Tag Archives: how-to

Hardware

Linksys Router Doesn’t Connect to Ambit uBee U10C018 Cable Modem

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I recently ran into a situation where a Linksys WRT-54G wasn’t able to get an IP address when connected to an Ambit/uBee U10C018 cable modem. This issue may also apply to other routers when used with the U10C018 cable modem.

When a PC is connected directly to the modem, everything works fine and the Internet can be reached normally. When a router is placed inbetween, then there is no longer any access to the Internet. Viewing the status information in the router shows that it is unable to acquire an IP address, even though the router is set to use automatic configuration via DHCP, the same as the PC.

Apparently, the U10C018 cable modem is aware of the MAC address of various routers. In order to get the router to work with the modem, use the MAC cloning feature of the router. The location of this option will depend on your particular router brand and model. When you find it, turn it on. Then, set the desired MAC address.

On the Linksys router, the MAC address cloning page has a button to copy the MAC from the PC that’s currently connected to the administration interface. If your router has this feature, use it to set the router to the same MAC address as your computer. If your router does not have this feature, then you’ll have to get your MAC from the network driver or the network card.

Once you have a non-router MAC entered into the MAC cloning setting, save and restart the router.

Have you run into this issue? If so, post your router model and steps to configure MAC cloning for it in the comments.

Hardware

Button to Turn on Epic 4G Keyboard Backlight

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Many reviews of the Samsung Epic 4G (SPH-D700) Android phone fault it for the backlighting of the four shortcut buttons at the bottom of the phone. When the keyboard backlight times out (six seconds, by default), those touch-sensitive shortcut buttons are no longer visible at all. The area becomes completely black. As a result, you either have to memorize which location is Menu, Home, Back and Search, or increase the backlight’s timeout, which uses more battery power.

Well, there’s actually another solution. When the shortcut keys are not visible, simply press the camera shutter button, located at the bottom-right of the phone when held in portrait orientation. Et voila! The keyboard backlight turns on. Since the camera button is raised, it’s easy to find, even in the dark.

Have any other tips for the Epic 4G? Share them in the comments.

Software

Thunderbird Can’t Create Mailbox Node When Archiving Email Messages

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For quite some time, I’ve been getting an error whenever I tried to archive an email message on an IMAP server for the first time during a Thunderbird session (i.e., archiving the first email after starting Thunderbird). All subsequent archiving operations would be error-free until I restarted Thunderbird. (Note: I’m using Thunderbird 3)

After pressing Ctrl+A to archive an email message, Thunderbird’s Activity Manager would contain the following error:

“The current command did not succeed. The mail server for account Account Name: Can’t create mailbox node /path/to/mail/Archive/: File exists.”

Despite much searching, I wasn’t able to find anyone else who encountered this problem when archiving an email message. So, I worked around the problem by just remembering that the first message I archive had to be archived twice, because the first attempt would fail and the message wouldn’t leave the inbox.

Today, I discovered the solution. After setting up a new IMAP account, I didn’t receive any error archiving email messages from this new inbox. However, the Archive folder had a subfolder named 2010. Aha! So, Thunderbird must be trying to create a similar folder in my other account and failing. Well, I don’t need these annual subfolders, so turning off the behavior should take care of the problem.

Fortunately, it is possible to disable the annual folders created by Thunderbird’s archiving feature:

  1. Click on Options in the Tools menu
  2. Click on the Advanced tab icon
  3. Click the Config Editor button (if you receive a facetious warning about voiding your warranty, just accept it)
  4. In the Filter text box, enter granularity
  5. Double-click the preference mail.server.default.archive_granularity and enter the value 0

With the granularity set to zero, Thunderbird won’t create annual subfolders in the archive folder. This finally got rid of the error because the problematic server didn’t allow a mailbox folder to have subfolders.

Software

Banshee Crash when Playing Video or Audio Files

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For some reason, the Banshee media player on my Ubuntu installation stopped responding and, as a result, its database was damaged. The result? Whenever I tried to play a video podcast, Banshee would attempt to start playing and then crash.

Rebuilding Banshee’s database to fix the corruption is pretty easy.

  1. If you don’t already have sqlite3 installed, get it via the following command: 
    sudo apt-get install sqlite3
  2. Go to Bashee’s config directory: 
    cd ~/.config/banshee-1
  3. Dump out the database: 
    sqlite3 banshee.db ".dump" > dump
  4. Make a backup of the original database file, in case the repair doesn’t work properly: 
    mv banshee.db banshee.db.backup
  5. Reload the dumped data into a new database file: 
    cat dump | sqlite3 banshee.db

Worked great for me. Thanks to boombox1387 for posting the info. I ended up putting these commands into a shell script called BansheeFix.sh, so it’ll be even easier to take care of next time.

Is your Banshee crashing for a different reason? Got a fix for it? Post it in the comments.

Software

PuTTY Displays Box Characters Instead of Hyphens in Man Pages

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A couple of posts ago, I wrote about fixing the incorrect characters that appear in man pages when using PuTTY. If, however, you see a box or rectangle where a character should be, then here’s the solution for that.

Although PuTTY and Cygwin support UTF-8, some fonts have more character coverage than others. In the case of PuTTY on Windows, most of the fixed-width fonts are missing some of the characters that are used in manual pages. As a result, a hollow box will appear in their place.

DejaVu Sans Mono is one fixed-width font that includes the required characters. Switch to it and your man pages will look good once more.

What other fixed-width fonts have good UTF-8 coverage? Share your findings in the comments.