Not Just Another Unix/Linux Blog

DNS and DHCP

2011-08-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

For some reason I hadn't enabled the ability for DHCPD to update my internal DNS server when a new client joined the network, so I decided to do that.

The process is quite simple, you generate a key which you give to both DHCP and DNS and they hash out the communication.

However after I did that I noticed I was getting an error:

Aug 19 17:00:56 server01 dhcpd: if iPod-touch.mydomain.org IN A rrset doesn't exist add iPod-touch.mydomain.org 3600 IN A 192.168.1.140: timed out.
Aug 19 17:00:56 server01 dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.1.140 from 00:26:bb:a1:cf:a0 (iPod-touch) via eth1
Aug 19 17:00:56 server01 dhcpd: DHCPACK on 192.168.1.140 to 00:26:bb:a1:cf:a0 (iPod-touch) via eth1

I Googled for any signs of what this could mean and I didn't find anything. There weren't too many people reporting the same issue, so I guess there wasn't that much to it.

I finally did an strace on the named server and managed to catch that the server was getting an access denied error. I looked at my bind directory and realized it was owned by root as were the files... I quickly changed this to the bind user and voila! problem solved.

-P

PS - many people may wonder why I would want to do this in the first place, do I REALLY have that many machines or ... anyway, the answer is it's "because I can".

VMWare MKS plugin on 64bit Ubuntu with nspluginwrapper

2011-04-11T04:33:00.000-07:00

Since I've been running Ubuntu 64bit at work I've found a few things that still don't work like I'd like.

We use VMWare Lab Manager which gives you access to a console for the VMs that you deploy. However, the plugin that is provided by VMWare is only a 32bit app and due to that it doesn't seem to work when you install it.

Every time you go to the console, you get a black screen which allows you to install the plugin even though you already installed it.

However, there is a solution. You can go ahead and install the MKS plugin as usual, restart your browser and make sure that the plugin shows in the Extensions.

Then shutdown the browser (so you might want to print this blog entry or copy paste to gedit) and you can then try using nspluginwrapper to install it.

I suggest you run it like this:

/usr/bin/nspluginwrapper -v -i $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxx.default/extensions/VMwareMKSNPRTPlugin@vmware.com/plugins/libnprtmks.so

Where xxxxx.default is your profile.

You can use sudo if you want, but this way it installs it into your .mozilla/plugins/ directory. The reason for the -v is so that you get verbose output if the installation fails (see below.)

*** NSPlugin Viewer *** ERROR: libexpat.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
nspluginwrapper: no appropriate viewer found for /home/USER/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxx.default/extensions/VMwareMKSNPRTPlugin@vmware.com/plugins/libnprtmks.so

Now what problems can you encounter? Well, in my case I found that I needed libexpat.so.0 as you can see above. Since this library isn't available to install, I installed libexpat.so.1 (sudo apt-get install libexpat1) and I just created a symbolic link in the /lib32 directory like this:

sudo ln -s /lib32/libexpat.so.1 /lib32/libexpat.so.0

I then ran it again and it was successful.

Now I can start my browser go to the console and voila, it works.

I'm not sure if there are other libraries that are needed, but at least by doing this I managed to get it working.

Getting this plugin to work with nspluginwrapper has given me hope that any other plugin that I cannot get working out-of-the-box will work through nspluginwrapper as long as I have the -v to be able to find the libraries that are missing.

Good luck!

-P

Dual Booting Blues?

2011-03-31T01:57:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I wrote anything. Not because I didn't have anything to say, just I didn't have the time to really write anything.

However, today I decided I would write THIS down. It's information that was gleaned from different sources and finally helped work the issue out. None of the places I read had the FULL steps to fix the issue. Hopefully this will help a poor soul.

Yesterday, someone installed Ubuntu on their system when I wasn't locally around to help out. They've installed Ubuntu on their home PC and on another desktop without really encountering any issues. That wasn't the case yesterday.

Somehow, the installation had frozen and they had therefore canceled it in mid-stride. They then reran the installer but manually selected the partition where they wanted to install (the one previously created/resized during the first install attempt.) Luckily they didn't wipe the Windows partition which they still needed, however booting into the machine was now not possible.

Investigating the issue I discovered that os-prober didn't see the Windows files it needed to boot. I went ahead and updated the system in case there were any fixes included in one of the updates. However, it seemed that the boot information for Windows was gone.

I was going to run something to recover the boot manager, but I wanted to be there to be able to troubleshoot things.

When I arrived at the office, I found out that they had taken things into their own hands and had used a Windows 7 install disk to "fix the boot manager" which in turn broke grub2 and now he couldn't boot into Windows 7 OR Ubuntu.

He could boot into the USB stick with Ubuntu, so quickly I did the following.

sudo fdisk -l
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo chroot /mnt
update-grub
grub-install /dev/sda
grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
sudo umount /mnt/dev/pts
sudo umount /mnt/dev
sudo umount /mnt/proc
sudo umount /mnt/sys
sudo umount /mnt
sudo reboot

This fixed the grub bootloader and we were now able to boot into Linux once more. However, During the update-grub, the Windows partition wasn't added to the loader. (This information came from Ubuntu's Help site.

Once in Ubuntu, I opened a terminal and did:

sudo fdisk -l
sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /mnt
ls /mnt/boot
os-prober
sudo update-grub
sudo umount /mnt
sudo reboot

Ok, in reality I initially mounted the Windows partition and checked that the files which were missing (BCD, BCD.log, etc) were there. Then I unmounted the Windows partition, ran os-prober which didn't detect Windows. So I then mounted the partition, re-ran os-prober and it DID find the Windows installation. At that point I ran update-grub which added the Windows information to the grub.cfg file and voila!

The things I had to "put together" were:

1. os-prober seems to need the Windows partition mounted when you run it manually. Not sure why it doesn't seem to need it when Ubuntu runs updates. Maybe it takes care of that itself.
2. The Windows 7 (and Vista) Boot Manager needs the files in the C:\boot\ directory to boot and os-prober needs those files to detect Windows 7/Vista.

I hope these steps help people out.

-P

gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with error status 256

2010-10-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered I knew something was wrong before it was wrong. That doesn't make much sense, but let me explain.

One day on my laptop I had a problem with my /tmp directory where the permissions had changed and therefore my user was not able to install applications, etc, etc. I didn't know what changed it, but since I didn't reboot, I just changed the permissions of /tmp back to 1777. Everything happy.

Today, a colleague of mine installed Ubuntu on his desktop. He did the usually good thing of installing all the updates. However after the reboot he got the error listed above and couldn't log into his system. The rather odd error of /usr/lib/gconf2-4/gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with error status 256 didn't really give much as to why this was happening.

We used ctrl-alt-f1 to go into a tty and look around. We tried a few things but nothing seemed to fix it. I did a quick Google search and discovered that others had had this issue even with versions prior to 10.04. The solution?

sudo chmod 1777 /tmp

And guess what? That fixed it. What exactly changed the permissions on /tmp we're not sure, but at least we were able to fix it.

-P

Cancel or Cancel?

2010-10-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

I'm not a design guru by any means, but something caught my eye today.

I was on a web screen that gave me the options to click OK or Cancel. Those were the only two choices, which is fine because I was looking at a page that was just displaying my preferences and if I did or didn't make any changes, those were my options. However, when I click "Cancel" I got a popup that said "Do you really want to cancel?" and my options were once again "Ok" and "Cancel."

So, lets recap. Options: "Ok" and "Cancel" - I press "Cancel". Popup: "Ok" and "Cancel".

Now do you see the problem? I pressed "Cancel" the first time, but I have to press "OK" the second time. Why not "Cancel" and "Cancel"?

Granted the question is "Are you sure you want to cancel?" but surely if I didn't make any change there shouldn't be any reason why I'm asked if I am sure I want to cancel.

Note that pressing "OK" doesn't prompt me if I'm sure I want to "OK" the action. It just submits the form and takes me to a completely different page. In other words, I don't get to continue editing my preferences.

Oh well. I guess whoever designed that workflow didn't think anyone would want to cancel their Ok.

-P

Hair washing robots

2010-09-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

As you know, Japan develops a lot of robots. They do so because the country has a rapidly ageing population and the idea is to have robots do chores and help out elderly, etc with as many tasks as possible.

So now, they've come up with a hair washing robot.

Meanwhile I'm still trying to put together my washing machine.

-P

Back on Linux! And how to get Citrix ICA Client on Linux 64bit...

2010-09-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

I was finally able to switch my laptop to Linux. Windows 7 was too problematic and I really didn't like it. However I must say that it was better than Vista. I still had some of the issues with W7 as I did with Vista, but it was at least 64 bit and more stable.

I'm still getting everything setup on my system since so much depends on Windows specific processes, software and one of these is that being able to get into our Windows Terminal Server was starting to become a little problem. I needed to install the ICA Client on my laptop but I installed 64 bit Ubuntu. (Why use a 32 bit OS now-a-days?)

