Setting up TV tuner cards.

We should ensure we have the latest development V4L (Video For Linux) driver for the TV tuner to work.
Here are the steps in installing the latest V4L drivers.

In a terminal window type in the following to install gcc, mercurial and the kernel headers:
sudo apt-get install patchutils libproc-processtable-perl build-essential git-core linux-headers-`uname -r` 

You may be asked for your password with the above commands, type it in and press Enter.
Move to the /usr/src/ folder with:
cd /usr/src 

Download the latest V4L drivers with:
sudo git clone git://linuxtv.org/media_build.git 

Move into the newly created folder with:
cd media_build 

Now start the building process with:
sudo ./build 
This will take a while.

Finally we install these drivers with:
sudo make install 

Reboot your computer and the newer V4L drivers will be used.
Please note that if Ubuntu/Mint release a updated kernel you will have to go through the above steps again.

Get rid of that pesky Caps Lock key!

To get rid of the Caps Lock key, we just need to use xmodmap.

Open a terminal and enter:
$ xmodmap -e "remove lock = Caps_Lock" 
Now caps key is disabled.

To enable caps key, enter:
$ xmodmap -e "add lock = Caps_Lock" 

Enter the following code to add it permanently to your shell startup file ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile file: $ echo 'xmodmap -e "remove lock = Caps_Lock"' >> ~/.bash_profile

If the above doesn't work, use the setxkbmap command instead.

To turn off caps lock key, enter:
$ setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps 

To reset caps lock. enter:
$ setxkbmap -option

Install Chrome on Mint

Here's a quick how-to to get Google Chrome on Linux Mint.
1. Open a terminal window.
2. Type in these three commands and hit <enter> after each one.
wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

That's it :-)

VPN issue and solution

As I am allowed to work from home twice a week, I needed the ability to connect via Cisco AnyConnect VPN. I was told that under Linux I should use the free OpenConnect software, as work colleagues do.
Try as I might I could not get access to some work servers. That traffic was being routed over my non-VPN connection. Why was only some of the traffic doing this? I'm no networking guru but I managed to fix it quite simply.
On a PC that could access all of the servers, I simply pinged the problem servers like:
$ ping google.com
This returned the following information:
PING google.com (74.125.237.104) 56(84) bytes of data.
Then I opened the hosts file as root:
$ sudo gedit /etc/hosts
and added the IP number followed by the URL:
74.125.237.104  google.com
Finally save and close the file and hey presto, problem solved.

Adding Multiple User logins to Mint 13

I discovered that if my screensaver locks the desktop, only my account can unlock it. What a pain! Thankfully using some google-fu I found the answer. Simply open a terminal and type the following command:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/mdmflexiserver /usr/bin/gdmflexiserver
That simple command creates a symbolic (soft) link to fix user switching.