Aigarius Blog (Posts about linux)

Moved to Mezzanine

Aigars Mahinovs — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 09:10:43 GMT

After my server that has hosted my blog for some years had given out its last breath (second motherboard failure), I decited it was time for a change. And not just server change, but also change in the blog engine itself. As I now focus on Python and Django almost exclusively at work, it felt logical to use some kind of Django-based blog or CMS. I tried django-cms and mezzanine and ... Mezzanine is so fast and simple, that I simply stopped looking.

After simply following the tutorial and creating a skeleton project, I had a ready-to go site with all the CMS features, incuding a blog. I just had to change a few settings to have the blog module be the home page of the site, change site settings for the title and Google Analytics settings and such and tweak the theme a bit to my liking.

This was my first real exposure to a Bootstrap design. I must say - it is very simple to understand and modify if your needs fit within its limits. For example, I wanted to remove the left sidebar and expand the main content block to fill that. All I had to do was to remove the div element with class "left-sidebar span-2" and change the class of the main content part from "span-7" to "span-9". To do that I simply copied the templates/base.html file from mezzanine default templates and modified it. The information from django-debug-toolbar showed me what files were used in rendering the page.

But the feature that really got me hooked was the Wordpress import. Using a simple management command I was able to feed into Mezzanine instance the XML export file from Wordpress. It created blog posts, categories, comments, static pages and even redirects from Wordpress permalinks to Mezzanine permalinks. It was not flawless - there were a few issues:

I had to set the COMMENT_MAX_LENGTH setting to something higher than the default 3000 chars to accomodate some longer comments
As I failed to clean up the comments before exporting, comments marked as spam in Wordpress still got into the XML and showed up in the new blog without being marked as spam there
Some comments (mostly spam) had a much longer user name than 50 char maximum. Even with a --noinput setting that should have truncated the names, the import errored-out as Django passed the long strings to the Postgress database which promptly refused to store too much data or to truncate it. I chose to work around that by increasing the column size in Postgress.
One of the posts did not have a set title, so the import took the whole first paragraph as the title and then failed to create a good slug from it. This caused the redirect creation to fail. I fixed this by editing the XML file and setting a title.
It looks like the slug creation for the redirect and the actual slug are slightly different. Some permalink redirects for posts with non-ascii symbols in the title failed to link up correctly

After that was done it was a relatively straightforward process of picking up the code and data and deploying it to a Django-friendly hosting service. There is a plenty of good competition out there, most now offer a simple one-click Django installation, so I just created a simple Django skeleton via their web interface and then replace what they generated with my app while keeping their settings as local_settings.py . I should probably write a bit more details about the process. After I create a custom fabric file for this.

It is quite a strange feeling to have a Mezzanine blog that responds faster from a shared server half a continent away, compared to a Wordpress on dedicated server in the same room

There are a few features that I am still missing - most notably draft post autosave. That has bitten me hard while writing this post :P Also a Twitter digest post feature. But on the bright side - that is a great motivation to write such features, preferably in a portable way that other people can use too :)

Cloning or pre-configuring a batch of Android phones

Aigars Mahinovs — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:09:43 GMT

An interesting question popped up in my Twitter stream today - is there an Android alternative to Apple configurator (for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) that allows to create a bunch of identical Apple devices with some added configurations and applications. The best I could come up with is not as polished, but on the other hand much more powerful option - Nandroid backup and restore (also known as ClockworkMod Recovery backup).

To do this, you need a source phone and a bunch of destination phones. On the source phone a ClockworkMod Recovery (CWR) must be installed (either via a root or via a bootloader unlock). On the destination phones you will either need to also install ClockworkMod Recovery or unlock the bootloader to allow the Fastboot tool to work.

So the procedure then goes as follows:
1. Unlock the bootloader on the source phone (search for device specific info on how to do that)
2. Use fastboot flash recovery filename.img to write a device-specific version of CWR to the recovery partition of the device (the phone must be in fastboot mode at that point)
3. Do whatever customisations you want to the source phone at this point. You can use custorm ROMs, install whatever applications, do whatever configuration, but I would suggest keeping everything in phone memory so you don't have to flash the SD card as well.
4. Reboot the source phone into CWR mode, use the backup option to create a full backup.
5. The backup will now be in the SD card of the source device. Copy that to the computer that you will use for creating copies.

