GenietVanHetLeven!

Solution: Displaying KTimeTracker results chronologically

2012-01-28T16:50:00.000-05:00

KTimeTracker is very cool. It automatically adds events to an .ics file for events on the computer.

But it has no way to display the record in a chronological fashion.

The solution is a bit of a hack, but after several hours of googling about it seems to be the only way:

1. Load the .ics file as a new calendar in Thunderbird's Lightning calendar application (Sunbird is defunct, Evolution does not offer the conversion).
   File > Open > Calendar File > (Navigate to the .ics file)

   This will display most of the events as "Tasks" but not to worry, we are just using the file conversion feature of Lightning.

2. Export it as a .csv file:
       Right click on the calendar file in the left panel (e.g. chronology), select Export Calendar,
       select Outlook Comma Separated Values (.csv) as the output file format,
       and choose the filename (which in this case defaults to chronology)
       (Delete the calendar in Lightning: right click and choose Delete...)

4. Open the exportedfilename.csv in Excel or OpenOffice Calc. This will trigger the text-to-columns editor. Ensure you select Separated by: Commas and especially, Detect special numbers or else the times will be imported as text fields with a text delimiter I cannot figure out how to delete.

5. Format the date and time columns as desired. I prefer 24 hour formats, which at a touch confirms that the times have been properly imported.

6. Sort the result as you wish.

Easy when you know how...

As I said, this is a hack. It only gives the result at a snapshot of time. I wish KTimeTracker would just offer a chronological sort presentation, which would show ongoing results. But it doesn't.

NDAA, SOPA, PIPA, MPAA, RIAA, and Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

2012-01-18T20:31:00.002-05:00

18 January 2012 was an historic day, mark my words:

WE THE PEOPLE spoke with unequivocal clarity:

Yoh! Government! Butt Out!

There is a clear, dangerous, and hideous trend here:

NDAA: Elimination of habeas corpus protection, after 900 years
SOPA/PIPA:

Elimination of due process: arbitrary website shutdowns on suspicion of malfeasance broadly defined
Redirection of web access ("DNS" filtering): effectively reporting you to authorities for even trying to access certain websites

I won't sea-lawyer the details here, there are plenty of other sites that explore all the niceties. If you don't know the acronyms then Google and Wiki-dive when you can.

The point is that there is a collusion afoot between our elected representatives and big business "content vendors" (MPAA, RIAA) to restrict our historically defended (um, with blood, need I remind you) rights to freedom of body, speech, privacy, and spirit.

So what can you do?

MAKE A NOISE. Complain. Write. Join. Post.

If you just let it happen, if you insist on being politically correct, you have no one to blame but yourself. That is what happened in Germany in the 1930s.

Anyone who is purposely trying to hurt you is NOT your friend. Not family, not associates, especially not politicians.

So, MAKE A NOISE.

As for the MPAA, RIAA, News of the World, all the "Times", and the newspaper industry in general, consider the following:

Studies have shown that if someone likes a product they'll usually end up paying for it. That certainly goes for me.
On the other hand, I don't pay for trash.
Most of the movies out there are trash. Violence, foul language, stress... who needs it?
Packaging a ton of trash with the one good song is common recording industry practice. If you want the one good song you have to pay for all the trash you don't want.

London Times does the equivalent. You have to buy an entire week of papers to get Internet access to their site. I don't have time to read all that trash!! So I canceled my subscription, and haven't missed it a day.

I can go on and on. But the bottom line is that most people are decent. The people they are trying to get with these measures will find another way and most are just doing for fun or bragging rights anyhow. So they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

And when you do that at the expense of my freedom, liberty, and privacy, then I get mad.
Fighting mad.

And not just I.

LISTEN UP!! WE THE PEOPLE!!

As for actual measures to fix the problem:

Term Limits

We need to change the kind of people that are drawn to elected Government positions. That means changing the system fundamentally from risk-averse to risk-prone people. People willing to stand up and strike out.

Like me.

But people like that will burn out. So they won't stand for the twenty or so years it takes to get into a position in which you can actually accomplish something.

So the system needs to change to let people like me get in, fix things, and get out.

And that means TERM LIMITS. Three strikes and you're out:

First term to figure out what's happening
Second term to actually try to do something
Third term to start to become cynical and conniving.

And that's it, bubba, home for you.

It's no coincidence that that is why the military typically limits tours to three years. It works for action- and results-oriented people.

So:

Make a noise: write your representatives, post to your friends and the web. Do Something!

If not, you have only yourself to blame.

Linux Anti-Virus: Klamav

2011-09-29T15:11:00.000-05:00

For a number of reasons, I reinstalled Linux openSUSE 11.4, which then meant reinstalling all the apps, including clamav, the popular anti-virus app for Linux.

This time I discovered klamav, a KDE GUI for the underlying command line interface (CLI) clamav. (There is also a Gnome GUI, but I haven't used it yet.)

klamav is a true pleasure. Very well thought out and complete, as far as it goes.

And it goes quite a way.

Use it to:

Schedule virus scans on any number of directories, either recursively or not: it has a very easy functional decomposition tree of the directories. If you want to go recursively there is a simple click box: click it and any particular directory in the tree and all the children are automatically checked.
Conduct a scan immediately. Simply click scan.

And much more.

Of course, it has a few problems:

It offers only two email programs to be scanned dynamically as the messages arrive: kmail and Evolution. I searched, there was a Thunderbird ("T-bird") addon that supposedly solved this, but it has disappeared for version 7.0. But that doesn't really matter, as you can manually and on schedule do the scan, as noted above. And frankly, dynamic scanning is an exercise in paranoia for most Linux users...

It tags and (with your permission) quarantines the entire subdirectory containing a suspect file. And it does this by default if it finds stuff it doesn't understand, like any binaries or encrypted files. But this is not a problem unless you are doing a lot of encrypted PDF and binary transfers by email, which you shouldn't be doing anyhow. Use http, ftp, BitTorrent, or whatever else, not email... And even then, it has a 'way cool "check it out" feature: once the files/messages are quarantined you can right click to have their "problem" checked out online, (I found the google link the most helpful), and then with one click, restore them.

Most of the problems were of the "not understood" variety. I did find one file that possibly had a real virus, and deleted it.

But it would be nice if the author were to enable quarantining just the single offending file (rather than the entire subdirectory) and include Thunderbird in his list of supported email clients, or else offer a website posting on what it would take to create a filter to do so...

So very well done, and well recommended. Infinitely better and easier than struggling at the CLI.

Screwtape Zero, Andy One

2011-07-30T10:21:00.003-05:00

This summarizes the features of the fresh water system in M/V Pilgrim and measures taken to repair the problem of the fresh water pump failing to turn on until pressure is non-existent.

The freshwater pump was replaced in July 2010. The water pressure was falling to 0.5 bar before the pump would come on. It would then cut out at 1.7 bar. If you were in the shower you would have to get out of the shower to open the sink tap to trigger the pump to come on so that you could complete the shower.

At the end of the day, the problem was the selection of pressure switches. The original installation had an outboard pressure switch installed, but the new pump had an integrated switch. Loathe to foul things up I installed the new pump without modification, bypassing the outboard switch and using the integrated switch. It turns out that the pressures on the integrated switch are too low for our needs so we needed to reinstall the original outboard switch.

The second problem was determining maximum system pressures. There are at least six different choices, depending on which component you examine. Documentation is poor. We were unable to find documentation for the installed semi-rigid blue piping, but research indicated that most PVC piping can sustain pressures much higher than the accumulator tank (10 bar) or installed pressure gauge (4 bar). So in the end we adopted the maximum of the installed pressure gauge.

The third problem was then adjusting the outboard switch to fall within this range of pressures. We were not able to determine whether the switch had differential setting capabilities so had to experiment. It appears that it does not. Thus we had to settle for a 2.0 bar differential between cut-in/-out. The “green zone” maximum of 2.5 was adequate but this would cause a 0.5 bar cut-in, which is too low. So we accepted 1.2/3.2 bar.

A remaining problem may be final tweaking of the accumulator tank air pressure. It should be 0.15 bar below the pump cut-in switch. We have it somewhat less than that.

And then finally we need to investigate why the hot water side is substantially lower than the cold water. But tomorrow is another day.

It all looks terribly simple in the result, but life is easy when you know how and terribly difficult when you do not.

I do now know how, at least on this bit.

We have cut-in at 1.2 bar, cut-out at 3.2 bar, well within the pressure limits of the installed pressure gauge, accumulator tank, piping, and pump. And we no longer have to get out of the shower to open a tap to trigger the pump. Life is good.

Full report at
http://tinyurl.com/3j42vhp

Screwtape one, Andy zero

2011-07-29T17:00:00.000-05:00

Well maybe not.

There were just too many moving parts, too many things amiss, so I have decided to stay until next summer.

In the meantime, working to fix stuff.

Starting with the anchor windlass. But the switch had packed up. So I ordered a new one.

Incredible but true: there seem not to be any shops in London into which you can walk and obtain a part or a tube of caulking. So it is all by mail order, with the attendant delay.

So we got the new switch, but it requires NON-silicone caulk, so we're waiting for THAT by mail.

OK, then let's attack the water system.

Sigh. See the attached report.

OTOH, I get to stay in London.

So who really won?

Life is tough when you pay attention.

Screwtape doesn't want us to leave London

2011-07-23T12:48:00.000-05:00

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/shipping_forecast.html#All~All

Oh well... :-( We wouldn't have gone anyhow, even if the windlass HADN'T packed up. Force EIGHT!! Good grief!! That's FORTY KNOTS!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale

Gentlemen do not sail to windward. It tends to get rough and sloppy and spills the champagne and hors d'oerves, and that's simply not right.

Especially at forty knots.

!!!  

Screwtape definitely doesn't want me to leave.

In my underway checks I fixed the wrench for the cooling system, but then found that the transfer valve was frozen. So I worked that with WD-40 for a while and then it broke free - literally, with an ominous "crack" sound. Now it is *too* free. So I need to finish checking that out to see if I need to replace the valve.

As for the windlass, the circuit breaker had tripped, but when I reset the breaker I found the foot switch had packed up in the UP ON position, so the windlass was continually on, even though the anchor was fully up. So I need to replace the switch.

And then the cooling system cap was leaking - the gasket had expired, so I trekked to Halfords on One Mile Road. Mine is set for 19 psi but the biggest they had was 13  psi. So I bought it and then swapped out the gasket...

Wow. When you go past Wapping suddenly you are in Pakistan... THAT was an experience...

And then there are three connectors on a wiring harness that are dangling loose. I don't know what they are for but have kind of figured out they are connectors for a module that is not installed. But I need to confirm that,  with either the manufacturer or experimentation.

And then there is the deck washing pump that brings up seawater to wash the decks, it isn't pumping except a trickle...

These things happen with boats when you don't use them for a while ...

So I'll get all these squared away and if there is still time head out, otherwise will leave the boat here for another year and have it all squared away and ready to sail NEXT summer...

I really got spoilt having it in NL under the care of the marina - so much so that I have forgotten a lot of the details. I have them in my files but am now refreshing myself.

The more you know the more you know how little you know.

Travels with Mobile Broadband

2011-07-21T07:48:00.006-05:00

We're on travel in the UK aboard a boat in St. Katherine's Dock, London. There are some 33 different WiFi access points, the stronger two being Boingo.com and WiFiHotzone.com. But even these have spotty connectivity. So we sought a different solution. This relates our trials (and success) in employing "Mobile Broadband" solutions.

One alternative to WiFi is to use 3G Mobile Broadband "dongles" offered by BT, Vodafone, ThreeNet, and others. We chose Vodafone, which currently (July 2011) offers the ZTE K3570-Z "dongle".

These dongles are essentially a cellphone on a USB stick. They appear as a CD ISO containing Mac and Windows software but then are "Modeswitched" to appear as serial modems. This is all bleeding edge technology: easy if you know how but frustratingly difficult to figure out how if you don't. It took us about a week of experimentation and googling to finally crack it.

Part of the problem is the "can't get there from here" problem: You need to download software to install to have the thing work, but if you can't get it to work you can't connect to download! The WiFi connections have a very short timeout, the native Windows apps are huge (88MB). So finding an amazingly simple solution is amazingly difficult to do. But we did and here is how.

First, do your homework. We went around Robin Hood's barn but by then had learned enough to be able to responsibly get an appointment with a Vodafone technician at one of the stores. The first thing he did was transfer the 88 MB software and set it up on Windows (We're running Windows XP on VirtualBox). But then two hours elapsed while he fiddled with APNs, PINs, passwords, and other things, none of which worked. So as it was time for lunch I thanked him for his time and for the software and left.

When I got home the first thing I discovered was that he had created a second modem. I deleted it and off we went - but on Windows. Still no joy on Linux.

There is a site (http://www.betavine.net/) that offers a bunch of Linux programs under a Vodafone logo but they are for the older Huawei modems and don't seem to work with my unit.

But finally I found

http://www.sakis3g.org/

They have two programs: one with and one without the usb-modeswitching software. The latter uses the modeswitch software installed on your system, the former provides its own.

Full version embeds latest Usb-ModeSwitch version along with its device database. You should choose it if your distribution does not provide a recent Usb-ModeSwitch version, and you intend using a switchable USB modem.
Binary free version is architecture independent but it requires Usb-ModeSwitch being installed on your system.

I first installed Sakis3G binary free. It connected to "Interface #3" but no packets were exchanged and ping did not respond from the gateway.

So I deleted that and tried the full version.

Still no joy. It connected to the network but no communications occurred. Checked the firewall, no problem...

But then I realized that knetworkmanager was still running. Shut it down, tried again, success!

Woohoo! Finally!

There are some tricks picked up in the earlier travels (travails?):

Run the command as root. Getting the root password doesn't seem to work on my system.
Get the correct APN. Sakis3G helpfully lists the various options for vodafone. In my case it is the "new" PAYG APN: ppbundle.internet
Get the PIN and PUK codes printed on the back of the SIM card card before you throw away the residue! If you fail in this regard (throw away the residue before recording the PIN and PUK) you can read the phone number off the SIM then use the Vodafone site to request the PIN and PUK(assuming you can get some connectivity to reequest them). The PIN is 0000 by default.
Get the correct phone number to dial. In my case it was *99***6#. The dongles have a number of different "connection profiles" (sets of Internet settings) that vary with manufacturer and service. Here the 6 refers to the sixth connection profile.
Consensus of my research is that /dev/ttyUSB3 is the only one, of the five serial ports generated, that responds. Presumably this is the only one that corresponds to a modem interface on the ZTE K3570-Z.
Make sure you have changed the network to NOT use a network manager. Under openSUSE 11.4 this is accomplished with yast2 network > Network card > Global Options > Traditional Method with ifup. You don't actually have to use ifup since Sakis3G does that for you, but you have to do this to allow it to do it for you.

If you want to learn more about serial ports and modems then Sakis has a comprehensive tutorial at

http://wiki.sakis3g.org/wiki/index.php?title=USB_interface

So other than that, Mrs. Lincoln...

Easy when you know how.

Choices

2011-04-26T08:29:00.003-05:00

I need to flash the ROM (Read Only Memory) in my Fujitsu P1630.

I tried upgrading the RAM (Random Access Memory) to 2GB with third party memory, did not work. I then discovered the statement:

http://www.vendio.com/stores/Mem-store.com/item/microdimm-memory/2gb-ddr2-microdimm-memory-fuji/lid=7509034

It says I may have to reflash my BIOS to make the new memory work.

There is an excellent utility that creates a floppy image (1.44MB):

    http://www.linuxinsight.com/how-to-flash-motherboard-bios-from-linux-no-dos-windows-no-floppy-drive.html

The latest (4/26/11) version of the BIOS upgrade program is at

     http://support.fujitsupc.com/CS/Portal/supportsearch.do

It is

     MODEL #: P1630     BIOS VERSION: 1.10     DATE: 6/26/09

This includes a program, FlashAid, to run the BIOS update. The README says:

     STARTING FLASHAID:     To start FlashAid and update the BIOS, double click on the     P1630_BIOS_V1.10_FPC46-1582-04.exe BIOS data file that you have downloaded and follow the notes displayed on the screen.

But the Fujitsu file is 2.3 MB, too big for a DOS floppy.
So I need a Windows boot disk.

Allegedly, the Windows XP CD is a boot disk, so if we can boot and mount /data then we can run the program.

So first move the program to /data/computer/admin and then run the XP disk.

Well, it does indeed have an option (R) to run utilities, but it does not recognize the hard disk. And the CD drive requires both available USB ports, so we can't mount the outboard USB drive.

So much for that idea.

OK, next trick. the Ultimate Boot Disk For Windows (UBD4Win) seems well commended:

    http://www.ubcd4win.com/

But we are chasing our tail, as it also requires Windows to build the ISO. We may come back here eventually or use a friend's Win machine to build the CD.

It requires:
    ✓1. CD Burner and blank CD
    ✓2. Windows® XP CD, with at least Service Pack 1
        3. Download UBCD4Win
        4. Run the UBCD4Win EXE file (obviously needs Windows).
        5. Insert your XP CD with SP1/SP2 into a CD Rom drive.
            a. Create a "XPCD" folder on one of your internal hard drives.
            b. In Windows Explorer, select from the menu: Tools > Folder Options > View tab.
            c. Check that the [show hidden files and folders] radio button is selected and the [hide protected operating system files] is unchecked.
            d. Now copy the folders and files from your CD drive to the "XPCD" folder on your hard drive.
        6. Launch UBCD4WinBuilder.exe (located in your C:\ubcd4win folder)

And much much more (another nine huge steps...)

OK, but think again.

Now, Wine is just an API, right? So if the EXE will run on wine will it access the hardware directly?

OK, give it a try, if you don't hear from me soon it didn't work and I'm reinstalling openSuSE 11.4. But I've read my email, backed up everything, so give it a shot:

Hang on, no guts no glory. Let's try it first on the P1610!

Well, that doesn't work because there is no ROM update for the P1610 and, besides, we have already seen that the memory works there.

So the options are:

Gamble with wine
Go through the complicated UBCD4Win routine
Bite the bullet and get the memory from Fujitu (demanding in advance that they assure us it will work without a ROM flash)
Put it off for another day

I vote for the last.

I only need it if I'm trying to run Windows interactively with Linux; otherwise it swaps Linux to disk or is not needed at all. The Fujitsu price is almost half way to the price of a new complete tablet, so I'd be better off spending the money there, once I have it (which I don't right now).

So onward to other mysteries...

The entire political process is disgusting. But let's get explicit:

2011-04-15T00:38:00.002-05:00

Today the media are whooping and hollering about "Woohoo! $38 Billion Cut in Spending."

E.g.,
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-congress-spending-20110415,0,6839980.story

Come on people, give me an effing break. These are mere spits in the bucket, whether a risible $38B or the even more risible and infinitesimally small $352M.

The true answer is that the cuts apparently are less than one thousandth of one percent of the total budget!!!

Good Grief! And we were going to close down government over that? Democrats, get real.

Total smoke and mirrors, by their own announcements, if anyone knows how to use a calculator.

Don't people have a clue as to the magnitude of our debt??? Get a life, shut down the TV, and break out a calculator or spreadsheet:

+ The total 2011 Federal budget is 3.83 TRILLION.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_States_federal_budget

That is:
3,830,000,000,000 (3.83x10^12)

The alleged cut is 38 billion:

38,000,000,000 (3.8x10^10)

The ratio (cuts divided by Federal):

0.010 (That is less than ONE PERCENT: 10^(-2))

Even if it is true.

Which apparently it isn't:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/04/14/135404502/how-washington-turned-38-billion-into-352-million

So now the math is

Analyzed cut is 352 million:

352,000,000 (3.52x10^8)

The true ratio (true cuts divided by Federal budget):

0.000092 (9.2x10^(-5) Less than one thousandth of one percent)

Good grief!!! Can I stop laughing now? This is extremely risible.

And therein lies the problem.

There it is again, that 98th percentile number:

98% of the population haven't a clue what risible means.
98% of that population don't care.
98% of those don't have a clue where to go to find out. Even if they cared.

How can we quantify risible to the third power?

Shame, shame, shame.

But you can't shame people who have no pride and no self-respect. Which is the category into which I place the majority of our current political leadership.

Memory, Misty or Not

2011-04-09T18:17:00.039-05:00

Lack of memory is a pain. Personally it is inconvenient. On a computer it is a real pain. But figuring it out can be sort of fun, getting your fingers dirty in the inner bowels of the machine.

The machine in this case is the Fujitsu Lifebook P1630

http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/3_notebooks_fujitsu_1630.html

I've learned a lot of new jargon. For example:

2GB DDR2 667MHz PC2-5300 Memory Upgrade for Fujitsu-Siemens LifeBook P Series P1630. 1.8v 200-pin Non-Parity Un-Buffered

is translated as follows:

2GB	Short answer: Two billion bytes of Random Access Memory (RAM) Long answer: Approximately. Watch this space...
DDR2	One of at least three electrical forms of RAM, operating at 1.8 volts http://www.brighthub.com/computing/hardware/articles/12461.aspx Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory interface. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2_SDRAM In addition to double pumping the data bus as in DDR SDRAM (transferring data on the rising and falling edges of the bus clock signal), DDR2 allows higher bus speed and requires lower power by running the internal clock at half the speed of the data bus. You cannot substitute one for the other for at least two reasons: the voltages are different the notch in the chip is different
667MHz	The clock rate (sample rate) for the RAM
SDRAM	Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory (SDRAM) is Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) that is synchronized with the system bus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_dynamic_random_access_memory Classic DRAM has an asynchronous interface, which means that it responds as quickly as possible to changes in control inputs. SDRAM has a synchronous interface, meaning that it waits for a clock signal before responding to control inputs and is therefore synchronized with the computer's system bus. The clock is used to drive an internal finite state machine that pipelines incoming instructions. This allows the chip to have a more complex pattern of operation than an asynchronous DRAM, enabling higher speeds. Pipelining means that the chip can accept a new instruction before it has finished processing the previous one.
PC2-5300	PC2-xxxx denotes theoretical bandwidth.
1.8v	This refers to the voltage applied to the RAM. DDR3 operates at 1.5, so the voltage difference is one of the reasons the various DDR variations are not compatible.
200 Pin	(as distinguished from 240 pin). These are the number of connections on the edge of the RAM. http://reviews.cnet.com/ram-memory/?filter=500056_112956_ Desktop computers use 240 pin RAM, while laptops use 200 pin RAM.
Non-Parity (Non-ECC)	Parity refers to having an extra data byte for ECC (Error correction code) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_parity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_random_access_memory#Errors_and_error_correction
Un-buffered	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_memory Registered (also called buffered) memory modules have a register between the SDRAM modules and the system's memory controller. They place less electrical load on the memory controller and allow single systems to remain stable with more memory modules than they would have otherwise. Registered memory is more expensive because of the additional components, so it is usually found only in applications where the need for scalability and stability outweighs the need for a low price (servers, for example). Although most server-grade memory modules are both ECC and registered, there are registered non-ECC modules and non-registered ECC modules. There is a performance penalty for using registered memory. Each read or write is buffered for one cycle between the memory bus and the DRAM, so the registered RAM can be thought of as running one clock cycle "behind" an equivalent unregistered DRAM.

