Archive for category of interest

Eclipse buttons not working?

Posted by Robbie Scourou in of interest on February 21st, 2010

This had me banging my head against a brick wall – in Ubuntu Karmic, if you use Eclipse and your buttons stop working, create a shell script to launch Eclipse and do the following in it before you run the Eclipse binary:

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

From http://www.ubun2.com/question/334/clicking_eclipse_buttons_not_working_or_does_nothing

development, eclipse, karmic, software, ubuntu

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Lost your mysql root password?

Posted by Robbie Scourou in of interest on February 3rd, 2010

Thought I would make a short instructive post as twice in the last month or so I’ve seen people come across this problem and not know how to resolve it. In one instance, the user had re-installed mysql and stuffed the server slightly.

If you have command line access to the server, and can login as a root user (or use sudo), do the following to reset your mysql root password.

Stop the mysql server, either by directly killing it, or using a startup script (recommended).
Create a text file on the server with the following in it (replace “somepassword” with your new password):
```
UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('somepassword') WHERE User='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
```
Start the mysql server manually, using the –init-file switch:
```
mysqld_safe --init-file=/path/to/file/created/above &
```
Your mysql root password should now be reset, test it out.
If you can connect using the new authentication details, delete the created file, and then stop the mysqld service and start again using the correct startup scripts for your system

Simple as that. No need to re-install any software, nuke your data, or spend longer then 15 mins fixing the problem.

lost, mysql, password, reset, root

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Open Source and Gaming

Posted by Robbie Scourou in of interest on January 22nd, 2010

I love computer games. I have done ever since playing the isometric Batman adventure game for my first computer, an Amstrad 6128K, on a green monochrome monitor. My current platform of choice is a playstation 3. I used to be a big windows gamer, but have since switched all my computers over to running Ubuntu Linux (mainly due to exasperation with Windows).

Now the playstation is great for gaming, buy isn’t really suitable for casual play, not to mention the fact that as its plugged into the big tv downstairs, I have to make sure I don’t monopolise use of the living room.

All this has driven me to explore the current state of gaming on linux. To my surprise I found quite a few games in the Ubuntu repositories. A few of the picks are listed below.

Battle for Wesnoth – an excellent turn based strategy game.
Tux Racer – a classic. Simple but addictive.
Aleph One – the open source Marathon engine. Marathon was the FPS game series released by Bungie studios before their Halo success. Great story line and world creation in this game.
Frets on Fire – a guitar hero clone that is surprisingly as addictive as the real thing.
Nethack – gets a special mention. No fancy graphics, bloody confusing at first and huge learning curve, but once you grasp it – surprisingly addictive and very fun . Play on the public nethack server on alt.org.

bungie, games, linux, nethack, open, source, tux, wesnoth

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Freenet, Darknets, the hidden web

Posted by Robbie Scourou in of interest on November 26th, 2009

Well. I was halfway through writing up a few thoughts on private p2p networks like Freenet, then the Guardian published this piece (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet) – followed by Freenet’s creator posting this slight rebuttal (http://blog.locut.us/main/2009/11/25/the-guardian-writes-about-freenet.html).

So I guess I’ll let them fill you in!

Suffice to say that the Guardian article should be taken with a healthy dose of NaCl. It reads like quite a sensationalist piece. Much of the “Dark Web” they talk about are things like company Intranets and non-public social networking sites (your facebook profile for non friends for instance). It’s not all scary Russians and kiddie fiddlers. The readers that are shocked by the ‘hidden’ Internet tend to be those that don’t really know what the Internet comprises in the first place.

Still, if you want to see what the Internet looked like 10-15 years ago – fire up a copy of Freenet and browse around. It’s a good project that deserves a little more positive publicity.

darknet, freenet, guardian, internet

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