gregoa's blog

fun with my machines at home in the last days:

• on the laptop my network interfaces got renamed from eth0 to eth1 & from ath0 to wlan0. messing with /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules helped. this seems to be #521521.
• strange sound phenomenons on my desktop. turns out that (1) centerim's new sounds are nice but very quiet & (2) the audible bell in xterm is broken; the latter is #520405. fixed by quickly creating a local 243-0.1 package.
• on my laptop the function keys don't work via acpi any more. turns out that CONFIG_ACPI_PROC_EVENT is finally turned off in debian's 2.6.29 kernel, & I found no documentation on how to make the keys work again with hal/evdev/whatnot. this is #521279, & right now I'm building a kernel with CONFIG_ACPI_PROC_EVENT enabled.

sometimes running unstable can be a bit time-consuming ...

I'm playing with my new toys:

I got my OpenMoko Freerunner around 2.5 weeks ago. of course I've installed Debian on it — & I'm spending so much time with it that I don't have the time to blog about my successes & failures :) but I guess I will.

today I bought a 3G usb modem & an appropriate SIM card (the yesss! product sold at hofer [they even had one in stock in the third outlet I checked {at 17:57}]) — mainly to have a SIM card for my Freerunner without having to take my regular one out of my communicator :) but of course also to have mobile internet.

setting up the latter was not much of a hassle; usb_modeswitch doesn't seem to be necessary (usb_storage fails, so the two modem devices are brought up) but I have it installed nevertheless.

& regarding the connection: guess what — using pppd (pon/poff after writing /etc/chatsecrets/yesss & /etc/ppp/peers/yesss) works better than umtsmon (which works too except that it claims "connection error" after setting up the connection).

(pppd files & usb-modeswitch/umtsmon packages available on request. basically there is all available out there "on the intarwebs")

on monday I migrated tux (the debian server at my workplace) to a new machine (hp [0] proliant ml110 g5). & it was completely painless. what I did:

• install a base system on the new machine (with debian-40r5a-etchnhalf-amd64-netinst.iso) [1]. yes, this is etch:
  • the installer worked flawlessly to create a RAID1 over the two disks & to install grub for booting from / on RAID. very nice.
  • just a minimal system, no users, ...
• copy stuff over from the old machine: (most of) /etc (including /etc/passwd & friends), /home, & a bit more.
• get the package list from the old machine, install them on the new machine keeping the old config.
• a few minor tweaks.
• change the ip addresses on both machines & switch their physical positions.

yes, that's it.

after ~3 hours I now have:

• my first dual-core machine
• my first amd64 system
• my first box with an etchnhalf kernel
• a box that is completely bored :)
  from htop:

  1  [|                                        0.3%]     Tasks: 49 total, 1 running
  2  [|                                        1.0%]     Load average: 0.00 0.00 0.00 
  Mem[|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||442/1004MB]     Load: 0.00 
  Swp[                                     0/1976MB]     Uptime: 2 days, 12:01:18

I keep being impressed by how simple linux is, & how good debian & especially the debian installer works.

do I need to mention that the migration of the windows server (from nt 4.0 to windows 2003 on new hardware) is still not finished after 2 days of hard work?
to be honest: the windows box has more jobs than tux: domain controller, roaming profiles, file server, exchange, mssql, some library database, ... tux only runs exim4 + spamassassin + clamav + greylistd, squid, some scripts, & does a bit of iptables blocking & port forwarding.
but still ...
(& the old machine worked more or less fine with 96 MB RAM & a ~300 MHz CPU.)

[0]
because they are linux & debian friendly.

[1]
of course that can be avoided by just copying stuff over from the old machine, either via netcat & friends or by putting the old disks in the new machine. but in this case (1) the old box doesn't boot from CD (have I already mentioned it's an old box?), (2) the old one has SCSI & the new one SATA disks, (3) the old one was i386 & the new one (at least potentially) amd64.

