Re: [PLUG] Intel Baytrail platform running Linux

[Scott Garman]

On 03/06/2015 02:43 PM, Mark Townsley wrote:
> Dear All
> 
> I was told that some of the lower end laptops with the Intel Baytrail CPU
> is not compatible with Linux thus installing Linux on them is not possible.
> 
> Is that a true statement?
> 
> Thanks in advanced for any tip.

I haven't heard this. There are several models of Baytrail that run
Linux, including the MinnowBoard and the ThinCanyon series NUCs.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] how to find and install an epel testing package?

[Scott Garman]

On 10/26/2014 09:21 AM, Galen Seitz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just updated to CentOS 6.6, which caused thunderbird to be updated to 
> 31.2.0.  As a result, I need an update for the calendar extension, 
> thunderbird-lightning.  I can see that a testing version of it is 
> available, but I can't seem to find where it is actually located.
> 
> Here's a page that shows an update is available:
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/thunderbird-lightning-3.3-1.el6
> 
> I tried the following command, per the epel wiki 
> (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/testing) but it did not find the 
> package.
> sudo yum install thunderbird-lightning --enablerepo=epel-testing
> 
> Here's what looks to be the contents of the epel testing repository.  No 
> sign of the package here.
> http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/testing/6/x86_64/
> 
> 
> Does anyone know how epel testing is supposed to work?

I'll offer an alternate suggestion - don't bother using the distro
packaged version for Thunderbird and Firefox extensions. If you just use
the app itself to install an extension (Tools->Add Ons), it will get
stored in your .mozilla or .thunderbird profile.

HTH,

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Digital cameras with wifi

[Scott Garman]

On 08/22/2013 02:22 PM, Mike C. wrote:
>>
>> I tried doing a port scan of the Windows machine running the Sony app,
>> but came up with nothing. The box says the camera is also DLNA
>> certified, and I wonder if that may also play a role.
>>
>> It's generally not a huge hardship to transfer the files over USB, but
>> I'm curious, and haven't run into any promising search results on the
>> web yet.
>>
>> Scott
>>
>
>   From the Sony manual:
> "You cannot transfer images recorded on the internal memory using the
> Wi-Fifunction (DSC-WX80/WX200"

Huh? I've tested this and it works just fine with the Sony software 
running in a WinXP VM.

The camera itself does have 48 MB of flash storage that's possible to 
use to take a few photos if you don't have an SD card installed. My 
guess is it's referring to that as internal memory.

Scott

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[PLUG] Digital cameras with wifi

[Scott Garman]

Hi all,

I was in the market for a P&S digital camera recently and was surprised 
to find that you can now get cameras with built-in WiFi for around 
$150-200. The Sony WX80 I picked up has it, and of course has a 
proprietary software app that works automatically with Windows and OS X, 
Android and iOS.

Now, aside from the fact that I likely shot myself in the foot by buying 
a Sony device in the first place, I was wondering if anyone knew what 
protocol these cameras (Sonys and others) use to identify and transfer 
files to computers on the wireless LAN.

I tried doing a port scan of the Windows machine running the Sony app, 
but came up with nothing. The box says the camera is also DLNA 
certified, and I wonder if that may also play a role.

It's generally not a huge hardship to transfer the files over USB, but 
I'm curious, and haven't run into any promising search results on the 
web yet.

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] Fwd: LinuxFest Northwest 2013 is nearing! Register Now!

[Scott Garman]

On 04/04/2013 07:34 PM, John Sechrest wrote:
> Anyone planning on going to LinuxFest this year?

I'll be giving this talk:

http://linuxfestnorthwest.org/content/building-robots-can-see

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Lenovo X1 Carbon - anyone have one?

[Scott Garman]

On 01/05/2013 01:07 PM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 04, 2013 at 06:52:22PM -0800, Scott Garman wrote:
>> Just wondering if anyone local is using one with Linux and what they
>> think of it.
>
> Thinkpads fascinate me, so I spent way too much time researching.

Thanks for the reply, Keith. It turns out that like you I also ended up 
changing my mind about getting one as I did more research.

The main reason is that I found the T430S (note the 'S') which is only a 
pound more, but doesn't require dongles, has a DVD-R drive I can remove 
and put in another HD if I want, still has the same high-res screen and 
great keyboard, and is significantly cheaper, too.

The disk space issue is a big one - the X1 Carbon maxes out at 256 GB 
SSD, which just isn't quite big enough for my needs. Being able to fit a 
standard sized laptop hard drive in the thing creates a lot of flexibility.

Scott

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[PLUG] Lenovo X1 Carbon - anyone have one?

[Scott Garman]

Just wondering if anyone local is using one with Linux and what they 
think of it.

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] Thunderbird progress bar

[Scott Garman]

On 09/28/2012 05:24 PM, Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> At the bottom of the T-bird window, near the right hand corner, there is
> a progress bar that, as far as I know, shows me that T-bird is still
> trying to download some part of an e-mail. This usually relates to
> something with an attachment.
>
> Is there some way to figure out what specific e-mail is still waiting to
> finish downloading something? I've been watching that little lack of
> progress indicator for half the afternoon. I've read and deleted most of
> the e-mail that came in this afternoon, and don't find anything suspicious.

I'm a heavy Thunderbird user and I get this all the time. In particular 
I seem to get the eternal progress bar after going into offline mode 
after it has downloaded my email. That happens about 50% of the time I 
go into offline mode, and if I leave it this way, Tbird will eat up some 
CPU continuously. If I close and then restart it, things stay quiet as 
expected.

I have the feeling it's just some buggy interaction between Thunderbird 
and the mail server.

It sure would be nice to get some info on what Thunderbird thinks it's 
doing, though - would make it helpful to develop a meaningful bug report 
for it.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Help with Xmodmap

[Scott Garman]

On 08/17/2012 06:21 PM, Daniel Hedlund wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 5:59 PM, Scott Garman  wrote:
>
>> I can see how I had my mapping reversed when using the add command, but
>> out of curiosity, can you explain why you needed the "= Alt_R" for the
>> remove command?
>>
>
> Because that's how it's described in the xmodmap(1) man page?  Remove is
> supposed to remove one or more keys associated with a specific modifier, in
> your case Mod1:
>
> remove MODIFIERNAME = KEYSYMNAME ...
> This removes all keys containing the given keysyms from the
> indicated modi‐
> fier  map.   Unlike add, the keysym names are evaluated as
> the line is read
> in.  This allows you to remove keys from a modifier without
> having to worry
> about whether or not they have been reassigned.
>
> "Clear"ing a modifier will clear all keys associated with that modifier,
> which removes both Alt_L and Alt_R (and possibly Meta_L if it's mapped to a
> physical key):
>
> clear MODIFIERNAME
> This  removes all entries in the modifier map for the given
> modifier, where valid name are: Shift, Lock, Control, Mod1, Mod2, Mod3,
> Mod4, and Mod5 (case does
> not matter in modifier names, although it does matter for
> all other names).  For example, ``clear Lock'' will remove all any keys
>   that  were  bound  to  the
> shift lock modifier.

Great, thanks for the additional explanations!

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Help with Xmodmap

[Scott Garman]

On 08/17/2012 04:48 PM, Daniel Hedlund wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 4:29 PM, Scott Garman  wrote:
>
>> I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around Xmodmap.
>>
>   *snip*
>
>> I have a laptop keyboard which has an Alt_R key but no Control_R key. I
>> would like the change this Alt key to a Ctrl key.
>>
>> I think what I'm supposed to do is:
>>
>> clear Mod1
>> add Mod1 = Control_R NoSymbol Control_R
>
>   *snip*
>
>> If I simply comment out the add line, xmodmap runs without reporting any
>> errors and the both of my Alt keys no longer do anything.
>>
>
> Close.  Try this and see if it works:
> remove Mod1 = Alt_R
> add Control = Alt_R

Thanks Daniel, that's exactly what I needed!

I can see how I had my mapping reversed when using the add command, but 
out of curiosity, can you explain why you needed the "= Alt_R" for the 
remove command?

Thanks,

Scott
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[PLUG] Help with Xmodmap

[Scott Garman]

Hello,

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around Xmodmap.

I have a laptop keyboard which has an Alt_R key but no Control_R key. I 
would like the change this Alt key to a Ctrl key.

I think what I'm supposed to do is:

clear Mod1
add Mod1 = Control_R NoSymbol Control_R

in my ~/.Xmodmap file, but when I run xmodmap on this, it returns:

Warning: Only changing the first 15 of 24 buttons.
X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for 
operation)
   Major opcode of failed request:  118 (X_SetModifierMapping)
   Value in failed request:  0x17
   Serial number of failed request:  13
   Current serial number in output stream:  13

If I simply comment out the add line, xmodmap runs without reporting any 
errors and the both of my Alt keys no longer do anything.

Is this enough information for someone to give me some suggestions?

Thanks,

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] Touch screen experience

[Scott Garman]

On 08/14/2012 08:37 AM, Wayne E. Van Loon Sr. wrote:
> Anybody successfully or unsuccessfully interfaced a touch screen to a
> Linux box (non laptop).
> Wayne

While this article is pretty dated (2005), it gives a broad overview of 
some things you'll want to consider:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-playscreen/

It also has a ton of useful links in the Resources section.

Basically you will want to get a touchscreen controller that interfaces 
over an RS232 serial port or USB to the host computer, and an LCD 
touchscreen that works with that controller.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Comcast DHCP Address changing

[Scott Garman]

On 06/12/2012 02:14 PM, Michael Rasmussen wrote:
>
> I'm doing a bit of research.
>
> For those of you who have have bothered to track it, how often does
> Comcast change your IP address?

I haven't seen much consistency - there was a time it seemed like it was 
changing about every three weeks, but lately it's been stable for over 3 
months.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] OSCON Deadline today

[Scott Garman]

On 06/07/2012 08:33 AM, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> But I am confused. Previously the exhibit hall only was free if you
> enrolled early, but now it seems to be always $25. And I am a proposer
> of a talk (although they rejected me!), which I thought was supposed to
> get me some goodies, but when logged in to my O'Reilly account I see
> nothing. And in previous years we got a PLUG discount, but I haven't
> heard about that yet either. And then there is the perennial booth
> question. I assume it will be a last-minute thing as it has always
> been, but I hope that whatever machinations are required have been
> or will be timely started.

I found this info on a public ML, so I assume it is public:

The Expo Hall Pass can be obtained for free by using the code "FREEPROJ" 
or "FREEORG".

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] Ubuntu 12.04 requires pae on the CPU?

[Scott Garman]

On 05/14/2012 05:49 PM, Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> So, after burning the right iso, I tried to boot it on my laptop. I get
> the error message:
>
> _
>
> This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: pae
>
> Unable to boot -- please us a kernel appropriate for your CPU.
> _
>
>
> Sigh. My desktop machine has the feature, but my laptop does not. On my
> desktop machine, I ran:
>
> rsteff@moonguide:~$ grep pae /proc/cpuinfo
> flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca
> cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx
> constant_tsc pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl cid xtpr
> flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca
> cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx
> constant_tsc pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl cid xtpr
> rsteff@moonguide:~$
>
> I tried running the same thing on the laptop and got nothing back.
>
> The desktop CPU is an Intel Pentium 4. The laptop is an Intel Pentium M.
>
> My first bit of Googling showed that there is a way to get 12.04 that
> doesn't need pae, but that defeats the purpose of having both machines
> running close to the same software.

