bugwhine

Boot Fedora 16 Live from partition on hard drive

2011-11-13T17:13:00.002+01:00

Also known as a 'poor man's install', I wanted to have a rescue partition on the hard drive, which I can use grub to boot should something go wrong with the regular Fedora install.

Here's how I did it, based on instructions from http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=191888

Use fdisk to create a FAT32 partition large enough to hold the live distro, in my case /dev/sda8 below
Format it using mkfs or gparted.

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xaa9baa9b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 24578047 12288000 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2 * 24578048 24782847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 24782848 502260399 238738776 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 502261760 625142447 61440344 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 502263808 503287807 512000 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 503289856 605689855 51200000 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 605691904 613883903 4096000 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 613885952 625141759 5627904 b W95 FAT32

Mount the iso image, and copy files from it

cd /mnt/

mkdir iso live

mount -o loop -t iso9660 ~/Downloads/Fedora-Live.iso iso

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda8 live

cp -r iso/* live/

Alternatively, a better way might be -
livecd-iso-to-disk --noverify --overlay-size-mb 2047 Fedora-16-x86_64-Live-LXDE.iso /dev/sda8

Examine the grub conf on the live distro -

cat /mnt/live/EFI/boot/grub.conf

title Fedora-16-x86_64-Live-LXDE.iso

kernel /EFI/boot/vmlinuz0 root=live:LABEL=Fedora-16-x86_64-Live-LXDE.iso rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet rhgb rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm=0

initrd /EFI/boot/initrd0.img

Find the UUID of your live partition -

[steve@aspireone753 ~]$ ls -lF /dev/disk/by-uuid

total 0

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10 Nov 13 11:33 B381-1423 ->; ../../sda8

Then edit the regular grub.conf on your main linux installation. Changes needed are shown in bold.

sudo vi /boot/grub/grub.conf

paste in a new entry, copied from the live distro -

title Fedora-16-x86_64-Live-LXDE.iso

root (hd0,7)

kernel /EFI/boot/vmlinuz0 root=UUID=B381-1423 rootfstype=auto rw liveimg quiet rhgb rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm=0

initrd /EFI/boot/initrd0.img

Reboot, and choose the live distro at the grub menu.

Fedora 16 Install

2011-11-13T09:35:00.000+01:00

Well this didn't go so smoothly. I first tried to install from live usb - perhaps this was a mistake.
After partitioning, when beginning the install, it stopped with a filesystem error.
Frustrated also with LVM, I had tried the install without LVM.
I tried many partition layouts, including with LVM, but in the end was unable to resolve it.

Desperate, I did a fresh install of Fedora 15 (from DVD install media), using a custom layout (without LVM), which worked fine. From there yum upgrade from Fedora 15 to 16 went smoothly.

Picasa on Fedora

2011-11-09T23:50:00.002+01:00

This you can find all over the web... but for my own use, and perhaps to save others browsing the many google results -

If you get this trying to run picasa -

/usr/bin/picasa: line 189: 8381 Segmentation fault (core dumped) "$PIC_BINDIR"/wrapper check_dir.exe.so
/usr/bin/picasa: line 248: 8497 Segmentation fault (core dumped) "$PIC_BINDIR"/wrapper set_lang.exe.so

Then install wine, and replace picasa's wine preloader with the one from the fedora wine install

cp /usr/bin/wine-preloader /opt/google/picasa/3.0/wine/bin/wine-preloader

And then, to allow sign-in to web albums -

cp /usr/lib/wine/wininet.dll.so /opt/google/picasa/3.0/wine/lib/wine/

Resizing LVM volumes

2011-11-09T22:31:00.000+01:00

Just made the costly mistake of shrinking an LVM volume by booting from a DVD, and using lvm to resize directly. I should have read the following first -

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-enterprise-47/shrink-lvm-without-dataloss-557746/

Seems the key step I missed was to use 'resize2fs' to resize the filesystem first.

Having re-installed... my next step is to put a second install on the hard disk, for future recovery work.

Horrible web site - Citi Commercial Cards / Citimanager

2011-10-08T21:55:00.000+02:00

Corporate policy now dictates that we use a Citibank corporate card... replacing the very functional 'First Card' we previously used. No problem... until one is forced to use their website to view bills etc.

1. Horrible login security

A password that needs to be between 6 and 9 characters long.
- What if I want a password with 10? Doesn't fit in their database table... too bad.
The password can't have any repeated characters in it
- Why not?
It must have mixed case and numbers
- Ok, that I can live with
After logging in with a password that fits all those requirements... it wants to know in which city I was born
- Why? If someone can remember the password that fits all the requirements... good luck to them in looking at the price of the dinner I paid for on my company card

2. Horrible layout

Try to understand how much you need to pay - good luck

3. One way messaging

Yes, every time I login, I have a new message in my inbox about some system downtime.
But, try to send a message to customer service, with an enquiry about your account... no way. You need to call to a call center, remember a whole other set of authentication details, and hope that the person on the other end can answer your question

Customer first... not a chance.
Move into the 21st century Citibank.

XBMC on Fedora 15 (upgrade from Fedora 14)

2011-08-28T14:54:00.000+02:00

After upgrading from Fedora 14 to 15, XBMC stopped working with the error below -

/usr/lib64/xbmc/xbmc.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libopenjpeg.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

An update of xbmc didn't solve the problem.

However, a subsequent update of vlc did -

Installed Packages

vlc.x86_64 1.1.11-1.fc14 @rpmfusion-free-updates/14

Available Packages

vlc.x86_64 1.1.11-1.fc15 rpmfusion-free-updates

Actually it may have been a broken spotify repo, that led to such updates not happening automatically.

HP Laserjet M1005MFP on Fedora 15

2011-08-05T18:02:00.000+02:00

All looked good for my printer on Fedora 15 - on plugging it in, it was detected and some installation occurred. Unfortunately when trying to print it failed, and lpstat gave the info below -

[steve@aspireone753 ~]$ lpstat -t
scheduler is running
system default destination: HP-LaserJet-M1005
device for HP-LaserJet-M1005: hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_M1005?serial=KJ18MKN
HP-LaserJet-M1005 accepting requests since Fri 05 Aug 2011 17:43:13 CEST
printer HP-LaserJet-M1005 now printing HP-LaserJet-M1005-8. enabled since Fri 05 Aug 2011 17:43:13 CEST
/usr/lib/cups/filter/hpcups failed
HP-LaserJet-M1005-7 steve 1024 Fri 05 Aug 2011 17:42:16 CEST
HP-LaserJet-M1005-8 steve 1024 Fri 05 Aug 2011 17:43:13 CEST

A further check in /var/log/messages revealed -

Aug 5 17:43:14 aspireone753 hpcups[5262]: prnt/hpcups/HPCupsFilter.cpp 418: m_Job initialization failed with error = 48

From which google found the solution below -

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=611255

Fedora 15 on Acer Aspire One 753

2011-07-08T19:13:00.002+02:00

My new Acer Aspire One 753 arrived. Somewhat to my surprise the performance of it with Windows 7 was not great, so I shrunk the volume, and installed Fedora 15. This went quite smoothly, except for the installer wanting/needing internet access. As the built-in WIFI device isn't supported by GPL drivers, I needed to plug in a cable to complete the install.

