Updated – Android: ADB on Windows x64

10. May 2012 · 37 comments · Categories: Android, howto, Windows · Tags: ,

Update 03/14/2012: The below process works for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. If you need to modify the driver .INF to support your device, please read this post for instructions on disabling Driver Signature Enforcement in Windows 8.

It isn’t actually that difficult to get ADB (Android Debug Bridge) working correctly under Windows x64 (Windows XP 64bit, 7 and Windows 8 x64 are supported) – you just need to perform a few steps in the right order.

  1. Download the latest 32-bit and 64-bit Java JDK from here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html (click the JDK link).
  2. Install the 32-bit JDK first, then the 64-bit. Note — Technically you can just use the 64-bit version, but you will occasionally get errors about the 32-bit version (x86) being missing. Best bet is to install both. Both Java 6 and Java 7 are supported.
  3. Once Java is installed, download the Android development kit for Windows from here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html – you can now opt to download the SDK install in .exe format, which is recommend (and will be used by this guide).
  4. After the installer has finished downloading, run it. If you haven’t yet installed the JDK packages, the installer will remind you that they are required and won’t let you proceed.
  5. The installer will automatically launch the Android SDK Manager and prompt you to install a number of default packages. Of those listed, only the first two options (Android SDK Tools and Android SDK Platform Tools) and the Google USB Driver package (located in the Extras tree, near the bottom of the list) are needed. After you have selected the packages you want, click Install (x) Packages. A new window will appear – any items without a green checkmark require that you select them, then click Approve before you can proceed.
  6. After the process has finished, allow the Manager to restart the ADB process, then close the dialog box.
  7. When it’s finished downloading and installing, enable debugging mode on your Android phone and plug it in. Windows should now automagically detect the correct ADB driver. Once Windows has completed the driver installation, open Device Manager and ensure that the “Android Phone” category at the top has an entry called ‘Android Composite ADB Interface’ (pictured below). If the driver wasn’t installed automagically and appears in Device Manager as a Nexus One (or whatever your model of phone is), you can find the driver downloaded by the SDK Setup in the folder you extracted the SDK to (by default, C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk-windows\google-usb_driver).
  8. Finally, open a command prompt, navigate to the platform-tools directory in the SDK folder and type ‘adb devices’ — ADB should now list your device (note: adb used to reside in the tools directory, but was moved to platform-tools with Gingerbread. As of r16 (the ICS update to the SDK), fastboot is also now located in platform-tools).
Device Manager showing the ADB Driver is correctly installed

Device Manager showing the ADB Driver is correctly installed

Note that some devices aren’t supported by the official ADB driver. Check the comments below for instructions on how to modify the driver INF to support your device.

Gnome-Keyring Issues in Ubuntu 12.04

06. May 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Linux, Makes Sense, Troubleshooting · Tags: , ,

While trying to do a ‘repo sync’ on the CyanogenMOD source after doing a fresh install of Xubuntu 12.04, I started getting the following error, repeated many times:

WARNING: gnome-keyring:: couldn't connect to: /tmp/keyring-*****/pkcs11

Turns out, a package upgrade (I was too lazy to identify which one) changed/reverted /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop and caused gnome-keyring-daemon to not load properly with XFCE. The fix was to find this line:

OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity

And append ;XFCE to it, making it:

OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;XFCE

After a quick reboot everything worked as normal.

Deploying Email Signatures with a Login Script

13. April 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: howto, Microsoft, Scripts, Windows · Tags: , ,

I work for an SMB, but we’re past the size where it’s ‘easy’ to go around to everyone’s computers and deploy a new email signature. We also have prescribed branding, but staff inevitably will find a font they like better for their signature and will destroy that branding and consistency without hesitation.