For each destination phone:
6. Unlock the bootloader of the destination phone
7. Reboot the phone in the fastboot mode, connect it via USB to the copying computer
8. Flash all partitions from the backup using fastboot flash ... commands, skip flashing the recovery partition if you don't want CMR on the destination device
9. Re-lock the bootloader (with fastboot oem lock)

And you are done!

All the phones must be of the same model. And that model must support unlocking bootloader for this to work.

I prefer this method, because this way it is possible to create an end device without root, with a locked bootloader and without CWR thus providing some security as unlocking the bootloader wipes the device, so without specific hacking an attacker can not easily get access to system data on such device. It is also possible to do this with devices that do not have an boot unlock if there is a way to root the original firmware which allows to install CWR and go on from there, but that is significantly more complicated and time-consuming, so using devices with an ability to unlock the bootloader is much preferable.

However, before you go to all that trouble, it might be worth to consider if maybe for your particular use case it would be enough with the two commands from Android SDK - adb install ... and adb push ... to install applications or individual files on devices or adb backup AppName and adb restore ... to backup and restore one or more individual applications with all their settings. These options have the benefit of that they will work across different device models and that they do not wipe other data or applications from the devices.

As I could not immediately find a better way or even a detailed guide how to do this, I decided to write this post, so it would be easier for other people to find this information. If you know a better way, please do mention it in the comments section!

You though NVidia was bad, don't try AMD

Aigars Mahinovs — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 20:09:34 GMT

Remember when Linus Torvalds lambasted NVidia for not supporting their Optimus technology in their Linux drivers for half a decade and counting? Well, I went out and bought an AMD/ATi video card as mu upgrade. And you know what? Its Linux drivers are far, far worse than NVidia.
1. Most of the games I had working fine on NVidia, do not work on AMD. And those that do suffer far more visual corruption, synchronization bugs (like bottom 40% of the screen rendering half a second after the top 60%), strange visual artifacts (weird triangles popping out of everywhere) and crashes, lots of crashes.
2. There were crashes with NVidia too, but NVidia never managed to crash Compiz along with it or crash the whole X server or lock up the system so far that only SysRq works or even lock up the system so far that only powering it off manually works.
3. And then there is the configuration atrocity. Apparently AMD is too good to store its configuration in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Or even to document the supported options there. Instead they have their own (also undocumented) configuration file in /etc/ati folder. And it is undocumented because it is a cryptic mess and the only supported way to change it is to use their tools - aticonfig and amdccccle. The command line tool is almost reasonable, except it is also barely documented. For example, one of my screens somehow was always stared at 1920x1080@30Hz. There were 3 different ways to specify default resolution, but none of them used or saved the refresh rate. And when I changed it in the GUI tool - the refresh rate did change, but it was never saved. Oh there nowhere is a save button. It 'just works', except when it doesn't. Like: both of my screens for some reason started with huge black borders around the screen, I finally narrowed it down to the GUI setting "overscan" which defaulted to 10%. Ok, so I change it, it works, but next time I reboot, the overscan is back! I had to find an undocumented invocation of the aticonfig that would change the default value to 0%. Why did this one setting not save? Oh and fun note - the refresh rate of that second screen was correct on the login screen, but it then swiched back as I logged in. Fun, huh?
4. Even at basic desktop tasks fglrx if inferior to not only the free driver, but also to the nvidia driver - even simple scrolling of a large folder in nautilus seems to tax the 200$ card to its limits - the bottom row blinks into place almost half a second after I stop scrolling. Another example - with NVidia when I switch my TV to the HDMI input from the card, the sound starts at the same moment as the picture, however with AMD the sound only decides to show up 10-15 seconds later. And sometime it does not show up at all, unless I start the AMD Control GUI tool and only then the sound shows up 15 seconds later (without doing anything in the GUI).

It may be that one part of AMD is better than NVidia at talking to free driver developers, but another part is so much worse at actual technical work of writing a driver, it is not even funny. They are busy reinventing the bycicle of configuration and display management, while their core driver is just ... not good enough.

TL/DR: Anyone wanna buy a HD 6850 cheaply off my hands?