I assume you're referring to the amd64 version of Ubuntu for the Pentium 
4, and the i386 version for the Pentium M?

Running those respective versions on your machines should still be 
"equivalent" software - you can make sure the same list of packages is 
installed on each machine. Userspace applications can use the same 
configuration files, etc. It's just that the software will have been 
compiled with some different CPU optimizations and the kernels will be 
somewhat different.

If you want absolute binary compatibility between the two machines, you 
could run the i386 version of Ubuntu on both of them. But I'm not so 
sure you really need to do this.

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] Virtualbox Better Than Qemu-KVM for USB Devices?

[Scott Garman]

On 05/10/2012 11:15 AM, Joe Shisei Niski wrote:
>> -Original Message-
>> From: plug-boun...@lists.pdxlinux.org [mailto:plug-
>> boun...@lists.pdxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Rich Shepard
>> Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 9:48 AM
>> To: p...@pdxlinux.org
>> Subject: [PLUG] Virtualbox Better Than Qemu-KVM for USB Devices?
>>
>> It appears that many folks have difficulty accessing a USB device
> (flash
>> drive, GPS receiver) via a guest OS in qemu-kvm. Has anyone here used
>> virtualbox to host a guest OS and access the USB ports?
>>
>> Rich
> 
> Yes, i've done it with thumb drives, as well as an old HandSpring Visor
> (PalmOS PDA) on WindowsXP SP3 and (thumb drive only) Windows7 (64-bit),
> hosting on 64-bit Ubuntu 10.11.
> 
> Once upon a time, one had to use the closed-source edition of VirtualBox
> rather than VirtualBox OSE in order to get USB support. i'm not sure whether
> that's still the case.

It is still the case. And yes, I use VirtualBox with a Windows guest to
access a Garmin Edge 305, so I can attest that it works. It is often
helpful to create a USB "filter" based on the device ID to make sure
VirtualBox grabs the device when you plug it in.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Shut up and Hack

[Scott Garman]

On 04/28/2012 10:41 AM, Mark Phillips wrote:
> I have run into some of them on the trail to the top of Camelbackhiking
> and hacking all the way;-)

This thread reminds me of something I did back in 2005 - the "Extreme" 
Ubuntu Install Challenge:

http://www.zenlinux.com/ubuntu_challenge/

Corny as hell (both the videos and the web page design), but it was a 
really fun day I had with some friends. :)

Scott



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Re: [PLUG] Sequent history anyone?

[Scott Garman]

On 03/10/2012 12:01 AM, Michael Dexter wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> Might you know when Sequent's Dynix 3.2.0 was release (ucb/att
> universes!) and if it was on NS NS32032's or i386's?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Michael

According to a co-worker who used to work at Sequent, he's certain they 
were 386's.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Anyone use the Blue Snowball USB mic w/ Linux?

[Scott Garman]

On 02/07/2012 11:45 PM, Matthew Gates wrote:
> I have used this device with Linux and it works just fine.  It has
> been working fine with the last few versions of Ubuntu.  Sometimes
> Pulse Audio messes things up and reverts back to the internal mic
> after a boot, but once it's working and selected as the main source,
> Skype and such seem to pick it up just fine.

Great to hear!

Thanks everyone for the replies.

Scott

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[PLUG] Anyone use the Blue Snowball USB mic w/ Linux?

[Scott Garman]

Hello,

I'm getting serious about developing some screencasts at work, and I'd 
like to get a decent microphone for voice recording. I have some friends 
who have done podcasting before who rave about the Snowball USB 
microphone by Blue:

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Microphones-Snowball-Microphone-Aluminum/dp/B002OO333Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328676180&sr=8-2

My searches are coming up with conflicting reports on whether this 
microphone works with Linux. As I'm trying to sort this out, I thought 
it wouldn't hurt to ask on this list if anyone has experience with this 
mic under Linux.

Alternate recommendations for something good quality known to work very 
well with Linux at under $75 are also welcome.

Thanks,

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] Video transcoding framerate problem: ogg -> avi

[Scott Garman]

On 01/07/2012 12:56 AM, wes wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 10:47 PM, Scott Garman  wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm going a bit crazy trying to do something that I think should be
>> quite simple.
>>
>> I'm creating some screencasts, using GTK RecordMyDesktop. It produces
>> Ogg Theora video files. I need to convert these to AVI files for later
>> processing.
>>
>> Using mencoder, I'm finding that the framerate and length of the
>> resulting video does not match the original by a long shot. A 10-minute
>> ogg video comes out as 7 minutes after transcoding. According to GTK
>> RecordMyDesktop, the framerate of the original should be 15fps.
>>
>> mencoder has two options for framerate. -fps specifies the framerate of
>> the original file, and -ofps specifies the framerate of the output file.
>> Setting either or both of these to 15 still does not resolve the issue.
>>
>> By trial and error I managed to create an output video of the expected
>> length by setting -fps to 6.28. But this only applies to that particular
>> video, and I have dozens more of different lengths to do the same to.
>>
>> I've also tried using ffmpeg to do the conversion. It gets the length of
>> the video correct but degrades the quality substantially, so I'd like to
>> see if I can get mencoder to work properly.
>>
>> Has anyone else encountered this before? I've gone down so many
>> dead-ends via Google now that my head is spinning.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Scott
>>
>
> My advice is to stick with ffmpeg, and play with the quality settings until
> you get acceptable results.

This turned out to be the best approach. All I needed to discover was 
the -sameq option to ffmpeg, which preserves the quality level of the 
original video.

Thanks for the replies,

Scott

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[PLUG] Video transcoding framerate problem: ogg -> avi

[Scott Garman]

Hello,

I'm going a bit crazy trying to do something that I think should be 
quite simple.

I'm creating some screencasts, using GTK RecordMyDesktop. It produces 
Ogg Theora video files. I need to convert these to AVI files for later 
processing.

Using mencoder, I'm finding that the framerate and length of the 
resulting video does not match the original by a long shot. A 10-minute 
ogg video comes out as 7 minutes after transcoding. According to GTK 
RecordMyDesktop, the framerate of the original should be 15fps.

mencoder has two options for framerate. -fps specifies the framerate of 
the original file, and -ofps specifies the framerate of the output file. 
Setting either or both of these to 15 still does not resolve the issue.

By trial and error I managed to create an output video of the expected 
length by setting -fps to 6.28. But this only applies to that particular 
video, and I have dozens more of different lengths to do the same to.

I've also tried using ffmpeg to do the conversion. It gets the length of 
the video correct but degrades the quality substantially, so I'd like to 
see if I can get mencoder to work properly.

Has anyone else encountered this before? I've gone down so many 
dead-ends via Google now that my head is spinning.

Thanks,

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] possible successful probes were detected ?

[Scott Garman]

On 12/12/2011 08:47 AM, Galen Seitz wrote:
> The following showed up in a logwatch report this morning.  Should I
> be concerned?  The system is running CentOS 5.7.  It has some static
> pages under http, and squirrelmail, trac, viewvc, and other stuff
> under https.  I haven't touched the configuration in months, just the
> normal yum updates.
>
>   A total of 3 possible successful probes were detected (the following URLs
>   contain strings that match one or more of a listing of strings that
>   indicate a possible exploit):
>
>  /?file=../../../../../../proc/self/environ%00 HTTP Response 200
>  /?mod=../../../../../../proc/self/environ%00 HTTP Response 200
>  /?page=../../../../../../proc/self/environ%00 HTTP Response 200

It should be reasonably straightforward to try going to those urls 
yourself and see if it works.

Scott

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[PLUG] Autotools talk slides & info

[Scott Garman]

Thanks everyone who attended my talk last night. I've just uploaded the 
slides here:

http://www.slideshare.net/zenlinux/dont-fear-the-autotools

The book I have on this subject that I highly recommend is John 
Calcote's "Autotools: A Practioner's Guide to Gnu Autoconf, Automake, 
and Libtool" published by No Starch:

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781593272067-0

If my talk made you curious to dig a bit deeper, this slide deck by 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz that is really good:

http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~adl/autotools.html

Enjoy,

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] Apache mime types?

[Scott Garman]

On 12/01/2011 09:55 AM, Tim wrote:
>
>> AddType application/x-tar .ova
>
> A Content-Type of "application/octet-stream" might be better for
> preventing IE from fooling around with the file extension.

Thanks, Jason and Tim - I was able to resolve my problem with this. Of 
course, the documentation in the httpd.conf file could not have been 
clearer:

#
# AddType allows you to add to or override the MIME configuration
# file mime.types for specific file types.
#
#AddType application/x-tar .tgz

So I appreciate the helpful responses despite my decidedly non-thorough 
searching.

Scott
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[PLUG] Apache mime types?

[Scott Garman]

Hello,

I have an Apache 2.2.17 server running on a Fedora 14 system. I'm trying 
to distribute some .ova files (which are virtual machine appliances).

For some reason the MIME type advertised by Apache is a tar archive, and 
this causes IE to automatically rename the file to end with .tar when 
downloading it from a Windows system. Using Chrome or FF, the file is 
downloaded with the proper file extension. :-/

I do not see any references to MIME types under /etc/httpd, and nothing 
jumps out at me in /etc/mime.types that could be causing this. Some 
Google searches have been fruitless. Can anyone hit me with a cluebat 
with ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks, and I'll see you at tonight's meeting!

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] Linux Clinic

[Scott Garman]

On 11/18/2011 05:19 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:04:30 -0800
> Marvin Kosmal  dijo:
>
>> I plan on coming Sunday  and bringing two old computers.  I would like
>> to install Mint 9 on one of them.
>
> I always maintain the latest releases of various distros, including
> Mint. But that means I just have Mint 11. There are various flavors of
> Mint 9:
>
>   http://www.linuxmint.com/release.php?id=13
>
> I have good bandwidth at home, so if you like I will download whichever
> one(s) you would like. Better for me to do so from home than to wait
> until the Clinic, because Free Geek doesn't have very good bandwidth,
> not to mention the time you'll have to sit waiting for it to download.

FWIW I believe Linux Mint 12 is due for final release on Nov 20. I've 
been running the release candidate on my laptop and the experience has 
been flawless. I'm finally happy and productive using GNOME 3 with MGSE 
and a couple of minor additional tweaks; I'll try to blog about my setup 
this weekend and will forward a url to the list when I've done so.

Scott
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[PLUG] Promising GNOME Shell tweaks.

[Scott Garman]

So I dunno if any of you care much for GNOME Shell, but I tried it for a 
couple of weeks and had to give it up (switched to XFCE). However, a 
co-worker of mine recently pointed me to a Linux Mint announcement that 
they will be addressing nearly all of my issues with GNOME Shell with 
some custom extensions.

