Initially, the problem was the autodiscover URL was not accessible. That was an easy fix by adding a DNS entry. The tough nut to crack, however, was a 401 error. I went through the usual suspects of disabling the loopback check, setting back-connection host names, etc. None of which had an effect. It wasn’t until I tried logging into Remote Web Workplace directly did I get a huge clue:

This user account does not have permissions to access your network remotely. Contact your network administrator to enable remote access for this user account.

That was a very strange error indeed since users could access all other resources including Outlook Web Access. I finally decided to look through Active Directory, specifically the Windows SBS Remote Web Workplace Users security group. As soon as I added the main user group that contained all users, everything started to work.

<div id="gallery1" class="gallery">
    <a rel="gallery1" href="/path/to/fullsize1.jpg"><img src="/path/to/thumbnail1.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" /></a>
    <a rel="gallery1" href="/path/to/fullsize2.jpg"><img src="/path/to/thumbnail2.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" /></a>
    <a rel="gallery1" href="/path/to/fullsize3.jpg"><img src="/path/to/thumbnail3.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" /></a>
</div>

The HTML is rather straight forward. You’ve got a <div> as a container for a bunch of thumbnails, each linked to a matching fullsize image. The CSS on the gallery has fixed dimensions matching the dimensions of the thumbnails with overflow set to hidden.

$(".gallery").cycle({ 
    speed:      0,
    timeout:    0
});

$(".gallery").mousemove(function(e){
    var n = $(this).children().length;
    var w = $(this).width();
    var x = e.pageX - this.offsetLeft;
    var i = Math.floor(x/w * n);

    $(this).cycle(i);
}); 

$(".gallery a").fancybox();

As for the JavaScript, it’s refreshingly short, which just goes to show how much heavylifting jQuery and the two plugins do. Let’s start with the Cycle activation. The speed parameter is set to 0. This means that the transition is instantaneous when an image flips. Setting the timeout parameter to 0 prevents the Cycle plugin from auto-advancing. So far nothing new for anyone who’s used the Cycle plugin.

The next part actually sets up the effect. Just like when you mouseover an Event group in iPhoto, whenever the mouse moves within the gallery div, the position of the mouse determines the index of the image to display. First we count the number of images within the gallery. Next, we get the width of the gallery. Then we get the horizontal position of the mouse within the gallery’s coordinate system. Finally, we use those three values to calculate the index. Using this index, we tell the Cycle plugin which image to display.

Now that the iPhoto effect is working, all that’s left is to activate the Fancybox plugin and we’re done.

First, click on your device. Then go to the Podcasts tab. Sync all unplayed episodes of selected podcasts and check only those podcasts you don’t want to sync permanently.

Now for those podcasts you want to sync permanently things get a little complicated because you also want to automatically include any new podcasts when iTunes downloads them. To accomplish this you need to setup a Smart Playlist. So create a new Smart Playlist. For the first rule, set “Podcast is true”. For the second rule, set “Album contains” and then type in the name of the podcast that is in the album field. This field isn’t on by default so you may want to adjust the View Options so that field is visible. Make sure Live updating is checked (default). Once you have your Smart Playlist set up, I recommend you rename it to the podcast name. Also view the playlist to confirm the Smart List matches the correct podcasts and sort the playlist the way you want. The iPod/iPhone will keep this sort order.

Once you have all your Smart Playlists setup, click your device again and go to the Music tab. Check Sync music and Selected playlists. Then check off the playlists you want to sync including the Smart Playlists you created for your podcasts. That should do it. Hopefully, this will improve the way you manage your podcasts.

In order to create the guest user account, the easiest way is to use the Users and Groups application. This is not installed by default. You need to first install this via Synaptic/apt-get. The package to install is gnome-system-tools. It will install other complimentary administration utilities. Once you start Users and Groups it will be straight-forward, as to how to add a user. Just put in the username, real name and keep the “Desktop user” profile, set the password, and click OK. Everything else you can safely ignore.

The next thing to setup is the auto-login. gOS 2.0 uses Entrance as the display manager—worst misnomer ever by the way. In Linux, the display manager is the name of the graphical login. Why couldn’t they just call it the graphical login manager. Anyhow, Entrance does not have an auto-login setting (yet?). So to get that feature you need to install the Gnome display manager, gdm, again using Synaptic or apt-get. During the configuration phase of the installation it should prompt you which display manager you want to be used by default. Make sure to select gdm. Afterwards, just open the Login Window preferences and go to the Security tab. There you will find a checkbox to Enable Automatic Login. Choose the guest account as the user and that’s all there is to it.

Optionally, you can install the greenos-gdm-theme. This will make the login screen and OS have continuity. Once installed, you set the display manager theme via the Login Window preferences. Just select the “gos” theme and make sure the “Theme” setting is set to “Selected only.”

