:wq! (dabeul iou quiou bang)

gtk and other graphical configuration under fluxbox

2011-12-27T07:28:00.003+01:00

For some reasons, after a fresh install of fluxbox and fine tuning of the configuration, I had one issue with the icons set and font size in most of the applications.

I solved the problem by using a simple tool (not in command line, for once, in order to get the preview of the modifications): lxappearance

In few actions, I got what I need, icons are now back in thunar

I post this as a note for my next install and it might help others.

links :
http://fluxbox.org/
http://thunar.xfce.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lxde/files/LXAppearance/

The end of the X movie

2011-12-08T15:09:00.001+01:00

That's it,

I finally got my X server configured correctly, with a neat dual screen set-up ! This is a good sign, an evidence :
~$cat .bash_history | grep xorg | wc -l
...returns "only" 22 entries today...

I have been struggling with the beast for almost two years now. And yes, I have read the manual and all the $*%ø tutorials on the topic; with no hope. I even gave up my free mind an downloaded the nvidia closed driver, tried the graphical configuration interface with very limited results. After hours of trials and errors, could eventually get the $£µ%ù dual screen working until the next reboot...

Finally, I moved again (my last post was also about moving 3 years ago), while unpacking in the new flat, I found the nice and brand new screen VGA cable and I had a flash, damn it !

My video card is a nvidia geforce 5700 FX (from mathusalem), with a double output, a DVI plug and an standard analog VGA plug. I have a huyndai 17' L70S imagequest, plugged on the VGA and a LG 24' plugged as DVI. There was the problem ! The %µù*$^ DVI was switching to sleep mode and the £ù*%µ driver would eventually forget about it, simply considering it was disconnected and somehow switching only on the VGA screen, ... This is the reason why I could get it working but during limited time and in awkward circumstances.

It took time, but I had finally the idea to come back to the old school analog cables and bought a DVI_to_VGA plug and connected the two screens as VGA. Do you know what ? It worked like a charm in few minutes.

I choose the "separate X screen" configuration instead of a real dual screen. I prefer to have two independent X screen, to allocate applications and to have proper screen calibration set-up (through the nvidia-settings application).

As a result, my first screen :0:0 is in 1900x1080 and the screen :0:1 is in 1280x1024.
I am not using Xinerama (I don't need to extend some applications from one screen to another.

Screen :0:0 is the wide and new one for photo editing and work, the smaller one :0:1 is for monitoring, parallel videos, music player, chat, etc...

Bellow is my file, quite simple indeed, probably not perfectly optimised, but it works !

Next post is about my awsome nerdy conky configuration...

~$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf

# relative positions of the two screens, my big screen (screen 0), has absolute position x,y of 1280,0

# screen 1, is located on the left of screen 0
Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 1280 0
    Screen      1  "Screen1" LeftOf "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

# I disabled Xinerama, I didn't want to extend my desktop on a large virtual screen, I prefer to keep separated screens, it's also better for calibration I think 
Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

# mouse stuff, I hate mac, and yes 3 buttons is cool, I wish I had more
Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

# need to type, this is not an iPad !
Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

# wide screen, main screen
Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "LG C243"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

# smaller screen, side screen
Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "IQT L70S"
    HorizSync       31.0 - 79.0
    VertRefresh     60.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

#video card for the first screen, first output
Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce FX 5700"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          0
EndSection

#video card for the second screen, second output
Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce FX 5700"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          1
EndSection

# allocation to video cards to screen, depth and meta modes, kind of auto mode, it works like this, I will not fine tune more...
Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection
# allocation to video cards to screen, depth and meta modes, kind of auto mode, it works like this, I will not fine tune more...
Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Videocard1"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Desperated

2009-01-25T07:09:00.001+01:00

New job, new computer, new phone... windows mobile, windows XP... my linux box is in the boat, will get it in one month...Arg

New machine in town...

2008-03-05T10:09:00.002+01:00

So my trustful old laptop from the lab is going to be sent down the drain... Well, can't say I'll cry as I've been using the thing for 3 years and the pas 4 months without a working lcd.
A new machine is currently being built and shipped my way by, ekk, Dell again. Cannot change it, IT policy from my university, that sucks but we cannot do anything about it. Or at least I prefer to put the fight on double booting rather than on machine type.
And I fought...
And I won the right of having a double boot on the damned new machine, if and only if, they provide no support whatsoever for me. Hell! You touch the freebsd partition of my machine and you are a leaving the lab in a body bag, that's how I care about your support!!

So... Dell D430. That what it's going to be...
Freebsd 7.0 is going to be installed on it by me.
I managed to get them to partition the HD in 3 separate bits: one for XP (and *not* Vista which is somehow a good thing as I heard...), one fat32 for data so I can access it from both side, and the last one empty.

We'll see how it turns out...
Can't wait to test freebsd 7.0!!! More soon then...

eeepc powered

2008-03-01T19:27:00.002+01:00

Ok, sometimes I often like to buy stuffs which are not really useful, but this time, I promise, I might have bought the most necessary device... A damn small linux powered laptop...A5 size, 4G of disk, 300€.

The computer is delivered with a custom Xandros distribution which is really optimised for this material, the boot time is really short and the CPU / RAM strong enough to run googlearth, gimp, inkscape, firefox and vim (ah ah).