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851

I'm really looking forward to trying this out when it is released!

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] RaspberryPie $25 Linux Computer

[Scott Garman]

On 10/30/2011 04:49 AM, Russell Senior wrote:
>> "Keith" == Keith Lofstrom  writes:
>
> Keith>  A $25 ARM/USB/SDcard computer won best-of-show at Arm TechCon:
> Keith>  http://www.raspberrypi.org/
>
> Interesting, though they have used a Broadcom SoC which makes me
> nervous.  Broadcom has a bit of a history of being unhelpful with
> information on the details of how their parts work.

There are a number of folks working on the Yocto Project which are eager 
to develop a BSP for this device as soon as they become widely available.

http://yoctoproject.org

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] usefulness of Cisco 186/188 ATA phone adapters, & Ooma

[Scott Garman]

On 10/28/2011 09:21 PM, C W wrote:
> Scott,
> Thanks for the feedback.  Ooma's service sounds like it's better quality
> than mobile phone service, so I can live with that.  Especially since Ooma's
> monthly charge is extremely low.

Yep, which is why I really would prefer to stick with them if I can. My 
cost comes to $3.47/mo now.

> How expensive and difficult is it to add several phones in the same house to
> one Ooma line?

If you have a cordless phone setup with several handsets, you can plug 
your base station into the Ooma and have as many handsets as you want. 
That would be the simplest approach.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] usefulness of Cisco 186/188 ATA phone adapters, & Ooma

[Scott Garman]

On 10/28/2011 07:12 PM, C W wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooma
>   Anybody here familiar with Ooma?

I switched from Vonage to Ooma this year. Never had any issues with 
Vonage, but with Ooma I have occasionally had audio quality issues, and 
even dropped calls. Not fun when I work from home most days and am 
dropping from a conference call.

About a month ago I was considering going back to Vonage, but things 
have been stable since then, so I'm willing to take the risk until I run 
into problems again.

Scott

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[PLUG] Ubuntu release party Sat night.

[Scott Garman]

I just learned that there will be an Ubuntu release party at Backspace 
Saturday evening, with free t-shirts even:

http://calagator.org/events/1250461457

Sounds like fun!

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Future PLUG presentation - pick the topic.

[Scott Garman]

On 10/17/2011 05:26 PM, Michael Dexter wrote:
>
> Thank you Scott for giving some choices!
>
> On 10/6/11 3:14 PM, Aaron Burt wrote:
>> OE/Yocto would be amazingly good.
>
> I am impressed with what Intel is doing with Yocto. The talk at OSCON
> with Beth, Jefro and Dave was great and totally under-attended.
>
> Highlights: Reliance on QEMU as a multi-platform emulator for the
> various platforms, no?
>
> License-level management of a project to keep things clean.
>
> Very complete! (no? :) )
>
> I'll watch for other 1+'s on the various topics.
>
> Scott, are all topics on offer if adequately spaced?

Potentially. I can only commit to things one at a time, though. It all 
depends on how busy I am.

The good news is they're each related to my job, so in theory it's just 
a matter of formalizing the knowledge and putting a presentation 
together...in theory. :)

Scott

PS - the Yocto Project just released v1.1 to the world today 
(yoctoproject.org)

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Re: [PLUG] Future PLUG presentation - pick the topic.

[Scott Garman]

On 10/06/2011 08:57 AM, Scott Garman wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Every time I've run into Michael Dexter I've told him I've been meaning
> to put together another talk for PLUG. I think it's finally time for me
> to get the ball rolling on this.
>
> I'm open to giving a talk on one of a few different subjects, and
> thought I'd leave it to the group to pick which one. So vote with
> replies to this thread and I'll put something together - I would just
> like more than a month to prepare (so I could do this in December or later).
>
> Potential Topics:
>
> * An overview of Autotools/Autoconf
> * An overview and comparison of RPM vs. DEB packaging formats
>
> * I could also do a talk on the Yocto Project, a build system and
> framework for developing embedded Linux images. I gave a talk a while
> back about OpenEmbedded, which is now a part of Yocto. I have plenty of
> things I can talk about with Yocto (it's my day job at Intel) that the
> presentation wouldn't be a re-hash of my OE talk.
>
> I'll leave it to the organizers to decide whether these should be
> general meeting presentations vs. advanced topics. The autotools one in
> particular might be hard to not be an advanced topics meeting. ;)
>
> I'll keep the choices simple with these three options. Feel free to vote
> away!

And it appears the winner is - an overview of Autotools/Autoconf! By 
just a hair. :)

Someone told me Michael Dexter is in Europe, so I'll coordinate with him 
when he has time to figure out which month this meeting will be (again, 
December would be the earliest I could do this, but I know some user 
groups skip meetings in Dec).

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Future PLUG presentation - pick the topic.

[Scott Garman]

Thanks for the feedback so far - I'll let 'voting' continue until the 
end of this weekend.

Scott

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[PLUG] Future PLUG presentation - pick the topic.

[Scott Garman]

Hi all,

Every time I've run into Michael Dexter I've told him I've been meaning 
to put together another talk for PLUG. I think it's finally time for me 
to get the ball rolling on this.

I'm open to giving a talk on one of a few different subjects, and 
thought I'd leave it to the group to pick which one. So vote with 
replies to this thread and I'll put something together - I would just 
like more than a month to prepare (so I could do this in December or later).

Potential Topics:

* An overview of Autotools/Autoconf
* An overview and comparison of RPM vs. DEB packaging formats

* I could also do a talk on the Yocto Project, a build system and 
framework for developing embedded Linux images. I gave a talk a while 
back about OpenEmbedded, which is now a part of Yocto. I have plenty of 
things I can talk about with Yocto (it's my day job at Intel) that the 
presentation wouldn't be a re-hash of my OE talk.

I'll leave it to the organizers to decide whether these should be 
general meeting presentations vs. advanced topics. The autotools one in 
particular might be hard to not be an advanced topics meeting. ;)

I'll keep the choices simple with these three options. Feel free to vote 
away!

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Upgrading PHP on CentOS 5.x

[Scott Garman]

On 08/04/2011 01:47 PM, Vincent L. Damewood wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Scott Garman  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm running a VPS with CentOS 5.6. It includes PHP v5.1.6.
>>
>> I noticed recently in a WordPress install that PHP v5.2.4 or higher is
>> now required [...]
>
>> [...]  I would imagine by now there is
>> likely a canonical CentOS repo I can add to my config and just grab the
>> binary package feed. Can anyone recommend one?
>
> There is no need to change your config. The updates repository for
> CentOS 5.6 has several packages named php53-*. A "yum search php53"
> should give you a list of PHP 5.3 packages. These should count as 'or
> higher'.

Cool, thanks for pointing that out - I hadn't realized it!

Scott

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[PLUG] Upgrading PHP on CentOS 5.x

[Scott Garman]

Hi all,

I'm running a VPS with CentOS 5.6. It includes PHP v5.1.6.

I noticed recently in a WordPress install that PHP v5.2.4 or higher is 
now required starting with WP v3.2.1. So I need to upgrade my PHP before 
I can upgrade my WordPress installs.

My Google searches have found a lot of tutorials on how to rebuild 
custom PHP RPMs for CentOS 5.x, but I would imagine by now there is 
likely a canonical CentOS repo I can add to my config and just grab the 
binary package feed. Can anyone recommend one?

Thanks,

Scott
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Re: [PLUG] ANNOUNCEMENT: April PLUG Meeting

[Scott Garman]

On 04/05/2011 12:17 PM, Russell Senior wrote:
>>>>>> "Scott" == Scott Garman  writes:
>
>>> So, instead of having a PLUG meeting we will attend Richard
>>> Stallman's talk at 7:30 PM at
>>>
>>> The PSU Native American Student and Community Center 710 SW Jackson
>>> St Portland Oregon 97201
>
> Scott>  The Calagator info I see here:
>
> Scott>  http://calagator.org/events/1250460423
>
> Scott>  states that the talk will go from 7-9pm. So you probably want
> Scott>  to correct the mention of 7:30 above unless you have access to
> Scott>  newer information.
>
> The link to the ACM of PSU website in that calagator entry says 7:30.
> I just contacted the PSU ACM folks on IRC.  They say that the doors
> open at 7pm, talk starts at 7:30pm.

Thanks for clarifying this, Russell. I had only looked at the Calagator 
entry.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] ANNOUNCEMENT: April PLUG Meeting

[Scott Garman]

On 04/05/2011 01:02 AM, David Mandel wrote:
>  MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT
>
>   PLUG Meeting will be different than normal
>
>Richard Stallman
> is speaking at
>   Portland State University
>   during PLUG's normal meeting time.
>
>  So, instead of having a PLUG meeting we will attend
> Richard Stallman's talk at 7:30 PM at
>
>  The PSU Native American Student and Community Center
>   710 SW Jackson St
> Portland Oregon 97201

The Calagator info I see here:

http://calagator.org/events/1250460423

states that the talk will go from 7-9pm. So you probably want to correct 
the mention of 7:30 above unless you have access to newer information.

Thanks,

Scott

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[PLUG] Richard Stallman to speak at PSU Thursday evening.

[Scott Garman]

Hi all,

I don't think I've seen it mentioned here yet, but Richard Stallman will 
be giving a talk Thursday evening (conflicting with the PLUG meeting?) 
for the PSU ACM chapter:

http://calagator.org/events/1250460423

Scott

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[PLUG] Yocto Project seeks local testers - free food/beer!

[Scott Garman]

Hello all,

I work with some folks at Intel who are really passionate about embedded
Linux development. We've been working on the Yocto Project, a build
system and set of tools you can use to create embedded Linux
distributions. If you're familiar with OpenEmbedded or Poky, we are
based on these projects.

http://yoctoproject.org

One of the things we're adding to this system is an Eclipse-based
development environment to help accelerate the creation of embedded
Linux userspace applications and Linux-based products.

We'd like to get some feedback from people about how well our tools
work, and as such we're going to sponsor a little get-together for some
folks who want to be our "guinea pigs" to try out our software. We're
asking for informed opinions about what we're doing and how we could
improve, and in return we will be providing free food and tasty
beverages (yes, I mean beer).

This gathering will be one evening in late Feb/early March. I'm thinking
that the SE Lucky Lab function room would be a good spot to hold this -
but this isn't set in stone and in fact is open to suggestions by those
who would like to attend.

In order to keep this session focused and productive, I'm looking for no
more than a dozen people to participate. One or both of the following
things should be true:

* You've done embedded Linux development before (or are quite familiar
with the process - perhaps by setting up a router with OpenWRT and
customizing it)
* You are familiar with an IDE that runs on Linux, particularly Eclipse

We would be open to having 1 or 2 people join this who may not have an
embedded background or Eclipse knowledge, but you should be a software
application developer and well-versed with your build tools.