• I have a new toy: notify-send.
• I need to pratice guitar playing more often.

so let's try to combine these points:

• install needed software: notification-daemon, libnotify-bin (contains notify-send).
• find an image.
• set up a cronjob.

cronjob (wrapped over several lines for better legibility):

0 17 * * * DISPLAY=:0.0 notify-send \
        -t 0 \
        -u critical \
        -h "int:x:1680" -h "int:y:0" \
        -i /home/gregoa/data/sound/trio\ infernal/triologo_square_border_transparent.png \
        "Trio Infernal says:" \
        "Heute schon Gitarre gespielt?"

(for details check man 1 notify-send)

result (at the top right corner of my screen):

& yes, this is not my only use case for notify-send :)

after I had some troubles today I put my solution for reading UTF-8 encoded HTML mails with mutt into a short article.

today in my website's access.log (wrapped for easier legibility):

64.1.215.166 - - [21/Nov/2008:19:03:02 +0100] "GET /{,blog/} HTTP/1.0" \
  404 6963 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Twiceler-0.9 http://www.cuil.com/twiceler/robot.html)"

the broken URL comes from my ~/.signature which since about 2 months contains the following fragment:

http://info.comodo.priv.at/{,blog/}

& probably that line was found in some web archive of a mailing list or newsgroup or somesuch.

now what is this highly intelligent Twiceler thingy? a look at the URL in the access.log entry redirects to cuil, & the page proudly claims in friendly, large, green letters

Cuil is the biggest search engine on the planet.

apart from the fact that I've never heard about them & that their search results are not impressive either, their "philosophy" (huh?) page claims:

Size matters

maybe it's just me but probably they should invest more in technical "cuil" [0] than in marketing speak that sounds less like search engines but more like another business branch on the intarwebs.

[0] "Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge." (source: cuil again)

I've upgraded the kernel on both my laptop (on tuesday) & my laptop (today) to 2.6.26; no problems so far, the extra modules built & the kernels run. — ath5k is still not working with my wifi chip (AR5212, cf. #463425, although the errors look slightly different [0]; let's wait until 2.6.26-686 hits unstable).

on other news: cpu frequency scaling seems to finally work on my laptop (thinkpad R60e with a Intel(R) Celeron(R) M CPU 420 @ 1.60GHz cpu); the trick was to set the minimal frequency explicitly to 400 khz (200 would be the lowest value).

# cat /etc/modules
..
p4-clockmod
cpufreq_ondemand


# cat /etc/sysfs.conf
..
devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor = ondemand
devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq = 399999

updates:

• I have strange network problems here at DebCamp with 2.6.26 & madwifi, fortunately I still have some other kernels installed :)
• ath5k still doesn't work with linux-image-2.6.26-1-686 from unstable.

update:
w00t! ath5k works with linux-image-2.6.26-1-686 2.6.26-2!
but I still have massive packet loss wih both madwifi and ath5k here at DebConf. — & also here some days later at "Hostal Sebas" in BsAs.

[0]

# grep ath5k /var/log/syslog.0
Jul 30 00:36:09 nerys kernel: [  320.450984] ath5k_pci 0000:03:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
Jul 30 00:36:09 nerys kernel: [  321.121107] ath5k phy0: Atheros AR5424 chip found (MAC: 0xa3, PHY: 0x61)
Jul 30 00:36:22 nerys kernel: [  333.513763] ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration timeout (2412MHz)
Jul 30 00:36:22 nerys kernel: [  333.513794] ath5k phy0: can't reset hardware (-11)
Jul 30 00:36:38 nerys kernel: [  349.655496] ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration timeout (2412MHz)
Jul 30 00:36:38 nerys kernel: [  349.655525] ath5k phy0: ath5k_chan_set: unable to reset channel (2412 Mhz)
Jul 30 00:36:42 nerys kernel: [  353.004057] ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration timeout (2412MHz)
Jul 30 00:36:44 nerys kernel: [  355.314594] ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration timeout (2417MHz)

finally I managed to book my flight to DebConf8.

