Raspberry Pi’s New Wifi Manager Friend WICD

I know of no better way than getting WiFi to connect automatically than using the wonderful wicd-curses package. So, here’s how to do it:

1. Plug your wifi dongle in. I cannot impress on you enough how important this is
2. If you’ve not done it already, login as root and install wicd-curses:
   1. apt-get install wicd-curses
3. Run it. Just type
   1. wicd-curses
4. You’re given the wicd interface. You probably haven’t got anything showing yet, so do Shift-R to refresh the network scan.
5. Use the arrow keys to highlight your router and press –>
6. Go down and hit space when you reach the Automatic connection checkbox.
7. Then, go down to the password field and put your wifi router password in.
8. Hit F10 to save the settings and you’ll go back to the first screen.
9. Highlight your router if it’s not already and hit shift-C to connect.
10. Hopefully, this will connect you. If not, check your password!
11. Do shift-Q to come out of wicd.
12. Type ifconfig -a and you should see your wlan0 connected to your router and your ip address displayed.

The beauty of doing it like this rather than via the command line is that wicd runs as a daemon when your Pi starts up and will automatically connect to the network without you doing anything else.

NB: You may have to wait a minute or so for it to connect.

Installing the Google Chrome Windows Media Player Plugin to fix Media Player Issues

Ive found that some people come across with the issue when trying to play some media content on and you get a nice grey box instead of the content.

Sometimes VLC would step in if you have it installed and use the VLC Web Plugin like so.

But for those of you without VLC you get this. (click to enlarge)

This is simple to fix you need to install the WMPChrome.crx Plugin file. Downloading is easy you 2 locations to retrieve it from. The WLC Dropbox Folder or the site suggested.

Dropbox - https://www.dropbox.com/s/es9p7m9l61rx2jp/wmpChrome.crx

Suggested Site - http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/wmp-extension-for-chrome

I am writing this for the visual aspect for those who are learning their computers.

The instructions from the site are simple enough to follow but for those who like images ill stretch it out for you.

First you need to download the plugin once you have downloaded it you need to navigate to the folder you downloaded it too

Now you need to open Google Chrome’s Extention Page

In the web address bar at the top type Chrome://extentions

Now you need to drag the WMPChrome.crx file into the window. so you click and hold the file then drag your cursor onto the chrome extensions page.

Then you get a window popup asking if you want to add Windows Media Player Plugin

Just click Add

You get a message popup on completion

and its installed

also you will see the media player on the webpage you tried to view

All complete.

Enjoy and comment if you don’t understand.

Switching Apache MPM Prefork to Apache MPM Worker simply

The drawback to doing everything with processes is that Apache prefork can be a bit of a memory hog, especially under load. Another precompiled flavor of Apache can be installed as an alternative:Apache MPM worker. "Worker" differs from "prefork" in that worker's processes are multithreaded, giving them the ability to service more requests with fewer system resources. This can translate into faster pages served with less RAM and CPU. However, because some Apache modules don't necessarily work well when run under multithreaded Apache, you have to specifically select this version to install on Ubuntu and on other GNU/Linux distros with package management.
Apache comes by default as mpm-prefork.
But you will want to instead use mpm-worker, as it will use less memory and be more efficient.
To use the “worker” MPM with PHP, do the following:
Step 1. Stop the apache2 daemon
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop
Step 2.  Uninstall apache2-mpm-prefork
sudo aptitude remove apache2-mpm-prefork
Step 3.  Install apache2-mpm-worker and apache2-threaded-dev
sudo aptitude install apache2-mpm-worker apache2-threaded-dev
Step 4. Enable CGI and mod_actions (may already be enabled)
sudo a2enmod cgid2sudo a2enmod actions
Step 5.  Create a file in /etc/apache2/conf.d with the following content (I called mine php5-cgi.conf):
<IfModule mod_actions.c>2 Action application/x-httpd-php /cgi-bin/php53</IfModule>
Step 6.  Start the apache2 daemon
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

Another way is this way by PCJonathan

Installing Flash and Java in Raspbian On Raspberry Pi

Using midori it doesn’t show flash or java and deems the plugin missing.
To install flash first load your terminal
and insert the following code:
sudo apt-get install browser-plugin-gnash

Give it time it may take a while to install so have plenty of paitience.
Next you need to install Java
So enter the following code:
sudo apt-get install icedtea-plugin

The two plugins are compatible with all browsers that supports loading NPAPI browser plugins.
Famous browsers like Firefox, Chromium and Moidori do support NPAPI.
and in result the flash starts to load the chat box on Doctor Who Media

Please share and comment I'm open to helping the best i can.

