Karmic Upgrade

i had not even thought about  a new release i was so happy with my laptop running jaunty, so i was surprised when my little notification popped up saying upgrade to new version?

usually i would say no and plod along until i decided i need to upgrade because of lack of functionality in hardware or software version……but no this time i clicked yes .

when my laptop booted up  it was blue again arrrrgggghhhhh!!!! why oh why oh why would they revert to the boring blue crap after the beautiful dark theme of jaunty…..well it got worse from there believe me .

i logged in and there ares no toolbars or anything , so i alt+f2 open a terminal rename my .kde folder and reboot , still the same only this time no alt+f2.

so i decided to reinstall.
i set it up with encrypted home because i already had that
after i booted in to my shinny new install i looked to swap the location of my encrypted home to my old encrypted home only they changed the way they do it so i could not do that….. i actually prefer the way they do it .

after copying all my data and now i am settling in to it , what do i think?

well to be honest so far i think Karmic sucks, i give it ..it does seem faster and very stable so far , but the look of it is so ugly compared to jaunty , i know i can change all the themes etc……….one thing that just looks ugly and wiered is the network manager ….i got on well with that on jaunty it was easy and worked well and looked pretty. i read online t got a make over in karmic , well it has …..a fugly make over , now it doesn’t look like the nice one in jaunty it looks like it should be on gnome ..i think for Ubuntu its a make over but for pretty KDE its a fugly disaster……well maybe i can change it in themes etc?

anyway enough of my whining its stable and works …i just made a lot of work for myself pressing that upgrade button.

 

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IPcams , 500w , V4l2 and Zoneminder

ok so a wired title , i just wanted a title that lets you know what the post is about.

i decided i was going to make a homes security / surveillance system, of course i obviously wanted to do this with linux.
i did a little research and price comparisons , i found that there was linux software for this …namely zoneminder. thats IPcams are still expensive and are a bit like webcams in the compatability with linux department .i settled on the airlink101 skyipcam500w.

500W
these are a relativly inexpensive ipcam they dont actually stream avi they stream mjpeg wich seems to be the rapid succesion of jpeg images , there are issues with this in zoneminder , especialy on this model.
zoneminder can however pick up the single jpeg from this cam.

Install
so i ordered all the things and they have nearly all arrived , 1 new cheap compaq box and 4x ip cams .
as i mentioned in an earlier post i had dumped vbox for vmware , so i setup zoneminder in vmware.
configured all the cams and placed them then set about connecting them to zoneminder vm.
This didnt quite go as planned the mjpeg didnt show in zoneminder , neither did the regular jpeg , this was a dissapointment for me , but i had noticed other input types on te zoneminder setup.

zoneminder can take a V4L2 device as input so i wondered if i could somehow show the ipcam as a local V4l2 device. hence 2 days of googling and finding out things .

The Hack
so far we know the mjpeg doesnt play well with linux , i cant stream it through any players and can only view it in a browser with the aid of java, however i can get a single jpeg from the camera .

i wrote a little python prog to get the images form the camera and display them in rapid succession to give the ilusion of a streamed video ……i did this very easily and it worked perfectly

so now i wanted to somehow output that feed to an avi on the fly and pass it to zone alarm ……this didnt really seem possible without saving the avi file and it becoming huge , as i wanted to jsut loop it and have no saved files this didnt seem like it would work.

so what i decided on was to try to loop the output as a V4l2 device

V4l2 loopback
i did some googling and found a loopback driver for V4l2 so i downloaded it to test it ,but didnt work on my ancient kernel its only for very new kernels , luckily the vm that zoneminder is on is built with jaunty  so it worked .
they sugest feeding the loopback with an application they also make so i downloaded that too after some messing around with it it seemed to work . i changed the script to jst dump the jpeg  to a file and set the loopback device to  collect the jpeg as input , the script continues runningchanging the input file .

now i think this should work , when i conenct a view to the device it does connect and get now errors from the viewer or the loop back devie or the feed application …..i just get no picture ……so i tried my regular laptop webcam (V4l2 compatable) and with the viewer here i just get the same …… so i am thinking it is a vmware problem …so i need some dedicated hardware to try it on , i do have the new machine i bought but …………i didnt get a vga cable for it …ordered one but its taking ages to arrive 😦

so i guess i just have to wait and see what happens with dedicated hardware , to test that …….i am thinking it should work ……unless i am over looking something like you cant change the file when the input has been set ?…….but if that was the case i think i woudl have goten errors by now  so we will see.

as for zoneminder that didnt pic up video from my webcam either ……i think zoneminder doesnt like the virtual enviroment too much either ……..will have to try them both on dedicated hardware.