I've built a spreadsheet that calculates memory usage based on the free command. I set a base configuration of kernel, operating system, and GUI and record the output of free. The usage is the sum of the used column entries, comprising
    Mem:
    -/+ buffers/cache:
    Swap:

I then load (or unload) a single program. Again, the usage is the sum of the used column entries. The usage of the program is the difference in the original usage and the new usage.

In my present setup (Linux 2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop kernel, openSUSE 11.4, KDE 4.6) I have 1 GB of RAM and 2 GB of Disk Swap.

The results are variable. They depend on what other apps have already loaded common libraries. They also depend on activity since the system moves stuff from main memory to cache to swap depending on what apps and associated files are in demand. For example, on one app whenever you type something the usage jumps to 16 MB, but wait a few seconds without further activity and it settles back out at 6MB.

With those caveats, the following shows representative usage:

With minimal desktop (Firefox, Basket, konqueror, and kontact) 40 MB free (1.3GB used)
Firefox is a memory hog: 122MB
Konqueror uses 78 MB.
GnuCash uses 60MB.
The Oracle VirtualBox platform uses 48MB.
Baskets uses 25 MB.
Kontact uses 7 MB.
But then start Windows in the VBox: it immediately gobbles 506 MB with no applications visibly running.
Start TurboTax: another 10 MB.

Suffice it to say we need to get more RAM.

To Beep or Not to Beep: that is the bleeping question....

2011-04-07T14:12:00.012-05:00

Overview
There are quite a number of voice recorders out there for mobile phones. Several are quite well done.

But all have a common failing so far in that they cannot disable the recording beep function (notification to the parties that the call is being recorded) in the Nokia Symbian^3 phones. (Apparently they have been successful in disabling the function on older phones.)

Beyond the existence of the beep are the questions of whether you should (ethical) or must (legal) employ it.

So the various call recorder programs are mostly novelties (for Nokia Symbian^3 users) until success is achieved in being able to choose to (or not to) use the function and (for all users) until resolution is achieved regarding ethical and legal questions on its use (or non use).

Note to self: Perhaps lawyers should be more properly called parenthesisists???

Recording Beep Function Description
Googling suggests that the recording beep function exists in Symbian^3 phones as a file in the Read Only Memory (ROM) of the phone. You must remove or nullify this source file from the ROM, an event well beyond my ken and apparently beyond the ken of everyone else so far.

Googling reports indicate that trying to remove this file from Nokia Symbian^3 phones crashes the ROM and requires it to be "re-flashed" - i.e., rerecorded, something I do not know how to do at this time...

Intrusiveness
Given that there is a beep then the next question is, how intrusive is it?

The beep sound will not get recorded and you will not hear it when you play back your recordings.

But anytime it beeps during the conversation it distracts you from the matters at hand.

Googling reports issues with the amplitude (loudness) being extremely distracting.

And conceivably the frequency (pitch) of the tone might be quite irritating.

Distractions In professional employment translate to delays and loss of quality of service, hence time, hence dollars . Professional call centers have resolved this by inserting the familiar "This call is being recorded for training and quality control purposes." recording at the start of the conversation, thereafter leaving participants to carry on beep-free.

(To which I usually reply "Make my day", but I digress...)

But this option does not exist for Nokia Symbian^3 users.

So there is some threshold of amplitude, frequency, and periodicity above which the product becomes unusable. And in some products the beep causes a delay and subsequent distortion in the recorded signal.

Beep Control
There is some control to be had here. For example:

SymbRecorder has three beep modes.

In Modes 1 and 2 the beep occurs every 15 seconds.

In Mode 3 at the default Beep Suppress Tune of 80 the beep occurs every two seconds while at a Beep Suppress Tune of 6000 (the maximum available) it delays to seven seconds. Perhaps this function is better named the Beep Suppress Time in milliseconds??
Changing recording formats (AMR/WAV) has no effect on the beep.

So even if you can't get rid of it altogether, how about making it as infrequent as possible or examining the volume or frequency of the beep? Well, now you're back to the law, see Amplitude, Frequency, and Periodicity below...

Anyhow, here are my impressions after installing and using the programs on my Nokia Symbian^3 N8, with My Humble Opinion (MHO) being rated on a scale of x out of 5 (x/5):

TotalRecall (4.5/5)
http://tinyurl.com/6kx72m9
Probably the smoothest I've seen. It has two beep suppression modes: Enable and Enable Advanced. But neither suppresses the beep on the Nokia N8. They are "working on it".
SymbRecorder (4/5)
http://www.symbsoft.com/
Very cool, with lots of customization options - geek perfect.

But it also fails to suppress the beep on the Nokia N8. They also are working on it.

The first two modes are very good quality. The third mode introduces a distortion in the recording whenever the beep occurs although you don't hear the beep on the recording. You can tweak the sampling rate, so perhaps I could resolve that, but as long as the beep remains then why bother...
Best Call Recorder (3/5)
http://nokia-n8-software.smartphoneware.com/callrecorder.php
They post a warning: Warning: the disable beep function will not work properly on S^3 devices in most cases, please test the fully functional trial version on your device before you buy (see the Download link).

Sure enough, we installed it, the beep is there on the Nokia N8, annoyingly frequently (approximately every two seconds). It doesn't appear on the recording itself but does introduce a burble into the recording.
Nokia N8 Voice Recorder (1/5) A default-installed application in the Nokia N8. Very fidgety, no autostart. If you start it before the call then it suspends when you switch away If you wait to start it until after the call then you lose several seconds of the conversation. And in any case you get the beep.

Oh, I need to mention, all of these do a fine job of recording Voice Clips if the phone is not on a call. So, bravo!

But that is not the point. The point is how to lose the beep!

Ethics and Legality
Of course, all the vendors give some kind of "Don't sue me" caveat regarding the legality (or not) of recording calls without the beep. IMHO, it seems that ethical or legal culpability depends on the purpose to which the data are put. Simply collecting the data should not be considered unethical or illegal...

But then what do I know: I'm neither a priest nor a lawyer, just an engineer.

Instead, while googling seems not to address ethical questions it does seem to indicated that it is illegal in some (many) cases to even collect the data.

However, on reflection, these laws seem to be designed to protect the individual from third party violation of privacy. Not the inferred interaction among individuals!

See the following, with the bullets highlighting critical details:

http://www.accuratealways.com/support/learn/notification_law.htm:

The U.S. federal law allows recording of phone calls with the consent of at least one party. This means if you are initiating a recording on a call that you are participating in, the other party does not need to be notified that the call is being recorded.

This only makes sense if it is to protect you from a third party intrusion.

Currently, 12 states [including MA but not RI] require the consent of all parties. Interestingly, this is the most cited, albeit the minority, position among all my findings...
The Australian law prohibits a person from listening to or recording, by any means, of a communication in its passage over a telecommunications system without the knowledge of the person making the communication. Again, this suggests a jurisprudential focus on protecting the individuals from third party intrusion.

"A communication includes conversation and a message, and any part of a conversation or message, whether in the form of speech, music or other sounds, data, text, visual images, signals or in any other form or combination of forms."

http://www.connectionsmagazine.com/articles/2/236.html:

Some states and countries require "one-party notification" in which only one of the two individuals needs to be made aware that the call is being recorded... At least 37 US States, the District of Columbia, the US Federal law, Canada, and England only require one-party notification.

Amplitude, Frequency, and Periodicity
Apparently there are no specifications on the amplitude (loudness) of the beep. There are specific requirements for the beep tone:
http://www.vlrcommunications.com/record_regs.asp
The beep tone needs to be a 1260 to 1540 Hertz tone, lasting 170 to 250 milliseconds, and broadcast for both sides to hear every 12 to 15 seconds...

Going Forward
So, dear technologists, there is yet another opportunity for achievement in this world. Go forth and prosper: design systems with an option for the beep and, after the fact, figure out how to hack the ROMs of the world to control it.

And, as for Nokia (and any other manufacturers), a libertarian view: Yoh! Dude! Lose the beep!

Let me be responsible for my own happiness (and ethics and legality). Give me a paper to sign or whatever but

Let ME live MY life.

======================
Sequitur:

http://www.nokiarecorder.com/beep_free_nokia_recorder_compare.html

offers another objective comparison of the market leaders in this domain. Thanks to SymbSoft for pointing this out.

As for me, I am now a newbie student of ROM patching.

Googling: how to rom patch nokia n8

ROMPatcherPlus seems to be the market leader in this regard, but I haven't found its homepage, just a lot of warez sites.

Much fodder to examine. But not tonight.

Mobile Blogger

2011-04-07T12:43:00.003-05:00

Now, why didn't I think of this?
http://www.blogger.com/mobile-start.g

Better than SMS (a broadcast), better than Twitter (single point record of messages - the blog), simpler than a blog (instantaneous blogging without a keyboard:

a combination of all three!!

:-)

Sent from my Nokia N8, tweaked from my Linux openSUSE 11.4 Fujitsu P1630 :Lifebook

Task Managers and Tracking Time Usage

2011-04-05T09:33:00.000-05:00

I've spent quite a bit of time on evaluating task managers.

+ TaskJuggler fails to install even from the openSUSE RPMs:
http://software.opensuse.org/114/en
Depending on the selected version, the RPM is missing libkcal.so.2 or something else. Too hard.

+ Tasque is just too simple for my needs. It is little more than a list with a checkbox.

+ Task is a command line app.

+ ktimetracker (currently V4.4.10-3.2) is wonderful. It allows:

Functional decomposition of projects/tasks/clients
Automatic application usage logging
Time accumulations by different tasks and time periods
Integration with the KDE PIM (Kontact)
Chronological listing of events with the ability to add comments

The only problem is that the last bullet (for me the most desirable) apparently cannot be exported. I have tried copy/paste, Export this and that... Nope, it is all locked into the app. You can look but you can't touch.

Now, all that precious data resides inside an RFC 4225 ical (*.ics) file. Cool. I'll just open the ics, right?

Annnxxxx. WRONG. Very complicated, linear file with all kinds of irrelevant (to me) information, like lay days for the Gregorian calendar etc.

OTOH, the precious File > Edit History window does exactly what I want. I just can't get it out of the machine!! (Well, I haven't yet tried GIMP Screen shot with OCR, perhaps that will work...)

====
So my options are (in addition to extensive googling, from which it is not my friend):

1. Figure out how to get the Edit History window rendition out of ktimetracker. (I've written the developers, awaiting a reply.)

2. Find a similar app that isn't dead (GnoTime looked like the right answer but has apparently disappeared, certainly not supported by the openSUSE repositories). TaskCoach and rachota seemed promising but fail to do what ktimetracker does.

3. Figure out how to parse the complex ICS file.

I've failed on 1) and 2) so far. You'd think there would be a zillion ICS parsers out there for 3), but they are all libraries or modules (Ruby???!!) for developers. Surely there must be an off the shelf app that does this?

Enquring minds...

Stopping Runaway Processes: Magic SysRq Keys

2011-03-14T11:20:00.025-05:00

Pre-sequitur:

Consider the following Wikipedia entry that I subsequently found after doing all this work:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

 But it doesn't invalidate my findings:

     w f e v b (in that order) are the more useful.

And many of the claimed functions simply do not work, as discussed below.

Always willing to be corrected...

========================================================================

I found out how to get the kernel's attention when it is in some kind of process panic or runaway process. Before this, I just pulled the plug... :-(

So this is much more elegant:

        Alt+Fn+SysRq+<command key>

where +<command key> is one or another of a long list of characters, discussed below. It seems that

        w f e v b

(in that order) are the more useful.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

When I leave the machine idle for a while (going to bed, going to lunch) I often come back to find it frozen with mad disk thrashing going on. Sometimes I get its attention back with a mouse move or hitting the Esc key, but more often I just have to pull the plug.
What I find from /var/log/messages is that hald is doing a lot of stuff and won't let go of the system.

Today I noticed that the log ends with entries like:

Mar 12 14:07:42 P1630 kernel: [11391.748962] Out of memory: Kill process
1378 (hald) score 598 or sacrifice child
Mar 12 14:07:42 P1630 kernel: [11391.748968] Killed process 1504
(hald-runner) total-vm:56372kB, anon-rss:26496kB, file-rss:632kB
Googling tells me this is the response of the out of memory killer (oom_killer), so I"ve read a lot about how it calculates the score by which to decide which process to kill to free up memory, and the winner (or actually, loser) in each case is hald.
Pulling the plug is actually a PITA, Searching around (thanks DenverD) gave me a much more elegant solution:

        /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sysrq.txt

This  bears careful reading and even more careful experimentation, which I here report:

The Fujitsu P1630 keyboard has a Function (Fn) key which is used to invoke functions on other keys that are indicated by a box around the function name, such as SysRq. In this case the following are the results of various key combinations, where a comma implies a wait, a + implies pressing simultaneously, and <command key> implies any of the letters of the alphabet cited in the sysrq.txt source above:

Alt, Fn+SysRq+<command key> just brings up the screen shot module

Alt+Fn+SysRq+<command key> does nothing for <command key> = d g h.

 Instead, dmesg shows a help screen:

 [13321.912458] SysRq : HELP : loglevel(0-9) reBoot Crash terminate-all-tasks(E) memory-full-oom-kill(F) kill-all-tasks(I) thaw-filesystems(J) saK
  show-backtrace-all-active-cpus(L) show-memory-usage(M) nice-all-RT-tasks(N) powerOff show-registers(P) show-all-timers(Q) unRaw Sync
 show-task-states(T) Unmount force-fb(V) show-blocked-tasks(W) dump-ftrace-buffer(Z)

The following are the results for the remaining <command key> combinations:

Alt+Fn+SysRq+b  Will immediately reboot the system without syncing

                or unmounting your disks.

                This is clearly the most dangerous and exciting!

 
Alt+Fn+SysRq+e     Send a SIGTERM to all processes, except for init.

                   Dumps you to the terminal prompt.

                   This is almost as much fun as <b>...

Alt+Fn+SysRq+f     Calls oom_kill to kill a memory hog process. This is

                   probably the most commonly useful one, e.g.:
 [13385.402701] [11278]     0 11278     8026     2004   0       0             0 packagekitd
 [13385.402706] Out of memory: Kill process 3421 (firefox) score 122 or sacrifice child
 [13385.402716] Killed process 3631 (plugin-containe) total-vm:137648kB, anon-rss:840kB, file-rss:2436kB

Alt+Fn+SysRq+    i j k l m o all change the log levels:

        Alt+Fn+SysRq+i
        j[13859.996645] SysRq : Changing Loglevel [13859.996673] Loglevel set to 5 
        Alt+Fn+SysRq+j

          [14057.594808] SysRq : Changing Loglevel
         [14057.594837] Loglevel set to 1
        Alt+Fn+SysRq+k

         [14158.143866] SysRq : Changing Loglevel
         [14158.143894] Loglevel set to 2
        Alt+Fn+SysRq+l

         [14158.143866] SysRq : Changing Loglevel
         [14158.143894] Loglevel set to 3
        Alt+Fn+SysRq+m

          [14240.847738] SysRq : Changing Loglevel
         [14240.847767] Loglevel set to 0

        Alt+Fn+SysRq+o
         [14399.663636] SysRq : Changing Loglevel
         [14399.663660] Loglevel set to 6

Alt+Fn+SysRq+n        This adjusts the niceness of the tasks.

         [14327.222095] SysRq : Nice All RT Tasks

Alt+Fn+SysRq+p  Will dump the current registers and flags

                to your console to appear in dmesg).

Alt+Fn+SysRq+q  Will dump to dmesg per CPU lists of all

                armed hrtimers (but NOT regular timer_list

                timers) and detailed information about all
                clockevent devices.

Alt+Fn+SysRq+r  Turns off keyboard raw mode and sets it to XLATE.
        [14773.473596] SysRq : Keyboard mode set to system default

Alt+Fn+SysRq+s  Will attempt to sync all mounted filesystems.

        [14816.857775] SysRq : Emergency Sync
        [14816.860901] Emergency Sync complete

Alt+Fn+SysRq+t  Will dump a list of current tasks and their information to dmesg

Alt+Fn+SysRq+u  Will attempt to remount all mounted filesystems read-only

Alt+Fn+SysRq+v  Forcefully restores framebuffer console (same as b)

Alt+Fn+SysRq+w  Dumps tasks that are in uninterruptable (blocked) state.

So more experimentation later, but it seems like w f e v b (in that order) are the more useful.

How to Activate Macro Recording in LibreOffice 3.3.1

2011-03-14T10:35:00.000-05:00

Tools > Macros > Record does not exist in LibreOffice 3.3.1 on first installation. But you can add it with
    http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=28782&p=131108&hilit=record#p131108

     menu -- > Tools -->Customize brings up a new window. Select the Menus tab.

On that tabpage there is a dropdown box where you can select the part of the menu where you want insert the new item. It starts with File selected. Scroll down to Tools | Macros

Then click on the Add button.

Another window opens. In the left window Category select : BASIC
In the right-hand window Commands select : Record Macro
Click button : Add
Click : Close
Click : OK
Repeat this process for any other additions you wish, e.g., Stop Recording, Run Macro.

Now we add toolbar icons:

Tools > Customize > Toolbars Tab > Toolbar: Formatting > (Scroll to end of list) > Add > Category: BASIC > Commands:
    > Record
    > Stop Recording
    > Run Macro
    > LibreOffice Basic Macro Organizer

    >Close > OK

Easy to do but obscure and undocumented...

Another dead black beast: bluedevil!!

2011-03-10T16:17:00.002-05:00

Posted details to http://tinyurl.com/66wr4q7.

The Waveinput contributor bpa has taught (um, re-taught) me a valuable lesson:

+ When pushing the car back up the hill, it is best to go one step at a time. Tedious, but in the end more effective.

In this case it was one of adding one supporting application at a time, retesting, going back, doing it again.

And we have won:

+ Bluedevil requires the obex stack in addition to bluez! But none of the documentation I've seen describes this. So I have a self-assigned task to update the README file to make this clear.

Basically, we have loaded, unloaded, rebooted, reloaded, unloaded, etc. with a host of different combinations of stuff, finally deciding to do one-by-one:

+ Nuke all associated *blue* apps

+ Reboot

+ Add one thing at a time:
     - bluedevil (and nothing else that doesn't appear as being required)
     - on failure google around
     - discover obex
   - Add obex elements one-at-a-time, repeat.

+ Success achieved in this manner after adding obexd and obex-client.

New README file to follow.

openSUSE 11.4 RC2 bêtes noires: One down, more to go...

2011-03-09T19:28:00.000-05:00

Licked Squeezebox Server issues today, am delighting in Choral Evensong and Rachmaninoff as we speak.

Details posted to http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=80458&page=14:
:
So the key fixes were:

+ Providing a link to bootstrap.pm in one of the directories on the $PATH

+ Correcting the owner and group of the logs to squeezeboxserver

+ Setting up the firewall to masquerade the internal 192.168.x.0/24 network.

+ Explicitly setting Custom rules on the firewall to allow ports 3483 and 9000 in TCP and UDP.

Now for some tunes...

openSUSE 11.4 RC2 bêtes noires

2011-03-08T19:18:00.000-05:00

Call me a self-flagellant.

I was so pleased with the smooth upgrade to KDE 4.5.5 that I decided to just go ahead and follow the instructions to upgrade to OpenSuSE 11.4 (oS11.4). Spent several hours RTFM on zypper, set up the 11.4 repos and removed the older ones, and pushed zypper dup. About an hour later it was all done.

[Footnote: OpenSuSE is now calling itself openSUSE so I guess we can all stop following the ancient German-based capitalization scheme...]

It went well enough. oS11.4 is at Release Candidate 2 Beta with only a few days to the full release. But there are some questions, if not bugs:

+ The splash screen is a grey streaked thing with a jagged gecko in the lower right corner that looks as if the video is corrupted until you notice that the gecko in the middle of the screen is perfect. So maybe this is a Beta reservation of some sort? It goes on and brings up the plasma desktop without fault or error. And indeed, the new video is crystal clear. Very cool.

+ There is a new tool KPackageKit that seems to be trying to takeover from YaST. It wakes up and downloads a scrunch of stuff, even though I had just done zypper dup the night before.

+ Squezebox Server (SBS) 7.5.3 won't connect. Part of it was a firewall thing (dropped port 3483 packets) solved by moving from guarddog to.the openSUSE firewall and turning on masquerading, but it still doesn't load. It shows as enabled but doesn't load, and when explicitly loaded does not respond. Now this may be an oS11.4 thing, or it may be an SBS 7.5.3 thing. I've posted to the forum, watch this space.

+ My mouse problems have been solved by replacing the keyboard (and its included stick mouse).

Other than that no noticeable problems except:

+ Bluedevil. Aaargh.

