volatile int

Updated Spotify ebuild (0.6.1.309)

2011-10-04T15:43:00.001+02:00

Earlier I posted an ebuild to Spotify (for the package manager in Gentoo called Portage). Here is a newer version of that ebuild. Like the last time, put it in a file called spotify-0.6.1.309.ebuild inside your local repository (like /usr/local/portage/media-sound/spotify/)

# Copyright 1999-2010 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: $

EAPI="2"

DESCRIPTION="Spotify desktop client"
HOMEPAGE="http://www.spotify.com/"

LICENSE="Spotify"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~amd64 ~x86"
IUSE="gnome"

MY_PV="${PV}.gb871a7d-1"
MY_P="${PN}-client-qt_${MY_PV}"

SRC_BASE="http://repository.spotify.com/pool/non-free/${PN:0:1}/${PN}/"
SRC_URI="
x86? ( ${SRC_BASE}${MY_P}_i386.deb )
amd64? ( ${SRC_BASE}${MY_P}_amd64.deb ) "

RDEPEND="
    gnome? ( >=gnome-base/gconf-2.12 )
    >=sys-libs/glibc-2.6
    >=media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.14
    >=x11-libs/qt-core-4.5
    >=x11-libs/qt-dbus-4.5
    >=x11-libs/qt-gui-4.5
    >=x11-libs/qt-webkit-4.5
    >=sys-devel/gcc-4.0
    sys-apps/usbutils
    "

RESTRICT="mirror strip"

src_unpack() {
    for MY_A in ${A}; do
        unpack ${MY_A}
        unpack ./data.tar.gz
    done
}

src_install() {
    mv "${WORKDIR}"/usr "${D}" || die "Install failed"
}

Update: Remove gnome-support since Spotify states this is broken and will be removed in the future.
Update2: This ebuild does NOT work on Gentoo (~amd64) right now since there is a dependency on libssl-0.9.8, and we are currently using v1.0. Hopefully this will be solved somehow. I'll remove this update when it is.

Locked svn repository and you can't unlock or clean?

2011-02-11T20:49:00.000+01:00

I discovered that I couldn't update my subversion repository, nor could I commit, revert or even run cleanup on it! The error I got was

"Working copy is locked, run cleanup on it to remove locks"

I was wondering what the hell had happened since I hadn't locked any files on purpose. 'svn unlock --force' didn't do the job so I had to try cleanup. But when running cleanup all I got was

"svn cleanup: can't find .svn/tmp/log. "

It seems to stem from some version problem, and all that is really needed is to create a .svn/tmp directory by hand. By running a little command on the shell, we fix the problem within seconds.

find . -iname '.svn' -exec mkdir {}/tmp \;

After creating all the '/tmp' dirs, just run 'svn cleanup' again, and it should be ok for an update or a commit.

Thanks to Kyle Cordes for the fix.

Speeding up your secure file-transfer by using tar and ssh

2011-02-08T12:36:00.002+01:00

Normally when transferring files between computers, one would use 'scp', and for a directory 'scp -cr'. The problem with this is that scp creates a connection for each file when transferring it, and this adds a lot of overhead.

To speed up the transfer of many small files, it is better to use the beloved Unix pipe, together with tar (the archiving software) and SSH (Secure SHell). What we do is 'tarball' all these files and directories, compress them if we would like to, and pipe the result to ssh, which on the other computer either puts them in a (compressed) tarball or untar it back into its original directory structure.

To decrease the use of bandwidth, we also set tar to filter the output through gzip, a compression program. This is done using the '-z' flag. The other two flags we use is '-c' and '-f' which means 'create archive' and which file to create (in our case '-' which means stdout) respectively.
Tar usually uses stdout if nothing else is specified, so we could actually skip the last flag.

Using scp, it would look something like this:

scp -rc directory/ user@host:~/

But with tar and ssh, we instead write it like:

tar -zcf - directory/ | ssh user@host "tar zxvf -"

I have created a directory on the receiving host called 'backup', so I want to put it into that directory instead:

tar -zcf - directory/ | ssh user@host "tar zxvf - -C backup/"

or if we remove the '-f' flag with its corresponding argument:

tar -zc directory/ | ssh user@host "tar zxv -C backup/"

I tried using bzip2 as a filter as well, but it seems to have a tendency to be too cpu-heavy in comparison to its improved compression ratio. But this depends on the amount of available bandwidth.

I found some comparisons at http://smaftoul.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/ssh-scp-little-files-and-tar/, which saw an 19x transfer time improvement when transferring a 109 Mb large directory containing 9992 files. This is definitely worth a little command line magic!

Native Spotify ebuild for Gentoo

2011-01-06T21:59:00.003+01:00

You also love Spotify? Well, it truly is the best thing since the Interwebs, that's for sure!

A lot of Linux users don't know that the wonderful developers over at Spotify are actually releasing early beta builds of their native Linux client. It's not perfect, but for being early-releases it's damn near close! You just have to love those guys...

Anyway, here's an ebuild I've completely stolen from dstien a couple of months ago, and then updated to new versions as they've come out. I've added the Pulseaudio dependency (dstien doesn't seen to have done that yet) since the previous version didn't work without it).