Crossposted to Google+ - https://plus.google.com/u/0/107099528362923100900/posts/6PC7RFQpm8K

P.S. I also noticed the color difference - with NVidia there was no difference between colors on my LCD TV and my IPS monitor, but with AMD there is a huge difference, the TV color just got washed out. I guess there is no proper color calibration support in the AMD driver?

Update: I have managed to return the HD 6850 to the shop where I got it from (thanks to a nice law requiring web shops to take stuff back within 14 days no questions asked) and got the new NVidia GeForce GTX 660 instead. I had to build an updated NVidia driver (304.48 from this post, just like here or here) but other than that it was smooth and painless and everything is working great again. Only even faster :)

NVidia Optimus fail

Aigars Mahinovs — Tue, 24 May 2011 09:05:02 GMT

Guys, we have a problem. The name of that problem is NVidia and their Optimus technology. The idea of that tech is quite neat - take a laptop, put two video cards in it, use the powerful card when you need 3D power, use the weak card when you need to conserve battery. The problem is that any laptop with this technology is currently an expensive paperweight on Linux (or rather it was so until a couple weeks ago, see below). And NVidia has no plans for fixing that.

Let me explain the technicalities.

In all modern laptops (such as the new and sexy Dell XPS 15z and many, many others) NVidia Optimus is implemented as follows - there is an NVidia card and an Intel card, all display outputs are connected to the Intel card, when the user wants more 3D power, the NVidia card is powered on and it renders an image into a framebuffer in the video memory of the Intel card which is the responsible for actually outputing that framebuffer to a display.

Currently in Linux if you are using NVidia drivers the Intel card is left uninitialised, your session starts up fine on the NVidia card, it outputs the resulting picture onto the video memory of the Intel card, but ... the Intel card is not configured in any way and so it does not do anything further with this picture and the display stays black.

The alternative is to use Intel video card driver and then the NVidia card stays there in your laptop as dead weight. It does not even power down (out of the box) so you have all the power consumption and none of the functionality. There is some support from NVidia to using that card for CUDA computing purposes in such situation, but nothing else.

After years of neglect and statements from NVidia that Optimus support in Linux is impossible and thus not even planned, one individual stepped up and made it work. Yes, the solution is hacky, yes it is a hassle to set up and make it work, but this is the first glimmer of hope for actually working Optimus on Linux. Over the last couple years the share of laptops with Optimus has greatly increased - almost all laptops that have NVidia video cards have Optimus now. This Bumblebee project is currently our only real hope on making Linux work on these laptops.

This project needs our support in a multitude of ways:
1) help test the actual project on different hardware;
2) look at the code and help improve on it, both the core code and system integration, simplify it so that everyone can install and use this;
3) figure out how we can integrate that support into distributions, so that it becomes possible to have working Linux out-of-the-box on Optimus hardware;
4) pressure NVidia more to provide official Optimus support on Linux (at least in always-on-NVidia mode, without breaking Bumblebee along the way).

Martin has already showed the superiority of open source by implementing something that NVidia considered to be too hard to do, let's show the power of our community to push such solutions to production quality.

Nexus S review incoming

Aigars Mahinovs — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:01:26 GMT

This is just a quick note that I broke down and replaced my ageing iPhone 3G with a brand new unlocked Google Nexus S. I got it in my hands last Saturday and by the end of the first day it did 90% of what I used my iPhone for and by the end of day two it did 100% of what I used my phone for before this and did it better than the iPhone. I will give it a week and then write up a bigger thing on all the good and bad things I notices from my migration from iPhone to Nexus S.

If you want to know something specific about Nexus S, Android 2.3, its interaction with Debian/Ubuntu, ... this is the time to ask.

Phoning it in

Aigars Mahinovs — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 23:06:15 GMT

Currently I own and use an iPhone 3G. I bought it almost two years ago, when the local phone provider LMT started offering the iPhone legally. I had a pretty good experience with it most of the time, but now it is showing its age:

The two year warranty will run out in September

The iOS 4 update left out most of the new features - my model cann't have multitasking or backgrounds or any of that new cool stuff that is exclusive to the new iPhone 4

The hardware itself is starting to wear - the speaker stopped working a few weeks ago (so I have to use the loudspeaker function or headphones) and also approximately around that time the phone stated to randomly lock up approximately one a week or two - it freezes and after a few minutes reboots and demads to be connected to iTunes and restored from backup

Also the battery does not last as long as it used to

I will try to send my iPhone in for repair hoping to extend its usefulness, but frankly it looks that I might have to get a new phone at or before Debconf.