It was working on oS11.3 with KDE 4.5.5 but now doesn't. More to follow, but at present:
    - It sees the phone, the phone sees it, they pair.
    - The phone can send files to Bluedevil, but not vice versa
    - Neither can browse the other.

So this is what we've done:

1. Delete PC from N8, N8 from PC, reboot both.

2. Discover N8 on PC (Manage devices):
    a. It finds the N8, sends a PIN. Acknowledge all prompts on the N8 (PIN, services, access, etc.)
    b. Set up services on PC (Send files), follow prompts
    c. Transition into attempt to send file. Follow prompts, select file, destination, OK. Nothing happens. No audio on phone, no prompt on PC, no files on phone.

3. Discover PC on N8 (delete pairing on N8, search and pair):
    + You have to be really quick as the prompt doesn't last long on the PC, and after a few attempts does not appear at all. So reboot and try this step again:
        - Minimize all PC windows, with mouse at about 3 o'clock on the screen
        - Start the process on the N8
        -click the PIN approval
    + Success. Send from N8 to PC: (have mouse in same position)
        - Accept connection: success.
    + Send file from PC to N8: no joy, same as 2c. above.
    + Delete pairings on both devices, re-pair on PC, but do NOT transition to send.
    + Attempt send: once again you have to be quick. The notifications widget has the attempts but doesn't alert! But same as2c. above, no joy.

So:
    + Pairing does work in both directions, but you havae to be quick if pairing from phone to PC.
    + Better to pair on the PC - the prompts are too short-lived and obscure on the PC.
    + File transfer works from phone to PC regardless of pairing direction. But watch the notifications area for prompts and be quick.
    + Browsing a remote device does not work in either direction.

The installed version is 1.0.2-3.8.1. What happens if we uninstall and reinstall an older version?
We find version 1.0-2.9 at
    http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Release:/45/openSUSE_11.3/i586/
and give it a whirl.This was the version that worked for us before. But no joy. They all show
    0.6 KiB/s
    0.0 KiB/sin the notifications section.

I've posted to
http://forums.opensuse.org/forums/english/get-technical-help-here/install-boot-login/455185-bluedevil-under-opensuse-11-4-rc2.html#post2300263
Se we await comments of others smarter than I.

FWIW, pretty much everything else works flawlessly on OS 11.4. Firefox 4 beta has a few problems, but that is not an OS 11.4 issue...

So all in all, a good couple of days.

Success! Bluedevil on OpenSuSE 11.3

2011-03-06T15:18:00.003-05:00

If you upgrade KDE to 4.5.5 or install KDE 4.4.4 development files (for ALL of KDE, OpenSuSE, and Bluedevil) then you can get Bluedevil to work, so far to the extent that I can now both receive AND SEND files between laptop and Bluetooth device.

Woohoo!!
=========================================
Details:

Continuing to try solving.

The tarball responds

ERROR: cmake/modules/FindKDE4Internal.cmake
Googling suggest running build-essential but this does not exist.

Repository search suggests it is in libKDE4, libKDEcore4, libkde4-devel, libkdepim-libs4-devel, kdepim4-runtime-devel, or kdepim4-devel, which are not installed. So I install them all.

That problem is solved, but now it can't find libBlueDevil, no problem we have 1.0-3.3 available as an RPM. Install it and try again. But it still can't find it.

So I go to the gym to clear my head and try one more time.

Go search at http://software.opensuse.org/search, choose the v. 1.0-2.9 ymp. Again, it can't find kdebase4 > 4.6, but volunteers to install an older version, I click OK.

It runs and runs and runs and ... claims Installation was successful.

But it wasn't. bluedevil is not to be found.

Re-check yast2: It shows it as being installed. KDE also shows it as being installed but the icon bounces up and down and eventually dies.

Check yast2: it offers updates for libluedevil1 and libluedevil-devel. The latter was not installed Accept these and try again. Now the icon appears in the tray.
Woohoo!! Finally! I can send files to the N8 and it puts them in E:/Received files.
=====
But notso fasto. When I reboot I get the dreaded Unable to start ksmserver. But now I know, although have not heretofore tried
zypper dup
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Zypper_usage

This command uses the distribution upgrade algorithm, which handles package splits, unmaintaned packages, and similar. Use it to switch to another distribution release.

# zypper dup

It is recommended to enable only the main repository of the distribution you want to install plus a few important repositories you were using (even better - their version corresponding to the current main repository) during a dist-upgrade. You can achieve this by disabling the old repositories using zypper mr -da, adding the new repositories via zypper ar and issuing zypper dup. You can also specify repositories to be used using --repo option: zypper dup -r repo1 -r repo2 ....

This runs freaking forever, but on reboot, all is now working. Well, at least Bluedevil is working.

Start > Favorites > Configure Desktop > Help > About KDE shows that I have been upgraded to KDE 4.5.5. Totally painlessly.

So now that was so much fun, I followed the advice of
http://tinyurl.com/6kvoflv
to upgrade to OpenSuSE 11.4!

Next step: return to resolve and review OpenSync.

Great progress, great day.

Dependency Hell

2011-03-04T22:47:00.002-05:00

Note to reader: This is now 6 March 2011. I have learned more, so am editing this post to change things that no longer are correct. If you have saved information earlier than today then please review this article.

If you upgrade KDE to 4.5.5 or install KDE 4.4.4 development files (as posted later) then you can get Bluedevil to work, so far to the extent that I can now both receive AND SEND files between laptop and Bluetooth device. The strikethrough fonts below demonstrate the deprecated remarks.

The solution appears to install devel packages for ALL of KDE, OpenSuSE, and bluedevil (libbluedevil1). So while it isn't presently easy, it is doable

=================================================

A fresh morning, a fresh start:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Distro:/Factory/openSUSE_Factory/i586/
Download libbluedevil1-1.8-8.2.i586.rpm and bluedevil-1.0.2-32.2.i586.rpm. The first installs flawlessly, the second complains about not having kdebase4-runtime >4.6.

This is where we crashed ksmserver yesterday. So this time I just skip that requirement and let it go ahead an install. But it fails.

OK, download and install kdebase4-runtime-4.6.0-287.1.i586.rpm since this time we have the zypper fix for the crash...

But it needs QTDeclarative.so.4. This is provided by lib32-qt, but that is not in the repositories.

So checked and updated the repositories and added OpenSuSE Build Service - KDE: Updated Apps.

We check https://build.opensuse.org for the dependencies. We have all the direct ones but as above kdebase4-runtime lacks some that do not exist in our repositories or yast2 web search:

dbus1-x11
kdebase4-runtime-branding-upstream
libIlmImf6
libexiv2-9
libjpeg62
~~So I am correct. We ain't there yet.~~

OpenSync Installation Protocol

2011-03-04T22:17:00.001-05:00

So absent my current problems with Bluetooth, hopefully soon to be cured with OpenSuSE 11.4, here is the installation protocol I have gleaned from all the multitudinous sources. Again, I'll make it pretty tomorrow:

=============================================
1. Start clean. Nuke all opensync files and directories then download and install:
    - libsyncml
    - libsyncml-tools
    - libopensync
    - libopensync-pluginxxx
     where xxx is one of the following:
        -evolution2
        --file
        -gnokii
        -kdepim
        -syncml
        -python-module
    - libopensync-tools

libopensync-plugin-kdepim is problematic as it no longer seems to exist.
The multisync-gui is nothing more than a text editor for the two configuration files.

2. Check to see if everything went right:
    msynctool --listplugins
    Result:
    Available plugins:
    syncml-obex-client
    evo2-sync
    gnokii-sync
    file-sync
We did not get syncml-http-server but it is there, check by running
    syncml-http-server

3. Set up the phone to sync. My N8 uses
    Settings
        > Connectivity
            > USB > Nokia Ovi Suite
            > Data Transfer
                > Sync
                    x Contacts
                    x Calendar
                    x Notes
                    x Bookmarks

All the following are done as user, not root:

4. Create a directory to store your files:
    mkdir ~/files_from_nokia

5. Add groups:
    a. Add a group to sync your Nokia to Evolution as user:
        msynctool --addgroup nokia2evo
    b. Add a group to sync your Nokia to files as user:
        msynctool --addgroup nokia2file

6. Add members to each group:
    a. Add members to the Evolution group
        msynctool --addmember nokia2evo evo2-sync
        msynctool --addmember nokia2evo syncml-obex-client
    b. Add members to the File group
        msynctool --addmember nokia2file file-sync
        msynctool --addmember nokia2file syncml-obex-client

7. Detect your phone over bluetooth:
    hcitool scan    This returns
        Scanning ...
                E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC       Andy's N8
    http://osdir.com/ml/misc.opensync.user/2006-11/msg00006.html
    A easy way to check/create your bluetooth pairing is (as root):

All the following are done as root, not user:
        hcitool cc E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC
                Runs fine

        hcitool auth E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC
            Not connected
             So we connect with the p1630 Bluetooth manager. Now: same answer, although the manager says we're connected.
        hcitool dc E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC
            Not connected

        sdptool browse E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC
            This returns the long list of services even with USB cable removed. So we are clearly connected, despite what hcitool auth says. So there is a problem with Bluetooth in general, as investigated and reported in my previous report.

8. Get all services available on this phone:
    sdptool browse E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC | less
     This returns a very long list (253 lines in my case) of services, listed in the sub-tab Services.
    The |less pipe lets you scroll up and down the list using up and down arrows.

9. Find the USB services offered by the phone. Plug in the USB cable and do
    syncml-obex-client -u
    If you don't plug in the cable you will get
        Found 0 USB OBEX interfaces
    With the USB cable connected you will get
    Found 4 USB OBEX interfaces
    Interface 0:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: SYNCML-SYNC
    Interface 1:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: PC Suite Services
    Interface 2:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: SYNCML-DM
    Interface 3:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: Haptics Bridge
    Use '-u interface_number' to connect

All the following are done as user, not root:
10. Configure clients:
    a. Evolution clients:
        i. Configure client 1 evo2-sync:
             msynctool --configure nokia2evo 1
             This creates the configuration file and opens it in vi. For this member much needs to be done, and done so much more easily in kate or some other GUI text editor so just quit:
      :q[Enter]

        ii. Configure client 2 syncml-obex-client:
             msynctool --configure nokia2evo 2
             Again, this creates the configuration file and opens it in vi. For this member much needs to be done, and done so much more easily in kate or some other GUI text editor so just quit
:q[Enter]

    b. File clients:
        i. Configure client 1 file-sync:
             msynctool --configure nokia2file 1
            This creates the configuration file and opens it in vi. For this member much needs to be done, and done so much more easily in kate or some other GUI text editor so just quit
      :q[Enter]

        ii. Configure client 2 syncml-obex-client:
             msynctool --configure nokia2file 2
            Again, this creates the configuration file and opens it in vi. For this member much needs to be done, and done so much more easily in kate or some other GUI text editor so just quit
     :q[Enter]

10. Refine client configurations. Open the file in your favorite editor. The file to open is:
        /home/$user/.opensync/groupm/n/syncmember.conf
    where
            $user is your user name (e.g., andy)
            m is the group number:
                1    Evolution group
                2    File group
            n is the member number:
                1    set number (evo, file)
                2    obex-client

    a. Refine configuration for nokia2evo evo-sync:
        kate /home/andy/.opensync/group1/1/evo2-sync.conf
        This file needs the explicit path to the evolution databases. Replace:
            default
         with (note to delete the trailing slash)
            ~/.evolution/addressbook/local/system
            ~/.evolution/calendar/local/system
            /~/.evolution/tasks/local/system

    b. Refine configuration for nokia2evo file-sync
        kate /home/andy/.opensync/group2/1/file-sync.conf
        This file needs the explicit path to where to save files. Replace:
            default
                    with            ~/files_from_nokia

    c. Refine configuration for syncml-obex-clients for both Evolution and File:
        i. Make the uncontroversial settings:
            + Bluetooth MAC address:E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC or whatever your value is from hcitool scan

            + The string that the plugin will use to identify itself.
                The identifier for Nokia mobile phones is:
                        PC Suite
                This parameter sets the "Synchronization Software" Identifier, which will be used to identify to the mobile phone. Most mobile phones ignore this identifier value. So far we only know Nokia mobile phones, which reject the synchronization when the identifier is wrong.

            + Other settings:
                https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NokiaEvolutionSyncing/Opensync suggests:
                    * version: 1
                    * wbxml: 1
                    --wbxml
                    This switch to WAP Binary XML instead of plain XML in the synchronization.
                    So far as we known this is used by most mobile phones, so we enable it by default.
                    If you have trouble with the initial sync testcase remove this parameter.
                    * usestringtable: 1
                    * recvLimit: 10000    Default is 0
                    * maxObjSize: 10000     Default is 0
                Don't change contact_db, calendar_db or note_db, and don't put in a username or password (perhaps unless you have one set up in the phone).

                https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NokiaEvolutionSyncing/Opensync
                    says to set it to the channel being used by SyncML Server (10).
                    But other sources suggest using the SyncML Client (6)
                    And then we are using PC Suite Services, which suggests channel 8
                    So this needs to be determined by tests.

            + The USB interface number of the SYNCML-SYNC target returned by step 8 sdptool browse. The conf file says this is is the interface number (0) from step 9 above (syncml-obex-client -u with USB cable)
                    Interface 0:
                            Interface description: SYNCML-SYNC
                    Interface 1:
                            Interface description: PC Suite Services
                    Interface 2:
                            Interface description: SYNCML-DM
                    Interface 3:
                            Interface description: Haptics Bridge

        c. Additional settings not in the default .conf file
            https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NokiaEvolutionSyncing/Opensync
                suggests additional settings for USB:
                You'll need to fix permissions for your USB device. First you should connect your device with the usb cable. Then make sure that the lsusb command lists your device:
                    lsusb
                returns a bunch, including
                Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0421:0302 Nokia Mobile Phones

            i. Change the rules:
                + Unplug the phone
                + Use kate as root to modify /etc/udev/rules.d/40-nokia-mobiles.rules. The file does not exist.
                    Write it as
                    BUS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0421", SYSFS{idProduct}=="*", MODE="0660", GROUP="dialout"
                    # This might work if the above doesn't :-( (substitutes ATTR for SYSFS)
                    # SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0421", ATTR{idProduct}=="*", MODE="0660", GROUP="dialout"                 + Run as root:
                    /etc/init.d/boot.udev reload                + Replug the phone

11. Check Bluetooth
    syncml-obex-client -b E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC #        where # is 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10
        -b
        This parameter is for Bluetooth connections. For fill in the MAC address of your mobile phone and for the number of the SyncML service. But these all fail with
            Failed to start the client: You have to configure at least one database

12. To get a resume of your configuration just do a:
    msynctool --showgroup sync_nokia2file

13. Now all is configured: just sync your date from your phone to your computer:
    msynctool --sync sync_nokia2file

============================
In theory, enjoy. But first, we need to fix Bluetooth and USB connectivity.

Phew...

2011-03-04T00:59:00.004-05:00

Note to reader: This is now 6 March 2011. I have learned more, so am editing this post to change things that no longer are correct. If you have saved information earlier than today then please review this article.
======================================================
What a day... Indeed, what a number of days...

I have spent the last several days trying to get a top down view of OpenSync.

Below is my first take, my gleanings from the zillions of postings on the subject. I will be ecstatic if someone would post comments directing me to the contrary:

Point one:

+ Everything I have found is at the warp and weft level
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaving

The postings address the finest details of the most lowly elements of the architecture, but I have not found anything that offers a top-down description of the architecture. Not even from the source...

So as a result, there seems not to exist any source that describes in a single document on a macro level how to integrate the architecture with the remainder of the computer world. It seems to be an own-self-navel-contemplating structure in an ivory tower impervious to the forces of reality... :-(

-----
OK, dude, here is some reality, below.

Point two:

+ Great idea, but to date, poor execution. Aside from the relevance and context issue above, there is the issue of functionality. Guess what: it is broken.

At least it is broken on OpenSuSE 11.3.

=====
Look: here's the deal:

OpenSync is a great idea. You have a central engine that can translate from X to Y. X can be any of a zillion of different modules referred to as "plugins" that the user can choose among. Y can be any of a zillion same or different modules ("plugins") among which the user can choose.

This reminds me of the project for which I was a program manager at a large company once upon a time. Take X, translate it to a common format (XML?) and then translate it to Y.

Great Idea.

=====
Howevah, Poor Execution:

+ Lots of people seem to be working on the intimate details of all the possible X and Y variations.

+ But THE WHOLE SYSTEM depends on access to hardware, that is on Bluetooth and USB interfaces. And there seems to be precious little effort there.

I'm on OpenSuSE 11.3. It seems by allegation that its default Bluetooth interface (kbluetooth) for the underlying protocol stack (bluez) is broken.

However, if you upgrade KDE to 4.5.5 or install KDE 4.4.4 development files (as posted later) then you can get Bluedevil to work, so far to the extent that I can now both receive AND SEND files between laptop and Bluetooth device. The strikethrough fonts below demonstrate the deprecated remarks.

Indeed, irrespective of OpenSync I can transfer data from a remote Bluetooth device to the bluez-equipped computer using the remote device's software. ~~But I cannot transfer data from the computer to the device, despite kbluetooth's offering to do so. It doesn't work~~

So what alternatives exist?

bluedevil (http://www.afiestas.org/bluedevil-the-new-kde-bluetooth-stack-is-here/) is widely touted as the solution. But actually installing it is dependency hell. I have spent the entire day trying different combinations of RPMs, YMPs (YaST Meta Packages), git streams, and tarballs. All fail in one or another way, one way in particular wiping my KDE 4.4 installation (cannot start kmserver) requiring a system reinstall ("update"). The solution appears to install devel packages for ALL of KDE, OpenSuSE, and bluedevil (libbluedevil1). So while it isn't presently easy, it is doable.So yet another Great Idea But Poor Execution. The developers are not on the bleeding edge, they are on the hemorrhaging edge of the latest KDE variation (4.5.5) and installation techniques (CMAKE) for which little or no documentation exist.

~~How the heck do you use cmake anyhow? The source says just do ccmake but that crashes...~~

-----

OK, next rant. If Bluetooth won't work, how about USB, hmmm?

Well, it turns out that "OpenSync does not currently support accessing the raw USB device" or words to that effect.

In other words, it doesn't work on USB.

=====

So OK, kwitcherbichingnobodypromisedyouarosegarden, ok.

You can't make a case. It is free and open software, you get what you pay for.

But it would be nice if someone, in the course of doing the best that they can do, were to post a list of the things we are trying to do, each with an annotation of where we stand. A "todo" list so that at once:
+ A newbie can know where the project is along its trajectory
+ A supporter can see where he can apply his efforts to best solve the issue.

My contribution is in general providing the top down view posted below, and today getting my arms around the bluetooth/bluedevil part of it, contacting the developers and asking for information so I can make it better.

But we ain't there yet. The following is what I have figured out so far, I'll make it pretty tomorrow:

===========================================
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSync
OVERALL ARCHITECTURE
Opensync software comprises a main engine and "plugins".

There are two version sets: STABLE (v. 0.22 series) and UNSTABLE (v.0.39 series)

The STABLE main engine is libopensync. The UNSTABLE main engine is libopensync1.

The STABLE plugins are libopensync-plugin-(suffix).
The UNSTABLE plugins are opensync-plugin-(suffix).
(suffix) is, for both versions:

      Suffix        Syncs to and from

    -evolution2         Evolution

    --file              files on the computer

    -gnokii             older non-OBEX Nokia phones

    -kdepim             KDE3/4 PIMs (kontact, kaddress)

    -syncml             OBEX supporting platforms

    -python-module      Allows python plugins to be used

    -google-calendar    Google calendar

    -gpe                GPE handhelds

    -irmc               IrMC (Sony Ericsson, Siemens) handhelds

    -moto               Motorola handhelds

    -opie               Opie/OpenZaurus handhelds

    -palm               Palm devices

    -sunbird            Mozilla Sunbird calendar

Media
The architecture is designed to be implemented on both bluetooth and USB connections.

http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSync/SyncML-OBEX-Client

In openSUSE 10.2 Beta 2 there is no permission for the desktop user to access the USB raw interface by default. When we receive lots of USB Products and Vendor IDs of mobile phones, from the community then we can provide a hal-resmgr fdi file which grants access to the USB RAW interface of your mobile phone.

This implies that except for testing, syncml-obex-client does not function on USB.

http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/USB:
This page is about capturing raw USB traffic, e.g. the packets a USB mouse will generate on the Universal Serial Bus.

To dump USB traffic on Linux, you need the usbmon module. Load it with the command

modprobe usbmon

Implementation: Sets, Groups, and Members
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSync
Implementation requires establishing a synchronization set, containing several groups. Each group contains several members.

Establishing the Set
The set is established by the existence of a group and its configuration. The set is identified by a field common to all the group and member configuration files. The most common set for Nokia devices is PC Suite

Adding Groups
Groups are created by the command
    msynctool --addgroup $groupname
    The group name can be any single alphanumeric word, e.g., nokia2evo, nokia2file, and so forth.

    Creating a group creates two subdirectories
        ~/.opensync/engines
        ~/.opensync/groupn
    where n is the next sequential number 1...n that has not previously been used for a group.

Adding Members
Members are added to the group by the command
    msynctool --addmember $groupname $membername
    The member name must be the name of the function in the desired plugin:

    Plugin        Membername
    -evolution2    evo2-sync
    --file       file-sync
    -gnokii        gnokii-sync
    -kdepim        kdepim-sync
    -syncml        syncml-obex-client Currently only Bluetooth?
                   syncml-http-server
    -python-module Allows python plugins to be used
    -google-calendar    google-calendar-sync
    -gpe       gpe-sync
    -irmc          irmc-sync
    -moto          moto-sync
    -opie          opie-sync
    -palm          palm-sync
    -sunbird       sunbird-sync

    Adding a member creates a subdirectory
        ~/.opensync/groupn/m
    where m is the next sequential number 1...n that has not previously been used for a member.