Ebuild:

# Copyright 1999-2010 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: $

EAPI="2"

DESCRIPTION="Spotify desktop client"
HOMEPAGE="http://www.spotify.com/"

LICENSE="Spotify"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~amd64 ~x86"
IUSE="gnome"

MY_PV="${PV}.g604b4fb-1"
MY_P="${PN}-client-qt_${MY_PV}"

SRC_BASE="http://repository.spotify.com/pool/non-free/${PN:0:1}/${PN}/"
SRC_URI="
    x86?   ( ${SRC_BASE}${MY_P}_i386.deb )
    amd64? ( ${SRC_BASE}${MY_P}_amd64.deb )
    gnome? ( ${SRC_BASE}${PN}-client-gnome-support_${MY_PV}_all.deb )
    "

RDEPEND="
    >=media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.14
    >=media-sound/pulseaudio-0.9.21
    >=sys-devel/gcc-4.0
    >=sys-libs/glibc-2.6
    >=x11-libs/qt-core-4.5
    >=x11-libs/qt-dbus-4.5
    >=x11-libs/qt-gui-4.5
    >=x11-libs/qt-webkit-4.5
    "

RESTRICT="mirror strip"

src_unpack() {
    for MY_A in ${A}; do
        unpack ${MY_A}
        unpack ./data.tar.gz
    done
}

src_install() {
    mv "${WORKDIR}"/usr "${D}" || die "Install failed"
}

Just copy this into an empty file within your portage overlay (for example /usr/local/portage/) in the media-sound directary, go into the directory and run

> ebuild spotify-0.4.9.302.ebuild digest

and then you're ready to go! Should be at least ;)

Logging boot output

2010-08-21T22:39:00.001+02:00

Ever seen an unnerving [ !! ] scroll by during boot, hidden among 50 lines, way too fast to be able to actually read the problem? Then X then starts, it clears the buffer in the TTY, not allowing you to scroll up to read it when you do a VT-switch back to TTY1.

While 'dmesg' (or reading /var/log/dmesg or /var/log/messages) shows you the boot output from the kernel and other parts of the system, it usually doesn't show the issues from specific boot processes that show up in the list with [ ok ] or [ !! ]. Well, we can actually enable the logging of the console output from the boot process by a few simple steps.

This applies to a Gentoo system, and I'm not sure which other distributions it works for.

#1. First enable RC logging by editing '/etc/rc.conf'. Uncomment the following line (marked by '>'):

# rc_logger launches a logging daemon to log the entire rc process to
# /var/log/rc.log
# NOTE: Linux systems require the devfs service to be started before
# logging can take place and as such cannot log the sysinit runlevel.> rc_logger="YES"

Then we also need to install the showconsole daemon which does the actual logging.

> eix-sync showconsole

[I] app-admin/showconsole
     Available versions: 1.07 1.08
     Installed versions: 1.08(22.23.03 2010-08-21)
     Homepage:            http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/
     Description:         small daemon for logging console output during boot

Just run 'emerge showconsole' and reboot, after that all the messages scrolling past the screen as you boot will be stored in /var/log/rc.log.

Using the command line to find out your router's external IP address

2010-05-11T20:30:00.001+02:00

Ever been in the position where you need to find out your IP address without having a GUI to fall back on and surf to www.whatsmyip.org or the likes?

At tips4Linux I just found a great command for it! Just fire up wget and get the address printed right there in your terminal.

wget -O - -q icanhazip.com

That's it!

Trying out Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) on Radeon 4850

2009-12-08T19:06:00.004+01:00

I've been trying out Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) on my Radeon 4850, since it's extremely cool! The new kernel/mesa/ati-drivers also allows me to run accelerated 3D graphics on the desktop, finally! Well how does it work? Just have a look!
I think I have some more stuff to do ;)

Listing the size of directories

2009-11-21T16:56:00.004+01:00

By doing ls -l, you won't get the size of directories. It will only be listed as 4.0K, while the files are listed correctly. But even the files are actually not listed correctly if you are currently changing the file, for instance during a download. It will list the final size of the file, not the current file size.

If you instead use the 'du' (disk usage) command, you will get a more correct number, even for directories.

du -sh *

will list all the files and directories in the current folder, with the size it occupies on the disk.

Listing which kernel modules you have built

2009-11-21T16:50:00.002+01:00

Every now and then I'm confused about which modules I actually have compiled. And what was the name of that module you just built to fix your lm_sensors or wifi-card. This problem is not as common as it used to be, since a lot of software now seems to load the modules it needs, or even the kernel does it itself. But it's always good to have a clue I guess.

A little handy command to run is:

find /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/ -type f -iname '*.o' -or -iname '*.ko'

This will list all the modules in your module directory for the currently running kernel.

Open Document Format + C# = <3

2009-09-12T01:04:00.003+02:00

So you want to be able to manipulate ODF-documents with C#? That was exactly what I wanted to do this morning and after some quick research I found a solution.

Solution 1: The Hard Way (tm)
Turns out that the .odt- and .ods-filetypes (.ods being the one I was interested in) are basically zip-archives which can be decompressed by any archive software supporting it. Inside the archives you'll find a bunch of .xml-files. The file 'content.xml' is where the goodies are. The hard part is parsing the xml-code and getting something useful from it. This I leave to the reader since I wasn't able to get a good result in a hurry.

Solution 2: The Easy Way (tm)
Turns out that someone has already done all the work for us and put it in a small library called AODL . I recommend downloading the binary version (less files), however the documentation resides with the source code in the src-archive so you might as well grab that to while you're at it. Though this library seemed great at first, I quickly ran into a problem. But before we go into that, lets open a document.


using AODL.Document.SpreadsheetDocuments;
using AODL.Document.Content;
using AODL.Document.Content.Tables;

[...]

SpreadsheetDocument doc = new SpreadsheetDocument();
doc.Load("/home/god/blahblah.ods");
RowCollection rows = doc.TableCollection[0].RowCollection; //get rows in first page of doc

foreach(Row row in rows)
{
   foreach(Cell cell in row.Cells)
   {
       Console.WriteLine(cell.OfficeValue); //return the string value of this cell
   }
}

[...]

You might expect that this piece of code prints the contents of every cell in the document. You are sadly mistaken. As I found out, it printed everything except string values. That is, floats and ints etc. printed ok, but when a cell contained a string the WriteLine-statement gave an empty string instead. After some fruitless googling and and hour or two of desperate screaming I finally came to the rather embarassing conclusion that the empty string was actually a null string. Then, after some quick IntelliSensing (well, MonoDevelop's version of it anyway) I produced the following.


