Linux OS does a superb job of handling sound.  Since early on it will even be configured out of the box.  Unfortunately, keeping it that way is an entirely separate matter.  Especially when going through multiple upgrades or installing other packages possibly even applications that may alter your sound behaviour strange things may start to happen with your sound.  Take for instance this issue:

PROBLEM

unix_connect: can’t connect to server (unix:/tmp/ksocket-root/lhs.localhostservers-11ca-43c04c25)
ALSA lib conf.c:1592:(snd_config_load1) _toplevel_:51:23:No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:2837:(snd_config_hook_load) /etc/alsa/cards/aliases.conf may be old or corrupted: consider to remove or fix it
ALSA lib conf.c:2700:(snd_config_hooks_call) function snd_config_hook_load returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:1969:(snd_pcm_open_conf) Invalid type for PCM default definition (id: default, value: cards.pcm.default)
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can’t be opened for playback (Invalid argument)

SOLUTION
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Today I decided to scope out some Polish / English translators as they do come in handy from time to time.  Trying not to look like a complete wreck, I decided to check how far technology has progressed in the last couple of years and find a good English to Polish translator.  I'm pretty sure my Polish writing is impecable after 20 years of not having written in it but I like to be on the safe side and I didn't want to take any unnecessary chances.  To that end, I went out to ferret for a good web translator to use.   I tried something simple to use to see how well the engines would translate text and below is a table with the results:

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PROBLEM

The network is not present or not started

At some point or other, and for reasons unknown to me at the current time, I couldn't get into shared files on other workstations on my home installation.  This used to work earlier.  Turned out after numerous trials and errors that the service Client for Microsoft Networks client service was not installed on my workstation.

SOLUTION

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Today I stumbled upon an interesting Perl issue that was causing some random printout in my code then what I expected.  In fact, I’ve used the same sprintf /regular expression in another part  following the script I was writing but it seamed to work just fine there.  The issue was that the script printed two different results when using ’sprintf’ and ‘printf’.  Strangely enough, ’sprintf’ or ‘printf’ printed every second match that it found!  Here is what the test code to resolve this oddity looked like this:

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Your RPM GPG Key is missing.  You may receive this error, especially on new installations and when you try to install fresh RPM packages for the first time.  This means you will need to install one: PROBLEM

$ rpm -qp –qf i386 /Files/RHEL4-22/RedHat/RPMS/anaconda-runtime-[0-9]*
warning: /Files/RHEL4-22/RedHat/RPMS/anaconda-runtime-10.1.1.25-1.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID db42a60e i386
$ rpm –rebuilddb
$ lcoate RPM-GPG-KEY
-bash: lcoate: command not found  (oOps!)

SOLUTION

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Sometime back I was wondering how I can get a screenshot in Linux.  I've created this workaround for myself to use from the shell not knowing about the GIMP screenshot capture/aquire function at the time:

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Not a big post today.  Just a solution to a problem I ran into earlier.   This may appear self explanatory if you assume disk space issue, as in this case the error is actually not referring to mailbox size.

PROBLEM

Feb  8 04:02:06 lhs sendmail[4105]: l18924AB004105: low on space (SMTP-DAEMON needs 0 bytes + 100 blocks in /var/spool/clientmqueue), max avail: 0
Feb  8 04:02:06 lhs sendmail[4105]: l18924AA004105: SYSERR(root): returntosender: cannot select queue for root

SOLUTION

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PERL REFERENCE / CHEAT SHEET

Handy, searchable Perl reference guide for both beginners and intermediate Perl developers.  This is something of a reference and a tutorial combined into one.  If you like, don’t forget to post a comment.

CONTENTS

Assignment Operators
Operators, Precedence, Example and Associativity
Numeric Literals
Bitwise Operator Result Table
String Literals
Variables
String Operations
Built In Literals
Control Blocks
Loop Flow Control Modifiers
Printing Format Specifiers
Print Specifier Modifiers
Alternative Quoting
Pack Unpack Modifiers
PERL REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
Optional Delimeters
Operators Matching Modifiers
Operator Table
Y Modifier Table
Perl REGEX Metacharacters
Perl File IO
Perl File Lock Types
Script Arguments
File Test Operators

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PROBLEM

You receive random errors failing to initialize your network card at boot time or during manual restart that look like the one below:

$ifup eth0
via-rhine device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.
$

Or just a form of the

# service network restart
.
.
device does not seem to be present, delaying initialization
.
.
#

from any device such as bond0 or wlan0 etc.  Here's how to solve it.

SOLUTION

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FCKEditor 2.1 / 2.5 2.6.2 Recently I found myself looking for an editor for posts more powerfull then the standard built in editor that comes with WordPress.  To that end I came up on FCKEditor (NOTE: No, it's not meant to be synonymous after the popular explative.) and so far it has been worth the install (See below for a screenshot of the editing tool bar).  It means a bit less clicks on the 'Code' button for me, which I have been finding myself doing quite often with the built in editor.  There are a few things I will miss with the old editor such as the ability to resize the main editing window an ability that FCKEditor doesn't seam to have (other then editing your FCKEditor options and manually specifying a predefined value.)  I've yet to test many more features of this editor but so far many of my wishes I had with old editor have been satisfied.

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