Category    linux

Not enough threads or processes : "thread create failed"

by Walter Rudametkin     linux bug

I started running into a weird problem that I didn't immediately identify. Some programs just started failing: libreoffice, chrome, chromium, firefox, eclipse, ...

It was quite undeterministic and depended on the system ressources being fairly well used. I thought it was a RAM issue, not having enough memory would cause programs to fail. I have somewhat agressive ram settings, but, I also have 16 GB of RAM on my computer. Well, it wasn't a memory issue, I was able to reproduce the issue with loads of memory still left over.

Here's some of the messages I was getting.

Libreoffice: (similar bug here)

osl::Thread::create failed

Java:

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread.

Chrome and Chromium:

pthread_create error: Resource temporarily unavailable

Make chromium faster with video acceleration

by Walter Rudametkin     linux chromium feature

I tried this on my Dell e6530 and it seems to work pretty good.

http://www.borfast.com/blog/how-enable-webgl-google-chrome-linux-blacklisted-graphics-card

For video acceleration : Go to chrome://flags → Override software rendering list → Set to Enable

This works for both Chrome and Chromium.

Add Chrome PDF Viewer to Chromium on Fedora 20 x86_64

by Walter Rudametkin     linux chromium feature

I really would like a PDF reader that saves the open pdf files in tabs, like a browser does. It would let me get back to reading whatever I was reading after a restart. Currently, I try to restart as little as possible, usually between 20 and 40 days in order to save all my open stuff. I would use Mendeley except the open tabs feature request has been open since 2009 and not implemented yet!!! http://feedback.mendeley.com/forums/4941-general/suggestions/263198-remember-open-tabs-and-position-within-pdfs.

My answer for PDFs is to use my browser to store my open files. It might be a little overkill but it does the job decent enough. I mainly use Firefox + mozplugger + evince, but I also use the Chrome and Chromium browsers for different things including reading PDFs. Chrome has a simple PDF plugin that I like and its pretty fast, but Chromium doesn't have it because of licensing issues.

Reduce touchpad sensitivity on a Dell e6430

by Walter Rudametkin     linux feature

I find the touchpad on my laptop way to sensitive by default. To change it, I've found the following settings comfortable:

xinput set-prop "AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad" "Synaptics Finger" 18 18 18

I also have a wireless mouse that I sometimes use. It's way to sensitive. The following command makes it useable:

xinput set-prop "HP Wireless Optical Mobile Mouse" "Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration" 1.5

Acrobat reader cannot find libEGL.so.1 : Fedora 20

by Walter Rudametkin     linux bug

I use acrobat reader sometimes, like when people send me an annotated pdf or if Evince doesn't print it properly. My main pdf reader is Evince, but it's a bit buggy. Also, I use okular to annotate pdfs, which it does a fine job at.

Anyhow, I was getting the following error after applying some updates:

acroread: error while loading shared libraries: libEGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

It took me a while to track down the problem, which has a simple solution, just find the missing symbolic link. I ran into this page that describes the issue but nobody had provided the proper command http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=297151.

Fr alternative keyboard layout bug (fr-oss): right ctrl key not working

by Walter Rudametkin     linux bug

I really like the 'alternative' french keyboard layout on my computer, a.k.a fr-oss. I like to use the deadkeys for accents in french and spanish, and I really like the alt-gr + ctrl# for doing arrows and stuff like that.

Earlier this year on my Fedora laptop (F20) for work the right ctrl key stopped working. It sucked because ctrl-arrows no longer jump through words in text documents. VLC right ctrl+Up/Down no longer changed the volume either, making me have to use both hands just for that. I figured it was a bug in Fedora so I found a neat command to fix the mapping while I waited for the problem to be fixed. However, some time later it happened to my wife's Ubuntu laptop and looking into it I found that the problem is comes from higher up the chain.

Someone decided to map right ctrl to something "new" instead of letting it be the same as the left ctrl key. Sure, if programs used the "new right control" it might be great and super useful. But they don't, so the key does nothing. Kind of beats the purpose, huh?

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15804#c44

To fix the problem, here's the command you can run.

xmodmap -e 'keycode 105 = Control_R' -e 'clear Control' -e 'add Control = Control_L Control_R'

However...

Mount your Box.Net account using WebDAV

by Walter Rudametkin     linux webdav cloud

It's pretty easy to setup box.net with webdav and to have your files automatically saved to box.net. I got 50gb of storage space on box.net when I bought an HP Touchpad 32gb on firesale.

However, because it's not a paid or professional account, I can't really do anything with it.

UPDATE: I don't use this setup because box.net is just too slow and some people have been complaining that they don't implement webdav properly. I really wish they'd come up with a client for Linux like Dropbox has.

Originally posted on Ubuntu Forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202761&page=4

NSLU2 Linux Gateway

by Walter Rudametkin     linux nslu2 work-in-progress

It's easy to setup additional IP addresses on Debian Linux. This is particularly useful for the NSLU which doesn't have a display so you need to remotely connect to it.

Having more than one virtual network interface allows us to have both a DHCP address and a static IP address, making the NSLU2 accessible pretty much always.