Crossed Wires

Vic’s Blog

Archive for July, 2007

Google Earth

Jul 11

Posted by Vic in Uncategorized | No Comments

Before yesterday, I had never run Google Earth.  There, I’ve said it.  Some might be surprised, but for some reason I had just never bothered to look at it.  Because Sabayon Linux has it right there pre-installed, I figured I had to have a look.

I like it.  Actually, I don’t think like is the right word.  It’s… remarkable?  Fascinating?  Incredible?  I’m still looking for a way to describe it.

First thing to do is to get the vanity searches of current and past residences, if only to give you the “eye-in-the-sky” reality check (looking at someone else’s backyard doesn’t give you the twinge; it’s only when you look at your own backyard that it hits home).

Once you’ve got that out of your system though, the fun factor kicks in.  For example, I’ve spent the last few hours doing a virtual tour of some of the places I’ve been (most of which I’ll likely never return to in the real world).  And the travel directions feature is a nice addition to extend that fun factor a little longer.

Will I use it every day?  No.  But there’s no doubt that its impressive.

Sabayon Linux

Jul 11

Posted by Vic in Linux | No Comments

My desktop Ubuntu system is/was a 32-bit build running on 64-bit hardware.  I’d been looking on-and-off for a way to in-place upgrade an Ubuntu system from i386 to x86_64, but it doesn’t look easy/feasible/worthwhile compared to a fresh install.  So thinking that I was up for a reinstall anyway, I decided to check out whether Ubuntu was still the desktop Linux for me, and happened across Sabayon Linux.  I’ve done the download-boot-repartition-install dance, and this post is coming from there now…

I still have the Gentoo bug, so the idea of a Gentoo system where someone else has done the work of gluing all the packages together is very appealing.  It installs nicely — like many distros they use the “Live CD” approach (where you boot from a CD or DVD into a running system that you can try-before you buy, so to speak, before deciding if you want to commit it to your hard drive), and use Red Hat’s Anaconda installer to do the work of getting the system onto your disk.

It is very much a gamers system.  Some popular Linux games are pre-installed, including Battle of Wesnoth, which has already cost me a decent amount of leisure time. ;)   They include things like the NVidia and ATI binary drivers, AIGLX or XGL for desktop effects thanks to Beryl, and other things like Google Earth and Kerry Beagle preinstalled.  They also have support for Xen and KVM/QEMU virtualisation, and the virt-manager tool for managing virtual machines.

I started to wonder though: do they maintain a separate Portage infrastructure for their own stuff, or is it vanilla Gentoo?  The answer is that for the most part it’s vanilla Gentoo.  They use Layman to track their own Portage overlay, but behind it is vanilla Gentoo, which means that at a time like this, where a new release of Sabayon is just around the corner, doing an emerge world is much more likely to get stuff from Gentoo Portage than the Sabayon overlay — especially since the testing “~” keyword is set by default.

I really like what they’ve done, but to me having it backed by Gentoo Portage means that you’re back to riding the knife edge that is the Gentoo “rolling release” strategy.  And after a couple of updates, you’re running Sabayon Linux in name only.

This is all based on very early experiences mind you.  I haven’t had a proper chance yet to settle in and see how some of this stuff works in real life.  I think I might sit tight until the 3.4 release goes out (should be soon), and get stuck into the doco then.

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The “Technology With The Worst Name Ever” Award

Jul 8

Posted by Vic in Linux, Soapbox | No Comments

…and the winner is: KVM!  Why?  Because as you read this, some of you will be thinking I’m talking about a keyboard-video-mouse switch, while some of you will be thinking I’m talking about Linux kernel-based virtualisation (still others are probably thinking of something else… what I don’t know, but I reckon I can be sure that the letters KVM have not been put together only twice in human history).

For the record, I’m talking about Linux kernel-based virtualisation.  It wins my award for the Technology With The Worst Name Ever because if, like me, you go looking on your favourite search engine for issues with Linux kernel-based virtualisation, all you find is issues about keyboard-video-mouse switches.  This is because for the last fifteen years (at least), in the computer industry KVM has stood for keyboard-video-mouse (switch).

This is not your common-or-garden-variety case of acronym overloading, either, because many folk (myself included) still use a KVM.  Usually acronym overloading occurs when the acronym being overloaded has fallen from use and a new technology takes its place, or when an acronym is used to reference a little-known technology and a new usage of the acronym is unaware of the previous usage[1].

