Tag Archives: internet

Saturday, 4 December, 2010

Amazon Kindle for PC Runs under Wine

Amazon Kindle for PC can run under Wine in Linux. I am using Wine 1.3.6 in Puppy Linux.
The latest KindleForPC version is 1.3.0 , and the file size is 12850600 .

To install, just run:

# wine KindleForPC-installer.exe


To run the KindleForPC from a terminal:

# wine "C:\Program Files\Amazon\Kindle For PC\KindleForPC.exe"

To be able to login to my Amazon account, I need to get Secure HTTPS working under Wine.

Tags: Linux, Puppy-Linux, internet, testing, installation, WINE, Amazon, kindle


Posted in Linux , Personal , Open-Source


Saturday, 4 December, 2010

Secure HTTPS under Wine

I am using Wine 1.3.6 , installed from wine-1.3.6.pet found at http://puppylinux.org/wikka/wine
Wine lets you run Windows software on other operating systems.

With the default installation, secure https does not work.
When I run the builtin Internet Explorer and navigate to a https://url , I will see this error "wininet:NETCON_secure_connect SSL_connect failed: 12169" in the terminal.

From Microsoft WinINet functions error codes, the error is SSL certificate is invalid.

# wine iexplore
..
err:wininet:NETCON_secure_connect SSL_connect failed: 12169

It appears that Wine requires the root certificates to be installed in Linux. After I downloaded the VeriSign root certificates and copied all the *.pem into the dir /etc/ssl/certs , then secure https works under Wine.

Tags: Linux, Puppy-Linux, internet, testing, installation, WINE


Posted in Linux , Personal , Open-Source


Monday, 22 November, 2010

Testing Puppy Linux

I am running the latest Puppy Linux from the CD. Once the PC boots up from the CD, I can start using it. There is no installation steps! Pretty fast also!

Puppy will run totally in RAM. When you shutdown for the first time, Puppy will ask you where you want to save your personal files and settings. Puppy will see what is available and will display a menu and you just choose what you want. It's pretty simple. You can choose to save to the hard drive, or a plug-in USB drive.

It does not detect my USB mobile broadband modem (Huawei E180) automatically though. There are some system modules that are not loaded. The below steps are needed before the modem is detected (run the commands on a terminal):
modprobe usbserial
modprobe option
  1. Click on the connect icon on the Desktop
  2. It will display the Internet Connection Wizard the first time. Click on the Internet by dialup analog or wireless modem
  3. In the PupDial modem Internet Dialer, click on Choose button , and then click on the Probe button to automatically probe and setup the modem. If the USB modem is correctly detected, then the modem device will be /dev/ttyUSB0
  4. Edit the settings for Singtel mobile (Account 1 in the screenshot). Click connect.


I have an old wireless USB adapter from DLink, DWL-G120 bought years back for my old Windows. I remember that there is no Linux support for it at that time. The DWL-G120 is now supported! The system will load p54usb module and can autodetect it. Hooray! :)

Tags: Linux, Puppy-Linux, internet, wireless-network, testing, installation


Posted in Linux , Personal , Open-Source


Saturday, 13 November, 2010

HowTo Transfer Files Between Linux and Android Phone

In Android 2.2, we can just connect our computer to the phone's Wi-Fi hotspot directly without accessing a separate wireless network. The instruction below will describe the use of the phone's Wi-Fi hotspot although it is not required. (It is sufficient that your computer can access your phone through a network)

  1. On the Android phone, Select Menu > select Settings > select Wireless&networks
    Wireless&networks
  2. Select Tethering & portable hotspot
  3. Select the Portable Wi-Fi hotspot checkbox to share your data connection
    Tethering&portable hotspot
  4. If this is the first time the Wi-Fi hotspot is turned on, you should configure your phone's network SSID and password. To do that, select Portable Wi-Fi hotspot settings > select Configure Wi-Fi hotspot, then enter the values and save it.
  5. From Linux, assuming you are using NetworkManager, you can select your phone's network SSID and enter the password you have set earlier on your phone to connect to Internet via your phone's Wi-Fi hotspot. Subsequently, NetworkManager will by default auto-connect without requiring the password to be entered again.
    NetworkManager
  6. Open a terminal, and enter the route command to check your phone's IP address. In my case, the default gateway 192.168.43.1 for my wireless network interface (ra0) is my phone's IP address.

