Just recently started playing Alien Arena for fun (free) on Ubuntu which is Quake II or Unreal Tournament.  AA is available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.  However, I found that after upgrading to Ubuntu Lucid 10 that the audio no longer functioned.  Open up Synaptic Package Manager and see if "libopenal1" is installed.  Installing the Open Audio Library packaged fixed the issue for me.  See you on AA.

I was majorly annoyed when this was happening so I when to check the power management settings (System -> Preferences -> Power Management) and made sure that "Dim Screen When Idle" was unchecked for both AC and battery settings.  Darn both of those options were unchecked and I just lived with having to move the mouse for a couple of weeks.

What you need to check is your Screensaver settings (System -> Preferences -> Screensaver).  By defualt, the screeensaver is "Blank Screen" and the timeout for "idle" is rather low.  So uncheck "Activate screensaver when computer is idle" or increase the slider for "Regard computer as idle after...".  This solved my problems and I'm posting this so I don't forget.

I own an aging, but trusted workhorse of a printer - HP Series II.  My printer was built in 1987 and to the surprise of many the toner cartridges are still available from mass retailers.  The crux of getting old in the printer world is my Series II only has an LPT port and most new computers (even desktops) no longer have LPT ports.  This was the issue for me in the recent years where I only had one computer (a Shuttle mini-box) with an LPT port.  This was fine until our recent move and I now longer want to have my Shuttle system setup to just for my occational printing needs.

Enter the TrendNet TU-P1284 USB to Parallel Convert which I just got off Amazon for a cool $14.  I'm using Ubuntu and CrunchBang as my operating systems.  As any Linux user knows, having a manufacturer listing Linux support is pretty rare for the little items like a converter (although I am noticing it more and more).  So the cable arrived today and I hurried unpacked it. I plugged it in and a big fat... nothing.  CUPS would not even recognize a new printer connected.

After a whole bunch of Googling and a few thoughts of returning the cable to Amazon, I found a bug from a few years about about foomatic not recognizing printers connected via usb to parallel converters. So instead of editing CUPS configuration files I decided to check if I could find in "/dev/usb" if Ubuntu actually saw the usb converter plugged in and Ubuntu did at "/dev/usb/lp0". I was right! It was mirrored at /dev/usblp0.  So I tried adding a printer again in CUPS by using this device URI "usb:/dev/usblp0" (yes, a zero - "0") and the test page did not work.  I reviewed that bug report again and noticed his HP printer only worked when using the device URI of "parallel:/dev/usblp0".  That worked and I was able to select the printer driver for HP II (there are three available) and had a successful test page printed.

So I'm posting this for two reasons:

1. Google did not come up with any immediate results that helped me.
2. I will forget how I set this up by tomorrow and next time I switch computers around in my office I will up a wall trying to figure this out again.

Hope this helps somebody else out there.

This tutorial assumes that you already have VirtualBox installed and that you have a CrunchBang Linux ISO downloaded.  You may choose a 32-bit or 64-bit version of CrunchBang depending if your target system supports a 64-bit system.

In VirtualBox:

1. Click on "New..."

2. VM Name and OS Type
  a) Enter a name for your new virtual machine
  b) Select an operating system.  In this case, select "Linux" and for the version select "Other Linux"
  c) Click "Next"

3. Memory
  a) Choose the amount of memory. The default is 256MB of memory.  Depending on the what you are going to do with the virtual machine you may need more memory.
  b) Click "Next"

4. Virtual Hard Disk
  a) You'll need to create a new hard disk for this virtual image.  Don't worry! You're not going to delete the contents of your current hard drive but create a virtual disk for your new virtual machine to use.
  b) Click "Next" and the New Virtual Disk Wizard will appear.