[...]
foreach(Row row in rows)
{
   foreach(Cell cell in row.Cells)
   {
       string s = cell.OfficeValueType; //get type of value
       if(s.Equals("string")
       {
           Console.WriteLine(cell.Content[0].Node.InnerText);
       }
       else
       {
           Console.WriteLine(cell.OfficeValue);
       }
   }
}
[...]

Why cell.OfficeValue (which is of the type string) doesn't work for strings evades me. But at least there is a quick solution. There are probably others, if so please leave a comment.

New author

2009-09-11T16:57:00.002+02:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to present myself. I am manneorama; developer, death metal-connaisseur and all in all pleasant man. Welcome, myself, to volatileint.

Creating fdi policy files for HAL

2009-03-18T22:09:00.008+01:00

I have been using Gentoo for about 6 years now, and every now and then the system breaks as a result of a large update. This isn't a terrible thing, and usually I just have to scout the http://forums.gentoo.org for a couple of minutes to find the solution to the error, if I can't figure it out myself.

The most recent problem people have been seeing lately (since at least 6 months ago) is the merge from configuring input devices in fdi policy files - as a result of the Xorg-team wanting to move to HAL-based configures - instead of an input section inside the xorg.conf file. This is mainly in the xorg-server 1.5 and onward. If you want to read much more about HAL, more info is located here.

I have had lots of problems getting this to work, and every time I was trying to convert, I grew sick of it and just reverted my changes. But now I stuck to it and came through alive on the other side. As usual, the forums could help me.

First we add a section with server flags to our xorg.conf:

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddDevices" "on"
Option "AutoEnableDevices" "on"
Option "AllowEmptyInput" "on"
EndSection

This tells xorg that it is OK that we have removed all input devices in the file. Then we can comment out the devices we have listed (to later remove them for good).

Now we need to convert our input settings to the new fdi config file structure. There are some example files scattered across the web, for example on Ubuntu's wiki. The settings are quite basic for most people, so it makes it easy to write the file.

First off we create our config file in /etc/hal/fdi/policy/ and name it 10-x11-input.fdi. The config in my xorg.conf said:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "se"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Logitech MX510"
Driver "evdev"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
EndSection

This translates to very similar settings in our new 10-X11-input.fdi. I should mention that I also took the opportunity to switch my device handling to "evdev" for both my devices, instead of the xorg handled one.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keyboard">
<merge key="input.x11_options.XkbRules" type="string">evdev</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XkbModel" type="string">evdev</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XkbLayout" type="string">se</merge>

</match>
</device>
<device>
<match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.mouse">
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">evdev</merge>

<merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">false</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

After creating the file, we restart our hal daemon:
root@skare$ /etc/init.d/hald restart

and unplug/plug in our device. If we monitor devices with hal, it will print out a new device.

root@skare$ lshal -m

Start monitoring devicelist:
-------------------------------------------------
22:52:00.340: usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial_if0_logicaldev_input removed
22:52:00.344: usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial_if0 removed
22:52:00.345: usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial removed
22:52:09.263: usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial added
22:52:09.263: usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial_if0 added
22:52:09.307: usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial_if0_logicaldev_input added

We can see that I first unpluggen my device, and then plugged it in again. To check what devices we have as mouse and keyboard, we run two other commands:

root@skare$ hal-find-by-capability --capability input.mouse |xargs hal-device
udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial_if0_logicaldev_input'
info.subsystem = 'input' (string)
info.product = 'Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse' (string)
linux.device_file = '/dev/input/event3' (string)
info.category = 'input' (string)
info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial_if0_logicaldev_input' (string)
input.originating_device = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial_if0' (string)
input.device = '/dev/input/event3' (string)
input.x11_driver = 'evdev' (string)
info.capabilities = { 'input', 'input.mouse' } (string list)
input.product = 'Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse' (string)
input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons = 'false' (string)
linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.1/usb4/4-2/4-2:1.0/input/input3/event3' (string)
info.parent = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c01d_noserial_if0' (string)
linux.hotplug_type = 2 (0x2) (int)
linux.subsystem = 'input' (string)

root@skare$ hal-find-by-capability --capability input.keys |xargs hal-device
udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port_logicaldev_input'
info.subsystem = 'input' (string)
input.xkb.layout = 'us' (string)
info.product = 'AT Translated Set 2 keyboard' (string)
linux.device_file = '/dev/input/event2' (string)
input.xkb.variant = '' (string)
info.category = 'input' (string)
info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port_logicaldev_input' (string)
input.x11_options.XkbRules = 'evdev' (string)
input.originating_device = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port' (string)
input.x11_options.XkbModel = 'evdev' (string)
input.device = '/dev/input/event2' (string)
input.x11_driver = 'evdev' (string)
input.x11_options.XkbLayout = 'se' (string)
info.capabilities = { 'input', 'input.keyboard', 'input.keypad', 'input.keys', 'button' } (string list)
input.product = 'AT Translated Set 2 keyboard' (string)
linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input2/event2' (string)
info.parent = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port' (string)
info.addons.singleton = { 'hald-addon-input' } (string list)
linux.hotplug_type = 2 (0x2) (int)
input.xkb.rules = 'base' (string)
linux.subsystem = 'input' (string)
input.xkb.model = 'evdev' (string)

Here we can see if our policy file actually did its job, i.e. loaded the right drivers for the devices. It also shows the settings, so we can double check those. The /var/log/Xorg.0.log also displays the changes:

root@skare$ tail -n 20 /var/log/Xorg.0.log
(EE) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: Read error: No such device
(II) config/hal: removing device Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse
(II) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: Close
(II) UnloadModule: "evdev"
(II) config/hal: Adding input device Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse
(**) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: always reports core events
(**) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: Device: "/dev/input/event3"
(II) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: Found 8 mouse buttons
(II) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: Found x and y relative axes
(II) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: Found scroll wheel(s)
(II) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: Configuring as mouse
(**) Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
(II) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: Forcing middle mouse button emulation off.
(**) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: YAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
(**) Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse: EmulateWheelButton: 4, EmulateWheelInertia: 10, EmulateWheelTimeout: 200
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse" (type: MOUSE)

One positive thing with this new HAL stuff is that we don't have to restart X when we add a new device, or want to change the settings of the ones we have. Just restart the hald daemon and it re-reads the policy files, and unplug/plug in the device again, and the new settings should be enabled. Good luck!