So I am considering my options for a new phone and so far I have 3 main options each with some sub-options. The main options are: iPhone 4, MeeGo and Android. Each choice has its benefits and drawbacks and each also has several sub-options related either to specific phone models or to purchase methods.

What I need is a phone with: calling function, contact information synchronised to Google, support for Google Mail/Contacts/Calendar simultaneously with one Exchange account also providing mail/contacts/calendars, music, audiobooks - saving my place in the audio book and in the list of books, fully featured Twitter client with Twitpic and location support, encrypted password storage application (preferably open source), GPS with maps, ability to download maps for offline use, Geocaching support with offline cache info and logging, Skype client, ability to write in Latvian, English and Russian in all applications, reliable backup and restore of phones data including settings and data of installed apps. Optional features: last.fm streaming and reporting support, ebook applications with purchasable ebooks, high quality video and photo recording (for a phone), ability for me to write applications on the phone, ssh client, wireless data upload to the phone, ability to change the phones battery without loosing data in the phone (on the go), compass, physical keyboard, confidence in getting software upgrades and developer interest for the next 2 years.

I'll try to describe all of the options here to organise my thoughts and maybe also help someone else make the choice.

Option 1: iPhone 4

To get the iPhone 4 I have two options: LMT and unlocked.

The official arrival of iPhone 4 to Latvia is expected in September and it will likely be sold by LMT for the same prices as iPhone 3GS is now. If I choose this scenario, I will need to survive with my semi-broken iPhone for 2-3 more months. Total price over 2 years (LVL): 131 (purchase price) + 24 * 8 (surcharge) = 323 LVL.

Note: the surcharge is the extra cost of the iPhone call plan compared to a comparable regular plan (Vienādais 7 + Internets telefonā 5).

If I go and purchase an unlocked iPhone 4 in a country where such units are sold (UK is the most easily accessible choice, because a few of my workmates travel weekly to and from UK) then the total price over 2 years would be the purchase price: 499 GBP + 65 GBP (2 year warranty extension) = 505 LVL

Now lets go over the general benefits and downsides of the iPhone 4, first the positives:

It is a simple to use device that I am used to over the two years

The screen resolution is higher than any other option

It is smaller and lighter than Nokia N900 and the bigger Android devices

There is a huge number of free and paid apps as well as accessories for the iPhone - docks, headphones, chargers, ...

I know that it can do every thing that I need it to do (with apps) and most of the optional features too, except ... (see drawbacks)

Drawbacks:

The first thing that I hate about the iPhone is its umbilical cord like link to iTunes. iTunes is the sole purpose I still have a real Windows installation on my main computer (in a Sun VirtualBox, thankfully). iTunes is slow, clumsy and generally unusable piece of dog excrements. It can only do one thing at a time, mostly: if you are adding a folder to your library, you can't switch to another tab and see how the backup of your iPhone is going. The actions do happen in the background, but more often than not you cann't switch away from some actions. If you try to do multiple things in parallel, instead of resolving any process conflicts and queueing the actions iTunes will simply silently fails to do something, often leaving remains of the half-finished actions. It also does not bother to check if the backup or restore of the phone is complete before using it - in this way I have many time gotten into a situation where I connect the iPhone to the iTunes, it starts backing it up, then crashes and next time happily offers this half-done backup copy as a valid restore point. Or it crashes during restore and only writes some files and settings to the phone - other settings stay at their default values. It is also very cryptic, for example if you have a lot of music it can take hours to import it into iTunes (it spent 2 hours 'Analysing gapless playback information' of 5000 songs) and then you will be puzzled about how to put some of that on the iPhone. If you just tick the checkbox to sync your music you'll get an error stating that there is not enough free space, which is not very helpful. The magic combination was to check 'Manually manage music' and then go to music tab and choose 'Autofill' option. At that point iTunes will spend half an hour choosing which songs to put on the phone, before it even starts copying. And god forbid that you would use that AppStore application on the iPhone to actually install apps - sooner or later you will run into a 'backup bug' where creating or restoring a backup of your iPhone might take 2-3 hours instead of more normal 5-15 minutes. Only a factory reset of the phone followed by selective reinstallation of applications (loosing all their settings in the process) can work around this bug currently.