So the other, I finally got around to making things easier for myself. Rather than try to convince everyone to leave their signatures alone, and rather than go around to everyone’s computer and have them login so I can change their signature, I sent out instructions on how to set your signature in Outlook (in Options, under the Mail Format tab), and then hammered out a few lines in to the existing login script:

REM Copy email signature
c:
cd \
if exist %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures goto COPY
md %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures
:COPY
cd  %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures
del *.* /q
copy Q:\Marketing\EmailSignatures\%username%.* .\

The first two lines (after the Remark) make sure that the script is in the root of the C: drive (other parts of the login script not listed here move around, and as we’re deleting files later on with a wildcard it’s worth it to make sure we’re in the right place).

Next, it checks to make sure that the Signatures folder exists. If you’ve already been in to the Signatures area in Outlook it will create the folder for you, however if this is the first time the user is logging in and their profile is just being created, that folder won’t be there, so we make Outlook create it.

After that, we delete the contents of the folder — I can do this because I know that our staff should only be using the one signature. If you’re in an environment where that isn’t the case, this is a Bad Idea.

Finally, we copy the new signature off the shared drive. In this case, we have a plain-text signature and and HTML version, and the filenames are prefixed with the users username, so I can make use of the username environmental variable to automatically select the right files.

The first time the script runs users had to go back in to Signature Options and select the new signature, but after that, because the filename doesn’t change, Outlook will remember the selection and staff will always have a copy of the (correct, consistently-branded) signature.

Like I said, very basic, and there are a few improvements that could be make to the batch script, but it works well enough for me.

Disable Driver Signature Enforcement in Windows 8 CP

14. March 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Android, Beta Testing, Google, Microsoft, Software, Support, Troubleshooting, Windows · Tags: , ,

So, one of the big issues I’ve had with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is that Microsoft now not only forces you to use Digitally Signed Drivers (this isn’t new, as Windows 7 requires them as well), but also checks to see if the driver has been modified and will fail to install if it has.

This is a problem for anyone who needs to modify a driver .INF to support their device (*cough*Android ADB Drivers*cough*). Fortunately, there is a (slightly complicated) workaround.

To get started:

  1. From the Metro Start Screen, open Settings (move your mouse to the bottom-right-corner of the screen and wait for the pop-out bar to appear, then click the Gear icon).
  2. Click ‘More PC Settings’.
  3. Click ‘General’.
  4. Scroll down, and click ‘Restart now’ under ‘Advanced startup’.
  5. Wait a bit.
  6. Click ‘Troubleshoot’.
  7. Click ‘Advanced Options’
  8. Click ‘Windows Startup Settings’
  9. Click Restart.
  10. ???
  11. Profit!

When your computer restarts, select ‘Disable driver signature enforcement‘ from the list. You can now load your modified driver. Reboot again once the driver is installed and all will be well.

PowerShell Script to Set AD User Password from List

05. March 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: howto, Microsoft, Scripts, Servers, Short, Windows · Tags: , ,

We’re moving to a new system on our public access computers that will require that staff provide a password for clients to login to the computers. Rather than training staff to change the password daily, I decided it would be easier to write a PowerShell script that runs as a Scheduled Task on the server every morning. It changes the password to one randomly selected from a word list (one word per line in a .txt file), and then writes the password to a file in a location only staff have access to so that they will know what it is.

To use this, copy the section below to a text file and save it as ChangePass.ps1 - note that you will need to allow scripts to be executed before this will work. Information about running .ps1 as a scheduled task is available here.

#Import the Active Directory Module
Import-Module ac*

#Grabs a random line from WordList.txt (enter the full path, in quotes if the path contains a space)
$pwd = Get-Content C:\Script\WordList.txt | Get-Random

#Uncomment the next line to print the selected password to the console
#Write-Host $pwd

#Convert the selected password to a Secure String so it can be accepted by the commandlet
$secure = convertto-securestring $pwd -asplaintext -force

#Set the password – replace username
Set-ADAccountPassword -Identity username -NewPassword $secure -reset

#Write the password to a file so the staff will know what it is – add your own path
$pwd | Out-File “C:\Share\Todays Password.txt”

So when the script is down, the text file located in C:\Share (or whatever you’ve changed it to) will contain the password. Be aware that this file will be overwritten every time the script is run, so don’t edit the file – you’re changes will be lost.

