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meerkat

H. Wittenbrink Osnabrück, Germany
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Hi, I am meerkat and I create XSplash Themes, Amarok 2.x Scripts and Usplash Themes.

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Last time active : Feb 10 2013
Joined : Apr 22 2008
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

https://launchpad.net/xsplash-background-settings/trunk/1.3

link fixed, thanks for the hint - Mar 15 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

Thanks for your contribution.
1. Can you confirm, that it is the same problem with python-gksu2 as discussed with zetty above, namely that Quote:python -c "import gksu2;gksu2.run('whoami')" prints "root" on the terminal output, while Quote:python -c "import gksu2;ctx=gksu2.Context();ctx.set_command('whoami');gksu2.su_full(ctx)" does not?
2. Do you mean xsplash-background-settings upgrade or xsplash upgrade (or rather a general update which might have covered both)?
3. If you select "Use Desktop Background", click "OK" and change you desktop wallpaper afterwards, does the xsplash background change or not or become completely white?
4. A nice gui to configure GDM already exists: Quote:gksudo -u gdm dbus-launch gnome-appearance-propertiesNote this bug though: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/459747
5. https://answers.launchpad.net/xsplash-background-settings/+question/99844 - Feb 04 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

interesting... seems like sudo is working but su is not. problem is, there seem to be no python bindings for gksu_sudo_full or gksu_run_full (which chooses between su and sudo depending on system configuration). the disadvantage of gksu_run is, that it doesnt allow manipulating the message given in the password dialog. anyway, if this is a common problem i should change it or at least use gksu_run as fallback method if gksu_su_full failes. so, if anybody reading here encounter similar problems, please confirm here!
in the meantime there is always the workaround to manually permit permanent user write access to the xsplash image folder
Quote:sudo chmod -R a+rw /usr/share/images/xsplash or start the settings dialog from terminal with sudo
Quote:sudo xsplash-background-settings --settings - Feb 02 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

1. At the moment i have no idea what might cause the described problems. To test if this is a general issue with python-gksu2 you may run the following command:
python -c "import gksu2;ctx = gksu2.Context();ctx.set_command('echo \$USER');gksu2.su_full(ctx)"
This should print "root" on the terminal output.
2. Actually the radiobuttons need confirmation with "OK", but the custom background selection dialog actively changes the XSplash background which really is a bit inconsistent. I will fix that.
3. Test button is on the list.
4. Thanks a lot for your translation, i will include that in the next release. - Feb 01 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

actually i didnt mean that, but its a solution, though it would slow down logging out a bit. well, youre welcome to implement it, im still not tempted. i dont know whats so cool about xml backgrounds anyway. if i want periodical changing wallpaper i use an app like drapes which allows to easily add or remove wallpapers from the list and provides a random sequence. the only cool feature of that xml stuff is the crossfading which can make the wallpaper kind of dynamic and i.e. reflect the time of day, but unfortunately that special case is not satisfactorily solved with your suggestion anyway. - Jan 24 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

I can change this for all languages, as its a phrase used in libgksu and therefore can be fetched from there. French version is: "Saisissez votre mot de passe pour effectuer les tâches d'administration." ;) - Jan 24 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

That would indeed solve the xml issue for rebooting and log out / log in activities - not in the case of a normal boot up though, as you cant possibly know which time the user will start his computer again. This primary task could only be solved by deciding the background image during the boot sequence which would mean fiddling around with init scripts and as a side effect would actually slow down the boot process. Im not sure if thats worth it. - Jan 24 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

Thanks for the hint. As you may have noticed, actually the user password is expected. Just the phrase "Enter the administrative password" is a bit unclear. Its the default phrase of the python-gksu2 module. Maybe i should change that to "Enter your password to perform administrative task", which is the phrase used by other administrative tools like synaptics and seem to be a bit clearer. - Jan 24 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