Mozilla closing in on Firefox 3.1 beta 3

2009-03-12T13:48:00.006+01:00

It seems like the release of Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is closing in. The Mozilla Quality Assurance team is organizing a test round "for the rollout of" the beta release today, and states that to test it, the 3.1 users just need to klick "Check for Updates" in the Help menu. I have tried it, but the update doesn't seem to be out yet. I guess it will arrive later today.

They announced earlier this month that they would probably have yet another Beta candidate before doing the actual release, as well as renaming it Firefox 3.5 as a result of the long wait. The beta3 was originally planned for release months ago, and the reason for the delay was a couple of serious bugs, where the most prominent one was in the TraceMonkey javascript engine. This is the same engine that has been hailed as one of the reasons why the new Firefox is lightning fast, so let's hope they iron out the last creases! I have been running the Beta2 as my main browser for several weeks now, and have not experienced any problems at all, so I am looking forward to the Beta3 to see if there are any noticable changes.

Some of the new stuff in Firefox 3.5 except TraceMonkey and great speed improvements are "Private browsing mode", support for embedded video and audio (without Flash etc), improved rendering (improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering) and of course lots of bug fixes.

Using regular expressions in Vim

2009-02-27T12:10:00.003+01:00

Today I was faced with the task of replacing lots of words in a script file. The problem was that I could not simply replace them by doing a "search-and-replace" (:%s/old_word/new_word/g) because they should only be replaced on some of the lines. For example, the script says

OUTSTANDING
COMMAND Record SetPriority priorityRecording_INI
COMMAND Play SetPriority priorityRecording_INI
COMMAND Record SetDestinationSampleRateL Record_A_006_INI
COMMAND Record SetDestinationBitRateL Record_A_005_INI

My task was to replate the priorityRecording_INI with priorityPlayback_INI for all the lines which had the COMMAND Play on them. While I in this case could have done it by hand, a regular expression is perfect for this task!

First we need to use the "search-and-replace" command like we stated above:

:%s/exp1/exp2/g

This is in more detail the command s (find and substitute), extended with "%" which tells it to look through the entire file. "exp1" is then replaced by "exp2", and "/g" in the end tells it to do it for all occurrences for every line.

To boil the problem down, we first focus on what tells the line apart. We use "Play" as the command to tell the difference. We then search for "Play", and don't care about the rest, at least up until the thing we want to replace. This means we search for

/Play.*priority

since priority is the last word we want to keep. The problem here is that we have two instances of the word priority, but we can tell them apart by the fact that one of them has a TAB in front of it (it could be spaces as well, but I won't go into that flame war). To enter a TAB character in Vim, we press ctrl+v TAB, which looks like ^I.

The command

/Play.*^Ipriority

highlights everything from Play to end of priority. We could also do a case sensitive search, but I have that disabled as default, so this was a smoother solution.

To keep certain parts of our search, and replace others, we use $exp3$ formatting. This means that the substitution command won't replace that, but instead move it to a new position in the substitution expression. Alll wildcards or search expressions outside of the  will be replaced. The new position for the "exp3" (or several) is noted by using \1 (\2, \3, ..., etc etc) in the order they have been declared in the search expression.

So first we define the "/Play.*^Ipriority" as the first thing we want to keep, and since we also want to keep the "_INI" in the end, we define that as \2. The end result is rather confusing, but it does the job!

:%s/$Play.*^Ipriority$.*$_INI$/\1Playback\2/g

And the result is exactly what I wanted!

COMMAND Record SetPriority priorityRecording_INI
COMMAND Record SetPriority priorityPlayback_INI
COMMAND Record SetDestinationSampleRateL Record_A_006_INI
COMMAND Record SetDestinationBitRateL Record_A_005_INI

Imagine doing this for a file with 2000 rows, allowing us to automate boring manual labour. You can read more about regular expressions in Vim's help page (:help :s or :help pattern) or http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/regular-expressions-cheat-sheet/, a great cheat-sheet.

Configuring the Ralink RT2860 card

2009-01-25T17:20:00.008+01:00

This is how I set up my Zepto Znote 6024W (using the Ralink RT2860 wifi card) with my D-Link DI-524 router. It is a really crappy router, and I have had lots of problems with it, but today I seem to have found a solution to my problems. It still seems to disconnect a lot, but if I dhclient it again, it usually reconnects. This is how I set it up.

Go to Ralink's website at http://web.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html. The latest drivers when writing this is 1.8.0. Download them and untar them somewhere.

I really recommend you to read the README_STA that comes with the drivers. It tells you how to configure the drivers for your setup, even if they do leave a lot to wish for. The information that I'm sharing here is a mix between that file, as well as the info that can be found in the manpages for wpa_supplicant, wpa_cli, wpa_supplicant.conf and ifup.

First we change the config for the build so the card is being controlled by wext and network manager. Open the file os/linux/config.mk and set:
'HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y' and "HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y'.