The closed nature of the iPhone means that I cann't install 'unapproved' software unless I jailbreak the phone and even then it is rather problematic to develop for the phone unless you have a Mac and shell out 99$ a year for participation in the developers program

The iPhone is a consumption device and not a productivity device. I would like to have a device on which I could be creative as a software developer as well

Option 2: Maemo/MeeGo

Some of my colleagues at work (in the Riga office of Accenture) have N900 phones and I have been exposed to people with raw enthusiasm towards the Maemo platform ever since the Debconf in Helsinki, where we saw the first N700 devices in the hands of some lucky Debian/Nokia people using it as an Internet tablet. N900 has been a strong leap forward for the platform, before its head was teleported sideways by the whole MeeGo merger/debackle.

Again I have two options here:

Get a N900 either here in Latvia for 325 LVL (that would be the total cost over 2 years) or get it from USA during Debconf for 399 USD (+129 USD for 2 year warranty) = 317 LVL. And additional option would be to wait until October/November and then buy the new Nokia MeeGo device, rumoured to be N9-00 and likely to be around the same price as N900 was when it was introduced (around 500 LVL).

Benefits:

A fully open and rooted Debian Linux based device with apt-get, X, pusleaudio, d-bus and Qt as core technologies

I can install software from anyone and can also write my own software either in Qt/C++ or even in Python

There is (or was) a significant hacker community that develops applications for N900

As far as I know most of the features that I need do work on N900, but I am unsure about:
1. audiobook support - how easy it is to put a MP3 on the device and tell it is an audiobbok so that the device would remember position when playing the file and save it even if the player is stopped and the device is rebooted or backed up and restored from backup?
2. can I have Google Mail, Contacts and Calendar and at the same time also have an Exchange account with mail and contacts and calendar active?
3. how is the Geocaching.com support - is there an app already that makes it easy to geocache while offline?
4. Multilingual keyboards - I've seen people having to reimplement the on-screen keyboard in their programs, and naturally they do not bother to add support for all language. So support for multilingual keyboard input is an open one.

Drawbacks:

All the uncertainties above - while I could write all the above software, it would be better if I would not have to, so that I could focus on something more productive

Also the whole position of Nokia on the MeeGo support on the N900 is kinda ... backwards. I am now used to the Apple way that if I get a device, then it will get software updates for at least next two years and will get the new software features developed in the next two years at least. If Nokia would have said - "All phone-oriented MeeGo releases will have a version for N900 until at least the end of 2012." Then this drawback would not have been there, but currently it is a mayor sticking stone for me. I don't want to buy a device that will be on a dead-end software platform that will die before the end of this year.

N900 is the largest and heaviest of all the options

Option 3 - Android

After looking trough the options for Android phones, I've narrowed the selection to the ones that are either available from local carriers or can be easily gotten unlocked also the phones need to have announced plans to have at least Android 2.2 version. Currently the choice is limited to HTC Desire (from carrier or unlocked) and Samsung Galaxy S (unlocked). The prices over 2 years break down as follows:

HTC Desire (locked to LMT): 69 + 9*24 = 285 LVL
HTC Desire (locked to Bite): 199 + 2*24 = 247 LVL (Note: only 500Mb of data per month available)
HTC Desire (locked to Tele2): 179 + 6*24 = 323 LVL
Note: all the above options would also require me to pay a 45 LVL early termination fee on my current iPhone contract if I choose to do this before September.
HTC Desire (unlocked): 311 LVL
Samsung Galaxy S (unlocked): 350 LVL (import from Germany)

Benefits:

As far as I could find, the features I need are out there in one way or another - there usually is an app for that!

