10March2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
So support for these little beggars has been present since 2.6.20. They’re pretty clever things - setup as mass storage devices containing the drivers so on Windows the install wizard sets it up and you’re online within seconds. With linux its a quick config file edit. You’ll need to have wvdial or gnome ppp installed. Here’s the /etc/wvdial.conf file which works fine with 3 in the U.K. and seems to be the case with vodafone as well.
[Dialer Defaults]
Phone = *99***1#
Username = wap
Password = password
Stupid Mode = 1
Dial Command = ATDT
[Dialer 3G]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 384000
Init2 = ATZ
Init3 = ATq0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D1 +FCLASS=0
ISDN = 0
Then (as root), run:
wvdial 3G and you should be on!
9March2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
So after mapping my local area on openstreetmap, I felt compelled to try and get mapnik into Fedora. Spent a good part of Sunday finding out why it wouldn’t build on PPC64 - this is because I’m thick and in the end it need a two line patch to stick the libs under /usr/lib64 as opposed to /usr/lib. Still, learnt a bit of python in the process so not a dead loss.
Job continues to be ace. I will however be very, very glad when I get my driving license back two weeks from now. :)
21February2008
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends; Linux & Open Source; White Noise.
Hectic week and dog-tired but here it is in bullet-points:
- New job rocks but don’t like publicly blogging about work so that is that
- Sold guitar and amp (ostensibly to upgrade to acoustic but actually for the readies)
- Log4net has been accepted into Fedora (it only took 5 months!)
- The road to my driving license winging its way back to me is truly in its final stretch as the DVLA are talking to the doctors
- Virgin media have only just realised after three months that I am on the wrong tariff
- The girl is moving house tomorrow so I am supplying rippling muscles of steel to smooth the process
- My new job rocks
16February2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source; Music.
I’ve got this album of 500 songs called The Rolling Stone Magazine 500 greatest songs of all time. Radio Chruz is currently playing Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is”. Its not really very rocky at all. More like a smooth pebble, rolling across the ocean floor.
I’ve spent the evening sorting out issues with Jokosher and the FLAIM database engine, two pieces of software I package in Fedora. The former wasn’t building due to new python egg policies which require the building of each egg from source rather than distributed as a binary. Thankfully the Jokosher developers use setuptools so the process was pretty simple and the script takes care of all of that.
FLAIM required a couple of patches, one of which I’ve punted upstream to get it building in x86_64. Keeping patch count down makes things much easier, packaging-wise.
Both packages track subversion checkouts rather than stable releases for various reasons. FLAIM is waiting for the day when ifolder finally arrives in Fedora.
Now listening to “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. Its 1am and I’m still not really rocking very much…
13February2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
The last few days have seen a healthy batch of flapping turkeys on the usual discussion channels. It all started following the discovery of an exploit which allows users to gain “root” or administrator privileges on a system. Fair enough, its bad to find something that has been been around for over a year and a half but only Secunia, who I have linked to above, seem to have an “Everyone keep calm” approach.
Here’s why: Its only a local exploit - you need to be sat in front of the computer.
I also compiled and ran the code (for fun). It failed the first time round. The second time it gave me root, then locked up my system solid.
Lastly, a patch has been posted, merged and I’m running it within a couple of days of the problem rearing its ugly head. If anyone wants to know what caused the problem, here is the one line of change:
- if (unlikely(!base))
+ if (!access_ok(VERIFY_READ, base, len))
So I’m not overly concerned.
12February2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source; Travel & Leisure.
Richard Hawley provided entertainment on Friday night. Think Morrissey blended with Edwyn Collins - great voice and if he hadn’t gone into music he would’ve been a good stand-up comedian.
The Hacienda was a nightclub in Manchester and is spoken about in oft-reverent terms by those who attended it and even by those who never did. The girl and I visited an exhibition detailing the club and its history at the impressive Urbis on Saturday. Its difficult to see what all the fuss was about though the interior was pretty radical and it attracted a number of famous faces, seemingly on numerous occasions.
Back in the land of geekdom and not one but two Fedora wiki upgrades have taken place. The current wiki has been upgraded to Moin 1.6 and at the same time has been converted to Mediawiki. This is great news - I was whinging about the speed of the wiki yet again on IRC last week as it took about one minute for a small page edit to update. I can’t emphasise this enough - moin sucks harder than a whole cluster of black holes.
Lastly an email from my brother entitled “Look what [I] just installed”:
…Ubuntu Linux…
I have found the way out of The Matrix.
Will let you know how I get on.
It brought a tear to my eye…
7February2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
The next version of Fedora 9 in its very Alpha early form is available for testing. If you don’t know what an Alpha release is then wikipedia is your friend and has a good write-up - click here.
I’m getting tired of constantly patching this blog to the latest wordpress release so might farm it out to wordpress themselves. It seems the sensible thing to do but being a bit of a content-miser I’m putting it off.
4February2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
No I didn’t make it (maybe next year) but the videos are upand some excellent talks are there to be had. Currently watching Stop In The Name Of The Law by Kimberlee Weatherall.
Seems like its mostly good news, in particular in the arena of graphics drivers. The nouveau and radeon driver projects are storming ahead it would appear. Hardware support is getting better in general and vendors seem to understand code feedback due to gpl requirements a lot better.
29January2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
Not much tech news seems to breach the mighty Jericho-like walls of BBC News 24 however the announcement that company was within days of launching a service that would offer unlimited music downloads free-of-charge was one that did.
“Whats the catch?” everyone asked.
Qtrax touted a no-DRM service supported by ads. They even boasted they had found a way around the Apple FairPlay DRM system, all with the consent of the labels.
Today the labels responded with a fairly firm “No Dice”.
Possible reasons for this:
1) Qtrax don’t have a legal department - unlikely
2) Someone high up in the corporate music machine got wind of it and put the kibosh on the deal - possible
3) The whole thing is a publicity stunt - now we’re getting somewhere
Looking more closely into the actual Qtrax app itself, all it appears to be is a laughably simple modification of Songbird, a xulrunner-based mozilla app that has Web 2.0 written all over it. I ran screaming from the website a few months back when I couldn’t get past the phrase “mash-up” which fills me with horror and a nasty sense of dotcom-bubble-pre-millenium-tension.
For a laugh I tried to run it in Wine which sort of didn’t work.
25January2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
So after some discussion (I’d love to think I prompted this but since I’m very low-input on fedora-devel I can’t) gdb has been updated to prompt which debuginfo package is missing. Be careful what you wish for… :)
