FreeNAS supports the appropriate hardware of the FreeBSD-Version where FreeNAS is based on. But sometimes it is necessary to install a third-party or a self-compiled driver. My how-to “Install Ethernet driver on FreeNAS/NAS4Free (full-install)” shows how to install a downloaded binary Ethernet interface (NIC) driver on a full installation of FreeNAS/NAS4Free. This how-to describes the same for the embedded platform. It was written for non-experienced Unix users.

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Lenovo’s UltraNav Touchpad and Trackpoint (Photo: Tim Schulz)

In the Internet you can read here and there that Lenovo’s UltraNav Touchpad do not react as sensitive as some users want. First I was disappointed from a Thinkpad L420′s Touchpad either.

Left and double clicks performed by tapping on the touchpad were not recognized reliably. One-finger scrolling was only possible when I pressed my finger hard on the the pad. And even then it was not recognized in every case. Multi-gestures or even Two-finger scrolling was even more worse.

I had to adjust the sophisticated and extensive settings of the UltraNav touchpad driver to get the touchpad working my way. [...]

Samba can provide a recycle bin on a network share, as current operating systems do locally. Even FreeNAS and NAS4Free offers this feature and can be activated in its administration under Services|CIFS/SMB|Shares.

All deleted files and folders of a share are moved to this bin, physically localized on the network share. In comparison to a Windows’ recycle bin the maximum size is not settable. Therefore the recycle bin is able to overflow the share.

A cronjob and a tiny shell script can prevent this automatically.

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A nice feature of a Samba server is the optional recycle bin, which stores all files and folders that were deleted from a client on a network share. However the Samba recycle bin behaves different in comparison to the Desktop recycle bins of Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

This posting describes the peculiarities of this Samba feature and how to use this function reasonably.

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If your multi-language WordPress-Blog is qTranslate-driven, some plugins need adjustments. So MicroKid’s Related Posts.

webwork.onblog.at (German) describes how to do this with MicroKid’s Related Posts versions 2 and 3. In MicroKid’s Related Posts version 4 you have to alter the code at a different position and in a slightly different code context.

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DISLIN is a very nice and well-documented 2-D and 3-D plotting framework for Fortran and some other programming languages. Furthermore DISLIN provides some widgets to create simple graphic user interfaces (GUIs). This how-to describes how to install DISLIN on an arbitrary Ubuntu system and how to compile and link a sample Fortran 90  program with the shared and static libraries.

Since Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) and DISLIN 10.2 came out, things are easier for Debian-based Systems now. However 64-bit users have to consider some points. I updated this article for Ubuntu 12.04 and DISLIN 10.2 users. Obsolete instructions for Ubuntu 10.04 and lower as well as DISLIN 10.0 were deleted.

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Windows XP on Medion Akoya E1222

The Netbook Medion Akoya E1222 (MD98240) is delivered with Microsoft Windows 7 Starter Edition. Less Memory (1 MB RAM) and the restricted features of Windows 7 are just two reasons to downgrade to Windows XP. Especially if you  have a XP license left. Medion does not support Windoes XP on this machine at all but the service supported me finding appropriate drivers.

This How To describes the installation of Windows XP on the Medion Akoya E1222 Netbook for unexperienced users. Furthermore I point to external sources for some missing drivers.

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After upgrading CMS Made Simple 1.8.2 to 1.9.2 I noticed:

• pageloading lasted longer as in Version 1.8 on the same server,
• problems with Umlauts and special characters and
• CSS-problems in the menu.

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In the first part of this field report I reviewed the Organizer of Photoshop Elements 8. In this part I review the Editor of PSE 8. It is based on Photoshop CS4.

Adobe cropped some functions and tools of CS 4 in PSE’s Editor but added some new ones which were designed for beginners.

Whether these crops constrains my work flow or not shows the following report.

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Hobby photographers will look for a photo organizer and editor sooner or later. Especially if you are working with RAW photos  you expect a optimized work flow from such a “all-included” software with media organizer, raw converter, photo editor and additional built-in tools.

Photoshop Elements 8 (PSE) contains all these compounds and the manufacturer Adobe® is known for high quality and  professional graphic software as Photoshop CS and Lightroom.

PSE 8 is divided into two parts: the Organizer, which manage all your media data and the Photo Editor, the image processor. The first part of this field report is focused on the Organizer.

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