An ISO image is a single file that images an entire (usually optical) disc – a CD or a DVD. They’re often used for software distributions or archives. Most CD authoring programs will happily accept them and burn them to disc – Ubuntu can even do this by simply right-clicking the file.
However, what happens if you just want a couple of files off the disc? Or haven’t got a spare blank?
It’s possible to mount the discs as virtual images, and navigate them as if they were sat in your CD drive – only far faster as you’re puttering about on your hard drive. You can also mount several of these at one time, rather like having many CD drives with discs in all attached to your PC at once. As long as you have the hard drive space to store these images (and that’s not a problem these days) it’s a great way to access data.
Now, in Windows there’s a great little tool for mounting an unmounting virtual drives which Microsoft dishes out for free. Why it’s not built into Windows (XP at least) I don’t know, but it’s only a tiny download and install. Don’t even think about trying to search for it on Microsoft’s download site – I couldn’t find it using the search box, though I think you may have some luck via the knowledge base. Just click here for version 2.1 for XP. If you’re using Vista, remove it and replace it with XP or Ubuntu. Trust me, your computer will thank you.
Under Ubuntu there are a few options. There’s the fancy-dan graphics version which involves manually creating mount points for future use… and the dead-simple right-click and mount ad-hoc version.
The former can be achieved with GMount ISO. Just use the apps manager or “sudo apt-get install gmountiso” at the command prompt. I did have a tinker with this the other day and it’s a nice front-end, but does involve some setup before you can get it to work.
I found the Nautilus Script from MundoGeek a lot simpler and effective. Install it, log out and back into Ubuntu and you’ll find a nice right-click context-sensitive option available to “Mount image”. To unmount you have to ensure you right click the original ISO image you mounted, and not the virtual mounted device itself. Other than that, no configuration.
Oh, and don’t forget in Ubuntu you can also mount ZIP and other archive files as virtual drives with a simple right-click. This makes manipulating files within them so much easier.
Now that I’ve been using it for a few days, I though I’d give you an update on Dropbox. And it’s all positive. It does a lot more than I realised when I first signed up.
First up, you don’t need to have the Dropbox applet installed to access your files. This is useful if you want to get at your documents when you’re on a public machine. You can upload and download files via a very simple web interface. Of course, the ideal situation is to have it installed and the applet seems to work perfectly on Ubuntu. It’s quick, registering changes to documents and replicating them online very swiftly.
Within Explorer, or whatever you use to browse your PC files, those which are replicated are clearly marked with a big green tick (I assume this is the same for non-Ubuntu systems). Context-sensitive options are added to these files which are worth checking out. Again, all of these can also be accessed via your account on the Dropbox web site.
One I spotted which could be incredibly useful is “revisions”. Every time you re-save a document, Dropbox backs up the last version so that if you’re made a huge mistake it’s really easy to recover an older backup. I don’t know if there’s a way of limiting the number of revisions or whether these take up any of your alloted space [update: no, they don’t – found the info on their FAQ] but it’s an excellent facility and one they should advertise more.
When you start up, Dropbox automatically creates two folders: Public and Photos. Anything stored in your Public folder can be accessed by anyone if you give them the relevant URL. This can be obtained via the web page, or by right-clicking on the file. Popping pics into the Photos folder will share them on your personal page on the Dropbox website in a gallery format. Simple as.
I’ve also tried the page on my Nokia E71 and it works pretty well. The only thing is that it’s the same layout as the default web page so there’s a lot of scrolling involved. I’ll feed this back to them.
Overall, I’m even happier with it than I was before. A great resource, especially if you only need a couple of gig and go for the free option. As before, if you’re interested then please sign up via this link as then I’ll get a little boost on my storage space. Chris did!
Dropbox is a funky new toy I’ve been playing with under Ubuntu but it also works on pretty much any Linux flavour, as well as Windows and Mac.
It’s a file synchronisation program, and one of the simplest I’ve found to use. The free package gives you 2Gb of on-line storage and the little program that runs in the background synchronising things uses very few resources.
Download, install and (in the case of Ubuntu anyway) log out/in to trigger the background process. Register an account and let the program know where your “dropbox” folder should be stored. That’s it.
Linux has one major advantage over Windows in that you don’t have to store all the files you wish to keep synced in a particular folder. Use any old folder for your Dropbox and drag/drop virtual links to other folders into it. These folders will then be read and their contents stored on Dropbox’s servers. Make any changes, add files, delete them… and very quickly these changes will be reflected on the main site.
Updates are logged and a full history is available on your profile page.