Fixing MP4 when you can hear but not see a Embedded Online Video

A while ago I got a problem when trying to watch videos on my favourite Doctor Who Site Doctor Who Media. Videos would play but i couldn’t see them only hear them which wasn’t good as i looked into it everyone who had this issue had Google Chrome browser. But i found a fix that was quick and simple
In chrome you have something called Hardware Accelerated Video because there wasn’t an update in chrome to fix it yet i disabled this and it fixed my problem so it might fix yours.
To start open chrome and in the address bar type the following
chrome://flags/

Once this page has loaded you need to scroll down the page and find Disable Hardware Accelerated Video Decode by default its disabled.


Click enable to disable the Hardware-accelerated video decode. and restart your browser.
Try the video player and see if it fixed your problem.
Disclaimer – May not work for all Issues.

How To Check Your Temperature Of Your Raspberry Pi in Raspbian

First Login into your pi via local terminal or remote ssh terminal.
Me I’m gonna use Putty to access my Pi.

Next you need to install BC which most linux editions have yet the Raspberry does not.
#sudo apt-get install bc
*TIP* – To stay as root without having to sudo everytime use the command

#sudo -i

This should show when it’s installed

Next we need to download the Temp Check Script. I keep a copy in the Windows Linux Commands Dropbox Folder under the Scripts folder, as these files work fine for me.
To do this we need to type the following:
#wget  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f9udfyer4ktmjdg/pDocgOCmP5/Scripts/TempCheck.sh
This will download the file to your raspberry pi.

Once downloaded all we have to do is run it and it should show us the current temperature of your Raspberry Pi (R-Pi)
To run the script type the following command:
#sh TempCheck.sh
and you should get this the current temperature of your Raspberry Pi:


Thanks for reading please comment below if you don’t understand anything.

How To Install Raspbian On SD Card In Windows

Install Raspbian onto an SD card using a Windows computer RASPBIAN IMAGE DATED 09/02/2013
RASPBIAN WEBSITE
After downloading Raspbian on a normal Windows PC, the operating system must be put on an SD card (you will need one of at least 2GB in size) using a special tool called Image Writer. Return to a web browser and find Image Writer. In the centre of the screen is the download button click it and save the file to a memorable location..
This is a compressed Zip file. Once the download has finished, click Open Folder and find the win32diskimager-binary.zip file. Right-click it and choose Extract All followed by Extract. This will create a folder called ‘win32diskimager-binary’, with some files inside.

It is now time to copy the operating system to an SD card. If using an external SD card reader, slot the SD card into it now and connect it to the PC. Otherwise, just slot the SD card into the computer’s built-in memory card slot (some desktops and many laptops have these).
Use Windows Explorer to navigate to the win32diskimager-binary folder and double-click the Win32DiskImager.exe file. In the window that appears, click the blue folder icon next to Image File and browse to the ‘2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian’ (or similar) folder. In this folder will be a single file called ‘2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian’. Click this, then click the Save button at the bottom.

If more than one removable drive is connected to your PC, check that the drive letter – found to the right of the Image Writer window – corresponds to the SD card reader. If unsure, simply unplug all other external drives from the PC until this process is complete. Click the Write button at the bottom of the Image Writer window, then click Yes in the dialogue box. This will write the Raspbian image file to the SD card.

When the writing process has finished, wait for the light on the SD card reader to stop flashing and then remove the SD card; this card is now ready to be used in a Raspberry Pi.

 

Windows Linux Commands Dropbox Folder