Run your virtual OS directly from GDM in Ubuntu

ashokgelal — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:12:46 +0000

If you regularly run a couple of OS from your VirtualBox and want to login to those OS directly from GDM session, here is a quick way to do it. For this to work you should have already set up your VirtualBox. Here we won’t be talking about how to setup VirtualBox but only how to login to a virtual OS from GDM session.

: Windows XP GDM

1. Create a bash script with the following contents

#!/bin/bash VirtualBox -startvm NameOfYourVirtualOS

Replace yourSUPassword with your password, and NameOfYourVirtualOS with the name that you have given to your virtual OS in VirtualBox.

2. Name it something like windowsXPGDM (if you want to run Windows XP), make it executable, and then copy it to /usr/bin.

$ chmod 755 windowsXPGDM
$ sudo cp windowsXPGDM /usr/bin

2. Go to /usr/share/xsessions and create a new file with the following contents:

[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=WindowsXP Comment=My Virtual WindowsXP Exec=/usr/bin/windowsXPGDM Icon= Type=Application

3. Save it with a name something like windowsXP.desktop.

4. Log out and you will see a new entry WindowsXP in your GDM session. You can now directly open VirtualBox session without even logging in to your Ubuntu machine.

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Fixing XServer After Hardy Updates

ashokgelal — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:12:14 +0000

Since I loaded Hardy into my system a month ago, it has been my routine job to fix xserver after nearly every updates. After many desperate attempts to fix the things, I’ve found a way to fix it. I don’t claim that whatever I’ve done should work for others but it is better to give it a try once rather than ending up with reinstalling Ubuntu. Here is what I do:

I always backup my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to something like /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bckup
When something is broken, I often find that my xorg.conf file has been modified. To find out whether there is any modification, I issue:
stat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
If there is any, I list the changes:
diff /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bckup -y –suppress-common-lines
I then undo the modifications. Those who aren’t comfortable with command lines can try meld. It is a graphical frontend for diff command. It couldn’t be more easier to merge/remove changes in two versions of same file. It is in the Universe repository so you should get it by issuing:
sudo apt-get install meld
After the modifications have been undone, I restart Hardy. Most of the time I get my xserver fixed with everything working fine – color depth, screen resolution etc.
If restarting the system does nothing other than greeting with that dialog box – Ubuntu is running in low graphics mode, then i try to reconfigure xserver by issuing:
sudo dpkg reconfigure xserver-org
It will ask you a couple of questions, clicking on default option will be OK
After it gives a ’successful’ message, time to restart. I can see the changes immediately – login screen spanning to my whole screen.
I need to enable the drivers for my card by going to System>Administration>Hardware Drivers
Finally, enabling my nvidia card, restarting once again and going to System>Preference>Screen Resolution to set the correct resolution, gives my pretty looking xserver back again.
The next important task is to create the backup of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file again.

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Quick Tweaks » xserver

Run your virtual OS directly from GDM in Ubuntu

Fixing XServer After Hardy Updates