I then set about getting wifi to work as follows -

Black list acer_wmi
echo blacklist acer_wmi > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-acer.conf

Install broadcom driver
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
yum update
yum install kmod-wl

Fedora 15 is performing very well, and the new interface is nice.

Microsoft tax

2011-06-26T15:41:00.000+02:00

My original Acer Aspire One sadly died recently, so I decided to replace it with an Aspire One 753. I'm anticipating it's arrival. One of the reasons I bought the Aspire One originally was that it came with Linux installed. Unfortunately this is no longer an option (the Cromia isn't available here yet), so I began to investigate if it's possible to get a refund for Windows 7. The posts below show that it is -

Getting a Windows refund from Acer in the Netherlands
Windows tax refund for Acer notebook (Acer Aspire 1410/1810T)

but I don't have the patience to go through the difficult process. Whilst I'm not a Microsoft hater in general, their monopolistic practices have clearly left a legacy - and sadly this time they will be taking a cut from me.

Chrome unresponsive for gmail and yahoo mail on Fedora 14

2011-06-06T15:26:00.000+02:00

Some time back I switched from Firefox to Chrome on my Aspire One (running Fedora 14). I was impressed by how fast it is, and became a convert. Unfortunately, after some time it became unusable, with gmail and many other pages leaving Chrome unresponsive.

I tried many workarounds and 'solutions', removing my cache and configuration directories but still no joy.

I then began troubleshooting with strace - and noticed that the problem went away. This lead me to some more googling, and I found this post -

Issue 77274: Chrome 11 hangs on linux due to gecko-mediaplayer

The solution was as simple as removing gecko-mediaplayer

$ sudo yum erase gecko-mediaplayer

D-LINK DHP-307AV Powerline AV

2011-04-11T20:55:00.001+02:00

Although my apartment is wired with CAT-6, unfortunately where I have the TV and HTPC now, there is only one outlet. As my TV provided via IPTV, my set-top box needs it's only Ethernet feed from the 'triple-play' switch (XG6745). The HTPC needs a good connection to my NAS... so initially it got the CAT-6 connection, whilst I figured the IPTV could be sent over HomePlug AV.

So I bought this kit - D-LINK DHP-307AV.

Initially, I was very impressed - the setup was very smooth, just plug-in, and press a button on each unit... and my IPTV was up and running.

However, after a couple of days, my the TV would occasionally freeze, and break-up. After some resets, and moving outlets... the problem remained.

I then switched the TV back to Ethernet, and connected the HTPC over the powerline. Whilst it works fine.. the throughput was around 30Mbps - somewhat disappointing. I had hoped based on google research to be in the range 60-85Mbps.

MCE Remote and LCD Display

2011-03-31T00:19:00.000+02:00

Microsoft MCE Remote
sudo yum install lirc

yum install lirc-remotes

cp /usr/share/lirc-remotes/mceusb/lircd.conf.mceusb /etc/lirc/lircd.conf

chkconfig lirc on

/etc/init.d/lirc restart

I'm unable to get the mouse working at this point. After lot of experimentation and googling, I'm not sure anyone has succeeded yet with Fedora.

LCD Display

sudo yum install lcdproc

cd /etc/sysconfig/lcdproc

cp LCDd.conf.example LCDd.conf

Edit LCDd.conf setting Driver=imonlcd

cp lcdproc.conf.example lcdproc.conf

chkconfig LCDd on

chkconfig lcdproc on

/etc/init.d/LCDd start

XBMC on Fedora 14 (HTPC)

2011-03-30T19:26:00.002+02:00

I bought a new HTPC, in pieces -

386482 - Antec Fusion HTPC Remote Black, Fans: 2x 120mm Sida, IR, Remote, LCD Display, iMon software
612433 - Corsair CX 500W PSUATX 12V V2.3, 80 Plus, Standard. 2x 6+2pin PCIe, 5x SATA, 120mm Fan
610540 - AMD Athlon II X3 450, Triple Core, 3.2Ghz, AM3, 1,5MB, 95W, Boxed
363359 - Crucial DDR3 1333MHz 4GB KIT, CL9, Kit w/two matched DDR3 2GB, 240pin
597747 - Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H, Socket-AM3 mATX, AMD880G+SB850, DDR3, 2xPCIe(2.0)x16, VGA, DVI, HDMI, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0
575186 - Western Digital Caviar® GreenPower™ 1TB Sata 3 Gb/s, 64MB Cache
582000 - Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 700V2 Black USB
508084 - HDMI Cable, 1m
493692 - Lite-On Blu-Ray Reader IHOS104-37, Blu-Ray DVD-ROM, Sata

It's been many years since I've built a PC - it was a nice surprise to see the assembly be problem free. Tired of Vista, and not wanting to shell out Microsoft tax for Windows 7, I decided to install Mythdora - MythTV on Fedora. It was very disappointing - so I switched to Fedora 14 + XBMC - and was immediately impressed.

Customisations so far -
Auto-login, and auto-start of XBMC -
http://www.perturb.org/display/GDM_AutoLogin.html

Installed NoMachine NX Server to allow easy remote management

Next to tackle -
- Microsoft MCE Keyboard/Remote
- Front panel display on the Antec Fusion case
- IPTV PVR

Fedora 14 on Acer Aspire One A150L

2011-02-05T20:19:00.004+01:00

Problem 1
Old livecd-tools from Fedora 8, for Linpus, seem to create a syslinux.cfg that isn't compatible with the version of grub (?) used on the FC14 live image.

Result was this message at boot -

syntax error in syslinux.cfg

Work-around - use Windows based liveusb-creator.

Problem 2
During boot of Fedora from live usb image, the message below appears -

no root device found.
booting has failed, sleeping forever.

The problem in my case was the volume name of the USB drive (FAT32). The label had a space character in it ('P1I CARD'), which the liveusb-creator mapped in syslinux.cfg as 'P1I_CARD'.

I was able to resolve this by renaming the volume to 'USBDISK', and replacing all instances of 'P1I_CARD' in syslinux.cfg.

Install to hard disk
Having booted the live usb image, I used gparted to reduce the size of the linpus partition, and free up space for Fedora.

Next was to install Fedora into the free space and boot into Fedora.
I then copied lines from the linpus grub.conf into the new fedora grub.conf, such that I could dual boot.

This went smoothly, and Fedora is performing exceptionally well... just wish I'd made the upgrade sooner.

VirtualBox-3.1.2 upgrade on Aspire One Linux

2010-01-13T19:15:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted for a long time... but just to show some activity, I'm posting regarding the latest VirtualBox upgrade.

