alan.lamielle.net » google

Nexus One USB in Ubuntu 9.10

Alan LaMielle — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 04:55:14 +0000

My shiny new Google Nexus One wasn’t connecting properly over USB to my Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) notebook using the Android SDK. Here’s how I fixed it.

After a few days of debating whether or not to buy a Nexus One, I finally gave in a bought one. Rachael ended up getting a Droid Eris (Verizon) for Christmas, so in the course of a few weeks I gained access to two fantastic Android-powered phones. I had been compiling a list of mobile application ideas and the fact that I now have the hardware to test on motivated me to start looking into Android development.

After getting the Android SDK setup I needed to connect my N1 and push an application to it for testing on real hardware. I found some Android documentation that discussed connecting up an Android device over USB. However, after following the steps on this page, I was still seeing strange output when running adb devices:
List of devices attached ???????????? no permissions
This led to some searching which turned up a blog post. Basically, the Google Android team hasn’t added the Vendor ID for the Nexus One. Apparently HTC’s USB Vendor ID isn’t correct. So, I followed these steps to fix it:

Create/edit a udev rules file:
sudo vim /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
Add the following line to this file:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="18D1", MODE="0666"
(Note the vendor ID of 18D1. This was changed from the HTC vendor code of 0BB4.)
Restart udev using either
sudo reload udev
or
sudo service udev reload
Connect your Nexus One.
Run
adb devices
and you should see something like
List of devices attached ############ device

Hopefully Google updates the documentation to include the Vendor ID 18D1 rather than making us hunt for this number ourselves. Enjoy!

Google Gears in Firefox 3.5 in Linux x64_64

Alan LaMielle — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:59:45 +0000

I recently posted about getting Firefox working in Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 x86_64. Updates to Firefox 3.5.1 were recently pushed to the repositories, and after updating, Gears stopped working again. Use the Gears build here for Firefox 3.5.1 Linux x86_46, linked to from this Google Groups post.

It really would be nice if 64-bit Linux was supported by Google rather than having to find these work-around builds. Clearly it works for us, what is the holdup?

Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04

Alan LaMielle — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:07:39 +0000

I’ve finally moved permanently to Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04). Initially I installed it by following the instructions found here and here. However, I didn’t put the time in to update my extensions, so I ended up reverting back to the 3.0.* series. I installed by adding the Security Team’s PPA to my package sources list, but that is apparently no longer necessary.

The two extensions I couldn’t live without were Tab Mix Plus and Google Gears. After some digging, I found a TMP thread with a link (xpi) to a development build that works with Firefox 3.5. Also, I found a Google groups thread and a blog post with a few links to Linux x86_64 builds of Gears.

Once I upgraded these two extensions I was happy enough to continue using 3.5 permanently rather than just playing with it for an hour or so.

Note: The builtin support for OGG video is amazing. The problem is it’s only in Firefox right now, so I don’t really expect to see widespread adoption of it. However, it is one great step towards getting rid of plugin-based video based on flash.