Save the file, we now move on to configuring the more detailed stuff. The settings for the drivers are entered into the RT2860STA.dat file in the base directory of the drivers. This is then copied to /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA/ when we compile the source and run 'make install'.
Edit the settings that interests you. I don't see why we need to enter our psk (preshared key) both here and in the wpa settings (see further down), but I haven't had the guts to remove my settings. The things I changed are:

#The word of "Default" must not be removed
Default
CountryRegion=5
CountryRegionABand=7
CountryCode=
ChannelGeography=1
SSID=your_ssid
NetworkType=Infra
WirelessMode=9
Channel=0
AuthMode=WPA2
EncrypType=TKIP
WPAPSK=cf3e61b119de1e8bceb45edc60c5b7aa00b240c58bee8ba83cc9448761300cf3

To find the encrypted version of your password, use wpa_passphrase. The output should look something like this:
root@george:# wpa_passphrase your_ssid super_duper_password
network={
ssid="your_ssid"
#psk="super_duper_password"
psk=cf3e61b119de1e8bceb45edc60c5b7aa00b240c58bee8ba83cc9448761300cf3
}

We will do the same again later, but for setting up the wpa_supplicant. Now let's build the driver and load it into the kernel.

root@george:# make all && make install && modprobe rt2860sta

Enable, build and load the kernel modules that allows for encryption (TKIP, AES etc). If you are running Ubuntu, these will be compiled as modules already (which means that we don't have to recompile anything), otherwise enable them as modules in the kernel and compile and install them.

load kernel modules for encryption
root@george:# modprobe ieee80211_crypt_tkip \
ieee80211_crypt_ccmp \
ieee80211_crypt \
aes_x86_64 \
aes_generic

Now it's time to set up the configuration for wpa_supplicant, so we can connect to our encrypted access point. Since you've already set a password on the AP, let us try to use it.

Encrypt password using wpa_passphrase
root@george:# wpa_passphrase your_ssid super_duper_password >> /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Edit the created file so we can add some settings. I am running WPA2 with both AES and TKIP encryption, so I'll let the driver use both.

root@george:# vim /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
network={
ssid="your_ssid"
scan_ssid=0
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
pairwise=CCMP TKIP
group=CCMP TKIP
#psk="super_duper_password"
psk=cf3e61b119de1e8bceb45edc60c5b7aa00b240c58bee8ba83cc9448761300cf3

}

The file should now look something like above. We now start wpa_supplicant with the arguments that it should use the wext (generic wireless driver for Linux) driver, with our config file. It will also set up the interface as ra0. We also tell it to be verbose, so it is easier to spot errors in our configuration.

root@george: #wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ira0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -d

And to receive the correct dhcp info from our access point we run dhclient on it.

root@george: # dhclient ra0

We can check the interface has been started now with ifconfig and iwconfig:

root@George:# ifconfig ra0
ra0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:15:af:b7:93:xx
inet addr:192.168.0.116 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:44812 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:9096 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4619023 (4.6 MB) TX bytes:369091 (369.0 KB)
Interrupt:18

root@George:# iwconfig ra0
ra0 RT2860 Wireless ESSID:"your_ssid" Nickname:"RT2860STA"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.452 GHz Access Point: 00:1C:F0:88:A4:02
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:50FF-9C3C-6A3B-1EBB-6D50-AF11-8F74-XXXX
Link Quality=100/100 Signal level:-39 dBm Noise level:-81 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

My computer keeps disconnecting, and I'm unsure about what to do about that. This does at least get the network up, so I could post this article! First I had lots of settings for the encryption in my /etc/network/interfaces file, but I moved all these to the wpa_supplicant.conf file, which should mean that we can keep a very clean interfaces file. We do need to make it run wpa_supplicant every time we want the interface up though, so we'll add that to the config. Mine now looks like:

root@George:# cat /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto ra0
iface ra0 inet dhcp
pre-up /sbin/wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ira0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -B

Now it should get the interface up and running every time you boot the computer. Good luck!

Adding Reiser4 and Ext4 support in the 2.6.27 kernel

2008-12-13T16:58:00.003+01:00

I recently bought a new hard drive, and thought that I might try some "new" filesystems that I haven't used before. Therefore I went with the Reiser4 (not supported in the kernel, and won't be in the near feature for several reasons) and Ext4 (which will be in 2.6.28).

To add support for these file systems we need to patch the kernel with the official patches that we can find here and here respectively. Download the files (to your desktop in this case) and extraxt them into your kernel directory.

# cd ~/Desktop/
# gunzip reiser4-for-2.6.27.patch.gz
# bzip2 -d 2.6.27-ext4-2.bz2
# sudo cp reiser4-for-2.6.27.patch 2.6.27-ext4-2 /usr/src/linux/
# cd /usr/src/linux

Then su and type in you password (or do the rest with sudo). To apply the patch we use the command "patch", with the -p argument.

# patch -p1 < reiser4-for-2.6.27.patch
# patch -p1 < 2.6.27-ext4-2

Then we need to enable it.

# make menuconfig

and enable the new filesystems that exists under the "File Systems". Build the kernel and install it.

# make all modules_install
# make install

Then let's cross our fingers and hope it works!

Hell has finally frozen over!

2008-11-18T10:58:00.006+01:00

Today marks a milestone in human history, like when man crawled onto land and decided to stay there, or the industrial revolution. Adobe has finally released a 64 bit Flash version for Linux! And not only for Linux, but also for.. oh wait, no ONLY for Linux! It must be the first time ever a large, closed source, company releases a linux version before any other platform. Kudos to them! I just wish they would focus on a 64 bit ver... oh wait.

This is just an early version, "pre release quality", but it does mean alot. I'll download it as soon as possible, and I hope you don't forget to also report bugs on their official bugtracker, and not only complain on a forum somewhere. But what took them so long? Tinic Uro explains some of it on his blog.