Google looks poised to continue development at a rapid pace

There is an active hacker community and also an active commercial software community that offers cool applications for a few bucks

As far as I understand the phone backups onto itself - a backup of the phone is created onto a SD card in the phone and you can then copy that off the phone for permanent backup, it is a nice concept

There are literally thousands of sources for Android applications: from the official Market to Google Code to individual web pages and forums

The hardware looks solid, powerful and generic enough to last for a couple of years

It is likely that knowing how to program Android app will be useful for me at work

It is cheap and simple to start writing Android apps on Linux

Drawbacks:

Typical usability of Android apps is pretty low compared to iPhone

The Android environment is very unique and is not like anything else - it's not really much of a Linux system from an apps perspective

I would be relying on HTC to provide OS updates in a timely manner - it is quite likely that after a year or so the updates to new version will come slowly or even stop altogether and I will have to use hacked ROMs

I have a dislike for Java. I wish one could write fully featured Android apps in Python :(

Please correct me if I am wrong with something!!! And also it would be cool if you expressed your own opinions in the comments.

Currently I am very undecided about what I am going to do, but after completing this entry I am leaning towards an unlocked HTC Desire.

Update:
Olivier Crête shares a N900 vs. Nexus One experience

Edit 01-07-2010:

Handed my iPhone in for a warranty repair, got a dumbphone Nokia as a loaner during repairs. Very surprised about how long a battery can last on a low powered and cheap phone.

In the mean time from all the comments here and elsewhere I am starting to see that I am too annoyed with the iPhone platform (mostly iTunes) to stay there and that I am also not convinced in the direction MeeGo is going (a lot of community developers are annoyed and are jumping ship), so N900 is also out. I will need to see 2-3 MeeGo smartphones and also see how Nokia will treat their smartphone users and developers on this platform, in the long term, before I'll be ready to trust them with my money. Therefore, my choice is becoming pretty clear - look for the best Android phone (after my iPhone dies). We have this thing at Accenture, where we can get company phones at a discount and HTC Desire is on that list. If I can get that, it would slash 100 LVL (almost a third of the price!) off it, but to get there I either need to get a promotion (rather rare after just one year with the company) or prove the necessity of the phone for the needs of my project (kinda hard currently). Well, the situation will be a bit clearer next week when I get my iPhone back. (Apparently the Latvia's largest holiday - Midsummer Festivities or Jāņi/Līgo - with tons of traditional outdoor activities, caused a lot of phones to become broken and there is a backlog of warranty service :))

So at this point my plan is: get my iPhone repaired and get a promotion or a project where I can justify a company-paid HTC Desire and then hope that Nokia/Intel really get their stuff together and make MeeGo a great smartphone platform over the next year or two.

Update: Got my iPhone 3G back from the 'warranty'. It is in quotes because they just gave me a new iPhone 3G. The battery lasts for 3 days of minimal use and it has not crashed yet. The recovery process was a pain - again caused by iTunes: iTunes refused to restore my backup onto the new phone, because my backup was made on a iOS 4.0, while the new phone I got from the warranty has 3.1.3 on it. So I had to set this phone as a new phone, initialise it, make a backup, upgrade to 4.0, restore from the (empty) backup, then reset the phone to factory settings again and only then I could start restoring data from my original (pre-warranty) backup and start copying my data on to the device. All in all it took nearly 3 hours if iTunes doing something and almost a dozen reboots of the phone. Almost half of that time was spent doing completely unnecessary steps to work around the fact that iTunes is braindead.

I'll continue using my iPhone for now, keeping my eyes on the newest Android phones and also waiting for the long-promised first MeeGo phone from Nokia.

Going to Debconf10!

Aigars Mahinovs — Thu, 06 May 2010 20:05:15 GMT

After a few months, today I finally got the approval and

As I work for Accenture now, I got them to pay for the plane tickets and also spring for the 'Professional' registration, so more people can attend. I am very happy, and very grateful to the company and to the managers here in Riga office for being so very supportive. It is refreshing to see that even a large corporation can be quite nimble.

I hope I can get on a direct Riga - New York flight (there actually is one, once a week, by Uzbekistan Airways) which would be a wicked cool way to save travel time and worries. This might even be faster end-to-end than last year going to Spain (via Frankfurt). Now I only need to replace my passport with the new biometric one, to qualify for USA Visa Waiver and I'll be good to go :)

Latvijas pavasara Ubuntu Bug Jam un Installest - 27.03.2010

Aigars Mahinovs — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:03:34 GMT

The following is an invitation to the Latvian Ubuntu Bug Jam (in Latvian) sent for a bit of a wider circulation to catch people that monitor Planet Debian, but not Planet Ubuntu.lv.