Nevertheless, I must have played less than ten minutes with the easy mode interface and switch to the "advanced" interface which is kde (beark). After two weeks, i've decided to install fluxbox which was really easy (xandros is debian based and apt-get install was my friend). After I have optimised the screen usage as this computer screeen is only 7''.

I had to install few extensions for firefox (little-fox theme and fullscreen extension) and then I have reduced the menu fonts by editing the userChrome.css and change to a smaller size the fonts.

/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/95olpcar.default/chrome> vim userChrome.css

After this, I played a lot with the fluxbox themes, and decided to customise the "Lait" theme and reduce all the fonts and borders to the minimum.

Ok, this post is not really detailed, it was just a short message from the free world. I happy about this new toy but a little bit desperate when I read the blogs and forum about the eeepc, it seems some guys are willing to install windows on it...wtf..but what for?

Saving time ?

2008-02-15T22:36:00.002+01:00

Good to be back, long time without post here !

Damn day, I have 30 000 thousands text files and I need quickly to change some informations contained in the files. In fact I have to update some dates in these files....

Some time it's longer to think about about to do it a clever way than doing by brute force !

Option one : if I was a windows user I would open file by file, I would use MS word for this and then use the replace function, type each time the text to find and to replace

Option two : back home, log on linux and in two minutes refresh my sed basic knowledge a make a script

Option three : why not having more fun with sed and vim ??? Why? Because vi is rigolo !!

Here is the Option 3 :
for i in *.txt; do vim -c '%s/08\/02\/07/22\/02\/07/g' -c 'wq!' $i; done

Done !

Coming back from the dead. A FAT32’s story.

2007-09-14T06:29:00.000+02:00

I’ve forgotten why but it appears that I still had an old FAT32 partition on my (windows) computer (primary is NTFS). Last week, it crashed taking down all my photos, DL, and so on at the same time :) (Since Murphy’s law is the great rule that unified them all, let’s say I’d never heard of such things as backup !) The only things left was this dull message : The disk in drive D is not formatted. Do you want to format it now ? - NO !

Sadly when it comes to windows, software often rimes with money (or with astalathings – you’re evil !). Fortunately, I found TestDisk(1) which, one more time, prove that there IS a true god out there on the internet. Bless the GNU God.

This nice tool try to reconstruct the boot sector (look in the advanced menu) and find the root directory. I suggest that you let it find the root directory by itself if the first candidate seems not valid (use Abort, it’ll look for the best match).

If it succeeded, you can check the validity of its solution with List and write a brand new boot sector. Life can be beautiful, isn’t it !

Tools:

(1) http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Virtualisation 2. The free world’s revenge.

2007-09-14T06:25:00.000+02:00

Some time has passed since the last time I build a virtual box from scratch with vmware… Now, time has come to use some pretty GNU stuff: VirtualBox(1) is all you need.

Before anything else, I have to warn you that despite being outrageously easy to install, I only used it has a client with NAT configuration. Has I’ve seen on the web, you can configure it with host interface. It seems only a little bit more tiresome than vmware configuration.

Like I’d said, it’s really easy : download VirtualBox (1.5), Download the ISO image of your preferred OS (I’d choose the Debian Etch.)

Step 1: Basic installation (with X)

Step 2: Installation of the guest additions.
Download the kernel header files, the default gcc version (which appears to be the one needed to recompile the kernel). Mount guest additions ISO image and run the installation script.

Step 3: Pb…
- I had to change the X configuration file manually to enable the new video driver in the Device section : Driver “vboxvideo”. (In fact, I do not remember if I’ve done this by editing this file or by running a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg command)

- Once done, I loose the mouse cursor (but the mouse was still active). This time, you really had to edit xorg.conf and change the InputDevice’s driver to “vboxmouse”. It seems to be a known bug.

Step 4: Enjoy.

Tools:
(1) http://www.virtualbox.org/

Virtualization

2007-03-20T09:33:00.000+01:00

Let’s face it : windows is still the best OS for doing pretty cheap/bad things in the minimum amount of effort (non exhaustive list : printing document on a un-collaborative shared printer, making a presentation (Powerpoint rules !), and so on.) Nonetheless, when it comes to serious computing you’ll want a real partner ! Someone you had faith in, like a unix/linux box ! You can do it a) with efficiency b) with panache

A) The vmware approach ( some variation might reside on the dark side of the legal frontier)

- Solution 1 (maximal efficiency - require a registration step):

Tools of the trade (I had to stop reading hacker’s stories):
vmware player (free) : http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
vmware workstation (evaluation copy) : http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/ and http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/eval.html
Note: currently there is the beta 6 out there for testing purpose here : http://register.vmware.com/content/beta/ws/registration.html
Your unix/linux installation cd

Here are the process for a Debian Sarge (Note : I had to choose the default 2.4 kernel to install vmtool or I had to cope with compilation pb - and no time to solve them.)

Step a. install workstation, create a new virtual guest (at least 256Mo of RAM) with bridged network if your on a lan with a dhcp server somewhere or nat if you want a stealth mode :). Choose a adequate storage space you can not alter it afterward (3-4 Go for a functional debian). Fortunately, vmware is smart enough to adapt the size of the corresponding file to what is really needed.

Step b. insert the install cd

Step c. boot your new guest and follow the installation process. Install the kernel headers (if you do this after this step use : apt-get install kernel-headers-`uname -r`).