Well, I found that Citrix doesn't have a 64 bit client and it turns out that getting the 32 bit client running on here wasn't hard to do, just hard to find the solution. Amazingly, the information is actually on the Ubuntu website, but whenever I searched, nothing linked to it.

I'm posting this information to make it easier for people to find the solution.

The link to the Ubuntu instructions is here. And basically what I did was:

I downloaded the 32 bit Citrix tarball. I ran the installer:

sudo ./setupwtc

This installed the software in /usr/lib/ICAClient. You are then suppose to run from that directory a program called wtcmgr.

However it failed because it was missing libmotif3 which if you apt-get install, you get the 64 bit libraries. You therefore need to install the 32 bit version by download the 32 bit version and installing it manually.

I downloaded the package from Ubuntu's site and then I extracted the files and copied them over to the 32 bit lib directory.

sudo dpkg -x libmotif3_2.2.3-4_i386.deb /tmp
cd /tmp
sudo mv usr/lib/lib* /usr/lib32/.
sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libXm.so.3.0.2 /usr/lib32/libXm.so.4

Then I went back into the ICA Client directory and ran the file.

Tada! Things work.

I love Linux!

-P

Excited to see my stuff is still around...

2010-09-08T05:01:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I didn't think that most of the stuff I would write about would be of use to anyone.

However, it seems I was wrong. I've found that several of the things that I've put together in these measly pages are of use!

I also checked out some of the graphics I've made (not great, but useful ones) on OpenClipArt.org and found that they're of use too!

I created some server racks in a previous job because I couldn't find any that worked in inscape without any modification. I also wanted them to be easy to use and allow me to add servers and hardware that would fit neatly. I made each U 12 pixels high and made them available. I made them in June 09 and as of today they've been downloaded over 3500 times!

Cool! Now, what else can I make and have you thought of contributing?

-P

Another great feature from Google GMAIL team...

2010-09-03T03:23:00.000-07:00

Google enabled "Email Priority" on my accounts and I got to say, it's AWESOME!

I wish were using Google Apps where I'm working now so that this feature is available. Basically by learning which emails you consider important (because you reply to those people, you read most of their emails, etc) GMail now will mark emails from those sources as "important" - meaning you see those at the top of your inbox. Below you get starred emails and below that "the rest" which includes the ones that are priority.

Love the new feature!

-P

God Squad and TeachBook.

2010-08-25T01:58:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading any news lately you've probably stumbled on a couple of articles regarding these two cases.

One is a case of Best Buy owners of the brand Geek Squad against a priest for using God Squad. However, the issue there is that the priest is not just using the word Squad, which is a generic word, it's that the priest is using a similar logo to the Geek Squad, plus he uses a VW Beetle like the Geek Squad does. Although the priest isn't using the God Squad to fix computers, or even to make any money, I can understand why Best Buy is a little upset.

However, today I saw a article that Facebook is suing another website for using the word "book" in it's name. Teachbook is a "social" networking site for teachers. It's a place for teachers to help each other and discuss how they teach, among other things. Their logo does NOT look at ALL like Facebook does. There are no similarities as in the two sites don't look alike and I'm not a member, so I don't know if they even function alike, but I doubt it. As the wired article points out, Teachbook doesn't even advertise it as a "Facebook for teachers" like some other sites do. Do you think that Facebook should win? I don't.

I think people need to register other sites that end with book and start those as protest to Facebook. What do you think?

-P

Going on vacation? Don't post it on Facebook.

2010-08-16T03:03:00.000-07:00

One of the "great things" about social media, the internet is the ability to quickly share your photos and Tweet to all your friends and family about your wonderful vacation.

Although this topic has been discussed at length on other site all over the place, it's worth mentioning it once more.

People, especially the younger generation, aren't paying attention to the things that they post on Fecebook and Tweet out to the world. They say they're going to the store, to a concert and even on vacation. One of the links above points to a person going to a concert and getting burgled only a few minutes after leaving.

If you're planning on going out and you want people to know. Then don't post anything that'll give away when you're leaving and coming back. A concert? Don't say what day. Note that this still leaves you vulnerable to getting watched by the person who intends to rob you, until you leave.

Going on a vacation and want to make people jealous. Same thing, wait until AFTER you got back to post that you were away and upload the pictures. Why give someone the opportunity to go away with all your valuables?

And if you have kids? Educate them about their personal security and privacy, and let them know you don't want them posting that they're going away for a few days. They should also refrain from posting about their (vacational) activities when they're gone. That doesn't mean they cannot talk to their friends and Tweet/post on Facebook, generic comments and activity. But although you don't post you're leaving, someone else might do that for you.

-P

Robot Washing Machine

2010-08-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

The definition of a robot is rather broad. Technically a washing machine AS IS, is a robot. It washes your closed by putting the detergent, water, washing, rinsing, etc. These are pre-programmed cycles. It's very simple, it's repetitive and doesn't require much except for the help of a human to actually fill the machine with clothes, the detergent, bleach, softener and pressing the right button.

The newer higher end washing machines can do more, like use less water (by weighing how much clothes are in there) and using lower temperature water (heating water costs money).

So I thought: the washing machine as it stands is quite good. Why change it? However, wouldn't it be nice to be able to put all the detergent in there, and all the bleach and all the softener and only have to worry about putting in the clothes?

Let the machine figure out if the clothes are whites or color and then have it do everything for you. Once it's running low of something, it'll add the item to your online shopping cart. It'll let you schedule when it washes or picks the best time of the day/night to do it.

This doesn't sound very hard to do. What would it cost? Well, I started looking into it. It depends on the parts that you use.

Here were some ideas:

Building containers will add cost to your design. How about using the existing ones... the bottles? Just screw the top which is attached to the washing machine and slide the bottle in. (container $0)

Somehow you need to get the liquid in the right amount (which depends on how much clothing and how dirty it is) so you could use some sort of pump. I was looking at a mini peristaltic pump which unfortunately isn't very cheap ($60) but would give you really good control of how much you'd use.

You'd need one pump for each liquid (3 so far - $180.)

Then you'd need the logic board and the components that detect the weight and how dirty the clothes are. I didn't even try to figure out how much that would cost as I got somewhat discouraged with the price of the pump.

I'm sure lots of people out there have great ideas on how this could be done for less than $300. However think about it, that's $300 you're adding to the price of something that's around $300 already.

Still - feel free to play around with my idea. Just post something about it. I'd like to know if anyone's tried it.

The next problem (which really should be a separate problem) is getting the clothes INTO the washing machine. Thereby eliminating the need for you to do it.

-P

Robots

2010-08-11T04:40:00.000-07:00

For some reason I started to think about Home Automation and particularly robots and how they change our lives. Most people don't realize just how many things in the world are currently handled by robots. Granted most of these are in factories or warehouses, but people that know me, know I am a fan of the Roomba.

However, one of the things that I've always wondered was why people always want their robots to do many things and worst of all, to look humanoid. That is to say, they have 2 legs, 2 arms and a head.

Does your robot really need a head to vacuum? I think that's the success of the Roomba; it's designed to do one thing - suck dirt and pick up debris from your floor. There are still issues with it. I have once sofa that's too low and therefore the Roomba can't get underneath to vacuum. iRobot, the makers of the Roomba have also made one that "mops" called the Scooba. I'm not sure how well it does it's job, but it seems to work well.

Again, what people need to understand is that if you want a robot at home to do chores, it's not going to look at all like a human.

Robots need to be made to work on a particular task as efficiently as possible. Humans are not the most efficient design for everything, but our advantage is we can do multiple things at the same time (well mostly.)

Washing windows? Why not make windows that wash themselves? (They're working on this BTW.) Also, there are robots that do this to some extent: look at this video.

Washing clothes: A washing machine already takes care of that for you. You just need a robot that sorts clothes by color, puts them in the washing machine. (You can just put them in the hamper - unless you ALSO want yyour robot to pick up your clothes. How lazy are you!) However, how about making the washing machine more intelligent? Why not have it dispense the right amount of detergent? All you do is fill containers with liquid or powdered detergent, bleach, fabric softener. The machine can detect what types of clothes are in there and dispenses the right "ingredients" for the wash.

If you start running low of something, it emails you, or better yet, adds it to the shopping cart that your fridge... Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, you still need to move the wet (and heavy) clothes to the drier and then fold them. But those are two different things. The same robot that sorted the clothes could move them to the drier, and another would fold them (and iron.)

Picking up things (like shoes, clothes, books, and general crap) can be done by one robot - all it needs is an arm and pincers. This one looks quite interesting, granted it seems more like a toy than a real functioning robot, but maybe it can be hacked.

Spills! Dropped a glass with a liquid? Dropped a jar with mayo? One robot to pick up the bits and gook (all excess,) the others (Roomba, Scooba) take care of cleaning the floor.

Toilet: Yes, someone's been working on it. However, I think that approach isn't the best. Again, it's doing what a human would do. Stick a brush and scrub. See how bulky that looks? This one disenfects the seat. I think that this can be done more efficiently in a different way. It may mean changing the toilet or at least the seat.

