Monthly Archives: October 2007

VirtualBox and Ubuntu Gutsy

Yea, Ubuntu Gutsy is out!! Just updated my system using the instructions on the kubuntu site. After the upgrade – about 20 minutes – even my mysterious ATI drivers still work perfectly.

Unfortunately, the ubuntu guys decided to remove the usbfs from Gutsy. As virtualbox relies on this system for usb support > no usb support in virtualbox under linux.

As a quick workaround edit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh and remove the comment #’s from the following lines:

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
#mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
#domount usbfs “” /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
#ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
#mount –rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Running /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh start afterwards reenables the usbfs, virtualbox is happy again 🙂

The magic Border and Others in Openoffice

Openoffice is quite nice once you know what you have to do. Personal note about one of my issues follows 🙂

Borders: One of the nice features OpenOffice copied from the Redmond company is the abilty to add a vertical line under a parapgraph. Comes quite handy if you are writing down some simple calculations. But how to delete this line?

Well, as written in this Document, the line is declared as bottom border for the preceding parapraph. So, to delete the line do the following:

To delete the created line, click the paragraph above the line, choose Format – Paragraph – Borders, delete the bottom border.

There are also nifty features available for generating different line styles etc. Just play with —-, ***, ###

Headers on different pages: If you want to add different header for the first page the page templates in the stylist are your friend. For the page template to edit open the stylist, select the page template section. Either define your template to use "first page" as first page and default page for the following pages or do it the other way round. Doesn’t matter actually.

 

Eagle Commands

Some handy commands for the PCB layout software Eagle from cadsoft.de that are not readily available via the menu buttons… you may see this as a personal reminder that these commands exist :-9

Ever wondered how to draw the name of a network or a bus next to the wire of a schema? Label is your friend. Select the <label> command, select the wire and place the text.

Some ICs are shipped with hidden power pins, something I never do in my own libraries. Here the eagle naming convention holds true that all pins of equal name are connected. To bad if you are using a different power pin naming scheme. With invoke these previously hidden power pins are shown in the schema.

Btw – objects with identical names are connected E. g. just draw short wires for SCL and SCK and name them accordingly. Then, wherever you need I2C just hook up two short wires with the sames names. Eagle will assume these wires are connected, voila! Quite handy to cleanup a convoluted and chaotic schema.