ugly gnome setting hits bug

When plugging an usb hard drive into ubuntu 8.04 pc, it is automatically mounted under "/media/something". Right click the mounted media, you can access the properties of the media. Click "Volume" tab, unfold "setting" option, the users seem to be able to setup their own mount parameters such as "mount point", "file system", etc. Naturally, I tried setup my own "mount point" such as "/mnt/name". Then when I plugged out/in media again, the automounter stops working. It gives you an error message: "Cannot mount volume. Unable to mount volume..., mount_point cannot contain the following characters: newline, G_DIR_SEPERATOR (usually /)"!

It turns out that you cannot put full path like "/mnt/mymntpoint" into this field (which is by all means what people think so). You can only put one name in this field for example: "foo", then the gnome-mount will use that name with prefix "/media/" and mount your media under "/media/foo" which is quite annoying for Linux user. The only way to get rid of this error is to use "gconf-editor" under your own login (without sudo). Changing the key "/system/storage/volumes/_org_freedesktop_Hal_devices_voume_uuid_*/mount_point" to "foo" will be fine again. Also you can delete all keys and values of that field, so gnome-mount can use default name and mount points.

The bug is reported here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-mount/+bug/107668

At least underneath the "setting" option of "Volume" tab, gnome should give some detailed message or validate the user input before letting gnome-mount messed up!

seamonkey 1.1.9 couldn't install Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5

I rebuilt machine recently and apt-get installed seamonkey 1.1.9 from ubuntu official repository, though current stable version of seamonkey is 1.1.10. One of the major reason of using mozilla types of browsers are the existing excellent addons. The very first one I always install is Adblock Plus. My my previous experiences, the seamonkey doesn't support installation into local profile of Adblock Plus. When you install it, you will get the error message as following:

"This extension requires write access to the application directory to install properly. currently write access to some of the relevant subdirectories is forbidden, you probably have to log in as root before installing. after installation no elevated privileges will be necessary, read access is sufficient to use Adblock Plus."

The only way is to let Adblock Plus installed into application directory, for example: /usr/lib/seamonkey/. So you will need to:

1. using root privilige mode to start seamonkey, for example: (sudo seamonkey) .
2. install Adblock Plus at privilliged mode.
3. start seamonkey as normal.

However, the above approch doesn't fix the lastest version Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5 along with seamonkey 1.1.9 . As reported in the following link in Adblock Plus forum:

http://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2550&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

The symptoms are: 1) you installed Adblock Plus at root mode without problem, but when you switch back to normal seamonkey startup. The addon wasn't there. 2) the size of bottom toolbar of seamonkey is larger and ugly than normal. it messed up.

The solution now is to install eariler version of Adblock Plus 0.7.5.4, you can select earilier version option from mozilla addons page. It works fine for me.

apt-get behind ISA proxy server

Computer is behind company proxy server running Microsoft ISA. The http proxy address is 192.168.16.6 the port number is 8080. ubuntu 8.04 is installed, though firefox is working by setting up proxy and use domain/username password to get through, the apt-get cannot work properly whatever you try any methods. The solution is ntlm project.

1. download 0.9.9.0.1 version.
2. tar -zxvf ntlmaps-0.9.9.0.1
3. modify the following parameters:
   

   PARENT_PROXY:192.168.16.6
   PARENT_PROXY_PORT:8080
   NT_DOMAIN:YourDomain
   USER:yourname
   PASSWORD:yourpassword

4. $ ./ntlmaps-0.9.9.0.1/main.py &
   $ export http_proxy="http://127.0.0.1:5865"
   $ sudo apt-get update
   
5. Now you can have built-in package installed
   apt-get install ntlmaps


6. add proxy into apt configuration file: create
   /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/proxy
   with content:
   Acquire::http::Proxy "http://127.0.0.1:5865/";
7. modify your general proxy setting and your synaptic proxy setting as well

note: my firefox seems faster to directly use proxy address 192.168.16.6 rather than using NTLM listening address "127.0.0.1:5865"

To reconfigure you ntlmaps using new proxy address:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure ntlmaps

References:

http://michaelcarden.net/blog/?p=58
http://www.lupaworld.com/912/viewspace_2210.html