, be sure to mark the linux partition as bootable! That will make it easy to access your files from the USB drive without booting into Linux
   • When you’re done with the installer CONTINUE USING THE LIVE CD
4. Modify GRUB’s menu.lst file on the new install
   • Use the Gnome Partition Editor (System->Administration menu -> GNOME Partition Editor) to mount the newly created root partition
   • Locate the menu.lst file. It should be at boot/GRUB/menu.lst
   • Open a terminal and type “gksudo gedit “, then drag the menu.lst file to the terminal, then press ENTER. The file should open
   • Find the line in the menu.lst file that says “kopt=root=UUID=(Long HEX number here)”. Copy from “root=UUID=” through the end of the HEX number.
   • Replace all instances of root=/dev/sda1 (where sda1 is the partition you installed to) and replace them with the “root=HEX-NUMBER” line.
   • This is to make GRUB find the HD no matter what device it shows up as.
   • Save and close the file
5. Modify the gdm init script to reconfigure the graphics card each time it starts
   • In the terminal, type “gksudo gedit ” again, but this time drag the file etc/init.d/gdm from the new install
   • Find the line that says “start)”.
   • Insert a new line below the “start)” line that says “dpkg-reconfigure -fnoninteractive –no-reload -phigh xserver-xorg” (this auto reconfigures the xserver. I believe it’s the same command used in the Ubuntu Live CD)

   Save and close the file

6. Add an updated sources.list
   • For some packages that we need to install, we will need to access more than the default set of software Ubuntu provides. To do this, we will update our apt config file. Another page on this site talks more about apt.
   • Download this new sources.list file to your desktop.
   • In a terminal type “sudo cp ~/Desktop/sources.list “
   • Find the old sources.list file at etc/apt/sources.list on your new install, and drag it to the terminal
   • Press ENTER and the old file will be overwritten
7. Shutdown, disconnect the HD, and you should be set!

Issues

• GRUB wants to be on hd0 (the first HD the BIOS sees). In some BIOSes, simply selecting to boot from USB is enough to make this the case. On others, the boot order makes a difference. If you are selecting to boot from USB, but get GRUB errors, try changing the default boot order.
• This would probably work in a very similar fashion on other distros. Ubuntu Edgy uses volume IDs in the fstab which helps this work. That may not be the case for other distros
• Other? — We only had a handfull of computers to test this on so far

This page is OLD and probably contains errors, out of date information, security flaws or other problems. I am keeping it around because it might be helpful to someone.

This assumes your boot failed, and you landed in busbox. Busybox is a mini all-in-one shell. It’s good enough for our purposes. 1) From the busybox shell, check if the device you can’t access shows up in /dev. If it doesn’t, this tutorial is what you’re looking for. Figgure out what modules you need to load. Alternate between modprobing and starting udev again until the devices show up.

For OldWorld Macs, try these modules: mesh, mace, sd_mod, mac53c94.

# modprobe mesh
# modprobe sd_mod
# udevstart
# ls /dev

2) mount the root partition and chroot to it

mkdir /mount
mount -t ext3 /dev/YourRootPartition /mount
mount -o bind /dev /mount/dev
chroot /mount /bin/bash
cd

3) Edit the text file /etc/mkinitrd/modules and enter the names of the modules you had to probe to get the devices to show up.

4) Run “dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-`uname -r`

If you don’t have an OldWorld Mac, exit the chroot, exit busybox and reboot.

Good luck!

The rest is OldWorld Mac specific!

5) Mount the MacOS partition.
modprobe hfs
mkdir /mnt/hfs
mount -t hfs /dev/MacOSPartition /mnt/hfs

6) Copy /boot/initrd.img-kernel-name to /mnt/hfs and put it in the Linux Kernels folder.

7) Unmount the hfs partition
umount /mnt/hfs

8) Reboot into MacOS and try with the new initrd.

This page is OLD and probably contains errors, out of date information, security flaws or other problems. I am keeping it around because it might be helpful to someone.

I refurbished and gave away old computers to people for a while as a service project.This post is from when I was involved in that.

We give these computers away, and want to provide people with comptuers with legal software on them. Since we want to stay legal, we can’t just use the one OS9 CD we have, on every computer. We will use Mac OS7 as the first stage boot OS since it is available for free from Apple’s site. You may be able to skip or simplify some steps if you don’t need to worry about having enough legal copies of systems.

Boot process summary:
OldWorld Macs can only (easily) boot into Mac OS. We’ll create a 50 Meg Mac OS partition with Mac OS7 installed on it for this stage. The computer boots to Mac OS. From Mac OS, you run BootX which boots Linux from within Mac OS. Mac OS can’t see the Linux partitions, so you must place a copy of the Kernel and initrd (initial RAM disk) on the Mac partition.

You will need:
Mac OS install CD/Disks — I will refer to this as OS9, but others may work.
A copy of Stuffit Expander (comes on OS9 install CD)
Mac OS 7 image parts from Apple’s site
BootX
Ubuntu install CD

I) Setting up the install process

1) Boot from the OS9 CD and partition the HD into at least three parts. Partition 1 should be 50 Mb, in the Mac format (Not the Extended Mac format!) . Partition 2 should be about 200 Mb, which will be used for OS9 during the OS7 install. The rest can be free space.

2) Install OS9 on one the 200 Mb partition. It should hold a full install of OS9. A full install is convenient because it includes Internet support and Stuffit Expander.

3) Boot to the installed OS9.

4) Download or otherwise aquire the OS7 disk image parts.

5) Decompress the 19 OS7 image parts with Stuffit Expander. Run the first one and a new disk will apear on the desktop with the OS7 installer in it. Install a minimal OS7 to the 50 Mb partition.

6) Download or copy BootX to the OS7 partition.

7) Copy initrd.gz and vmlinux from the PowerPC Ubuntu install CD. Both files can be found in install/powerpc on the CD. They should be placed in the “Linux Kernels” folder in the BootX folder on the OS7 partition.

8) Boot to OS7.

II) Installing Ubuntu

9) Insert the Ubuntu CD and run BootX. Choose vmlinux as your kernel. Choose “Options” and select initrd.gz as the initial ramdisk. Click “Linux” to boot to Linux.

10) When the install process has already installed the kernel, switch to a console. Mount the OS7 partition.
You may have to modprobe the following modules first: mesh, sd_mod, hfs

11) Copy the kernel and initrd images to the OS7 partition. Note that vmlinux and initrd.img are symlinks, you need the real files!

12) Wait for the Ubuntu install process to finish. It should display a warning at the end that a bootloader could not be installed, and tell you what the root partition is. Write down this partition, you will need it.

III) First boot?

13) Boot into OS7 and run BootX. Use the newly copied kernel and initrd.  Put the root=/dev/sdWhatever which was told to you in step 12 into the kernel arguments line. Click Linux.

14) If you get dropped into a busybox shell, don’t dispair! You just need to create an initrd that will probe the modules you need. See creating a custom initrd.

Creating a custom initrd.img for oldworld machines

The initrd.img tutorial is now a separate page as it applies to more than just old Macs.

Starts to boot, but can’t mount swap home, etc.

If you have two disks on an OldWorld Mac, the Ubuntu installer seems to get mixed up when creating the /etc/fstab file. Try editing it and check if /dev/sda should be /dev/sdb and vice versa.