Tub: I found this but don't really know how well it works.

Shower: Well, not exactly a robot but I found this. Maybe what you need is something to scrub the bottom (like a mini-roomba type scrubber.)

Pools: These have been around for a while (I think iRobot makes them too.)

Gutters: Roomba has one too. Again, doesn't look like a human, but needs human interaction.

The one thing that I did think all of these robots could benefit from is a network connection and the ability to communicate between each other and a "master" device. How about being able to program or have them remotely execute.

Although I focused on a lot of things that have to do with cleaning, robots don't need to just be focused to cleaning. Walking the dog? (Didn't find anyone that's working on that.) Cutting the grass? (There's a few.)

Yes, I know what most people are going to say. Each robot isn't cheap (eg. Roomba goes for $300+) so having one for each task makes it expensive (10 robots at $300) and these existing robots don't have the networking capabilities yet.

Still, it defintely made me start to think about what the not so distant future could hold as the components to build these devices become cheaper and cheaper. Not to mention you can buy one robot at a time over a period of several years. My Roomba is 4 years old and still works (although I can't find the filters for it anymore.)

What robot are you waiting for?

-P

iPhone 4 or a bicycle?

2010-07-30T01:18:00.000-07:00

Finally Three has started selling the iPhone 4 (funny that the website doesn't advertise it on their first day of sales.)

However, am I in line for one? Nope.

I was going to get one, but instead I opted to wait. Why did I wait, because my son wants a bicycle. :)

How could anyone tell their 8 year old, "No, dad is going to get an iPhone."

When I heard that my son had several friends with bicycles and he was the only one without one, my heart broke. And with it, the urge to get an iPhone. Apple, you've met your master.

-P

A free case for your iPhone 4.

2010-07-22T02:09:00.000-07:00

It's great that Apple admitted that the iPhone 4 has a problem with the antenna design. It's a pity that they try to persuade everyone that it's not a big deal and then try to show how others have the same problem. I thought Apple was bigger than that.

Even if other companies Berries, Droids and Minis have this problem too, why couldn't they have been a little more intelligent and said "It's a problem. We can fix the issue for most people by giving them a bumper or a case from other companies, but we can't properly fix it without making a significant change to the phone and we're not going to recall it since we're too heavily invested and most people love the phone the way it is."

Instead they create a webpage dedicated to showing others have issues too.

That's like Toyota saying, "Our cars accelerate by accident, but Ford Explorers tires blow up! And Volvos are not as safe as they claim."

I was asked if the antennagate issue is going to scare me away from the iPhone 4. The truth is... no. I'm going to buy one and I'm going to use it like I would usually use it. IF I see the problem during my daily use, and a case, bumper or Antennaid doesn't fix the problem, then I'll return my iPhone and will go with something else. Maybe a new Droid.

-P

iPhone 4? Where's my iPhone 4!

2010-07-14T04:52:00.000-07:00

Well, as everyone in the world knows, I've been wanting to get an iPhone 4 but waited until after the launch to get it as I didn't have all the pricing available on the day of the launch. I found that I can get the iPhone 4 £70 to £80 cheaper through one carrier than the others that were selling the iPhone on launch day. That's one reason I haven't bought it...

The other reason is that I've been reading all the issues with the antennas. I say issues, because it's not only the 3G coverage that's affected, but also bluetooth. When I saw the iPhone 4 I thought it was a great looking phone and when I discovered that the antenna was the outside of the phone I wondered how much of a problem that was going to be. I've see what happens with other devices when a "body" is in the way. It's cool to get better reception (like you do with TVs and getting an arial antenna) but just as you can get good reception, I was pretty sure you could get bad reception. Still, I thought maybe Apple had figured something out that EE's hadn't.

Anyway, I'm going to wait this out a little longer. I'm curious to see what Apple will do next and what people will say when Apple releases their different patches to "fix" HW issues. Maybe I'll wait for the iPhone 4.1.

-P

Three (3) to offer iPhone 4 in the UK

2010-06-22T03:37:00.000-07:00

Now that 3 is going to offer the iPhone 4 in the UK I'm ready to add them to my price comparison spreadsheet.

I've broken down the pricing a little more for the existing carriers and I've not also added the 18 month contract tab. I still need to verify all the pricing that I've entered, but I think most of it is correct.

Please let me know if you find any inconsistencies (from the links in the spreadsheet which take you to the carriers pricing pages.)

-P

iPhone 4 - UK Carriers comparisons

2010-06-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

I decided to get an iPhone 4 and in the UK we are lucky to have 3 carriers (at least for now) to choose from.

I decided I was going to find a better way to digest the pricing structure on these and so I started a Google spreadsheet and as carriers have come out with pricing, I started putting their pricing in there.

What have I found? Well, not all pricing is equal. Some are selling the iPhones cheaper. Remember that Apple isn't going to sell the iPhone 3G anymore, only the 8G 3GS and the new iPhone 4 in 16G and 32G.

Also please note that I haven't included all the carrier disclaimers or additional pricing for add-ons, bolt-ons, screw-ons.

I also only did the pricing on 24 month contracts instead of 18 month. I am planning on doing that too. I'm not sure about doing the Pay-As-You-Go plans. If you think I should, let me know!

-P

Ubuntu 10.04 is out - download via torrent!

2010-04-29T13:57:00.001-07:00

Download the isos via bittorrent.

Help everyone out that way.

Go to the Ubuntu site to get the links to the torrent files.

-P

Ubuntu 10.04 will be out today!

2010-04-29T03:18:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm eager to try it out.

I'm not going to upgrade though, I'm going to do a clean install. In part because I want to document this for my other blog - Linux on your Mac.

I'll try go show all the steps I go through from the beginning. (I'm not going to bore people with the backup of my home directory or the application list.)

Lets see what happens.

-P

OS X Server - Connection Failed?

2010-02-18T07:14:00.000-08:00

So I've been working with some colleagues on a problem whereby users trying to connect to a OS X server from their OS X client were getting a connection denied.

If the user were to go to the Finder and via the hostname in Finder try to connect to the server (which uses Bonjour) they would get a Connection Failed even if they entered their username and password correctly. However, they could connect whenever they pressed Ctrl-K (i.e. Connect To Server) and used "afp://servername/" or "ftp://servername/" with the same username/password.

Trying different things like updating the replication of OpenDirectory, changing the users passwords.

In the end, we discovered that there was a directory that users had as their home directory (a default one /99) and the permission on that directory were set to 700 and only for one user. Changing it to 777 (we didn't try 770) solved the issue.

Useful MegaCli commands

2010-02-18T02:53:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, finding the manual for the MegaCli command was rather hard. I've decided to put some of the more useful commands I've discovered/started using.

MegaCli -AdpAllinfo -a0 -- shows you firmware versions, serial number, and LOTS of useful information.

MegaCli -CfgDsply -aALL -- Also very cool and useful.

MegaCli -PdList -a0 -- give you the disk information which shows media errors which will help if you're having problems with your disks.

iPad with no flash? No problem!

2010-02-01T01:23:00.000-08:00

Everyone is complaining that the Apple iPad doesn't have flash, but you know what? This is easily solvable.

Gordon (demos) is a Flash runtime written in Javascript by Tobias Schneider. With this you should be able to view Flash on your iPad. All that's needed is for the site to call the JS with the swf file as an attribute. Something easily done when you detect that the user doesn't have flash.

-P

IRC, oh how I miss thee.

2010-01-29T04:25:00.000-08:00

Eons ago, I used to be an OP in the IRC Channel #cuseemesexy. It was a channel dedicated to the video conference software by White Pine - I think it still exists, but I'm haven't tried it in ages.

Well, I've started going to the #ubuntu-uk channel on FreeNode. I guess I get a good feeling when I get to help people and what better way than to do that. Especially if it's a topic I enjoy and believe I can help out.

If you'd like to chat, get on your irc client and use irc.ubuntu.com. :)

-P

New Year, New Gadgets, New Tech

2010-01-08T05:32:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Yes I am 8 days late, but it's better late than never. Plus you take a holiday and boom, you forget about things.

CES is on in Las Vegas. This is one trade show I would love to go to. I love reading about all the new things are coming this year, however there's one thing that I am not really interested in. 3D TV.

Sony is going to start selling TVs that support this and the great thing is that they're making their PS3 compatible (I assume it's only a firmware upgrade.) All these other manufacturers are coming up with other things like Skype on the TV. This might not be too bad but it involves buying a hi-def camera for that TV too.

Tablets. What can I say. Apple is said to release their tablet pretty soon and I'm sure that they want their stocks to go up, so releasing during CES wouldn't be in their best interest. Nor is it their usual MO. Still, the tablets at CES aren't generating as much excitement as expected. What will consumers actually think when they're at the shop? Dell's tablet looks really nice though. Lets see what Apple comes up with.

Exciting things? So far I like the Light Touch interactive projector and Plastic Logic's lightweight e-reader. Since CES isn't done yet I'm hoping there's more to get excited about.

-P

X-Factor over... let the CD purchasing begin!