You have to be willing to do some "homework" first by setting up Eclipse
with our plugin. Here's information about where to obtain the plugin and
a screencast which demonstrates some basics of using it:

http://yoctoproject.org/projects/eclipse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZlOu-gLsh0

To be clear, this isn't intended to be a "training" course on how to use
our tools. We're looking more for what your initial impressions are
about using these tools and observing how you'll attempt to do a few
things with them at the event. Of course we'll be happy to answer
questions in-person and on our mailing lists.

Does this interest you? If so, please drop me a line (off-list) and we'd
be happy to buy dinner and drinks!

Thanks,

Scott Garman

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Re: [PLUG] pc as data logger

[Scott Garman]

On 01/02/2011 08:59 AM, Denis Heidtmann wrote:
> Anybody here looked into this?  The cheapest approach is likely to use the
> sound card and an external chopper to get past the capacitor.

Does your pc have traditional serial or parallel ports? You can use them 
as GPIO (general purpose I/O) pins with the help of some basic 
libraries. I used parapin some years ago to do this over a parallel port:

http://parapin.sourceforge.net/doc/parapin.html

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Looking For Software to Check A Hard Drive

[Scott Garman]

On 12/18/2010 03:19 PM, Mark Phillips wrote:
> I have an older hard drive (WD1200VE - 120 GB) that use to be in my laptop,
> but I ran out of room so I replaced it with a larger drive. I have the
> WD1200 in one of those nifty ez-upgrade USB drive enclosures and it mounts
> and works just fine. I need some portable back up space, so I thought I
> would use this drive. However, I would like to test it (thoroughly, whatever
> that means) to see if it has any problems before I use it as a backup drive.
> I am looking for either a command line tool or gui that I can run on a
> Debian machine to exercise the drive and find any errors. An automated test
> suite that I can setup and run in the background (ie does not suck up the
> whole machine to run it) for a few hours/days to test the drive, log errors,
> fix those errors that can be fixed, etc.
>
> I can't use the WD diags for the drive since my Windows machine will not
> recognize the drive in its usb caddy. I looked at bonnie++ and I can't find
> a way to tell it to test a usb drive instead of the drive with the root file
> system. Bonnie is also a benchmarking program and not really a drive stress
> test program.
>
> Any recommendations? I don't care about the data on the drive now, as I have
> sucked it all off to my new hard drive.

Try smartctl from the smartmontools package. There are tests you can run 
(short/long) which may be helpful. Also check the Reallocated Sector 
Count and be wary if you see any reallocated sectors.

Keep in mind that a drive can go south with no advance warning 
whatsoever, and the older the drive, the more likely that can happen.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Locate v. find

[Scott Garman]

On 11/28/2010 04:12 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> This is weird:
>
> [r...@devil8 jjj]# locate nvidia.ko
> /lib/modules/2.6.34.7-61.fc13.x86_64/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko
>
> [r...@devil8 jjj]#
> rm /lib/modules/2.6.34.7-61.fc13.x86_64/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko
> rm: cannot remove
> `/lib/modules/2.6.34.7-61.fc13.x86_64/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko':
> No such file or directory
>
> [r...@devil8 jjj]# find nvidia.ko
> find: `nvidia.ko': No such file or directory
>
> Nautilus doesn't see the file either. Does locate just make things up?

On most Linux systems I've worked with, the locate database is only 
updated every so often (usually nightly, but sometimes weekly). Check 
your cron jobs to see how often the "updatedb" command is run.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Cheapest possible linux hardware?

[Scott Garman]

On 11/09/2010 09:17 PM, Scott Garman wrote:
> The tiniest, most inexpensive Linux-based devices I know of are "smart"
> ethernet ports, which often only offer a tiny embedded webserver an
> miniscule amounts of flash memory. Useful when tied to a sensors in data
> acquisition situations.

My apologies for the unusual grammar above. I'm tired and/or becoming 
senile. :)

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Cheapest possible linux hardware?

[Scott Garman]

On 11/09/2010 08:39 PM, Eric House wrote:
> A friend and I had a crazy idea for a linux-based appliance that only
> works if it can be an order of magnitude cheaper than the Soekris and
> PCEngines boxes I'm used to tinkering with.  And so I went googling to
> figure out just how low in the system-on-chip world I could go and
> still run something close to vanilla linux.  And found nothing.
>
> It must be that I don't know what search terms to use.  Does anybody
> here?  That is, how do I figure out what the cheapest SOC is for which
> I can build my own kernel and userspace stack?  Or does one even do
> that in the embedded world?  Does one instead run something the SOC
> vendor provides?  I think of myself as knowing "embedded linux"
> because I work on a linux-based smartphone OS, but smartphone hardware
> is a lot more capable than what I'm trying to research here.  Any
> pointers to get me started?

Generally the goal of selecting embedded hardware is to obtain the 
cheapest platform that offers reasonable performance in whatever domain 
you're working on. You seem to be approaching the problem in the reverse 
order.

What do you need the device to do? How small does it need to be? Are we 
talking about a handheld, battery-powered device or something that can 
run on AC power? Does it need to run video, display a user interface, or 
act as a headless web server, etc?

FWIW TI is releasing an extremely inexpensive board called the Panda 
Board. I think it's targeted around $100 or so (likely in volume), and 
uses modern ARM (v7) hardware.

The tiniest, most inexpensive Linux-based devices I know of are "smart" 
ethernet ports, which often only offer a tiny embedded webserver an 
miniscule amounts of flash memory. Useful when tied to a sensors in data 
acquisition situations.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] memtest86: Help Needed

[Scott Garman]

On 11/02/2010 05:14 AM, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Sun, 31 Oct 2010, Bill Barry wrote:
>
>> I should add that this seems to say that memtest86 crashed not that it
>> reported you have bad memory.
>
> Bill,
>
> Certainly looks that way.
>
> I replaced memtest86 with memtest86+. It ran all night (was in the 13th
> pass when I stopped it). In the first pass 8 errors were detected; no
> additional ones found.
>
> What is considered an acceptable error number? The 8 found here seems
> high to me, but I know the areas are very tightly packed on the silicon.
>
> Should I swap these for a new pair?

Just a few weeks ago I had some RAM that showed up with one error in 
memtest86+. After a couple of runs found the error at the same address, 
I prepared an RMA and the vendor (G.Skill) promptly replaced it.

You can probably "get away" with running RAM that has a small handful of 
errors, but I don't recommend it. If the RAM is still under warranty, 
definitely return it.

Scott
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[PLUG] Linux Foundation announces the Yocto Project

[Scott Garman]

Hello,

I thought I'd share some noteworthy news in the embedded Linux space.

Today the Yocto Project was announced at the Consumer Electronics Linux 
Forum (CELF) conference. This is an effort to help promote and 
contribute to existing open source projects (Poky/OpenEmbedded), which 
are build systems for developing customized Linux distros for embedded 
devices.

A common problem for companies trying to create embedded Linux products 
is that every time they need to use a new hardware platform for a 
product, developers need to learn and/or workaround idiosyncracies of 
the hardware vendor-supplied Linux distro. An important goal of the 
Yocto Project is to provide a flexible and standardized system to allow 
companies to create their own embedded Linux distros that they can use 
across a range of of hardware devices.

Board vendors will also appreciate that the Yocto Project defines a 
standard way of creating Board Support Packages (BSPs) for their 
embedded products.

The Yocto Project is a community effort under the Linux Foundation's 
umbrella, and it supports all major hardware architectures - not just 
x86, but also arm, mips, ppc, and even x86-64 are supported equally.

A good overview of the Yocto Project was posted on Linux for Devices today:

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Linux-Foundation-Yocto-Project/

and of course you can learn more at the project's home page:

http://yoctoproject.org

A number of folks (including myself) from Intel's Hillsboro location 
have been working on this effort (as well as from other sites). We 
welcome and encourage participation in the project. There's some really 
exciting stuff going on right in our backyard when it comes to embedded 
Linux.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] what simple linux command does this?

[Scott Garman]

On 09/29/2010 06:58 PM, Galen Seitz wrote:
> Michael Rasmussen wrote:
>>  $ mkdir -p /another/path/on/another/partition/
>>  $ mv /one/long/path/on/a/partition/file !!$
>
> !!$ can be shortened to !$

I'm not sure if anyone has explained yet that these !-variables have to 
do with bash's history. I read this article recently on bash history and 
found it to be quite good:

http://symkat.com/90/understanding-bash-history/

You can do some pretty cool stuff with your bash history.

Enjoy,

Scott

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[PLUG] Open Source Bridge is this week.

[Scott Garman]

Hi all,

This is just a quick reminder that the Open Source Bridge conference is 
this week. It is being held at the Mark building of the Portland Art 
Museum, and you can attend the evening BoF sessions for free:

http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2010bof/sessions

One-day passes are only $99 if you'd like to attend a few of the talks 
during the day but aren't able to take multiple days off of work this week.

http://opensourcebridge.org

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Favorite Backup Systems?

[Scott Garman]

On 05/21/2010 09:35 AM, Russell Senior wrote:
> Dirvish is a layer on top of rsync.  I use rsync directly.  The cool
> thing about rsync is that incrementals and full backups are the same.
> Every time you take an rsync snapshot (using the --link-dest option),
> you get a parallel tree of directories with common files hardlinked
> across.

I use rsnapshot, which is a layer on top of rsync in this manner as 
well. It's easy to set up with one configuration file, and has been 
working quite well for me for a couple of years now (backing up to an 
external USB drive).

http://rsnapshot.org

> You should be aware that USB on a cruddy old laptop is going to be
> (probably) a cruddy old USB speed also, and that backups over it are
> going to be slow.  USB2 is going to be better, eSATA is going to be
> pretty fast, if you can get it.

I can also verify this. However, I'm still using USB 2.0 for my backups 
because I wanted to use the eSATA speeds for a drive I make use of 
during the day. My backups run for a few hours every night, so I keep 
them on the slower medium.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Help with some partition trickery.

[Scott Garman]

On 05/18/2010 05:38 PM, m0gely wrote:
> Scott Garman wrote:
>
>> Unfortunately the reason why I'm trying to
>> do this rather than doing a full install of WinXP myself is that I'm
>> trying to convert the WinXP image from my work laptop into a VM I can
>> run within Linux, and I don't have full admin privileges within Windows. :(
>
> Does your work know you're doing this? This would likely upset the
> sysadmin in charge of the laptop. I know I would be.

Yes, I have authorization to do this. I'm happy to share the details and 
why I'm trying to go through this convoluted process, but I don't think 
it's appropriate for the list.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Help with some partition trickery.

[Scott Garman]

Thanks for the reply, Jason!

On 05/18/2010 02:18 PM, Jason Barnett wrote:
> I'm working from memory but I think this works.
> 1) Create a linux VM  (I would just use a live ISO image)
> 2) set your Windows dd image as hda

I think I get the rest of this, but could you be more clear as to what 
I'm doing in step 2?

Thanks,

Scott

> 3) make a new virtual expanding drive the same size as your dd image and set
> it as hdb
> 4) boot the VM and use dd to copy hda to hdb ( dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
> bs=512 )
> 5) wait
> 6) once the copy is done, shut down the VM, remove the original dd image and
> set the new expanding drive as hda
> 7) Set the VM to boot from hda (instead of the iso image )
> 8) boot the VM into windows
>
> This should make the new drive only as big as it needs to be, instead of the
> full 80 Gigs.  Even if it is still 80 Gigs, at least you can use one of the
> previously mentioned options on the native VirtualBox drive image.