The applet shouldnt be a problem. Please update to the current release and try again (note that you need to reboot once after installation for the desktop background option to work). If you still have problems please run the daemon from a terminal (
xsplash-background-settings --daemon
), change the wallpaper (or wait for your applet to change it) and see if you get any messages on the terminal output. - Jan 23 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

thanks, repository is in the making - Jan 23 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

i did some reading about packaging DEBs and avoided some rising installation issues by creating a config gui. i managed to wrap that up as DEB (see second download link above). anyway its still a hack, requiring user access to a system folder. though thats not a serious security issue as it just contains the images for the splash screen, this might not be suitable for an ordinary distribution or repository. - Jan 12 2010
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

well, its certainly possible to package the script as DEB file. however i have no experience in creating DEB packages, but ill have a look at it (unless someone experienced volunteers). - Dec 31 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

the script is meant to dont stop, because its a daemon (background process), that monitors if the user changes his desktop background and changes the xsplash background accordingly. So if you dont kill the process with CTRL + C and change your desktop background, the xsplash background will change as wanted.
To achieve that behavior without starting the script manually, just follow the install instructions till end:
3. Add wallpaper_daemon.py to the startup programs (gnome-session-properties).
4. restart
- Dec 16 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

the script depends on imagemagick, just install that and it should work:
sudo apt-get install imagemagick - Dec 03 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

no, i didnt implement any xml support. so if you select an xml background file the xsplash background will just stay as it was before. as i understand the xml functionality it wont be possible to get this smooth booting experience (which my script is intended to permit) anyway, as the desktop background is decided on startup (depending on the time) which furthermore also might be a cross-fading of two images, whereas my script sets the xsplash background whenever the desktop background is changed. so the only possible response of selecting an xml file as desktop background would be to select one of the images listed in the xml file (the first one / a random one) as xsplash background. you might as well do this by hand or use my script and just set the image of your choice as desktop background and select your xml file again afterwards.
if there are users which consider it useful to have the first image in a xml list set as xsplash background whenever a xml file is selected as desktop background, i can easily integrate this in the script. just let me know or suggest other treatments of xml files, you would prefer. - Nov 18 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

actually imagemagick is needed to convert images to jpg format and the script wont work without it. as for filling the screen, im not sure about xsplash, but at least for the login screen it depends on the rendering option of the user "gdm". To check it, run
sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/background/picture_options
from terminal.
To change it, run
sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --set --type string /desktop/gnome/background/picture_options zoom
You may replace "zoom" with another valid value like "none", "wallpaper", "centered", "scaled" or "stretched". - Nov 16 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

Well, on my system everything works smooth. Concerning the performance there is no essential difference between using this script and the default configuration (its just an image file), except i spared generating different resolutions. So if you have a low display resolution but use a high resolution desktop background this might cause your problem, but i can only guess. Maybe try a low resolution image to check this.
If you want to revert to the default configuration, just unpack your backup file as described in the uninstall instructions above. - Nov 16 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

actually not at all - Nov 16 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

1. see my statements above
2. afaik the first bootsplash (with the ubuntu logo on black) is generated by usplash. in that case dynamically changing it would need write access to the /boot folder (or at least the initrd files) which i consider a serious security issue as this exposes the essential files for the boot process. though it might seem unlikely, that someone tries to destroy your boot process by using this security hole (e.g. malware) i think its still an inappropriate risk for a little bit of eye candy. - Nov 09 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

i did a second test in a VBox by now and didnt face any problems. if this problem really is related to my script, its at least not a general netbook remix issue. - Nov 09 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

i really cant image that anything my script does affects the netbook-launcher. i did a quick test on a netbook remix live system and didnt run into any problems (netbook-launcher still works fine) - i couldnt do a restart on a live system though. the only things that are not reverted by my uninstall instructions above are some additional files stored at /usr/share/images/xsplash (namely bg.jpg and the backup file backup.TIMESTAMP) and the user write access to that folder (you may revert that with sudo chmod -R a-w /usr/share/images/xsplash
please let me know if you solved your problem. - Nov 09 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

Ill try my best...
I assume you downloaded the file in a folder called Downloads in your Home folder (thats default behavior of firefox in ubuntu karmic).


sudo apt-get install imagemagick

cd ~/Downloads

tar -xf 114984-wallpaper_daemon_1.2.tar.gz

mkdir ~/.scripts

mv wallpaper_daemon.py ~/.scripts

cd ~/.scripts

chmod +x wallpaper_daemon.py

./wallpaper_daemon.py --install

gnome-session-properties

The last command opens a dialog, click on "Add", fill in a name like "xsplash wallpaper daemon" and as Command:
~/.scripts/wallpaper_daemon.py
Confirm with "Add" and "Close" the "Startup Applications Preferences".