Nightmare: Pulseaudio, Nvidia HDMI Audio, and CentOS

27. February 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Hack, Hardware, Linux, Troubleshooting · Tags: , , , ,

I’m in the process of converting my home server in to a CentOS SMB server and XBMC combination box. In the process, though, I ran in to a problem where PulseAudio would recognise the HDMI audio capabilities of the video card (after installing the Nvidia binary drivers), but wouldn’t output any sound. After a lot of digging and swearing, I finally fixed it by doing the following:

As a normal user, open a Terminal window and enter alsamixer. Press F6 and then unmute all of the audio channels (do so by selecting them with the arrow keys, and then pressing ‘m’. When done, press ESC to exit.

After this, su - to assume root, and then type aplay -l to get a list of your audio devices. In my case, I’ve disabled the onboard audio, so the only devices are the Nvidia ones. The output will look something like this:

root@wormwood ~]# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Note that while there are four devices, the first one (which Pulseaudio selects by default) doesn’t do anything. To get this to work, we need to tell it to use the second device (#7). This isn’t horribly easy. If you have another sound card, note the device numbers listed for it above – you’ll need them in a minute.

Finally we can tell Pulseaudio to actually use the correct devices. Still as root, open up /etc/pulse/default.pa and find these lines:

### Automatically load driver modules depending on the hardware available
#.ifexists module-udev-detect.so
#load-module module-udev-detect
#.else
### Alternatively use the static hardware detection module (for systems that
### lack udev support)
#load-module module-detect
#.endif

Now, comment them all out as I have done above. This prevents Pulseaudio from trying to be smart. Now, scroll to the end of the file and add the following line (if you have more than one audio device, you will need to add it multiple times with the correct card and device numbers that you gathered from aplay above):

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,7

Now simply do a killall pulseaudio and try to play something. You should have audio output over HDMI now!

Edit: Just a bit of follow-up if you’re having trouble with the sound muting after every reboot. As root, enter the following in a shell:

touch /etc/asound.state

chmod 777 /etc/asound.state

Now, as a standard user, follow the instructions above to unmute the Nvidia device channels via alsamixer. Once you’ve confirmed sound is working again, from a shell (still not as root!) type:

alsactl store

Now go back as root and:

chmod 644 /etc/asound.state

When you reboot, you shouldn’t have to unmute through alsamixer anymore.

Ad Company Apologises for Justin Bieber Ad

03. February 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: "It's a Feature", Twitter · Tags: , ,

The other day, I was happily using my free (ad-supported) version of MetroTwit when I noticed this ad:

This prompted me to finally bite the bullet and buy a license for MetroTwit Plus, as well as post the following:

.@metrotwitapp If this was your plan to get me to buy MetroTwit Plus, mission-fucking-accomplished.  [link]

A few hours later, I received this reply:

@laslow sorry we don’t review all the ads that are delivered. :(  [link]

I replied again, and then sort of forgot about it. Later, though I was retweeted, and that prompted the following reply (again from the @metrotwitapp account):

@Rob_Aarts @laslow if you guys have feedback about the ads, the guys at @140ProofAds are listening [link]

And indeed they were! A few hours ago, 140 Proof, the ad company themselves tweeted:

@laslow Thanks for the feedback on the ad you saw. Sorry, we never intend to annoy. Will pass along the feedback to the team. @metrotwitapp [link]

 

Clearly, the lesson to be learned from this is if you want to sell licenses for ad-free versions of your software, sign a contract with Justin Bieber and only push his ads.

The State of Desktop Twitter Clients One Year Later

06. January 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Twitter · Tags: ,

In January, I posted a list of complaints I had about desktop Twitter clients, and how they stacked up against mobile clients and the official Twitter website. Several months ago, Twitter user MrBretticus reminded me of that post, and I figured it would be fun to check up on some of the popular clients and see how they’re doing now. I started writing this post then, and ended up forgetting about it. I’ve dusted it off to start the new year, though, so here’s where we are today.