On the VirtualBox download site, they haven't posted an RPM for Fedora 8... so I resorted to the 'All distributions' release http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/3.1.2/VirtualBox-3.1.2-56127-Linux_x86.run

The process was smooth and simple
- Remove the old RPM installation

sudo rpm -e VirtualBox-3.0.6_52128_fedora8-1

- Set the execute bit on the downloaded install file

chmod a+x VirtualBox-3.1.2-56127-Linux_x86.run

- Run it

[user@aspireone Downloads]$ sudo ./VirtualBox-3.1.2-56127-Linux_x86.run
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox for Linux installation.........
VirtualBox Version 3.1.2 r56127 (2009-12-17T13:37:07Z) installer
Installing VirtualBox to /opt/VirtualBox
Python found: python, installing bindings...
error: invalid Python installation: unable to open /usr/lib/python2.5/config/Makefile (No such file or directory)
Building the VirtualBox vboxdrv kernel module
Building the VirtualBox netflt kernel module
Building the VirtualBox netadp kernel module

VirtualBox has been installed successfully.

You will find useful information about using VirtualBox in the user manual
/opt/VirtualBox/UserManual.pdf
and in the user FAQ
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/User_FAQ

We hope that you enjoy using VirtualBox.

I don't thing the python error message is anything to be concerned about.

OpenVPN on the DNS-323

2009-11-29T07:12:00.000+01:00

There are times I want to grab files from my trusty DNS-323 when not at home. Recently I found time to try opening up access to it using OpenVPN. This post shows the steps... and it really is simple to setup. I tested the process with Linpus, Fedora 12 and Windows XP as a client, and all went smoothly.

Transcoding MJPEG to Xvid

2009-09-18T05:41:00.003+02:00

Videos from the Canon IXUS 80 weren't playing properly for me either with VLC (Linux or XP) or Media Player.. so I thought I'd try transcoding them. It worked nicely.
See my earlier posts for the transcode install process.

Input file -
[user@aspireone ~]$ tcprobe -i MVI_2282.avi
[tcprobe] RIFF data, AVI video
[avilib] V: 30.000 fps, codec=MJPG, frames=7607, width=640, height=480
[avilib] A: 44100 Hz, format=0x01, bits=16, channels=1, bitrate=705 kbps,
[avilib] 254 chunks, 22364580 bytes, CBR
[tcprobe] summary for MVI_2282.avi, (*) = not default, 0 = not detected
import frame size: -g 640x480 [720x576] (*)
frame rate: -f 30.000 [25.000] frc=0 (*)
audio track: -a 0 [0] -e 44100,16,1 [48000,16,2] -n 0x1 [0x2000] (*)
bitrate=705 kbps
length: 7607 frames, frame_time=33 msec, duration=0:04:13.564

Transcode to Xvid -
transcode -i MVI_2282.avi -y xvid4 -o MVI_2282.xvid

Output file -
[user@aspireone ~]$ tcprobe -i MVI_2282.xvid
[tcprobe] RIFF data, AVI video
[avilib] V: 29.970 fps, codec=XVID, frames=7606, width=640, height=480
[avilib] A: 44100 Hz, format=0x55, bits=16, channels=1, bitrate=128 kbps,
[avilib] 7606 chunks, 4055761 bytes, CBR
[tcprobe] summary for MVI_2282.xvid, (*) = not default, 0 = not detected
import frame size: -g 640x480 [720x576] (*)
frame rate: -f 29.970 [25.000] frc=4 (*)
audio track: -a 0 [0] -e 44100,16,1 [48000,16,2] -n 0x55 [0x2000] (*)
bitrate=128 kbps
length: 7606 frames, frame_time=33 msec, duration=0:04:13.786

The other benefit -
[user@aspireone ~]$ du -h MVI_2282.*
435M MVI_2282.avi
59M MVI_2282.xvid

Tomcat on DNS-323

2009-09-13T23:43:00.004+02:00

Given my lack of success with bridging for VirtualBox, I thought I'd try starting Tomcat on the DNS-323.

Starting with hope provided by this post.

The process was remarkably easy. Follow this post to get optware setup.
Then install the jamvm optware package.
Next, follow this post to install Tomcat.

It's a bit of a memory hog,
Mem: 60260K used, 1644K free, 0K shrd, 11220K buff, 8916K cached
CPU: 1% usr 0% sys 0% nice 97% idle 0% io 0% irq 0% softirq
Load average: 0.03 0.06 0.18
PID PPID USER STAT VSZ %MEM %CPU COMMAND
30766 30688 root S 40204 65% 1% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30687 30686 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30767 30688 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30835 30688 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30824 30688 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30836 30688 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30690 30688 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30691 30688 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30689 30688 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30768 30688 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak
30688 30687 root S 40204 65% 0% jamvm -classpath /opt/share/classpath/glibj.zip:/opt/jak

and painfully slow -
INFO: Server startup in 151671 ms

but it seems to be reasonably functional... although trying to run a database as well on the DNS-323 would be a stretch.

VirtualBox Bridged Mode on Linpus

2009-09-09T04:26:00.007+02:00

I wanted to run TurnKey Tomcat in VirtualBox, and use bridged network mode to make the tomcat available on my LAN. Easy I thought...

The basics of setting preparing the host Linux environment I found this post.
However, the Linpus kernel doesn't have
- TUN/TAP support built in the kernel... so I turned to this post.
- Bridge support... so it was time to build my own kernel, for which I turned to this post.

I then discovered that Linpus has a custom build of Grub, that doesn't show a menu on boot... which was something of a problem, as my kernel, built with 'CONFIG_BRIGE=y" did not work properly - the mouse and keyboard didn't seem to work.

I hope to replace the Linpus grub with a more standard variety... but this I'll save for another post. I want to make sure I have a safe procedure for restoring the original version first.

On a side issue, I tried using
- Damn Small Linux (DSL) for recovery - but it hung whilst booting.
- RIPLinux - at first this didn't seem to work either... until I found that by first running it's hardware detection tool, and then running grub, it worked nicely. Strange incompatibility with the Aspire One I suspect.

For my kernel second build, I tried with bridge as a module, CONFIG_BRIGE=y. This worked nicely.

I then hit this error - VERR_SUPDRV_COMPONENT_NOT_FOUND which is easily resolved by modprobing, see this post.

Then, to my horror, I found that Linux bridging doesn't work on WIFI - see this post.

If anyone tries this procedure, and gets it to work, perhaps against a regular Ethernet port, I'd like to hear your experiences.

Snapshots in VirtualBox

2009-07-06T03:51:00.003+02:00

Firstly, I want to give credit to this thread - as it steered me onto the right path.

The way snapshots and virtual media (hard disks) work in VirtualBox is clearly not entirely obvious to the newbie, myself included. If you don't understand it, it looks plain buggy... however once you've understood it... there is reason in the madness - and more importantly it works!

