Author Archives: Richard

VirtualBox disk size

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I use VirtualBox on an almost daily basis.

As I now use Linux Mint as my operating system of choice, I need some way to run a few programmes that are specific to Windows, such as Windows Live Writer (which I am using to write this!).

A long time ago I set up a Virtual Machine to run Windows 7.  I installed Live Writer and Office (which I never managed to install via Wine despite claims that it can be done).  Since then, I backup my “VirtualBox VMs” folder and restore it after any upgrade.  My Windows 7 therefore remains pristine and fully working.

Lately however I have been running close to full disk capacity in my VM, with only 1Gb to spare.  My first thought was to create a new VM and install a copy of Windows 7 there.  That worked with no problems as I expected, however try as I might I cannot get Live Writer to work properly.  Of the three blogs I work on, one loads with no problems whatsoever, the second connects but refuses to recognise the theme and the third won’t even recognise the fact that it’s a WordPress installation.  All three blogs have identical setups so I am baffled as to the cause of this.

The solution to my problem I have now discovered is extremely easy.  I simply increased the size of my virtual hard drive.

Open a terminal in home/VirtualBox VMs  and CD into the folder that contains the virtual Machine (in my case it was “Win 7”).  Then run the command

VBoxManage modifyhd “Win 7.vdi” –resize 30000

That’s it!

Naturally you need to change the “Win 7.vdi” bit to your own VM name (and the quotes are necessary if there is a space in the name), and set your own new disk size (the number is Mb, so 30000 = 30Gb).  Note also that there are two dashes in “–resize”.

There is one further step though.  Running your VM will still show the old disk size, which may cause a moment of frustration or even panic!  The reason is that you have increased the hard disk but with an unformatted area.

In my case I simply went into Windows’ Disk Management (enter “partition” into Search to find it) and expanded my current disk to fill the new free space.

My Windows 7 Virtual Machine now has an extra 10Gb of free space!

Simple Scan not finding a scanner

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I recently did a full format and reinstall of Linux Mint 13.

I installed the MATE version from DVD but installed Cinnamon on top, and am using that as my default desktop.

As part of the build, I had to connect to my printer.  It’s a Hewlett Packard Officejet J4680 wireless multi-function printer and it is well supported by Linux.

Setting up the printer was no problem at all.  However, when I went to test the scanner I ran into problems.  While I could print pages to my heart’s content, Simple Scan just flatly refused to recognise the scanner.

I searched the Internet and found a few people with the same problem, but no solutions.

It then occurred to me that the setup of the printer had actually been too easy!  It just connected and that was that, with no downloading of drivers or anything.  I disconnected the printer and logged into MATE.  I went to reconnect the printer and it promptly downloaded the drivers.  Even better, Simple Scan now worked.

I logged back into Cinnamon and all works smoothly.

It’s not an elegant solution to the problem, but it did solve it.

Video and audio playback too fast

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I came across an interesting problem today.

I have just reinstalled my full system of Linux Mint 13 MATE/Cinnamon and all is working well bar one fault – I tried to play a YouTube video and it played back at at least twice the speed.  Naturally audio was non-existent too.

My first suspect was the browser, so I tried running a local MP4 file in Gnome Movie Player and ran into the same problem which eliminated the browser or any plugins.

The culprit, as I discovered is Pulse Audio.

I have Pulse Audio Volume Control installed and found the solution straight off – I went into the Configuration tab and set my soundcard configuration to "off".

All videos now work normally as does sound.

Fixing the unbroken

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

For many months now I have been using Linux Mint 13 MATE edition.

While I had no major complaints about MATE, there were a few features of Cinnamon I thought I might like.  I decided to change.

I backed up my /home partition just in case, and then installed Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon, formatting the root partition but leaving the /home partition as it was.  All went smoothly.

I played around with Cinnamon for a couple of days and decided that yes, my decision to switch was a good one, apart from the fact that the system seemed to be a bit slower.

Being a bit of an experimenter, I decided to update Cinnamon to the Nightly version to see what lay in the future.  This was a mistake.  I immediately ran into problems with my ATI video and some of the minor features of Cinnamon failed to work, such as the ability to customise it.

For a couple more days, I worked with my new setup but the more I worked with it, the slower it seemed to become.  It reached the stage where the disadvantages heavily outweighed the advantages and I decided to cut my losses and return to MATE.

Once again, I took the lazy way out and left my /home partition alone while reinstalling Linux Min 13 MATE.

Very soon I was back to where I started with my original setup and configuration.  I reinstalled all my applications and all went well.

The problem now was that I missed the features of Cinnamon.  I decided in a fit of madness to install Cinnamon Desktop on top of MATE, so at least I would have a choice if I got too frustrated with one desktop or the other.

To my surprise, Cinnamon works very well on top of MATE.  Naturally, all the settings from my previous install of Cinnamon were intact so it worked straight away just as I wanted it.  It appears to be a lot faster that the standalone Cinnamon version, and I have been using it all this week with no problems whatsoever.

A major bonus that resulted from all this messing around is my new choice of Desktops –

Logon Screen

I not only have a choice of MATE or Cinnamon, I also can run Gnome Classic, or even Ubuntu.  As a bonus, I can run XBMC as my desktop.  This is my preferred Media Platform which I installed as a programme.

I am very happy with this setup.  It is running very smoothly and the only thing I can’t do is upgrade Cinnamon to the Nightly version.    That was a hard lesson.

“If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it”?

Rubbish!

Mint 14 Nadia and Remote Access

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I see preparatory work has started on Linux Mint 14 (“Nadia”).

I just hope they integrate Remote Desktop properly on this release.

I wrote some time ago about the difficulties I had with enabling Remote Desktop on 13.  That page has become the most popular page on this site by a factor of about ten.

This is a sample of keywords used to reach here –

Keywords

Let’s hope they don’t make the same mistake with 14?