Step d. install X. choose the vmware drivers for the screen. The mouse is an ibm/ps2 (/dev/psaux). Choose 24 bits 1280x1024 and lower resolutions. Here is a sample of my X11 configuration file prior to vmtools:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "fr"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "VMWare Inc [VMWare SVGA II] PCI Display Adapter"
Driver "vmware"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Écran générique"
HorizSync 28-50
VertRefresh 43-75
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
…
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection

Step e. once the installation is complete, choose to install vmtools (this option is available in one of the menu. Once actuve it create a CD) [it improves the graphic performance and so on. It is not mandatory but it’s way cool !) See http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/new_guest_tools_ws.html for additional détails. Mount the CD; find the vmtoolsxxx.tar.gz; gunzip; untar; launch the installer. It will compile vmtools for your kernel. A sample of X11 post installation:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Écran générique"
HorizSync 1-10000
VertRefresh 1-10000
Option "DPMS"
ModeLine "800x600" 100 800 900 1000 1100 600 700 800 900
ModeLine "1280x768" 100 1024 1100 1200 1300 768 800 900 1000
# ModeLine "1280x1024" 100 1280 1300 1400 1500 800 900 1000 1100
ModeLine "1280x1024" 135 1280 1312 1416 1664 1024 1027 1030 1064
ModeLine "1600x1200" 100 1600 1700 1800 1900 1050 1100 1200 1300
EndSection

Use the rest of your evaluation period to install other guests OS :)

Step f. When your done uninstall workstation and install vwmplayer instead.

Job complete !

The only purposes of the workstation was to a) create all the file requested to install the guest OS b) provide vmtools. Solution 2 get rid of a). Note : it seems that keeping vmtools after step f is legal (I’ve read somewhere that vmtools comes from vmware server which if freely available). . .

- Solution 2:

Tools of the trade:

Qemu : “a generic open source machine emulator and virtualizer” http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
Qemu Accelerator module : same url
vmtools (if you consider that keeping it when using the player is legal) : http://taltan.free.fr/index/2007/02/06/61-vmware-tool-toujours-sur-la-main
vmplayer

The goal is to build all the files needed by vmplayer without workstation. The process comes form i) http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html, ii) http://cri.ch/linux/docs/sk0020.html, iii) http://www.hackaday.com/2005/10/24/how-to-vmware-player-modification

Step a. create a storage file with qemu :
qemu-img.exe create -f vmdk .vmdk 4G

Step b. Create a file .vmk like this one :
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "3"
#scsi0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.filename = "Rheas.vmdk"
memsize = "256"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
#scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
#scsi0:0.fileName = "Rheas.vmdk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "D:\Tmp\master.rheas3.0.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
#ide1 :0.fileName= "auto detect"
#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
#ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "es1371"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
displayName = "RedHat2004"
guestOS = "other24xlinux"
nvram = "Other Linux 2.4.x kernel.nvram"
scsi0:0.redo = ""
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d 9e 34 6d 2f 6b 75-1f be 02 0c 1b a0 e2 7d"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 9e 34 6d 2f 6b 75-1f be 02 0c 1b a0 e2 7d"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
tools.remindInstall = "TRUE"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:a0:e2:7d"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
tools.syncTime = "FALSE"
ethernet0.connectionType = "bridged"
checkpoint.vmState = "Other Linux 2.4.x kernel.vmss"
ide0:0.redo = ""

Pay attention to

a)the ide1:0 if you want to install your OS from an ISO or from an real CD.
b)the guestOS must belong to the list describe in ii) but I suspect that this info is not utterly important.

Next steps. follow solution 1

B) The free way : qemu

Qemu : “a generic open source machine emulator and virtualizer” http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
Qemu Accelerator module : same url

Step a. Install both qemu and the accelerator (download the source package and execute the .inf)

Step b. enable the accelerator with the command : net start kqemu

Step c. create a storage file

qemu-img create –f qcow .img G

Step b. Launch qemu

qemu.exe -L . -cdrom "\\.\F:" -hda debian_sarge.img -m 256 -boot d -net nic -net user -redir tcp:5555:10.0.2.15:80 -redir tcp:5556:10.0.2.15:8080

This command tells qemu to boot with the cdrom (you can also specify an iso file) and redirect all the outgoing connections for port 80 and 8080. This way you’ll be able to download all the requested files during installation and surf the web after that ! 10.0.2.15 is the default ip returned by the qemu dhcp server. (Note : I use 8080 since I’m behind an http proxy which is listening to incoming connections on this port)

Step c. If you have to reboot from the hard drive you should stop qemu, and change the -boot parameter from d to c (you can keep the cdrom image if you had to).

Step d. Configure X11. Use the PS/2 with /dev/psaux for the mouse and the cirrus driver for the video (screen : Hsync 30-70 Vrefresh 50-160 option DPMS) I tried 1280x960 but I think I’m stuck with 800x600.

A brief note:

I had to admit that I prefer vmplayer due to it’s flexibility and ease of use:
- the 1280x1024 screen,
- switch full screen with ctrl/alt/return (I don’t remember how but it is possible to make the upper toolbar dockable… the trick is to switch to full screen then find the key combination (like CTRL+ALT) to call the host OS pointer but not exiting the full screen mode ! Then click on the pushpin … that’s all !
- access your usb pen with one click+mount and it’s done

and so on.

Final advice n°1: do not forget to set up a samba client with a windows shared folder (setting a server might look better but do not forget all the possible windows’ delay when the OS try to access your directory and your virtual machine is off (like when you configure an auto-connect shared folder)).