2009-12-14T00:28:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned before, I haven't really been a fan of the show "X Factor" but this year I've actually watched the last few shows. Last night, the show ended. About two to three hours later, I had pre-ordered two CDs from the winner. I'm not sure how many more people did the same thing, but sounds like it's going to be a profitable end of year.

-P

X-Factor ...

2009-12-12T11:42:00.000-08:00

What happened? I've never been interested in watching these shows. Idol in the US, X Factor and any of those show; I would avoid watching as I always thought they were boring. I never really cared, but tonight I'm actually watching.

The three contestants on tonight's show are actually VERY talented. They have really good voices and I know I've actually made up my mind as to who should win. Some how the personalities don't really lend themselves to stardom since all three singers are very down to earth.

The truth is that all 3 of them have won. The publicity they've gotten so far and their talent will make them famous and they'll have great professional careers.

All I can say is that I think I'll have to buy 3 CDs whenever they come out.

-P

Simply rails...

2009-12-11T04:30:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not going to talk about Ruby-on-Rails or Perl-on-rails or python-on-rails or train rails. I'm talking about server, switch, router mounting rails.

One of the things that I have to do for work is mount equipment. I've had to mount equipment from several manufacturers and of different types. Some are just mounting brackets where it doesn't reach the full length of the rack, some are longer and go from to back and some "meet in the middle."

I'm not going to name manufacturers, but I can tell you the these are the things that ALL manufacturers have at one time done wrong and sometimes get right after several tries. One of them makes such wonderful rails that they can be mounted with one hand. This particular company has gone through different iteration of "rapid mount" rails. (Which usually cost extra, but they're worth the cost.)

See, the thing that most manufacturers don't take into account (or maybe they do, but they don't care) is that at times, there's only ONE person mounting the equipment. And depending on the weight of the equipment and WHERE the equipment is going (bottom of rack or top!) this can be really painful to do if the rails don't slide property or are hard to mount.

Anyway, I've emailed one of the manufacturers that we use and who's rails aren't easy to use and asked if this can be "revised."

I'm trying to do something positive for that company and at the same time avoid back pain.

-P

Food glorious food!

2009-12-09T00:11:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been using a service (My Home Personal Assistant) to delegate tasks (ironing) off to someone. It's great to get back the kids uniforms and my shirts and trousers all nicely ironed and taken care of; something that my wife and I have had trouble getting right and spend far too much time trying to do.

I was a beta tester of sorts for the latest service that they provide which is home cooked meals. They've finalized the menu and include several dishes that are really good. There are a few things to note:

Most of the dishes are meant to be the main course where you still have to (well, you don't have to) add something to make it a full meal. It could be rice or a baked potato or maybe some vegetables.

The portions are single portions. That's to say, what you see on the menu is meant for a single person, but you can order a family meal if you contact them before hand and explain. I think there's even a discount if you were to order for a family meal.

It was explained to me that the dishes that have been picked were picked because there are many dishes already that you can buy pre-made at the local stores (frozen but ready to cook) and these dishes are all made fresh. These dishes are also dishes you're less likely to find at the local store. Makes sense.

We have tried two of those at home. One from the menu and one was a test dish that might get added to the menu later.

The Spanish Chicken and New Potatoes - which was pretty much a full meal, was amazing. It had chorizo, chicken and vegetables and all we had to add was some rice which took another 15 minutes to prepare while we heated the dish.

The other dish was Salmon wrapped in Parma Ham and New Potatoes. The kids usually leave something - i.e. not all food gets eaten, but in both these cases the plates were practically clean.

Success!

I may not be able to afford to completely stop cooking, but for a once a month (or even once a week) thing, I might be able to survive off of this menu.

-P

Firefox on Ubuntu oddness

2009-12-05T05:56:00.000-08:00

I started noticing that Firefox would come up after a restart and any saved sessions would load, but... it looked like it never finished. I then realized that resizing the window would then actually display the contents in FF properly.

Very odd...

I'll have to take a look and see where the problem lies. I've updated to the latest version of everything to see if it fixes the problem but so far no go. It may be something that's not yet documented elsewhere, so I'll have to post it when I find out what the solution is.

Keep an eye out.

-P

Stem cell donation?

2009-12-03T13:55:00.000-08:00

My brother who lives in Belgium told me about this campaign that the Belgian Red Cross (Rode Kruis) is promoting. They're requesting that people donate stem cells since these can be used to (possibly) find curses for terminally ill people. They even have a Facebook app that you can use and send to your friends. (They ask "Who are your real friends".)

I don't know if the Red Cross in other countries do that or if that data can even be shared across borders with another country that allows stem cell research. I wonder if that is considered illegal?

I definitely would like to see what else they can do with stem cell (stamcel) research.

-P

OmniGraffle to SVG

2009-12-02T01:35:00.000-08:00

Lately you'd think I'm obsessed with SVG, but the truth is I'm just trying to cope with all the different diagramming tools out there and see if I can find a common format between all of them that is a standard. SVG is it. Anyway, working with Macs and all the wonderful software that they have, I've had to start looking at converting Graffle files created with OmniGraffle to SVG. The easiest way is again, converting to PDF and importing the PDF in Inkscape.

The interesting thing is that once you break out the PDF, you get all the objects and you can then fiddle around with the page. The fonts have been the one issue, as I do ask Inkscape to try to find a font similar to the one in the document, and it's not really good at doing that.

Anyway, doing a quick search on google I found graffle2svg. A pair of python scripts that will try to convert the graffle file into an SVG. In my case it didn't work since OnmiGraffle seems to have changed the format of their file format. Well, it use to be a zip file, now it's a directory.

Still, this is a good start and I look forward to trying this out and maybe helping out the developer to get it working. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that loves his SVG.

-P

Frustrations of the MegaCli tool

2009-12-01T01:08:00.000-08:00

If you have ever used the command line tool for Dell PERC controllers, you'll know that MegaCli can be a powerful tool.

The frustrating bit is that the output of MegaCli -h means you're stuck guessing for what each parameter does. Some you can guess, but wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to guess?

I found a post about the exact same frustration and someone posted the following link to the LSI MegaRAID SAS User's Guide

This is exactly what I was looking for - particularly starting on page 126.

-P

MythTV "streaming"

2009-11-30T13:27:00.001-08:00

I was amazed to see how well the MythTV backend could stream to the MythTV frontend via wifi.

The setup doesn't seem to lag and it even seems to play better than streaming a file directly from the backend into VLC or mplayer.

-P

Cisco SVG

2009-11-26T12:04:00.000-08:00

Guess what? So I have a post where I converted the Cisco Networking Icons in EPS files into SVG. I recently noticed that Cisco was offering them in SVG format.

After downloading them to try out I had noticed that although they were in SVG, they were odd in that they basically where a small icon in the middle of the full page. They have a feedback link at the bottom so I proceeded to ask if I could make the changes to the SVGs to resize them as well as add metadata for the SVGs.

Well, Cisco got back to me. I managed to explain how I converted the files and what did I find today? Cisco had updated the SVGs and now they're right. Thank you Cisco.

I'd like to thank the person that responded, but I don't know if they want their name floating around the web, so I won't mention them. However, thank you!

Now, to draw some network diagrams.

-P

What's the difference between a bank and a swing band?

2009-11-24T00:10:00.000-08:00

I was reading a new article today on the Telegraph which I find absolutely crazy.

It's about a swing band called Wills Fargo being harassed by the bank Wells Fargo.

I don't know about you, but unless the band starts asking for deposits and gives you a cash machine, it starts using the same red box with yellow letters and includes the stage coach as part of their logo, then WTF!

I hate this type of stuff. There is absolutely no overlap in ANY way. Next we'll get sued for using the letters W and F because they're part of the name.

I can understand brand dilution (Wills Fargo Bank), I can understand fraudulent use, I can understand a lot of stuff, but this goes beyond what should be allowed.

Gaaah!

-P

Ubuntu 9.10 issues and solutions

2009-11-12T00:54:00.000-08:00

One of the major issues I have had with my Macbook Pro and Ubuntu 9.10 relates to virtual machines and Virtualbox. My virtual machines would freeze for a few seconds (10-15 seconds) then do some more work, then freeze again for 20-30 seconds, then some more, then freeze, then go, then freeze...

This drove me nuts! I run XP every once in a while and it was so quick on Virtualbox prior to the upgrade that I thought VB was the culprit.

I messed around with the settings, I turned things on and off; all to no avail.

Then I remembered a post somewhere that mentioned the video drivers. Not the virtual machine's virtual video driver, but the actual driver of the host machine.

So I looked at what I was running.

Nvidia's driver version 183 - which was suggested and recommended by Ubuntu 9.10 after the upgrade. It worked fine with everything I did... could it be the culprit?

I then swapped the driver to version 173 which I was running previously (that reminded me I tried 180 and had problems with virtual machines then too) and my XP virtual machine was happy once again.

I did experience an issue or two with my machine freezing (the whole thing, not the VMs) after doing this and thought it was the Nvidia drivers again.