27. martā LU Linux centrā notiks divi pasākumi vienā - Ubuntu Global Bug Jam Latvijas daļa un installfests. Global Bug Jam ir pasākums, kurā piedalīties ir aicināti interesenti, speciālisti, studenti, lai meklētu kļūdas Ubuntu Lucid Lynx testēšanas versijā. Cilvēki, kas grib uzzināt par Ubuntu Linux, vai kuri grib atrisināt kādu konkrētu problēmu ar Ubuntu Linux tiek aicināti nākt uz šī pasākuma otro daļu no pulksten 14:00 līdz 16:00. Pasākuma būs kafija un bulciņas ar Accenture atbalstu.

Ubuntu Global Bug Jam ir globāls pasākums, kura mērķis ir iepazīstināt programmētājus un tulkotājus ar rīkiem, kas tiek lietoti, lai labotu problēmas Ubuntu operētājsistēmā un arī izlabot pēc iespējas lielāku skaitu problēmu īsā laikā. Izstrādātāji, kas grib labot Ubuntu problēmas vai iemācīties kā labot Ubuntu problēmas, tiek aicināti ierasties 12:00 un palikt līdz 16:00.

Installfest pasākuma sadaļā tiek aicināti visi esošie Ubuntu lietotaji, kuriem ir kādas konkrētas problēmas un arī cilvēki, kas tikai vēl interesējas par Ubuntu Linux. Ja jums ir konkrēta problēma ar Ubuntu Linux ir ieteicams atnest uz pasākumu savu datoru, kurā šo problēmu var atkārtot, lai pasākumā esošie programmētāji varētu noteikt šīs problēmas iemeslu un palīdzētu no novērst. Installfests sāksies 14:00 un turpināsies līdz 16:00.

Ubuntu ir bezmaksas, uz Linux balstīta pilna apjoma operētājsistēma jebkuram personālajam datoram, serverim un portatīvajai iekārtai. Tās standarta komplektā iekļautas visas nepieciešamās programmas, lai strādātu ar tekstiem, attēliem, elektronisko pastu un Internetu, kā arī jūs varat instalēt papildus programmatūru dažādiem nolūkiem. Pasaulē to šobrīd jau lieto vairāk kā 8 miljoni cilvēku, un to legāli bez maksas var lietot gan mājās, gan komerciālās un nekomerciālās organizācijās.

LU Linux Centrs ir izveidots Latvijas Universitātes Datorikas fakultātē. Linux Centra darbības mērķi ir: popularizēt atvērtā pirmkoda (Open Source) programmatūras, tai skaitā, Linux operētājsistēmas un citu atvērto tehnoloģiju iespējas un priekšrocības; piedalīties LU studiju procesā un īstenot lietišķo IKT pētījumu projektus, tajos izmantojot un attīstot atvērtās tehnoloģijas; sekmēt APP pieejamību Latvijā un pasaulē.

Linuksys WRT54GL

Aigars Mahinovs — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:03:19 GMT

Daniel, I also recently installed a WRT on the Linksys WRT54GL. But I used DD-WRT instructions - went to http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database, entered my model number and got direct download links to the firmware along with a README.

One very important points in flashing these routers is to clear the NVRAM by doing a hard reset BEFORE and AFTER an upgrade to a different type of software on the device. Also, starting with a micro build is strongly recommended.

In any case the hardware looks to be very solid, especially if you don't need gigabit ethernet and n wireless, but might need some advanced networking features.

USB 3D Sound

Aigars Mahinovs — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:02:51 GMT

Want a sound card? Want a cleared sound that is not contaminated by electromagnetic interference in you computer's case? Want that all to work in Linux?

I did. So I got me one of theseUSB sound cards. It arrived today in a tiny padded envelope.

And it works with Linux. Just plug and play. PulseAudio makes it all trivial. The device ID as reported by lsusb is 0c76:1607 JMTek, LLC. The text on the back of the device says 'Model HY544 USB 3D Sound Pnp FC CE Made in China'.