Final advice n°2: do not forget to alter the smb.conf ! Particularly:

domain master = no
local master = no
preferred master = no

I forgot this step and saw 2 sys admins came into my office searching for the owner of the station who continually usurp the domain master browser :(

It's been a long time...

2007-01-14T18:58:00.000+01:00

I've been moving... many things have changed in my life, I've been struggling ?

The point is that I had no time these days to nerd on my computer (soledad). Since I am living in Dijon, I have been using Gnome and Mandriva 2007, arg! I know some guys (to be precise, mainly one who is not far from here) who could die from an heart attack reading this...

Today, after 45 minutes of running around the Lac de Kyr, I decided to bring my linux box back to a normal life and to build a fresh e17 2007 cvs !

2007 will be e17 year !

1... 2... Daaaaaaaashhhhhhhh!!!

2006-10-26T19:20:00.000+02:00

Hej, it's been a while... How are yall doin'?
Mmmm soory I'm getting my US english back on track before going to Boston next week... Anyway, enuf said 'bout my life...

Recently I got a pretty annoying little problem. Some asshole, sorry, I meant some windows user thought it was nice to start a file name by "- ". Come on dude!!!
"- foo -" is NOT a good name for a file.
It is bad, in the sens of contrary to good! It is evil!!! Imagine the whole world as you know it collapsing in a trashing curse, life being wipe clean by tempest of acidic rainy winds... sort of...
Bad!

OK. So how does a Unix guy get around that a rename it, mv-it I should say, into something more reasonable, such as foo.txt for instance. Because - is the option thingy, see.

Easy when you know the trick, like swallowing a burning spear or a sharp curvy sword. Yes, if you know the damn trick!!!!
OK, ok, here it is: start the name of the file by ./ (telling basicaly that you want to act in the present directory, which actually is what you want...) so that you get something like mv ./-\ foo\ -.txt foo.txt and there you are.

I hate you, windows guy... but there is always, *always*, ALWAYS a solution in our Unix command line world...

Setbacks in Debian land

2006-10-16T09:17:00.000+02:00

Another 'reminder' post :
Allright, you're ready to install a Debian distro right from the internet... Things are going well until the program chooses the lan to install itself instead of your standard pppoe ADSL connection! Meaning either you didn't read the info displayed or your modem response to DHCP Discover is privileged... (probably both of them)

Ok, stay calm and wait for the end of the procedure.
pppoeconf will not be sufficient to save the day. You'll have to edit the /etc/network/interfaces, comment out 'iface eth0 inet dhcp' and add 'iface eth0 inet ppp provider . Bring up eth0... That's all :)

Ref: take a look at 10.6.1.6

Chasing Orpie

2006-10-11T09:01:00.000+02:00

Severe brain damage caused by windows left me naked with my debian box.

A. Statements :
Where have they put my calc.exe ?
aka No I don't feel miserable enough to use expr !
aka I don't want to use my cell phone either
aka besides, I don't want to compute square root with the basic operands with the previous methods

B. Encounter deep inside the land of the lost packages.
The first google rule stress that thou shall not seek in vain (at least with no time constraint). Imagine that you meet someone whose very first words are "Because the equals key is for the weak". How could you refrain yourself from falling in love ? Let's face it, the world would never be the same anymore.

By the way, Orpie is a command line scientific calculator using the RPN notation and a visual stack. The chances are high that you could snob all your coworker just like during the hp48 days! (Remember ? When you were the only one willing to lend his/her calculator knowing the awful truth. The world were divided between 2 classes : those who would/could not understand how to use it and those who already own one. Ah! Life were so simple back there!)

Help yourself, go and compile it ! It's here

The infamous John Smith, the stream ripper...

2006-10-10T20:29:00.000+02:00

Some time ago, Longwei shared with us how to record an episode of some monument (he said so) of the French TV in order to go out and have some beer with friends (there)...
Today I was confronted to almost the same issue: some friends of mine are doing a radio show in France on RadioCampusGrenoble, while I am willing to go and juggle in the juggling gathering her, in Copenhagen. The beauty of Internet let me stream the show, albeit at the correct time...

So. Here we go again, the same in color! Or rather the same without image.
To hear the stream I just connect to the website of the radio and use any kind of software which can do that (BeepMediaPlayer on Cafetière for example), to record it on a mp3 or rather ogg file we need something else, in the name of Streamripper... Sounds like a serial killer to me but it might be because I listen to too much deathmetal.

Then it is the same cooking:
- do a script with the correct parameterss
- edit correctly your cron table
- go out and toss some stuff in the air, try to catch it again or run faster than gravity bring it back...

Here comes the script:
#!/bin/sh
#duration in seconds
$TIME=$1
/usr/local/bin/streamripper http://live.campusgrenoble.org:9000/rcg112.m3u -l $TIME -a -A -m 15

Here comes my cron table:
30 21 * * * /home/hern42/scripts/rcg.sh 5400

I know it is some sort of a rip-off Longwei's fantastic work but, hey, his script didn't work out of the box for my radio show...

Writing in Chinese ? 写汉语？

2006-10-08T12:45:00.000+02:00

This post is more a post-it that a post !
Each time I upgrade my system or I install it again, I always forget how to configure the chinese input!

It's more than easy in fact, only few stuffs need to be installed and configure.