In VirtualBox there are 3 types (or modes) of virtual hard disk images, Normal, Immutable and Write-through. These are fairly well explained in the manual - I highly recommend reading at least that section of the manual, as it also helps make sense of snapshots.

I'll discuss only the 'Normal' image type here. This is the default type set, when you create a new machine and hard disk. You start up your guest OS, and everything works nicely. You try powering off the machine, saving the state, everything works as you'd expect.

Then you see the 'Take snapshot' option, and try it. Now, you need to understand how they work - whether you know it or not :)

The snapshot stores the machine state, just like the 'current state' you've used up until now. It also contains a differential image of the hard disk. Ie. from now on, the (normal) hard disk image file (eg. xp.vdi) that was previously being updated, is no longer updated. Instead, when your guest OS writes to disk, it writes into the differential image.

If you create another snapshot, a new differential image is created, so now, the current content of the hard disk is stored across 3 files, the original, and the two snapshots. This of course gives the possibility to go back to an exact, earlier copy of the entire system (including hard disk).

So what's the problem?

Snapshot files, including the differential hard disk image aren't particularly portable. So whilst you can easily move your original hard disk to different machines, moving the updates in your differential files is difficult. Unless you run on basically the same host machine, with the same vbox version you can restore the changes from your differential images.

Or can you?

The solution is to discard your snapshots!

Sounds dangerous? Well, not quite as dangerous as it seems. When you discard a snapshot, it merges the differential image into it's parent image.

So, if you have snapshots like this -

- Snapshot 1
  - Snapshot 2
     - Current State

And discard 'Snapshot 2', the differential image changes will be merged back into Snapshot 1, leaving -

- Snapshot 1
   - Current State

Then discarding 'Snapshot 1', will merge back into your original hard disk image 'xp.vdi'... leaving no snapshots, but also a portable hard disk image.

I recommend experimenting by taking a snapshot, then create some files in the guest OS, and then create another snapshot. Then discard away, and see that the files survive.

Commodore 64 on the iPhone

2009-06-21T03:51:00.002+02:00

Well this is totally off topic, but it has two strong connections to my past. The C64 which I spent countless hours programming and hacking in my youth, and and old friend, whose personal company developed the product.

So go ahead and take a look -
c64iphone
Full Commodore 64 emulator rejected from App Store

Tiresome

2009-04-29T22:20:00.002+02:00

But just because they bug me so much, here's the latest spammer from my www logs -

118.168.136.169 - - [29/Apr/2009:13:54:46 +0200] "CONNECT maila.burst.idv.tw:25 HTTP/1.0" 501 357 "-" "-"

Hack attempt?

2009-01-15T01:51:00.002+01:00

In my web server logs I regularly see the following -

211.95.78.70 www.ocnar.com - [14/Jan/2009:07:12:00 +0100] "POST http://www.ocnar.com/cgi-bin/textenv.pl HTTP/1.1" 404 345 "-" "-"

I'm assuming it's some kind of hack... but googling it didn't turn up much. Can anyone enlighten me?

Using Sony Ericsson P1i as a GPRS/3G modem on Acer Aspire One

2009-01-04T18:09:00.006+01:00

As I got the Aspire One just prior to travelling, I didn't have time to test using it for internet connectivity using my Sony Ericsson P1i as a GPRS modem. As I'm travelling again soon, I decided to iron out the process in advance.

First I tried using Windows XP running in VirtualBox, with the normal Sony Ericsson tools. This worked largely without any hitches.

On to Linux (Linpus Lite), using a post on bayan ni juan as a reference.

Here's how to do it -

Check to see that the phone is detected when you plug it in. You should see something like the following.

[user@localhost ~]$ dmesg
usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
cdc_acm 3-1:1.1: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
cdc_acm 3-1:1.3: ttyACM1: USB ACM device
cdc_acm 3-1:1.5: ttyACM2: USB ACM device
usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm
drivers/usb/class/cdc-acm.c: v0.25:USB Abstract Control Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters

Check that wvdial is installed. It seems to come with the Aspire One.

[user@localhost ~]$ yum list wvdial
wvdial.i386 1.60-3.fc8 installed

Install gnome-ppp

[user@localhost ~]$ sudo yum install gnome-ppp
Installed: gnome-ppp.i386 0:0.3.23-4.fc8
Complete!

Run gnome-ppp -

[user@localhost ~]$ gnome-ppp

Unfortunately it needs to run as root to access the modem, so give the root password (or invoke via sudo).

Click Setup
Click "Detect" to detect the modem
It should find /dev/ttyACM1
Speed 460800

Add the phone number for GPRS *99#
Phone numbers, *99# (you can use *99***10# to use profile 10 from the phone. I have the phone setup for WAP etc already, so this seems to be unnecessary).

Under init strings, my operator Telia suggests AT+cgdcont=10,,"online.telia.se"
this seems to be unnecessary, perhaps for the same reason cited earlier.

All other settings I left unchanged.

Quit and re-run gnome-ppp (perhaps not required)

Give a Username (test)
Give a Password (test)
Check the box "Remember password"
This seems to be required to workaround a bug in gnome-ppp. Without the box checked, gnome-ppp doesn't respond to the wvdial prompt "Please enter password (or empty password to stop):" - it took me a while to figure this out :)

Press connect, and hopefully you'll get a connection, with IP address, DNS etc.

Alt Gr dead in java gui apps

2009-01-03T00:21:00.003+01:00

Its time I blogged about a bug. This one isn't very interesting, but it is annoying. Internationalisation is one of those seemingly simple things that is so hard to get right, due to the huge combination of settings, and solutions.

Whilst trying to do some coding in Netbeans, I found the Alt Gr key not working on my Swedish/Finish keyboard. Pretty important as it gets you the { and } keys! What's so frustrating is that the keys are working perfectly in every other app I've used.

After checking this Netbeans article, I found the solution here in Ubuntu's bug tracker.

$ XMODIFIERS='' /opt/netbeans-6.1/bin/netbeans

VirtualBox on Acer Aspire One

2009-01-02T00:00:00.003+01:00

I'd started to install VMware on my Aspire One (Linux), when I came across
macles* post on VirtualBox. In a couple of hours I had it up and running, with Windows XP as the guest OS, nice.

When reading about VirtualBox, the thing that excited me most was the support for USB devices - ie. it can 'pipe' them through to the guest OS, such that devices not supported in the host OS can be used in the guest OS... nice.

So I gave it a try - first was my HP Laserjet M1005 MFP, printer and scanner - no problems. Install the drivers (in XP), plug in the device, tell VirtualBox to enable it, XP detects it and out comes the test page. Similarly for the Scanner. Mounting ISO images of CDs (eg. install CDs) works beautifully too, something XP itself isn't so good at.

Then the Sony Ericsson P1i PC suite. This is a buggy thing to start with... I can no longer get it to install on my Vista work PC, how about XP under VirtualBox? Basically, no problems! I may have to run VirtualBox on my Vista laptop too :)

It's really nice when things work so well.

