Lenny missing out

As a long time Debian user I have really come to appreciate the Debian repository system. With stable, testing, unstable and experimental points in the release cycle to choose from. Typically I run testing, with occasional packages from unstable and experimental. Or, put another way, I want to use the newest “stable” releases of software which are going to be in the next proper release of Debian.

However, as the package freeze for the next Debian release, Lenny, has been in place for some time it has prevented new packages from making their way into testing. I’m not sure if Lenny is actually over due or not, but what I am sure of is that it will put Debian behind the times with three very important pieces of desktop software: Openoffice, the kernel, and network management.

Openoffice.org (OOo) in Lenny is going to be set at 2.4, only missing out on Openoffice 3.0 by some weeks. The hassle here is that OOo 3.0 is significantly nicer to use than OOo 2.4. Firstly, because it supports a multipage view in writer meaning I can take advantage of a larger desktop screen. Secondly, because the multihead view actually works in Presenter, putting it back in the ring against Power Point, etc. As well it is faster and smoother to use.

The kernel will be 2.6.26. 2.6.28 has been in the wild for a few months now, and supports devices like the Atheros wireless network card which is found in MacBooks and many other laptops. This is significant because the previous option to get these cards working was to use MadWifi, which uses a closed source HAL object file, which isn’t in keeping with the free and open Debian ethos.

And finally, the network manager for Lenny will be 0.6.6. 0.7 is in experimental, and it supports GSM modems, and has better support for VPNs, which is very significant for the travelling business applications.

All of these newer packages will be available in the next release of Ubuntu, and are already in the latest Fedora Core, which leaves Debian behind the curve in this market. Of course people could, like me, use a mix of release packages, but a line should be drawn somewhere to prevent packages in a frozen-for-release repository from getting so out of date. Given the quality of Debian packages have become very good, and reliable, it would be better to unfreeze a release after a month to allow newer, tested, software in. This assumes that this won’t affect the “blockers” which have so far prevented the release.

In summary, experimental isn’t as scary as it sounds, and perhaps we need a different philosophy on the release cycle in this rapidly changing world of software.

Samsung K3 on Linux

To cut to the chase, to use the Samsung K3 on Linux you need to use the MTP protocol, supplied by libmtp, and supported by mtp-tools, Rhythmbox (>=0.11), gnomad2 and amarok. (Credits for this tip go to Linux-Club.de). All of these, except the newest Rhythmbox are available in Debian unstable today (2006-08-26). I compiled Rhythmbox from SVN using these instructions.

You could probably quite easily patch these into the existing debian package, or recompile the Ubuntu bleeding edge packages against the Debian libraries.

The verdict, the play is quite nice, cheaper than the iPod, and works fine in Linux.

UPDATE

It doesn’t work so well after all. I put about 40 songs on ok, but after that I could no longer use any of the libmtp apps to update the device. They all segfaulted. This was bad. According to the libmtp compatibility page this device is unknown as to its support level.

The solution I ran with was to upgrade to the Korean firmware. On top of those instructions I had to work around a “no space for DB. delete at least 18mb error” as their suggested solution (reformatting) didn’t work. The Samsung program said the device was already in use. What I did was (c)fdisk the devices in linux, creating a FAT32 partition and formatting it. Then I did the second firmware upgrade to 4.06 and the device was properly reinitialised.

All works better now, except occasionally the device does crash the USB on linux and I can no longer update it in that session. And, the new firmware supports OGG files

UPDATE

I started getting the same kinds of USB errors under the new firmware as I did under the original. It turns out that the USB in my ThinkPad T41 is somewhat buggy. If I drop down to USB 1 there is no problems any more.

sudo modprobe -r ehci_hcd

I have not tried going back to the old firmware, so I don’t know if it is exactly the same error. Perhaps some other day I’ll follow this up.

Python packaging: freevo

I’ve been packaging up some of the libraries required for Freevo, like pylirc and kaa-*. These are a few note for future reference.

Make sure the includes are in this order:

include /usr/share/cdbs/1/rules/debhelper.mk
include /usr/share/cdbs/1/class/python-distutils.mk

The reverse (as seen in some places) does not work. It doesn’t call pysupport.

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPythonFAQ
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPython/NewPolicy
https://perso.duckcorp.org/duck/cdbs-doc/cdbs-doc.xhtml

powered by performancing firefox

Photosmart 2575

I just got a HP photosmart 2575, which I will probably post more about in due course, but the useful snippet I am contributing today is this. If you want to scan over the network, you can use XSane, so long as you have the hp-makeuri address of the device. BUT, this only works with the IP of the device, not the mDNS name, so this script will lookup the name, and launch xsane with the IP address, provided it can be found.
If you try this with a non-2570 series scanner make sure you correct the xsane url.

#!/bin/sh# Start XSane with the device IP address

HOSTNAME=<NAME>.local

IP=`resolveip $HOSTNAME`

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then

IP = `echo "$IP" | cut -f 6 -d ' '`

xsane hpaio:/net/Photosmart_2570_series?ip=$IP

else

zenity --error --text="The device could not be found"

fi

Bluetooth Fuse OBEXFS under Debian

Because the Gnome Bluetooth tools are not in Debian it makes it kinda hard to transfer files to a BT enabled phone. However, there is a really neat project out there called OBEXFS, which uses Filesystem in Userspace to mount an OBEX device, like a phone, as another folder on your computer.

First thing is to set up the basic system for using fuse

modprobe fuse

or

echo fuse >> /etc/modules
adduser  fuse

Now, get and compile the obexfs programs

./configure && make && sudo make install

Finally, the magic lines. Nokia phones use channel 10 for OBEX transfer, so:

mkdir -p ~/mnt/bluetooth
obexfs -b <BT MAC ADDRESS> -B 10 ~/mnt/bluetooth/

If you need to find your BT MAC address use:

hcitool scan

Requirements:
apt-get install fuse-utils bluetooth

New packages

I’ve just added the latest bluez packages (Linux bluetooth stack) to my repository. As well, I have a 2.6.14 kernel built for the IBM Thinkpad t41, with Bluetooth, modem, wireless, trackpad, IBM ACPI, hard drive monitor, etc built in.

deb http://ihpc.jcu.edu.au/~jc118215/debian ./

The continuing plague of dbus (0.23)

I’ve recently found myself stuck in between want and need. The need for a working system, and the want for some more modern gnome apps. And the sticking point. dbus.

dbus 0.23, the old API, was becoming pretty widely adopted round the place as a nice, simple, IPC protocol, especially when communicating between root and user apps, and especially in the hotplug hardware arena, where multiple apps needed to be notified. Then along came dbus 0.50, with a new API (which is to be expected in beta software), but what didn’t come along was updated to all the main debian packages which used it.

I’ve ended up recompiling lifearea myself, with the threat to do the same with the evolution plugins (so I can get my calendar back).

I have however bought a new toy. A bluetooth card, and headset. But the linux bluetooth stack (bluez) doesn’t even compile. Geez. Will this ever end.

(Not that I’m really complaining, but I’m sure we can learn a few things from this)

avahi killed my java

After upgrading my mDNS responder from howl to avahi jmDNS died. Well, jmDNS stopped working, and avahi segfaulted to be precise. avahi has become debian’s official mdns responder, due mainly to licensing reasons, but unfortunately it does not allow any other mdns stacks to run, and to register with avahi you need to use dbus, so any java based systems which use mdns are now shafted on debian/gnome systems. I’m not entirely sure how to get past this. howl happily coexisted with other stacks so I don’t know why ahani can’t. We’ll have to follow this one up.