when you 've lost admin rights

I couldn't access my cdrom drives and it had something to do with the user rights. A short while later I could access my drives but had lost admin rights!!

The quickest solution I found and tried was:
Reboot, when entering the grub menu press c to prevent further booting. Choose: Ubuntu recovery mode. Then you get a menu: choose work in terminal
and enter: usermod -a -G admin username

After that's done (without feedback) type reboot.
Other useful commands
To get info on your cdrom drives: dmesg | grep CD-ROM
b.t.w. the command that got me into trouble was:
first: usermod -G cdrom username
and then:
chmod 660 /dev/(name drive)
found with
ls -la / media
or
ls -la /dev/cdrom*

Change username into your own username.

Howto spot which ports are active

"I like to use netstat -ntulp that will show everything that is listening tcp and udp and the ip that it is listening on."

Making Keybindings in OpenBox more accessible with Conky

Open box is a wonderful clean window manager that is very low on resources when you start an openbox session. And if you use the wonderful Tranquility Open box theme computung starts to get really nice. (Don't miss the wonderful pine background).

The best place to start is Urukrama weblog that has a very clear and easy install guide for Open box and all kind of extra possiblities to enrich the OpenBox environment.
When I was asked to prepare a pc for a 12 year old child on a old 500 mhz Pentium my thoughts immediately were about how to make the OpenBox environment easy and super user-friendly.
In the Crunchbang distro. that I didn't want to use I saw how conky was used as a reminder for keybindings for starting programs. In openBox keybindings are very easily set in the rc.xml file in ./config/openbox. There is a gui program that is to be used when setting a theme for instance, Obconfig, a fine program but without the possibility to set keybindings. The basics are explained here.
Urukrama gives some suggestions for using keybindings to start programs. Here is what I have defined as keybindings.



And here is the .conkyrc file that comes with it and is palced in the ./home folder:

# conky configuration
#
# The list of variables has been removed from this file in favour
# of keeping the documentation more maintainable.
# Check http://conky.sf.net for an up-to-date-list.
#
# For ideas about how to modify conky, please see:
# http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/59/my-conky-config/
#
# For help with conky, please see:
# http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/2047/conky-help/
#
# Enjoy! :)
##############################################
# Settings
##############################################
background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Sans:size=8
xftalpha 1
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_transparent no
own_window_type desktop
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 200
maximum_width 240
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color white
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 12
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no
##############################################
# Output
##############################################
TEXT
SYSTEM INFO:
${hr}
Host:$alignr$nodename
Uptime:$alignr$uptime
RAM:$alignr$mem/$memmax
Swap usage:$alignr$swap/$swapmax
Disk usage:$alignr${fs_used /}/${fs_size /}
CPU usage:$alignr${cpu cpu0}%


SHORTCUT KEYS:
${hr}
Alt+F2$alignr Run Dialog
Alt+F3$alignr Alt Menu
Super+space$alignr Programma Menu
Super+tab$alignr Client Menu
Super+t$alignr Terminal
Super+f$alignr Bestanden
Super+e$alignr Tekstje
Super+m$alignr Mediaspeler
Super+w$alignr Web Browser
Super+g$alignr Graphics Editor
Super+a$alignr Afbeeldingen
Super+l$alignr Word
Super+p$alignr Programma Paneel
Super+b$alignr Branden
Super+o$alignr Logout
PrtSc$alignr Screenshot

B.t.w you can find a wonderful closedown menu and script here (Python).

There was an error starting the GNOME Settings Daemon

This error was bugging me intensely, mainly because I couldn't find a solution anywhere. From a debug message it was clear it had to do something with a gstreamer update; after removing some gstreamer plugins the problem wasn't solved. This was the solution:

I got a similar error. According to the man page there are some debug options --debug and -no-daemon

I tried

gnome-settings-daemon --debug --no-daemon

from a console

and I got an error message about segfaults with ffmpeg.

ERROR: Caught a segmentation fault while loading plugin file:
/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstffmpeg.so

Please either:
- remove it and restart.
- run with --gst-disable-segtrap and debug.

I renamed the file to .old and this let the settings daemon start.

source: http://www.debianhelp.org/node/6711

Solved icons problems

Got some very nasty icon problems and part of the upper panel was gone; for instance volume control and logout button; installed lxappearence:
http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php/LXAppearance.
This made new custum settings very easy to set and to experiment with

Information independance: how to import GMail onto your local pc

For different reasons it is wise to import the email you have on GMail to your local pc.
First install Thunderbird:

sudo aptitude install mozilla-thunderbird

Act upon the info given here.
So install the webmail plugin by going here and downloading the xpi file to a local folder (right click and save as). You first have to install the Webmail add on and after that the GMail add on (or Yahoo etc.):

1. In Mozilla Thunderbird, open the extension manager (Tools Menu/Extensions).
2. Click the Install button, and locate/select the file you downloaded and click "OK".

After you have installed both (restart Thunderbird each time) you can add your gmail account. In Thunderbird: edit, account settings, add account and provide the needed information.

Restored sound after update Pulse Audio

After an update from pulse audio no sound (Hardy).
Alt+ F2 and run gstreamer-properties, selected Alsa as default output plugin ( was default) and sound returned again.