How to solve “network unreachable” problem when installing the Android SDK on Gnu/Linux

When I was trying to get the Available Packages from the Android SDK and AVD Manager, I kept on getting an error saying

"Failed to fetch URL http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/repository.xml, reason: Network is unreachable"

Apparently others had the same problem as I had when trying to get the Android SDK to work on my Gnu/Linux box and I found the solution here.

All you have to do is edit the /etc/sysctl.d/bindv6only.conf file and change the line

net.ipv6.bindv6only = 1
to
net.ipv6.bindv6only = 0

and reboot since the kernel needs to read this option before booting

Get gnu/linux hardware information

I just found this cool tool called dmidecode which “decodes your computer’s DMI (some say  SMBIOS) table contents in a human readble form” and basically spits out detailed information of your system hardware. For example to see what type of RAM memory you have on your motherboard just type as root

dmidecode –type=17.

Similarly if you want to check your processor’s details

dmidecode –type=4

The type parameter can be set to a specific number depending on the hardware you want to investigate. The full list of supported types is found in the dmidecode manual accessible through > man dmidecode. You can use the command without specifying a type in which case you’ll get a really long list of information.

UPDATE:

You can also get the similar information using keywords. For example

dmidecode –type=memory

is the same as using type=17.

The supported keywords are
bios
system
baseboard
chassis
processor
memory
cache
connector
slot

Change system-wide default browser on Debian

Type the following command as root:

update-alternatives –config x-www-browser

This will present a list of installed browser from which you can select the one you prefer.

[credits]

Disable ipv6 on Debian

A few days ago I got my girlfriend’s old PC and set a Debian unstable on it. After installation Iceweasel was taking too long to do the DNS lookup of websites that I was typing into it, something I have never encountered before. After searching over the net, most people seemed to suggest that Debian (for some reason) defaults to ipv6 and apparently when its ipv6 requests don’t resolved properly it falls back to ipv4. So disabling ipv6 should fix the slow DNS lookup problem. Here’s how to disable ipv6 on Debian

-> open /etc/modprobe.d/aliases
-> find a line that says : alias net-pf-10 ipv6
-> change it to : alias net-pf-10 off ipv6

and reboot the machine.

If the problem still persists, go to iceweasel/firefox and type about:config in the url bar. search for “network.dns.disableIPv6” and set it to true.

Hope this helps anyone else with similar problems.

Greek subs in Kaffeine

Credits for this post go to http://zeps-corner.blogspot.com/2008/11/kaffeine-greek-subtitles.html

1. Download arial fonts,
2. Extract arialBySapioiCorp.tar.gz to /usr/share/xine/libxine1/fonts/
3. Settings –> xine Engine Parameters –> subtitles
4. Beginer Options: normal 0 iso-8859-7
5. Expert Options: arial