The best method for Chinese input is definitively scim, so first I need to install scim, scim-tables and scim-pinyin. Scim can also be used for other exotic languages, from japanese to tibetan. Scim is easy to use and very similar to popular input methods used in China with in Microsoft windows.

Once installed, I just had to modifiy my .i18n file in my home directory by adding four lines wich are used by X depending on the window you want to type in (GTK, QT or basic X). More information can be found on this website.

GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
QT_IM_MODULE=scim
XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"
XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM

Then, after I restart my windows manager and once back in, in order to switch from french/english/chinese I just have to use CRTL+SPACE

Upgrading frenzy

2006-09-29T11:13:00.000+02:00

It's no secret, not that the stars are falling from the sky, but that updating your freeBSD box is a quasi trivial matter thanks to the fantastic port system and the non the less fantastic portupgrade command (ahhh portupgrade portupgrade, at least as good as man man, one of my favourite commands!!!).

But what to upgrade is another issue...
Fortunately the port and package systems provide us with nice tools for that. Especially pkg_version which gives us indications on if ports are older, newer or at the same "age" that the one on the root tree... Provided you update your tree dutifully with a good round of cvsup. You do that before trying to upgrade, don't you? It would be like not checking if you have gained 10 Kilos before going and buying a new pair of trousers...

The problem is that there is typically way to much ports and that way too much of them are in no need of upgrading... Once you played a little with pkg_version you know how to communicate with it, or more accurately how it communicates with you, meaning spiting out a > or a < a =" depending" style="font-style: italic;">pkg_version -v | grep \< | less and that should do it, allowing you to browse through the list of things that may need a good kick in the basement... (the \ before the < is to prevent the shell to interpret it as a feeding of file, of course...)

As I am approximately as lazy as longwei I am working on a script to compare for me the version numbers and tell me what *really* needs to be upgraded, but my coding/scripting is going down the drain at the moment due to a lack of free time (or an excess of activities, about the same in the end).

Don't forget to portugrade portugrade, heh!?

Portable carnivale ?

2006-09-29T00:23:00.000+02:00

My ipaq rx3715 a great PDA but its screen is only 320x200. This is not a big problem nevertheless when I watch some Carnival episodes on it , as my files are encoded in divx 640x480 the rendering is too slow. Here is a minimalistic command line to reencode these video files. I am not fully satisfied of the options, but at least, it gives a 200Mo files for 1 hours of videa with a pretty good quality and smooth rendering.

mencoder carnivale-1_09.avi -vf scale=320:-2 -sws 1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=128 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=600 -o carnivale-1_09_PDA.avi

It takes 5 to 10 minutes to process a file. For your information, shame on me, I am using windows mobile and TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player) as video player. I should be able soon to switch to linux, but that's another story.

Use MapJon and move to Dijon !

2006-09-27T21:14:00.000+02:00

Hmmm (this is the only meaningful introduction that I was able to find for this post),

I've heard that it seems that I am moving to dijon. It seems also that I have to look for a flat.
Last time I had this stupid idea was in 1999 and at this "age" only few adds were available on internet. But today, especially today, as I am back to Paris after some days away, my email is full of adds with obscure streets name such as "Rue le Gouz-Gerland" or "Rue Jacotot". It also seems that there are no metro stations in this city and consequently no ways to refer to these stations in order to decide whether or not the flat is in a nice place and it's usefull to have a look to the details.

Today, after three cut (mouse highlight) and paste (middle click) in the http://maps.google.fr I already feel tired.

That's why I have created (adapted from existing stuffs) the most useful "piece of software" of the day, which is called "MapJon" like Map Dijon !

What is it ?

It's a simple Mozilla firefow bookmarklet in javascript, the source is :

javascript:q = "" + (window.getSelection ? window.getSelection() : document.getSelection ? document.getSelection() : document.selection.createRange().text); if (!q) q = prompt("You didn't select street name in Dijon, please type it here:", ""); if (q!=null) window.open("
http://maps.google.fr/maps?f=q&hl=fr&q=dijon+"+escape(q)+
"&ie=UTF8&z=15&om=1&iwloc=A"); void 0

How to install it ?

You simply have to create a new bookmark in the mozilla-firefox bookmark toolbar and call it MapJon, then you edit its properties copy the source above and paste it as the bookmark url.

How to use it ?

You simply highlight the damn street name your looking for in dijon and then you click in the bookmark bar on the MapJon and then you will see in a new window a google map pointing to this street.

As I am lazy, the next step I'm sure will be to add a keyboard shortcut or a menu entry in the right click menu with a firefox extension.

/me is getting a hell of a lot of trouble just to stay nerdy...

2006-09-12T13:28:00.000+02:00

I am using (also) a MacBook. And today I'll talk about a newbie experience to figure out some of the Mac stuff.

I am heavily using ghoul (the name of this whitish stylish machine... don't ask...) as a *NIX box, mainly on terminal (but with nice real transparency, you become snobbish really fast when you have a real transparent terminal!) and using X11 and darwinports extensively to use as much as I can the same applications... That could be debated further but I am risking the stake if too many Mac user read that...