2008-08-03 IB3537
07:45 / Munich, Franz Josef Strauss, Terminal 1
10:25 / Madrid, Barajas, Terminal 4


2008-08-03 IB6845
12:25 / Madrid, Barajas, Terminal 4S
19:40 / Buenos Aires, Pistarini, Terminal A


2008-08-25 IB6844
21:35 / Buenos Aires, Pistarini, Terminal A
14:30 day +1 / Madrid, Barajas, Terminal 4S


2008-08-26 IB3564
16:30 / Madrid, Barajas, Terminal 4
18:55 / Munich, Franz Josef Strauss, Terminal 1

& I'm still surprised how frequently the prices for the same flights change ...

• since last weekend both my desktop & my laptop run linux 2.6.25 & perl 5.10; no remarkable changes/problems so far.
• more interesting: by chance (well, by running powertop) I discovered that my laptop (Thinkpad R60e, Intel Celeron M 420 CPU) now supports cpu frequency scaling; it uses the p4-modclock kernel module & works fine with the ondemand governor. — so there might have been some changes in the kernel which I had missed for a whole week :)

for those interested in cpu frequency scaling I can still recommend john goerzen's fine tutorial.

update 1:
or not. the machine freezes every other minute for several minutes, both with the ondemand & the conservative governor; & also with the userspace governor.

update 2:
after disabling some cpu power management option in the BIOS cpu frequency scaling seems to work, although I see occasional short freezings.

update 3:
well, having freezes of 2-3 seconds each minute is better than everything before but not good enough for actually using it.

when I woke up today (after sleeping in for the first time with my new roll-top in front of my bedroom window) I was surprised & confused by a couple of "congratulations!" messages in my irc away-log. it took me a bit of time & coffee (& looking into my mailbox) to begin to realize that my Debian account had indeed been created while I was asleep. — in fact I guess I still haven't completely realized my new status as Debian Developer.

as others I'd like to follow the good tradition of taking the opportunity to thank some of the people who helped me to get there:

• first & foremost Tony Mancill, my advocate, permanent sponsor, & long-time co-maintainer; for all his support in preparing & quickly uploading packages, tracking down bugs, encouraging & advocating me but also for our very pleasant "chats" via email. — we have already agreed to continue co-maintaining each other's packages.
• the friendly & helpful guys from the Debian Perl Group: Gunnar Wolf, for always encouraging me (to join the group, to apply for the New Maintainer Process, ...); Damyan Ivanov, for teaching me so much (even if he called it "nitpicking"); Gunnar, Damyan, Krzysztof Krzyżaniak, Niko Tyni, Roberto C. Sánchez, Stephen Gran, Frank Lichtenheld, Jaldhar H. Vyas, Russ Allbery, Raphaël Hertzog, & some others for uploading packages I've prepared & helping me when I had questions or problems; Martín Ferrari, for all his help, expertise, & especially for the fun & the good times we share on IRC.
• my Application Manager Wouter Verhelst; for guiding me through the New Maintainer process not only fast but also in a very helpful, at the same time demanding & supporting way.
• the Debian Women sub-project; for making Debian a better & friendlier place not only for women but in general.
• finally: the people who used the time while I was asleep to actually create my account tonight :)

some final thoughts about the NM process from my point of view:

• it took me some time to actually apply for NM; what deterred me was not that I knew it would take some time but that I didn't know how long the time would be; & that I knew that the bigger part of the overall time would consist of waiting.
• I applied on 2007-04-03, my account was created on 2008-04-18; 380 days is not bad altogether in my opinion; the actual work with my AM was from 2007-08-12 until 2007-11-28 (i.e. 108 days, or 28% of the whole duration).
• I did enjoy the actual checks; I had to read & think a lot, & I learned a lot in that period.
• Front Desk (i.e. Christoph Berg) was very quick on all necessary steps.
• I was never demotivated about my Debian work because of all the people supporting me & taking the burden of uploading packages I had prepared. but I have to admit that I got a little bored in the last months of waiting after the report had been submitted by my Application Manager.

& now it's time first to celebrate & then to try to fully grasp my new rights & responsibilities.