This was probably one of the last things that my girlfriend complains daily about, which usually goes like:

"Why the HELL do you want things like this?! Never ANYTHING working! Always spending half an hour fixing this and that, EVERYTIME we are supposed to watch a movie (with subtitles), youtube video or listen to internet radio."

I also saw that Sun is actually about to release (newly released) their 64-bit version of their JRE and their java plugins as well. It only took them 4 years to fix that bug! Now it is supposed to work on Linux/Windows/Mac and soon Solaris. Hell, maybe soon I won't even bitch monthly about surfing the web.

Sound problems on Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex

2008-10-27T23:26:00.004+01:00

I've been running the Intrepid Ibex Beta for about a month now, and I must say it is surprisingly unstable and troublesome. At least for a beta. Now, when it is slowly approaching the release date of 8.10, it is starting to reach a certain level of stability and usability.

Something that was a bit more annoying than losing wifi - since I have an extra network cable close to the couch - is actually the loss of all sound. Except a crackling sound every now and then when trying to play a file (no matter if it is video or music). I have an Intel card, but I don't know if it only happens on those cards.

I did however find a small fix for it, I just needed to restart alsa, and force it to reload the modules. Why this had to be done, I don't know, but 2 seconds later the sound was back. Crisp and crystal clear.

The key?

alsa force-reload

This fixes the issue for good, also after a reboot.

Working some magic in (G)Vim

2008-09-17T17:33:00.002+02:00

It's hard not to love Vim when substitutions and movement is as beatiful as it is. The commands of the day are:

:g!/IMPORT.*\n/d
ggVG
:retab!
:g/\t.*\s.*\s/d
:%s/($.*$,/(KCommand\1,"\1"/g
:%s/_LIT(K$.*$,.*);/TBool CAudioMgmtServerWrapper::\1()/g

These few commands actually lets us completely reformat a block of text, remove comments, add variable names and then turn it into a list of functions again. Sweeet.
Let's go through them a bit more in detail:

:g/exp1/d - cut (delete) the text that matches the expression1 inside the "//".

ggVG - go to the top (gg), go into 'mark mode' (V) and then go to the EOF (G). This is performed in ordinary command mode.

:retab! - Let's replace whitespaces with real tabs instead.

:%s/exp1/exp2/g - Replace expression1 with expression2, and do it for all occurences on every line (g).

How to change/update the URL of your SVN repository

2008-09-09T23:36:00.005+02:00

Sourceforge has done some huge updates and changes during the last couple of months, and I might not be the busiest bee regarding updates and commits to my own project, Subspace Battle.

Today when I was doing some updates and fixes, I tried to call it a night and did the final touch: a commit. But for some reason I kept getting a '403' error, which means there is some security issue. I knew my password was correct, and also the user, so what could it be? Perhaps the UUID of the server had changed after sourceforge's updates, and that somehow stopped the update. I checked their website to see if there were any changes or big "REMEMBER TO DO THIS" signs waving at me, but saw none.

After reading through parts of the svn guide, I compared my repository URL to the one I got from the 'svn info' command. It turns out that they have switched to https (instead of http), which means my URL was wrong. So how do we update it without downloading another local copy of everything? I tried several different solutions, and finally find the right one!

svn switch --relocate http://subspacebattle.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/subspacebattle https://subspacebattle.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/subspacebattle

This simply changes the URL of the repository that your local version maps to. Or as the 'help' chapter describes it, if only I had read that sooner...

switch (sw): Update the working copy to a different URL.
usage: switch --relocate FROM TO [PATH...]

Rewrite working copy URL metadata to reflect a syntactic change only.
This is used when repository's root URL changes (such as a scheme
or hostname change) but your working copy still reflects the same
directory within the same repository.

Now let's get on with the commits!

Sending output from one command to another

2008-09-07T17:13:00.001+02:00

When I recently updated xorg-server to version 1.5.0 (which comes with the new X.org that is released soon!) I needed to rebuild some of the drivers (packages) that comes with it. To get the list of drivers I use the command qlist.

$ qlist -I -C x11-drivers/

which outputs a list of packages from the category x11-drivers that are installed (-I) and without color (-C). Although it's nice to get a list like the one I got:

$ qlist -I -C x11-drivers/
x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers
x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev
x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard
x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse
x11-drivers/xf86-video-nv

it's a bit annoying if you have to copy and past all these onto the command line as parameters to the 'emerge' command. So what we do is get the qlist to list these packages into the emerge command. This is done using the "$" symbol, which first evaluates the output of its embedded command, and then outputs it as a parameter to the parent command. To clarify:
$ parent-command $(command we want the output from)

which in our case turns out to be:

# emerge $(qlist -I -C x11-drivers/)

This starts the emerge and re-compile of all our drivers. Now we wait... ;)

Using find to recursively unrar all files in subfolders

2008-08-31T14:08:00.003+02:00

Sometimes when I've downloaded something, it is compressed into several small rar files, divided into lots of subfolders. This can be handy to keep track of files, but at the same time a pain in the ass when uncompressing them. You simply have to go into each subfolder and either run:

$ unrar x *01.rar

or using a gui-tool to unrar/unzip them. A little trick to make this a lot faster is to simply use the "find" command to find all the files you need, and then send them into whatever program you need to decompress them. You can use the same command to pipe files into playlists or even to compress files into several folders.

Now in this example we have a folder structure like the following:

$ ls -l
totalt 2,3G
foo.bar.v1.12.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.13.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.14.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.15.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.16.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.17.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.18.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.19.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.20.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.21.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.22.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.23.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/

First we start with the find command.

$ find ./software-foo*/

This will list all files in the folders. Each subdirectory in its turn contains:

$ ls -l
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part02.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part03.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part04.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part05.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part06.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part07.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part08.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part09.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part10.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part11.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part12.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part13.rar

To unrar, we need to define the first file (or any really, but just one) in each subdirectory. To show just the files we add the "-type f" flag. To then be able to parse the list, we also add a check for filenames. This is done with the "-name" flag.

