Something I haven't had the 'opportunity' to experience before (given that I've always used US layout keyboards before)...
While using an application on my UK laptop the keymap started to
intermittently switch to a US layout - most notable this mean that
characters like [" @ #] were in the wrong place.
Not helpful while programming...
This was only happening in some applications - the rest continued to use the correct keymap. Huzzah for finding new an unusual microsoft arsenic-laced easter eggs...
The quick'n'dirty solution is to make sure that there is only one keymap available (not great if you are plugging different keyboards into the computer, but hey...):
The fix is immediate (surprisingly it didn't need a reboot).
So here we go, I've imported a the few blog/article-like entries I had started to store on my wiki into a new nanoblogger blog.
This is a static-html style blogging system built essentially in bash and using common unix tools to get the job done.
The nicest thing is that it's a command-line blogging system so it's pretty easy to write articles using vi, not to mention to be able to import articles that are written offline.
This is a quick summary of the steps to create a new virtual machine for use with VMware Player using QEMU.
To create, instance, a file called hda.vmdk which will be a 10G disk:
qemu-img create -f vmdk hda.vmdk 10G
Using the following template (this template was found on Lorenzo Ferrara's Web Site), create a configuration file. For easy OS installation from an ISO image, just specify that image as the cdrom ide device.
## VMware Player Configuration File ## This indicates the version of the virtual machine. ## Compatible VMs are the ones created by Workstation 4.x and 5.x, GSX Server ## 3.x, and ACE 1.x. ## Valid entires are 7 and 8. We will use 8. config.version = "8" ## This seems to indicate the version of the VMware hardware. Valid values ## are from 0 to 4. But to set value 4 you need to make the configuration ## file not writable because VMware Player will change it automaticaly to 3. virtualHW.version = "3" ## This will specify how much ram will be used by VMware Player. memsize = "128" ## This variables are used to configure the primary master ide channel. ## You must assign to ide0:0.fileName the name of the hard disk image created ## with qemu-img. ide0:0.present = "TRUE" means that the device shoul be ## connected on system startup. ide0:0.present = "TRUE" ide0:0.fileName = "hda.vmdk" ide0:0.deviceType = "disk" ide0:0.redo = "" ## No configuration for the primary slave ide channel. ## ide0:1.present = "TRUE" ## Configure the secondary master ide channel. ## This time you want to configure a cdrom. ## This configuration uses the cdrom.iso file as cdrom drive. ## If you want to use your phisical cdrom drive set ## ide1:0.filename = "auto detect" ## ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw" ide1:0.present = "TRUE" ide1:0.fileName = "cdrom.iso" ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image" ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE" ## No configuration for the secondary slave ide channel ## ide1:1.present = "TRUE" ## This section configures the floppy drive. ## change "/dev/fd0" to "A:" if you run VMware Player on Windows. ## You could also use an image of a floppy disk. floppy0.present = "FALSE" floppy0.fileName = "/dev/fd0" ## Ethernet configuration. ## Activate on startup and set a nat connection. ethernet0.present = "TRUE" ethernet0.connectionType = "nat" ethernet0.addressType = "generated" ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:7f:26:09" ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0" ## Usb configuration. ## Activate usb on system startup. usb.present = "TRUE" ## This configuration makes VMware Player emulate an es1371 sound card. sound.present = "TRUE" sound.virtualDev = "es1371" ## This is just to set tile of the VMware Player window. displayName = "Virtual OS" ## Here you need to specify the guest os, that is the os that ## VMware Player will run. Possible choices are: ## "dos" ## "freebsd" ............ generic freebsd distribution ## "netware6" ........... netware 6 ## "other24xlinux" ...... generic distribution with the linux 2.4.x kernel ## "other26xlinux ....... generic distribution with the linux 2.6.x kernel ## "otherlinux" ......... generic distribution with the linux kernel ## "redhat" ............. red hat linux (fedora?) ## "solaris10" .......... solaris 10 ## "suse" ............... suse linux ## "win95" .............. windows 95 ## "win98" .............. windows 98 ## "winme" .............. windows me ## "winnt" .............. windows nt ## "winnetstandard" ..... windows server 2003 standard edition ## "winxphome" .......... windows xp home ## "winxppro" ........... windows xp professional guestOS = "otherlinux" ## Set the Non Volatile Random Access Memory file which contains information ## about BIOS settings. nvram = "bios.nvram"