Technology Tales

Adding Microsoft core fonts to Debian

When setting up Ubuntu, I usually add in Microsoft's core fonts by installing the msttcorefonts package using either Synaptic or apt-get. Though I am not sure why I didn't try doing the same thing for Debian until now, it's equally feasible. Just pop over to System > Administration > Software Sources and ensure that the check-boxes for the contrib and non-free categories are checked like you see below.

You could also achieve the same end by editing /etc/apt/sources.list and adding the non-free and contrib keywords to make lines look like these before issuing the command apt-get update as root:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main non-free contrib

All that you are doing with the manual editing route is performing the same operations that the more friendly front end would do for you anyway. After that, it's a case of going with the installation method of your choice and restarting Firefox or IceWeasel to see the results.

A case of the reverse Midas touch?

Last week, a power outage put my main home PC out of action. While it may have been recoverable if that silly accident of a few weeks back hadn't happened, a troubled rebuild is progressing. Despite the challenges, I somehow manage to remain hopeful that an avenue of exploration will yield some fruit. Even so, thoughts of throwing in the towel and calling in professionals rather than throwing good money after bad are gathering. The saga is causing me to question the sense of self building in place of buying something ready built. Saying that, they can have their off days too.

Meanwhile, I have been displaced onto the spare desktop PC and the laptop. In other words, my home computing needs are being fulfilled to a point, though the feeling of frustrated displacement and partial disconnection from my data remains; because I have been able to extricate most of my digital photos and my web building, things are far from being hopeless. With every disappointment, there remains an opportunity or two. Since the spare desktop runs Debian, I have been spending some time seeing if I can bend that to my will, which can be done, sometimes after a fashion.

A few posts should result from this period, not least regarding working with Debian. On the subject of hardware, I will not elaborate until the matter comes to a more permanent resolution. From past attempts (all were successful in the end), I know that the business of PC building can feel like a dark art: you are left there wondering why none of your efforts summon a working system to life work until it all comes together in the blink of an eye leaving you to wonder why all the effort was expended. The best analogy that I can offer is awaiting a bus or train; it often seems that the waiting takes longer than the journey. Restoring my home computing to what it was before is a mere triviality compared to what some people have to suffer, but resolution of a problem always puts a spring in my step.

Getting Fedora working in VirtualBox

After a hiatus induced by disk errors seen on start up, I have gone having a go with Fedora again. In the world of real PC's, its place has been taken by Debian, so virtualisation was brought into play for my most recent explorations. I could have gone with 10, the current stable version, but curiosity got the better of me and I downloaded a pre-release version of 11 instead.

On my way to getting that instated, I encountered two issues. The first of these was boot failure with the message like this:

FATAL: INT18: BOOT FAILURE

As it turned out, that was easily sorted. I was performing the installation from a DVD image mounted as if it were a real DVD, and laziness or some other similar reason had me rebooting with it still mounted. Though there is an option to load the hard disk variant, it wasn't happening, resulting in the message that's above. A complete shutdown and replacement of the virtual DVD with a real one set matters to rights.

The next trick was to get Guest Additions added, but Fedora's 2.6.29 was not what VirtualBox was expecting, and it demanded the same ransom as Debian: gcc, make and kernel header files. Unfamiliarity had me firing up Fedora's software installation software, only to find that Synaptic seems to beat it hands down in the search department. Turning to Google dredged up the following command to be executed, which got me further:

yum install binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel

However, the installed kernel headers didn't match the kernel, but a reboot fixed that once the kernel was updated. Then, the Guest Additions installed themselves as intended, with necessary compilations to match the installed kernel.

The procedures that I have described here would, it seems, work for Fedora 10; well, they certainly have bequeathed me a working system. I have had a little poke and a beta of Firefox 3.5 is included, and I saw sign of OpenOffice 3.1 too. So, it looks very cutting edge, easily so in comparison with Ubuntu and Debian. Apart from one or niggles, it seems to run smoothly too. Firstly, don't use the command shutdown -h now to close the thing down, or you'll cause VirtualBox to choke. Using the usual means ensures that all goes well, though. The other irritation is that it doesn't connect to the network without a poke from me. Whether SELinux is to blame for this or not, I cannot tell, but it might be something for consideration by the powers than be. That these are the sorts of things that I have noticed should be telling you that I have no major cause for complaint. While I have mulled over a move to Fedora in the past and that option remains as strong as ever, Ubuntu is not forcing me to look at an alternative and the fact that I know how to achieve what I need is resulting in inertia anyway.

Taming raw images with ImageMagick: A virtual workaround for Ubuntu 9.04

While using a command line tool like ImageMagick for image processing may sound a really counter-intuitive thing to do, there's no need to do everything on a case by case interactive basis. Image resizing and format conversion come to mind here. Helper programs are used behind the scenes too, with Ghostscript being used to create Postscript files, for example.

