Quick Tips

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German Keyboard Layout in Xming

via Xming arguments

Add "-xkbmodel pc105 -xkblayout de" to the startup arguments in the Xming shortcut

in terminal

With "loadkeys de" you can set to german keyboard for the current session.

via dpkg

run "dpkg-reconfigure console-data" to run the setup.


pulsaudio tools

In the linux vm you have these pulsaudio tools:

  • paman - PulsAudio Manager
  • pavucontrol - PulseAudio Volume Control
  • pavumeter - PulseAudio Volume Meter
  • padevchooser - PulseAudio Device Chooser
  • paprefs - PulseAudio Preferences

more information: http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/AboutPulseAudio#RelatedSoftware


change date/timezone

run "dpkg-reconfigure tzdata" to change the timezone.


save disk space

If you use NTFS online compression you can save much hard disk space, because the disk images contains many unused Bytes.

create a normal user

Use useradd -m username to create a new non-root user, with a homedir.

Make a normal user the default user

The default andLinux user is a root account without password. The following shows how to make a normal user the default account.

Add passwords (optional)

If desired, use the "passwd" command directly on each account to set a password. If logged in as root, any account password may be changed using: 

> passwd <username>

Install sudo (if required)

sudo isn't always installed with andLinux. To be sure it's available log in as root and type: 

> apt-get install sudo

Change the default user

  1. Edit /usr/bin/X11/startwindowsterminalsession and replace 'root' with your new username.
  2. Add this user to /etc/sudoers, for example, supposing a username of "newuser" by typing "sudo visudo" in the terminal 
# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
newuser ALL=(ALL) ALL

For the version 0.7.4 (Beta2 Final)

  • We can change the default user at "/etc/andlinux/xsession_cmd" file: 
   sux - <current_default_user> /usr/local/sbin/launcher.pl

by replacing <current_default_user> with whatever name we wish to use.

  • For the sudoers case, as long as we add user to admin group, we can bypass modifying the "/etc/sudoers" file.

(For this version of andLinux, I've found cobuntu as a default user and all my xfce or kde programs are launched under the cobuntu name until I've change it to my username at the xsession_cmd file.)

Change Launcher Port

To change the launcher port, both the windows registry and launcher.pl within the andLinux root filesystem need editing. Here's how:

windows

Non-root-users can't use ports <1024. As we'll now be defaulting to a non-root user the launcher must use a port greater than 1024, e.g. 8081. To edit the windows registry to suit the new port number, first create a text file with the following content: 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\andLinux\Launcher]
"IP"="192.168.11.150"
"Port"=dword:00001f91

then rename it to "Launcher.reg". Run this file to edit the registry. The Port number (shown in bold) is coded in HEX, and means 8081. If other values are required, windows calculator can be used in scientific mode to convert between hex and decimal.

Look also at FAQ - Changing the Launcher Port

linux vm

edit /usr/local/sbin/launcher.pl and change LocalPort. Reboot.

Change Permissions of windows disk

Normally the windows disk in is mounted as root, so a non root user is not allowed to write to the windows disk in /mnt/win.

Change cofuse permissions

The mount options for cofuse are not documented very well. Here's how to edit /etc/fstab to make a non-root user the owner of /mnt/win.

/etc/fstab: 

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>               <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults                0       0
tmpfs           /dev/shm        tmpfs   defaults                0       0
none            /dev/pts        devpts  gid=5,mode=620          0       0
/dev/cobd0 / ext3 defaults 1 1
31 /mnt/and cofs defaults 0 0
/dev/cobd1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/cofs0 /mnt/win cofs defaults 0 0
/dev/cofs0 /mnt/win cofs defaults,uid=1001,gid=100 0 0

The uid parameter in the last line is the important one and should be set to match the ID of the user needing write access to /mnt/win. By default the first user's id will be 1001, but to check use the "id" command: 

> id <username>

for example, for a username of "newuser": 

newuser@andLinux:~$ id newuser
uid=1001(newuser) gid=1001(newuser) groups=1001(newuser)
newuser@andLinux:~$

The mode option is not supported by the cofuse, so it is not possible to change the file permissions in general.

Alternative approach

In the event of difficulty changing permissions, and provided sudo has been set up, it's possible to simply prefix all commands which write to /mnt/win with "sudo" in order to use root privilege. In this way the default cofuse setup will still be sufficient, but normal operations can be performed with normal user privilege.

Change default shell

You may find that the default shell for the new user (/bin/sh) isn't the one you want. To change the shell, use the "chsh" program. Available shells are shown in /etc/shells. Bash is a popular choice, for example: 

sh-3.2$ chsh
Password: 
Changing the login shell for newuser
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
        Login Shell [/bin/sh]: /bin/bash
sh-3.2$

Following this, the next terminal started will use bash: 

newuser@andLinux:~$

Alternative way of starting Linux programs

XFCE panel and andLinux Launcher are nice, but I want the least possible number of special objects on my Windows desktop. I just need a terminal emulator, as I can start all programs from the shell. The andCmd.exe binary comes in handy here. I have created two Windows batch files (for a root and a normal user shell): 

C:\Programme\andLinux\Launcher\andCmd.exe xterm -bg orange

C:\Programme\andLinux\Launcher\andCmd.exe sudo su - ah -c xterm

Of course the chosen terminal emulator (as well as the background color of the root shell ;-) ) is a matter of taste.