However I noticed something interesting. The freezes occurred only when I had Firefox running. If FF wasn't running, everything ran smoothly.

So I went into the FF add-ons and thought about how a "new" add-on I had installed and almost never used would actually use cool 3D effects. I'm talking about FoxTab. I disabled that after 20 minutes and guess what?

My virtual machines are happy, my Macbook runs smooth as silk!

Now to troubleshoot something else... OpenVPN on NetworkManager.

-P

Mythbuntu 9.10

2009-11-05T07:02:00.001-08:00

I finally managed to update my MythTV server up to 9.10 of Ubuntu. Although I didn't install it from a Mythbuntu CD when I did the first install - it's now a Mythbuntu installation.

What can I say about this?

MythTV 0.22 (the normal app is 0.22RC2, I think in ubuntu it's 0.22+svn fixes)

The new MythTV is NICE! I still have some issues. I'll document them here and any solutions that I find. There are several things that I need to do to get them working right according to the MythTV wiki.

For now, I'm updating the graphics of the videos and I'm trying to tune all the different settings that you can use.

All in all, I think it's great!

-P

Visio and Linux or what I call "Want SVG, use PDF"

2009-11-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

I tend to get Visio diagrams from people every once in a while. Most of the time it's the vsd type, not even the xvsd (or xml based) version. Even if I had the xvsd, I'm not sure what exactly I could do with it.

Visio does have the capabilities of exporting to SVG (at least the latest release does) but I find that they don't import properly into Inkscape. It's strange but they seem to display properly elsewhere.

The answer to this issue? Another intermediate step -- use PDF. Visio can also export to PDF directly. (Or maybe you need a plugin?)

This PDF renders correctly and when you import it into Inkscape it shows up correctly too.

Now to test another file type... Visio can export into Autocad format!!!

I just recently discovered that you can convert DWG to SVG. I haven't tried the Cad2SVG tool yet, but I'm hopeful it will also provide an SVG that's usable in Inkscape.

By the way, if you're wondering why I'm so eager to go with SVG? It's simple -- it looks good and you can zoom without losing detail (very handy with an iPhone!) And if you don't believe that there's a lot of SVG out there, check out http://svg.startpagina.nl/.

-P

Ubuntu 9.10 on MacBook Pro

2009-10-31T11:47:00.000-07:00

So Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) is out and in the usual way, I went ahead and did the upgrade from 9.04. Did I have any issues? Not really, the servers were a little slower than I'm use to which I'd expect.

After the upgrade I discovered that my O2 USB data card (a Novatel Ovation) wouldn't work. However, I manged to get it working after a reboot. (Not sure why.)

Wifi works, keyboard + multitouch pad worked, bluetooth keyboard + mouse worked, sound worked. What seems to not work? Well, when I put the machine to sleep and it comes up, I ALWAYS get a crash report which says that there was a kernel crash of sorts and that the system would be unstable.

Does this annoy me? Yes. Does it stop me from still using the system (i.e. is it really unstable?) No.

I haven't finished trying out all the usual apps that I use, but so far, I'm happy with the result.

Now, I can't wait to upgrade my Myth Server at home! I have seen there are a LOT of really cool things in that arena!

-P

Organising when you don't have time...

2009-10-31T06:40:00.000-07:00

Do you seem to not have enough time in the day to do everything you need? I know I do and it's a pain to try to juggle everything, prioritize, and then do the things you CAN do and leaving those things you can't for another day.

That's one reason I wish I could have a clone... or a mini-me! :-)

But, it seems that there's another way.

You can use a service like My Home Personal Assistant to help you do the tasks you don't have time to do. It may sound lazy, but I've started with the ironing. I also know my car needs to get serviced soon and that means I don't have to take a day to do that too. What else is there?

-P

P.S. Cloning myself would be a bad idea, I'd probably argue over which one of me would get to do what! We'd fight over going on vacation, and we all would have to eat too, imagine the food bill.

Amazing headphones; amazing service

2009-10-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

As a requirement for work we wanted to get some headphones.

After looking around we found some: Sennheiser PC166.

They seemed decent, had good review and so the search for a reseller began. I look at the usual places, Amazon, Froogle, etc. and ended going to http://www.best4headsets.co.uk/

The order was placed for 1 to test and to my amazement, we had them the next day!

We then "tested" them and found the headphones to be really good. Excellent!

We're now going to purchase 8 more. ;-)

It's nice when things go smoothly.

-P

New TV Season starting

2009-09-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

The new TV Season has started and with it there's a lot of shows continuing (Yay, Heroes!) and some new ones that I'll have to check out.

Ah, if I only had enough time in a day.

However, I'm thinking of getting the episodes for my iphone and watch it while travelling.

;-)

-P

Restarting a Polycom (and others) from within Asterisk

2009-09-24T05:46:00.001-07:00

It's been a while...

Useful tidbit in Asterisk to reload a phone without going to it to restart it manually.

sip notify polycom-check-cfg user1 [user2 ...]

This allows you to make any changes to the phone system and then have the phones pick up that change after hours or anything like that.

Cool!

-P

IPhone OS 3.5?

2009-06-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

The iPhone OS 3.0 came out and I managed to upgrade within 30 minutes of the release. I'm happy with the extra functionality, but there's some stuff I wish would have been included.

So what are the things that should be included in the next release?

How about RSS feed subscription and updates? I don't want to sync with iTunes just to get podcast updates! I want to be able to download them by just clicking on "Refresh" in the podcast window instead of having to go to the "iTunes Store."

How about uploading your pictures to Flickr or Picassa from the photo app?

Anything else you can think of?

Yes, I know you can buy separate apps for these but it would be nice if it were all included.

I guess someone has to make a living by making things people want or need?

-P

Geeks: Star Wars, Star Trek, Matrix, Firefly, oh why?

2009-05-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

I'm a geek. I love technology and the possibilities that it opens. As a geek, I love movies that have tech theme. My wife doesn't understand why I (and other geeks) love watching these movies over and over. She doesn't understand what we find so fascinating. Well, let me try to explain.

Star Wars: Knights with swords, rescuing damsels in distress, fighting evil and a force that unites all living creatures. Oh, and everything wrapped with technology.

Star Trek: Explorers searching for things that will help better humanity, meeting creatures and beings. The adventure spirit at it's best.

Matrix: People obsessed with technology also tend to be people that don't like things to stand still. We don't usually believe in fate and think that we make our own luck, etc. If we can't control it, then maybe there's an external reason.

Firefly: Cowboys, guns and the old west but with spaceships.

Discuss.

-P

Dovecot migration error

2009-05-26T04:55:00.000-07:00

We migrated IMAP servers at work and for some reason I was the only one that was affected by a small problem. I couldn't get my email! The error that would show in the maillog was:

dovecot: IMAP(user): FETCH for mailbox INBOX UID 176705 failed to read message input: Is a directory
dovecot: IMAP(user): Disconnected: BUG: Unknown internal error bytes=473/4475

After looking at several things I eventually saw that my cur directory had some subdirecties named like emails. They were empty, so I went ahead and deleted it and that fixed it!

Just thought I'd let other people know since it's one of those things that Googling didn't really give any answers. (Imagine that!)

-P

EPS to SVG

2009-05-07T03:00:00.000-07:00

Wow it's been a while since I've update this!

I have several images that I got from Cisco that are in EPS format and I wanted to use them in Inkscape for diagrams, etc. They're public domain, so I wanted to see if I could give them back to the Open Clip Art Library once I was done.

I got them from the Cisco site but couldn't find anything that could easily convert them on the command line. The ways I found involved converting to PDF and importing in Inkscape. The best way was loading them in Scribus and exporting as SVG, which worked fine, but do that with 300+ files!

In the end I found that I could use pstoedit to convert to another format and then from that format to svg. This worked flawlessly and I didn't even encounter any problems on the final svg file like the website claimed there would be.

This is what I did:

for EPS in *.eps ; do FIG=`echo "$EPS" | sed -e s/eps/fig/` ; SVG=`echo "$EPS" | sed -e s/eps/svg/` ; echo "Converting ... $EPS" ; pstoedit "$EPS" -f fig "$FIG" ; fig2dev -L svg "$FIG" cisco_svg/"$SVG" ; rm -f "$FIG" ; done

It worked like a charm.

-P

2009 is here.

2009-01-15T00:12:00.000-08:00

Where did it come from? I was only now just getting use to 2008.

So I found an interesting Bash tutorial and I've linked to it because you can never have too many interesting Bash tutorials.

-P

Asterisk - so powerful

2008-11-24T02:57:00.000-08:00

I've been doing some things with Asterisk that have been causing me headaches. However, this is probably due to my inexperience and the fact that I'm still learning. I can do a lot of stuff already but there's tons more that I know can be done and I'm probably not doing.

My dilema is that if I were to take a course, as far as I can tell, they tend to cover the basics. All the things that I know will be repeated. Now, will I lean something new? Maybe. Will is be worth the £XXXX that I have to pay for the course? I don't think it will.

