Ubuntu: Crackling audio noises on a Dell M1530 (or HDA cards)

The problem I found (so did everyone else) when updating to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic was static/popping noises when your sound card is silent (aka goes into power-save mode). It applies to my Dell XPS M1530 laptop’s on-board sound and probably to the same chipset elsewhere.

The fix couldn’t be simpler! Simply edit this file (as root):

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and comment out the last line. Then, restart ALSA to save you having to do a reboot to check it worked:

sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils stop sudo alsa force-reload sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils …

in Linux · Sat 16 January 2010

Virtualenv, Plone, and Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty

What a complicated situation it is trying to use all of the above-mentioned pieces of software together. In all seriousness, Virtualenv is now appearing to be the best thing since sliced bread for me to help out with making Plone/Zope usable under Jaunty.

By default, as everyone should know by now, a whole bunch of old Python 2.4 packages got removed from Jaunty, throwing us Plone developers into peril.  Well, those of us who hadn’t discovered the joys of virtualenv yet, that is.

Here’s how to convert an existing buildout folder over to Virtualenv without too …

in Plone · Fri 12 June 2009