4a. Virtual Hard Disk Wizard
  a) Click "Next" on the welcome screen.
  b) I prefer a "dynamically expanding storage" type of hard disk so it doesn't eat up all the allocated space right away (i.e. the size of the "virtual" hard disk grows as you put things on it in your virtual machine).
  c) Click "Next"
  d) Select a location to put the virtual hard disk file.  Yes, the virtual disk is just a file on your host hard drive. I used the default 8GB size.  You may want to make it bigger depending on what you are going to do with the virtual machine.
  e) Click "Next"

5. Summary
  a).  Now you ready to create the virtual machine so click "Finish" to continue.

6. Start your new virtual machine.

Inside the Virtual Machine:

1. Since this is the first time you're starting your new virtual machine.  You'll need to mount the CrunchBang ISO as the CD-ROM so you can install the OS in your new virtual machine.  Select the "live" option when the machine boots into the ISO start menu.

N.B.  Once VirtualBox takes focus of your keyboard and mouse inside of your virtual machine you might be wondering how you can defocus the keyboard and mouse so you can use programs in your host OS.  The default option to deactivate focus is to simply press the right CTRL key on your keyboard.  The deactivate shortcut key in noted in on the bottom right on the virtual machine window.

2. Right click on the desktop or press super+space (super key is the "Windows" key) to get the CrunchBang menu.  Select "Install CrunchBang".  Follow the options for timezone, language, etc.  You'll be prompted on the hard drive to install CrunchBang.  When you setup the administrator user name and password make note of what you selected as you'll need this information later.  Also, the default option (and only option) to install CrunchBang should be virtual drive you created.  After it has finished installing, be sure to reboot.

3. Press super+u to do a system update.  We'll want to be sure that the OS is up to date.  You'll be prompted for the administrator user password that you created when you installed CrunchBang.  Follow the prompts on the screen.

4.  At this point, you'll only have maximum screen resolutions of 800x600 in CrunchBang.  In order to increase this, we'll need to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions.  We'll need to install the GNU C Compiler first in order to accomplish this.
  a) Go to the CrunchBang menu (super+space) -> System -> Package Manager.  You'll be prompted for the password of the administration user and since this is the first time that the Package Manager has been run, it will take a few moments to build an index of packages.
  b) Type "gcc" (without the quotes) into the Quick Search box.  Find "The GNU C Compiler" in the list and click on the checkbox on that line.  Select "Mark for Installation".  Click "Apply" at the top of the Package Manager and follow the prompts to install the package.
  c) Quit the Package Manager.

5. Now, at the top of the virtual machine goto Devices -> Install Guest Additions...  Unless you've downloaded the Guest Additions ISO follow the prompts to have VirtualBox download the ISO for you.  At the end, mount that ISO to the virtual machine's CD-ROM.  VirtualBox should ask if you want to mount the ISO to the CD-ROM for you.

6. Back in CrunchBang, press super+f to bring up the file manager.  We need root privileges to install the Guest Additions so goto the Tools menu -> Open Current Folder as Root.  You'll be prompted again for the root password.  Then navigate to the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Drive (you should see it listed on the left side.  Run the "VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run" package.  After it finishes compiling and installing the Guest Additions then reboot the virtual machine (super+space -> Exit - Reboot).

7.  Once you've rebooted, you'll probably have higher screen resolutions automatically.  However, if you want to change them just use GrandR or LXrandR (super+space -> System -> Display Settings) to change the screen resolution.

Congratulations! You have a new CrunchBang virtual machine!

I'm posting this for future reference and in the hopes that it might help somebody.  This works for CentOS5 (works on 3 and 4 as well).  I assume it works on RHEL as well since CentOS is just the open source version of that.

1. Go to the time zone directory

#cd /usr/share/zoneinfo

2. Find the timezone you want (in my case I prefer to run everything in UTC)
3. Copy the timezone you want to the localtime zone for the server.  In this case, we're going to switch the server to use UTC:

#cp UTC /etc/localtime

4. Type "y" to overwrite the current timezone.
5. The imezone should be changed automatically. Check the time by running:

#date

The "#" is the character for the command line prompt. Do not type this into your terminal.