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Re: [PLUG] Help with some partition trickery.

[Scott Garman]

On 05/18/2010 08:56 AM, drew wymore wrote:
> Not tested but google seems to say this should work.
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24864/virtualbox-from-an-existing-partition
>
> Use vmware converter to convert the existing install into a vmware
> instance, load said instance into Virtual Box (it's supported
> apparently) ... profit???

Thanks for the suggestion. I installed VMWare converter but then learned 
that it doesn't work with dd images. Norton Ghost, Backup Exec, etc 
images seem to work, but not raw dd images.

It can also reportedly connect to a running instance of the OS, but 
requires admin credentials. Unfortunately the reason why I'm trying to 
do this rather than doing a full install of WinXP myself is that I'm 
trying to convert the WinXP image from my work laptop into a VM I can 
run within Linux, and I don't have full admin privileges within Windows. :(

Scott

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[PLUG] Help with some partition trickery.

[Scott Garman]

Hi all,

I have a Windows installation that I'd like to convert to a VirtualBox 
VM so I can run it under Linux. This is possible under certain 
circumstances, as described here:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows

I have tested the process by taking a dd image of the 80 GB drive and 
successfully got it to boot within VirtualBox. However, the Windows 
installation is only 12 GB or so and the 80 GB disk space hit is too 
much of a problem for me. I'd like to instead have a 20 GB VM.

So I revisited the original Windows hard drive and re-sized the first 
partition to 20 GB. Unfortunately, as the above web page mentions:

3. Either pull the drive from the windows machine or copy the data with 
a low level image tool (like dd) to a USB drive or other removable 
media. If making an image, DO NOT image just the partition, this will 
not work!

And just to be certain, I tried imaging just the partition and verified 
the documentation is in fact correct. :)

Since AFAIK once you start with a VM of a particular size, you cannot 
actually "shrink" it, I'd like to figure out if there is some way I can 
simulate this single 20 GB partition into being a hard drive with a 
valid partition table indicating the size of the drive is 20 GB. Is this 
possible, and how?

I'm eager to learn more about how disk partitions work in the process, 
so point me at some documentation if you have a high confidence that it 
will allow me to resolve this problem.

Thanks,

Scott

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[PLUG] Fwd: Portland Software Census (please fill out and re-distribute)

[Scott Garman]

Hi all,

Your participation in this survey will help the City of Portland get a 
better sense of the local software community. More details can be found 
below, and here is a direct link to the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KTGSH9Q

Scott

 Original Message 
Subject:[pdx-groups] Please Distribute: Portland Software Census
Date:   Wed, 12 May 2010 14:21:56 -0700
From:   Audrey Eschright


Hi everyone,

Some of you may already have seen this on Twitter, but a group of us
have been working on a PDX Software Community Census for the city's
economic development efforts. We have an announcement we'd like you to
share with your user groups and post on blogs. It's important that we
get the widest response we can, and we're trying to get people to take
it ASAP so we can share it before the PDC's next round of "software
cluster" meetings. Thanks!

Here's the text:

If you're involved with Portland's software community, you know that
there's an amazing variety and depth of work being created at companies
large and small, in hobby side-projects, and open source efforts. The
City of Portland has selected software as one of its economic
development clusters for the economic plan currently being written.
Agencies like the Portland Development Commission (PDC) are involved in
documenting our software community and developing a plan for working
with it, but they lack accurate data on the types of software
development local organizations are undertaking, and have limited
experience with the kinds of small companies, ad hoc organizations, and
independent work that forms much of our technology efforts.

We'd like to assist the PDC and City of Portland efforts by initiating a
software community census to:

 * Gather some basic demographics about Portland's tech community

 * Flesh out what work people are doing and for whom

 * Build a baseline so we can quantitatively track the community's
   breadth and depth


How can you participate?

 * Take the survey  at
   http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KTGSH9Q before May 17

 * Spread the word to your colleages, coworkers and friends

 * We will be posting the results online, so check back with Silicon
   Florist and your community tech organizations for details.


What do we get out of this? This census will:

 * Ensure economic development efforts are targeted to what our
   industry actually needs

 * Provide data that can be used to assess the success of economic
   development efforts

 * Create an accurate picture of our amazing tech community (and give
   us bragging rights at OSCON).

 * Market Portland to companies like Involver
    who are coming to check out
   Portland !


How our work fits into the City of Portland's plans:

 * Software is the of the 5 clusters identified in Portland Economic
   Development Plan. It is the cluster that is least well defined in
   the plan.

 * PDC took the first step with their survey. Now we are helping them
   flesh out their results and better target their efforts.

 * We will be sharing our survey's results directly with the Mayor
   and PDC's Urban Development Director, Erin Flynn.


The survey will be open through the end of May, but we *strongly*
encourage you to complete the survey by May 17th so we can include your
data in the results we share at the next Lunch 2.0.
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Re: [PLUG] smartmontools test accuracy?

[Scott Garman]

On 04/30/2010 11:25 AM, Dale Snell wrote:
> Is that a Seagate drive, by any chance?  I have a Seagate FreeAgent Go
> USB drive that has similar behavior.  Nothing shows up
> in /var/log/messages, but both  smartctl -a  and Palimpsest show huge
> numbers for raw read error, seek, and hardware ECC correction rates.
> Yet both programs give the drive a healthy status.  For the record,
> here's some of the output of  smartctl -a :

It is in fact a Seagate. The story got even more interesting when I 
noticed the following was in my smartctl -a output:

==> WARNING: There are known problems with these drives,
see the following Seagate web pages:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207963

That second URL points to a KB article mentioning a critical firmware 
update. You might want to check Seagate's web site in case your drive 
also has "known problems."

I have no idea if updating the firmware on the drive would make it work 
without errors...at this point there's no way I can trust it. It's 
needed for an important  build server, so I won't be taking any chances.

Scott
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[PLUG] smartmontools test accuracy?

[Scott Garman]

I have a server with a SATA drive in it which is filling the syslogs 
with the following error:

[455740.180143] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: ATA pass through 
information available
[457540.199345] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Recovered Error [current] 
[descriptor]
[457540.199360] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):
[457540.199367] 72 01 00 1d 00 00 00 0e 09 0c 00 00 00 00 00 00
[457540.199384] 00 4f 00 c2 40 50

smartctl -a shows some enormous values for the following parameters:

Raw_Read_Error_Rate: 179400719
Seek_Error_Rate: 7232305
Hardware_ECC_Recovered: 179400719

However, I have just run the short and long tests from smartmontools and 
they both passed without errors.

So yes, I'm going to replace the drive immediately. But it surprised me 
that the SMART tests would pass. I'm curious if anyone else has run into 
this, and why it is the case?

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Advisability of changing shell redirect

[Scott Garman]

On 04/28/2010 11:11 AM, Tim Wescott wrote:
> t...@servo:~/Downloads$ ./arm-2009q3-67-arm-none-linux-gnueabi.bin
> The installer has detected that your system uses the dash shell
> as /bin/sh.  This shell is not supported by the installer.
> You can work around this problem by changing /bin/sh to be a
> symbolic link to a supported shell such as bash.
> For example, on Ubuntu systems, execute this shell command:
> % sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow dash
> Install as /bin/sh? No
> Please refer to the Getting Started guide for more information,
> or contact CodeSourcery Support for assistance.
> t...@servo:~/Downloads$
>
> Do I want to touch this?  Is this going to screw up _other_ software
> that may be looking for 'sh' to be a Dash shell command?  Or am I fairly
> safe playing with it?

FWIW, OpenEmbedded and Poky also require this change. I believe it is 
done because they support building thousands of packages, and there are 
many of them out there that expect /bin/sh to support bash extensions.

I have not yet run into any cases yet where a shell script breaks 
because /bin/sh is bash instead of dash.

> And do I want to just change the link manually, or do I want to use
> dpgk-reconfigure as they suggest?

Definitely use dpkg-reconfigure. This will ensure that package updates 
don't end up reverting the change.

Scott

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[PLUG] OT: Where to find a USB Mini-A:A cable?

[Scott Garman]

Hello,

I'm trying to find someplace in Portland where I can buy a special USB 
cable. Rather than the usual A to B cable, I need a Mini-A to USB A 
female adapter for an embedded system.

I will try Free Geek, but as they deal largely in mainstream computer 
parts, and I doubt they will have it. Radio Shack and the big box 
electronic stores definitely don't have it.

Thanks, and I apologize for the off-topic nature of this post.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] DHCP Config problems

[Scott Garman]

On 03/26/2010 03:28 PM, Scott Howard wrote:
> This is driving me crazy.  I install Ubuntu Server on a portable drive
> at home.  Fire it up on a wired network and check ifconfig.  It
> dutifully gives me the internal ip address from my router and is able to
> access the internet.  I then dutifully reboot the machine turning it off
> after everything is killed but before the reboot starts.
>
> The scene changes to my office where I turn on a different machine with
> no drives but the portable drive on the USB port.  Ubuntu server boots
> up and works just fine until I sudo ifconfig.  The internal loop shows
> 127.0.0.0 shows but the wired network ip address does not.
> Init.d/networking restart gets an eth0 no such device message.
>
> Ubuntu LiveCd on the office machine get the network and internet just
> fine.

Hi Scott,

I feel your pain, and have run into this before moving a CF disk between 
different embedded devices.

The problem is with udev. When your Linux system boots, the udev 
subsystem enumerates your hardware and sets up some dynamic rules files. 
What it's doing is noticing that the MAC address of your ethernet device 
has changed, and rather than overwriting it, it is creating a new ethX 
device. Your networking scripts, on the other hand, are trying to bring 
up eth0 specifically.

Look in your /etc/udev/rules.d/ directory for a file named 
"persistent-net.rules" or thereabouts. If inside that file you see 
entries for multiple ethernet interfaces (e.g, eth0, eth1, eth2, etc), 
and you only have one wired NIC in each of your machines, then you have 
confirmed that this is the source of the problem.

The solution I've used (which may not be the Right Way to do it) is to 
delete this rules file and reboot. The file will get regenerated again 
and will use your current NIC as eth0 again.

If you're only moving this disk between two different computers, you 
could also go ahead and create a DHCP connection for eth1. However, if 
you're moving the disk between N computers, the deletion route is 
probably simpler.

Let me know if this works for you.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Open Source Bridge CfP ends March 29.

[Scott Garman]

On 03/26/2010 09:51 AM, Tim Wescott wrote:
> Do they cover much open-source embedded development, or is it all
> desktop/server stuff?

One of the neat things about this conference is that the proposal system 
is completely open. You can browse through the submitted talks and add 
your comments here:

http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2010/proposals

These proposals look to have some component of embedded systems in their 
descriptions:

http://opensourcebridge.org/proposals/403

http://opensourcebridge.org/proposals/390

The latter one is going to be quite similar to the talk I gave at PLUG 
AT last month.

