Vino VNC asks for keyring password

When you try to connect with VNC to your Ubuntu desktop which has Vino configured and running, it may trigger a gnome keyring password prompt on the local display, and the login process hangs on the remote end. There are many solutions around, and most of them leave the system somewhat dirty. Here's a procedure I've gathered which fixes the problem, even remotely, and leave the system clean.

First of all, we need to shut down the gnome keyring daemon. But I've found that all application trying to gain access to the keyring will cause it to launch. So I found the only way to stop it without removing it is to rename it. Temporarily, don't worry:

sudo mv /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon.bak
sudo reboot

Then you should be able to connect to the remote machine with VNC. But let's not stop here and do things proper. First, reenable gnome keyring daemon and launch it so it is available to the next step:

sudo mv /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon.bak /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon
gnome-keyring-daemon

Make sure seahorse is installed and launch it from the VNC session. It's in System / Preferences / Passwords and Keys.

Now there's this "Login" folder. Unlock it by right clicking and choosing Unlock.

In the login folder, you will find an item named Vino. Right click on it and delete it.

And that's it. You can make sure everything is fixed by rebooting and trying to connect with VNC again.

I believe you have to leave the VNC password blank. Otherwise it'll create this item in the keyring. Feel free to confirm this in the comments. I've pulled too much hair out for this already ;)

Play C64 SID files under Linux

VLC didn't work, neither did totem, and couldn't get sidplay to work.

Install audacity

then install the "exotic" plugins package, namely audacious-plugins-exotic

There you go. You can load and play your sid files from within audacity.

Linux: Slow wifi with Intel and iwl3945

I have this lovely Thinkpad T60 on which I replaced the Atheros Wifi card for an Intel one a few years ago. I'm using Fedora 20 on it and noticed the wifi connection, although negociated to 54Mbps wouldn't get any better actual speed than 1 Mbps. I was on the edge of getting an Atheros back but here's what I did to fix the problem:

As root, add a new file:

/etc/modprobe.d/iwl3945.conf

With content:

options iwl3945 disable_hw_scan=0

then:

modprobe -r iwl3945 

modprobe iwl3945

No need to restart, the changes were instantaneous.

I don't know if it also helped, but prior to that I had removed NetworkManager and installed wicd instead. Look around on how to do this if the above solution alone didn't work. One thing though if you install wicd-gtk, I had to add my user to the "users" group and then reboot. This had nothing to do with the problem. I reinstalled NetworkManager and everything was still fine.

All thanks to this comment on ubuntu launchpad. It's from 2011 but still works.