Pidgin : Google Talk / MSN error : SSL support unavailable

So you've installed Pidgin but are unable to connect using Google Talk or MSN and get the error message, "SSL support unavailable". Ya me too, major bummer. After a few hours of Googling the following solution is what I've come up with.

If you're compiling from source you'll probably see this in your ./configure output :

----
checking for Mozilla nspr4 libraries... no
checking for Mozilla nss3 includes... no
checking for Mozilla nss libraries... no
---
SSL Library/Libraries......... : None. MSN, Novell Groupwise and Google Talk will not work without GnuTLS or NSS. OpenSSL is NOT usable!
---

Problem : SSL support is not installed, a previous version of Pidgin/Gaim is still installed or some other error has occured.

What worked for me (on Debian Etch) :

1. #>apt-get install libnss3-dev
   [This also installed libnspr4-dev and libnss3-dev]
   
   
2. #>./configure --enable-nss

Here is my new ./configure output :

---
checking for NSS... yes
---
SSL Library/Libraries......... : Mozilla NSS
---

3. make && make install

4. Success ! When I first loaded Pidgin MSN gave me yet another SSL error message but by simply disabling / re-enabling it everything worked fine ! I am now able to connect to both MSN and Google Talk.

IceWM : Change the number of workspaces / virtual desktops

By IceWM default loads four virtual desktops ( aka Workspaces). If you want to adjust this setting open your ~/.icewm/preferences file and look for this line :

WorkspaceNames=" 1 ", " 2 ", " 3 ", " 4 "

Adjust that according to your needs then restart IceWM for the changes to take effect.

SMF : Can't install packages

Recently I fired up Fantastico and installed Simple Machine Forums (SMF) version 1.1.4. Right away I tried to install a few packages but no matter what package I tried it never worked.

Symptoms : When trying to install a SMF package it fails with no error message, no error in the server error log and leaves me with a blank screen. All the appropriate directories/files are set to writable and are "owned" by my user.

After a few hours of Goolging I discover the solution. Thanks to the tips from Sarge over at the official SMF forums I'm now able to install packages !

Here is what I did to resolve my "SMF can't install packages" issue :

1. Log into cPanel (etc) and open phpMyAdmin

2. Select the relevant SMF database (mine was _smf1)

3. Select "smf_settings" on the left hand side

4. Select the SQL tab in the right section @ the top

5. Paste this search command then click Go : SELECT * FROM smf_settings WHERE variable = 'package_path'



6. If your settings looks like the image below and just says "public_html" then this is your problem.



7. Click the little pencil icon to edit the package_path value

8. Enter the real path, it's usually something like /home/username/public_html however your situation may be different. If you don't know your path click here.

9. Change the value then click go.

You should now be able to install packages.

After I fixed my entry it looked like the following



Don't know your absolute path ?

Do the following :

1. Open a text editor and put the code <? phpinfo() ?>
2. Save as phpinfo.php
3. Upload to your web site
4. Open http://yoursite.com/phpinfo.php
5. Search for the line "DOCUMENT_ROOT"

This line should show you the path / absolute path / document root (whatever you prefer to call it). This is the value that should be in the DB key instead of just "public_html".

Firefox is bloatware

Firefox has officially outlived its usefulness.

I have three computers and 5 operating systems**, each of which has Firefox installed. Now I'm no historian but I seem to remember Firefox promising to be a good web browser and all that jazz. Sure it's better than IE in several ways however it's my firm belief that Firefox has become bloatware.

You might be thinking that I've always felt this way, never really liked Firefox and there for never gave it a fair chance. However this is not true. I didn't start seriously hating Firefox until about five minutes ago.

So here's my story. I'm on an old laptop (400mhz 192mb ram, win2k) out and about on vacation connecting through a whiz-bang Sierra Wireless 595U AirCard. So I boot up Win2k and the first thing I do is start Firefox since I know it takes forever and a day to load.

So after I hit Firefox I opened up the Sprint Mobile Broadband connection thingy and connect. Firefox STILL hasn't opened. By this point it's taking so long I'm thinking perhaps I didn't click the icon. A few moments later Firefox finally opens. By the way that Sprint connection tool isn't even on my desktop like Firefox. I gotta navigate the start menu to open it then the program has to go through about 5 steps before I can even CLICK connect - then there's another two or three steps before it's totally connected. I was able to do all of this before Firefox even showed up on the screen.