Converting videos to play on the Sony Ericsson P1i

2008-12-31T21:35:00.004+01:00

All the playing around with transcoders for the Creative Zen got me thinking about watching videos on my Sony Ericsson P1i. It has roughly the same size and resolution screen as the Zen, although probably less colours, and a even more limited video player.

First I tried using transcode, but quickly learned that the P1i video player likes 3GP files, which use MPEG4/H.263/H.264 for video, and AMR/AAC for audio. Both of these codecs have license/patent issues, which means they aren't built into your usual rpm files.

I then found this blog post and was inspired to try using ffmpeg. The vanilla rpm on my aspire one didn't include aac/amr, so I gave source building a try.

Install SVN, and checkout the source for ffmpeg
sudo yum install svn
svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg

Install amr and faac codecs
sudo yum install amrnb amrnb-devel
sudo yum install faac-devel

Configure and make ffmpeg
./configure --enable-libfaac --enable-libamr-nb --enable-nonfree
make

Convert avi file to 3gp
./ffmpeg -i /mnt/nas/somebody.avi -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec libfaac -ab 128000 -y somebody.3gp

Copy to phone, and play
cp somebody.3gp /media/PHONE\ CARD/video/

it works!
I found that the player couldn't handle resolutions other than qcif (176x144). More experimentation is required to see what else it can handle.

I've read that H.264 would be worth trying, and perhaps the audio rate I'm using is an overkill. This post also is interesting.

Still, I'm not that sure I actually want to watch video on the phone... so perhaps I'll just end here :)

Happy New Year!

libmtp #2

2008-12-28T14:16:00.003+01:00

To give libmtp a fair chance I downloaded the lastest released version, compiled and installed it, and retried. I must say the process went smoothly -

./configure
make
sudo make install
./hotplug.sh

(it seems the fedora 8 rpm for libmtp is very old... still I'm avoiding moving from linpus on the aspire one... I was however impressed yesterday by a fedore 10 vmware image... hmm.. q-emu on linpus perhaps?)

The updated mtp-sendtr now prompts for meta-data which is nice. I found giving an empty album name resulted in a seg fault... however, after being more forth-coming with meta-data, it worked!

Starting program: /usr/local/bin/mtp-sendtr u2.avi u2.avi
libmtp version: 0.3.3

PTP: Opening session
u2.avi,u2.avi,(null),(null),(null),(null),(null),(null),00,0,0
Sending track u2.avi to u2.avi
type:avi,8
Title> U2
Album> U2
Album artist> U2
Artist> U2
Writer or Composer> U2
Genre> rock
Track number> 1
Year> 2004
Length> 228
Sending track:
Codec: Audio Video Interleave
Title: U2
Album: U2
Album artist: U2
Artist: U2
Writer or Composer: U2
Genre: rock
Year: 2004
Track no: 1
Length: 228
Storage ID: 0
Sending track...
Progress: 25604828 of 25604828 (100%)
New track ID: 94879
Album doesn't exist: creating...
success!
PTP: Closing session

Program exited normally.

The length I found using
[user@localhost ~]$ tcprobe -i u2.avi
[tcprobe] RIFF data, AVI video
[avilib] V: 29.970 fps, codec=XVID, frames=6856, width=320, height=240
[avilib] A: 44100 Hz, format=0x55, bits=16, channels=2, bitrate=128 kbps,
[avilib] 6856 chunks, 3659103 bytes, CBR
[tcprobe] summary for u2.avi, (*) = not default, 0 = not detected
import frame size: -g 320x240 [720x576] (*)
frame rate: -f 29.970 [25.000] frc=4 (*)
audio track: -a 0 [0] -e 44100,16,2 [48000,16,2] -n 0x55 [0x2000] (*)
bitrate=128 kbps
length: 6856 frames, frame_time=33 msec, duration=0:03:48.761

and simply converted it to seconds.

Perhaps I should give gnomad2 another try, with a later release of libmtp.

Creative Zen, libmtp, gnomad2

2008-12-28T02:02:00.002+01:00

Today I've encountered a number of bugs (and unexpected features)... mostly whilst trying to get fast forward, rewind and duration to work on video files transferred to the Creative Zen. After spending a number of hours trying to re-encode the video files with different tools, switches and the like - some heavy googling revealed that the problem might lie with the method I was using to transfer the files onto the device!

A quick test, using Windows to transfer the files instead of Linux + libmtp showed that the transfer method was the problem. MTP is Microsoft's Media Transfer Protocol, and unfortunately (for me) it allows meta-data to be sent 'out of band', ie. not relying on the data embedded in the media files being transferred. The duration of a video clip is one such piece of metadata, and the Zen apparently relies on this metadata when seeking in a video file.

libmtp comes with an (example) tool 'mtp-sendfile' which I'd been using, as well as a 'mtp-sendtr' which perhaps is more appropriate, as it allows meta-data to be specified. Unfortunately it doesn't handle .avi files in the release I have at least.

In the process, of investigating the above, I managed to 'corrupt' data in the Zen, such that it thought all the videos on it were gone. A reboot of the device resolved this.

I then found a blog post http://tiagoboldt.net/blog/creative-zen-linux/ indicating that gnomad2 handles the meta-data correctly. It uses libnjb to communicate with the device (I'm not sure if this is a layer above mtp or beside). Unfortunately it behaved badly on my machine, crashing with a seg-fault, and leaving the Zen hanging.

libnjb is beautifully documented via doxygen, so perhaps I'll read up more on it, and even do some coding to get a working solution :)

Dependencies and video transcoding

2008-12-26T09:26:00.007+01:00

Well it seems that I'd made one of the great Fedora no-nos and enable yum repositories for both livna and freshrpms.

This led to the problems below, whilst trying to install transcode -
ffmpeg-libs-0.4.9-0.42.20071121.lvn8.i386 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: libx264.so.56 is needed by package ffmpeg-libs-0.4.9-0.42.20071121.lvn8.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libx264.so.56 is needed by package ffmpeg-libs-0.4.9-0.42.20071121.lvn8.i386 (installed)

I found an explanation here -
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Fedora/2008-01/msg04547.html

And resolved it by disabling the livna repo, then -
[user@localhost ~]$ sudo yum erase ffmpeg-libs
This was installed from livna, and then re-install my video utilities from freshrpms -

[user@localhost ~]$ sudo yum install transcode
[user@localhost ~]$ sudo yum install dvdrip

[user@localhost ~]$ sudo yum erase libdvbpsi
[user@localhost ~]$ sudo yum install vlc

I was then able to reencode and resize videos for the Creative Zen as follows -

[user@localhost ~]$ transcode -i /mnt/nas/Music\ Videos/input.mpg -y xvid4 -o test.avi -Z 320x240 -w 768,100
(Transcode takes a plethora of options which probably need tweaking... that I'll try to get back to some time)

Connecting to the Creative Zen requires MTP (Media Transfer Protocol), so -

[user@localhost ~]$ sudo yum install libmtp libmtp-devel libmtp-examples

[user@localhost ~]$ mtp-sendfile test.avi test.avi

And surprisingly enough... it works!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-23T23:21:00.004+01:00

I've been working hard, learning JDBC and enjoying coding for the last few days... but now it's time to relax, eat and enjoy the Christmas break.

