I found this while surfing the internet a while back ago,
How to recover GRUB using Ubuntu Live CD (12.04 LTS)
Sometimes for some reason when you installed Microsoft Windows or other operating systems, your GRUB installation will be overwritten. This will cause your Ubuntu operating system unable to boot.
Here’s how to solve the problem using Ubuntu LTS Live CD:
1. First boot the Ubuntu Live CD from your computer
2. Then, open terminal-emulator application, and add boot-repair application to Ubuntu repository
[bash]
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
[/bash]
3. Update repository and install boot-repair
[bash]
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair
[/bash]
4. Then run boot repair by typing “boot-repair” at the bash prompt
To begin repairing/reinstalling GRUB, click on “Recommended Repair” at the application screen:
The “Advance” button offers other option that lets you customize the boot option.
Boot-repair lets you to:
1. Reinstall GRUB bootloader
2. Change the default OS to boot
3. Place boot flag on any partition or devices.
4. Add extra kernel option
5. Restore MBR (only when necessary!)
6. Repair filesystem (only when necessary!)
Official Boot-repair website: http://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair/home/Home/
Ubuntu Community Page on Boot-repair: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
Solving choppy and distorted sound while playing back video on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)
Since installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on my Core I5 computer, I’ve noticed that I’ve problem with Video/Audio playback on my computer.
It turns out that it only affects computer with Intel-based sound chip. To confirm that you have Intel based audio chip, you need to run this command:
sudo lshw -c multimedia
If Intel chip is present, then you should see something like this at the bottom of the output:
[bash]
configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=32
resources: irq:16 memory:fe024000-fe027fff
[/bash]
To fix it, you need to add “options snd-had-intel model=generic” at the end of /etc/modprob.d/alsa-base.conf file.
This should fix the problem with choppy/laggy sound while playing video.
Generate EAN,UPC,ISBN barcodes in Ubuntu / Debian Linux
‘barcode‘ is a utility in Debian GNU/Linux distribution used for generating common 1-D barcode: EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC, ISBN, code93, code128 & codabar.
barcode outputs file in postscript format which can be converted to PDF with the ‘ps2pdf‘ utility
Usage:
1. Outputs isbn barcode and converts it to PDF file
$ barcode -o barcode.ps -e isbn $ ps2pdf barcode.ps
2. Outputs EAN-13 barcode
$ barcode -o barcode-ean.ps -e ean
If you are looking for a tool that could generate QR Code, then you can try ‘qrencode‘
Ubuntu TV Preview & Features
Here are the preview of Ubuntu TV, a line of Ubuntu powered device designed for home consumers.
A class of Smart TV device, Ubuntu TV supports few key features:
- Youtube Integration
- Intelligent search
- Cloud Storage via Ubuntu One
- Social Networking Integration
- Tablets / Smartphone dock option
- Support for 3rd party application and games
Visit Ubuntu TV wiki for more information.
Backup your Gmail account in Ubuntu Linux with gmvault
This is a follow-up of my previous post “What to do when your Google disabled your Gmail account?“.
Here’s how to download all emails from your GMail account with Gmvault:
Download and setting up gmvault
1. First you need to install python-pip
[bash]
sudo apt-get install python-pip
[/bash]
2. Then using ‘pip’, install gmvault
[bash]
sudo pip install gmvault
[/bash]
3. Finally you can sync and backup GMail accounts with ‘gmvault‘
[bash]
gmvault sync your_username @ gmail.com
[/bash]
4. gmvault will ask you to authenticate yourselves with GMail, and after that, the syncronization process starts. gmvault stores all the gmail backup in the ‘gmvault-db‘ directory.
p/s: Some users encounters error telling that the “All Mail folder is not visible”. You can enable All Mail folder visibility by checking the “Show in IMAP” box in Settings->Labels. Also, IMAP access should also be enabled for this to work.
p/s 2: It might not be obvious right now why you need to backup your emails when Gmail has gigabytes of storage. But according to Gmail discussions group, Google can and might disable access to all of its services, locking the users out from their emails forever.