> I'm about to revive a deeply embedded ARM project that I last worked on
> before I defenestrated my PC, it'd be nice to talk to folks who've
> actually done cross-development from a Linux host.

I'm sure you'll find some of us there. In fact, I'm starting to 
brainstorm possible activities for the 24-hour hacker lounge that might 
involve embedded projects - if you have any suggestions, ping me off-list.

Scott

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[PLUG] Open Source Bridge CfP ends March 29.

[Scott Garman]

Hi all,

I haven't seen anything mentioned here on the ML about the Open Source 
Bridge conference, so I wanted to post a short announcement.

Open Source Bridge is a conference for developers working with open 
source technologies. It will take place June 1–4, 2010, in Portland, 
Oregon, with five tracks connecting people across projects, languages 
and experience to explore how we do our work and why we participate in 
open source. The conference structure is designed to provide developers 
with an opportunity to learn from people they might not connect with at 
other events. Attendees will learn and interact at three days of 
traditional conference presentations, a day of free-form unconference 
sessions, and our 24-hour Hacker Lounge.

This year we are thrilled to have an excellent downtown location at the 
Portland Art Museum, an extra day packed full of open source goodness, 
and an on-site 24-hour Hacker Lounge! As a user group member, you can 
use the coupon code “osbugluv” to register for only $200 when you select 
either an Early Bird Registration (through April 1st), or a Regular 
Registration (after April 1st).

Also, the Call for Proposals ends on March 29th, so if you'd like to 
give a talk, please submit something immediately:

http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2010/proposals

To register for the conference or learn more, visit

http://opensourcebridge.org

On a personal note, I attended this conference last year and was really 
inspired by it. I think it offers one of the best values in terms of low 
registration costs and attracts some really high quality presentations.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Portland Startup Weekend is happening March 5-7 @ Nedspace

[Scott Garman]

On 03/14/2010 11:12 PM, Mike Connors wrote:
> Hey Scott - So what was your experience of this event? I was hoping you
> would share with the rest of class. But maybe it was such a good thing
> that you
> decided to keep it all to yourself!

Sure thing. I ended up writing a blog post recap of the event and the 
project I worked on:

http://blog.zenlinux.com/?p=328

You can also see quick video introductions of the projects here:

http://portland.startupweekend.org/2010/03/06/day-2-candid-interviews/

As expected, pretty much everyone was working on web applications of 
some sort. There was also a renewable energy project idea, but I believe 
even that was based around a way of monitoring home energy use via a web 
site.

Even though I was one of two teams who ended up working on a project 
solo, I spent a lot of time meeting and hanging out with some really 
smart and motivated "startuppy" people, and had a really good time.

It was a good way to spend a weekend, for certain. :)

I believe there will be another Startup Weekend Portland in September.

Scott

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[PLUG] Portland Startup Weekend is happening March 5-7 @ Nedspace

[Scott Garman]

Hi all,

I briefly mentioned this during my PLUG AT presentation a week or so 
ago, and though I'd bring it up on the mailing list.

Portland Startup Weekend is kind of a mix between an unconference and a 
weekend-long development sprint. You show up, pitch project ideas, form 
teams, and work your ass off all weekend and see what comes out of it. 
If the stars align right and your team gels, you may even find yourself 
becoming a co-founder of a new tech startup company.

It's certain to be a lot of fun, and it's only $75 to register (students 
can register for $40). Friday night there will also be some great 
presentations to get things going on the right foot.

For more details, visit http://portland.startupweekend.org

I'm planning to be there, and I'm especially interested in any product 
ideas that would involve an embedded Linux project. I've posted a few 
concepts on the Comment Wall of the Portland Startup Weekend community site:

http://startup-weekend.ning.com/group/portland

It just occurred to me that sensor networks would also be a compelling 
concept to pursue.

Ping me off-list if you'd like to get in touch.

Scott

PS - If this kind of things sounds really interesting to you but you 
feel a paralyzing sense of anxiety/nervousness about it, don't let that 
stop you! You do not need any startup experience to get involved, only a 
willingness to be open-minded and flexible, and to focus on a project 
for a weekend. I have no idea what the heck I'm doing registering for 
this event, but I do know when it's over I will have no regrets.

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Re: [PLUG] Erasing tapes

[Scott Garman]

On 02/22/2010 09:58 AM, Larry Williams wrote:
> I can't test this, but wouldn't wipe do the job? I would think something
> along the lines of
>
> wipe -Da /dev/st0
>
> would work, although it could take a long time (35 passes by default,
> use -q to do four passes). In the same time and with less mechanical
> wear and tear you could sit a few rare earth magnets on the cartridge.

There's also the GNU shred utility. I'm not sure how similar it is to 
wipe, but it's intended for securely erasing files off of disk drives by 
writing passes of random data onto it. It can be run on device files, too.

Scott

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[PLUG] OpenEmbedded follow-up questions.

[Scott Garman]

Hello,

I thought I'd answer a few questions that came up at the meeting last 
night that I wasn't able to answer on the spot:

Q: Does OpenEmbedded support any devices that don't have an MMU?

I'm not familiar with too many MMU-less architectures, and my grepping 
around the machine configurations didn't lead to much. However I don't 
see any reason why OE couldn't be used to generate images for devices 
without an MMU.

Q: Does OpenEmbedded build bootloaders too?

Yes, in fact I'm seeing many u-boot recipes for various boards in the 
repository:

http://cgit.openembedded.net/cgit.cgi/openembedded/tree/recipes/u-boot

Q: Are there any tools for running compile farms for BitBake jobs?

Take a look at icecc, a distributed compile system. There are a few 
references to it being used by folks on the OE mailing list.

Q: What makes ipkg so different/better than dpkg for embedded systems?

I think this turned out to be a lot of little things that added up. One 
of the main differences is that ipkg's metadata takes up a lot less disk 
space than dpkg. Also, dpkg by itself isn't very usable without the 
apt-get front end. I may have been playing a bit too fast and loose with 
the ipkg vs. dpkg comparisons; ipkg vs. apt-get would be more appropriate.

In other ways ipkg became smaller by removing support for some things 
that apt has, such as package signing. That feature loss in particular 
created some controversy in the community, and the OpenMoko project 
forked it not long ago to create the opkg system, which appears to be on 
its way to being adopted by OpenEmbedded.

A co-worker of mine mentioned to me today that ipkg ticked him off when 
he learned that it wasn't reporting errors via its exit status 
correctly. This made it impossible to use properly within scripts (he 
had to parse the output of the command instead, blech). Apparently opkg 
resolves this bug as well.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] REMINDER: PLUG AT TONIGHT

[Scott Garman]

On 02/18/2010 09:02 AM, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Dexter  writes:
>
> Michael>  Tonight at Roots: OpenEmbedded
>
> Michael>  As Scott indicated, this should be of appeal to a more than just 
> hard
> Michael>  core embedded developers.
>
> The video for this is up at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4808334 although I
> use the term "video" loosely.  Mostly dark human-like shapes against a
> too-light background, followed by very dark impossible to read text sometimes
> obscured by the outline of a human shape. :)
>
> The audio is mostly listenable, and has a lot of good content, but the
> acoustics of the room are not very good for recording (too echoey).

Thanks, Randall for recording the audio. My slides are available on 
SlideShare as well as being posted to my blog:

http://www.slideshare.net/zenlinux/openembedded

http://blog.zenlinux.com/?p=316

I really appreciate everyone who came out to hear my talk.

Also, I am considering trying to improve upon this presentation and 
possibly submitting for the Open Source Bridge conference in June. So if 
anyone has any critical feedback that would help me do a better job next 
time, I'd very much like to hear it (off-list preferred).

Thanks,

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] ANNOUNCEMENT: February PLUG AT Meeting

[Scott Garman]

On 02/12/2010 12:39 AM, Michael Dexter wrote:
>
> For next week's PLUG Advanced Topics: Scott Garman on OpenEmbedded
>
> Roots Organic Brewing 1520 SE 7th, 7PM - 9PM/last customer
>
> Getting started in embedded Linux development can be intimidating. Every
> hardware device vendor seems to have its own embedded Linux distribution
> and way of developing for it. OpenEmbedded (OE) is a framework for
> creating highly customizable embedded Linux distributions. It provides a
> well-designed build system and cross-compilation environment to
> developers, and a robust package management system for setting up and
> maintaining your embedded Linux system.

Just a quick note: this should be a very accessible talk to people who 
haven't done any embedded Linux development before, so don't get scared 
away by the subject and fact that this is an "Advanced Topics" meeting.

Also, I will be bringing a sound system with me to help overcome the 
sub-optimal acoustics of the back room at Roots.

Scott

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[PLUG] February PLUG meeting topic?

[Scott Garman]

I'm just curious what the meeting topic will be for next week's PLUG 
general meeting.

Thanks,

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Recommended wifi router for OpenWRT?

[Scott Garman]

Wow, thanks for all the replies everyone. This has given me a lot to 
consider. I will follow-up with news of what I end up selecting.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Recommended wifi router for OpenWRT?

[Scott Garman]

On 01/19/2010 03:55 PM, m0gely wrote:
> Scott Garman wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'd like to pick up a wifi router that I can run the latest release of
>> OpenWRT on, which has plenty of flash space for experimentation. Can
>> someone suggest a specific model and hardware version for me to look at?
>> If it's currently available on NewEgg for under $125, I would find that
>> to be ideal.
>
> What does "plenty" mean? Do you want 802.11n? The classic answer here is
> the WRT54GL. Or the WRT320N maybe? This is for DD though. I don't use
> OpenWRT.

Plenty just means I'd prefer not to buy a router model that is 
especially anemic when it comes to available disk space. I'm not exactly 
sure yet what I will be running on it, but I'd like as much flexibility 
as possible.

In my cursory Google searches on this topic it appears that not all 
hardware revisions of the WRT54GL have the same processor and work with 
OpenWRT. Is that true?

Scott

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[PLUG] Recommended wifi router for OpenWRT?

[Scott Garman]

Hello,

I'd like to pick up a wifi router that I can run the latest release of 
OpenWRT on, which has plenty of flash space for experimentation. Can 
someone suggest a specific model and hardware version for me to look at? 
If it's currently available on NewEgg for under $125, I would find that 
to be ideal.

Thanks,

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Winmodem and VirtualBox?

[Scott Garman]

Tim Wescott wrote:
>>> Anyone have success with this?  I've got the 'free binary only' version 
>>> of VirtualBox that lets me turn on USB, but doesn't have all the bells 
>>> and whistles of the $$$ version.
>>> 
>> Which distro are you using as your host OS? On some older versions of 
>> Ubuntu I've had to follow an online guide to get usbfs set up correctly. 
>> Here is one such guide:
>>
>> http://www.arsgeek.com/2007/10/24/get-usb-devices-mounted-on-your-virtualbox-xp-machine-in-gutsy-ubuntu-710/
>>
>> This is pretty dated but it may offer the clues you need.
>>
>> Scott
>>   
> Karmic, but as far as I know the modem is on the PCI bus, not USB -- 
> should I be looking at the USB bus anyway?