Adium is a nice counterpart for Gaim, nothing to say about that...
But real nerds use irc so irc-ing I was... And to do some irc-ing, I chose to try on Macirssi, which is a gui implementation of the console irssi (that I also installed through darwinports but I'll get to that later...). Who says "gui and Mac" says "good and thoughtful", usually... But not here, I mean, not completely...
Why not to use the port of Xchat is a good question, it is supposed to be quite buggy, that is what I was told, I didn't experience it myself (but maybe I'll try it soon)

Anyway I had to relearn all the console irc commands, so I guess I'll post them here in order to have the really useful ones at hand:
/CONNECT server (for example, irc.europnet.org where we lurk...)
/JOIN #channel (for example #BOP, where indeed we lurk...)
/NICK foo to change your nick from what it was to foo, or more probably for toto to toto_away or toto_eats

/AWAY I am gone to put some powder on my nose
/QUIT Arg here they come to get me!!!
are also quite useful...

and there is also
/ME is putting a finger up is nose
/MSG The_other Hi I want to talk to you without all the others to see that I will be making a fool of myself and try to invite you for a game of tic-tac-toe, wink wink...

All that is fair and square, but I also tried to send and receive some files, fool that I am!
That's a bit trickier, first because it is in the server tab and not in the channel tab, then because I never used before the command lines for that (I was sending the file from my freeBSD box cafetière, using Xchat2)
/DCC SEND nick_of_the_other foo.txt to, well, send foo.txt to the other guy way down there...
/DCC GET yournick to, err, get the offered file

Well, with all that, I can survive...
But there is another problem, the one of those funny characters, such as accents in French and å, ø and other thingies such as æ in Danish... Not that I use a lot of Danish but I don't have a lot of ways of trying to impress people, do I? Unfortunately the command /charset utf-8 seems to be inefficient in Macirssi and I still haven't found not what I am looking for but a way to get around that... It seems to be a bug because you can specify in the preferences your charset and putting it on utf-8 didn't solve anything. Damn it.
And trying the console version (I told you it would come) was a complete failure, I couldn't even start to connect to a server... I haven't said my last word on that!

And now for something completely different... Ciao.

Me and a bottle of Wine.

2006-09-04T10:52:00.000+02:00

Let's face it, running W2K on an old Celeron 1Ghz 256Mo to do some dev things (especially Java) is usually one of the best ways to summon my nemesis: Your system lacks virtua
l memory + infernal swapping mode ON. Damn it!

Phase One : Preserving the integrity (or trying to do so)
Damn Small Linux (DSL) saved my day a couple of time by allowing me to backup the MBR [1](turning on your office PC with the non bootable disk welcome message might be a stre
ssing situation the fact that this is entirely due to my own silliness is totally irrelevant here :) !).

dd if=/dev/hda of=backup_mbr count=1 bs=512

Phase Two: Trying to be casual
Debian ('cause I'm not sufficiently desperate to opt for a FreeBSD distro right now ... but who knows !)
[Enter Sarge] The installation process ran smooth[3]. At least until I want to disable X at startup.

update-rc.d stop xdm 6 5 4 3 2 1. leads to nowhere for mysterious reasons. This is not the case with:

update-rc.d remove -f xdm
So much for X.

Phase Three: Did I miss something?
[Enter Boss] What's your opinion on the last mail from M.Yellow? [waiting for an immediate reaction]
[Me not so casual] Well ... [su reboot ... choosing the I'm on a really top urgent thing right now approach and looking annoyed ] I have not read it yet ...
[... 2' ... Enter W2K ... 2' ... Enter Lotus] ...

Phase Four: Bring me some Wine!
Yes I know, running Lotus Notes should be definitively prohibited. Unfortunately one must not rely too much on common sense here.

A quick glance at Wine puts me into a quantum state:
- Waouw this is it! Let's try it...
- No binary for Sarge. No time (nor skills) to do a backport myself. Let's transform my linux's partition into freespace for M$.

A few nano seconds later I was upgrading to the unstable distro [2] :)

Next, I changed the /etc/atpt/sources.list to include links to wine packages (no need to set the preference file as no prior packages was in conflict [4]). A cp -r of my M$ n
otes directory and I prostrate myself before my desk.

There is a god somewhere!

Final thoughts.
I'd wished I've been stealthy during all theses steps but with downloads exceending the Go the chance is that I won my place on a blacklist... (Just one week after having rec
eived a mail which politely reminds us of the network's good practices. How funny!)

Notes & References :
[1] Some people also backup the partition's table with :
sfdisk -d /dev/hda > backup_pt
[2] do not forget to install debian with kernel 2.6 BEFORE upgrading to unstable.
[3] In the initial installation process if you set up your clock with funny values do not forget the hwclock command (perfect with ntpdate).
[4] The first time I tried to install wine apt-get was unable to locate wine. I still don't know why so I downloaded the files manually and installed them with dpkg -i (good
luck with the dependencies :()

About a script, chinesetape2ogg

2006-09-02T19:03:00.000+02:00

Last year, during an attempt of ogg enconding of my father old Blues Vinyls I wrote a script in order to encode on the fly sound from the line in of my sound card.

It worked well until today when I tried again with some chinese lessons on a tape bought in Shanghai . Maybe because I am not a surfer, I gave my old aiwa walkman to a friend. Consequently, I have no other means than converting these lesson to ogg in order to enjoy mobile chinese lessons on my Iops !

