Nokia E6-00 notification light change keymat fix

I recently changed my phone from a Nokia E72 to E6-00. If you did the same, you will have noticed the lack of a notification light. More precisely, the lack of a transparent D-pad makes it impossible for the breathing notification light to be seen. This is known issue and has been acknowledged by Nokia as a hardware fault repairable under warranty. The fix is a new keymat with a transparent ring on the D-pad.

I however bought the handset second hand and don’t have warranty. Here’s a quick guide how to get your handset fixed anyway. Basically you have two options, either send in your handset and pay for the repair or just order the spare part and do it yourself. If you choose to let it be repaired you’ll find the necessary information in the Nokia Support section, look for ‘online repair’. By January 2013 Nokia Europe seems to have made massive changes to its partner network. All Nokia Care Points I usually visited have lost their license and there is only one company left as a Nokia partner. So if you choose the other way, first you need to find your nearest repair partner. It’s best to contact Nokia for that, as of today the Nokia homepage still lists non-existing care points.

Once you have found your nearest distributor for Nokia spare parts, explain them the problem and order the spare. They offered me to do the repair for 60€, but I refused and insisted on the spare part only. You might have to assure them that you know what you’re doing and that you do it on your own risk. Once I convinced them, they sent me the part withing two days for 17€.

Now, all you need is a size 4 Torx screwdriver, a filed off plectrum and a fine forceps. Check out the Nokia E6-00 service manual and follow it until step 18. In this state you can remove and change the keymat and reassemble the handset by reversing the steps. I reused all the parts and the whole process took me about 15min.

Compiz bug fix: scale plugin (aka. exposé) only shows current workspace

Ubuntu 12.04 suffers from a regression bug in Compiz, when activating the scale plugin with the key combination Super+W only the windows of the current workspace are shown. The released fix has been taken back because of troubles implementing the fix without breaking any shortcuts.

Here is a PPA containing the fix. Execute the following command consecutively.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:timo-jyrinki/compiz-12.04-fix-933776
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install compiz

After a restart Super+W should bring up all windows from all workspaces.

Canon LBP6000 does not print in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (64-bit)

Save yourself the trouble and do not buy a Canon LBP6000 laser printer!
It will not run under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Panglion" (32-/64-bit).

Just a quick notice on a printer I recently bought totally confident with my previous excellent Ubuntu printer support experience. Previous laser printers I had like two of the Brother HL line (HL-2030 and HL-2070N) worked out-of-the-box. Not so with the LBP6000.

I spent several hours trying every trick I found on the web. There is quite a number of users struggling with this printer. My conclusion after a weekend of try and constant error is that the LBP6000 does not print under Ubuntu 12.04. I tried both 32- and 64-bit Ubuntus. Basically I’m presented with the problem presented here. It apparently installs flawlessly, however refuses to print a page.

It seems though, as if the printer was working on previous Ubuntu versions, but not on todays most recent LTS version (october 2012).

PDF printer in Wine applications

I’m using MS Office under Wine once in a while. As I work a lot with PDF files I constantly miss the option to quickly save/print a PDF version of a Doc(x) file without the need for additional software.

You won’t get around installing additional software, however it couldn´t be made any easier. You just need to install the package cups-pdf from your standard repositories.

sudo apt-get install cups-pdf

Restart whatever application want to print with and you’ll hopefully find a PDF printer in the Wine printer dialog. Your PDF will be in a new folder in your home directory called  ”PDF”. I tested this under Ubuntu 12.04.

Cuttlefish Unity app indicator icon fix for Ubuntu 12.04

My last post was about Cuttlefish. What I did not mention, is a little annoyance with the indicator icon under Ubuntu 12.04 using Unity. It does not really fit into the monchrome indicator app menu.

The application is installed to /opt/ and even comes with a monochrome indicator app icon. However it is no used by default, so I was constantly distracted by the alien purple icon in the indicator bar. Here is an easy fix to the problem:

cd /opt/extras.ubuntu.com/cuttlefish/share/cuttlefish/media
sudo cp tentacle_indicator.png tentacle_indicator.png.old
sudo cp cuttlefish_indicator.png tentacle_indicator.png

The middle command backs up the original indicator file before overwriting it in the next step with the monochrome icon. Of course you can replace the icon with whatever icon you wish. However, being a cuttlefish user I’m obviously very lazy, so that’s enough of a fix for me for this cosmetic problem.

Switch device-specific Xmodmaps upon USB event with Cuttlefish

I described in an earlier post how to switch keyboard bindings on an Apple keyboard using Ubuntu using Xmodmap. Now, this works great, however I do use the external keyboard just at home with my laptop docking station. When on the move it gave me the unpleasant side-effect that the keybindings on the laptops keyboard were switched too, making the previous fix on the external keyboard a pain on the laptop keyboard.

This is Cuttlefish enters the game, it was created within the 2012 Ubuntu App Showdown and was one of the best submissions. It is a tool that helps you trigger a specific event upon a defined stimulus. In my case I have two possible stimuli, either the external keyboard is connected or it is not. For either scenario there is a reaction described in the above figure.

 

Using this setup it enables me to type on either keyboard as I am used to. Cuttlefish can be installed via PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noneed4anick/cuttlefish
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cuttlefish

Recover images from SD card using PhotoRec

For whatever reason you might find yourself one day missing all your pictures form your digital cameras SD card. No need to be desperate, there is a great piece of open-source software called PhotoRec that can help. Although it sports no GUI it’s not really necessary after all, it’s pretty straightforward.

In Ubuntu 12.04 you can install it via the Software Center choosing the metapackage testdisk. After successful installation PhotoRec can be started in a terminal (Alt-Ctrl-T) by the command

sudo photorec

Here choose your device and filesystem you’ll like to recover data from and a destination with sufficient space where to save the recovered data. Recovering a full 8GB SD card took approx. 10h for me, so maybe plan an overnight recovery.