Sorry, I thought from your original post that the modem was USB-based. 
You shouldn't need to do anything with usbfs to make it work if it's a 
PCI card.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Winmodem and VirtualBox?

[Scott Garman]

Tim Wescott wrote:
> Had an "aha!" moment this morning -- I have a Winmodem, and I have 
> VirtualBox with a Windows installed image, so maybe I can use my 
> Winmodem to fax stuff!
> 
> No luck so far -- I can't figure out how to make the Winmodem visible to 
> Windows under the 'box'.
> 
> Anyone have success with this?  I've got the 'free binary only' version 
> of VirtualBox that lets me turn on USB, but doesn't have all the bells 
> and whistles of the $$$ version.

Which distro are you using as your host OS? On some older versions of 
Ubuntu I've had to follow an online guide to get usbfs set up correctly. 
Here is one such guide:

http://www.arsgeek.com/2007/10/24/get-usb-devices-mounted-on-your-virtualbox-xp-machine-in-gutsy-ubuntu-710/

This is pretty dated but it may offer the clues you need.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Looking for sys admin

[Scott Garman]

Dwight Hubbard wrote:
> I think it's an interesting idea, but I would be concerned about the small 
> number of less than scrupulous recruiters posting a bunch of crap that would 
> make it nearly useless for it's intended use.  Like nearly every job and 
> resume site on the net.

Personally I would never post my resume online. My LinkedIn profile has 
a summary of my background and experience, but that's as far as I would go.

I'm not sure if there are any laws against this in Oregon, but where I'm 
from I've heard of a couple of cases where the following scenario has 
occurred:

1. Recruiter is authorized to head-hunt for a job opening at a company, 
usually in a non-exclusive manner (i.e, the company is also accepting 
candidates directly).

2. The unscrupulous recruiter posts a fake job ad on various sites (on 
Craigslist this is the easiest) collecting resumes of people likely to 
apply for aforementioned job.

3. Now if one of those people who gave the recruiter their resume gets 
the job by applying directly for it, the recruiter claims that the 
candidate and/or employer was trying to circumvent the recruiter to 
avoid paying the finder's fee.

Clearly this is fraudulent behavior, but that doesn't help you if you 
get caught up in the mess.

The best way to avoid it is to never submit your resume if you don't 
know where it's going. Craigslist postings that don't mention the 
company name are red flags to be avoided in particular.

I apologize if this post is a bit too off-topic.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Does your favorite rescue CD recognize your current filesystem?

[Scott Garman]

John Jason Jordan wrote:
> Fedora started using ext4 with Fedora 10. Ubuntu made it optional with
> Jaunty, and Karmic uses it exclusively.

Just to clarify about Ubuntu: ext4 is the default filesystem Karmic will 
use, but you can still choose from many other filesystems if you select 
the Advanced partitioning option, as always. So "exclusively" probably 
wasn't the word you meant to use, but rather "by default."

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Workspace switcher failure

[Scott Garman]

Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> Workspace switcher in my gnome panel stops responding to selection
> mouseclicks from time to time.  I would like to figure out why,
> but I don't understand the panel applet process well enough.  



> Right-clicking the original borked switcher brings up the usual
> preference menu, and that works, but does not fix the left-click.
> It would be nice to debug this.  Suggestions?

Here is a short guide to using gdb to debug GNOME applets:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingGNOMEApplets

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] A Question About Locales/Languages

[Scott Garman]

Mark Phillips wrote:
> I forget to say I use gnome. There must be a better way than fooling with
> with the console to set this up?
> 
> Actually, I found the solution for gnome by looking through the menus,
> except it does not paint a nice keyboard layout on the screen. Add the
> keyboard-indicator to the gnome panel and then edit the keyboard preferences
> to add a German/Spanish keyboard layout. No cute flags, just letters (USA,
> DEU, etc) and no keyboard layout on screen. But close.

If you add the "Keyboard Indicator" applet to the GNOME panel, you can 
right-click on it and select "Show Current Layout". Is that what you're 
looking for?

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] A Subversion Question

[Scott Garman]

Tim Wescott wrote:
>> This is called doing an export of the code. So instead of doing an svn 
>> co you do an svn export.
>>
>> Scott
>>
>>   
> Ah!  Now that's stunningly obvious!
> 
> (gee I feel stupid).
> 
> Thanks.  I have no trouble with the hard parts -- it's the easy parts 
> that trip me up.

While it was a simple question, I don't think it was a stupid one. If 
you don't know the term to describe something, that makes it a lot 
harder to find your answer online.

I'm a git newbie myself and I know I've asked a lot of questions like 
this to folks on IRC.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] A Subversion Question

[Scott Garman]

Tim Wescott wrote:
> I'm a new Subversion user, so be gentle.
> 
> OK.  In Subversion you can check out a bunch of files, which creates a 
> working copy.
> 
> But I know you can also grab that same group of files without Subversion 
> setting up the working copy, which is handy when you're releasing code 
> from a tag and don't intend to ever, ever change it.  I've done it.  
> I've found how to do it in the documentation.  It's probably dead 
> simple.  But I can't find it!  Augh!
> 
> Any clues for the clueless?  I know I can just do a check out and 
> manually delete Subversion's tracking files, but I'd really rather 
> remember how to do it 'right'.

This is called doing an export of the code. So instead of doing an svn 
co you do an svn export.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Transmission v. Vuze

[Scott Garman]

John Jason Jordan wrote:
> So I stopped the torrent in Vuze and launched Transmission.
> Transmission also failed to get the tracker to respond, but in spite of
> not getting a response from the tracker, Transmission started
> downloading the pieces. That was half an hour ago and it has downloaded
> half the file, at a rate of 200 KB/s. 

This isn't really related to your original question, but I've frequently 
encountered problems getting torrent downloads started, and find they 
can hang indefinitely. A workaround that seems to fix this pretty 
consistently is to let transmission start the download, see that nothing 
happens after a minute, and then pause and restart the download. That 
usually gets it going for me.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Anyone know of "lossy" version-control software?

[Scott Garman]

Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> Sounds like you want the "make backups using rsync" tool that was described at
> Advanced PLUG a few years ago.  Can't recall the name though.

I haven't seen rsnapshot mentioned yet. It's my favorite backup tool and 
can be used to save the last X snapshots of data.

http://rsnapshot.org

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] automate replacing resolv.conf file at startup

[Scott Garman]

Mike Connors wrote:
> Russell Senior wrote:
>>   Reading the manpage for dhclient.conf or googling on that
>> might help.
> Yeah, I thought this was the answer too.  I think you're referring to 
> this stanza in dhclient.conf?
> 
> request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers,
> host-name, netbios-name-servers, netbios-scope, interface-mtu,
> rfc3442-classless-static-routes, ntp-servers;
> 
> However, much to my chagrin I still got Comcast's DNS info. Granted, I 
> didn't specify static DNS entries in the Linksys config. So maybe the 
> Linksys just referred to the DNS info in the cable modem and ignored the 
> dhcp client request info?

I think you're on the right track here. I found this info:

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

which suggests adding a prepend domain-name-servers line to your 
dhclient.conf with your desired DNS servers.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Linux clinic Sun - kernel hacking?

[Scott Garman]

Mike Connors wrote:
> Alan wrote:
>> What do you need to know?
>>
>> I guess I know more than most.  (I am the Linux kernel maintainer for
>> Intel's Ultra Mobility Group.)
> I guess I'd just like to get a general understanding of the kernel, 
> modules, variables, etc. Every once in a while I want to do something on 
> my Debian box and
> inevitably I have to  enable/disable something in the kernel or build a 
> kernel with a module loaded. For instance, I want to disable IPv6 
> support. Does any of this make sense?

This is a nice, short HOWTO on creating custom kernel packages for your 
Debian system:

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/90

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Embedded Linux Project Ideas

[Scott Garman]

Scott Garman wrote:
> *** Open Source Board Support Kit/SDK for MikroTik RouterBoard ***
> 
> Michael Dexter mentioned that he would like to see the development of an 
> open source board support kit and SDK aimed toward students using an 
> open hardware single board computer. Michael will need to confirm this, 
> but I believe the hardware platform he had in mind for this was the 
> MikroTik RouterBoard:
> 
> http://www.routerboard.com/pricelist.php?group_id=11

I just received word from Michael that the board he was referring to was 
actually the Open RB:

http://openrb.com/

This is an open hardware design (the MikroTik is not). Sorry if I 
confused anyone.

Scott

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[PLUG] Open Source Hardware Bank.

[Scott Garman]

The lack of open source hardware designs was something discussed at the 
embedded Linux meetup last Thursday. I stumbled across this blog post 
which is quite relevant to the discussion:

http://antipastohw.blogspot.com/2009/03/introducing-open-source-hardware.html

I have no idea of the status of the project otherwise.

Scott

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[PLUG] Embedded Linux Project Ideas

[Scott Garman]

As I mentioned in a previous post, this email thread is intended to
track potential embedded Linux projects to pursue. Below I will list to
the best of my recollection/notes what people came up with at the
meeting, but we are also welcoming ideas from people who did not attend
the meeting. If this email thread gets too long I'll happily migrate it
to a wiki page.

Please feel free to correct me if I'm inadvertently including any
misinformation below.

*** Personal Telco Project/OpenWrt ***

The Personal Telco Project is quite active and doing lots of work with
wireless routers and the OpenWrt Linux distro. Russell Senior has a 
number of projects people could jump in on, including:

* We need to bring up a bootloader (either u-boot or redboot) on a 
PePLink WINTI board (from the SkyPilot SkyExtender devices)

* We'll need to add support for the WINTI board to OpenWrt

* We are currently working on debugging a memory leak in OpenWrt (seeing 
it on both Netgear WGT634U and Alix)

Another idea that was mentioned was taking some of the OpenWrt-capable 
routers that have a USB port and turning them into home wireless 
automation control devices through the addition of a USB to serial port 
adapter and the required software. Many home lighting systems are 
serial-based as well as other sensor devices.

http://www.personaltelco.net/

http://openwrt.org/

*** Open Source Board Support Kit/SDK for MikroTik RouterBoard ***

Michael Dexter mentioned that he would like to see the development of an 
open source board support kit and SDK aimed toward students using an 
open hardware single board computer. Michael will need to confirm this, 
but I believe the hardware platform he had in mind for this was the 
MikroTik RouterBoard:

http://www.routerboard.com/pricelist.php?group_id=11

One might consider taking the Linux from Scratch tutorial and adapting 
it to include details about a particular board.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

*** Thermostat which Accounts for Humidity ***

Michael also noted that an idea he would find useful would be a 
thermostat system which takes into account the humidity level, to create 
a more consistent human comfort level. This would be more of a low-level 
project involving some hardware hacking.

*** Microcontroller-based Garage Door Control System ***

Galen talked about how useful it would be to have his garage door close 
automatically after a certain amount of idle time (e.g, 10 minutes) to 
eliminate nagging worries of whether he remembered to close the garage 
door upon leaving for work. This would be more of a low-level project 
involving some hardware hacking.