You're probably thinking "big shocker, you're on an old laptop". Wrong. On my 1.5ghz with 512mb of ram Firefox is slow, on my 2ghz machine that has 1gb of ram Firefox is still slow ! Now if 2ghz + 1gb of ram isn't enough muscle to open Firefox swiftly I'd like to know what in gods name is.

On the other hand Opera, Safari (Windows beta) and the dreaded IE all run worlds faster than Firefox. Perhaps I wouldn't care that much if FF and all its fan boys weren't constantly beating that drum which says Firefox is the greatest, fastest and most secure.

Let me state this part again; previous to about 5 minutes ago I liked Firefox, I was using it upwards of 50 times a day. But as of right now no more, screw Firefox. It can't keep me logged into sites for crap, it loads and operates slower than Christmas and somewhere along the way its spell check has gone to hell.

For an example I just opened FF and misspelled vegetable on purpose. I typed "vegitabe" which is exactly two letters off. This should be easy. If you put "vegitabe" in Google it knows right away which word you meant. Here are the suggested spelling corrections Firefox gives me : veritable, veritably, ignitable, inevitable and inevitably.

None of these are EVEN CLOSE to what I typed and out of this whole list "vegetable" isn't mentioned. Way to fail Firefox. And this kind of crap happens to me all the time. I've had dozens of instances where I was one or two letters off on a commonly used word and Firefox "suggest" words totally unrelated and fails to give me the correct spelling.

I decide to run a little test. So I fired up Firefox and disabled the few addons that I use, rebooted the computer and the ran Opera + Firefox at the same time to see what the load difference is. I put both desktop icons side by side and each time I started Firefox first, then press the right arrow key and hit enter to load Opera.

Initial load time : Opera shows on the taskbar a full 5 seconds before Firefox appears.

Round two load time : Opera pops up a full 4 seconds before Firefox shows up.

So for me that's it. I'm tired of Firefox's slow performance, I'm making a full switch to Opera. By the way, it's worth noting that a lot of features people love about IE7 and Firefox started off in Opera. Opera has always been way ahead of the game and has managed to keep their browser small, fast and customizable (Opera 9.26 installer is 4.7mb, Firefox 2.0.0.12 is 5.7mb).

**
Windows XP Pro
Windows XP Pro
Windows 2k Pro
Damn Small Linux
Puppy Linux

Strange tone / beep in KDE related to kwifimanager

Recently when using KDE I've been hearing a strange tone that loops in the background. As you can guess searching Google for "strange sound kde" can be pretty uneventful.

I decided to check `top` first and discovered kwifimanager sitting at well... the top.

After killing the process the strange KDE tone vanished. I'm not sure what KDE or kwifimanager has to do with this issue. I recently started using it without issue then all of a sudden I'm getting this tone. I know for a fact that I didn't experience this problem when I first started using kwifimanager.

I also use gnome with my wifi and experience no strange tones.

System Specs
Debian Etch 4.0r1
Linux 2.6.18-5-686 #1 SMP
KDE 3.5.5
kwifimanager 4:3.5.5-5
Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)

Opera stuff

Just discovered some of this stuff for Opera.  So far it's made my Opera experience a lot more enjoyable.

• How to make Opera look like other browsers
  
• Customize Google for Opera
• Firefox skins for Opera
  
• Del.icio.us buttons
  

Windows Firefox install size off the charts

Take a careful look at this picture - something* is very wrong.

Your first natural thought is probably that I simply have my cache set to ~500 MB or so. Wrong.

I don't think I ever adjusted my cache settings. Right now FF claims it's using a mere 50 MB for the cache.




If you're totally clueless to the cause of this issue welcome to the party cause I am too.

A weak shot in the dark would be addons, skins and all that other stuff.

Wrong. Wrong and wrong again.

A quick trip to Explorer clears up the confusion. I have two rather large PS (post script) files (200+ MB a piece). These are the results of some fairly large File->Print->Print to file operations.

So if you discover your Firefox (or whatever else) installation size is OFF THE CHARTS check out the folder in Explorer. Chances are it's just some other files laying around throwing off the numbers.


* Bonus points if you noticed that Windows gets the "last used" date all wrong. The screen shot (like this post) was taken @ 10/26/2007 however WinXP claims FF was last used on 10/22/2007. I've used FF at least 100 times since 10/22 !

