Less on the Tech Side - Restoring a Whiteboard

While I did spend most of  my day attached to a computer or sitting in class, at the end I got a little surprise gift. I call it a surprise because it wasn't supposed to be a gift. What I received was a 2'x3' white-board with marker on it that wouldn't come off (except by scratching directly). Well, I know I'm not the first one to have this issue, so off to google I went. And I came up with this.
I had:

• An Ehow article describing how to clean a white-board, 
• a rag, 
• bottle of alcohol, 
• Kaboom
• about 15 minutes
• a bottle of Orange Glo
• not a bottle of multi-surface pledge  and
• not shaving cream

First off I tried the isopropyl and the rag, and most of the marker came off. Where different colors of marker were used, there were light smears of color creating a colored backdrop. Not what I was going for. Next I tried Kaboom! the bath/tub/tile cleaner on it. I simply sprayed it on and quickly cleaned it off. This removed even more, but yet still not all. Next up I tried shaving cream, since it is just soap, not realizing that the 2 products before it were significantly stronger than it. Nothing happened except making my hands smell like Colgate with Aloe. I figured that it wasn't getting any cleaner, so I moved on. I dried it off (which took a little bit more off) and moved on to the pledge. The article recommends pledge, and I didn't have any of the original, so I sprayed the multi-surface pledge on the board, let it set, and wiped it clean. Nothing came off, and the board had a dry feeling to it. Since I know that pledge is a wood cleaner with oils for the wood, and that my teachers called white-boards grease-boards (not sure if they were right to do so, but that is neither here nor there) I decided to try the Orange Glo, which is a fancier(in my opinion) wood cleaner. Mine was the 2 in 1 type in case you would like to replicate my findings. Anyhow, I sprayed it on liberally, let it sit a few minutes, and rubbed it in with a paper towel. As I rubbed it in, the board began to turn white and the last of the marker began to come off, although with some effort. I rubbed it dry, and gave it a test drive. Perfect -- no stray marks or splotches of color. #win

Day's Roundup: E17 Debian Squeeze Stable

Fought tooth and nail for the last few days to get Enlightenment 17 installed, and finally won. Here are a few solutions that I used and needed, but the most useful one is here.

Gist:
Ok, here are the steps I followed. If I missed any details, please let me know so I can update this. Oh, and for the sake of this example, we'll use Debian Squeeze.
1) Install e17

a) Download easy_e17.sh from http://omicron.homeip.net/projects/#easy_e17.sh b) Install all the required packages as root or sudo:     apt-get install subversion autoconf automake1.9 autotools-dev autoconf-archive gettext libtool libfreetype6-dev libjpeg62-dev libpng12-dev libtiff4-dev libungif4-dev libbz2-dev libltdl3-dev pkg-config libxine-dev build-essential flex bison byacc libxcursor-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libtag1-dev sqlite libxml2-dev libsqlite3-dev libxslt1.1 libxslt1-dev giblib1 giblib-dev libtool libtagc0-dev libmpd1 libmpd-dev libxcomposite-dev libxcomposite1 libxdamage-dev libxdamage1 libxkbfile-dev libxkbfile1 libxkbfile-dev libxkbfile1 libdbus-1-dev libtheora-dev libpopt-dev libglib2.0-dev libfontconfig1-dev libxrandr-dev libasound2-dev libxinerama-dev cvs automake libgstreamer0.10-dev menu menu-xdg xdg-utils liblua5.1-0-dev dbus-x11 libiptcdata-dev libexif-dev libpam-dev mesa-common-dev libudev-dev x-window-system slim c) As root or sudo, run: bash easy_e17.sh -i (to install e17) d) Follow the instructions at the end of the script's output e) Set the path (the following steps are as the regular user): export PATH=\"$install_path/bin:\$PATH\" f) Create /home/me/.xsession with 'exec /opt/e17/bin/enlightenment_start' (w/o quotes) g) Create the symbolic link: ln -s ~/.xsession ~/.xinitrc  To start e17, do: startx

 A few things to mention, my e17_src folder kept on popping up in the root directory, so I went to the script and replaced $HOME with /home. Worked like a charm. Additionally I had to reconfigure my DM to recognize Enlightenment, and install xcb and a few other files I think. Have fun!

How to configure SLiM for Linux
Gist:
To configure SLiM to load a particular environment, edit your ~/.xinitrc to load your desktop environment:

#!/bin/sh

#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)
#

exec [session-command]

SLiM reads the local ~/.xinitrc configuration and then launches the desktop according to what is in that file. If you do not have a ~/.xinitrc file, you can use the skeleton file by:

$ cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~

Remember to make .xinitrc executable:

 chmod +x ~/.xinitrc

Replace [session-command] with the appropriate session command. Some examples of different desktop start commands:

exec awesome
exec dwm
exec startfluxbox
exec fvwm2
exec gnome-session
exec openbox-session
exec startkde
exec startlxde
exec startxfce4
exec enlightenment_start
exec ck-launch-session $ONE_OF_THE_ABOVE

To get automount to work it might be necessary to use something like e.g.:

exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch startxfce4

How to fix “X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting.”

Gist:

In linux, by default root user is allowed to run X server in most cases. So you don’t face this issue while running “startx” as root user.
Basically the Xorg X server needs to be configured to to authorize this user. Where should we configure this?

/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config – This file has as setting called “allowed_users”. It can accept three values:

1. root

2. anybody

3. console

The above values are self explanatory. You can edit this value to set as anybody for normal user to start X server. If normal user starts X server from console, console can also be set. It can be like this.

allowed_users=anybody

In Debian and its derivatives like Ubuntu, you can run the following command to do it in user friendly screen as shown below.

# dpkg-reconfigure x11-common

How do you modify a user's home directory in Unix/Linux?

Gist:

1. Login as a user with sudo privileges.
2. Enter this command:

sudo nano /etc/passwd

3. Nano text editor opens up. Locate the username you would like to change the home directory of (the last added user is in the end), and just enter whatever directory you would like. For example, the home directory for the user jack is set to /home/jack in this file:

QuickFix

Error: visudo: sudoers.tmp is unchanged

Fix: my VISUAL element was wrongly configured and contained an invalid argument. Simply did "export VISUAL="leafpad" " and all was well