I am going to see what else I can do that will help me learn - other than trying to implement things, I don't know what I can do that will make me discover ALL that Asterisk can do.

-P

iPhone 3G - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2008-11-09T04:43:00.000-08:00

I got an iPhone 3G and I must admit that I like it. It's not much of a surprise, however I did find quite a few things that go wrong.

One thing that I noticed it doesn't do well is SMS. I use to be able to write several SMSes with my old phone even when there wasn't a signal available. I'd "send" the message and write another one and once the phone had a signal again, it would send all the messages. Well, I wasn't able to do that with the iPhone. It kept on complaining that there wasn't a signal and it couldn't send. (Yes I KNOW, save it for later!)

The other issue I've had it that it's gotten "stuck" with a few applications and I've had to force reboot it. One was just trying to write into a large text field on a website. It started slowing down and finally I wasn't able to do anything. I couldn't go back to the home screen or anywhere.

One time that actually happened with an email. Speaking of email. I also have a lot of problem sending emails. It keeps on complaining that the email address I'm sending to is incorrect, even though I know it's right. I'm still working on that one and to see if I find a solution.

However, I must admit that the user interface is great and the other day I saw someone using the Samsung touchscreen phone. They went to send an SMS and what did I notice? They got a NUMBER KEYPAD as if it's a regular phone instead of a full keyboard. This meant having to use the number to select the letters which makes me thing that these manufacturers don't understand what the purpose is for the touchscreen. Anyway... lets see what they come up in round two.

Well, all-in-all the iPhone isn't a complete disappointment. I hope they can fix those stability issues, but I think they still have the best interface in town. Let's if what Blackberry's phone does can compete.

-P

A few issues resolved with new drivers...

2008-10-15T07:36:00.000-07:00

After struggling with some of the wifi networking issues on my MacBookPro in Ubuntu -- I had to use ndiswrapper -- I got an update today that seems to have fixed those issue.

Basically, I could connect to my WAP/WAP2 protected wifi network, but I'd have problems with the card not getting a DHCP address. I looked further into it and realized that my DHCP server wasn't actually receiving the request. I figured it was the wpa_supplicant application that wasn't working quite right. Well, all of a sudden it's all working right.

BTW -- Ubuntu showed those drivers as being the restricted drivers (not open source) -- but they actually work great.

-P

C&C: RA1 and Ubuntu

2008-09-04T04:43:00.001-07:00

So who said you can't play games on Linux? I've just downloaded the ISOs for Red Alert 1 from the EA website. Yes, it's a free download as the franchise has turned 13 years old (or maybe it's just that game.)

I installed it on my MacBook Pro - in Ubuntu - using wine.

There were a few issues but these were issues that were mentioned in the WineHQ website and were seemingly easy to overcome.

One issue I still have though is that the menu entry didn't get created, but I'll just add it manually. Also, you have to set the emulation mode to Win95 or Win98 for it to work well, but I'm not complaining.

Red Alert is a classic - I still have the CDs somewhere in storage!

RA 3 looks really kewl - wish they'd made a Linux version...

-P

Google Chrome

2008-09-04T00:17:00.000-07:00

I don't know anything other than what I've read in other blogs, articles and on the Google page. I'm just trying to see if by putting this in the title I'll get more hits!

Why? Just because...

Move on... Nothing to see here...

-P

64-bit Ubuntu on MacBookPro and Google Earth

2008-08-11T04:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I managed to get the last thing that wasn't quite working to work.

I like to use Google Earth. It's a great learning tool and it helps to make you realize how small you really are. But I was running into problems the first time I installed this. This isn't specifically a Mac problem, it's a 32-bit vs 64-bit problem. I had several 32-bit libraries installed but the one that Google Earth was missing and therefore causing my headaches turned out to be lib32nss-mdns. Once I installed it, I was going around the world in 2 seconds.

I found the solution in a Google Groups posting.

So now, everything works. I can suspend, hibernate, wifi, voip, VPN, google earth, browsing the web, email, sound, IM, VNC, scanning and printing from my HP printers (the office and home printer using HPLIP toolbox.) I even got desktop recording to work which will help with tutorials.

I also use Skype, my Vodafone data card, dual screens, project management, development, Asterisk monitoring (using gastman) oh, and lets not forget games! There's a ton of OpenSource games out there that I found thanks to another site and I've just had to "sudo apt-get install" them. The iSight works too with Cheese although I hope they improve that app a little. I can burn DVDs and ISOs of the different server images we have for work.

Right clicking is done by using the right "cmd" button instead of ctrl-click.

The only thing I haven't tried to do yet because I haven't had the necesity to is to use Bluetooth. I haven't paired my Plantronic 509B Headphones or my Sony Ericsson phone.

I'll try that later and post about it.

So in conclusion ... MacBook + Ubuntu is a win-win situation. You get great hardware and great software with a little bit of hassle if you've never set things up. I'm sure if I had to do it again, I would have less trouble doing so and I'd still be very happy with the outcome.

-P

TTG - Text Traffic Grapher

2008-07-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to know how much bandwidth you were using this instant? Do you like CLIs? (i.e. Command Line Interfaces) Then this utility is for you!!!

I found this utility the other day and discovered that it's one of those tools that I don't know why it's not included in most distributions. It's actually at the very bottom of that page, but it's very good.

You provide the name of the router or switch you want to monitor traffic on, the RO community string (usually public) and then you can type "list" to see the interfaces you can monitor and their status. Once you know, use that and you'll see the most recent traffic utilization through that interface.

e.g.

ttg switch public gi1/0/1
Found "GigabitEthernet1/0/1" at index 10101:
[09:44:59] current throughput: in 411.9 kB/s out 218.8 kB/s
[09:45:00] current throughput: in 405.9 kB/s out 247.4 kB/s
[09:45:01] current throughput: in 485.4 kB/s out 342.4 kB/s
[09:45:02] current throughput: in 523.7 kB/s out 357.5 kB/s
[09:45:03] current throughput: in 538.3 kB/s out 350.8 kB/s
[09:45:04] current throughput: in 486.4 kB/s out 302.4 kB/s

---- ttg statistics ----
in out
maximum throughput: 538.3 kB/s 357.5 kB/s
average throughput: 475.3 kB/s 303.2 kB/s
minimum throughput: 405.9 kB/s 218.8 kB/s

Nice huh? This will definitely help me when trying to figure out bandwidth utilization over a short interval.

And there's loads of things it can do ... try the help.

-P

Ubuntu isn't perfect, but it's damn close

2008-07-15T23:50:00.000-07:00

I have everything working on my new MacBook Pro. I installed Ubuntu Hardy (i.e. 8.04) like I mentioned in the previous post and after using it for a few weeks for my day to day tasks I can honestly say that it's 99% there.

I've discovered a few annoying issues that are slowly being worked on by the Linux community at large and I hope will fix my problems once they release the new version of these applications.

Which applications are causing problems? Well the two worst issues are the ones that unfortunately I think are quite important. One is something I need to have for daily use - a softphone. Now there are several applications out there: Ekiga and Twinkle are two of the Open Source ones that are available for install - Ekiga being the default. However I found that there were a few times where they didn't work. When I used Mac OS X I would use X-Lite, then I discovered Zoiper and used that instead. Well, Zoiper runs on Linux too, so I've installed it as well to test. I also found WengaPhone which I installed and tested too.

The reason for testing all these applications is that I would always encounter a problem or on a different application, a different problem. On Twinkle, my audio drivers would not work if some other audio application (or itself) crashed. With Ekiga, I couldn't get it to work over the VPN. I tried different settings and maybe I missed something, but on a VPN it doesn't work. With Zoiper - I thought that being on a familiar application I would be able to troubleshoot it better and get it to work. Well, that didn't work either. I also tried WengaPhone which worked much better, but had the same problems as Zoiper - the audio would sometimes fail and I wouldn't be able to hear or talk to anyone. I think this may be due to the applications being 32 bit while I'm on a 64 bit installation. I have the compatibility libraries - including sound, but still no go.

Anyway - while I'm in the office I'm going to use Twinkle and just have to reboot if the audio driver fails (what a pain.) A possible solution which I haven't tried yet is finding a way to reload or reset the audio drivers. If you have an idea of how I can do this easily, let me know. I may just have to script the rmmod, insmod for the sound modules.

The other issue that I have is related to the wireless connectivity. At home I setup my wifi to use WPA+WPA2 for protection. I was able to get our wifi printer on the network, our Nintendo Wii and the two other computers. My MacBook Pro on Unbuntu sees the network requests the key and then doesn't do anything. It seems to connect to the network, but doesn't get a DHCP address. I've tried using a static IP address, overwriting Network Manager, but that worked once and then stopped working. I even had created a profile for "home" so I could just toggle that and have a static IP at home... but nothing!

For now I'm tethered via a network cable. Not the best solution, but it'll have to do until I find a solution.

By the way, I did disable the WPA+WPA2 settings and went with JUST WPA and then with JUST WPA2, but in both situations I had the same problem that I don't quite complete the connection and don't get an IP address from the router's DHCP server and I can't get the static IP address to work either.