Blu
Wow. Despite having a new version available, Blu really hasn’t changed at all. It still only has four settings (none of which are an SSL toggle), doesn’t let you customize/disable toast notifications, has annoying UI animations, and refreshing bumps the tweets in the timeline making you scroll around to find where you left off. Yep, still crap.

blu

All four of Blu's settings

Seesmic Desktop 2
Basically, SD2 has the same issues as Blu. Not enough settings, screws with your timeline position if you’re scrolled to the top, no in-app media previews, and doesn’t know where you left off when you relaunch the program.

MetroTwit
There have been a few improvements since I last used MetroTwit. The client has always had a wide selection of settings, but now there are options for forcing the use of SSL, disabling Toast notifications, and even allowing you to choose which services to shorten URLs and expand them with. Nice! However, there are still two concerns I have with the program: The unread count is annoying, there still isn’t an in-line image preview, and the UI is noticeably slower to respond (not to mention that going in to Settings, changing something, and then saving results in your columns blanking, forcing you to restart the program to see any older tweets). Happily, clicking on a link to a service like yfrog, twitpic, or most other image/media hosting services (including YouTube) now results in a small in-app popup with a preview of the media!

MetroTwit now also remembers your timeline position after you close the program (sort of)! When you reopen MetroTwit, it will automagically refresh and marks the last read tweet from your previous session with a mark line on the tweet itself and on the scrollbar. Given, it still starts you at the top of the timeline, but this makes it very easy to scroll down and start reading where you left off. You can also toggle a setting that allows the timeline to stay where it is when MetroTwit refreshes.

A fair word of warning, though – MetroTwit does include an ad. Yes, just one. By default, it sits at the top of your Direct Message column and is very subtle. I rarely notice it, but even when I do, I find the ads to be nothing objectionable. If you want to remove them, you can pay a one-time fee of (currently) $16.11CAD ($14.95AUD).

With all of the improvements that have been made, and with the release of New New Twitter, I’ve officially switched the MetroTwit as my full-time Twitter client. It really is that good.

MetroTwit

 

Twitter’s #NewLook Bothers Me, So I Fixed It

10. December 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: "It's a Feature", Twitter · Tags: ,

I’m not exactly a fan of Twitter’s #NewLook – I like my content on the left, and nav/other crap on the right. Twitter, apparently, doesn’t.

Ugh

So after seeing @Kosh post about a script available on Stylish for Chrome I installed the extension and then loaded the script. Success! But I wasn’t really happy with it.

I actually wanted something that would not only move the dashboard over to the right again, but I wanted the dashboard fixed, so that even if I scroll it stays there. After brushing up on my CSS, I modified the script like this:

Section 1:

.dashboard{
    margin-left:10px !important;
    position: fixed !important;
    right: 28%;
  }
Section 2:
.content-main{
    position:relative !important;
    right: 38%;
}
(Note: You may have to adjust the right: percentages depending on your screen resolution.)


Perfect: Now it's exactly how I like it!




Notice how even though I've scrolled down the page, the dashboard on the right is still visible.

									

			


					 

				

					
Mythbusters and Damage Control

				

					
07. December 2011 · 42 comments					 · Categories: Non-Tech · Tags: , 					 


				

										
A story ran on Slashdot today about how an experiment the Mythbusters were running went out of control and they ended up firing a cannon ball through a house and in to a minivan. I laughed, and then remembered that yesterday I saw several pictures posted on Grant, Kari, and Tory’s Twitter accounts. When I went to check, though, I found the tweets had been removed.


Update: Kari, Grant, and Tory have just posted apologies on Twitter.

Further Update: Jamie and Adam have posted apologies as well.




Yet Another Update: Adam has confirmed that no, Mythbusters has not been suspended/cancelled.


Fortunately, I use Plume for Android and it doesn’t remove deleted tweets! Here are the removed pictures:


Tory and his Cannon


 


"Cannon Envy"


 


"Heavy Artillery"


Edit: Sorry for the slowness – my little VPS is struggling to handle the load after being linked on Wired, Techdirt, and Fark (can’t find the link at the moment). Did some conf tweaking and the site should be more responsive now.

									

			


						

			
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