Finally change your desktop background as you normally do and restart ubuntu to see the effect.

good luck! - Nov 08 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

just found a corresponding bug report (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/459747) and a solution to get rid of the icon:
System -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Accessibility
uncheck "Accessibility features can be toggled with keyboard shortcuts" - Nov 08 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

i can confirm this strange bug. i have no idea how to get rid of the gnome-at-properties icon though.

i have replaced the description above with a direct method where this bug does not appear. - Nov 08 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

i added some uninstall instructions above - Nov 07 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

thanks for the hint, should be fixed now - Nov 06 2009
XSplash Background Settings

XSplash Themes by meerkat 84 comments

./wallpaper_daemon.py --install
does the backup and so on.

./wallpaper_daemon.py
(without --install) applies the desktop background to xsplash, whenever you change it.

Therefore you should run ./wallpaper_daemon.py --install once and add ./wallpaper_daemon.py to the startup programs.
If you want to test the behavior without restarting just start ./wallpaper_daemon.py from terminal and change your desktop background. You may also test xsplash without restarting by running sudo xsplash

Hope that helps. - Nov 06 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

the script was originally created for gnome, but it works with kde as well, see here:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?action=knowledgebase&content=103307&kbid=73
note that the above is only true for kde versions before the new kde 4.3, that just was released a week ago. for kde 4.3 you wont need any additional packages, as knotify now implements the dbus api my script uses. unfortunately there are some serious issues with that (see apoldors posts below), so if you are on kde 4.3 please wait till they are fixed or i released a temporary workaround which i will implement as soon as i find time for that. - Aug 10 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

i checked on jaunty 64bit live cd with amarok 2.1.1 and everything worked fine. did you activate the script in the script manager (check the checkbox)? could you please specify the problem: does it install / show up in the script manager? what exactly is not working? etc. - Aug 07 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

good thinking. i just realized that i havent commented my sourcecode at all - i should add some comment in the next release. you actually changed the update interval from nearly 1 sec to 10 sec which prevents the blinking as long as the duration is < 10 sec. the duration time falls back to default this way, ill handle that together with the other issues in my next release. - Aug 02 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

i have checked on kubuntu karmic alpha and can confirm all your observations. well it seems kde is starting to support the freedesktop notification interface which is good news for the integration of gnome software in kde and vice versa (examples: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/4028).
there still seems to be some bugs though but im confident theyll be fixed till karmic final in october. the only thing i can do in the meantime is prevent the blinking by deactivating the update if knotify is used and maybe fix the image problem. ill try that sometime next week.
thanks for your detailed report on the problems with kde 4.3. - Aug 02 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

thanks for the detailed description. i have no idea why those encoding problems occur and i sadly cant test on them, because on my system everything works fine. nevertheless ill look into it when i find time to. in the meantime you can test this little hack, that may solve your specific problem, but also may cause other:
http://mantis.blogsport.de/images/NotifyAmarok1.1.amarokscript.tar.gz - Jul 21 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

hm, thats strange - i remember having those problems in an early version, but they were solved when i moved from amarok api to dbus as source of the track information. anyway, cant see how utf-8 can be the problem - actually the script is encoding everything to utf-8. please check if dbus is providing the track information correctly (e.g. by typing the following in your terminal when a track in question is playing in amarok):

qdbus org.kde.amarok /Player GetMetadata

are you sure it's caused by the accent characters or are there other special characters (e.g. $ or ") in your tags in question? are the notes ♫ and the play symbol ▶ shown in your notifications? does the problem appear in head as well as body of the notification and title as well as artist tag? - Jul 21 2009
CONKY-colors

Conky by helmuthdu 930 comments

As here in germany (depending on your phone company) you are able to choose the telephone provider for a single call by a prefix (thats called "call-by-call" here), i often need the information which provider is cheapest at that moment and wrote a small script to show this information in conky. Though thats just of local use and therefor not likely to be reasonable for conky-color integration, the idea might be interesting for other countries as well. You can find the script here: http://www.gtk-apps.org/content/show.php?content=107776
There is a screenshot of the Script in action integrated in an conky-colors design.
Anyway, keep up the good work helmuth and everybody contributing to this project here. im always astonished about the rapid progress when im checking this page. - Jul 01 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

The new version should solve this problem, as the cover path is now directly taken from Amaroks DBus interface. - Jun 03 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

I tested with Amarok 2.1 Beta 2 on Ubuntu 9.04 and the new version (1.0) works fine there. Dont know why the previous version didnt work, but it used a lot more of the Amarok Script API, maybe something changed there. Please test if the new version works on your system as well. - Jun 03 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

thanks for the hint, i'll investigate why that is the case - May 28 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

ok, thanks for the hint, thats easy to include (if the filenames there are calculated the same way). please test if it works with the new version. - May 27 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

