“Un-Coupling” KMix and Amarok Volumes

I don’t know since when, but for a while now I am seeing this behavior in my KDE 4.14 desktop that when I increase or decrease volume using KMix, volume in othet KDE applications also increases or decreasing correspondingly. Basically it means, there are no separate controls for KMix and other KDE applications. Tried to search on web, and came across this KDE bug where it explains this is called “flat volumes”. Some people may like this feature, but not me right now. And, Here is how to disable flat volumes. Simply add:
flat-volumes = no
in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf to disable this system wide or in ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf to disable for the user.

Enable mod_rewrite in apache2

If wordpress permlinks are not working for you, the first thing you should check is if mod_rewrite module is enabled! Learned this the hard way.
How to check:
Run phpinfo() and in Loaded Modules sections the mod_rewrite should be present. Just do a CTRL-F after running phpinfo() and check if it finds mod_rewrite

Loaded Modules core mod_access_compat mod_so http_core prefork mod_unixd mod_systemd mod_actions mod_alias mod_auth_basic mod_authn_file mod_authz_host mod_authz_groupfile mod_authz_user mod_autoindex mod_cgi mod_dir mod_env mod_expires mod_include mod_log_config mod_mime mod_negotiation mod_setenvif mod_ssl mod_userdir mod_php5 mod_reqtimeout mod_authn_core mod_authz_core

So, if it is not there, edit your /etc/sysconfig/apache2 and add “rewrite” to APACHE_MODULES
APACHE_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_file authz_host authz_groupfile  authz_user autoindex cgi dir env expires include log_config mime negotiation setenvif ssl userdir php5 reqtimeout authn_core authz_core rewrite"

Restart your apache2 server, if it starts without any errors, run phpinfo. mod_rewrite should be there now!

RMAN archivelog deletion policy

Today I faced issues while starting my Oracle database. While startup/opening the database I was getting the error:
ORA-03113: end-of-file on communication channel
Process ID: 10263
Session ID: 91 Serial number: 3
I checked my “Alert log” which was at
 $ORACLE_BASE/diag/rdbms/xe/XE/trace/alert_XE.log
In there was this line
ORA-19815: WARNING: db_recovery_file_dest_size of 10737418240 bytes is 100.00% used, and has 0 remaining bytes available
So the issue was my recovery size was full! Oracle gives you the below options for this problem
************************************************************************
You have following choices to free up space from recovery area:
1. Consider changing RMAN RETENTION POLICY. If you are using Data Guard,
   then consider changing RMAN ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY.
2. Back up files to tertiary device such as tape using RMAN
   BACKUP RECOVERY AREA command.
3. Add disk space and increase db_recovery_file_dest_size parameter to
   reflect the new space.
4. Delete unnecessary files using RMAN DELETE command. If an operating
   system command was used to delete files, then use RMAN CROSSCHECK and
   DELETE EXPIRED commands.
************************************************************************
First I need to delete the files to recover the space:
oracle@linux-xbvi:~> rman target / 

Recovery Manager: Release 11.2.0.2.0 - Production on Sat Oct 25 21:19:05 2014

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

connected to target database: XE (DBID=2702090012)

RMAN> delete archivelog all;

released channel: ORA_DISK_1
allocated channel: ORA_DISK_1
channel ORA_DISK_1: SID=5 device type=DISK
List of Archived Log Copies for database with db_unique_name XE
=====================================================================

Key     Thrd Seq     S Low Time 
------- ---- ------- - ---------
36      1    48      A 25-AUG-13
        Name: /u01/app/oracle/fast_recovery_area/XE/archivelog/2014_01_19/o1_mf_1_48_9fonmn1c_.arc

37      1    49      A 19-JAN-14
        Name: /u01/app/oracle/fast_recovery_area/XE/archivelog/2014_01_19/o1_mf_1_49_9fonn0p1_.arc

38      1    50      A 19-JAN-14
...
Do you really want to delete the above objects (enter YES or NO)? YES
deleted archived log
archived log file name=/u01/app/oracle/fast_recovery_area/XE/archivelog/2014_01_19/o1_mf_1_48_9fonmn1c_.arc RECID=36 STAMP=837218637
deleted archived log
archived log file name=/u01/app/oracle/fast_recovery_area/XE/archivelog/2014_01_19/o1_mf_1_49_9fonn0p1_.arc RECID=37 STAMP=837218649
deleted archived log
archived log file name=/u01/app/oracle/fast_recovery_area/XE/archivelog/2014_01_19/o1_mf_1_50_9fonn8xb_.arc RECID=38 STAMP=837218657
deleted archived log
archived log file name=/u01/app/oracle/fast_recovery_area/XE/archivelog/2014_01_19/o1_mf_1_51_9fonnh9l_.arc RECID=39 STAMP=837218663
...
archived log file name=/u01/app/oracle/fast_recovery_area/XE/archivelog/2014_10_25/o1_mf_1_266_b4qkjlxx_.arc RECID=254 STAMP=861916652
deleted archived log
archived log file name=/u01/app/oracle/fast_recovery_area/XE/archivelog/2014_10_25/o1_mf_1_267_b4qkjnjl_.arc RECID=255 STAMP=861916654
Deleted 220 objects
After that change RMAN retention policy to avoid this problem in future:
RMAN> CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY TO RECOVERY WINDOW OF 5 DAYS;

new RMAN configuration parameters:
CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY TO RECOVERY WINDOW OF 5 DAYS;
new RMAN configuration parameters are successfully stored

Social Social

So many Social sites, Face Book, Google+, Twitter, etc, etc.. How to integrate all these!!! Face Book has become limited to just staying in touch with friends, Twitter for Politics and Google+ is where all the nerds/geeks meet. And I am not even talking about Instagram and other sites et all!

openSuSE 13.1 – Copy Paste memory use

Since I had installed openSUSE 13.1,copy pasting has been a real problem. Whenever doing a copy paste operation, the entire system became useless due to copy-paste process taking all the system memory.

This problem didn’t seem to be any application specific, as this problem was occurring in Dolphin, Konqueror as well as in Krusader . And when I checked “cp” command from the terminal, even that was causing the issue.

After a lot of search, I read somewhere that is the kernel that came with openSUSE 13.1 which has this issue with copy paste. The kernel version was 13.11.

I updated the kernel from openSUSE stable kernel repo to 13.13. And yes, the problem is gone! So it was a problem with kernel 13.11. My system is currently having kernel 13.14,and till now the system is running fine.

Did you face the same problem with kernel 13.11?

P.S: Usually I do not choose to make any updates to my system, as I like a very stable system, but this issue forced me to update what is the basis of any Linux system.

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