Viable group membership include:

    nokia2file
        file-sync
        syncml-obex-client

    nokia2evo
        evo2-sync
        syncml-obex-client

Configuration
For each group configure each client by invoking
    Configure client 2 syncml-obex-client:
    msynctool --configure $groupname $membernumber

    This creates the configuration file and opens it in vi.

    For some members nothing needs to be done, so just issue the vi command:

        :q[Enter]

    For other members much needs to be done but is done so much more
    easily in kate or some other GUI text editor so just quit:

        :q[Enter]

    then open the file in your favorite editor.

    The file to open is:

        /home/$user/.opensync/$groupnumber/$membernumber/syncmember.conf

    where

     $user is your user name,
     $groupnumber is the sequential number for the group, and
     $membernumber is the sequential number for the member, obtained from the -addgroup and -addmember actions described above.

Testing
Testing involves giving commands and recording the results.

    syncml-obex-client
    http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSync/SyncML-OBEX-Client#Testcase_Basics
        This URL discusses a number of tests. Essentially they are setting the parameters of the syncml-obex-client configuration file and testing its response. All are invoked with the following command:

        syncml-obex-client --$testtype [$test parameters]

            where $testtype [$test parameters] can be any of the following:

--sync $type $database   Set data types to be synched

--identifer $name        Set syncronization set identifier

--wbxml                  Sets use of wbxml format 

                         (WAP Binary XML instead of 

                         plain XML)

-u             With no id it will list all available
                interfaces
                With id it will ????
-b             Bluetooth configuration

        syncml-obex-client --sync $type $database
        where:
            * type: stands for the mimetype -
                  o text/x-vcard - for contacts
                  o text/x-vcalendar - for events
                  o text/plain - for notes

            * database: is the name of the database in the device which stores the entries. Known database names:
                  o contacts
                  o calendar
                  o notes
                  o tasks
                  o agenda (on some Sony Ericsson, for W800i both calendar as well as agenda work)

    hcitool
        hcitool is a tool for testing bluetooth connections. It currently has only one option:
            hcitool scan
                Scans for Bluetooth devices and list the name of the device and the MAC address.
                Ensure your Bluetooth is enable on your mobile phone and is discoverable.

    sdptool
        sdptool is a tool for exploring Bluetooth connections. It currently has only one option:
            sdptool browse
                returns the Bluetooth service of the device and their channel numbers.
                The Nokia N8 returns a very long list of available Bluetooth services. The literature
                is unclear on which channel to use. This source suggests using the channel for
                    SyncMLClient         6
                while others suggest
                    SyncMLServer         10
                Also plausible are
                    OBEX File Transfer    7
                    OBEX PC Suite Services    8
                So further explanation or testing is required to resolve this parameter.
================
Next, what I've gleaned as a step-by-step installation process, assuming you can get past the USB and bluetooth issues that I'm having on OpenSuSE 11.3.

Nokia Frustration, cont'd

2011-02-26T21:46:00.002-05:00

http://www.opensync.org/ is the source and is for OpenSync 0.2 - we are on 0.22-156.1 so it should be applicable...

OpenSync is a successor of project Multisync, created by the same people.

http://www.opensync.org/wiki/GettingStarted
To get started with OpenSync you probably need:

    * OpenSync itself, the core:
          it is a library and does not contain any plugins or user interfaces. It is the engine for synchronization.

    * The format plugins.
          OpenSync converts every data into standard formats before performing the synchronization. You will require at least one of the following plugins:

    (We do not have any of these nor are they offered by YaST!)

    + vformat:
          supports vcard, vcal, iCalendar, vtodo and vnote. It is required for devices that directly provide this kind of format.

    + xmlformat:
          enables to handle any xml compatible data, like documents, bookmarks, notes and contacts. It is the central format for libopensync to perform changes comparison and mergers, this format is required.

    + The peer plugins:
          there is one plugin per type of thing to synchronize (files, PDAs, smartphones, Google Calendar, whatever). Note that the version number for the OpenSync core must match that of the plugins you want to use. For instance, you can use the Evolution2's plugin 0.22 with OpenSync-0.22 but not with OpenSync-0.36 and viceversa. (All our plugins are 0.22

    * Some kind of user interface (UI):
          such as Multisync or Kitchensync for KDE. Multisync contains both a command line tool (osynctool) and a GUI written in GTK. Note that multisync versions older than 0.90 are not relying on OpenSync and won't work''

(We do not have either of these nor are they offered by YaST. Multisync-GUI is available, but as noted yesterday it is only a text editor for the configuration file. The notes on this state "This package is independent from the various multisync-* packages which will be obsoleted once OpenSync has left the beta phase." It would seem that this has already occurred if none of the mulitsync-* packages are offered.

http://www.opensync.org/wiki/download gives the latest (0.22) resources for Gentoo, Mandriva, and OpenSuSE. Since our present install is not working there is no harm in nuking it and downloading the Factory package for OpenSuSE. This detail is available on request, but suffice it to say we have the latest and all seem to by in sync among themselves.

But these do not include KitchenSync.

     http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/KitchenSync?content=132538 offers an UNSTABLE version for OpenSuSE, so we give it a try. But it conflicts with the gnokii plug in, so we let it deinstall that plugin, we can always add it later. But then it wants to wipe the entire opensync install, so we say fuggedabout kitchensync for now.

And that is where the guidance stops.

So other than having replaced the software with slightly newer versions, we are where we ended yesterday.

=====

So OK, we've done due diligence by going to the OpenSync source and RTFM. It's just that the manual is a bit short.

Nuke the old configuration files, reboot, and start again.

======================================================================
OK, from the top:
1. Download files        Done

2. Test if everything went right:
    msynctool --listplugins    Result:
    Available plugins:
    syncml-obex-client
    evo2-sync
    gnokii-sync
    file-syncWe did not get syncml-http-server suggested by the ubuntu site.

All the following are done as user, not root:

3 Create a directory to store your files:
    mkdir ~/files_from_nokia
4. Add a group to sync your nokia to Evolution as user:
    msynctool --addgroup nokia2evo
5. Add members
    msynctool --addmember nokia2evo evo2-sync
    msynctool --addmember nokia2evo syncml-obex-client
6. Detect your phone over bluetooth:
    hcitool scan    This returns
        Scanning ...
                E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC       Andy's N8
7. Get all services available on this phone:
    sdptool browse E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC | less    This returns a very long list (253 lines in my case) of services, listed in the sub-tab Services.
    The |less pipe lets you scroll up and down the list using up and down arrows.

    Of particular interest is:
        Service Name: Nokia SyncML Server
        Channel: 10

8. Find the USB services offered by the phone. Plug in the USB cable first and do
    syncml-obex-client -u    If you don't plug in the cable you will get
        Found 0 USB OBEX interfaces    With the USB cable connected you will get
    Found 4 USB OBEX interfaces
    Interface 0:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: SYNCML-SYNC
    Interface 1:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: PC Suite Services
    Interface 2:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: SYNCML-DM
    Interface 3:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: Haptics Bridge
    Use '-u interface_number' to connect
    The SYNCML-SYNC interface is of particular interest.

9. Configure client 1 evo2-sync:
    msynctool --configure nokia2evo 1    This creates the configuration file and opens it in vi. For this member nothing needs to be done, so just quit (:q[Enter])

10. Configure client 2 syncml-obex-client:
    msynctool --configure nokia2evo 2    Again, this creates the configuration file and opens it in vi. For this member much needs to be done, and done so much more easily in kate or some other GUI text editor so just quit (:q[Enter]) then open the file in your favorite editor. The file to open is:
    /home/$user/.opensync/group1/2/syncmember.conf    where $user is your user name.

    Now:
    + Bluetooth MAC address: E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC (yours from the hcitool scan above)

    + Bluetooth channel:
        There is some confusion. Yesterday's work indicated it should be the Syncml Client channel, while today https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NokiaEvolutionSyncing/Opensync says to set it to the channel being used by SyncML Server from step 7. above, which returns this as channel 10.

    + The usb interface number of the SYNCML-SYNC target:
        This is the interface number (0) from step 8 above.

    + Set the connection type to use. 5 means obex over usb, 2 means obex over bluetooth

    + The string that the plugin will use to identify itself.
        https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NokiaEvolutionSyncing/Opensync suggests PC Suite.
        The phone itself at Settings > Connectivity > Data Transfer > Sync is titled the same.

    + Other settings:
        https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NokiaEvolutionSyncing/Opensync suggests:
            * version: 1
            * wbxml: 1
            * usestringtable: 1
            * recvLimit: 10000    Default is 0
            * maxObjSize: 10000     Default is 0
        Don't change contact_db, calendar_db or note_db, and don't put in a username or password
            (perhaps unless you have one set up in the phone).

    + Additional settings not in the default .conf file
        https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NokiaEvolutionSyncing/Opensync suggests additional settings for

        USB:
            You'll need to fix permissions for your USB device. First you should connect your device with the usb cable. Then make sure that the lsusb command lists your device:
            lsusb
            returns a bunch, including
            Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0421:0302 Nokia Mobile Phones
        Now they want us to change some rules, but first let's just see if it flies as is.
        But the response is
            USB:
                Error while synchronizing: Invalid answer from plugin process            Bluetooth:
                Member 2 of type syncml-obex-client had an error while connecting: Bluetooth connect error
11. OK, change the rules:
    + Unplug the phone
    + Use kate as root to modify /etc/udev/rules.d/40-nokia-mobiles.rules. The file does not exist. Write it as
        BUS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0421", SYSFS{idProduct}=="*", MODE="0660", GROUP="dialout"
        # This might work if the above doesn't :-( (substitutes ATTR for SYSFS)
        # SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0421", ATTR{idProduct}=="*", MODE="0660", GROUP="dialout"     + Run as root:
        /etc/init.d/boot.udev reload    + Replug the phone

12. Make sure the configuration has been updated using the command below as user:
    msynctool --showgroup nokia2evo    This prints out the configuration file

13. Run the sync:
    msynctool --sync nokia2evo
But no joy:
    USB:
        Error while synchronizing: Invalid answer from plugin process
    Bluetooth:
        Member 2 of type syncml-obex-client had an error while connecting: Bluetooth connect error

So tomorrow is yet another day...

Woohoo! A simple keylogger!

2011-02-25T23:49:00.001-05:00

After a full day of work (below) and a good meal it was time to play.

I enjoyed Jono Bacon's distinction between systematic and opportunistic developers (Linux Format 140 January 2011 Get developing ):
http://www.linuxformat.com/archives?issue=140

This is me.

Everything I do I do intensely. Document it, analyse it, etc. And I get tired like everyone else, and sometimes just stretch out on the sofa and go to sleep.

So I would like to know when all that intense activity ceased.

Solution? A keylogger. Something that will record any keyboard activity with a time stamp.

I tried inotify. A great program, but much more complex than I need. I just want to know when I checked out.

Tonight I came across logkeys:

http://code.google.com/p/logkeys/downloads/detail?name=logkeys-0.1.1a.tar.gz&can=2&q=

Easy install:
     Untar it then (as root)
     ./configure
     make
     make check
     make install

Very simple, very cool, very minimalist, very high entropy. Simply records keystrokes to a log file with a time stamp.

Awesome.

My command is (as root):

     logkeys -s -o /Desktop/logkeys.log &

Doing this as root makes the file unreadable by the user, so again as root:
     cd /Desktop
     chown -R $user:users *
     chmod -R 0755 *

A sample output:

2011-02-25 23:43:27-0500 > doing this as root makes the file unreadable by the user, so again as root:b     b     cd /desktop
2011-02-25 23:44:17-0500 >      chown -r andy"$user:users
2011-02-25 23:44:36-0500 >      chmod -r 0755 *<#+3> *b
2011-02-25 23:45:03-0500 > bvery bcool.
2011-02-25 23:45:15-0500 > <#+67>
2011-02-25 23:45:27-0500 > a sample output:
2011-02-25 23:45:33-0500 >

Very cool.

So it is now late (as shown by the log) but not too late. Tomorrow I'll bet it can be tweaked. For example, I don't really need the time zone and we could do without the scrolling and navigation records.

But all in all very cool for what I want.

Well done.

Fuggedabout MSWin. How about OpenSync?

2011-02-25T20:48:00.002-05:00

Having given up temporarily on MSWin sync for the N8 or N900 we undertake opensync.

http://antoine.ginies.free.fr/syncnokiae70/syncnokia.html

is an excellent guide for Bluetooth sync with the E70.

We adapt it here for our machines.

+ Download and install:
    - libsyncml
    - libsyncml-tools
    - libopensync
    - libopensync-plugin:
        -evolution2
        --file
        -gnokii
        -kdepim
        -syncml
        -python-module
    - libopensync-tools

libopensync-plugin-kdepim is problematic as it no longer seems to exist.

The multisync-gui is nothing more than a text editor for the configuration files.

+ First create a group to sync your nokia:
    msynctool --addgroup sync_nokia2file

+ List all plugins available to sync your phone:
    msynctool --listplugins

    This returns:
        Available plugins:
            syncml-obex-client
            evo2-sync
            gnokii-sync
            file-sync

+ Now add three members to the group sync_nokia2file:
    msynctool --addmember sync_nokia2file file-sync
    msynctool --addmember sync_nokia2file syncml-obex-client
    msynctool --addmember sync_nokia2file evo2-sync

Clearly this command is in the form of
    msynctool -addmember $groupname $plugin-name

+ Create a directory to store your files:
    mkdir ~/files_from_nokia

+ Set up the phone to sync. My N8 uses
    Settings
        > Connectivity
            > USB > Nokia Ovi Suite
            > Data Transfer
                > Sync
                    x Contacts
                    x Calendar
                    x Notes
                    x Bookmarks

+ Detect your phone
    hcitool scan    This returns
        Scanning ...
                E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC       Andy's N8

+ Now get all services available on this phone:
    sdptool browse E0:A6:70:FE:9B:DC | less

    This returns a very long list (253 lines in my case) of services, listed in the sub-tab Services. The |less pipe lets you scroll up and down the list using up and down arrows.

Of particular interest are:

Service Name: SyncMLClient
    Channel: 6

The author states:
Some interesting Nokia code to retrieve information about MAC address:
      #2820#: get the Bluetooth MAC adress
      #62209526#: get the WLAN Mac address

But at present I do not know how to apply that information.

The service name "SyncMLClient" is the service used for file transfer. It's channel 6 in my case.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=705103is also helpful in reaffirming that this is the channel of interest:
    Scroll through until you come to the section referring to "SyncMLClient" (NOT the "Nokia SyncML Server" or "SyncML DM Client"). Note down the Channel shown.

+ Now we have to configure all members of the group sync_nokia2file.

+ First is the configuration file that describe the path to future files. Do
    msynctool --configure sync_nokia2file 1

    This should open the vi text editor, where you can enter the configuration data for the member.
vi isn't very difficult, just arcane.
    http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/vi.html
    is just one of zillions of vi howto URLs. These are the key commands needed to process this:
    i    Insert text
    Esc    Exit insert mode
    u    undo whatever you just did
    ← →    Left, Up, Right, Down moves in those directions
    :wq    The colon indicates a command, so write quit return

If you'd rather not use vi then this file can be opened with kate or any other text editor at    /home/$user/.opensync/group1/1/file-sync.conf
where $user is your username.

+ Next is to define the channels for a number of services, obviously more difficult.

First, find the available USB services (as root):
    syncml-obex-client -u    This returns:
    Superuser privileges are required to access complete USB information.
    Found 4 USB OBEX interfaces
    Interface 0:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: SYNCML-SYNC
    Interface 1:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: PC Suite Services
    Interface 2:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: SYNCML-DM
    Interface 3:
            Manufacturer: Nokia
            Product: N8-00
            Interface description: Haptics Bridge
    Use '-u interface_number' to connect

Then configure the obex client.
    msynctool --configure sync_nokia2file 2

This step is necessary to create the file, but again, you can avoid vi by exiting and with a text editor modifying
    /home/$user/.opensync/group1/2/syncml-obex-client.conf

    This has a large number of parameters. Mine are available on request. Read and follow the prompts in this file. I left most things as the default.

Next configure the evolution client.
    msynctool --configure sync_nokia2file 3

Again, this is necessary to create the file, but you can avoid vi with a text editor modifying
    /home/$user/.opensync/group1/3/evo2-sync.conf

+ To get a resume of your configuration just do a:
    msynctool --showgroup sync_nokia2file

+ Now all is configured: just sync your date from your phone to your computer:
    msynctool --sync sync_nokia2file

Oops. No joy:

Clients 1 and 3 connect, Client 2 does not.

So tomorrow is another day.

:-(

I surrender - Nokia Ovi Suite - Windows XP

2011-02-24T20:58:00.000-05:00

+ The Cable Connectivity Driver is hosed. Removing it allows the device to be recognized the first time, except that its mode (which is recognized by Windows) is not recognized by Ovi, which declares that the device is not in Ovi Suite mode, even though it is.

+ The typical mantra (uninstall, reboot all devices, reinstall) does not work.

+ Plugging in the phone gets a report of Bad CDC descriptors. We haven't figured out what that means.

+ Windows recognizes the phone as a Digital Still Camera but also as N8-00 in Ovi Suite mode on occasion.

+ But Ovi will not connect to it.

========== Details ==========
Ovi Suite is installed. Reboot.
+ Plug in and connect the phone before starting Ovi: not possible since Ovi starts on boot and resides in the system tray.
+ Plug in and connect the phone after disk thrashing subsides. dmesg reports bad CDC descriptors.
+ Click left, right and double on the system tray icon: Nothing
+ Right click the desktop icon: we get and hour glass for a while, then nothing. Correction: after several minutes it starts loading, very slowly.
    Windows Task Manager reports Ovi Suite 3.0.0.290 not responding. Highlight it and click End Task. Then it appears! But shortly after crashes and disappears.
+Reboot without the phone plugged in.
+ Right click Ovi in the system tray. After fifteen seconds it offers
    - Open Ovi Suite
    - Exit
+ Click the desktop icon. Ovi comes up. dmesg has no odd registrations.
+ Plug in the phone. Same as before. Windows recognizes it in the Ovi mode (not storage) but Ovi hangs at a very low rate. I did try touching the USB icon on the phone and reselecting Ovi Suite in case perhaps this had gotten lost, but there is no change. The only choice is to reboot.
+ Reboot, delete the Cable Connectivity Driver, try one more time.
+ Plug in the phone. Now it is recognized. Minor problem: USB Controller Bandwidth exceeded. The USB controller does not have enough bandwidth for the Digital Still Camera. The USB controller wants 95%, the System reserve is reserving 10%. We'll deal with that later.
+ Select the Nokia N8-00. The program responds that it is not in the PC Suite USB mode. YES IT IS! But I reset it in that mode just the same.
No joy, but progress. So reboot, and reboot the phone.
+ Start Ovi, plug in the phone. Same message about USB Controller bandwidth. This time Ovi does not recognize the phone. Shut it down and restart. Still no recognition. Disconnect the phone and replug.
+ Still no joy. Go to Device Manager and uninstall the Digital Still Camera, which is how it is being recognized... No joy.
+ Disconnect, reconnect. No joy.
+ Remove all Nokia software except the Ovi Suite. Click Repair on Ovi Suite. It takes forever, during which I prepare dinner. But eventually it announces that it has been repaired. It has not replaced any of the drivers I had deleted. So start it up and...
    - Windows recognizes both Digital Still Camera and N8-00 Phone Parent
    - Ovi recognizes N8-00
But then slows to a crawl. Windows is now totally frozen. There is not a lot of disk activity, but the CPU is flying.. htop shows it eating 98% of CPU time.

OK enough for today.

Nokia Frustration, cont'd

2011-02-23T22:30:00.000-05:00

OK. We've been struggling for several days to install a functional version of one or another of the Nokia Suites: Ovi or PC on Windows XP (Service pack 3).

They grind and grind and nothing happens.

So finally we nuke the session, reboot, nuke the software, and try a different iteration.

Then today it occured to me: maybe it is trying to phone home and my (excellent) firewall is not allowing this?

So tonight we try again: delete all traces of Nokia anything, reboot, and restart installation, this time of Ovi Suite, and monitor the firewall log:

+ Ovi Suite itself progresses (slowly) without any firewall activity. But then complains Minimal memory 256 MB . So shut down, adjust memory, reboot, restart the installation.

Yes, indeedy. It is trying to phone home. The firewall reports (dmesg):

[12735.781008] ABORTED IN=wlan0 OUT= MAC=00:24:d2:2b:e1:52:94:44:52:78:f0:28:08:00 SRC=62.70.27.118 DST=192.168.5.7 LEN=40 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=47 ID=0 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=80 DPT=2398 SEQ=3165126420 ACK=0 WINDOW=0 RES=0x00 RST URGP=0

To which I respond:
     P1630:~ # whois 62.70.27.118and receive:
netname:        TROLLTECH-NET1-OSL-NO

So TrollTech (QT) is trying to read me because OVI is built on QT. But my firewall is blocking this.

Is this why the app won't install? Why didn't they tell me beforehand?

But before I open the firewall port I want to try all other available options:

OVI Suite has installed successfully, it wants me to do all kinds of things, but gracefully gives me the option of "doing this later".

OK, nevermind, continue. Reboot WinXP, and continue to try to install the phone, this time monitoring the firewall.

First, Ovi asks me to plug in the device. I do.

dmesg reports discovery
    [14282.120826] usb 1-3: Product: N8-00

but also reports a fault:
    [14282.124194] usb 1-3: bad CDC descriptors
    [14282.125721] cdc_phonet: probe of 1-3:1.14 failed with error -22
This is troublesome (probe failed) but Windows XP recognizes the phone in the tray.
    Found new hardware... etc.
Ovi says Please wait while USB drivers are installed on your computer but then freezes.

Firewall log does not show any blocking. But now Ovi is completely frozen. Fortunately WinXP is not, so we shutdown and reboot.

Once again, start up Ovi Suite. No firewall messages, but the above cited bad CDC descriptors complaint. But Ovi never restarts.

OK, shutdown, reboot.

Ooops, black screen of death. Once again, shut down. Period.