Here, KVM was already in heavy use, and I’m sure that none of the Linux kernel hackers could claim to being unaware of the term.  Yet they used it anyway.  And nothing in /usr/src/linux/Documentation explains why.

I’m sure there’ll be something out there about why they chose the name…  but in the meantime I’m left to find other reasons why KVM doesn’t seem to work on my system.  Which KVM do I mean?  Ah, that’s for me to know…  ;)

[1] RTP is an excellent example of this — it was already in use as Rapid Transit Protocol (a part of the APPN-HPR suite), but the VoIP folk never heard of APPN and used RTP for their Realtime Transfer Protocol.

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Jabberd database error

Jul 6

Posted by Vic in Uncategorized | No Comments

Read on if you’ve recently upgraded Jabberd2 and are seeing a heap of error messages about a database table that doesn’t exist.

I was getting these errors in my log, at a fairly cracking pace:

  jabberd/sm: mysql: sql select failed: Table ‘jabberd2.status’ doesn’t exist

I’d recently upgraded jabberd2, and the config now includes a “status” module.  It would seem that this new module wants a table in the database, but the Jabberd people didn’t get around to updating the database definition!  Oops!

No worries…  If you want to use this module, one way to avoid the errors is to override the database definition for that module.  Add the following to sm.xml, in the <storage> section:

  <driver type=’status’>db</driver>

You could use sqlite as well…  Just anything that doesn’t require the database definition up-front.  Whichever you use, make sure you have an appropriate configuration section in the <storage> section of sm.xml (like you had to create a MySQL section) that defines where the database will live.

Stop and start jabberd2, and the “status” module will write to the alternative database instead of MySQL.

Of course, now we should be able to see what’s in the table, and create a MySQL table to suit, and remove the <driver> line from sm.xml.  But I’d rather wait for upstream to get it fixed. :)   That way I don’t risk creating the table incorrectly, with the wrong data types, or field sizes, or whatever.

If that all sounds like hard work, I guess you could also remove the “status” module from the session manager config.  Don’t know what “status” does, but if it’s a new addition that we’ve done without then we won’t miss it a bit longer.  Problem would arise if it provides an existing function that used to be contained in a different module.

Projects page announcement!

Jul 2

Posted by Vic in Uncategorized | No Comments

I’ve always considered myself to be a FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open-Source Software) advocate and a participant in the Linux and Open Source communities.  However, a comment or two on this blog have suggested to me that I perhaps have not been as community-minded as I ought.

Just being a Linux or Open Source user doesn’t make one a part of the community — a point that has been lost on me in recent years as I’ve been unable to participate in things like Redbook residencies and mailing lists that were my (albeit small) contributions to community.

So, in response to my web traffic and comments on the blog, I’ve decided to start up a site to release and track the little utilities I write (and write about) that help me run my systems.  If they’re useful to me, they might be useful to you — and together we might be able to make them better for both of us.

The site will be here.

First item to be released will be my little hacked LDAP Caller-ID name lookup script for FreePBX (just please stand by while I work out a nice way to place a file for downloading, until then you can view it in the SVN).  After that, I plan on creating a Gentoo Portage overlay (or at least copies of my ebuilds) for folks who are interested in the same custom versions of things that I am (like DHCP servers with LDAP backends).

There are sure to be teething problems, but please place feedback either in comments here or on the site itself.

To those who gave me the nudge to get this done, thank you!

PS: This is really part-time, and so I will be keeping it as low-maintenance as possible.  Since I have no time to monitor Wiki spam, the Trac has ‘anonymous’ wiki editing disabled right now.  When I can, and if there’s a need, I’ll work out a way for users to register and make updates.

Linksys WIP330 – another tale of hardware woe

Jul 2

Posted by Vic in Hardware | 1 Comment

I was on eBay not long ago and happened across a listing for the WIP330 (big brother to the WIP300) for much less than local retail.  I decided to take advantage of: a) the good price, b) the current strong position of the A$ versus the US$, and c) it was within 1 hour of closing and the vendor was giving 10% off…  and bought it.  I honestly should not have bothered: this is a terrible piece of equipment, and now sits beside my bricked Cisco 7970 as the worst online auction purchase I’ve made.  But first, a little history…

Some time ago I saw some reports of Linksys releasing a couple of Wi-Fi VoIP handsets.  Reviews looked moderately promising, but as one of the devices (the “prestige” version) was based on Windows CE I was disappointed in the lost potential of the device.  But then I saw that eBay listing, and I jumped immediately into Gadget Acquisition Syndrome justification mode.  ”Sure, it’s based on Windows CE, but haven’t you always told people that you believe in horses-for-courses?” said my inner gadget-junkie.

