Recently in Linux Category

A 'tput reset' should fix it.

Since a while I am offering Linux Virtual Servers (Xen DomU) and FreeBSD Jails at buetow.org. Until now I was only capable of offering Debian VServers and FreeBSD Jails. From now on I also support VServers running Gentoo.

Once a while I am adding new applications to curses.buetow.org. Now I've added Calcurse.

Calcurse is a text-based calendar and scheduling application. It helps keeping track of events, appointments and everyday tasks. A configurable notification system reminds user of upcoming deadlines, and the curses based interface can be customized to suit user needs. All of the commands are documented within an online help system.

This calendar is nice. However not perfect. I am missing outlook compatibility. I need outlook compatibility in order to use this at work. However calcurse deserves to be listed on curses.buetow.org :)

I added the following ModRewrite rules to cxg.de:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*(curl|wget|fetch).*
RewriteRule ^ ?raw=1 [L,QSA]

Means: If you fetch any post with curl, wget or fetch, you will get the raw (text only) version without HTML code.

I don't remember who requested it but thanks to this guy. I needed to modify the ModRewrite rules a little bit in order to get it working.

As you might know, I am a proud owner of the DebianPad S10e. I recognized one anoying feature: The CPU fan gets noisy while compiling the kernel. And I do not want to scale down the CPU frequency of the whole system. The solution is called cpulimit. On Debian, just do:

sudo apt-get install cpulimit

And then do something like:

cpulimit -e cc1 -l 10 -v

This command will detect all processes called cc1 (which is the GNU C Compiler process) and lower its max CPU percentage to approx. 10%. Now, compiling the kernel takes longer, but without anoying fan.

As you can see on the last screenshot, cpuinfo automatically recognizes new matching processes starting and stopping :).

PS: I had to scale down the % to 7 in order to let the fan be 100% quiet!

At P. B. Labs, I've enlarged my range of services. I'm now offering Linux Virtual Servers (running Debian GNU/Linux 5.x). They are virtualised using Xen on a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Dual Core w/ 4GB RAM dom0 host. I'll serve a maximum of 5 productive Virtual Servers on this system. Afterwards I'll use another dom0 host.

You can choose between 3 different base versions:

1. VServer Small (256MB RAM, 10GB HDD)
2. VServer Medium (512MB RAM, 20GB HDD)
3. VServer Big (1GB RAM, 50GB HDD)

You can also ask for special versions. But the price has to be calculated separately then. For prices of the standard versions take a look at the website.

My IdeaPad arrived! After playing around with SLED 10, I recognized that I should install Debian on it instead. SLED is a little bit too sluggish :(

• Because I don't have an USB CD-ROM drive, I prepared a bootable USB-key with the Debian 40r6 installer. However, the IdeaPad didn't want to boot from it. The reason was probably my USB-key which refuses to be bootable.
• I found out about a nice way of how to boot an .iso from an USB-key. Here, Debian booted into the installer (using a tmpfs) but could not find a CD-ROM drive for the source of the packages. So I unplugged my USB-key and used my workstation in order to copy the content of the Debian ISO onto the USB-key. Afterwards I mounted it to /cdrom => the installer recognized the source. After creating partitions and user accounts, the Debian installer could not find the codename of its version. This problem was caused by mounting an USB-key to /cdrom instead of a real CD.
• I decided to use the network as the installation source. However, this version of Debian didn't recognize any network devices.
• I decided to try out the Debian installer of the testing branch with the hope that it will recognize some network devices. After rebooting my IdeaPad the MBR of the HDD was gone => I was not able to boot the ISO file from my USB-key anymore.
• After checking all available booting methods in the BIOS I found out that I could use PXE in order to boot from the network. So I set up a bootpd and tftpd on my workstation which provides the PXE installer of Debian testing => The installation of Debian progressed without any flaw; until the first reboot.
• After the first system reboot the kernel could not find my root filesystem. I don't know why, but the installer decided to write /dev/sdb3 instead of /dev/sda3 into the grub configuration. The fstab was affected as well. (Maybe I forgot to unplug my USB-key from the IdeaPad during the PXE install). After manual fixing I had a fresh working installation of Debian :)

• One thing still didn't work out of the box: The WLAN. After installing the closed source Broadcom driver everything worked then.

I like the IdeaPad S10e very much. The glossy display doesn't bother in any way. All hardware works perfectly (built in webcam [skype works out of the box with video-call], audio, wireless network, the display + xorg). And after half an hour you can type on the small keyboard very fast and without any typing errors.

Some critics:

• The CPU fan turns on and off a lot which can be anoying. This is a firmware bug which Lenovo has to fix. I am waiting for it ;)


• I am working in fulltime as a Linux Systemadministrator. So I am using the shell a lot. It is not very comfortable to type the pipe | on this keyboard (don't know if it only affects my german version of the keyboard). You have to press three buttons at a time for the pipe: Fn + AltGr + y. This can be fixed by customizing your keyboard layout.


• It would be nicer to have a TrackPoint instead of a small TouchPad (even if it's multi touch). A TrackPoint would save even more space and it is (in my opintion) more comfortable. I am used to TrackPoints.

But overall the IdeaPad S10e is a pretty nice toy :)

Sometimes your BIOS or your USB-Key does not support booting. However, if you want to boot a .iso file, grub is your friend. All you need is to add the boothd=/dev/sdb and the bootfrom=/dev/sdb/debian.iso options to your kernel :) This would look at your USB-Key in /dev/sdb and will boot the debian.iso from it.

Yesterday I ordered myself a Lenovo IdeaPad S10e in black with SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) preloaded.

Well, some people will critizise me buying HW from a chinese manufacturer. I am not a politician and I buy the HW which I like the most. Point.

I am not sure yet if I will keep SLED on it or if I want to install Debian on it. I will not install a FreeBSD (my favourite OS) on it. Lots of people don't like a SUSE Linux. Even I've had some problems in administrating SUSE. However, maybe I will not replace SLED for the following reasons:

1. SLED is preinstalled and the IdeaPad is certified running it.
2. All drivers are included already (even closed source WiFi drivers) and work out of the box.
3. It is a Netbook and not a development Notebook. I do not care how the system feels under the hood. I will use the IdeaPad for reading PDFs, surfing and e-mailing.
4. Installing Debian is possible, but I could do more important stuff instead.
5. Why not to use several Distros and Operating Systems on all the Notebooks, Netbooks, Desktops and Servers? My fulltime job is Systemadministrator and it does not hurt to try something else once a while. :)

Well, now I hope that my IdeaPad will arrive ASAP! This year I also want to buy a replacement for my old IBM ThinkPad T42. Maybe it will be a Lenovo ThinkPad T400 or a Lenovo ThinkPad X300 :). I am not sure yet.

I now have TWO Hauppauge WinTV PCI cards @ my workstation. The left screen shows a DVD being played by an external DVD player (read by /dev/video1 using composite-video as its input source) and the right screen shows a regular TV program (/dev/video0). I can also watch 2 TV channels at the same time (nice to avoid commercials).

Today I finally retired my 15 years old serial mouse. Now I am using my 2 years old USB mouse which still has been in its original package since i bought it.

Why did I switch? Because I replaced my FreeBSD with Debian on my home Workstation and it does not auto recognize serial mouses anymore and since I am too lazy (I've a full time job and additional to it a part time job) to configure my desktop I just plugged in my USB mouse which works out of the box now :) I must say, I like the feel of the new (optical) mouse. It is much more comfortable than the old serial mouse. It even has a wheel.

FreeBSD still remains on my private main Laptop, my private Webserver and my Workstation at work. While Debian will stay at my Workstation at home and my Gateway at home. And at work there is Linux all around. A Windows XP Prof. is installed in parallel to FreeBSD on my laptop. At work I can also access a Windows via rdesktop. So it's a pretty good mix now :)

Pictures of the first Android Phone have appeared. It does not have a perfect look, but i think it's still OK looking! And in black would be nicer! But much more interesting is the complete Open Source Operating System Android which uses a Linux Kernel!

The HTC Dream will be on the market this year. Maybe it'll replace my Nokia 95.

As many of you know, I am a big fan of open source software and UNIX and UNIX like platforms! So the perfect mobile phone should use an UNIX like OS and it should be made out of open source software!

Symbian is now open source but it is not UNIX like.

The iPhone uses an UNIX like operating system, but the user can not make advantage of it officially. And it's not open source at all!

The Android platfrom looks very promising. It's complete open source and it's a Linux operating system. However, no official phone for Android yet available. However you can already develop applications with the Android API, but Java only.

The OpenMoko project looks the most promising for myself. It's a complete open source phone platfrom as well and it's, like Android, a Linux. The advantage of OpenMoko over Android for me: You are not bound to the Java programming language, but you can use all kind of APIs including C, Python, probably Perl and C++ as well. And there is already the first running OpenMoko phone, called Freerunner, out to buy. However, the phone looks so damn ugly.

OpenMoko offers the most flexibility to a Linux user and programmer. An OpenMoko user should develop his own applications, or make use of the forming community. Probably, then the first phone running Android comes out, OpenMoko will get ported to it too. Maybe this will be the time I will get myself a new phone?

There are several other Linux based phone platforms I did not mention yet. That's because I don't know much about them yet. :)

At the moment I am using the Nokia N95. Well, it's not using an UNIX like OS and it still has a closed source version of Symbian on it. But it does it job well: Nice pictures, WLAN, SMS, phoneing, etc. It's a tool and not a toy for me. The perfect mobile phone would be also a toy for me (e.g. programming my own applications for it with fun in an environment I like).

It has always been a pain to get a recent version of Adobe Flash running on a FreeBSD desktop system. I am a fanatic FreeBSD user, and I use FreeBSD not only for servers but also on my Desktop as well as on my Laptop!

First, Adobe does not offer a native version of Flash for the FreeBSD operating system. However, FreeBSD has the capability to run Linux binaries natively. Therefore there are Linux Flash binaries in the FreeBSD Ports Tree available, which are www/linux-flashplugin7 and www/linux-flashplugin9. I was able to get Linux Flash 7 working on FreeBSD, however the Flash 9 version never worked well for me. Doesn't matter which browser I use. I don't want to list all errors and trails here I faced already. Lot's of websites however already require Flash 9. I found a suboptimal, but at least working, solution for having Flash 9 on FreeBSD. It's called using Windows Firefox on Wine. It works flawlessly :)

First install Wine 1.0 or higher (may ll work with an older version too). Afterwards download Firefox 3 for Windows XP. Run the installer with wine. The installation will work out without any complications.

After installation you can start Firefox with wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Mozilla\ Firefox/firefox.exe.

Now browse to the Adobe website and download the Flash Player for Windows. Afterwards close Firefox and run the Flash installer via Wine using wine install_flash_player.exe.

Now start Firefox again. As you can see, the Flash Player works flawlessly :-)

I hope some day I'll be able to run a more native version of Flash on my FreeBSD. A working Linux Flash 9 would be fine. Even better would be a 100% native version like Gnash, which is an open source implementation of Flash. However, Gnash is still to unstable and lacks features. Maybe next year?