November 14, 2014

Fusion 7 upgrade and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS startup shutdown scripts fail.

 

Upon upgrading VMWare Fusion 6 to version 7, I had an issue with my Xubuntu 14.04 vmware-tools.

Upon Startup I would receive the warning:

The VMware Tools power-on script did not run successfully in this virtual machine. If you have configured a custom power-on script in this virtual machine, make sure that it contains no errors. You can also submit a support request to report this issue.


And upon shutdown, I would receive the warning:

The request to halt this virtual machine failed because the corresponding VMware Tools script did not run successfully. If you have configured a custom halt script in this virtual machine, please inspect it for errors; otherwise, please submit a support request.

Typically I use the repository's open-vm-tools, so i tried to reinstall them, but this did not resolve the issue.  I uninstalled open-vm-tools and installed the vmware-tools from Fusion, but this did not resolve the issue either.

When i searched the repository, I noticed a new group of tools containing the keywords open-vm-tools-lts-trusty*, so I i uninstalled vmware-tools with the command:

sudo vmware-uninstall-tools.pl

I purged any instances of open-vm-tools like so:

sudo apt-get purge open-vm-tools*

I then installed the LTS version of the open-vm-tools:

sudo aptitude install open-vm-tools-lts-dkms open-vm-tools-lts-desktop open-vm-toolbox-lts-trusty

Upon reboot, I had no more warning and things worked as expected.
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November 11, 2014

DuckDuckGo search preferred ; recommended

I'm not one to promote products and services, but this is almost essential.

As a longtime proponent of Google search, about 3 years ago I first heard of duckduckgo and was immediately enchanted.

Within the first weeks, I decided to make DuckDuckGo.com my home-page and default search on all my browsers on all my computers and never looked back.

Unlike most other search engines, "DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is [their] privacy policy in a nutshell."

DuckDuckGo's true power comes to play with a "!BANG"

DuckDuckGo has the unique ability to provide search engine specific results.  In other words, if you want google-only results, fine, just add "!g" in your search:
Want google-images? Fine, add "!gi" in your search:
Want yahoo-only results? Fine, add "!y":
Want to find alternate software for some application, say Adobe reader? Fine try "!altto":
Want to see what info TVGuide has about The Walking Dead? Fine try "!tvguide":
Want to find IMDB info for a favorite movie like The Midnight Meat Train? Fine try "!imdb":

Here is the complete list of magic "!bangs" including some very technical ones: https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

Are you an expert in your field and want to create your own instant answer or !bang for the world to use?  Go to http://duckduckhack.com

I truly recommend DuckDuckGo.com to be your all-inclusive search engine!





TechGlipse.com offers a "cheat sheet" for duckduckgo instant answers:



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November 06, 2014

Compile Remmina 1.1.x in Debian Jessie

Update: Okay this sucks; i'm still having copy/paste issues. But here's the post anyway:

UPDATE 2015 March: Okay this sucks even more, seems i had compilation issues and had to add more cmake flags; HOWEVER, upon install i had segmentation faults when running remmina.

SO, i've found an alternate and preferred method of installing: Add the unstable branch (debian experimental "sid") to your /etc/apt/sources.list and use sudo apt-get -t experimental install remmina freerdp to install the latest available.

i.e. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING
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Remmina 1.0.0 is still the latest version in Debian Jessie (Testing) as of Nov 2014. However Remmina itself is up to version 1.1.x now.

Recently I have had issues with copy/paste (clipboard redirection) not working, so I decided to try to update it. Although not difficult, it was not exactly super quick to find the dependencies either.

note: I always use aptitude but you could just as easily use apt-get.

We will use the github version of Remmina:
sudo aptitude install git
cd ~/Downloads
git clone https://github.com/FreeRDP/Remmina.git

Of course, you probably already have the build tools; otherwise, install them:
sudo aptitude install build-essential

You may have issues with installing the following dependency due to a recent change in debian itself, but you should be able to work it out:
sudo aptitude install libgnutls28-dev

Now, we will install the rest of the dependencies:
sudo aptitude install libavahi-common-dev libavahi-client-dev libavahi-ui-gtk3-dev libvte-2.90-dev libappindicator3-dev libvncserver-dev libxkbfile-dev libfreerdp-dev libtelepathy-glib-dev

Now we can compile and install Remmina:
cd Remmina
cmake -DWITH_LIBSSH=OFF -DWITH_GNOMEKEYRING=OFF
make clean 
make
sudo make install

You need to make install otherwise it will not find the plugins.

I chose "keyring off" because I run XFCE and also when I compiled with it on, I still had copy/paste issues. However, that needs to be thoroughly tested and I was not interested in it.

Now you can run the new Remmina 1.1.x
killall remmina
remmina

good luck!
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