$ find ./software-foo*/ -type f -name '*01.rar'

This gives us a list of the filenames that match the pattern *01.rar.

$ find ./software-foo*/ -type f -name '*01.rar'
./foo.bar.v1.12.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.12.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.13.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.13.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.14.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.14.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.15.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.15.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.16.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.16.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.17.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.17.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.18.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.18.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.19.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.19.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.20.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.20.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.21.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.21.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.22.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.22.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.23.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.23.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part01.rar

So here is our list of files that we want to unrar. We then add the flag "-exec" to perform a command on the given files. The command we want is "unrar x", and then we also need to add some extra syntax to give the command its parameters.

$ find ./software-foo*/ -type f -name '*01.rar' -exec unrar x {} \;

Now we just wait! This decompresses all the files in all the subdirectories into the current directory. Perhaps not the best thing if it's hundreds of sourcefiles, so we have one more trick. Instead of using the "-exec" flag, we use the "-execdir" flag. Instead of performing the command from the directory where "find" was invoced, it performs it from each subdirectory. This sorts the files into subfolders for us!

$ find ./software-foo*/ -type f -name '*01.rar' -execdir unrar x {} \;

Hope this helps in the future! This is one reason why the command line is hard to replace fully in a GUI application.

Using the PlayStation 3 as a media center with Linux

2008-08-30T21:08:00.002+02:00

I recently got a PlayStation 3 from my wonderful girlfriend, and one of the reasons I wanted one was for its great possibilities of being a media center. I installed MediaTomb on my Linux machine (Gentoo) and after half an hour of configurations, it was ready to stream content to the PS3.

Installing MediaTomb
Portage is wonderful, and of course contains MediaTomb. It is an open source uPnP media server with DLNA support. DLNA is a protocol that computers and other devices can use to talk to each other, for instance when supplying video files over a network. It can do much more too, just have a look at the link to wikipedia for more info. When I did my install, I followed the guide at gentoo-wiki.com. To get more information (especially regarding transcoding), check the site there, this is my "shortcut" guide to it.

Install it using portage:

# emerge mediatomb

Make sure you have the use flags that you need enabled. I'm using

[I] net-misc/mediatomb
Available versions: 0.11.0 {curl debug exif expat ffmpeg javascript libextractor mysql taglib}
Installed versions: 0.11.0(22.28.13 2008-08-17)(curl exif expat ffmpeg javascript taglib -debug -libextractor -mysql)
Homepage: http://www.mediatomb.cc/
Description: MediaTomb is an open source UPnP MediaServer

and that works well for me. Since I rather use sqlite instead of a full mysql install, I haven't enabled that use flag.

When streaming to the PS3, you also need to enable some transcoding support. This also allows you to get thumbnails on the different video files. I use ffmpeg as my transcoder, since I already have it installed. Make sure you have the "encode" use flag enabled. If you need video thumbnails, also install ffmpegthumbnailer. support.

# emerge ffmgeg
# emerge ffmpegthumbnailer

Then you have to create 2 scripts to launch the transcoding for you. First the script for audio (/usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-audio):

#!/bin/bash

FFMPEG_PATH="/usr/bin/ffmpeg"
INPUT="$1"
OUTPUT="$2"
VIDEO_CODEC="mpeg2video"
VIDEO_BITRATE="4096k"
VIDEO_FRAMERATE="25"
AUDIO_CODEC="mp2"
AUDIO_BITRATE="192k"
AUDIO_SAMPLERATE="44100"
AUDIO_CHANNELS="2"
FORMAT="dvd"

exec "${FFMPEG_PATH}" -i "${INPUT}" -vcodec ${VIDEO_CODEC} -b ${VIDEO_BITRATE} \
-r ${VIDEO_FRAMERATE} -acodec ${AUDIO_CODEC} -ab ${AUDIO_BITRATE} -ar ${AUDIO_SAMPLERATE} \
-ac ${AUDIO_CHANNELS} -f ${FORMAT} - > "${OUTPUT}" 2>/dev/null

and then the one for video (/usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-video)

#!/bin/bash

FFMPEG_PATH="/usr/bin/ffmpeg"
INPUT="$1"
OUTPUT="$2"
VIDEO_CODEC="mpeg2video"
VIDEO_BITRATE="4096k"
VIDEO_FRAMERATE="25"
AUDIO_CODEC="mp2"
AUDIO_BITRATE="192k"
AUDIO_SAMPLERATE="44100"
AUDIO_CHANNELS="2"
FORMAT="dvd"

exec "${FFMPEG_PATH}" -i "${INPUT}" -vcodec ${VIDEO_CODEC} -b ${VIDEO_BITRATE} \
-r ${VIDEO_FRAMERATE} -acodec ${AUDIO_CODEC} -ab ${AUDIO_BITRATE} -ar ${AUDIO_SAMPLERATE} \
-ac ${AUDIO_CHANNELS} -f ${FORMAT} - > "${OUTPUT}" 2>/dev/null

We need to make them both executable:

# chmod +x /usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-audio
# chmod +x /usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-video