    lcm@skywind:~$ route
    Kernel IP routing table
    Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref   Use Iface
    192.168.43.0    *               255.255.255.0   U     2      0       0 ra0
    link-local      *               255.255.0.0     U     1000   0       0 ra0
    default         192.168.43.1    0.0.0.0         UG    0      0       0 ra0

  7. On your phone, download and install SwiFTP. It is FTP server for Android.
  8. Run SwiFTP. You will need to set the ftp user and password. By default, it listens on port 2121. SwiFTP
  9. Using the Linux Gnome File browser, select File menu > select Connect to Server menu, and then enter the ftp user, server and port. You can add the ftp connection as a bookmark so that you only need to enter the password subsequently.
    Connect to Server
    The File browser will prompt for the ftp user's password. Enter ftp password
    The File browser is displaying the Android phone's root folder. FileBrowser
  10. You can now use normal file operations: cut, copy, paste to transfer files between your phone and Linux. (If you prefer to use a Ftp client software, you can use that also.)

Tags: Linux, Ubuntu, Android, internet, wireless-network, user-guide, resource


Posted in Photos , Mobile , Linux , Personal , Open-Source


Monday, 8 November, 2010

Ideos Android Phone

I bought this Ideos Android Phone on Oct 9 (Singtel upgrade). There are 2 main reasons: it comes with Android 2.2 which includes the Wi-Fi hotspot feature, and it is cheap.

I cracked the phone screen on Oct 26, after about 2 weeks usage. :(

Read a Huawei Ideos review (CNET UK)

Ideos

Below is list of downloaded and installed Android applications on my phone: (The links are clickable on the Android browser)

I find out that some applications can be seen on the Android market website, but they are not available or cannot be found using my phone's Android market application.

Replica Island is an Open-source app, but the Android market app cannot find it. I download it from apkfile.net

Tags: Google, Android, internet, testing, installation, resource


Posted in Photos , Mobile , Personal , Open-Source


Sunday, 15 August, 2010

Java plugin not recognize by Ubuntu Firefox 3.6

Starting in Firefox 3.6, the Next-Generation Java™ Plug-In (libnpjp2.so) is required.

(see Bug #532174 in sun-java6 (Ubuntu): “[Lucid] sun-java6-plugin not recognized by firefox anymore)

in my system, in the dir /etc/alternatives/

the symlink
mozilla-javaplugin.so -> /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

We just need to point the symlink mozilla-javaplugin.so to the new plugin.

sudo rm mozilla-javaplugin.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so mozilla-javaplugin.so


Tags: Ubuntu, Linux, internet


Posted in Linux , Open-Source


Saturday, 15 May, 2010

Improve Client DNS lookup with Dnsmasq

dnsmasq provides a local DNS cache service that can speed up internet browsing. (see Ubuntu Dnsmasq documentation)

My mobile broadband connection is bad enough to frequently get "server name not resolved" errors. Installing dnsmasq should help.

In Ubuntu, can install with

sudo apt-get install dnsmasq

My netbook is using NetworkManager, I edit the Singtel connection setting and change the DNS servers to 127.0.0.1 . This setting is reflected in the /etc/resolv.conf

In /etc/dnsmasq.conf,  I modify the resolv-file setting to point to another resolv.conf file which should contain the name servers which dnsmasq can send/forward dns queries.

I also uncomment the no-dhcp-interface setting since I do not need another dhcp service. And, change the cache-size to a larger value.

If you want to check what are the domain names being queried, uncomment log-queries. By default, the logs are in the /var/log/syslog.

When dnsmasq receives a SIGUSR1, dnsmasq writes some statistics to the system log. With log-queries enabled, a complete dump of the contents of the cache is made.
This can be done with

sudo kill -USR1 <dnsmasq pid>

A DNS query can be tested easily with dig, like:
dig www.google.com

Tags: Ubuntu, Linux, wireless-network, internet


Posted in Linux , Open-Source , Personal