31 July 2011

12. Pulseaudio - controlling where the output goes

The non-free flash plugin can be a bit of a headache, since even if you install it and flash videos play nicely, you may not get any sound. On a laptop, you might not notice it, since the default output seems to be the laptop speakers. However, you may have problems piping the sounds through any attached USB speakers. Same goes for desktops, where the default output may be the sounds ports on your motherboard.

The fix is simple (assuming you have pulseaudio installed)
create an /etc/asound.conf file or a ~/.asoundrc file, with the following in it:

pcm.!default.type pulse
ctl.!default.type pulse

Rebooting should take care of things

11. Sorting out problems with NVIDIA or ATI graphics cards on Debian Testing

This bug has been a problem for a while now when running debian testing - if you do a dist-upgrade, chances are your prorietary drivers get borked.

Symptoms include gdm not starting i.e. no Gnome login window. Instead you get dumped into the terminal.

There are two fixes - one quick and dirty one and one which is more long term.

1. Quick and dirty
If you want Gnome up and running without necessarily using graphics acceleration, simply log in in your terminal and rename your xorg.conf.

sudo mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.old

This will allow you to use the graphics card on your motherboard again. It won't help with a PCI card much.

2. A real fix
SMXI. It may seems scary, but is fairly straightforward. Log in (presumably in the terminal)

sudo su
cd /usr/local/bin && wget -Nc smxi.org/smxi.zip && unzip smxi.zip && smxi


The sudo su logs you in as root. You could also sudo each command individually above.

Follow the instructions and let the smxi script install your graphics drivers.

28 July 2011

10. Combining MS data into a matrix

The following script takes a series of files with comma-delimited data named 0v.csv, 10v.csv etc., extracts everything in column 4 (in my case it contains relative abundance values from MS) from row 7 to the bottom, and stores those columns in files called 0.dat, 10.dat etc.

The second column (in my case it contains m/z values) is extracted from one of the csv files, and stored in mz.x.

Next, all the .dat files are pasted together, with the columns side by side, and the mz.x data added as the first column.

The data is rotated using the rotate script I've published earlier.

A file with cone-voltage values, cv.xy, has already been prepared by hand (single column), and is pasted together with the m/z data.

procms.sh
#!/usr/bin.bash
for e in 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 220 240 260 280 300
do
tail -n +8 $e\v.csv | sed 's/\,/\t/g'| gawk '{print $4}' > $e.dat
done

#get m/z
tail -n +8  0v.csv | sed 's/\,/\t/g'| gawk '{print $2}' > mz.x

paste  0.dat 10.dat 20.dat 30.dat 40.dat 50.dat 60.dat 70.dat 80.dat 90.dat 100.dat 110.dat 120.dat 130.dat 140.dat 150.dat 160.dat 170.dat 180.dat 190.dat 200.dat 220.dat 240.dat 260.dat 280.dat 300.dat > all.dat
paste mz.x all.dat > $1dat
rotate $1.dat > $1\rot.dat
paste cv.xy $1\rot.dat > $1\tot.dat