So, I was looking for a solution. Here it is

1. Getting rid of Evolution in Indicator Applet

Run sudo apt-get remove evolution-indicator

2. Install required packages

Run sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin. This is needed to make the Thunderbird extension work.

3. Install Thunderbird extension

Open the Add-On manager in Thunderbird and install “Gnome Integration“. After installation, restart Thunderbird.

4. Disable default Thunderbird notifications

In Thunderbird go to “Edit => Preferences => General” and uncheck “Show an alert“.

5. Add Thunderbird to Indicator Applet

Run sudo nano /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/thunderbird
and insert the following line:

/usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

What about a shortcut for composing a new message or open the address book?

Well, it is possible to add such shortcuts, but at the moment, you have to redo it after every update, as the file, you have to edit, will be overwritten.

Add the following lines at the end of /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop:

X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=Compose;Contacts

[Compose Shortcut Group]
Name=Compose New Message
Exec=thunderbird mailto:
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu

[Contacts Shortcut Group]
Name=Contacts
Exec=thunderbird -addressbook
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu

Auto Replay for YouTube

Sometimes, I want to watch/listen to a video more than once. Clicking on “Replay” every time the video is finished is quite annoying. This extension is fixing it. You’re able to enter a time range, where auto replay should happens.

Autocomplete = on

Saving passwords isn’t working on every site, as some web developers are using “autocomplete = off”. This extension is changing “autocomplete = off” to “autocomplete = on” and you are able to save your passwords.

Stop Autoplay for YouTube

Loading more than one video on YouTube in new tabs is quite annoying, as you have to pause any video at first. This extension is here to rescue you! It will pause any video you load, but the video is still buffering in the background. That’s making it better, than simply blocking flash videos from auto play.

Type-ahead-find

In Firefox, you are able to enable search-as-you-type. I have not found such a checkbox in Chrome, but this extension. You are also able to search in links only.

Youtube Automatic Quality changer

I find it quite annoying to change the video quality on every video. Why isn’t it saving my choice for the next time? But: this extension is fixing it. Less clicks for me. Yeah!

If I find more useful extensions for Google Chrome, I’ll let you know.
But if you have a extension that could be useful for me, but I’m not aware of, let me know.

Anyway. A lot of things changed in the last few months. Most of them to the good. Maybe it’s going on like that? Would be great.

2009 is over and 2010 started really good (thanks to someone).

But let me begin, where it should begin: at the beginning

Ok. I finally made it and found an apartment. It’s near my new employer, so I’m able to use my bike for getting to work. I find this is really awesome. My apartment is almost complete (complete = as complete as something like an apartment can be.). Some things missing, but I’m on it an it’s getting better every day. And some things, I have not thought about, are still coming up, but that’s okay. I will upload some pictures later that day, so you can have a look, what’s the current state. I moved in my apartment one week before christmas, as I was alone on christmas anyway.

One picture of a part of my apartment. Taken with my N900:

Another new thing I’ve bought me as a present for christmas was a Nokia N900. I like my new gadget. Really. I’m writing this blog post on my N900! There is currently nothing bad I can tell about the N900. At first, it was rebooting from time to time. But this problem is known to Nokia and they’re working on it. For now, there is an easy work-around and this is “fixing” the problem.
What else? Some positive things:
- Fm-transmitter: send music to any radio.
- Camera: pictures looking good and the cam is fast enough for taking pictures
- applications: as the Nokia N900 is running Maemo, it’s based on a really stable system and there are many different applications available. You can also get ‘root’ on the N900 really easy (just install a package and go on). For software management it’s using a version of Debian‘s APT.
- OpenVPN: yes. It’s useable without getting root or installing another image on your phone (hey google, can you hear me? Think about your crappie android os!).

As I’m a system administrator I love to have tools like VPN and ssh on my mobile. Why? Because I’m able to fix most of the problems from my mobile. If it’s working. And you know what? Nokia was able to get the N900 working. Thanks Nokia! (Again, can you hear me, google?)

Now, some more things going on in my life, but for now, it’s enough I’ve talked about.

Have fun and if you’re looking for a new mobile phone: Nokia N900

Wir sind gegen 17 Uhr am Cannstatter Wasen angekommen und wollten mit der Bahn weiterfahren. Allerdings war die Bahn einfach zu voll. So entschieden wir uns, dass wir laufen könnten. Stellt ja eigentlich auch kein Problem dar, von der Mercedesstrasse zum hinteren Teil des Wasens zu gelangen. Doch, welch Überraschung, gestern war alles anders. Straßen waren selbst für Fußgänger gesperrt. Warum, ist niemandem von uns so richtig klar gewesen, aber sicher ist sicher. So scheint es zumindest

Endlich am hinteren Teil des Wasens angekommen, sind wir erst mal wieder ein gutes Stück in die Richtung gelaufen, aus der wir kamen. Welcher Planer hat eigentlich die Bahn-Linie zwischen Wasen-Zugang und Straße gebaut? Die andere Seite wäre auch schön gewesen. Naja. Egal. Zurück also. Durch den Eingang sind wir schnell rein gekommen. Also zumindest schien das Abtasten gut organisiert, auch wenn ich alles mögliche hätte mit rein nehmen können.