So about a fortnight later the thing arrived.  I charged it for a decent amount of time, then configured it for my wireless.

“Failed to connect”.

Google then revealed a litany of people being driven crazy by this device’s inability to connect to a WPA-PSK network.  At this point I began to feel very much like Stuart Langridge of LugRadio fame, who only discovered after buying a new laptop that his research had failed him and he had indeed bought a laptop of “military-grade proprietariness” (as I seem to recall one of his fellow LugRadio presenters described it).  Had I known that in 2007 a manufacturer of networking equipment (backed by probably the biggest name in corporate and Internet networking today) could release a device that would not connect to a secure network created by THEIR OWN BRAND OF ACCESS POINT (a Linksys WRT54GS[1]), I might have researched that issue further.

Some hope was provided in the form of a firmware update.  Unfortunately, like most pieces of networking kit, firmware updates are delivered over the network…  In this case, the thing couldn’t connect to the network!  I had to shut off encryption on my network for the length of time it took to perform the update — which was doubled by the fact that the firmware on my unit required an interim upgrade to a staging release before the final update (to wip330_v1_02_12S) could be applied.

So with firmware upgraded and encryption re-enabled on my wireless, I tried again…

Same error.

At this point I was very keen to follow this advice and eject the rotten device from my life, but on that page I found the hint that got things working: my access point had AES as well as TKIP enabled, and the WIP330 seems to choke on AES.  Disabling AES on the access point finally got the WIP330 on the network.  At this point my son wanted to watch something via XBMC, and I found that the client Wi-Fi device through which his XBox attaches still had AES defined so could not connect to the network…  Turn AES back on, get the other device attached again, disable AES in it, disable AES in the access point again, and I was set.

Or so I thought.  Later in the day, the WIP330 was off the network again.  Trying to re-connect to my network brought failure, but power-cycling the device got it online again.  Sure enough though, an hour later it was off the network.

One hour.  3600 seconds.  The (default) rekeying interval of a WPA-PSK network.  The chuffing thing fails to complete rekeying and drops the wireless connection.  This time Google has been no help — I guess not enough people persisted through the AES problem to have the thing on the network long enough to hit the rekeying failure.

So right now the thing is useless to me.  I’m even contemplating dragging out my old 802.11b access point for the phone (and another couple of old WPA-incapable devices) to run on, but I think the last thing my neighbourhood needs is another 2.4GHz wireless network.

To try and balance this, I will mention a couple of things I like about it.  While it was on the network, it was easy to connect to Asterisk and get talking.  The device is light (bordering on too light) and the screen is just brilliant.  Sound quality was a bit dodgy, but then I haven’t had a chance to use it for long enough to know for sure (and then I was only talking to myself via the Asterisk echo test application).  One other thing that’s nice is that Windows CE is largely hidden.  There is a browser on the device, which uses the Windows flag as its progress spinner, but other than that it’s out of the way and not screaming “look at me, i’m CE”.

Like I said, however, the fact that in 2007 Linksys can release a device that has such problems just getting connected to a network is a great disappointment.  At this stage I think the best that can come of this device is that enough bad press is spread that they don’t sell at their RRP, forcing the price down and making it affordable enough for some crafty Linux hackers who could put an Open firmware on it.  Or, hope against hope, perhaps Linksys will see their channel back-up with units that won’t move, and switch to a Linux firmware themselves to get them going.

In the meantime, I’ll keep Googling for “wip300 wpa-psk piece of junk”…

[1] To be fair, my WRT54GS is running OpenWRT and not the stock Linksys firmware.  But the binary that provides WPA-PSK in OpenWRT does come straight from Linksys’ firmware…

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My ClustrMap got wiped

Jul 2

Posted by Vic in Uncategorized | No Comments

I was disappointed to see that my site’s image on ClustrMaps got a refresh…  Probably not a bad thing really, as it was getting a bit cluttered, but it was nice to see where the hits are coming from.  The old image is archived, if you click the image on the front page there are links available to show old images.