Merry Christmas

and let's hope it's bug-free :)

Annoying touchpad?

2008-12-15T00:44:00.003+01:00

Whilst workable, the touchpad on my Aspire one always seemed way too sensitive, and it would keep scrolling the screen when I didn't want it too.

Eventually I tired of it... went into the settings, reduced the sensitivity further, and disabled the scrolling function. Problems solved :)

Embarrassingly simple!

autofs #3

2008-12-02T00:21:00.005+01:00

Ok, I weakened... again this isn't a pretty solution, and it seems NetworkManager is becoming my friend...


[user@localhost ~]$ cat /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/03-autofs 
#!/bin/sh
if [ "$2" = "up" ]; then
 AUTOFS=/etc/init.d/autofs

 if [ ! -x $AUTOFS ]; then
    exit 0
 fi

 $AUTOFS start > /dev/null
fi

autofs #2

2008-11-22T14:37:00.008+01:00

Well, I'm back from vacation... the Aspire One survived the journey well, it really is light and compact enough, that you can travel with it without noticing it. The biggest hassle was the lack of a 'global' WiFi network. In Amsterdam it costs you 10 euro's to log in... Melbourne down to $5, in Kuala Lumpur free. At cafe's and hotels a similar story, sometimes free, sometimes expensive... but you find yourself wondering is it worthwhile digging out the credit card. A 3G modem would in an ideal world avoid these hassles. In the real world, there's still the cost of global roaming, and the fact that UMTS hasn't yet completely replaced GSM. Occasionally you'll find yourself barely getting 10kbps.

Anyway back to autofs... two annoyances remain -
- I don't have a dns or mdns or zeroconfig solution on my home network
- On linpus, /etc/hosts is replaced at each boot
- autofs needs the hostname for my NAS (could be avoided using the IP address I guess)
- for some reason autofs isn't starting automatically, although chkconfig shows it configured

Well here's my somewhat ugly solution to the host name problem


[user@localhost ~]$ cat /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/02-hosts
#!/bin/bash
if [ "$2" = "up" ];
then
       FOUND=`grep dlink-EEF76A /etc/hosts | wc -l`

       if [ $FOUND = "0" ];
       then
               echo "Updating /etc/hosts"
               DATE=`date`
               echo "#updated by $0 at ${DATE}" >> /etc/hosts
               echo "192.168.1.10    dlink-EEF76A" >> /etc/hosts
       fi;
fi

autofs

2008-10-19T19:17:00.004+02:00

Install autofs (yum install autofs), then follow the link below
Auto-mounting the NAS using autofs -
Accessing Windows Or Samba Shares Using AutoFS
add an entry for the NAS in /etc/hosts

Something fundamental I've missed is that autofs gets the key on demand.
so -
[user@localhost ~]$ ll /cifs
total 0

which isn't promising... but

[user@localhost ~]$ ll /cifs/DLINK-EEF76A/
total 0
drwxrwxrwx 24 user user 0 2008-10-16 01:43 Volume_1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2008-10-20 19:21 web_page

is what we want :)

A symbolic link simplifies access -
sudo ln -s /cifs/DLINK-EEF76A /mnt/nas

udev

2008-10-19T16:44:00.000+02:00

After some compilation and installation following this post FC8 HP LaserJet M1005 MFP installation -step-by-step-, I managed to get my scanner to work on Linpus. Unfortunately only as root. To get past this, I needed to dig into the world of udev. Here's what I found -

The scanner is found, as follows -
[user@localhost udev]$ sane-find-scanner
found USB scanner (vendor=0x03f0, product=0x3b17) at libusb:001:004

and after updating /etc/udev/rules.d/60-libsane.rules, udev is creating a symlink for the scanner -

[user@localhost udev]$ ll /dev/scanner-1-2.3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2008-10-20 16:33 /dev/scanner-1-2.3 -> bus/usb/001/004
[user@localhost udev]$ ll /dev/bus/usb/001/004
crw-r--r--+ 1 user root 189, 3 2008-10-20 16:54 /dev/bus/usb/001/004

and magically after a restart, it's even creating them with the right owner. A lot of playing around yesterday (perhaps without restarting) had me frustrated, as it was consistently created with root:root as the owner.

DAR backup

2008-10-16T00:13:00.000+02:00

Well I started looking at the different file base alternatives, but relatively quickly put many of them on hold. They each have there benefits, and I'll try to get back to them soon - but here in bugwhine style, I'll just explain why I put them on hold.

unison
Interesting file synchronizing tool.
Unfortunately on hold, as it's written in Objective Caml, so building for Linpus may require a bunch of work, I don't have time to follow this path right now.

rdiff-backup
In brief - File based backup directory -> directory. Hard links and special files, permissions etc. are preserved.
Incremental diffs are preserved in a special directory.
rpm available at livna (rdiff-backup.i386)

Why on hold -
- requires own server on NAS
- backup to/from cifs/samba mount not recommended
- file based

rsnapshot
A filesystem snapshot tool, using rsync.
rpm available at livna - rsnapshot.noarch
Why on hold -
- snapshots may become 'messy' on the backup filesystem
- written in perl (*)

duplicity
Uploads encrypted tar volumes to remote system. Uses librsync.
rpm available at livna - duplicity.i386

Why on hold -
- doesn't handle hard links
- written in python (*)

DAR - Disk Archive
In the end DAR was the first utility I made a successful full and incremental backup with (ie. without putting it on hold). It's available at livna -

[root@localhost ~]# yum install dar.i386

My first impressions from the documentation and the command line switches was that it looked a bit primitive, and that maybe I should have not given up so easily on the other tools.

I tried a complete backup first as follows -

[root@localhost ~]# dar -v -z -R / -P dev -P proc -P mnt -P sys -P tmp -c /mnt/nas/aspire/full

and remained skeptical. It took quite some time, but the resulting file was a compact 915MB.
To put it further to the test, I tried an incremental backup -

[root@localhost ~]# dar -v -z -R / -P dev -P proc -P mnt -P sys -P tmp -A /mnt/nas/aspire/full -c /mnt/nas/aspire/diff1
...
--------------------------------------------
59 inode(s) saved
with 2324 hard link(s) recorded
0 inode(s) changed at the moment of the backup
80778 inode(s) not saved (no inode/file change)
0 inode(s) failed to save (filesystem error)
5 inode(s) ignored (excluded by filters)
0 inode(s) recorded as deleted from reference backup
--------------------------------------------
Total number of inode considered: 80842
--------------------------------------------

At this point my skepticism had almost completely died. The incremental backup was very fast, and efficient. Being 'tar' style (single file on the destination device), there aren't issues with cifs/samba permissions. A clean result, but still with the possibility to quickly restore individual files.