Auf dem Weg zum eigentlichen Konzert war schon Musik zu hören und man musste sich durch eine Flut von Flaschen durcharbeiten. Als Belohnung für die Mühen gab es zu dem Zeitpunkt erst mal einen Auftritt von Christof Sonntag. Dieser war allerdings so schlecht, dass ich gar nicht genug kotzen konnte, als ich gewollt hätte. Wer den dort hingestellt hat, muss ihn echt nicht mögen.

Tja, je später der Abend, desto tiefer die Sonne. Nämlich genau auf Augenhöhe. Dementsprechend viel war Anfangs von der Bühne zu sehen: erst ein wenig, dann ging es über zu Punkten, die vor meinen Augen aufblitzten. Und das alles trotz Sonnenbrille. Die habe ich dann irgendwann auch mal total vergessen, bis ich von Matze, der mit mir auf dem Konzert war, gefragt worden bin, ob ich nicht mal meine Brille aufsetzen wollte. Zu dem Zeitpunk war die Sonne schon weg und die Fantas am Start.

Wo ich gerade bei Getränken bin: die ein Liter Behälter waren wohl recht schnell vergriffen oder jemand hat sich ganz genau überlegt, wie man die Leute über den Tisch ziehen kann. Es gab ausreichend kleine Becher, klar. Aber große, die günstiger waren: Nö. Aber was soll’s? Es sind die Fantas. Da lohnt sich das Geld.

Der Sound war ganz OK. Ab und an war es ein wenig dumpf, dann hat plötzlich wieder jemand die Höhen aus dem Keller geholt… Aber da das nur manchmal vorkam, war es ok.

Unterhaltsam war dann der Moment, in dem der Strom der PA ausgefallen ist. Die Fantas haben dann erst mal kräftig auf der Bühne weitergesungen und sind zu ihrem “Bring it back” richtig gut abgegangen. Nur eben die Menge nicht. Logisch. Die Fantas haben den Ausfall nicht mitbekommen. Dann war auch erst mal ein wenig Pause, bis jemand die Sicherung gefunden und wieder rein gemacht hat.

Zusammengefasst war das Konzert richtig geil, allerdings hätte der Sound deutlich besser sein können. Hier war manchmal einfach die klangliche Schwankung lästig. Trotzdem:

DANKE FANTAS!

Ach ja. Wie immer hab ich keine Bilder gemacht. Das liegt vermutlich daran, dass ich keine Digi-Cam hab und mit meinem Handy ging das nich so gut, was mitunter auch an der Sonne lag. Vielleicht kaufe ich mir ja doch mal eine Kamera?!?

Here are the steps that I’ve taken to get NETWAYSGrapher V2 up and running.

WARNING: I suppose you’ve already installed Apache, Nagios and MySQL and everything is working!

1. Install required packages:

2. Configure CPAN

Let CPAN configure itself by answering ‘yes’ to the question.

3. Install additional CPAN modules

The following modules are missing in Debian Lenny repository or too old:
- Thread::Queue
- Thread::Cancel
- threads
- threads::shared
- Proc::Simple

I’ve created Debian packages which you can find here
You can also install those modules from CPAN.

4. Download NETWAYSGrapher V2

You can download NETWAYSGrapher V2 here
After downloading, extract the package.

5. Run collector dependencies check

Run the following commands:

If all went fine, you should see a message like

SUCCESS: All perl deps (modules) found!

6. Disable magic_quotes_gpc and run frontend dependencies check

Disabling magic_quotes_gpc:

Running frontend dependencies check:

If everything is working, you should see no error message, except missing PHP LDAP support, which is not required.

7. Edit build.properties and fit it to your needs

Run your favorite editor and edit

If your database is not running on the same host, edit the db-values, too.

8. Create database user

Make a connection to your database as root user and execute the following command:

9. Start installation

10. Add it to Apache

In <GRAPHERV2_INSTALL_DIR>/appkit/etc/appkit_httpd.conf is a fully configured vhost config file.
Copy or link this file to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled and reload your apache.

After you’ve finished all steps, you can integrate NETWAYSGrapher V2 in Nagios.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.

This cronjob is lying in /etc/cron.daily/apt and has almost nothing to do, because everything is disabled by default.

You can add the following lines to your apt.conf, to make things work.
Start your favorite editor and open /etc/apt/apt.conf (by default, this file does not exists).

- Run apt-get update everyday:

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists 1;

- Fetch all upgradeable packages every 7 days:

APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages 7;

- Run apt-get autoclean every 7 days:

APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval 7;

- Run unattended upgrade every n days (0 disables it):

APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade 0;

You can disable the unattended upgrade by changing it to a positive value greater zero. But keep in mind, that this can seriously damage your system, if things go wrong!

If you like to check, if everything is working as excepted, you may be waiting a few minutes. The cronjob is using a random value for sleeping some time. This is useful, to make sure, that your systems won’t connect to your apt-mirror at the same time. But for testing, this is really annoying.
Let’s change it for testing. Add the following line to your apt.conf:

APT::Periodic::RandomSleep 5;

If you’ve finished testing, simply remove this line.