Debian : Install Firefox

Tonight I made the switch from Ubuntu 6.10 to Debian 4. My first priority is getting Firefox (not Iceweasel) up and running. As you probably know this isn't a straight forward situation. After a bit of searching I still didn't have a clear cut answer.

The error I kept getting was :

./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libmozjs.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I also got :

./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

A quick search shows that most of the files missing live in :

/home/me/firefox
/usr/lib/iceweasel

Of the possible solutions this is the one that worked for me. I know it's not the prettiest fix but it will due.

1. Download and unzip Firefox.
2. apt-get install libstdc++5
3. Copy the libs from /home/you/Firefox/ to /usr/lib/ (or some other acceptable place).
4. Run firefox-bin from the directory you unzipped it in.

Other possible solutions :
Add /home/you/Firefox to your path
Create symbolic links from the libs in /Firefox/ to /usr/lib (or something)

Other files Firefox may complain about being missing :

libfreebl3.so
libnspr4.so
libnss3.so
libmozjs.so
libnssckbi.so
libplc4.so
libplds4.so
libsmime3.so
libsoftokn3.so
libssl3.so
libxpcom_compat.so
libxpcom_core.so
libxpcom.so
libxpistub.so

Ubuntu : Firefox crashes related to VLC plugin

There is a lot of confusion about this topic so I'm going to keep it short and sweet.

I was using Ubuntu 6.06 + Firefox + VLC plugin, life was good, everything worked.

Then I upgraded to Ubuntu 6.10. Shortly there after I noticed that I couldn't stream audio of the x-mplayer2 variety. As soon as the page which initiates the stream loads Firefox would crash.

I tried a number of fixes but they didn't work :

-reinstalled Firefox
-reinstalled VLC + its plugins

When I ran Firefox from the command line upon crashing this is the only error I would get :

Segmentation fault (core dumped)

After much Googling it came to my attention that the plugin which handles such media types (the VLC plugin) may be to blame.


Long story short : I noticed the latest version of the VLC plugin is 0.8.6 which Synaptic told me I had installed. However about:plugins in Firefox told me the VLC plugin version was 0.8.4

It seems that when VLC upgraded it only upgraded the libvlcplugin.so in these locations :

/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/libvlcplugin.so
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libvlcplugin.so

and not in this location :

/home/Me/.mozilla/plugins/libvlcplugin.so

So I deleted the above copy of libvlcplugin.so and then used Synaptic to do another re-install of the VLC plugin. I then copied libvlcplugin.so from /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/ to /home/Me/.mozilla/plugins/

Firefox no longer crashes when I visit the offending pages (sites that use the VLC plugin) however my streaming radio still doesn't work.

Hopefully this information will be of some help.

Teh Post 1yr Anniversary !

Today (or tomorow..maybe yesterday, I'm not really sure) marks the 1 year anniversary for Teh Post !

Woot !

Teh Post has come a long way. The first version of Teh Post used the standard lame-o blogger templates.  Now Teh Post boast features almost no other web sites have (look closely).

The very first post on Teh Post was about how a major web masters forum was cheating digg. Since then I've covered Opera, Linux, Windows, Grub, Enemy Territory, AdSense, Nvidia tweaks, a previously reported botnet (!), Wordpress, Firefox, Xubuntu, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Windows Live Spaces, Cricket (the cell phone company), MySpace, Web 2.0, Internet Explorer 6, Security, Motorola Hacking, Ad-Aware, Gnome, Cingular, Blogger and maybe a few other things I've over looked.

It's nice to have passed the year mark, many blogs and web sites never make it this long. I read once that the average life span for a blog is 9 months, I'm a full 3 months a head of the game !

Teh Post has strived to bring you consice, reliable and important information. I'm not in the business of posting crap everyday just to put new info out there or to keep up with the Jone's.

Many of the post here cover problems I actually had myself and then tracked down the solution for. Although a lot of my information can be found at other web sites I try to keep things short and to the point. There is nothing I hate more than going to a site to get some info for a fix only to find five some odd pages of unimportant crap.

After this one year of service I'd like to ask a question of you my visitors. Why don't yall ever leave me some comment love ?

Cheers and I look forward to another (more exciting) year. Keep an eye open for Teh Post in a news article near you ;)

Sincerely,
Management

ps. Get back to work, you're not being paid to believe in the power of your dreams.

;)