Anyway - all in all - I'm very pleased with my Ubuntu installation.

-P

New MacBook Pro now with Ubuntu

2008-07-02T23:05:00.000-07:00

I got a new MacBook Pro for work and I decided that I was going to run Ubuntu on it. So after reading multiple threads, webpages and blogs on the subject went ahead with the install.

Let me tell you that IT'S AWESOME!

I've always liked Ubuntu and had it running on my old MacBook Pro on Parallels. Well, running it directly on HW is so much better.

If you want to know how I did it, just Google it, or click on the links at the bottom.

I got everything to work: sound, iSight, wifi (although I have a strange problem at home where DHCP doesn't take so I had to create a profile and give myself a static ip,) even my 3G Vodafone USB modem.

So far, everything that I use for work I can find a replacement for an apt-get away.

The only tool so far that I can't get a straight replacement for is OmniGraffle. We'll, I'm working on something...

Links:
Ubuntu on MacBook Pro 1
Ubuntu on MacBook Pro (most recent hardware)
Ubuntu and Vodafone 3G

Concept laptops

2008-03-27T00:31:00.000-07:00

Computer World has an interesting article on concept laptops and what we expect laptops to look like in 7 years. It's an interesting read and I find that there are several things that aren't mentioned that I would expect in future laptops.

Have you had a laptop stolen? How about manufacturers starting to build "phone home" hardware. I think this feature should be built into ALL laptops and activated when the user does the first setup.

How about cooler hardware (as in temperature, not looks) or maybe the head dissipating through the screen cover (I'm tired of warming my pants - except in winter) could be used to partially recharge the battery. It's not impossible according to this press release.

I'm sure there are tons of things that other people can think of that they want from their laptops.

-P

Karaoke - you know you want to!

2008-03-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

I recently bought a Karaoke microphone for my wife. It's the MVK II that I found at Best Buy for about $80. It had some file already in it and the good thing about it was that you could add your own MP3s to it and just add the lyrics.

Now this isn't the microphone my wife wanted. The one she wants has a game mode where players get scored on how well they sing. My sister-in-law has one and that's how she knew about it. However I couldn't find the mic on short notice so I got her the other one.

So finally I decided to add some mp3s to it, but one of the strange things I discovered when I added my own mp3 songs was that you could still hear the original singer instead of getting a karaoke version of the song - no matter what settings you selected on the microphone. Well, I found out why this is. The version that come with the microphone had the original song playing on the right track, while the karaoke version is playing on the left side. Therefore when you make the selection on the mic, you get a non vocal version.

Now this means I'm going to have to make Karaoke specific versions of files... And it also means I have to find version without vocals (maybe midi files?) that I can use. If anyone has a suggestion, that would be greatly appreciated. Still - I'm glad I solved that simple problem.

Time to sing!

-P

USB Flash Drive vs USB HD

2008-03-06T02:56:00.000-08:00

I've been looking around the internet for a comparison of speeds between USB Flash Drive (thumb drives, memory sticks, whatever you want to call it) and USB Hard Drives. I haven't found any so I am going to run some tests myself.

I'll post the results here...

-P

Do you remember the weather on your birthdays?

2008-03-05T01:07:00.000-08:00

Today is my birthday. It happens that today's weather looks to be nice and mildly-warm, even if it started cold. Last year is was also sunny, even though the weatherman has said it would be cloudy and miserable.

As a matter-of-fact, as far back as I can remember (and have taken note of) the weather on my birthday has always been sunny. For some time, I've even told myself that "It's God's birthday gift to me" not that just being alive isn't a gift in and of itself.

Now March isn't particularly a great month for weather as it's almost Spring, but it's still Winter and therefore you're prone to having some wild weather (at least in the Northern Hemisphere.) I know, Australia probably has great weather ALL of March, but that's not the point. I've lived all my life in places where it's usually Winter-ish but have had wonderful weather.

Still, the question is still valid... Do you remember the weather on your birthdays?

-P

Hex Hex and Hex Hex Next

2008-03-02T22:12:00.000-08:00

I'm not the type that usually will play board games or card games, however a friend of mine introduced me to Hex Hex and Hex Hex Next, a game by Smirks and Daggers that once you learn the basics will having you wanting more.

So I bought Hex Hex Next while travelling and introduced it to a group of my friends. At first, they weren't sure what was going on, but after a few rounds they all agreed to make it a weekly event. Even my wife who is very hard to convince about things like this wanted to play it after that day.

In case you don't know the game, you basically have a hexagon (multiple actually) and cards. You start with one Hex and during play you have to divert the Hex using the cards that you have been given. The cards have basic "deflection" like Turn Aside Right, which basically makes the Hex go to the right. Once you run out of cards and you receive the Hex you are Hexed and lose 1 point (Voice.) The game gets interesting when you play cards like Madenning Compulsion Left which means that everyone has to play a card that makes the Hex go to the left, if they can't they're Hexed.

So, I think you get the idea. The rules are on the website above as well as a page with all the cards for you to look through them. I recommend this game! It's addictive and a lot of fun.

-P

Great UNIXy tips

2008-01-18T04:59:00.000-08:00

I've been using Linux and Unix for a long time and I am always trying to make people that aren't Linux users change and go to Linux. One of the things that I like about Linux is the command line and all the tools available to speed things up using just one line (or maybe a few lines.)

Here's an example:

You want to build a complex directory tree of ... I don't know, say 20 directories and subdirectories. Now instead of typing

mkdir first-dir/ ; mkdir first-dir/first-sub-dir ; first-dir/first-sub-dir/first-sub-sub-dir

You can do:

mkdir -p first-dir/first-sub-dir/first-sub-sub-dir

Nice... But how about those twenty directories in a more complex arrangement? That's easy too!

mkdir -p first-dir/{first-sub-dir/{first-sub-sub-dir,second-subs-sub-dir,\
third-sub-sub-dir},second-sub-dir/{another-dir,one-more},\
third-sub-dir/maybe-one-more-dir}/last-dir

Yes, that was one line! (Or multiple lines separated with a \ so that the command continues in a new line.)

What does that look like?

ls -R first-dir/
first-dir/:
first-sub-dir second-sub-dir third-sub-dir

first-dir/first-sub-dir:
first-sub-sub-dir second-subs-sub-dir third-sub-sub-dir

first-dir/first-sub-dir/first-sub-sub-dir:
last-dir

first-dir/first-sub-dir/first-sub-sub-dir/last-dir:

first-dir/first-sub-dir/second-subs-sub-dir:
last-dir

first-dir/first-sub-dir/second-subs-sub-dir/last-dir:

first-dir/first-sub-dir/third-sub-sub-dir:
last-dir

first-dir/first-sub-dir/third-sub-sub-dir/last-dir:

first-dir/second-sub-dir:
another-dir one-more

first-dir/second-sub-dir/another-dir:
last-dir

first-dir/second-sub-dir/another-dir/last-dir:

first-dir/second-sub-dir/one-more:
last-dir

first-dir/second-sub-dir/one-more/last-dir:

first-dir/third-sub-dir:
maybe-one-more-dir

first-dir/third-sub-dir/maybe-one-more-dir:
last-dir

first-dir/third-sub-dir/maybe-one-more-dir/last-dir:

So what do you think? Neat huh? Try doing that within your gui!

By the way, I found this on a page at IBM's site a long time ago. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-badunixhabits.html

There's tons of them, search the site for "Speaking unix" and Unix tips. There are tons of things that you can find. Some of them you know, some I'm sure you don't.

By the way, one thing of importance... remember not to put any spaces between directories. If you have a directory with a space in it, quote it!

mkdir -p test/{test ing} will not create a test directory with a test and ing subdirectory... ;)

-P

Apple announcement and why I am not an analyst

2008-01-16T04:44:00.000-08:00

So Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air yesterday. It looks great and even my wife went "Wow, I can carry that in my purse!" Yes, she has a large purse.

Well, we got a new ultra-thin notebook, but unfortunately the tablet I was hoping for didn't materialize. I still have hope that someone will develop this or maybe even that the makers of the ModBook take some of the functionality of the new multi-touch software and make this tablet.

What do you think?

-P

2008 Tech

2008-01-10T01:51:00.000-08:00

I like reading articles related to future devices to appear in our homes. As I mentioned before, one of the next Apple devices to be released would be a tablet like device with multi-touch capabilities. I don't really know that this is going to happen, I just read about it. I don't usually see a photo to go with it since the products are not actually announced, but the artist rendition of Apple's product looks very nice and even if Apple doesn't release it, someone should! I'm talking about the item posted at this website: http://stuff.tv/News/BIG-IN-2008-MacBook-Nano/

I hope we get to see more esthetically pleasing hardware. Lets hope it works too.

-P

Back from Mexico

2008-01-08T07:50:00.000-08:00

We've been back from Mexico for a while. We had a great trip and I must admit I wish it would have lasted longer. Even without internet access I was able to find things to do. ;)

Now back in the UK, I'm trying to get into a new rhythm for work. I'm starting earlier that before and that means getting up very early to get into the office. At first I thought this was going to be the "worst thing ever" but it's not.