The subject of helper programs brings me to an issue that has hampered me recently. While I am aware that there are tools like F-Spot available, I am also wont to use a combination of shell scripting (BASH & KSH), Perl and ImageMagick for organising my digital photos. My preference for using Raw camera files (DNG & CRW) means that ImageMagick cannot access these without a little helper. In the case of Ubuntu, it's UFRaw. However, Jaunty Jackalope appears to have seen UFRaw updated to a version that is incompatible with the included version of ImageMagick (6.4.5 as opposed to 3.5.2 at the time of writing). The result is that the command issued by ImageMagick to UFRaw - issue the command man ufraw-batch to see the details - is not accepted by the included version of the latter, 0.15 if you're interested. It appears that an older release of UFRaw accepted the output device ppm16 (16-bit PPM files) but this should now be specified as ppm for the output device and 16 for the output depth. In a nutshell, where the parameter output-type did the lot, you now need both output-type and output-depth.

While I thought of decoupling things by using UFRaw to create 16-bit PPM files for processing by ImageMagick, it was to no avail. The identify command wouldn't return the date on which the image was taken. Though I even changed the type to 8-bit JPEG's with added EXIF information, no progress was made. In the end, a mad plan came to mind: creating a VirtualBox VM running Debian. The logic was that if Debian deserves its reputation for solidity, dependencies like ImageMagick and UFRaw shouldn't be broken, and I wasn't wrong. To make it work well, I needed to see if I could get Guest Additions installed on Debian. Out of the box, the supported kernel version must be at least 2.6.27 and Debian's is 2.6.26, so additional work was on the cards. First, GCC, Make and the correct kernel header files need to be installed. Once those are in place, the installation works smoothly and a restart sets the goodies in motion. To make the necessary shared folder to be available, a command like the following was executed:

mount -t vboxfs [Shared Folder name] [mount point]

Once that deed was done and ImageMagick instated, the processing that I have been doing for new DSLR images was reinstated. Ironically, Debian's version of ImageMagick, 6.3.7, is even older than Ubuntu's, but it works and that's the main thing. Since there is an Ubuntu bug report for this on Launchpad, I hope that it gets fixed at some point in the near future. However, that may mean awaiting 9.10 or Karmic Koala, so I'm glad to have this workaround for now.

Ubuntu 9.04 and Tracker

Shortly after it was released, I did the upgrade shuffle very painlessly, and it didn't take up so much time either. There was only one issue: Tracker falling over, complaining about corrupted indices. That got it removed from my system using apt-get remove (apt-get purge is another option, especially if you need to rid yourself of nefarious configuration files). After having a bit of a dig around the web, I found that I wasn't the only one seeing the problem. To me, it looks as if the upgrade to 9.04 doesn't work so well when it comes to Tracker, and it needs to be removed and reinstalled to ensure that all required dependencies are correctly set in place. Since I restored it on my system, all is working without complaint. Other than the Tracker issue, it has been a case of another uneventful upgrade. Though the evolutionary path that Ubuntu is following may disappoint anyone looking for excitement, no one would upgrade every six months if they knew that disruptive damage or upheaval might be caused. While I may do a clean installation at some point, that is well down the priority list right now.

Forcing Ubuntu (and Debian) to upgrade to a newer distribution version

Ubuntu is usually good at highlighting the existence of a new version of the distribution through its Update Manager. That means that 8.10 should be made available to you at the end of the month, so long as you have sorted the relevant setting for 8.04 to realise what has happened. That lives in System > Administration > Software Sources > Updates. If you haven't done that, then 8.04 will continue regardless, since it is a long term supported release.

Otherwise, it's over to the command line to sort you out. One of the ones below will do, with the first just carrying out a check for a new stable version of Ubuntu and the second going all the way:

sudo update-manager -c

sudo update-manager -p

if you are feeling more adventurous, you can always try the development version and this checks for one of those (I successfully used this to try out the beta release of Intrepid Ibex from within a Wubi instance on my laptop):

sudo update-manager -d

Neither of the above are available on Debian, so they seem to be Ubuntu enhancements. That is not to imply that you cannot force the issue with Debian; it's just that the more generic variant is used and, unless, you have gone fiddling with visudo, you will need to run this as root (it works in Ubuntu too):

update-manager --dist-upgrade

A quick way to do an update

Here's a quick way to get the latest updates on your PC using the command line if you are using Ubuntu or Debian:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Of course, you can split these commands up if you prefer to look before you leap. At the very least, it's so much slicker than the GUI route.

Cleaning up Ubuntu

Uninstalling software still leaves any dependencies that came with them in place, so a quick way to get rid of any detritus is always useful. Here's a command that achieves this in a painless manner:

apt-get autoremove

Just say yes to what it suggests, to allow it on its way.