Start again.

OK, this time we get a warning about WinXP not having started correctly, we choose Start Normally and up it comes.

Now the test: wait for all the disk thrashing to stop and then try to start Ovi. The thrashing goes on for about one minute (timed).

Plug in the phone. dmesg reports

[16009.828303] usb 1-3: bad CDC descriptors
[16009.830473] cdc_phonet: probe of 1-3:1.14 failed with error -22
and indeed Ovi fails to see the phone.

So there is something in the CDC descriptors that is preventing Ovi (or, I'll bet I get the same result tomorrow from PC Suite) from finding the phone.

Time for bed.

dmesg and kernel hacking

2011-02-23T18:24:00.001-05:00

I came across a lot of interesting stuff on kernel hacking:
http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/linux_kernel/kernel_configuration/ch09s07.html

It says:
     To enable timestamp options on kernel messages:
     Kernel hacking
         [*] Show timing information on printks

But it doesn't say where these [bracketed] options are being set.

It turns out that they are set with
    cd /usr/src/linux
    make menuconfig
and this particular option is already set. So this does not help, but the rest is interesting:

http://help.soft30.com/manual/SUSE-Linux-Administration-Guide/ch11s03.html
gives details on kernel configuration for SuSE.

    To configure the kernel, change to /usr/src/linux and enter the command make config. Choose the features you want supported by the kernel.

So out of curiosity I did that.

Woh! I hope I haven't done myself in, as this responded with:

HOSTCC scripts/basic/fixdep
HOSTCC scripts/basic/docproc
HOSTCC scripts/basic/hash
HOSTCC scripts/kconfig/conf.o
HOSTCC scripts/kconfig/kxgettext.o
SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.c
SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/lex.zconf.c
SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.hash.c
HOSTCC scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.o
HOSTLD scripts/kconfig/conf
scripts/kconfig/conf arch/x86/Kconfig
#
# using defaults found in /boot/config-2.6.34.7-0.7-desktop
#
*
* Linux Kernel Configuration
*
at which point I bailed out.

So I better go back and finish it, perhaps by hitting return at each prompt unless I want to change it...

Uggh!.

It's all coming back to me, kernel hacking back in 2002. And making a mess and having to reinstall...

But wait! It goes on:

“menuconfig” is a more comfortable way to configure the kernel. If necessary, install ncurses-devel with YaST. Start the kernel configuration with the command make menuconfig.

This does indeed require ncurses-devel. So we install that and try again.

Aha! Now this shows the options in the [*] and [ ] formats. The Kernel Hacking option (highlight and hit Enter) is where we want to go.

So we check it all out, exit without saving changes, and (fingers crossed) reboot.

It comes back up just fine.

Whew.

=====
All this occurred while trying to figure out how to convert the dmesg timestamp to real time.
/var/log/messages has system events that may be able to be correlated with dmesg output. There are allusions to a /var/log/kern.log having real times, but I don't have such a file.

So tomorrow is another day.

More PC Suite 7.1.60.0 angst

2011-02-21T20:35:00.001-05:00

A new day after several reboots.

On the N8 Settings > Connectivity > USB > Nokia Ovi Suite defines the use of the USB cable as a synchronizing medium.

If you have ever connected the phone in an incompatible mode then PC Suite remembers this, even if you have changed the phone. So you need to uninstall and reinstall PC Suite and all its components (connectivity kit, anything named Nokia), or search your user settings. Nokia admits this, see:

http://tinyurl.com/4ndvdqm
It says:

Plan A :
Uninstall PC Suite and its components , Restart PC, Install PC Suite - connect new phone

Plan B :
Exit PC Suite. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\PC Suite. Find Folder Named with IMEI-number and delete it. Now you can start PCSuite; data about the phone will be deleted.

Then:

+ Reboot. You may just have to pull the plug, since it doesn't close gracefully.
+ Open the Device Manager (Start > Control Panel > System > Device Manager
+ Plug in each phone and delete the entry that appears with the yellow highlighted question mark.
+ Reboot. Again, you may just have to pull the plug, since it doesn't close gracefully.
+ Reinstall Nokia PC Suite. Plan on reading a magazine while it loads. It takes forever.
+Follow the prompts. DO NOT plug in the phone until told to do so.
+ Plug in the N8 phone. It reports USB Connected Nokia Ovi Suite
+Wait another eternity. I started this step at 18:26 and read a magazine until my patience ran out at . The hash bar runs, the prompt says Windows is installing PC connectivity Cable drivers, please wait. The task bar icon says Found new hardware Nokia N8-00 Phone Parent. The cursor has an hour glass.

AHA! Ctrl-Tab shows a window about participating in a feedback program. It is waiting for confirmation. OK, click the green check mark. It eventually closes (it is now 18:39) and returns to the Get Connected prompt and progress bar.

18:41: still no joy. Click the back button. It turns blue about 30 seconds later.
18:45: try Ctrl-Alt-Delete. No response after a minute.
18:46: pull the plug.
==========
18:48: OK, now we're rebooted. Wait for the disk thrashing to subside.
18:50:30 It has ceased and the diagnostic request screen is up. Before clicking the check mark I look to see if the IMEI file is there, There are two .dat files, but no IMEI.
18:53:30 click the green check mark. Nothing happens.
18:54:30 Start PC Suite. It pops up in fifteen seconds. Very snappy. Good.
18:55:30 Click the get connected box.
18:55:45 Plug in the N8 phone: Your phone is in the file transfer mode... Well, no it is NOT, but you can't figure that out.
============
OK. Click OK and now try with the N900:
18:58:00 click the back button. It turns blue, but nothing happens.
19:01:00: OK, we're back at step 1/3. Cable is selected (we've tried IR and Bluetooth, not supported by this machine).
19:02:00: Click next. NO joy, it won't let go of the N8 even though it is disconnected.
Try to get out of this mess, but no response.
19:05:15 pull the plug.
==========
19:08:00: OK, now we're rebooted. Wait for the disk thrashing to subside.
19:09:00: It has ceased and the diagnostic request screen is up. Before clicking the check mark I look to see if the IMEI file is there, There are two .dat files, but no IMEI. Delete the C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Nokia and \PC Suite directories.
19:12:00 Start PC Suite.
19:13:15 Click the connect to phone button
19:14:00 The phone is recognized in PC Suite Mode
19:14:45 click next
19:16:00 the next screen appears (step 3 of 4, with connection options, cable selected),
19:16:30 click next.Read a magazine.
19:21:30 Window pops up implying we have USB connectivity issue. But Windows has seen the phone. It is not our problem, it is Nokia's.
19:23:00 Unplug and replug the N900 phone in PC Suite mode, recognized by Windows.
19:25:00, no joy, pulll the plug.
==========
19:34:00 OK, now we're rebooted. Wait for the disk thrashing to subside.
19:35:30 OK, it has subsided.
19:36:30 Start PC Suite. It pops up in fifteen seconds. Very snappy. Good.
19:38:30 Click the get connected box.
19:38:50 Click next
19:39:40 Plug in the N900 in PC Suite mode. Recognized by Windows as such
20:30:00 No joy, pull the plug.

It does not work.

Now, this is 7.1.60.0. Tomorrow is another day. If I can find an older version that works then everyone wins...

Nokia Frustration

2011-02-20T21:08:00.000-05:00

A couple of very frustrating days trying to install Nokia PC Suite 7.1.60.0 on Windows XP (latest patches). The core program installs, but then the Nokia Cable Connectivity Driver hangs.

I've done the whole routine several times:

+ Start the install. Basic flies, Driver hangs. Reset the machine.

+ Plug in the phone, follow the prompt to install the driver. Driver Hangs. Reset the machine.

+ Go to Control Panel. Delete all traces of software for Nokia: PC Suite, Modems, Connectivity, etc. Anything with a Nokia name
.
+ Go to Control Panel > System > Device Manager. Plug in the phone, delete the module that pops up with a yellow question mark, reboot.

+ Repeat.

It does not work.

Tried the same with the latest Ovi Suite, same results. The software sucks.

I thought maybe the path was the problem. Initially I wanted to modify the installation path, but then finally accepted the default. No change.

I've owned Nokia gear since their start. Nokia's gear is precious. Beautiful. A pleasure to behold. But their PC sync software, IMHO, sucks. When will they support Linux?

:-(

I then also tried this with Ovi Suite with the same results. There is a huge latency with the Cable Connectivity Driver that just does not work for me.

My phones are the latest: the N8 and N900.

Not pleased.

Solving ALSA and WavePlugin for SqueezeBoxServer

2011-02-17T12:42:00.026-05:00

I'm trying to get the WaveInput plugin for SqueezeBox Server working. So I'm trying to sort out ALSA and all its implications. I have figured out the schematic below based on a number of experiments and other research (click on the figure to get a larger image):

Several notes:

All the stuff in blue are functions and controls provided by ALSA.With the advent of the Linux 2.6 kernel, ALSA (the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) has become the standard sound system for Linux. ALSA comprises both the base, which provides sound card drivers and firmware, and alsa-utils for user tools. The main application in alsa-utils is alsamixer. alsamixer is an ncurses-based mixer for controlling your audio interfaces, both playback and recording. There are a number of GUI front-ends for the ncurses (terminal-based) alsamixer, including kmix and a host of others. All of these present the functions embodied in alsamixer. So if, for example, your version of alsamixer does not have a channel for MicIn then none of these front-ends can display such a thing.

The diagram shows what alsamixer shows me on my system (OpenSuSE 11.3).
The ALSA term for microphone input is MicIn - "low-level, mono microphone input". This does not exist on my system and this is what I need to be able to mute.
The red x indicates that there is a MUTE button available for that control. Not all the controls have a MUTE function. In particular, the microphone inputs do not have a mute function. You can set the volume to zero and the sound still is picked up. I have found that the only way to mute the built-in PC microphone is to plug a dead plug into the headset microphone socket. As indicated by the ganged microphone switches in the diagram, this will disable the internal microphone.
The Headphone and Speaker outputs also are served by a ganged switch: each of these channels has its own volume control but plugging in a headset blocks the output to the PC Speaker.
I don't know where the First Mic Boost Capture channel goes. My assumption is that it is a volume control on the microphone stream, which is then fed back into the sound card to be distributed normally (i.e., to Headphone, Speaker, or Capture channels). But that is a guess...
The output Capture channel fills a Buffer. This presumably is read by some device to then be served to WaveInput. It has an activation checkbox, indicated by the red checkmark. The preferred "device" has been said to be a recording device such as krecord. It turns out that krecord is totally unnecessary, unless you are trying to record the channel. All You Have To Do ... is the detail at the end of this post.
The channel names are those provided by alsamixer (and consequently by all the various GUI frontends for it, e.g., kamix, kmix, gmix, and so forth. These differ from those presented quasi-officially by http://alsa.opensrc.org/Main_Page. I have therefore inferred the following correspondence:

+ The ALSA term for microphone input is MicIn - "low-level, mono microphone input". This does not exist on my system and this is what I need to mute. Instead, my system shows Front Mic Boost, which does not have a mute control.

+ The ALSA term for digital stream input is PCM playback - "digital stream from software". This does exist on my system as PCM.

+ The ALSA term for digital stream output is PCM Capture - "digital stream to software". This does exist on my system as Capture.

+ The link cites synthesizer as one of the ALSA channels. This may be what we are seeing as Digital and may be the MIDI input.

+ The link cites Line Out - "analog output to external device" as one of the ALSA channels. This does exist on my system as Headset and controls the analog stereo connection.
I am testing all this with streamtuner2. Its feeds happily go to the PC headset (if plugged in) or the PC speaker. But to date, they do not get to the Capture channel and therefore do not get to the Buffer or WaveInput.

OK. So after some reflection and refraction, we hit it again.

The solution was found with the following protocol:

Start StreamTuner2
Start a stream. This starts kaffeine in Playback mode.
Go to kmix, zero and mute all the settings, then open them one by one and wait a long time before the next one. "Long time" turns out to be 34.5 seconds on my system, but YMMV.

Actually the latency is the key impediment to analysis: it takes 34.5 seconds on my system from making a change in kmix before it is reflected in the sound.

Sparing you the details, although if you email an address I'll give you more details, it turns out that (at least on my system) you must:

Unmute, max volume the Headphone control
Unmute, max volume the Digital control
Plug in to the PC headphone socket to disconnect the PC speaker. It has to be a real headset it seems, I tried various other plugs without success.
And of course unmute and max volume Master and PCM.

So this is where I am for now:

I need a more elegant way of muting the PC microphone than plugging in a blank plug.
I need a more elegant way of disabling the PC Speaker than plugging in the headphone.

There are of course many questions remaining to which we may attend in due course. At the top of the list are:

Why does it need Headphone when the feed is Digital?
Why is not simply muting Speaker enough, rather than requiring a headphone plug?
What does it take to actually mute the PC microphone, other than plugging it out?

I suspect these all have to do with impedances and other mysteries. Tomorrow (or next week, or next month) is another day...

For now, very pleased. The sound is beautiful...

So very good work to the author of WaveInput. It now works a charm. I hope this is helpful to others.

Continuation

2011-01-06T13:21:00.001-05:00

Today was wet and soggy. How better to spend time getting things done.

So we installed SuSE 11.3 on the netbook and generally have things going right again. But the missing part still eludes us.

I've done a more generic search, resulting in a host of ebay.co.uk sites. They don't cite the part explictly but are obviously in the domain of reclaiming parts, so have emailed them with the particulars. We shall see. If no luck by tomorrow PM then it is time to cut bait and put it all back together. And if it still doesn't work, then order the part from California.

Screwtape on defence

2011-01-04T12:59:00.010-05:00

OK, pursuing the solution. The repair shop didn't seem all that motivated, so I figured better to give it a go myself and only on failing to turn it over to them.

I'll come back later and clean up the pictures, right now I'm on the netbook and don't have a photo editor... :-(
I found

http://www.scribd.com/doc/27312157/Fujitsu-P1610-Upper-Case

that explains how to open the case. I also found lots of cat hair.

The disassembly proceeded directly, although slowly, as I was being particularly careful and documenting the steps and adding edits to the source:
Step 8: remove the keyboard upper trim
+ Note: one of the eleven screws removed in step 5 holds this trim in place. Do not take a shortcut and skip removing the screws!

Step 14: remove cables
+ The upper antenna cable (the one towards the rear of the machine) is grey.
+ Pull up on the black plastic tabs to disconnect the display connectors.

Step 17: Remove screws
+ There are 5, not 4 screws on the P1630
+ Still more cat hair...

Step 20:We need to carry on further to get to the USB connectors. On the USB audio board:

+ Remove four screws
+ Disconnect brown ribbon
+ Disconnect white coax
+ Remove VGA connector cover
+ Disconnect phone plug connector
+ Lift out USB audio board.

This is the bit that needs to be replaced. Its data are, from top to bottom:
    TEST
    FJ-T

    MADE IN VIETNAM
    VB335B* CP33353*-X1

    B.3 D.5 F.7 H.9
    CP333530-Z1

    REV/LOT
    RS93T17
    A1-O2/G
    08Y01298303 06

On the reverse of the card the serial connector has a tag that reads:
    Agere Systems
    Delphi Modem 040
    Approval No. 3785

    ASI-DELPHI-040
    Morocco: 2514/2005
    TEC/WR/I/MOD-08/02/122.MAY 07
    IC: 4005B-DELPHI, REN:0.1

Careful examination of the the rest of the system does not find any signs of damage: flare points, melting, burn spots.

But the USB audio card...

There is a clear burn mark with black residue on the eight-lead processor in the center of the card.

So now we have five choices:

1. Declare faith in the take-it-apart-clean-it-and-put-it-back-together philosophy:
    a. Put it all back together to see if it flies
          Not likely...
    b. If it doesn't work then take it back to the shop and ask them to do all the foregoing.
          That seems a waste, plus time, money and data liability, since I've already done all this.

2. Take the board to the shop and ask them to replace it.

3. Try to find the board myself.

4. Do #1a and if it doesn't work then #3.

5. Do #3 and on success or failure #1a. Then on failure #2. In any case keep the gear (and data) here until the card is replaced.

I vote for option 5. We have seen black residue in the past that didn't matter, e.g., the mouse. But if the card is not terribly expensive better to replace it now, given the burns and residue. And in any case delay turning the machine over to strangers until all other options are exhausted.

Tomorrow is another day.

Wow. Major Screwtape...

2011-01-03T12:35:00.009-05:00

C. S. Lewis wrote a delightful tale The Screwtape Letters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters) in which a senior demon called Screwtape gives advice to his nephew demon (Wormwood) on how to corrupt the souls of men. Basically, it is a matter of tossing marbles in their way and then watching as they do themselves in. So when I see a bunch of marbles in my path I declare a "Screwtape moment". I know he is trying to get me to mess myself up, so it is a time to stop and reflect, and figure out what is the correct next thing to do.

I have just had a major Screwtape moment. In fact, several of them:

I've been trying to get Bluetooth connectivity from Linux OpenSuSE 11.3 to various bits of gear, including a Bluetooth headset. After spending major time struggling with kbluetooth to no avail I discovered that people were singing songs of praise to Bluedevil (http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/46780) as an alternative open systems stack.

So I went in quest, and found it as a git and CMake project. OK, so more time learning about git and CMake to no avail. Then finally some friends pointed out the OpenSuSE 11.3 repository, where a vetted version resides. Downloaded it with YaST and hurrah! headset connectivity at last.

Next, as in after any major adjustment, reboot.

CRASH!!

It seems that the Bluedevil package requires the latest KDE stack (4.5.3), but it is unstable so trashed the machine.

No problem, we'll just reinstall ("upgrade") from the CD.

Uh oh. The CD drive won't run and Linux complains about current overload. Arrrgh. Screwtape...
It sort of connects,installs some files, deletes some others, but then stops. "Connect DVD #1" it demands...

OK, go look for the power supply for the drive. I think it is a 12 volt unit, but the charger tips will tell. (The drive is an IOmega SuperSlimDVD and it does not show the charger voltage...) So plug in the charger, it fits, and ....

BLITZ!!!

Nothing. The drive does nothing.

It turns out that the drive is one of these dual USB devices with a Y-split cord. I had only attached one of the two USB connectors, resulting in the current overload.

Screwtape...

But now we have blitzed the machine or the drive or both and the kernel is gone:

Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /vmlinuz...
Error 15: File not found...
So the kernel is trashed, and I have no way to reinstall because the DVD drive won't respond.
=====

That was yesterday.

Today I take the drive, the laptop, and myself up to Tottenham Court Road to Gigabyte Electronics, where several people are very helpful. We test various USB drives against the machine and other machines then migrate to powered drives.

All confirm: my USB port(s) are toast. I have several options:
1. Farkle with the machine tonight
2. Get the USB ports repaired (component level repair, air sucking through teeth)
3. Pull the Hard Drive and mount it somewhere to extract the data, then toss the machine.

The data are encrypted, so option three isn't all that bad, except in cost.

In the meantime, I buy a new CD/DVD drive and an ASUS EeePC netbook, then take the machine and the new acquisitions home to explore option 1. If it doesn't sort out tonight then options 2 and 3.

=====

OK, so now we are home with a snack and a pint and go to work.

Regarding the defunct Fujitsu P1630:

+ The blitz occurred on the second USB port, which is possibly short circuited.
+ We have tested single and dual lead drives against ports 1, 2, or both, none work
+ We have tested powered drives against each port, none work.
+ We have connected other USB devices (hub, cell phones) all DO work. ???

So the USB ports are knackered.

Regarding the netbook:

Some progress here, but 'way too slow.

+ OK, what about USB: I can read half the phone but not the part I really want, which is the memory chip. Hmm. Maybe I can put the chip in a card reader and load it directly into the netbook?

OK, put it on the "too hard" list for now and let's try Internet connectivity.

USB:

I have a mobile broadband transceiver with a SIM that connects through USB. But the netbook is "embedded", meaning it has a SIM slot. It reports this device as EM770. So the system refuses to find the outboard USB antenna, demanding a SIM for the embedded device. Whatevah, as long as it works, except of course it doesn't work as well as a space antenna. But whatevah, as long as it works.

OK, I can post (obviously), finished the pint and the snack and am about ready for dinner. So what is ahead?

+ Catch up on essential correspondence by email (mail.Google.com) with business, family, friends.

+ Get used to the offplaced right-hand Shift key next to the PgUp key: whenever I try to use the former I get the latter...

+ Establish Bluetooth or USB connectivity to the phones and memory sticks. I'm going to nuke Windows as soon as possible, so anything of substance needs to be stored offline, like this posting.

+ Test the old CD/DVD drive against the new netbook before trashing it.

+ Examine connecting the memory chip directly to the netbook for offboard storage

+ Print out repair objectives:
- Repair USB ports to allow booting from an external CD/DVD drive
- Alternatively, rip the encrypted /data partition to a USB stick or DVD

+ Save the plan on the external medium. Especially save the latest versions of itinerary.xls from the phones and USB drive. This contains all the passwords as well as details for Linux reinstallation.

+ Nuke Windows on the netbook and install OpenSuSE 11.3. Windows drives me nuts with its insolence. The vendor touted this netbook because it had WinXP, "not the hated Vista or Windows 7". Amen.

+ Resolve the conflict between the "embedded" mobile broadband and the USB attachment. I need to elevate the antenna for better reception.

+ Resolve the video resolution conflict: WinXP allows resolutions up to 1920x something, but apparently the video card can only handle 1024x768?? So if you set the resolution higher then you need to scroll all over the place.

Sigh... Screwtape...

Happy Christmas!

2011-01-01T11:58:00.001-05:00

It has been a magic time, with the full range of traditional English Christmas:holly, ivy, watercress,snow, music, Messiah, Vivaldi, fairs, markets, family, and friends.