*** Handheld Public Transit Tracker ***

This is a pretty ambitious project, but one that might also have some 
commercial viability. Currently smartphone users enjoy mobile 
applications that allow them to see the status of public transit lines 
in the immediate area (e.g, when the next bus is coming and how to get 
to the stop). There are many people who could use this kind of mobile 
application, but do not want or cannot afford a smartphone. What kinds 
of devices are out there (such as the Nokia N810 and Clarion MIND) which 
have embedded GPS chips and web access that could be used to develop a 
proof of concept application like this? Once that is done, the next step 
would be to "cost" the device into the minimum hardware necessary to 
perform the service (e.g, a touchscreen is not likely a requirement, etc).


These were some of the ideas thrown around during the meetup last 
Thursday. The intention of this email and email thread is to see if any 
of them "stick" enough that at least a couple of people are willing to 
start working on them.

Please add your own feedback and/or suggest ideas of your own!

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] gnome window content display problems, Intel video on DellD620, Karmic upgrade

[Scott Garman]

Joe Shisei Niski wrote:
> **
> 
> i upgraded my Dell D620 (work) laptop Jaunty from to Karmic (32-bit).
> 
> Video hardware according to lspci is: Intel Corporation Mobile 
> 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
> 
> kernel 2.6.31-16

Hi Joe,

I'm running the exact same laptop and video card hardware as you. I have 
not had any of the issues you described, and I have a fresh install of 
Ubuntu Karmic on my machine.

I do not have an xorg.conf file to share, as apparently everything is 
working in auto-detection mode. If you would like to compare other 
config files with me, feel free to ask.

Are you running the desktop effects? If so, try disabling them and see 
if you have the same problem.

Scott

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[PLUG] Embedded Linux meet-up summary: 2009-12-10

[Scott Garman]

Last night I was pleasantly surprised when seven other folks showed up
at Staccato Gelato for the first PLUG embedded Linux meet-up. We had a
diverse range of interests represented, from the "curious, wanting to
learn more" camp to folks working on embedded projects at various levels
  - from x86 appliances to low-power ARM/PowerPC devices to
microcontroller projects. There was also some discussion about

Announcements:

Maemo.org is holding its first bugday next Tuesday, 12/15. Drop by the
#maemo-bugs channel on the FreeNode IRC network to get involved.

http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/2009/12/07/maemo-org-bugday-dec-15th-1800-0300-utc/

Project Ideas:

I'm going to start a second email thread shortly to describe some of the
project ideas that were discussed. It would be great to see if any of 
these ideas could take off.

Note: I'm currently following-up on some info from the attendees to make 
sure I have the right info on this list, so that email will likely go 
out later this weekend.

Group Resources:

Absent any objections, our plan is to use this mailing list for embedded 
Linux discussions until it becomes apparent that we really need a new 
mailing list resource. This should help keep our actions visible to 
other potentially interested members of PLUG and encourage growth during 
our establishment.

At some point we may also need a few other online resources, such as a 
wiki or source code repository. In most cases there are plenty of free 
resources out there (e.g, SourceForge/Google Apps/GitHub) for open 
source projects. I think it's best just to play this by ear and get 
things set up on an as-needed basis.

Upcoming Meetings:

I'm not sure if Staccato Gelato is going to work as our main meeting
location, as the place filled up with some families later in the evening
and it became pretty challenging for everyone to hear each other. My
feeling for now is to hold off on scheduling another meet-up until a
clear meeting agenda arises, and then figure out where to host it.

In the meantime, I think I was somehow tricked into doing an upcoming 
Advanced Topics presentation on OpenEmbedded. :) So keep an eye out for 
that.

Scott

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[PLUG] FSF "Respects Your Freedom" hardware endorsements.

[Scott Garman]

I just received news from the Free Software Foundation that they are 
starting a hardware endorsement program to label devices that are fully 
compatible with free software. Vendors who choose to participate in the 
program will end up with a stamp on the packaging with the "Respects 
Your Freedom" slogan.

The first product to get this endorsement is reportedly a netbook - I'm 
not sure of the manufacturer.

This is great news for those of us who would prefer to buy Linux 
compatible hardware without spending hours on forum and wiki research to 
be "pretty sure" that new laptop model X will work well with Linux.

Scott

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[PLUG] Embedded Linux meet-up Thursday 12/10.

[Scott Garman]

Hello,

A few folks are getting together tomorrow evening in NE Portland to 
discuss embedded Linux development. More are welcome!

We'll be meeting at 6:30pm on Thursday, 12/10 at the Staccato Gelato on 
232 NE 28th Ave:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=232+NE+28th+Ave,+Portland,+OR&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=44.793449,76.464844&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=232+NE+28th+Ave,+Portland,+Multnomah,+Oregon+97232&z=16

The location is just north of the Laurelhurst Theater. Reportedly they 
have free wifi and the location should be conducive to discussion.

The purpose of this meeting is to share ideas, knowledge, and opinions 
about embedded Linux development, brainstorm ideas for a possible 
project to collaborate on, and whatever else comes up. Since the group 
is just forming, there are many opportunities for taking it in other 
directions.

Please drop by if this sounds interesting to you!

Scott

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[PLUG] Rhythmbox alternatives

[Scott Garman]

John Jason Jordan wrote:
> According to what I read, Rhythmbox is no longer being developed. I installed
> Banshee, but I can't find any way to migrate Rhythmbox collections.

Just a side note: if you're looking at alternatives to rhythmbox, I'm a
big fan of exaile (exaile.org). I like the interface and there are a lot
of plugins you can get for it.

I don't think it has any way of automatically importing your music or
settings from rhythmbox, though.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Embedded Linux subgroup?

[Scott Garman]

Mike Connors wrote:
> Scott - I would be very interested in meeting up to talk about
> startups or just to geek out on Linux projs. Maybe something more
> informal and hands-on than the PLUG meetings and more about what you
> can do w. Linux than happens at the Linux Clinic.

I'm game. Let's let things settle for a few days and see if anyone else 
is interested, and think about how we can get something moving. I seem 
to recall there are other hardware hacking/hands-on groups (Dorkbot?) in 
the area and that might be a good venue to jump into.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] We need more Linux in this town...

[Scott Garman]

Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 10:10:22AM -0800, Mike Connors wrote:
>> Maybe I'm living in my own fantasy world, but what I envision is a bunch of 
>> independent IT consultants working together to provide solutions
>> for the bizs in this town. Such that maybe 1 person does the server / 
>> desktop OS, virtualization. Another person designs and implements the 
>> network. Another person does web dev. And another person puts in Asterisk 
>> VOIP. I like this vision of Portland and I will continue to walk around this
>> town with my rose colored glasses on...
> 
> http://www.possepdx.org , the Portland Open Source Software
> Entrepreneurs, is an attempt at just that.  Members include 
> multiperson shops Open Sourcery and Prostructure, a few open-source-
> using businesses (like mine), and a few independent contractors.

I have yet to attend a POSSE meeting, but hope to soon. Thanks for 
reminding me about them.

I thought I would throw out here that I am very interested in meeting up 
with folks doing or considering startups which make use Linux as a core 
technology; particularly in the embedded space. I've only lived in 
Portland not quite a year now, and miss many of the interactions I had 
with friends who were doing startups back East. I have personally also 
set up an LLC, spent a year building a product, and never got past the 
point of having a handful of beta users, so I can sympathize with a lot 
of the stresses and uncertainty that this endeavor creates.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] We need more Linux in this town...

[Scott Garman]

Mike Connors wrote:
> Please excuse me for this selfish rant. Howerver, I'm frustrated w. the 
> lack of Linux job opps in PDX and and the rest of the state too for that 
> matter. Especially for entry to mid level people (3 - 5 yrs exp, 1 or 2 
> distros, light scripting w, other know/exp such as networking, 
> virtualization).

Hi Mike,

 From the sounds of it you're interested/looking for a job in IT, 
particularly system administration. When I graduated from college 
(2003), Linux was just starting to establish itself in industry, and 
from my perspective back then there were only a few niches where you 
could potentially have a career working exclusively with Linux:

1. Kernel development
2. Compiler (gcc) development
3. Sysadmin/IT

I had some decent Linux sysadmin skills working for the university while 
I was finishing my degree, and assumed that was going to be my default 
career.

It turned out that having a solid background in sysadmin skills, 
especially knowing how to customize Linux distros to act as appliances, 
set me up well for jobs working on embedded systems. While I have 
occasionally had to do some serious C development and customization of a 
kernel module or two, the vast majority of my time has been spent 
leveraging my higher-level OS knowledge and working with scripting 
languages and web technologies (particularly for user interfaces).

I just wanted to suggest this as another possible avenue you could be 
looking down in terms of finding work you can do exclusively with Linux. 
Best of all, many single board computing platforms are cheap enough to 
collect and start working on side projects of your own to build these 
skills and build a portfolio of sorts of interesting things you have 
worked on.

If there is some way you could bring in to an interview a device or demo 
project you have worked on, whether it is a commercial product or not, 
you are sure to make big impressions on a potential employer.

Just some thoughts,

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Now I've done it

[Scott Garman]

John Jason Jordan wrote:
> I know that Fedora 12 uses Gnome 2.28.0. I could swear that Debian
> testing did as well, but I have to check on that to be sure. If I am
> right, then there is no point in installing a distro that uses 2.28.0.
> I have no idea what I am doing that causes this, but I do know that I
> need all the applications that I have installed. 
> 
> I'm also running out of patience. :(

I have to say it is very unusual that you are running into this
repeatedly, especially using different distributions and desktops.

Are you running the same hardware each time? When you reboot your system
does the fsck disk checker get run? I suppose hard disk corruption could
break things this badly. Check the output of the command "dmesg" every
so often when you're logged in and using your system and look for errors
- especially ones related to your disk drives/filesystem.

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] Grub fails. Grrrr.

[Scott Garman]

John Jason Jordan wrote:
> My guess is that Grub 2 did install, but incompletely. Grub 1.5 failed
> because it detected Grub 2.0 already installed. I installed LILO to
> sda1, not sda, think that doing so would make it easier to install Grub
> later. But LILO doesn't start if there is something in the MBR. That is
> just my WAG.

I believe the PC BIOS looks at the MBR of the first disk, not the first
partition on the first disk. So you needed to install LILO or GRUB to
/dev/sda, not /dev/sda1.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only time you
should install a bootloader onto a partition is if you're already using
a bootloader on the MBR that you want to preserve and that presumably
will be told about the bootloader on your partition(s).

Scott

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Re: [PLUG] CD/DVD Drive and Movie Software: Xubuntu-9.04

[Scott Garman]

Carlos Konstanski wrote:
> You cannot play the DVD with your software because libdvdcss isn't
> installed, or isn't activated. Most distros require you to do
> something manually to get the library running. This is so that they
> won't have any legal liabilities.

On a recent Ubuntu system, what you need to do for the above is
described here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/musicvideophotos/C/video-dvd.html

Scott

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