My config file now looks like the following. Copy it to /etc/mediatomb/config.xml and start MediaTomb.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<config version="1" xmlns="http://mediatomb.cc/config/1"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://mediatomb.cc/config/1
http://mediatomb.cc/config/1.xsd">
<server>
    <ui enabled="yes">
        <accounts enabled="no" session-timeout="30">
            <account user="mediatomb" password="mediatomb"/>
        </accounts>
    </ui>
    <name>MediaTomb</name>
    <udn>uuid:51b10cef-e678-41be-8a0c-6d53e5243b2d</udn>
    <home>/var/lib/mediatomb</home>
    <webroot>/usr/share/mediatomb/web</webroot>
    <storage>
        <sqlite3 enabled="yes">
            <database-file>mediatomb.db</database-file>
        </sqlite3>
        <mysql enabled="no">
            <host>localhost</host>
            <database>mediatomb</database>
            <username>mediatomb</username>
            <password>mediatomb</password>
        </mysql>
    </storage>
    <protocolInfo extend="yes"/>
</server>
<import hidden-files="no">
    <scripting script-charset="UTF-8">
        <common-script>/usr/share/mediatomb/js/common.js</common-script>
        <playlist-script>/usr/share/mediatomb/js/playlists.js</playlist-script>
        <virtual-layout type="builtin">
            <import-script>/usr/share/mediatomb/js/import.js</import-script>
        </virtual-layout>
    </scripting>
    <mappings>
        <extension-mimetype ignore-unknown="no">
            <map from="mp3" to="audio/mpeg"/>
            <map from="ogg" to="application/ogg"/>
            <map from="asf" to="video/x-ms-asf"/>
            <map from="asx" to="video/x-ms-asf"/>
            <map from="wma" to="audio/x-ms-wma"/>
            <map from="wax" to="audio/x-ms-wax"/>
            <map from="wmv" to="video/x-ms-wmv"/>
            <map from="wvx" to="video/x-ms-wvx"/>
            <map from="wm" to="video/x-ms-wm"/>
            <map from="wmx" to="video/x-ms-wmx"/>
            <map from="m3u" to="audio/x-mpegurl"/>
            <map from="pls" to="audio/x-scpls"/>
            <map from="flv" to="video/x-flv"/>
            <map from="avi" to="video/x-divx"/>
            <map from="divx" to="video/x-divx"/>
            <map from="vob" to="video/x-divx"/>
        </extension-mimetype>
        <mimetype-upnpclass>
            <map from="audio/*" to="object.item.audioItem.musicTrack"/>
            <map from="video/*" to="object.item.videoItem"/>
            <map from="image/*" to="object.item.imageItem"/>
        </mimetype-upnpclass>
        <mimetype-contenttype>
            <treat mimetype="audio/mpeg" as="mp3"/>
            <treat mimetype="application/ogg" as="ogg"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/x-flac" as="flac"/>
            <treat mimetype="image/jpeg" as="jpg"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/x-mpegurl" as="playlist"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/x-scpls" as="playlist"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/x-wav" as="pcm"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/L16" as="pcm"/>
            <treat mimetype="video/x-msvideo" as="avi"/>
            <treat mimetype="video/divx" as="avi"/>
            <treat mimetype="video/vob" as="avi"/>
        </mimetype-contenttype>
    </mappings>
</import>
<transcoding enabled="yes">
    <mimetype-profile-mappings>
        <transcode mimetype="application/ogg" using="audio-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="application/ogg" using="video-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="audio/x-flac" using="audio-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/x-flv" using="video-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/divx" using="video-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/divx" using="video-thumbnail"/>
    </mimetype-profile-mappings>
    <profiles>
        <profile name="audio-common" enabled="yes" type="external">
            <mimetype>audio/L16</mimetype>
            <accept-url>yes</accept-url>
            <first-resource>yes</first-resource>
            <hide-original-resource>yes</hide-original-resource>
            <accept-ogg-theora>no</accept-ogg-theora>
            <agent command="mediatomb-transcode-audio" arguments="%in %out"/>
            <buffer size="1048576" chunk-size="131072" fill-size="262144"/>
        </profile>
        <profile name="video-common" enabled="yes" type="external">
            <mimetype>video/mpeg</mimetype>
            <accept-url>yes</accept-url>
            <first-resource>yes</first-resource>
            <hide-original-resource>yes</hide-original-resource>
            <accept-ogg-theora>yes</accept-ogg-theora>
            <agent command="mediatomb-transcode-video" arguments="%in %out"/>
            <buffer size="10485760" chunk-size="262144" fill-size="524288"/>
        </profile>
        <profile name="video-thumbnail" enabled="yes" type="external">
            <mimetype>image/jpeg</mimetype>
            <accept-url>yes</accept-url>
            <thumbnail>yes</thumbnail>
            <resolution>128x128</resolution>
            <agent command="ffmpegthumbnailer" arguments="-i %in -o %out -s 128"/>
            <buffer size="524288" chunk-size="512" fill-size="1024"/>
        </profile>
    </profiles>
</transcoding>
</config>

Start it using

# /etc/init.d/mediatomb start

Adding files and directories
To add files to the MediaServer, simply point your favourite browser to http://192.168.0.157:49152/ and then press the "Filesystem" link to the left. There you can add the directories you want, and the server parses them for you. If you have inotify enabled in you kernel (which you probably do) it will be possible to let the server automatically know when something has been changed, and it reparses that directory when needed.

Mesa releases v.7.1

2008-08-28T13:17:00.001+02:00

On the 26th of August, Mesa released the 7.1 version of their open-source implementation of the OpenGL library.

This is a development release, and warns that users focused on stability should go for the 7.0.4 release instead (or wait for 7.2). There are some interesting features added though, like DRI enhancements, "lots of DRI driver fixes", and GL_EXT_texture_from_pixmap in Xlib driver. They also mention the upcoming change to the GEM Memory Manager. The last is not in this release, but it is in the master branch of the GIT source tree, so I guess now we just wait...

The most interesting for me however is probably the support for the GL shading language on the i965 driver (Intel cards), this might actually mean that the integrated graphics card on my laptop finally supports shaders! Welcome to 2004! I bought the laptop with the intel card because of their great open source support, but was very (to say the least) surprised when it didn't have support of OpenGL2.0 or higher (or at least the shader side of it). Now my masters thesis might actually look a bit better, or at least as crappy as it looked on my desktop computer.

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=860721 + http://mesa3d.sourceforge.net/