We've had a fine time in London, with snow and full moon in Hampstead, browsing Covent Garden, Harrods, Bond Street, Burlington Mall, Selfridges, James Street, all the other West End offerings, and lots of walking, averaging around four miles a day. Found the most amazingly huge and wonderful mall in Shepherd's Bush ("Westfield Mall"). A lovely moonlit stroll down Embassy Row just west of Kensington Park and tea at the "Orangery" at Kensington Palace. Almost got locked in the park, as it closes after dark... Found the German Christmas Market in Hyde Park, full with roasted chestnuts, mulled wine, hand-blown glass tree ornaments, and Moravian stars. Supper at the Sherlock Holmes, went to hear Messiah at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. It was a perfect rendition.

We walked down to Wapping High Street and visited the butcher, garden shop, green grocer, and pharmacy. It was like walking through a rift in the curtain of time: suddenly it was 1950 all over again... :-) The butcher is amazingly deft with his cleaver, with apparent total disregard for his thumb just millimeters away from the aimpoint. (I couldn't watch after the first blow... :-(

Found a lovely holly wreath and real mistletoe, now adorning the boat inside and out. Delightful. The last time I saw a holly wreath was when I made one myself as a college student after cutting the holly in the forest. And I can't remember the last time I saw real mistletoe. (Although she did warn us that the berries are deadly poison, especially for cats... :-(

And found once again that we have two cultures divided by a common language: I've been looking everywhere for "mineral oil" to lubricate a pump. Getting constant stares and shrugs. Never heard of it, they say. Well, browsing this anachronistic little pharmacy I found "liquid paraffin". Yup. Same stuff... :-)

The single-handed trip down from Shepperton to Teddington was "interesting", what with unmanned locks ("self-service") and *literally*frozen lock controls, then a white-out mini-blizzard once on the Thames below Teddington. No one else on the river, except for scullers and rowers with total ignorance of the laws of gross tonnage and too many lights... :-)

So, living a full life, just wishing we could all be together all the time.

2010-11-14T22:07:00.017-05:00

Transition is always a traumatic thing. And so it is now.

My sense is that I lived one life from 0-13 years of age, another from 14-22, another from 23-37, another from 38-60, another from 61-67, and now another from now to ... Whenever next.

Each was a complete package, with a clear delineation between it and the next, so easily archivable and forgotten, for better or worse.

I did read in the Times today that a broken heart really can kill you. The Times have decided to get pugnacious (idiots) and try to charge for their web content (so pound sand) so I can't give you their link. But the article is virulent:

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=52318
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_heart
http://news.softpedia.com/news/A-Broken-Heart-Can-Lead-to-Death-Researchers-Say-107907.shtml

(Hullo, Times, do you understand that you are expendable? Idiots...)

Each of these phases were accompanied by some measure of the "broken heart" syndrome.

To find that I am still alive and well despite all that is rather amazing. At least to me.

TBTG.

So at this point I am obviously entering another phase, starting another package.

There is nothing wrong with my brain, and little wrong with my body, but I have not been able to find a suitable job.

Now, granted, that there are a lot of jobs out there, but the operative phrase is "suitable". I have resources so shall not starve, but it was a lot more fun earning what I did before.

But I have not folded the tent. So we shall see.

The plan is to Keep Calm and Carry On and see what the future brings.

At present, I am in the UK attending to the boat. And finding it all exceedingly comfortable, a complete experience of "coming home". Lots of people who look a lot like me doing the things I love to do.

And so it was in the Netherlands, and to a lesser extent, in France.

Went to the Anglers Inn on the edge of the river Thames by Walton-on-Thames and spent about four hours having a thymed lamb roast and a couple of pints of Hobgoblin, watching the families and their children, all blonde and pointy-chinned and mostly blue-eyed.

Basically people just going along, doing their thing, little girls in pretty dresses, little boys stomping in the mud in their wellies, people just being people and loving one another.
As it should be.

TBTG.

So, smile, share, and be kind. Do not let the remaining 2% of the world take you down.

New Media

2010-10-28T18:50:00.000-05:00

We've had a good New Media day. We got a new website up yesterday due to popular acclaim and linked it here (I need to figure out to easily link here to there: www.lavarre.org...)

Spent a good part of the day "fixing" DNS settings and Thunderbird.

The DNS (Domain Name Server) settings are handled through NetworkSolutions.com. Pretty good service, but there is some latency in becoming familiar with all the terminology.

For example, consider the domain lavarre.org:

You can create a zillion sub-domains, like
www.lavarre.org
whoever@lavarre.org

and any number of subdomains: pat., penny., christina., etc.

And then you can have sub-subdomains, like:

www.pat.lavarre.org
whoever@pat.lavarre.org
www.penny.lavarre.org
whoever@penny.lavarre.org

And so forth.

you can use the A (address) record to point a subdomain at an Internet Protocol (IP) address.

This is good in that an IP address (IPA) is very, very explicit.

But this is bad in that some services change the numerical address regularly despite keeping a fixed canonical name (CNAME), such as ghs.google.com.

Now, I don't yet really know, but my guess (without further googling) is that ghs stands for Google Hosting Service. And a clever bit of kit is is:

You enter ghs.google.com as your target CNAME in your DNS hosting service (e.g., www.networksolutions.com). Then on the other side of the link (in Google itself) you tell Google what DNS names they should expect to have come knocking at their door.

And it works.

A few whines:

The NetworkSolutions.com site only allows the numerical IPA in the A record. So you have to ping ghs.google.com to find that number (currently 74.125.53.121)
Their CNAME section allows you to put in the CNAME, e.g., sites/google.com/site/whateveryoursitename is
But you can't do both: either the numerical A record or the generic CNAME but not both. I'm not sanguine that they will always use the same IPA for ghs.google.com, so it would be better to be able to include the CNAME in the A record but it is what it is. We shall see.

==========

Once past setting up the site and the DNS (the web works [www.lavarre.org and some others] but still need to solve email) it was on to fixing Thunderbird.

GMail defaults to the IMAP protocol, which leaves all your email on the server. But aside from privacy issues, it is a PITA in that you get all kinds of duplicates. Very confusing. Better to have a POP account that downloads your mail and then you are then responsible for your destiny. (I found a number of I HATE IMAP sites, but I digress). So I set out to kill this particular bête noir. And succeeded.

But as they say, it's easy if you know how, but if not then a challenge. First you have to create a new account and then notice the tiny little Edit button that lets you change a drop down button from IMAP to POP and then change your home directory for the file and then change the IPA for the server and then...

Well, I won't spoil your fun, figure it out, but rest assured, it can be done.

==========

In the process, I recovered a former gmail account file (the last POP file I had successfully attained) that had some very precious work-related messages that I had thought I had lost forever. The sender had moved on so could not be asked to repeat them, nevermind the embarassment of having to ask him to do so...

So I was well pleased with myself... :-)

==========

OK, with all those bragging rights, then I set about cleaning up and reconciling the several POP, IMAP, POP3, IMAP-1, and so forth files. I figured out that deleting the various .msf index files does no harm and allows them to be rebuilt based on the raw data files, e.g., Mail, Sent, Drafts, etc. But after reviewing those accounts and transferring to Local Folders or deleting all their files the data files were still in huge fractions of gigabytes in size. What's going on?!!

Well, just a bit more googling solved it: You have to compact.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_Tips_:_Compacting_Folders

And now they are all tiny.

==========

OK, so while we're bragging, we did realize that with all this consolidation we were generating a whole bunch of duplicates in the various folders of Local Folders. So google again, and we first found a Thunderbird addon something like Remove Duplicates (Alternative) with five stars. Woohoo!

Except I couldn't make it work. So then I tried
Remove Duplicate Messages 0.1.1.10
that works a charm. It even looks across subdirectories to find the dupes, then lists them with its recommendations: delete this, save that.

Of course by now, what with consolidating some four different email accounts over some eight years, I had thousands of dupes, but checking the first few results, they seemed really to make sense. So, close my eyes and (it turns out I had some 60,000 messages) click Delete Selected so that now, poof!, there are only 19,182 left...

The 40,000 are gone, but safely gone, to Trash, so if you really want to wade through some 40,000 messages then you are welcome to do so. Knock yourself out, but also go to counseling for being seriously anal-retentive, and that advice from an accomplished AR veteran.

==========

So, all in all a very good day:

DNS solved
POP/IMAP solved
Critical files recovered
Files reconciled
Strong recommendation for a work well done:

Thunderbird Add-on Remove Duplicate Messages 0.1.1.10

Recommended.

Oh, and OBTW, sites.google.com is really sweet. Well done.

OpenSuSE 11.2 and VMWare Printing

2010-06-20T08:24:00.002-05:00

To add a printer to the VMWare VM:

Ensure the VM is secured.
Edit Virtual Machine Settings
Add ...
Printer
Power on This Virtual Machine

There are then two choices hp#1 and OfficeJet_6400. hp#1 complains about margins and doesn't print even if you answer yes to the query. Officejet_6400 doesn't complain but prints a header page and then prints the page half an inch too low.

OK, try using these on just plain Linux:
hp#1
No change, it does not print

Officejet_6400
prints the header
%% [ ProductName: GPL Ghostscript ]%%
resulting in the actual print being again too low. We may be able to suppress the header, which would fix both problems.

So it is not a VMware or Windows problem per se, rather something with the Linux setup.

Checking YaST showed that printing was not enabled for hp#1. So we enabled it. Now it prints (all three previous attempts) without the header in the correct position.

Problem solved.

Time to Give Back

2009-11-20T15:31:00.002-05:00

OK. I haven't fully gotten this blogging thing completely squared away, but gather I can rant or post information.

I'm pretty much out of rants these days, but have been working hard uncovering weirdness while trying to configure a laptop for my granddaughter Casey.

I've logged the solutions, but had not yet posted them so that others might benefit. So now I do.

The most fearful are those in the bowels of /bin and /etc because you really need to muck about as root and that can be a dangerous thing.

But I have already reinstalled this thing about three times, so it was the time to go a bit further:

Problem: All of a sudden I get

Permissions on the password database may be too restrictive
su: incorrect password

when trying to change to root with the su - command.

"All of a sudden" because I had not done anything (I swear!) other than restore the root password which had gone south a few days ago.

Googling brings all kinds of interesting stuff, all of which I tried with no success.

Solution:
This worked:

+ Log in as normal, going to user through the preestablished automatic login.

+ Log out as user and back in as root.

+ Go to YaST > Security > Local > Security Overview. We find Use secure file permissions disabled. Enabled it and set it to Easy.

AND THAT FIXED IT.

It's easy when you know how.

=====

Of all the intermediary research and trial and error that I went through in getting here, one source I would recommend is /etc/permissions. I had wanted to find something like this a long time ago without success. This file and its associated ...easy, ...standard, ...paranoid parallels are the basis for the Linux file ownership and permissions system.

You use them (as root in a rescue login) with

chkstat -set /etc/permissions
or
chkstat -set /etc/permissions.{easy,secure,paranoid}

or call

SuSEconfig

as YaST does after it thinks that files have been modified in the system.

Hope this helps.

Virtualization

2009-10-22T23:29:00.008-05:00

Your mileage may vary, but as of 10/25/09, VMWare is the winner. We have spent several weeks playing with the latest versions of CrossOverOffice for Linux (CXO) and Sun's VirtualBox (SVB). Both are brilliant in their own way. But in the end, you get what you pay for.

CXO does very well with its "supported" applications, but I have found little or none beyond that. The most frustrating part is USB support, which seems to be nil, no matter how many hacks I try.

SVB is much snappier than VMware, but again the USB support is spotty. I have documented all this, it just doesn't work all that well. I've RTFI'd the help file and discovered you need to define at least one "filter" for USB devices. This does not appear after hours of googling. But I have done so for all available devices, but it just works for one, the Nokia phone.

Below is a synopsis:

I've had a very pleasant experience with the latest CrossOver Office (CXO) 8.0.0 for Linux ($70)  with the apps that they "support". I can now use Word, Excel, without the huge disk-thrashing overhead of the XP OS.

It Turns Out That both Word and Excel are really quite snappy apps; their generally perceived sluggishness is due the OS, *NOT* the app. I can prove this by comparing response times on the app on WinXP versus response time on CXO. The difference is amazing. If I were the project manager for either MSWord or MSExcel I would prolly be hugely PO'd by the sluggishness rendered by the underlying OS...

On The Other Hand... :-(

CXO USB support and support for "unsupported" apps are less than marginally acceptable. They need an auto-discovery routine that will bring up ndiswrapper and prompt for the drivers. Or something.  Hey, dmesg and hal know instantly when you plug in a USB device. So it is very doable, but after several hours of experimenting each day for about a week I can only connect to USB memory devices that are recognized and mounted as drives by the host. So this leaves out:

+ Garmin GPS products
+ Nokia phones
+ ICOM radios
+ RayTech products

And a few other programs that are only available in MSWin such as:

+ NLReg
+ AimKeys
+ Adobe Acrobat
+ ...

In short, CXO does not support the only few remaining reasons to use MSWin: niche applications and USB dependent applications.

Graphics, communications, computer admin, media, music, photos, browsers, office apps, finance, all the rest of the mainstream I can do on Linux without even a Whiff of the MS stench.

(Sorry for the arcane allegory: Newport RI has a huge sewage problem that has them tearing up almost every street in the town trying to fix... Huge trenches, beaches closed, overflowing manholes... A third world country. So you spend a lot of time holding your nose...
 :-( 

(But the comparison is valid, be it MSWin or sewage: almost everywhere you go you find this stench so it takes extraordinary effort to avoid it...)

Anything mainstream that MSWin can do Linux can do better. But I need MSWin to run my little toys...

[OBTW, what in the world possessed them to totally hose the menu on Office 2007 with  eye-candy to completely confound over fifteen years of conventional usage and come up with a file format that is not backwards compatible with said over fifteen years of data?! The menu is just a single layer of eye-candy under which lies the old familiar File>Edit>View menu, but it takes you several days of frustration to figure that out. And the use of XML is just politically correct breast beating. Sure, introduce the new format as an option, but don't make it the default without warning! YOH! I have work to do. Time is money and you are costing me money!!

[Oh, and while you're screwing up my format and telling me that there are four cells whose formats are not backwards compatible how about giving me a [Find] choice instead of playing "I have a secret"?

[Cretins.

[But I digress.]

In short, there are only two reasons for using CXO:

+ Snappy performance of "supported" apps on Linux, compared to the sluggish performance on XP, whether on actual or virtual hardware (I can see no difference between the latter two)

+ Political activism for OS iconoclasm. Which I support.

So where does that leave us?

Well:

+ Native Win2k/WinXP/whatevah (Have you noticed the quiet death of Vista? Actually, it was stillborn...)

+ CXO for Linux for "supported" Apps

+ Virtual machines with MS Operating Systems for the rest of the niche and USB requiring Windows programs:

- VMWare on Linux Host with whatevah client

- VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/)on Linux Host with whatevah client

AFAICT, mounting WinXP on any of these seems to be about the same. Tons of disk thrashing. And yes, I have googled extravagantly trying to find a solution. It just doesn't seem to exist. Please tell me if you know of one.

My sense is that VirtualBox is cleaner and leaner than VMWare. And it certainly is infinitely cheaper (any number divided by zero goes to infinity...  :-) 

I know VMWare, VMWare is a friend of mine, but it also is rather dear in this domain and AFAICT no better, and perhaps worse, than VirtualBox.

Except that it works.

You get what you pay for.

Connected!

2009-09-07T11:56:00.004-05:00

Finally.

I've been struggling for quite some time to connect my Linux machine to the Internet via the cellphone. Today I cracked it.

There have been a several issues:

* SuSE 11.1 Bluetooth is broken, AFAICT. At least I can't get it going right. I had it working just fine on SuSE 10.2 but the 11 series release broke a lot of stuff. I had ppp working over Bluetooth on SuSE 10.2, but haven't yet succeeded on 11.1.

* AT&T pulled the ability to "tether" (connect through a phone) from my plan a year or so. It was working fine (again on SuSE 10.2) and then one day it just stopped. They said it should never have worked, but whatever. So now I have a plan that explicitly allows tethering.

* The newer versions (6.9, 7.0) of Nokia PC Suite just didn't work on my Windows 2000 installation on VMWare on SuSE.

But after returning from a wonderful holiday in Europe and the UK I got to work:

* First I created a new virtual machine and installed Windows XP. Time consuming (about a week) of reinstalling all the software and sorting things out, but it is all working, including PC Suite this time. So I could connect to the Windows instantiation, but still not to Linux.

* Installing PC Suite brought a phone firmware upgrade, so more time adapting to that.

* And then last night I found http://www.joiku.com/index.php. It is self described as a web community for free software. Well, maybe, but it points you to http://www.joikushop.com/index.php to buy software, albeit at very low prices.

I registered with the first URL with no problem, although have had some issues with the latter that they are working on. At any rate, I found JoikuSpot. This is a little program that turns your cell phone into a WiFi hotspot! With encryption, no less. And no proprietary tricks. So it works with Linux! 'Way cool.

There are some fiddly bits, but these were resolved with only a few hours of methodical experimentation.

So I recommend it. It has solved a long list of ToDos for me.

Here are the fiddly bits:

* Make sure that you set your WLAN to "AD HOC" mode, NOT "Managed".

* Set the network card to DHCP and add 192.168.2.1 as the explicit default gateway.

* Choose ASCII type keyword, not "Hex" or "Passphrase".

* Choose a keyword that does NOT include apostrophe or quote marks. (/etc/sysconfig/ifcfg files store field values delimited by apostrophes or quotes, so cannot handle passwords with those characters.)

* Choose WEP-open, 128-bit encryption NOT WEP-shared. Ensure the keyword is exactly 13 characters.

* Use ip addr to check the IP address of the client after network setup. Try pinging the host: ping 192.168.2.1

If it does not respond then reboot the client machine.

Oh, and of course RTFM. It is at User Guide.

Thanks JoiKu!

Audio Fix for SuSE 11.1 and VMware

2009-08-12T09:47:00.008-05:00

We are now doing regular meetings on a collaboration site on Windows, so I need audio. I run Windows when necessary in a sandbox (VMware: http://www.vmware.com/). I was able to hear myself speaking in the headset earphone, I was able to hear a "presence", but could not hear other participants and they could not hear me.

It turns out that VMware runs the OSS (Open Sound System) instead of ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). The solution to the hearing problem is to patch the basic VMware script to preload an ALSA-OSS wrapper. The solution to the recording problem was to access the Capture module of the sound system and turn it on.

Details
Player Sound
Initially there was no sound, so I went to the Linux audio control (KMix) and found the first control ("Front") muted. Unmuting it now gives a presence, but no apparent control of volume. I tried starting Amarok. It played, but no sound. I then ran

yast2 sound &

in a root terminal to check the settings. The presence disappeared when YaST started up. I reset all the values, restarted the sound system, restarted KMix, then checked it to find the first control ("Front") muted again. Unmuting it restored the presence. Restarted Amarok, now we have sound on Linux.

Now I started VMware as user. It reports:

Failed to open sound device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy.
Failed to connect virtual device sound.

The link

http://symbolik.wordpress.com/2007/11/10/vmware-server-104-and-kernel-26231-on-gutsy/

says that VMware uses OSS, not ALSA. I checked for the existence of all the requisite files following that link. They all exist, so VMware is just not loading them.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=331175

recommends patching the basic VMware script. Issshhhh (large sucking through the teeth sound...)

Before taking the plunge of patching the basic vmware script I ran yast2 sound to make sure it is using the cited device /dev/dsp. YaST doesn't say, but I turned on pulse audio, brought up Amarok and the mixer to check things. Amarok was already up in the system tray, so I shut it down completely and ran VMware one more time.

No change, no sound, no connection to the dsp. So bit the bullet:

cp /usr/bin/vmware /usr/bin/vmware.orig
kate /usr/bin/vmware

I added the following comments and command at the start of the script:

# 090811 patch to use alsa sound vice oss
LD_PRELOAD=libaoss.so exec

# the remainder of the original script

Then saved it and ran

chmod +x /usr/bin/vmware

just to be safe. I then restarted VMware normally as user.

No joy.

I tried starting VMware with the sound card disabled and then activating it after vmware was up and running. No joy.

So shutdown and rebooted the entire system, then restarted VMware without touching any audio apps and making sure that no audio apps were running.

Now it loads!!! WE HAVE SOUND!!! And VMware finds the device and Windows now has player sound.

But no record sound.

Record Sound

The microphone connection is working: I can hear the microphone in the earphone and muting the mike in KMix makes that go away. But KRecord does not record any sound.

First step: Google:

http://forums.opensuse.org/hardware/402106-no-sound-new-suse-11-1-a.html

says to try the following to test speakers:

speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav

This gives five renditions of "Front left" although zero renditions of "Front right" or anything else.

arecord -d 10 myrecording.wav

gives a ten second recording of... nothing. :-(

/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

does a number of tests on the sound system and saves the results in /tmp/alsa-info.txt.
It cites
E-sound daemon: Running - No.

and then a raft of other details, including:

Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Capture 0 - 46
Front Left: Capture 45 [98%] [28.00dB] [off]
Front Right: Capture 45 [98%] [28.00dB] [off]

This implies that KMix should have a module for capture and that it is presently muted.

I added the Capture channel (KMix > Menu > Settings > Configure Channels) and checked its checkbox.

Then tested with KRecord. It works!!!

Now, try on VMware. It works too!

I love it when a thing works out right...

Just the facts, ma'am

2009-05-06T20:11:00.004-05:00

These are the distros I have tried and have been unable to get to run on the Fujitsu Lifebook P1630. They all universally display the same behaviour: Regular boot up until X starts, at which the screen cycles through three shades of grey followed by red, green, and blue. All Linux:
* OpenSuSE 11.1
* ubuntu 8.10
* PCLinuxOS 2009
* Mepis 8 (does work but only at 800x600)
Reinstalling the Windows OS does work, so the machine is not defective.

But it does make one start wondering... Conspiracy et al. Is there a chip in the P1630 that prevents you from running anything except Microsoft?

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me...

Why does it have to be so hard?

2009-05-05T17:07:00.004-05:00

It's been a while since my last post. Very busy: work, taxes, summer planning, and ...