A Public Files folder is located in your Dropbox. Any files here are, obviously, publically browseable. In addition, a simple right-click and menu selection will put a URL into your clipboard. Paste this on an email or wherever and the recipient will be able to click on it to get a copy of the document from the Dropbox servers.
I’ve not made big use of programs like this in the past, but for offline storage, file sharing and synchronising between two or more machines it’s an excellent little tool.
If you do download it, pretty please do so via this link – that way I stand a chance of getting my 2Gb storage upgraded for referring you!
I run my laptop with both Windows XP and Ubuntu dual-installed. I’m using primarily the Linux, but there are still a few apps that just can’t be replaced hence still having the old MS workhorse taking up hard drive space. One of these, until today, was an up-to-date version of Skype from which I could send SMS messages.
After having a dig, I found an excellent post on the Ubuntu forums that told me about a cobble-on called “Skysentials”. This adds a few functions, basically making use of facilities present in the Windows version of Skype, the main one of which is the ability to register a phone and send SMSs.
First off, full credit for this entire method goes to “grobar” and “ceverett” on the board who, between them, published details to get this thing going. For those who need details, I’m running Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and my Skype is the latest from the Medibuntu repository, v2.0.0.72.
5. Find where you saved the file, right click it and “Extract to here”.
6. Open up a terminal and navigate to the new folder created. Enter the following command:
sudo python skysentials.py
If you have Skype running, then the last command will open the Skysentials window.
Now, navigating and running things from the command line isn’t easy, so here’s instructions on setting up an icon or having Skysentials run whenever you load Skype. The first set of instructions is the same for both.
1. Open a terminal and navigate to where you extracted Skysentials.
5. If you like, click on the large icon on the top left and select a new one. When done, “Close” the Launcher Properties window.
Fire up Skype and then locate and click on your shortcut to make sure it works. Skype will ask you to confirm whether you want this application to communicate with it. Make sure you say “yes”.
If you’d like the utility to start up whenever you load Skype, then perform the last set of steps:
1. In Skype, go to the Options Menu.
2. Select “Notifications” from the left, then “Skype Login” from the main window.
3. Tick the “Advanced View” box in the top right.
4. Check the box labeled “Execute the following script” towards the bottom.
5. In the box below this, enter the following line:
/usr/local/bin/skysentials
6. Click “Apply”.
Test this by closing and then re-opening Skype. The Skysentials window should open up shortly after you log in.
Personally, I’ve opted not to have it fire up at the start as I don’t always need it and it won’t minimise to the tray. Instead, I just open and close it as I need from the main Applications menu. If you use multiple workspaces (I don’t) you could always pop it in there.
It’s an excellent little add-on, but a shame it’s functionality isn’t built in to the current version of Skype for Linux. I’ve mailed Skype to ask when they’re going to bring this version up to date with all their others, but have had no reply. At least this works, and works very well!
Additional step: one thing I found when I’d finished installing it, was that I struggled to get rid of the originally downloaded files. When running “sudo python setup.py install”, files are created by root which you can’t delete normally. I managed to get these into my waste basket and then couldn’t ditch them. Awkward.
If you’ve not managed to wedge it into the wastebasket, navigate to the folder you extracted it to. If you did manage to do what I did and get it stuck in the wastebasket, go to ~/.local/share/Trash/files.
Either way, once you’re there execute the following line:
sudo rm -rf <foldername>
Another additional step: I just spotted that my shortcut icon is no longer working. On trying the command from the terminal, I saw it was failing with “segmentation fault”. On a whim, I ran it using sudo and lo – it worked. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled to no avail.
If you’re also having this issue, then edit your shortcut (instructions above) and prefix the “Command” line with gksudo. Note: not sudo. The former works in the graphic environment and will ask you for your password when you run skysentials. Using plain sudo will achieve nothing and leave you with a seemingly non-functional shortcut.
Annoying having to do this, but I can’t find another way around it. I’m wondering if it’s because I have two versions of Python installed (2.5 and 2.6) although skysentials was configured only with 2.6. The only other change I’ve made recently is upgrading from 8.10 Hardy to 9.04 Jaunty. Could be related but it’s been a while since I used the program.
Apologies for the lack of regular posting but I’ve been really busy the last few days.
I’ve just installed Ubuntu on my laptop (alongside XP) and I’m tinkering with the default Firefox 3 web browser. Annoyingly, it seems that the fonts or something are slightly different than in Firefox 2 on Windows, so the title of this blog is somewhat askew. That was always something I was going to look at anyway, once I found a theme I liked.
Even more annoyingly, it’s broken the theme I have for the travel blog by dropping the final “tabbed” link at the top to a new line. Grr. Time for some fixin’…
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