[root@localhost ~]# du -h /mnt/nas/aspire/*
3.0M /mnt/nas/aspire/diff1.1.dar
915M /mnt/nas/aspire/full.1.dar

The remaining thing bothering me, is manually specifying the paths to exclude from the backup. Perhaps a small thing, and perhaps something I should tune further.

I need to look further into a backup schedule, recovery methods and management of the archives with dar_manager - but this feels like a good start.

Thumbs up DAR.

(*) Perl and Python fans - I'm not against these languages at all. I just find that scripted solutions tend to be less well integrated than compiled solutions. Output messsages, exception handling etc, is often unprofessional in solutions based on scripting languages - and it was fairly clear that this is true also for rsnapshot and duplicity.

Backup of Aspire One to DNS-323

2008-10-14T21:53:00.000+02:00

I want to backup my Aspire One to my DNS-323 NAS, there are a plethora of ways to do this, so I thought I'd evaluate them here.

The following methods came to mind immediately -
- copy the whole hard disk/partition image (ghost style)
- copy at a file level, rsync style

Initially I like the whole image method. It speeds up the recovery process, and with a Linux style implementation, it's probably possible to loop mount the image, if one just wants to recover some files anyway. Or would this require 120GB or RAM? :)

The first obstacle of the image method is that you probably need to have the file system either not mounted or mounted read-only. This could be a hassle - I certainly don't want to have to boot on an external drive to perform a backup... but maybe dropping down to single user mode would be ok.

It's worth noting that the Aspire one comes with a recovery DVD (bootable via external drive or copy to USB key), that can restore the system to it's factory install. This should be a reasonable starting point for then restoring changed applications/data/configuration from the backup mechanisms evaluated here.

Partimage
Well I liked the look of partimage, and decided to start here. Rather than setup partimaged on the NAS, it seems mounting the filesystem was an easier way to go. See below -

[user@localhost ~]$ su - Password:
[root@localhost ~]# modprobe cifs
[root@localhost ~]# mkdir /mnt/nas
[root@localhost ~]# mount -t cifs //192.168.1.10/Volume_1 /mnt/nas
Password:
[root@localhost ~]# wget "http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/partimage/partimage-static-0.6.5-1.rh7.rf.i386.rpm"
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -i partimage-static-0.6.5-1.rh7.rf.i386.rpm
warning: partimage-static-0.6.5-1.rh7.rf.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
[root@localhost ~]# partimage-static

I then added an fstab entry for the partition
//192.168.1.10/Volume_1 /mnt/nas cifs auto,rw,user=guest,password=guest

but soon wandered off into issues with mounting it as a normal (non root user). For now I'm relying on sudo.
The big challenge is to unmount the root partition, or remount it in read-only mode, such that partimage can be safely used to produce a consistent image.

As the standard Linpus install only has one partition + swap, this challenge stumped me. The only options I see are unfortunately booting off external media, or doing some repartitioning. This is where I give up on this method for now.

Next I'll take a look at unison or rdiff-backup -
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/

ssh and telnet

2008-10-14T20:59:00.000+02:00

Well, what's a Linux install without ssh and telnet? I'm trying to resist hacking my new toy before I've learned it's pitfalls.. but ssh is something I need.

I'm starting as suggested by "The road to Elysium", let's hope it's a good road.

Alt-F2, Check 'Run in terminal', Run

[user@localhost ~]$ su -
Password:
[root@localhost ~]# yum -y install yum-priorities
fedora 2.1 kB 00:00
primary.sqlite.bz2 4.9 MB 00:07
updates 100% |=========================| 2.6 kB 00:00
primary.sqlite.bz2 100% |=========================| 2.2 kB 00:00
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package yum-priorities.noarch 0:1.1.8-1.fc8 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
yum-priorities noarch 1.1.8-1.fc8 fedora 8.1 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 1 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)

Total download size: 8.1 k
Downloading Packages:
(1/1): yum-priorities-1.1.8-1.fc8.noarch.rpm 8.1 kB 00:00
warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
Importing GPG key 0x4F2A6FD2 "Fedora Project " from /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
Importing GPG key 0xDB42A60E "Red Hat, Inc " from /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Installing: yum-priorities ######################### [1/1]

Installed: yum-priorities.noarch 0:1.1.8-1.fc8
Complete!

Check the contents of yum-priorities, edit it to match the below -

[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf
[main]
enabled = 1
check_obsoletes = 1

Install the livna repository -
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uvh http://www.fedorafaq.org/f8/yum http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm
Retrieving http://www.fedorafaq.org/f8/yum
Retrieving http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm
warning: /var/tmp/rpm-xfer.N4ZUob: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID a109b1ec
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
1:livna-release ########################################### [ 50%]
2:yum-fedorafaq ########################################### [100%]

Some quick checking with yum shows openssl is ready installed, but not openssh.

[root@localhost ~]# yum list openssh*
Loading "priorities" plugin
119 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
Available Packages
openssh.i386 4.7p1-2.fc8 fedora
openssh-askpass.i386 4.7p1-2.fc8 fedora
openssh-clients.i386 4.7p1-2.fc8 fedora
openssh-server.i386 4.7p1-2.fc8 fedora
[root@localhost ~]# yum install openssh*
Loading "priorities" plugin
119 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package openssh-askpass.i386 0:4.7p1-2.fc8 set to be updated
---> Package openssh-clients.i386 0:4.7p1-2.fc8 set to be updated
---> Package openssh.i386 0:4.7p1-2.fc8 set to be updated
---> Package openssh-server.i386 0:4.7p1-2.fc8 set to be updated
filelists.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 173 kB 00:01
filelists.sqlite.bz2 8.0 MB 00:22
filelists.sqlite.bz2 100% |=========================| 224 kB 00:01
filelists.sqlite.bz2 100% |=========================| 3.0 kB 00:00
filelists.sqlite.bz2 100% |=========================| 394 kB 00:00
filelists.sqlite.bz2 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
filelists.sqlite.bz2 100% |=========================| 76 kB 00:00
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
openssh-askpass i386 4.7p1-2.fc8 fedora 38 k
openssh-clients i386 4.7p1-2.fc8 fedora 463 k
openssh-server i386 4.7p1-2.fc8 fedora 264 k
Installing for dependencies:
openssh i386 4.7p1-2.fc8 fedora 284 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 4 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)

Total download size: 1.0 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/4): openssh-server-4.7p1-2.fc8.i386.rpm 264 kB 00:00
(2/4): openssh-4.7p1-2.fc8.i386.rpm 284 kB 00:00
(3/4): openssh-clients-4.7p1-2.fc8.i386.rpm 463 kB 00:00
(4/4): openssh-askpass-4.7p1-2.fc8.i386.rpm 38 kB 00:00
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Installing: openssh ######################### [1/4]
Installing: openssh-askpass ######################### [2/4]
Installing: openssh-clients ######################### [3/4]
Installing: openssh-server ######################### [4/4]

Installed: openssh-askpass.i386 0:4.7p1-2.fc8 openssh-clients.i386 0:4.7p1-2.fc8 openssh-server.i386 0:4.7p1-2.fc8
Dependency Installed: openssh.i386 0:4.7p1-2.fc8
Complete!