Trying to get SuSE 11.1 to work on a Fujitsu P1630 Lifebook.

Or any other distro, for that matter.

OpenSuSE 11.1 works just fine on the two years-old Fujitsu P1610 Lifebook. But the P1610 is getting a bit long in the tooth, so I thought I'd get the latest and greatest.

The machine is not defective, at least not as designed. It runs the M$ native installation just fine.

But I don't want M$. I want KDE-based Linux.

The P1630 comes with an Intel Mobile GM45 Express Chipset and a 1280x768 display. However, I have not been able to get the video to work except in Failsafe mode, and even then rather tenuously.

The basic issue is that the X system configurator, ''sax2'' hangs, at a point at which the screen repeatedly cycles through:
* Black
* 33% Grey
* 67% Grey
* White
* Red
* Green
* Blue

* I Try Mepis OS, it boots, but only offers 800x600 resolution
* I try PClinuxOS, it does the same as SuSE: flashing screen cycling from black through grey and white to RGB
* I download the latest SuSE 11.1 with KDE 4.1 ISO. No joy.

And of course, in the meantime a host of other issues with CD recorders and other matters.

I really love my P1610. I get a couple of hours of battery life and have two batteries, so plenty for a TransAtlantic. It fits on an airline tray and has 80GB of disk. So it seemed a no brainer to upgrade to the P1630.

But no, they had to go and fix something that wasn't broken...

If it ain't broke DON'T FIX IT!

2009-03-11T20:23:00.003-05:00

KDE 4.1 has a new "feature", a search engine called Strigi. It depends on a service called nepomukservices. The latter consumes about 95% of your CPU time. And there is nowhere that I can find any way to invoke strigi and make any use of it.

So, aphoristically, I am giving away 95% of my computing power to accomplish nothing.

OK, so let's turn it off. Fire up YaST and go to System > System Services (Runlevel). Sorry, no entries for either strigi or nepomukservices or anything like that.

OK, so then let's uninstall it. Fire up yast2 sw_single and find strigi. OK, done, change the checkbox to an X and proceed.

Not-so-fasto. It wants now to also uninstall all of KDE4 and plasma!!

Good grief!

OK, fuggedaboutit, locate strigi and rename the executables to trash_strigi, and then do the same for nepomukservices.

Done.

Look guys, I know you want to be creative, but please try to let something be optional until proven worthy and popular. The idea of uninstalling all of KDE 4 and plasma just to get rid of one useless search engine is ridiculous.

VNC - Virtual Network Computing

2009-03-07T10:53:00.003-05:00

I have spent a number of hours over the last couple of weeks trying to work out Virtual Network Computing between two machines on my WiFi LAN. This post summarizes what I have found on my own, compared to what Google has found for me.

The VNC protocol is basic Linux and independent of the GUI software.

There are two ways of connecting: either a Remote Frame Buffer protocol that sends the desktop of the server or the original VNC protocol that sends the contents of an X-session established remotely on the server. While a person at the server display can see what is happening in an RFB session, the workings of the X-session are invisible.

http://www.realvnc.com/support/getting-started.html provides a good synopsis of the basic commands, but there were some glitches.

http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/1470341 provides another good tutorial.

vncserver/vncviewer
This is the original, now TightVNC, protocol that comes with the distribution. Per the ''man'' page, vncserver is a wrapper script to launch an X server for VNC. Running it brings up av Xvnc session that only shows a shell terminal on the server machine.

krfb/krdc
This is a remote frame buffer GUI that comes with SuSE. krfb sets up a listening session on the server. krdc connects. krdc offers two types of connection: vnc and rdp. The former brings up the server's display. The latter is for remote control of Windows machines.

I have installed SuSE 11.1 (the latest) on both machines.

Review and Comments
vncserver/vncviewer

I can connect to "m90" server, but only get an X session
vncviewer will only connect to vncserver. It does not connect to a remote frame buffer server (e.g.,krfb)

krfb/krdc

I can connect to m90 server but the presented screen is all patchy and unusable. I have tried all three "Connection Speed"s. The lower speeds end up with a pixellated display, but otherwise the results are the same: the mouse movements are halting and there are numerous different-sized different-colored rectangular patches over any text, and font colors vary. The results are essentially the same in both directions, although the problems while using my "p1610" as a server are not as pronounced as when using m90. This suggests the problem is the server speed. The patchiness is primarily on text. Graphics render fine.

http://192.168.5.2:5800

|No response. Did various researches, opened firewall ports 5800:5802 and 5900:5902 on both machines. Just no joy. The result is the same in both Firefox and Konqueror. My guess is that this will only render an X session, which is not very useful (I can do as well with ''ssh'' if all it offers is a shell...

realvnc
http://realvnc.com/ offers a free version for download, which I have done. But it is just the usual vncserver/viewer X-session pair.|

I had earlier succeeded in getting a session with the machine upstairs {{{m90.Pilgrim.net, 192.168.5.2}}} using both {{{vncviewer}}} and the HTTP interface http://m90:5801/ on {{{konqueror}}}.

Remaining X-server Issues
The session is rendered as an X-session, not a desktop session, if vncserver is running. Which client is being used ((vncclient or krdc does not matter. You must have krfb up on the server to see the desktop.

With vncserver I do not know how to:

Have the client's actions appear on the screen of the X server. All this can carry on in X and there is no indication on the screen. krdc actions do appear.
See the existing server desktop. I only see the Xshell that comes up when I connect and any subsequent applications I open from the CLI in the shell. KDE Desktop, icons, etc. are all invisible.I can invoke KDE from the X-session shell prompt, but this then returns the pixellation and patchiness issues cited above, and again are invisible on the server display.
Resize the windows in the viewer. I can bring up the menu and select resize but there is still no response. By contrast, krdc does a nice job of resizing the display to fit the client screen.
Alt-Tab between the child windows. Again the Menu lets you park an icon manager and select windows there, but the Alt-Tab kind of function eludes me.
Allow access to external addresses. This is just a matter of working through the firewall settings and the results in {{{dmesg}}} but at present we haven't gotten there.
Allow access on my own machine. I can access M90 but not this machine and there are no messages in {{{dmesg}}} indicating the problem.

Tips

Ensure your network does not have any IP conflicts. Each machine needs a unique IPA. //Duhhh//...
Alt-F8 brings up the VNC viewer menu.
Try the {{{-shared}}} option. When you make a connection to a VNC server, all other existing connections to that server are normally closed.
You can run the viewer as either //user// or {{{root}}}. The permissions on the remote ("server") machine determine what you can do.
You need to open a number of ports in the firewall to allow access here: TCP 5800, TCP 5900 as a minimum.

Checklist
Here is a checklist of access controls that can prevent successfull VNC sessions:
(With multitudinous thanks to
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/vnc-connection-refused-435593/)
1. Make sure your router firewall allows VNC. Specifically, it should open the ports 5800, 5900. If your VNC display is on :1, you should also open ports 5801 & 5901. Similarly, if your display is on port :2, you should open 5802 & 5902, and so on.
In Guarddog, create these in the Advanced tab and enable Local to serve to to Pilgrim.net and vice versa (and the Internet if desired) in the Local section.

2. Make sure your Xwindows has access opened on those displays. To find out, do:
> xauth list
This results in:
P1610:~ # xauth list
P1610/unix:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 5e7c1e8f677366d772374530258c514e
M90.Pilgrim.net:1 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 5b6a01831f3e58b77218990dd62cdc1b
P1610/unix:1 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 5b6a01831f3e58b77218990dd62cdc1b
3. To find the external IP address of your linux machine, point your webbrowser (on the linux machine) to http://myipaddress.com/
4. Finally, note that you can point your web browser (on your linux machine) to the following website to check if your VNC server is accessible from the external world: http://www.gotomyvnc.com
5. And as usual after messing about with a firewall, go to
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
to make sure you are not showing anything you don't want to show.

Trucking Along... VMWare

2009-02-26T22:46:00.002-05:00

I've slain a bunch of dragons in the past few weeks. Quite happy with that.

But many others evade me.

One is VMWare's USB 2.0 support, apparently not. The menu states that WorkStation 5.0 series do not support USB 2.0, but I am on WS 6.5.1. Going to tools offers no solution for upgrading, and Googling has not helped so far...

As a result I cannot connect the Nokia E90 nor the Olympus DS-61 to Windows 2000 running on VMWare WS 6.5.1 on Linux SuSE 11.1.

I'm sure we shall figure it out eventually.

The Cat Sat on the Hat - SuSE 11.1 & KDE 4.x

2009-02-07T11:32:00.005-05:00

Well, not on the hat. But he did sit on the keyboard. I haven't a clue what magic combination of keys he triggered, but whatever, it was a doozy. The video settings were trashed, as was OpenOffice and several other things. So after numerous attempts to "upgrade", restart, re-this, re-that, I bit the bullet, reformatted the partition and started the installation from scratch.

This time it has installed KDE 4.1.9 and OpenOffice 3.0.1. Both, especially the former, are a delight.

KDE 4.1.9 has the touted "Folder View" working nicely. It took me a while to Google and figure out how to show the desktop icons. The key is to right click on the desktop, choose Desktop Settings and then examine the options in the Desktop Activity > Type options. (Yes, I know, this is not intuitive). The first two choices are Default Desktop and Desktop without ... (there is more but it disappears off the screen). The third is Folder View. Apply this and all your icons reappear.

Once past all that Plasma is a delight:

* Run your cursor to the upper left hand corner of the screen and you get a tiled miniaturization of all open windows showing the actual contents of each, making choosing the one you want much easier than using icon recognition (what is that funny little triangle with the exclamation point...). You just look at the window and know.

* Are you wondering what's underneath your current window? Just click the title bar at the top and hold or move the window. It turns partly transparent, showing whatever is underneath.

Also, delighted to see Input Actions (aka KHotKeys) have returned. I've really missed those.

So, much improved over earlier versions. I still haven't found how to turn back on the button for recent documents on the Start menu. They have Recently installed, but no Recent Documents. But I'm sure I'll eventually figure it out, prolly by adding an icon...

As for OpenOffice.org 3.0.1, it just generally seems much more complete, smooth, and professional. I'm mostly a Calc guy so have focused there. They have fixed some glitches and given it a new, more professional look.

Initial installation resulted in v. 3.0.0.9, but having read about 3.0.1 I updated the repositories and "upgraded" the components. This went alright, except that there were a number of conflicts between 3.0.0.9 and 3.0.1 components, so I finally just totally uninstalled 3.0.0.9 and clicked one box - OpenOffice.org - in YaST to install 3.0.1. This went flawlessly, but only installed Calc and Math. So I returned and only clicked four boxes: Writer, Impress, Draw, QuickStart. Again, no problems.

So I figure all those hard working folks have figured out the dependencies, I'll just let them decide what I need to install, instead of crawling through pages and pages of options myself.

Minimalism is a good thing.

So it seems that as, cited by an earlier commenter, the problems were with KDE and other apps and not with SuSE itself. OTOH, the packagers need to temper their desire to get the latest and greatest and not knowingly package buggy software in a release, at least not without some warning.

But, whatevah, I'm a much happier camper now.

SuSE 11.1 - too little, too soon

2009-01-21T16:39:00.004-05:00

I'm an engineer, so I like to read the instructions and do my homework before I come to a conclusion. So I have given SuSE 11.1 due diligence. I have spent at least a day with each of the problem areas, some with success, others without. As a result I have come to the following conclusion:

SuSE 11.1 is very pretty. The Plasma desktop is beautiful.
SuSE 11.1 is a very pretty bimbo. There are a lot of things that just don't work.

As my father said to my sister, "pretty is as pretty does." The SuSE people have obviously spent a lot of time on facepaint, but under that pretty face is a very disfunctional brain. Let me count the ways:

Bluetooth does not work on KDE. http://en.opensuse.org/Bluetooth gives the summary. http://forums.opensuse.org/hardware/402244-bluetooth-solution-opensuse-11-1-a.html gives the workaround as installing the gnome bluetooth package, but it only works if you have Gnome as the desktop. On KDE bluetooth does not even appear in YaST, although hcitool does show it exists and it can find remote and local devices. You just cannot assign a password to the local device, so you cannot connect. As a result there is a host of other things that do not work, including:
- obexfs
- syncml
- Bluetooth modem
GIMP 2.6.2 scanner support does not work. xscanimage cannot find the scanner even though skanlite and scanimage find the device. We can live with this since skanlite can save a scan to a file that we can then open in GIMP.
Audio does not work. We spent hours farkling this.There is a troubleshooting guide for SuSE 11.1 system at http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Intel-HDA_sound_problems but I have been through this in detail without success.
File previews in konqueror do not work. The new Plasma interface lets you select or deselect a file by clicking on the icon, but despite settings in Personal Settings you do not get the popup preview with size, date, ownership data.
The system will not shut down except by brute force power-off. See http://forum.soft32.com/linux/SuSE-11-Novell-bring-windows-98-code-Linux-ftopict474479.html
khotkeys does not work. As a result I have lost all my quick inputs of the complex passwords we have to use.
Beagle is a dog. Duhhh. But it really is. It spends hours thrashing about, but when you ask it something it plays dumb. So why am I wasting all that disk space? So I nuked it.
The SuSE firewall is a dog. No visible means of configuration unless you have memorized iptables. Thanks be to God for guarddog:
http://www.simonzone.com/software/guarddog/
There is no support for mplayer, even though this is the dominant open source media player. I had to revert to learning svn (a step beyond CVS and full of flamers) to get it to work, and the kplayer GUI still doesn't work.
The default SeaMonkey email system is definitely a work in progress. I went with it for a week and then trashed it to return to Thunderbird.

SO: pretty well disappointed.

Note that:
- These conclusions are deliberate. I spent easily a full eight hour day on each of these problems
- I am a real SuSE fan. I prefer the KDE interface as being bright and cheerful and crisp. Everyone else wants fat dull Gnome. I hate it.
- I'm a certified engineer and geek, so quite adept, and moreso than most, at farkling these problems.
- And, most importantly, all these things worked just fine on SuSE 10.2. So the operative phrase is: If it ain't broke don't fix it!! Good grief...

My opinion is that the community at large, and Novell/OpenSuSE in particular, would be better off adhering less rigidly to a six-month release cycle and more rigidly to making sure that very much everything works before making a release. Normal people do not reformat their disks and install a new operating system every six months. 'Way too much work. This evolution has easily cost me two months, which thankfully I had available. I'm not going to do that every six months. And releasing buggy software just gives the community a bad name. So take at least a little more time and ensure that it WORKS before releasing it. Especially do not release stuff that the community has already identified as being dysfunctional, like bluetooth on KDE4.

So, despite being a SuSE fan from 10.2 onward, I shall catch my breath, and then try to figure out how to get Fedora or something else to give me KDE. And then, maybe, very maybe, come back to try SuSE 11.2 or 11.3 or ... But again, shall do due diligence first.

MPLAYER DOWNLOAD AND INSTALLATION FOR DUMMIES

2009-01-03T00:01:00.003-05:00

1. Always try to download mplayer using your distribution's software manager:
| Distro | Manager|
|OpenSuse | YaST |
|Fedora | yum |
|Debian |apt|
|Ubuntu | ~|

If these fail then add the "packman" repository
http://opensuse-community.org/Package_Sources/Packman

(see that page) by issuing the following command as root (all on one line):
zypper addrepo --repo http://packman.mirrors.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.1/Packman.repo

and then try again by asking YaST for mplayer. It should give you a host of modules, select them all and click ACCEPT.

If that fails then the best answer is to use the svn repository. svn is a process ("protocol") for frequently updating the status and files of a software project, such as mplayer. Developers submit daily changes to the component files. The files are accessed by using the program svn, which may already have been installed on your machine by your installation system. Type
svn help
as root at a terminal to determine whether or not it exists, and if not then install it.

Once installed, svn uses a unique internet permissions protocol, called a "port", to access the updated files. Your firewall needs to give permission for the port to be seen and accessed by servers on the internet. Otherwise svn cannot find its target.

"Guarddog" from http://www.simonzone.com/ is an excellent tool to configure your firewall. You can add "ports" in the Advanced tab of the program, then tick the boxes in the Protocol tab for Internet, local and your local network.

Check your results with https://www.grc.com/ (using the ShieldsUp! option) to ensure you have not exposed yourself by opening this port.

Once past all that housekeeping, simply enter the following commands in sequence in a terminal as root:

svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer
# This will download the main software and most of its dependencies and associated codecs. It will not get ALL of them... :-(

cd /root/mplayer # This moves you to where the files have been downloaded

./configure # This is the normal start of an installation sequence that creates a "makefile" summary of all the files that need to be installed

make # This uses the results of ./configure to compile the program

make install # This installs the program.

Test your result by typing

mplayer

as either user or root.

For the explorers among you, this site seems to say it all:

http://linux.justinhartman.com/FFmpeg,_FFmpeg-PHP,_Lame,_Libogg,_Libvorbis,_FLVtool2,_Mplayer,_Mencoder,_AMR_Installation#Download_all_the_files_needed

If it works, Enjoy!

If it doesn't, then have a nice day. Google is your friend. Consider joining:

"MPlayer usage questions, feature requests, bug reports"

Oh yeh. This is for users of Linux. If you are on some proprietary closed source OS then really have a nice day.

Mindboggling

2008-12-15T01:20:00.002-05:00

I cannot believe that a sitting Republican president would even consider this course.

I have been a staunch supporter but this really earns them the DUBYA award. Shame.

Detroit is where it is, as is Wall Street, because of greedy, short-sighted management and workers.

They get what they deserve, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

So CUT THEM OFF!!!

WHAT makes them more deserving than ME???? I have a mortgage on a house, a boat, and a car. Why can't you bail ME out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What imbeciles.

Do you hear what I hear? How about the sound of a new Boston Tea Party?

Get it right.

Shame on them.

A letter to the President and Congress

2008-12-12T16:32:00.002-05:00

I have sent the following excerpt from

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122895755096596653.html

to the President and my congressmen (since I doubt they read WSJ.COM)

=========== Open Letter to the President and Congress ===========

PLEASE DO NOT BAIL OUT DETROIT!!!!!!!!!!!

Bankruptcy doesn't make assets disappear.A government bailout of the Big
Three keeps huge amounts of productive inputs in firms that can't use
them efficiently. The bigger the unprofitable firm, the more vital it is
that it be allowed to fail.

If Washington gives no special subsidies to workers and suppliers
outside of the auto industry, why treat GM, Ford and Chrysler
differently? Are their workers or owners more worthy? Not at all.

It is precisely because the Big Three differ in no essential way from
America's other firms that bailing them out runs a real risk of
cascading into a march on Washington by countless firms and individuals
unable to see why they are less entitled to taxpayer funds.

Like ME!!

If you bail them out then bail me out too!!!

Obama and Hillary

2008-12-01T17:06:00.003-05:00

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Politics/story?id=6368280

"Limbaugh called the choice of Clinton "a brilliant stroke by Obama.""

I agree with Rush. A brilliant stroke.

But I also have to recognize that we may be at a tipping point. This stroke effectively emasculates dissension within the Democratic party. Gate's reappointment as SecDef takes strides to do so among Republicans.

Brilliant.

So, if we have a new president who is inclusive and not partisan or sectarian we may have a real statesman who can actually solve problems instead of creating more, as so many before him, especially since Reagan, have done..

If the Democrats have finally come to the realization that they have plundered this Nation for the past 80 years and now are going to work to fix the damage then I am all behind them. Go for it.

Only the inclusiveness that Obama has shown so far will let this happen.

I worked for it, why shouldn't you?

2008-11-29T18:21:00.003-05:00

I am in a conversation with a liberal friend about helping a young woman who has earned her BS nursing degree by waitressing for a number of years but now is having difficulty finding a position.

We are all rallying around, but I made a comment about our location (New England) to the effect that despite the reputation for liberalism there are a number of people here who nevertheless appreciate and will support young people who want to really earn their own way. My liberal friend says he inherited his money, while I say I worked my way up on my own:

> you seem to be saying that people that work for a living should
> naturally be conservative, and people that inherit money should
> naturally be liberal. Is that true?

Mmmm. Not sure about the words should naturally be. Perhaps substitute tend to be.

Conjecture is one thing, empirical fact is another: it is what it is; if the shoe fits, wear it...

:-)

In my case (certainly not speaking for all conservatives) I find it really offensive for someone else to give away my money. It's my money because I earned it and *I* shall decide where and how to spend it or give it.

Of course my plan doesn't work for some liberals because I will likely spend my money on my family and my grandchildren and my church, helping grow more people like me.

Liberals have this obscene delusion that they are somehow supernaturally omniscient and therefore own all the assets in the world and shall decide on their own basis how to distribute those assets.

Obscene.

Omigod. If everyone had the right do spend their money as they wish then what would happen to all these poor people who don't want to work?

So the liberals have devised, and through political correctness and brow beating, achieved an income redistribution system to take my money and give it to people who won't lift a finger.

At its base it is letting the people with the work ethic do all the work, some of them misguidedly investing in the stock market to make those non-workers rich, and then paying the rest in taxes to be given to the rest of the people who do not want to work.

In the past those of us workers who were smart enough just moved the money to Switzerland. But that is getting harder to do, and besides I'm living hand to mouth, so don't have money to spare to send to Switzerland.

So if the liberals do this enough then I just stop working.

Not a recipe for national prosperity.

In general you have to look at the marginal tax rate: as that approaches 100% you have then completely removed any incentive, other than altruistic, to work any further. And, as I have already shortlisted, I'm rather short on altruism.

An anecdote from my earlier years:

I was the operations officer of the ship, another fellow was the engineer. I was practicing prudent management, saving the requisitions that the crew had submitted that were not time- or mission-critical (like, replacing foul weather jackets) until the end of the quarter, while approving those that were needed now: e.g., radar magnetrons. I had already learned that you never give back money, but also believed that I could make sure the money was spent responsibly by waiting until all the cards were on the table, i.e., approaching the end of the quarter.

The engineer was not so assiduous. He raced through his money and then asked the captain for more. The captain, instead of chastising him, took my money. Needless to say I protested loudly, but the captain had done his deed.