Here was the old script :

#!/bin/sh
mkfifo lak7.wav
oggenc -b 190 lak7.wav -o lak7.ogg &
sox -t ossdsp -w -s -c 2 /dev/dsp -r 44100 -c 2 -f lak7.wav

The idea is to create a fifo file, then encode on the fly this file which is feeded by sox listening to the output of the mixer. You launch the script and do a CTRL + C to stop it.
It worked until now, but today, with short recordings, the results were awfull when I tried to listen to the resulting ogg file. Just like if it was played in low motion !

I found the solution and my mistake here.

In fact, there problem comes from the fact that I end the recording by sending SIGINT (CTRL+C). But, this is received by oggenc and then its parent (sox) is receiving a SIGPIPE and terminates. As a result, the end of stream marker of the off file is missing which seems to be a problem on my short chinese lessons. In order to solve this, the web site above propose to trap SIGINT in order to send it to sox.

Here is the proposed script (rec is the sox frontend)

trap cleanup INT
(
trap "" INT
exec rec -t raw -c 2 -w -r 44100 - | oggenc -r -B 16 -C 2 -R 44100 -q 5 -o "$file_name" - ;

Toward FreeBSD Step #3

2006-09-02T00:20:00.000+02:00

I had a long and strange day at work.

Some hard nerding back home should help me to get rid of it!

On my "light" & console mode freeBSD brand new installation I tried to mount my Linux partitions (ext3) where I have all my personnal data (140G).

It seems there is no native way of having read/write on a ext3 filesystem.

Seems I have to recompile the kernel with ext2fs option... but in this case I still won't have ext3 journalised behavior, my files will be mounted as ext2 without journal...

So what? Will there be a "Toward freeBSD #4" ?

Reload me up, Scotty!!

2006-08-30T18:26:00.000+02:00

Mysql, php and phpMyAdmin is some sort of a power trio, they don't play heavy rock but they do rock!

Except that it took me 2 days and 3 minutes (the 3 saving-my-life-and-sanity minutes were on a gtalk with longwei, a specialist, he did *all* the mistakes before me...) to be able to add a user with the right privileges to some tables... It took me the same 2 days and 3 minutes to be able and get to kick off the awfully insecure "root/no password" connection and have a normal user with a password, all that because of what?

All that because of what?

All that because you have to push the "upload mysql" button (or the equivalent in command line: mysql_reload(MYSQL *mysql) if you are doing it in a xterm somewhere lost in the matrix) for your changes to be taken into account. You dumb stupid piece of worthless dungworm crap!!!

So now I can start designing my wonderful php websites, with user interface and sessionning and everything. By the way, not to forget to say it somewhere, php is secure by default, so you cannot pass variables in urls (like in foo.php?var=bar&var_bis=foobar) unless you specifically ask for it.
Meaning you have to edit the php.ini somewhere (/usr/local/etc/ for freeBSD users, the hell if I know where it is if you use something else...) and put register_globals=On where it should be!!! Fortunately I already did the mistake several times before, so I didn't lose *so* much time with it...

[sigh]
It is a hard 'prentice_nerd life...

---
For the not-so nerd, the pun in the title is from Star Trek (the first TV serie where they wear pyjamas...). "Beam me up, Scotty!" was the original line... But as I am not a nerd in the Star Trek way, it is also and most importantly a song from grindcore band from Belgium: Agathocles, on the album Humarrogance from 1997, those were the days...

The Cursed scanner of Doom and Death, from the fire legions of Hell...

2006-08-27T15:20:00.000+02:00

I had a few troubles with my MacBook (namely Ghoul, after naming it Zombie to be laughed at by a friend of mine, a mean friend of mine, who told me she didn't know I was such a big fan of the Cranberries, damnit) and my Epson F3200 scanner. This scanner is my (well, one of my...) arch-enemy, it is responsible for many sleepless drunky nights... Anyway, apart from being obviously spawned by hellish creatures to torture me, it is a great scanner and it does good what it is supposed to do, scanning negatives... when it does it.

I thought he on a Mac it should be piece of cake to use that, what with Mac being the instrument of choice for all graphic designers, digitalphotographers and other artistic beings... Yes. But...

I bought the scanner in january this year, I bought Ghoul (shutup Charlotte!!) in august this year. In the mean time Mac had gone to Intel architecture, the install CD in the scanner box was still on a previous incarnation of osX... And no, I didn't think about upgrading that on the Net before cursing all my ancestors (and a few more) because I was such a loser, etc.

So...
I went to espon.com and fiddled around a bit to get the new version of the F3200 stuff, made for the Intel Macs. I installed it after another swearing part (because it comes in a .sit file for which I didn't have the extractor, and I had to install that as well, jeez, why not a good old tar.gz huh ?...) and now, thanks to the help of a third party software: SilverFast (something german, it ought to be good, or at least square!), I can start again my scanning activities... Oh joy!

After one test scan I wanted to edit the picture with the Gimp, which I installed courtesy of DarwinPorts, only to be yelled at by the Ghoul... Somehow even if I was running X11 (as I always do, hey, don't look at me that way!!) the display thingy option bugger didn't seem to fit... I was saved by a BSDist and add the following line in the .profile file:
export DISPLAY=:0 gimp
And now all is well and the sheeps are well garded (doesn't make any sense?, it's OK, it is a french idiom).

Sometimes I think, but most of the time it's too late...

Toward FreeBSD Step #2

2006-08-27T13:54:00.001+02:00

Finally, at 1am I had (thanks Arno) the bright idea to have a look in my motherboard box (hidden somewhere in the mess where i never go) and I found the power plug for my hard disk.

