Fridge won't make ice? Kenmore Coldspot

My ice maker in my side-by-side Kenmore Coldspot fridge stopped making ice suddenly, so once the supply in the hopper was exhausted, I started to diagnose it.

Google searches gave me a bunch of nonsense about replacing the icemaker component, but come on... I removed the door to the ice maker and up at the top is the water dispenser that fills the tray where the ice is made. And behold a icicle hanging down blocking the water.

I grabbed wifey's blow dryer and warmed the dispenser and the ice pushed it's way out and then the water tray filled up. Now it's all working.

That's it. Your mileage may vary.

Remote desktop for Kubuntu

There's a build-in remote desktop server but it's either immature or it I don't have it configured properly. Go To Start->Internet->krfb (Desktop Sharing). To configure it for always on (for example, when you want to work from home), press Configure and check the "Allow uninvited connections" and uncheck the "Confirm uninvited connections. Set a password to help prevent unauthorized accesses.

When you get fed up with krfb crashing, install Xrealvnc. Running it with a ":1" parameter sets up a new window running the configured desktop. While you won't have access to currently running applications on the default desktop (:0), you will have access to the panel. From the remote computer, use a VNC viewing program with the URL vnc:/{hostname or ip}:1.

Currently, I use the following steps to work from home:

1. Establish VPN connection to network.
2. SSH into my remote box (acting as the server)
3. Launch "Xrealvnc :1"
4. Launch Kubuntu's Krdc and use the URL: vnc:/192.9.200.37:1

You could also use any old vnc viewer, adjusting the URL as appropriate.

THIS JUST IN:

Alternatively, installing x11vnc and running it as the vnc server will share the running desktop when connected to with a vnc viewer client. It's my new preferred method to work from home.

Now if I could only get my VPN connection configured properly in Kubuntu Gutsy.

Samba configuration on Debian Linux for accessing fileshares from Windows

After much hunting and well written how-to articles, I found that it boils down to this:

1. Either log in as root, or sudo each of these commands.
2. Edit your /etc/samba/smb.conf file to add whatever shares you need to access from a Windows computer. Here's a sample of mine

[docroot]
path=/var/www
writable=yes
invalid users=%S

3. Add a samba user:

smbpasswd -a {username}

4. Restart Samba

/etc/init.d/samba restart

5. Access your new share from Explorer or IE with the IP address of the computer backslash the name of the share. In my case:

\\192.168.1.106\docroot

Windows will prompt for the userid and password. Use the values you supplied to the smbpasswd command. You may have to preceed the userid with the hostname of the server (for example: 192.168.1.106\rick).

Network configuration woes with Debian

Trying to resurrect an ancient computer to use it as a low-powerer (wattage) file server/web server. After install Debian, couldn't communicate on the network.

Used ifconfig -a to show all the network interfaces. For some reason, eth2 was the selected choice.

Edited /etc/network/interfaces and changed references for eth0 to eth2. Then just did a ifup eth2, and behold the transmission of bits over my twisted pairs.

Other good commands to help diagnose the problems:

lspci - List all the PCI devices
lsmod - List modules loaded into the running kernel
modprobe -l - List all available modules

Correcting time problems in Kubuntu

After a serious misstep during a Grub correction, I installed a base install over my existing install. This resulted in network configuration going away and timezone problems. I fixed the network configuration easily enough, but the timezone stuff drove me crazy.

I finally found a post referencing the command tzconfig, which resolved my problems. Run it as follows:

$ sudo tzconfig

It will ask about your timezone and magically correct problems. My problems were with the desktop clock, the timestamp on Pidgin messages and the creation times of files created with Eclipse.

Adding default startup applications to Kubuntu

I wanted to have my gmail notifier start up with KDE on my Kubuntu 7.04 installation, so I Googled how to do it. Although the post I found was either incorrect or outdated, it let me down the right path.

To add a startup application, go to your .kde directory, then to the Autostart directory. In here, create a soft link to the application you wish to start.

$ cd
$ cd .kde
$ cd Autostart
$ ln -s /usr/bin/checkgmail checkgmail

Log out and login again and you should see the checkgmail application start.

Additionally, the checkgmail application is a Linux taskbar tool that monitors (unfortunately) one gmail account for new mail. Very much like the one Google makes for Win/Mac users. Highly recommended.

How to make Firefox built-in search open a new browser tab

I wanted to make Firefox 2's search window open a new tab rather then updating the current tab with the search results. After searching far and wide, I found that entering about:config in the address area brings up a geeky browser configuration page.

The setting I wanted was:

browser.search.openintab

Double-click that entry to toggle it from false to true, and you're there.