1. thats actually the version 0.4.1, its just the wrong version number in the script.spec (sorry for that)
2. at the moment the cover is taken from the amarok cover folder (if there is one with the right hashcode), or the folder where the music file is stored (if there is any image-file at all). if there is no cover show in notification but in amarok there is, that can be caused for example by changed tags since the cover storage or manual assignment of a file in a different folder.
as i have found out in the meantime how to simply use exactly the same image file amarok uses i will fix that in the next release, but that will take some time as im really busy at the moment. - May 27 2009
CONKY-colors

Conky by helmuthdu 930 comments

I really like this design. As I often use USB-Sticks, external harddrive etc. i wrote a small python script, that scans the /media folder for mountpoints and generates the appropriate conky code. additionally it calculates the percentage of used space and choses the appropriate pie chart icon. as posted python code gets broken here because of removed tabs/spaces i uploaded the script to rapidshare:
http://rapidshare.com/files/234420336/hd.py.html

i chose a reduced view with just the free disk space displayed (screenshot: http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/9744/conky.png), but you can easily change this back to your variant. i dont know if its common to mount everything in /media but at least in ubuntu thats default behavior. if you use this, make sure to use execpi in .conkyrc - May 18 2009
Linux-Unix command guide

Wallpaper Other by chino77 11 comments

very useful as terminal background if you shade it a bit - May 07 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

thats not planned at the moment and i dont think it will. it would mean rewriting half of the code which uses the new amarok qt api. besides there are already two notification scripts for Amarok 1.4:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Amarok+libnotify?content=75979
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/amarok+libnotify?content=49372 - May 01 2009
NotifyAmarok (Gnome)

Amarok 2.x Scripts by meerkat 39 comments

thanks for your feedback.
about 1) you are absolutely right, ill look into it next week.
about 2) as i just use the command line tool notify-send thats in the hand of the notification daemon. the standard gnome notification daemon just behaves as you wish. notify-osd in contrast just shows one amarok notification at a time. as notify-osd limits the number of notifications been displayed at the same time (i think it just allows 2), the stacking on screen behavior isn't possible at all for skipping through several tracks, nevertheless it might be possible to gain another solution for skipping through problem. notify-send doesn't povide any helpful options for this case, but ill have a look at the libnotify-api. - Apr 26 2009
Gnome Multimedia Keys 2

Amarok 2.x Scripts by browner 14 comments

i was really missing this on amarok 2. everything working so far. - Apr 25 2009
amaroKnotify

Amarok 2.x Scripts by thesalus 31 comments

Hi, just saw that we nearly simultaneously released similar scripts, but luckily used different (turned) names. I like the configurability of yours, maybe i'll adept that for my libnotify version. - Apr 23 2009
Save Earth

Wallpaper Other by kiriapurv 7 comments

yeah youre right, as the vikings certainly didnt have cars and they had warmer temperatures then today, there could be no relations between cars and rising global temperature. also as they didnt have any guns, but certainly killed people, there is no chance that people could be killed with guns (dont try this at home), because the same effect cant possibly be caused by different things...

for your questions you might want to do the obvious: read some basic information about the phenomena you described (i.e. Wikipedia) and you might find out, that afaik the so called "Medieval Warm Period" was most certainly a local and no global climate phenomenon, and about the mars i can only guess, that because of the lack of an atmosphere its temperature is nearly directly generated by the variation of sun radiation. Anyway, your lack of information about other climate events is no argument against the scientifically well documented anthropogenic climate change taking place in the present. - Apr 14 2009
Freedom

GDM Themes by Dav87 6 comments

nice theme, works fine, except that in my localisation (german) the word for username is a bit longer ("Benutzername") and is cut off. Widescreen version would be nice, as it looks quite streched on my screen (especially the ubuntu logo) and the computername/date/time is half on the black background. - Sep 27 2008
Scaled Black Amarok

Amarok Themes by twigsby 5 comments

Fits very nicely with lassekongo's orange door hinge emerald theme http://www.compiz-themes.org/content/show.php/Orange+door+hinge?content=77207. Fitting amarok color scheme would be black background and orange (#E98016) foreground. - Apr 30 2008
6 .3
Feb 10 2013
5 .8
Feb 10 2013
SeaDeep

Beryl/Emerald Themes
by pvt14

5 .0
Feb 10 2013