I did the install from ftp, everything ran smooth...until reboot...I have a back partition table... in fact I did a wonderful mistake where I created the Slices... Next time I will read the docs, hmmm, but it was late !

After a second try this morning, I was impressed by the speed of the boot sequence (of course I've only few stuff installed) and I finally log on my new freeBSD box.

Next step is the install of Xorg and other stuff as well as final configuration.

Toward FreeBSD Step #1

2006-08-26T21:48:00.000+02:00

Today was a nice and windy August-sounds-March day... I got up early, downloaded the FreeBSD install CD.

I had a bike ride to the Chinese computer market and bought a new hard disk to put BSD, got a 300G for 80Â in SATA II. Ok my motherboard will only run it in SATA1 but, it was cheaper in II than SATA I.

Everything was fine, except that! And of course, I am not in Shanghai, it's 10pm, no way to find a shop open!

Here is the conclusion of the first step on my way toward FreeBSD, I am stuck on a hardware brainware problem...

Contacts and film rolls

2006-08-24T19:35:00.000+02:00

Once we have scanned many film rolls, it's great to have web pages with thumbnails and browsing features. for this, Bins is your friend ! It's a command line web album generator. It's great, easy to use with nice templates... The scrip bellow is useless, it's a just a batch for bins album generation on resized pictures (with convert command from imagemagick) copied to my www directory.

[barth@localhost script_images]$ cat make_web_bins.sh
#!/bin/sh
export LANGUAGE=en_GB:en_GB.UTF-8:en
cd $1
mkdir tmp
for i in `ls *.jpg | grep -v _s.jpg`
do
dest=${i%.jpg}_s.jpg
if [ ! -s $dest ]; then
convert -geometry 60% $i $dest
echo $dest
fi
done
mv *_s.jpg tmp
bins tmp web_nb$1 -s joi
rm -rf ~/public_html/photosweb/photos/web_nb$1
mv web_nb$1 ~/public_html/photosweb/photos
rm -rf tmp

Bellow an example of the result.

Scan ta face

2006-08-23T21:07:00.000+02:00

Hmmm, I've just bought a new scanner, a 250€ Epson Perfection 4490 to replace my old Epson 1240U Photo. Was it a good idea ?

First, as some readers might wonder why I am choosing Espon again? There is only one answer, Epson, through Avasis release open source drivers for most of its scanners.

Ok, after 2 minutes of web search and a quick rpm -Uvh iscan-2.1.0-1.c2.i386.rpm, here I am for an unprofessional test.

I've took a negative film, black and white and realised two series of scans. 1200 dpi and 2400 dpi with and without unsharp mask on both scanners.

No comments !

1240U @ 1200dpi		4490 @ 1200dpi
1240U @ 1200dpi + Unsharp		4490 @ 1200dpi + Unsharp

1240U @ 2400dpi		4490 @ 2400dpi
1240U @ 2400dpi + Unsharp		4490 @ 2400dpi + Unsharp

Have a beer and don't miss "Plus belle la vie"

2006-08-22T18:03:00.000+02:00

How nerding can save your brain and help you to loose few brain cells ?

In 1998 was launched one of the best ever french TV serie, the unforgetable "Cap des pins". Unfortunately, this was stopped quickly and we, poor frenchies, had to wait until 2004 to discover "Plus belle la vie", its best sucessor.

Unfortunately it's on air every week day on France 3 TV channel at 8:20 pm which is not a reasonable time, even for a nerd stuck to his keyboard, especially when one of the several Arnaud of mine is offering a beer, "there", out in the real world.

So what, miss a beer or miss this delicious inside black hole, result of 30 minutes of brain tv wash ?

And someone invented recordings....

You need :

a somehow TV capable device with composite output and sound output
a video card with a composite input and sound card with line input
a physical friend and a beer waiting for you outside
mencoder

How to proceed :

A/ Create a nice script to record and encode the Tv output. It takes as input the name of output and recording duration. Mencoder is fun and uses nice parameters uh!

[barth@localhost scripts]$ cat record_tv.sh
#!/bin/sh
if test -z "$2"; then echo "usage: record_tv.sh outputfile durationinsecond"; exit; fi

#name of output
NAME=$1

#Duration in seconds
TIME=$2

#Where to put the stuff
OUTDIR="/home/barth/videos/tv_recordings/"
OUT="$OUTDIR/$NAME"

mencoder -tv norm=0:input=1:driver=v4l2 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=900 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64 -vf pp=lb -endpos $TIME -o $OUT tv:// > /dev/null

Just one comment, take car to redirect the output of mencoder to /dev/null or a file. This is necessary otherwise, the next step won't work (seems cron doesn't like verbosity)

B/ Edit your crontab to launch recording script on time and during 45 minutes (2700 seconds)

[barth@localhost scripts]$ crontab -e

=> This opens a nice vi, where we can edit le jobs to be launched!

20 20 * * * /home/barth/softwares/scripts/record_tv.sh plusbellelavie.avi 2700

Check the crontab by

[barth@localhost scripts]$ crontab -l

C/ Don't forget to set up you mixer setup

D/ Select the right TV channel on TV set and go out !

The B-Team almost complete

2006-08-21T14:48:00.000+02:00

Apparently everything works fine and the :wq! team is almost complete...
There is going to be some serious nerding going on!

First post on :wb!

2006-08-21T12:46:00.000+02:00

And let there be light!