And, oh how I love it when things work first go!

[root@localhost ~]# ssh root@192.168.1.10
The authenticity of host '192.168.1.10 (192.168.1.10)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 06:86:21:cb:61:3d:4f:4d:02:7f:41:22:0a:2b:52:0d.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.1.10' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
root@192.168.1.10's password:
root@dlink-EEF76A:~# uname -a
Linux dlink-EEF76A 2.6.12.6-arm1 #29 Wed Apr 30 10:03:59 CST 2008 armv5tejl unknown
root@dlink-EEF76A:~# exit
Connection to 192.168.1.10 closed.

and for completeness -

[root@localhost ~]# yum install telnet.i386
...
Installed: telnet.i386 1:0.17-41.fc8
Complete!
[root@localhost ~]# telnet 192.168.1.10
Trying 192.168.1.10...
Connected to 192.168.1.10.
Escape character is '^]'.

BusyBox v1.12.0.svn (2008-07-11 12:43:14 CEST) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

# exit
Connection closed by foreign host.

It has arrived

2008-10-13T22:02:00.000+02:00

All the way from Finland, shiny and small :)

Acer Aspire One A150L

2008-10-05T10:43:00.000+02:00

Well, I've finally given up on my old Dell Inspiron 600m. It had it's good times, but in the end, two problems killed it.

1. Physical
At a party I hosted, a friends 2 year old girl fell off the bed, and landed head first on the Dell. Amazingly she was not really hurt. The next day I realised why, the LCD had softened the blow, and no longer worked.

2. HW bug
From when I purchased the machine (back in 2004), it occasionally had a problem, where for no apparent reason, the machine would run incredibly slowly (usually from power on). Over the years it became more frequent, now it happens most of the time. I've given up on trying to troubleshot this... but the same behaviour occurs both in Linux and Windows, so I'm fairly sure it's a hardware problem.

So now it's out with the old, in with the new -

Aspire one A150-A / 8.9" LED CB / Atom N270 1.6Ghz / UMA / 2*512 / 1*120GB / 802.11bg / 5-in-1 / SD / 3 cells / 0.3DV CrystalEye / Linux Lite / blue

One of these is on it's way to me now (I hope). In some markets the hard disk version of the Aspire one (A150) is sold only with it's Microsoft tax paid - Sweden is one such market. Fortunately in Finland and the UK, the Linux variant is sold.. and I managed to find a Swedish online store (Multitronic) that has Finnish roots - and they're selling the Finnish, Microsoft tax-free version here in Sweden.

So.. if you're wondering how much Microsoft taxes PC makers for XP, it seems to be 641 SEK (around $90US), give or take Swedish moms (or VAT), which is more difficult to avoid.

Google Chrome vs Corporate security

2008-09-28T22:14:00.000+02:00

The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)

Yes, my work Vista laptop has it's share of problems... many of them seem to be cause by either the Pointsec or the enforced use of "Symantec Endpoint Protection". When I'm on my home network, I can't even ssh/telnet to my NAS.

Anyway, this post is about it refusing to run Google Chrome... luckily Google search isn't firewalled, and it turned up the solution below -

http://palaniraja.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/google-chrome-the-application-failed-to-initialize-properly-0xc0000005/

Small pleasures

2008-09-28T22:05:00.000+02:00

Would you believe the "CONNECT mail.agc.idv.tw:25 HTTP/1.0" finally stopped being logged on Sept 05 :)

Spammers

2008-09-06T00:16:00.000+02:00

Everybody hates spammers... at least I do, and with a passion. Any small form of revenge I find greatly satisfying. In the logs of my lighthttp server, I see this -

118.168.140.161 - - [31/Aug/2008:09:39:02 +0100] "CONNECT mail.agc.idv.tw:25 HTTP/1.0" 501 357 "-" "-"

every two hours. I guess it's some form of hunt for open SMTP relays... but seriously, if they've tried every two hours for a month (hopefully without success), isn't it time to give up?

I feel like writing a little server that fakes the behaviour of an SMTP server, and wastes some of their time and bandwidth... but I know it would waste more of my time than theirs... it seems we simply can't win against these vermin.

D-Link DNS-323 Easy Search Utility

2008-08-16T13:05:00.001+02:00

Ok, I've had a DNS-323 NAS box for sometime now, and really like it. It works well, was good value, and provides lots of functions to keep you interested... particularly if you're willing to do some 'hacking'.

Right now I want to start using the bittorrent client on it (that was released together with a firmware update)... to install the bittorrent client you need to use D-Link's Easy Search Utility... and that's where the whine starts.

One of the main puposes of this utility is apparently to find and map the NAS drives in windows.

Why write an application that provides functions that already exist? Particularly if it doesn't work as well as the functions built into Windows/Linux etc already?

In my case, Windows (even a horribly firewalled Vista) can find the device through samba, and through directly specifying it's IP address. The drive can be mapped by right clicking, and map drive. The configuration web page can be accessed through any web browser...

The easy search utility isn't able to find the drive on my network...
It has a dialog box where you can enter the ip address... but apparently, this can only be used if it can already find the drive.

What is the point?

I think I'll give up on D-Link's bittorrent client, and use something freely available on the net... with a more sensible install procedure.

synergy binaries for solaris?

2008-07-22T16:05:00.000+02:00

At work I use a Sun/Sparc/Solaris machine on a daily basis. Its not flexible or fast, but it's stable, and works.

Synergy is a great tool for using two computers with one mouse/keyboard. Unfortunately, like most open source products, they -

a. don't come with prebuilt binaries for Solaris/Sparc
b. damned hard to build successfully yourself (on Solaris)... and then, even if you do manage it, like in this case, they still won't run

If anyone knows where I can get prebuilt binaries for this.. let me know.

wintel

2008-05-20T14:52:00.001+02:00

Occasionally I go with the flow, and buy a 'standard' HP media PC, with Vista pre-installed - hook it up to the TV and stereo and start exploring the change from broadcast to vodcast TV.
For a year things worked quite well... until HP & Windows update services decided to end my fun.

Both want to update my graphics driver Mobile Intel(R) 945 Express Chipset Family
from 7.14.10.1322 to 7.14.10.1461. Vista SP1 seems to have it as a requirement.

The new driver however, loses the TV settings (zoom mostly) after the computer wakes from standby... damn annoying.

So far, the working solution is to system restore prior to the upgrade, then run windows update, and hide the Intel driver update. Now it's time to sit and wait for intel's next release... or until I buy a LCD TV :)