Usb pen drive recognized as audio player

There is a bug in Ubuntu Feisty (7.04). Some (for example, mine) USB pen drives are recognized as an audio player. When I plug it in, an audio player opens. And that’s not what the system is supposed to do. The bug report can be found here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hal-info/+bug/90286

Until the bug won’t be fixed, you can try to correct this small thing by yourself.

• Open a terminal
• Type “lsusb”. This will give you a list of all the USB stuff connected to your PC (some internal devices on laptops such as webcams may also appear in the list).
• Detect your USB pen drive (mine was: Bus 005 Device 006: ID 090c:1000 Feiya Technology Corp. Memory Bar)
• Type ” cd /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/” this will lead you in the directory we’re going to work on.
• Type “sudo gedit 10-usb-music-players.fdi” this will open the file to be modified.
• Remove the entry related to your drive. Mine was:

<!– Feiya Technology Corp Memory Bar –>

<match key=”@storage.originating_device:usb.vendor_id” int=”0×090c”>
<match key=”@storage.originating_device:usb.product_id” int=”0×1000″>
<merge key=”portable_audio_player.type” type=”string”>generic</merge>
<merge key=”portable_audio_player.access_method” type=”string”>storage</merge>
<append key=”portable_audio_player.input_formats” type=”strlist”>audio/mpeg</append>
</match>

</match>

• Save and close

• When you plug in your pen drive again, everything should be fine

I really think this bug will be corrected in the new Ubuntu version (Gusty Gibbon, 18th october 2007). If not, you now know how to temporally fix it. If you encountered this problem, please report your experience to the link above (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hal-info/+bug/90286). The more info we have, the best it is.

Have fun using Ubuntu!

Customizing Ubuntu (look)

I’ve been using Ubuntu for a while now (almost one year). For those who don’t know what Ubuntu is, I suggest you to follow this links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu
• http://www.ubuntuforums.org

This operating system is really amazing. At the beginning it was quite hard to use (it’s quite normal if you have been always using Windows) but after a while… well, I understood how powerful, nice and everything this system was. The most important thing to me is that it is fully FREE, it’s developed by the community and everybody can help (even with small things) to it’s growth.

In this article, I’d like to summarize what I know about Ubuntu look, and how to customize it. Let’s start with a small list of terms:

• Splash Screen: the small window which is showed after inserting username/password (loading OS)
• Icon Theme: sets of Icons

Well, this was nothing special. A good place to look for new graphical stuff is http://www.gnome-look.org . They have quite a lot of cool stuff there, and you can submit your own works if you want to. Let’s talk about how to install different stuffs:

Installing a Theme
This is actually quite simple, but not that simple if you don’t know where to press the right button. Go on System -> Preferences – > Theme. There, select “Install new Theme”. Browse your PC until you find the right tar.gz file (which is a compressed file). Ubuntu will decompress it automatically and install the theme. DON’T decompress the file by yourself (it’s not dangerous obviously, but it’s not necessary). Another way is that of dragging the tar.gz file into the themes window. It will have exactly the same effect.

Installing an Icon Theme
Icon themes are stets of icons which can be used with every theme. To install such a theme: System -> Preferences -> Theme -> Customize -> Icons -> Install and select the tar.gz file you downloaded. The way of installin this kind of themes is exactly the same as that for installing “normal” themes. Even when installing this kind of themes, you can drag/drop the tar.gz file in the window.

Changing splash

Well, this is just a little bit trickier that installing a Theme. Be sure you downloaded a PNG (image) file to use as splash. The default splash screen is saved in a special directory into your home. “~/.gnome/” will lead you there otherwise (same thing) /home/yourname/.gnome/. Into this directory you will find a file called “splash.png”. Well, rename that file to “splash_old.png” (or whatever you want) and put in this directory the file you want to use as splash, renaming it to “splash.png”. Well done, next time you log in you’ll see your new splash (you can reboot the X session by pressing CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE).