The adventures of Foo » Linux http://jensge.org My aggregated random tech blabber Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:57:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 The X201, addendum http://jensge.org/2010/07/the-x201-addendum/ http://jensge.org/2010/07/the-x201-addendum/#comments Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:57:50 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/?p=430 The fingerprint reader

The fingerprint reader is a mess. It has the USB id (147e:2016) of the upeksonly driver in the fprint project, but it doesn’t work. The reader seems to work with the normal UPEK driver (either in thinkfinger or fprint) by modifying the supported USB id. But the answers it presents to the driver don’t [...]]]> The fingerprint reader

The fingerprint reader is a mess. It has the USB id (147e:2016) of the upeksonly driver in the fprint project, but it doesn’t work. The reader seems to work with the normal UPEK driver (either in thinkfinger or fprint) by modifying the supported USB id. But the answers it presents to the driver don’t seem to conform to anything it knows.

]]> http://jensge.org/2010/07/the-x201-addendum/feed/ 0 Kolmas viikola Helsingissä http://jensge.org/2010/07/kolmas-viikola-helsingissa/ http://jensge.org/2010/07/kolmas-viikola-helsingissa/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:23:23 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/?p=425 or: You’re holding it wrong. Seriously. Once upon a time, you could buy a IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad with Intel graphics and it just worked. While the Intel issues in the last versions of Ubuntu were mostly home-grown, the current disaster with the Core i3/i5 on-chip graphics isn’t. Like in the X201.

The Ubutu experience

Getting Ubuntu 10.4 LTS to [...]]]> or: You’re holding it wrong. Seriously. Once upon a time, you could buy a IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad with Intel graphics and it just worked. While the Intel issues in the last versions of Ubuntu were mostly home-grown, the current disaster with the Core i3/i5 on-chip graphics isn’t. Like in the X201.

The Ubutu experience

Getting Ubuntu 10.4 LTS to work on an X201 isn’t too hard. You just need to follow some simple steps:

  1. Get Ubuntu (obviously) and put it on an USB stick; the X201 doesn’t have a CD drive
  2. Go to http://people.canonical.com/~hzhang/554569/ and grab the latest kernel package linked there (see also Launchpad bug 554569)
  3. Get the most recent BIOS update from Lenovo. A description on how to update your BIOS if you don’t have an optical drive may be found at thinkwiki.org
  4. Go to the BIOS setup and deactivate Intel AMT.
  5. Install Ubuntu normally. The installer should work just fine. If the graphical installer doesn’t, try the alternate install CD.
  6. After the installation is done, boot from USB once again and go into rescue mode to install the kernel package downloaded before.
  7. Boot normally.

Remaining issues

  • External video
    VGA works, but if you shut down the machine with the external monitor connected, it will somehow lockup (CPU is busy)
  • Suspend/Resume
    With the kernel from the launchpad bug, USB works after resume; the only thing I noticed is that sometimes the wireless LAN won’t come up again (like 1 in 10 resumes).
  • UltraBase
    No idea yet. Haven’t used though it is said that there are still problems with the display port on it
]]> http://jensge.org/2010/07/kolmas-viikola-helsingissa/feed/ 2 Xbox support landed in rygel master http://jensge.org/2010/04/xbox-support-landed-in-rygel-master/ http://jensge.org/2010/04/xbox-support-landed-in-rygel-master/#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:37:07 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/?p=400 Support for the Xbox 360 has landed in master. You need:

gupnp master0.13.3 gunp-av master0.5.5 gupnp-vala master0.6.5 rygel master

For the transcoding to work properly make sure you have gst-lame and gst-ffmpeg installed.

On a side note: Rygel master has now gained the ability to serve subtitles to Samsung DLNA [...]]]> Support for the Xbox 360 has landed in master. You need:

  • gupnp master0.13.3
  • gunp-av master0.5.5
  • gupnp-vala master0.6.5
  • rygel master

For the transcoding to work properly make sure you have gst-lame and gst-ffmpeg installed.

On a side note: Rygel master has now gained the ability to serve subtitles to Samsung DLNA enabled TVs

]]> http://jensge.org/2010/04/xbox-support-landed-in-rygel-master/feed/ 0 Rygel’s XBox support http://jensge.org/2010/03/rygels-xbox-support/ http://jensge.org/2010/03/rygels-xbox-support/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:55:41 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/?p=395 Status update: We’re nearly there. Out-of-the box support of XBox 360; no patches, no database [...]]]> Status update: We’re nearly there. Out-of-the box support of XBox 360; no patches, no database modification necessary.

]]> http://jensge.org/2010/03/rygels-xbox-support/feed/ 0 Software wishlist http://jensge.org/2010/03/software-wishlist/ http://jensge.org/2010/03/software-wishlist/#comments Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:09:23 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/?p=393 I’d really like a decent vocabulary trainer for my phone. It would be great if I could use the 30 minutes I spent on the tram to work for a quick training session. And it should be able to synchronize  its data and learning statistics with my desktop app. I like and use I GNU it [...]]]> I’d really like a decent vocabulary trainer for my phone. It would be great if I could use the 30 minutes I spent on the tram to work for a quick training session. And it should be able to synchronize  its data and learning statistics with my desktop app. I like and use I GNU it (though it’s management of the boxes is not quite clear to me) for my desktop. I couldn’t find a proper app for the phone, the closest one was a java app which had massive problems with umlauts – really problematic if finnish is the language you want to train yourself in.

Seems what is missing is some sort of VIF – a vocabulary interchange format. Some common ground might be the XML format chosen by the KDE guys for KVocTrain. But honestly, single-char XML tag names?!

]]> http://jensge.org/2010/03/software-wishlist/feed/ 0 Rygel XBox support update http://jensge.org/2010/03/rygel-xbox-support-update/ http://jensge.org/2010/03/rygel-xbox-support-update/#comments Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:05:50 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/?p=388 XBox support still has not landed in rygel master, though the branch gets more stable currently. I put together a wiki page to describe the necessary quirks together with a [...]]]> XBox support still has not landed in rygel master, though the branch gets more stable currently. I put together a wiki page to describe the necessary quirks together with a helper script.

]]> http://jensge.org/2010/03/rygel-xbox-support-update/feed/ 0 Rygel repository moved http://jensge.org/2010/03/rygel-repository-moved/ http://jensge.org/2010/03/rygel-repository-moved/#comments Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:56:34 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/?p=386 Friday I moved my rygel repository from github to gitorious. The gssdp/gupnp etc. stuff will [...]]]> Friday I moved my rygel repository from github to gitorious. The gssdp/gupnp etc. stuff will follow shortly

]]> http://jensge.org/2010/03/rygel-repository-moved/feed/ 0 Personal vim tip of the day http://jensge.org/2010/02/personal-vim-tip-of-the-day/ http://jensge.org/2010/02/personal-vim-tip-of-the-day/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:46:20 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/2010/02/personal-vim-tip-of-the-day/ 
au BufRead,BufNewFile *.vala \
let g:netrw_sort_sequence = '[\/]$,<core \%(\.\d\+\)\=,\.[a-np-z]$,\.vala,\.h$,\.c$,\.cpp$,*,\.o$,\.obj$,\.info$,\.swp$,\.bak$,\~$'

]]> http://jensge.org/2010/02/personal-vim-tip-of-the-day/feed/ 0 Fake rpm database in ubuntu http://jensge.org/2010/01/fake-rpm-database-in-ubuntu/ http://jensge.org/2010/01/fake-rpm-database-in-ubuntu/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:17:12 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/?p=374 At work I’m currently developing software which is supposed to run on openSUSE. I need to query the package database at some point which of course does not exist on my ubuntu machine. Here’s a quick setup how to create a fake local RPM database:

echo "%_dbpath /home/user/rpmdb" >> ~/.rpmmacros mkdir /home/user/rpmdb rpm -i --nodeps --justdb --force-debian *.rpm

And [...]]]> At work I’m currently developing software which is supposed to run on openSUSE. I need to query the package database at some point which of course does not exist on my ubuntu machine. Here’s a quick setup how to create a fake local RPM database:

echo "%_dbpath /home/user/rpmdb" >> ~/.rpmmacros
mkdir /home/user/rpmdb
rpm -i --nodeps --justdb --force-debian *.rpm

And that’s it.

]]> http://jensge.org/2010/01/fake-rpm-database-in-ubuntu/feed/ 0 (Gnu-)Tar option of the day http://jensge.org/2010/01/gnu-tar-option-of-the-day/ http://jensge.org/2010/01/gnu-tar-option-of-the-day/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:54:09 +0000 Jens http://jensge.org/?p=372 --exclude-vcs

]]> http://jensge.org/2010/01/gnu-tar-option-of-the-day/feed/ 0