The last thing to do is to prevent Entrance from starting up. You might think to simply uninstall it. Don’t. The problem with that method is that the entrance package is a dependency of the entrance-theme-greenos package which is a dependency of the greenos-artwork package. Uninstalling Entrance, means uninstalling a good portion of the gOS theme art. So the workaround is to install the Boot-Up Manager, bum. After installing the Boot-Up Manager, start it up and simply uncheck “The enlightened login manager, entrance,” and you’re good to go.

After finishing all this, it might have been much easier just to use the same method I used originally for my first guest computer rather than install gdm. Something to try next time.

1. Login into Google Calendar

2. On the left hand side, under My Calendars, click Add and a drop down menu should appear

3. Click Add by URL

4. In a new tab/window, go to a Meetup group

5. Click on Calendar

6. Scroll to the bottom of the page, until you see Subscribe

7. Right click the iCal link and select Copy Link Location if you use Firefox (a similar option should be available for other browsers)

8. Go back to the Google Calendar tab/window

9. Paste the link in the Public Calendar Address field and click the Add button

10. Click OK to return to your Google Calendar

If all goes well, the events from the Meetup group should appear on your calendar after a short while. It takes time for Google Calendar to load the remote calendar. This will work for any iCal address you find on the web.

To automatically login the user and start the GUI, I added the following command to the guest’s /etc/rc.local file. NOTE: You have to be root to edit this file. This solution was posted on the DeLi Linux forum, but I’m sure it’s applicable to any Linux distro.

su - guest -c startx

To launch an application at startup, there are various ways. The first is to edit the user account’s ~/.xinitrc file. In the case of Firefox, you would change this section

# start some nice programs

exec icewm-session

to

# start some nice programs

firefox &
exec icewm-session

The application you want to start must come before the exec icewm-session command. However, I settled on using the method built into IceWM instead. Create a file ~/.icewm/startup. This file is executed by icewm-session. An example, using Firefox:

#!/bin/sh
firefox &

Don’t forget to set the startup file as executable.

chmod +x ~/.icewm/startup

I know there are tutorials and projects for creating an internet kiosk using Linux, but I really didn’t care to jump through all the hoops to lock down the machine since a) it would be used infrequently, b) it wasn’t going to be in public, and c) though the primary use will be for accessing the web, it may not be the only use. You never know. My guests may want to play some Minesweeper.

Open up a terminal (mrxvt) and enter the following commands. NOTE: If you are not using DeLi Linux, your particular installation of IceWM may differ, and as a result, file locations may differ.

cd ~/.icewm
mkdir themes
mkdir themes/goldiKwarc
mkdir themes/goldiKwarc/taskbar
cd themes/goldiKwarc/taskbar
ln -s /usr/share/icewm/themes/goldiKwarc/taskbar/icewm-alt.xpm icewm.xpm

From the start menu, select Logout…–>Restart Icewm. Once IceWM reloads, you should see Tux smiling back at you. If you want to use the start button from a different theme, just change the symbolic link command appropriately. If you use one your own, you can either link, copy, or move the file to this folder. This technique should work for any image in a theme as long as the relative location is the same. Of course if you change a lot of images, you may want to consider creating a new theme instead.

NOTE: start.xpm is another valid name.

The default GUI fonts are a combination of Helvetica and Courier. The default GUI fonts can be overridden, not surprisingly, by the currently selected theme. Those font settings can then be overridden by a prefoverride file. NOTE: If you are not using DeLi Linux, your particular installation of IceWM may differ, and as a result, file locations may differ.

cp /usr/share/icewm/preferences ~/.icewm/prefoverride

FYI the ~/.icewm folder contains user-specific settings for IceWM.

Open the file using one of the installed editors (vi, X File Write, Beaver Text Editor, or XElvis). Delete everything before line 753.

Let’s work through an example. On line 106 (previously line 858), you will find a setting for TitleFontName. See anything familiar with the value? It’s the same kind of string value used in the Font Selector.

Start Font Selector and set the fndry to “adobe”, fmly to “helvetica”, wght to “medium”, slant to “r”, and ptSz to “120”. If you happen to be using a theme that uses the default fonts then the font will match the font in the window title.

Let’s say you’d rather have a serif font instead of a sans serif font. Let’s also say that you’d rather make the font larger. So change fmly to “new century schoolbook” and ptSz to “140”. Does it look good?

Now that you’re happy with the font, let’s apply it to the GUI. Switch back to the text editor and change line 106 from:

# TitleFontName="-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

to

TitleFontName="-adobe-new century schoolbook-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

Notice that the line is no longer commented out. Save the file.

To see the change, go to the Start menu and select Logout…–>Restart IceWM. You’ll have to click the arrow next to Logout in order to see the submenu. If all goes well, you’ll see the window title font change after IceWM reloads.

If you look through the rest of the file you’ll find many settings that you can override. Repeat the above steps to adjust any GUI font you don’t like. It’s fairly obvious which setting you will need to change by reading the setting’s name. To make things easier you can apply the same change by globally finding and replacing text. Just remember to uncomment any changed settings before restarting IceWM.