Now it's time to concentrate on getting the MythTV setup working. This should be a couple of weekends of work and hopefully that'll be it!

There's a few things I have to do around the house though... I think I am going to have to run a new antenna cable from the outside, but that's not too bad. Anyway, this is part of the few weekends that I need to get it done.

-P

Mexico 2

2007-12-19T21:15:00.000-08:00

I'm not allowed to use my computer and I don't have internet access where I'm staying. At least things are going well and we'll have some results regarding Christian's condition. Yes, one of the things we're doing while here is perform tests on Christian to see if we can find out why he's been sick so much.

We hope that we'll find something here and that in addition, the fact that we're in a new house where we've removed the carpet, we'll have a healthier child.

-P

Mexico 1

2007-12-17T16:31:00.000-08:00

I am taking some vacation and I'm currently in Mexico. It's interesting how technology reaches a place but that doesn't mean that the place has "advanced." I'm not going to say that Mexico is a backwards country because there's been a lot of great technological advancements that have come from Mexicans.

Anyway, I'm enjoying my time without the "ball and chain" that is my MacBook. I must admit I miss it and I feel that I could better organize my stay here, visit family, etc if I had it and internet access. However, I'm going to avoid that. I'm actually using a VAIO with internet access so I can post this. And since it's using a Mexican keyboard layout, it's harder to type this out quickly.

I will update this as anything interesting happens. Time to go spend time with family.

-P

Tablets and iPhone

2007-12-13T04:31:00.000-08:00

I want an iPhone. Why? Because of the geek factor and the fact that there's a lot of potential in the little guy, however I am going to wait until the 2nd rev. I know a lot of new stuff can and will come via firmware, but I am pretty sure that the hardware is going to improve too. Also wouldn't it be neat if you could get attachments or other hardware to interface with it?

I know that Motorola, Nokia and pals have products that they want to compete with the iPhone, but I haven't seen any that I would consider... yet. That said, I think that Apple has done something that the cell phone industry needed. Opening their eyes to their true potential (revenue, technological, etc) and at the same time making the customers aware that there's much more to be expected in the future.

Now what does this have to do with tablets? Well, I think some interesting things are going to happen in this space. Rumors abound about Apple's "iTablet", "iText", iGuessAgain which would incorporate some of the iPhone's technology. Dell has finally entered the tablet market with a multitouch screen, and I'm sure there's going to be more to follow! Anyway, the whole point is that I'm excited that this technology is finally starting to come around. This coupled with Microsoft's Surface computing table and... well, what's a geek to do?

Buy...

-P

symbolic links

2007-12-12T03:31:00.000-08:00

Something that people might run into this and get confused, or worse, panic at the posibility of losing data.

I was trying to explain the issue but it'll be easier to just write the syntax out and explain it there.

ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:47 dir1

ln -s dir1 dir2

Here you create the symlink from one directory and no problem here.

ls -l
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:47 dir1
lrwxr-xr-x 1 user1 group1 4 Dec 12 11:48 dir2 -> dir1

Next:

ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:47 dir1
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:49 dir2

ln -s dir1 dir2

Oops! Does this replace dir2?

ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 user1 group1 68 Dec 12 11:47 dir1
drwxr-xr-x 3 user1 group1 102 Dec 12 11:50 dir2

ls -l dir2/
total 8
lrwxr-xr-x 1 user1 group1 4 Dec 12 11:50 dir1 -> dir1

Nope! It just creates a symbolic link inside the 2nd directory!

So don't worry! Remember to delete the symbolic link just use rm

-P

New House

2007-12-05T05:32:00.000-08:00

We're in the process of buying, updating and moving into a new house. It's in the same street where I live now, about two blocks up. We're excited and are trying to get the bathroom looking nicer than it is now. It's really tough as most people know. While the work is going on, we're painting and decorating; making the house into a home.

Once we're finally moved in... I plan on going high tech! Yes, I am going to go green too. I'll change the lightbulbs a few at a time. I plan on automating the lights, however this seems to be a bigger issue than I thought since I can't seem to find ways of automating things cheaply. I'll have to research this a bit more.

I'd like to eventually add solar panels or a wind turbine at the back. They're not cheap, but I think you get an incentive from the gov or a discount or something. I'm going to take a look at this further. (Looks like £5000 for solar water heating panels and £2000 for a wind turbine from B&Q...)

I'll have to look at other things I can do.

--
Patrick

More podcasts

2007-11-12T07:08:00.000-08:00

Amazing. Today I found the Gimp podcast at Meet the Gimp (http://www.meetthegimp.org) and I mentioned how great it would be if someone did one on InkScape and guess what!? I found one!

Meet Screencasters... (http://screencasters.heathenx.org)

-P

Miro and Podcasting

2007-11-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

MythTV is great. I've finally started to get things working and we're going to move so my plan is to finish shortly after the move.

However, not everything can be found on TV. Yes, you can download your favorite shows from through Bittorrent but I was thinking more along the lines of Podcasts.

There's quite a few of them and I've been using Miro (use to be called Democracy) to subscribe to a few of them. The ones that I JUST found and think is great is called "Meet The GIMP" (http://meetthegimp.org/) and deals with the Open Source application GIMP. Finally someone has started to show how to use GIMP. I've wanted to learn how to use it but since I'm not really a great graphics artist I haven't spend a lot of time playing with the application's features to see how they work. However, this RSS feed got me interested!

Now if they only had one for InkScape, I think I'd be all set!

-P

Sickness Sucks

2007-11-12T04:07:00.000-08:00

It's amazing that I am once again writing about being sick. It's been a while since my last post and I just thought I'd write something quickly. Both my son and I were sick again. I was actually sick for a longer period of time (and I'm still not completely over it.)

However, I've been reading quite a bit about modern medicine and some of the new medications and advancements coming down the line. I've also watched a video from TED (http://www.ted.com) about regenerative medicine. It's a speech given by Alan Russell and it's quite amazing to watch. (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/142)

I also saw a few other videos including one of Jennifer Lin ( http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/46) a pianist that... well can compose "on the fly" and is quite amazing.

Enjoy.

Kids and illness

2007-09-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

I hate being sick. I especially hate it when my son or daughter get sick. It's worse when my 5 year-old son gets sick because of his age. He started with a cough. We went to the doctor and they gave him antibiotics, which I think was the right thing to do in this case. I thought he'd get better, but today I found out that he's been throwing up. I don't think it's the antibiotics because he's had the same one before.

Well, hearing he's throwing up is one thing... seeing him throwing up when he has practically nothing in his stomach and he's in pain is another. I feel helpless.

Now my daughter is also starting to get sick. She has flu like symptoms and it's the right season for it, so I'm not surprised. As long as hers doesn't get worse I think she'll be fine. She'll probably get to miss a day or two of school, which is fine too since she's a bright kid. At least her I can give something for the symptoms.

Still...

Did I mention I hate it when my kids are sick?

-P

MythTV strikes again

2007-09-11T07:55:00.001-07:00

Not everyone has heard of MythTV, however I am surprised how MOST geeks (and I mean it in the nicest way possible - I'm one of you) have.

For those that don't know what it is: MythTV is an Open Sourced application that with the correct hardware, will record TV shows. http://www.mythtv.org/

It's a really neat application that I have been keeping an eye on for a while now and I'm in the process of deploying an installation at home.

The main issue is hardware compatibility with Linux. The Linux TV team is doing a great job of getting hardware to be compatible and developing those drivers that aren't being made by the people that know the hardware the best... the hardware manufacturers.

However, I vow to get this box up and running soon and I'll post a screen capture for you.

-P

16 hour work days

2007-09-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

I had a 16 hour work day on Thursday. You want to know the sad bit? I use to have those more often and I miss them! Yes, that's right. I actually enjoyed working for such a long period of time. I know I'm not alone, but I also know there's a lot of people out there that don't enjoy working those long hours.

However, at the end, when I got home. I felt that I had accomplished something and that it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Now what other industries are there were people have to work for such long periods of time? I'm guessing Doctors.

The other day I read something interesting about how most people in other industries don't go home to continue "working" - a lot of people in the tech industry will go home and sit at their computer. They may update their website or their blog or test some code or something like that... However, you won't see a neurosurgeon go home to test something on their cat.

Well, it's time to go to bed.

-P

First post!

2007-09-04T01:46:00.000-07:00

The purpose of this Blog is to remind me of items, blogs, posts, links and tips that I find useful in not only at work, but also at home.

I've been doing so many things during my career that it's sometimes is impossible to keep track of everything. How do you do it when the world's knowledge doubles ever five years (that's a current estimate.) Granted, I don't know it all, but I feel that I know a lot.

I have friends that know a lot too and I'm constantly amazed and what I don't know and I learn every day. Yes, every day I learn something new.

Anyway, I digress, as I mentioned: this blog will help me remember the things I've learned and have to store outside my head! :)

-P