So I then quickly learned to invest in durable goods and stockpile early in the quarter. The next time the engineer came begging all he found was radar magnetrons and CPR kits and foul weather jackets, which he could not use or trade in for cash. I knew that eventually we would need these things so it was not wasteful, just husbanding my resources.

So I have stayed in durable goods and out of the market ever since. As a result I am completely untouched by this so called Great Depression II that no one can see except Wall Streeters. See Peggy Noonan:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122773612620961005.html

Now in the ship case, it really was not "my" money, rather more so the captain's, and indeed far more so the Navy's and the taxpayers'. But it was not prudent, fair, or in any way correct to take that which I had husbanded and give it to a profligate.

I didn't invent that idea, Jesus did, with the story of the prodigal son, and his was based on 3000 years of society at large as a precedent thereto. It is just plain wrong.

Now as in that story, perhaps I shall receive rewards in heaven and surely my life is far better than most, but I DESERVE IT AND HAVE WORKED FOR IT. So it really irritates me in a most profane way when others get GIVEN that for which I have WORKED, and ESPECIALLY when it it taken FROM ME to give to them.

Yet another: I turned 65 this year. I went from $37 a month military medical insurance to Medicare. The base rate for medicare is $97. But I get to pay $300 because I make too much money!!

So, thanks to all the liberals in the government, my medical payments have increased TEN FOLD for the simple sin of turning 65. And they are TAKING IT FROM ME TO GIVE TO SOMEONE ELSE.

So, NO. Anyone of that bent is just plain wrong and I shall and will fight them any way I can legally and morally.

And I will help and support young people who seem to be smart enough to figure things out the way I have. There is little or no hope of changing the minds of the liberals, but perhaps we can grow enough conservatives to outvote them.

"I WORKED for it, why shouldn't you?"

SyncML works for E90 and KDEPIM

2008-11-14T23:24:00.010-05:00

I have tried and tried to get this to render correctly by font, but it is late and it won't do what I tell it to do, so sorry it didn't work out. I give up.

To quote my favorite popmail server...

But if you don't need it to be perfectly pretty, here it is:

Guess what.

SyncML works.

It exists in the Nokia phone in the +Menu +Tools +Sync function.

http://ruslylove.blogspot.com/2007/10/nokia-e-series-sync-with-evolution-via.html
gives a howto for Ubuntu.

http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSync/SyncML-OBEX-Client exposes the SyncML OBEX Client, which has an extensive list of commands. This article explains accessing the phone databases, but does not indicate how to address a program on the PC.

The documentation states that the Evolution plugin does not work. This problem does not exist for the kdepim plugin, so we concentrated our efforts there, since that is where we wanted to be anyhow. (Nevermind the couple of days we spent trying to make it work before finding the comment in the source code... but whatevah.)

It Turns Out That (ITOT) the kdepim plugin works just fine. So we have now not only fired Microsoft in general, but also fired Outlook in particular. We can sync the phone to the KDE PIM flawlessly.

So. There.

SuSE HowTo
1. Install the required software
{{{
libopensync-plugin-*
libopensync0
opensyncutils
msynctool
mulstisync-qad
bluez-passkey-gnome
bluez-gnome
}}}
2. Check the plugins
{{{
p1610:~ # msynctool --listplugins
Available plugins:
gpe-sync
sunbird-sync
file-sync
evo2-sync
kdepim-sync
gnokii-sync
google-calendar
opie-sync
syncml-http-server
syncml-obex-client
palm-sync
}}}
3. Create msynctool groups and add members
{{{
msynctool --addgroup nokia
msynctool --addmember nokia kdepim-sync
msynctool --addmember nokia syncml-obex-client
}}}
This creates the nokia group, adds the PIM connector as the first member and adds the phone (syncml-obex) connector as the second member.
4. Configure the members
Configure the PIM Connector
{{{
p1610:~ # msynctool --configure nokia 1
This plugin has no options and does not need to be configured
}}}
Configure the SyncML-obex client (phone connection)
The default resides at
file:///usr/share/opensync/defaults/syncml-obex-client
while the current settings are at
file:///home/(localusername)/.opensync/group2/2/syncml-obex-client.conf
{{{
msynctool --configure nokia 2
}}}
This brings up a very long list of items.
For brevity let's look at its values like this:
{{{
00:1A:89:C4:F7:FF
10
0
PC Suite
1
1

2
1
0
0
65000
65000
Contacts
Calendar
Notes
}}}
Note that the values are case-sensitive!!!
Check the configuration
{{{
p1610:~ # msynctool --showgroup nokia
Groupname: nokia
Member 2: syncml-obex-client
...
Member 1: kdepim-sync
No Configuration found: This member has no configuration options
}}}
5. Experiment
{{{
msynctool --sync nokia
}}}

There are a few gotchas:

* The authors freely admit this is clearly alpha-ware.

* Kontact, KAddressbook, KOrganizer, in general ALL the KDE PIM elements have to be closed, like turned off, not even just in the task bar. Otherwise the process hangs.

* It takes a very long while, especially when you sync the first time. Be patient, let it run its course. As long as you are seeing the disk thrashing icon and top says it is alive, let it run. After several syncs things shall be much faster.

* Watch for the conflict choices. If it finds a conflict it shall ask; the answer is not trivial. Initially you shall find choices between real entries and trash. This may be an artifact of earlier attempts. After several syncs you may find choices being offered between, say, contacts and calendar events. There is not always a clear choice. You can choose a number or Newest. Newest is generally a good choice except where that choice is trash. So pay attention.

* Once it has settled out, pay particular attention to Korganizer. You will click on a particular day, but depending on what event you have selected you may end up at the initiation day or some other day, rather than the day you used to enter the edit.

But all these things are part of paying attention to detail, which is always a good thing to do. "Trust me" almost never works.

Hate to say I told you so... But I DID!

2008-10-31T08:21:00.003-05:00

See today's Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122542331644887249.html

On September 30 I asked, * Whom shall we be bailing out? and suggested that the answer is
Shareholders, stock brokers, corporate magnates, money people, that's who.

The article then goes on to tot up the bill at just the first three banks, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley, to some 31 B-B-B-Billion. So some five percent of the 700 billion bailout is going to disappear into the bankers pockets the minute it hits.

Good grief!!

'WAY Cool PDF Writer

2008-10-26T17:34:00.004-05:00

'WAY cool. Just like the old free Adobe PDF writer of 1998 vintage. It lets you simply print directly to a PDF instead of first to a PS and then translating it with ps2pdf.

The details are at
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/17636.html

The article is a little confusing, it talks about both the lpadmin command line approach and the CUPS GUI. ITOT you do all the work at the command line and then check it with the GUI.

So, to install this, all from the command line as root:

Install CUPS with the normal software installer (duh)...
Create a script file /usr/lib/cups/backend/pdf-writer per the provided text or our own now installed version, doing a chmod 755 in the process.
Unzip the designated Postscript Printer Description (PPD::

 cd /usr/share/cups/model
 gunzip -d Postscript-level2.ppd.gz

* Download the free AdobeTM Distiller ppd file here:
 http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=204&fileID=204
* Unzip it and copy it to the target directory:
  unzip -d adobe.zip
  cp Adobe/ADIST5.PPD /usr/share/cups/model/Acrobat-Distiller.ppd

Add the printer with:

  mkdir -p /export/share/pdf
  chmod -R 777 /export
  lpadmin -p CUPS-PDF -v pdf-writer:/export/share/pdf/ -E -P \
/usr/share/cups/model/Postscript-level2.ppd -D "PDF Writer for CUPS" \ -L "PDF Backend /usr/lib/backend/pdf-writer"

  lpadmin -p CUPS-PDF -v pdf-writer:/export/share/pdf/ -E -P \
/usr/share/cups/model/Acrobat-Distiller.ppd -D "PDF Writer for CUPS" \ -L "PDF Backend /usr/lib/backend/pdf-writer"

Then and only then, launch the 'way cool CUPS GUI:

http://localhost:631/admin

and play with your new virtual printer.

:-)

When you print test pages from this interface the results are stored in /export/share/pdf

Very very good.

Game face

2008-10-17T00:15:00.005-05:00

As long as we are breaking glass, what is the world view on makeup: lipstick, eye liner, eye shadow?

I know there are a lot of cosmetics firms that do not want to hear this.

But here it is, anyhow.

The issue is whether you have a limbic or neocortical kind of connection in your relationship. For me both demand that you wash your face.

If a limbic connection you just close your eyes, sigh, and enjoy what follows. But if neocortical you relate with eyes open. And therein lies the problem.

Makeup, by definition, is synthetic. I have never seen a person for whom makeup added anything, especially lipstick, eye liner, or eye shadow.

If the person is naturally beautiful then makeup hides their beauty and distracts you to the makeup, which renders the natural beauty invisible.

If the person is not naturally beautiful then the makeup accentuates their lack of beauty and makes them look rather needy, desperate, and pathetic.

These effects are especially pronounced on people of fair complexions since they create such a marked contrast.

So why do they do it?

One possibility is that it is their game face. Tight skirts, spike heels, and a painted face is their equivalent of going out on an NFL field in face masks and body armor.

Fine, go for it, but don't ask me to be your friend...

Needless to say, I have engaged very very few ladies in this sort of discourse, but perhaps this posting will spark a kindly debate from which all can win.

So folks, please wash your face.

It is what it is. If it is naturally beautiful it will shine through. If it is not, then your soul will shine through. In either case, your honesty and willingness to deal with reality will shine through, and show you to be a person worthy of friendship, kindness, and engagement. Being painted up just shows you to be pretending...

Of course, there is a counter-attack. What about all these dudes with Titan pickup trucks that will never see a trail path, the cowboys with boots and big hats who never have and never will leave New England, the boaters with flag belts and Docksides who have never left shore, let alone Narragansett Bay? And so on and so forth.

We all adopt affectations. The offense occurs when the affectation distorts reality.

If you are an actor or actress then makeup is a tool of the trade. It is, after all, a trade of make believe.

If you are a boat skipper or a ship captain then Docksides make sense to help you stay on your feet in a tossing sea, as do all the other accoutrements of Henri Lloyd jackets, baggy pants, and light shirts.

The belts work if you are real in a sort of "If you have it flaunt it" kind of mode.

But if you are not in the trades, then why?

Maybe for fun. Colorful belts of what you'd rather be spending your time doing are fun. LaCoste shirts are reminders of exotic trips you have taken and wonderworlds you have visited, so fun.

Maybe for defense, as the game face approach above.

But once it gets past either being who you are, doing it for fun, or doing it for defense then it starts to fall on deaf ears.

I for one do not understand it.

So let's all wash our faces and examine our affectations.

If it is not true it is false.

Duh...

Life is so simple, and so complex

2008-10-10T22:15:00.002-05:00

We have had a tumultuous week this week, with the Dow diving southward and other things.

But it offers a view of what really matters.

You need someone else in your life whom you love and who makes you smile every time you see them.

You need them to be able and willing to spend time with you, doing stuff. Whatever: weeding, doing laundry, preferably biking, swimming, traveling, but regardless, doing stuff, fun stuff, together.

Besides your going to work to earn money to be able to do these things, nothing much else matters.

Life at its essence.

It would be nice if this other person were a pretty person of the opposite gender, but if that is not possible then a nice Siamese cat will do.

Regardless, we need someone else in our lives.

OK, how we can make the bailout actually work... Needs and Wants

2008-10-02T20:21:00.006-05:00

OK, OK, yes, I had some fun with numbers in the previous post. Sorry if I offended anyone.

Except the money people. They deserve to be offended.

But it is true and the Congress is admitting as much: they are bailing out the money people.

But they say it is for a good cause.

What they are proposing is to buy all the bad debt, putting money back in the pockets of the money people and then trusting them to do the right thing!

Good grief. How naive!!

The alligator just ate your first-born. You are now going to toss your second-born into the pond and trust the alligator to do the right thing? Reminds me of the joke about software engineers...

Give me a freaking break.

Oh yeh, and along the way are the inevitable plugins of perks, pork, and earmarks...

Good grief.

-----

OK, enough complaining, how can we make it actually work?

I understand the following:

+ We want (not need) a viable long-term credit market to fund long term customer purchases.

(Please do not use the term "consumer" in my presence. I am not a consumer. A hog is a consumer. I am a customer, who chooses, based on quality of service, where to place my custom. If you are not kind, courteous, fair, and trustworthy then I will not place it with you.)

As customers we want (not need) to buy things like houses, cars, and even boats. Having credit means we can have them sooner than later (um, greed, but we can live with it).

If the credit is not available for these things then many fewer of these things shall be sold, so a whole bunch of people working in these industries may end up out of work, perhaps through no fault of their own. So maybe we should avoid that.

(OTOH, if they are following my previous suggestion of investing in real and durable goods they wouldn't be so bad off. And of course the whole credit system is a pyramid scheme, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. If we could convert credit to planning then people would have the money to pay cash for such things and the same number of builders and sellers could still be employed at the same levels. Of course that would then put the bank loan departments out of work... But I won't go there tonight.)

+ We also want (not need) a viable short-term credit market to provide liquidity to small businesses who have short term liabilities (payroll, for example) with rather longer term billing cycles. So they need to get the money to pay short-term liabilities until the longer term revenues accrue.

(OTOH, if they were saving and not using credit but rather creating enterprise funds to save up in advance for these easily predictable expenses then they wouldn't need credit. Hmmm. It is sounding more and more like this is a bailout for bank loan departments! But I won't go there tonight either.)

+ What we DO need (not want) is a safe place (other than under the mattress) for people to put their hard-earned money until they are ready to spend it on the preceding wants. But, with the FDIC and some controls, we may already have that.

+ What we NEITHER need NOR want is yet another license for the same money people to eat our lunch, again.

So what is to be done?

----------

Before I answer that, let me put in a plug for frugality: the people of Netherlands are notoriously (and wonderfully) frugal. They also run the industrial world.

(If you doubt that then start looking closely at all the major players in all the markets: Shell, Phillips, shipping companies, freight companies, industrial machinery companies, van this and van that... Of course, they are actually building stuff, not just inventing pyramid schemes...)

We are starting to see that here as well. What happens there and with enterprise funds here is that you allocate money on a regular basis to targeted savings funds to prepare in advance for fully expectable expenses, like rent, electricity, and (duh) payroll. And you do not use or allow credit for such things. Period, full stop. No cashee, no purchasee. Even for food.

In short, these practices demonstrate restraint, foresight, planning, and, of course, personal discipline and responsibility.

How quaint.

Of course, that is foreign to our normal yahoo cowboy mentality and political correctness so cannot be foisted on the populace. It needs to be learned (since we seem to have forgotten it) and we haven't time for that right now.

But it does work, wonderfully.

----------

OK, so here is what the Congress can do in the short term to 1) provide the short- and long-term credit markets we want and at the same time 2) prevent paying money back to the same yahoos who squandered our future with stupid and dangerous investments and are laughing all the way to their bank in the Turks and Caicos:

1. Establish a set of credit guidelines on how much money can be lent for how long at what rate for a person with how much income. This is a number cruncher's dream and ultimately doable. I remember my father reciting guidelines for how much house you could buy with a 25 year mortgage if you made $12,000 a year. That sort of thing. Give me a couple of hours of Googling and I'll bet I'll come up with a pretty good list.

2. Tell every bank in the world that has FDIC protection that they must adhere to those guidelines if they don't want to lose their FDIC protection. Make it effective immediately.

3. Revise Fannie/Freddie and all their cousins to start making short- and long-term loans to the public following those guidelines. In other words, start up a public sector honest broker competitor to commercial banks. That will get the money people up on their toes.

4. If that is too hard, then invest in the zillions of Federal Credit Unions and Federal Savings Banks, either with direct investment or higher insurance coverage and lower taxes, to have them provide the short- and long-term credit. Firms like Navy Federal Credit Union - navyfcu.org or USAA Federal Savings Bank - usaa.com. These organizations are, by charter, customer-oriented and -controlled and essentially non-profit organizations; they have Federal regulations and rulesets that require that excess profit is returned to the account holders, the shareholders, who regularly vote on by-laws and board member selections. They are responsive, responsible, and highly functional.

And non-predatory.

5. Now it gets harder, but we also need (not just want) some form of personal accountability for irresponsible speculation and exploitation. I'll think on this and let you know.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, but it does feel good when you get a chunk of it yourself. Cutting off their ears or other body parts prolly won't pass muster with UN human rights commissions, but it would feel good.

In the meantime, measures such as the previous four will meet the needs (and wants) and avoid paying money to the perpetrators of the crisis by buying bad debts.

So.

How far can 700 BILLION go? A very very long way, if it is spent carefully, responsibly, prudently, and conservatively.

And not simply turned over to the same dude that just did you.

Maybe someone can explain this bailout to me ...

2008-09-30T19:27:00.021-05:00

* Why do we need to bail out some people to the tune of $700 B-B-BILLION?

* Whom shall we be bailing out?

* What happens if we don't?

* Will someone bail me out?

Guess what:

* We are not bailing out the Government. The Government will not go bankrupt.

* We are not bailing out the poor people on welfare. The Government pays them.

* We are not bailing out people with savings accounts. They are insured by the FDIC to the tune of some $100,000 per person per bank. If they are keeping more than that kind of money in a bank uninsured at typically stupidly low interest rates then they are not very smart and deserve to lose it. (Yes, Social Darwinist, deal with it.)

* We are not bailing out those of us who choose to park our savings in real estate and durable goods. These shall not lose their value. They are real and durable. Duhhh...

* We are not bailing out the cash economy. You know, like Newport, RI, where all transactions are in cash and nobody reports any income.

So who is left? Shareholders, stock brokers, corporate magnates, money people, that's who.

Which is where all this problem started: People trying to be cute, knowingly at the expense of others, with rampant disregard for their fiduciary responsibilities to others:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122273029076687929.html

This citation recommends reestablishing a standard for value that is independent of the "unbridled greed and recklessness" of men. A standard such as gold or a bimetallic (gold and silver) that would provide such a buffer. The point is, that if you back your value with reality (gold, silver, real estate, durable goods) then you are insured against the stupidity and greed of market manipulators.

* So, why should I bail them out? Guess what: high risk investment is just that: possibly high gain, but possibly high loss. This time they got caught out and should pay the price.

-----

Here is some basic math; all it takes is simple division:

+ Let's see: I have some $300K left on the house mortgage and another say $50K on various personal property items. $350K in round numbers, which happens to divide nicely into 700,000,000,000.

+ 700,000,000,000 divided by 350,000 gives 2,000,000. TWO MILLION people like me.

* So who is going to bail me out? Why not bail out ME?! Isn't it better for society at large to bail out TWO MILLION honest, hardworking, and responsible people than a much smaller number of predatory and irresponsible people?

How much smaller a number? The census bureau points to some 3,512,000 people working as financial specialists:

http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032008/perinc/new06_001.htm

Not all of them are irresponsible, of course, but if two-thirds of them are then we are back to this magic 2 MILLION number. So it starts looking like $700 billion is going to bail out 2 million financial workers with lifestyles like mine.

But hang on, these dudes are NOT like me. They make a whole bunch more than I do. Looking at the same table I find that there are 492 thousand financial workers making over $100 grand. Wow!

So let's get real:

Let's be generous. Let's round this up to 500 thousand such people in the financial sector making over $100K a year. Divide that into $700 billion.

* That gives $1.4 million to each one of these dudes!!! Tax Free!!!

Yikes! Better than the lottery.

Will anyone give ME $1.4 mil, tax free (or otherwise)??

Of course not...

Oh, and by the way, they may already have parked their fortunes elsewhere. The following article cites $3.4 TRILLION (that is $3,400,000,000,000 - man, look at all those zeros!) as residing overseas, or just under $7 MILLION for each of those 350,000 money people making over $100K:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122273062657688131.html

Think about it.

Of course, I know my conclusions are guesses. As someone said, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

But they give you a sense of the magnitude and scope of the problem:

* The proposed bailout will benefit a relatively small number of people who do not deserve to benefit

* The proposed bailout will not benefit the vast majority of us who are not at blame for, nor at risk from, the situation.

* The economy and those of us not at blame shall survive, as evidenced by today's quick market rebound.

* If anything is to be done it is to return the money system to a reality based standard, such as the gold standard or a bimetallic standard to preclude this sort of damage from predators and speculators (one and the same...)

So, the immediate and correct answer is NO. To any of these schemes, but especially to the bailout.

Ye reap what ye sow.

Deal with it.

Doers and Losers

2008-09-25T23:04:00.007-05:00

As noted by the previous post sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the events of stupidity, laziness, and ignorance that surround me, resulting in a huge storm in my mind.

The following article is an affirmation that it is not only I that suffers in this manner:

http://www.jeffersonburruss.com/2008/06/united-airlines-satans-chariot.html

I am having my own travails with Pantaenius UK and Fedex.

The former, when presented with an invoice for some 5000 euros has allowed only 2000 euros and refuses to forward this up the chain to higher authority. So I have to take my precious and billable time to try to track down an address for higher management, someone with common sense, to resolve it.

The latter quoted me (over the phone of course, but "conversations are recorded for purposes of quality control" so we can get to them if necessary) some 470 USD to ship a 50 lb bike to the Netherlands, but then charged me some 2400 USD.

How the heck it can cost 2400 USD to ship a 50 pound bike worth no more than 2400 USD is beyond me.

Stupid people.

These shall be resolved, if only by extracting a pound of flesh.

The point is, how can people behave in such stupid ways? They must know that they are misbehaving, behaving in an irrational manner. But they have such a storm in their minds that they simply cannot behave correctly.

We have to fight this. Every time you walk away it makes it easier for them to blow you off. Every time that you push back you make them just that little bit less likely to behave in that manner again. Just hoping that someone will read your blog and do something is not enough.

So you just really must push back.

So I am calling, writing, and using my excellent lawyers to threaten and cajole these people into behaving correctly. Fortunately I have the means to do so, and hopefully my doing so will result in others not having to do so.