.
so i will keep you guys posted

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Virtualbox – VMWare

i used to use VMware server until i got my new laptop about 18months back when i discovered vmware made my keyboard lock up and other problems , so i switched to virtualbox , mainly becasue it looked somewhat similar to vmware and it was just an apt-get away.

i find virtualbox very useful but it has its problems , like i never got the usb to work on it …in all fairness thoguh i never really tried to fix it. i did however try to fix its problem with networking not being able to assign it a bridged network only ever used nat wich gets somewhat limiting when you want to work on servers, i tried a few things i found online but none of it seemed to work.

anyways i wanted to do some more server work so i decided to revisit vmware server (now version 2)

so i downloaded it (they have a 64bit version now ) and installed it , i did remember to run it thorugh sudo but it complained about perl errors , so i then ran it with
sudo perl ./install-vmware.pl
and it went throught he usualy setup routine etc just hit a bunch of yes's untill you get to it complaining about my kernel being compiled with a different gcc version than was installed , i was worried about this but google helped and you just ask it to go on anyways and it goes through ok . it asked me about user acount but i took the default answer (uh uh).

when i came to run it i opened a comand line and ran vmware it opened the browser and pointed me to a new managment console , there is not a stand alone application it seems for version 2 but instead is all through the web interface.
could i log on …could i hell , the default user i took was root being as i use kubuntu root has no password so i set a password for root with
sudo passwd root

and then i coudl log in ok and actually liked the set up a VM and away i went , runs ok though i have not really put it through its paces we will see in the next few days i suppose but everything seems good so far , the USB works fine as does the bridged networking so im happy and it has not locked up yet.

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Linux on PS3

i  deiced to make a home security system , just cameras and movement detection system so i googled for open source applications and came across zone minder
i needed a central pc for this and looked at some HP ones online then i had the bright idea of seeing if the PS3 coudl do it …..i always like to make things from things you already have so i thought ok i will give it a go installing linux on the PS3

so after a few minuets googling i came across not only a guide on installing llinux on the PS3 but also a guide installing zone minder on the PS3 , what luck i thought .

so off i went to radio shack to get a usb keyboard and a HDMI cable

all the guides say you want to be connecting the PS3 to the TV with HDMI otherwise its unbearable

i followed the guide here  http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10948
only i used the latest version of yellow dog .

so what where my findings ?

the guide is pretty easy to follow , once you have the OS on it is usable and actually kind of cool , but then moving on to the install of zone minder …..thats a different story

i am a debian boy kubuntu to be precises and although in the past i used madrake and other rpm distro’si have got so used to the way ubuntu does things using yellowdog and yum was a pain in the ass.
yum was painfully slow on the PS3 , i think that is more a PS3 thing than a Yum thing. but yum kept complaining about dependencies and that it couldn’t find mirror’s and things.

it reminded me of back when i was getting started with linux and you would have all these dependency problems and installing things would be such a pain in the ass …….thank god ubuntu got rid of all that with apt

what made it worse was every time it would complain about some dependacy or some mirror , running the commands again would take an age to complete i think this is something to do with the PS3 only allowing it to use 2 of its cores or something ……i read a lot of things about the performance a lot of things say its because it only has 256MB of memory …..but that i find extremely hard to believe as i was not running X at all and had disable a lot of services and just command line via ssh so 256 MB is lots i am sure

so in conclusion , running linux on the PS3 is a nice novelty and can even be usable with its enlightenment desktop you could collect email and web browse etc if you are patient ……i don’t think it is much use except from novelty ……but then i may just try ubuntu on it and see

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KDE 4 – and my thoughts on upgrading my systems

Just a quick update!
As i think i commented last year i did not upgrade to the latest version of Kubuntu because it had KDE4 and i had read that it did not have support for most of the programs i use.
well i decided to revisit KDE4 to see how the progress has been coming along, so i downloaded Kubuntu Jaunty and installed it on a VM on my laptop to see how it fairs , i have to say i have been very surprised , there has been a lot of development and nto only does it look stunning it seems to have a lot more program support.i find th e way you go through the menus for applications a little annoying at first but hey its linux so i can change everything the way i like i am sure !

When i get back home in april my desktop (heavy artiliary) should be ready and waiting , this system has been out of action for about two years now and is installed with Kubuntu 606 if my memory serves me correct …..i didnt upgrade it to a non LTS version becasue it was just set up so perfectly with VMware Server and all the stuff you just have to have. so if my laptop upgrade to KDE 4 goes well i may consider upgrading that machine too .

i will probably post again on more findings with jaunty.

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Linux on xda exec (universal)

I have had a o2 xda exec ( HTC universal) for some years, i hardly ever used it from the time i bought it because it was so slow that i would miss calls , it does have a lot of features and can do a great deal , as a phone it sucks , but for email and web and other stuff it was good , i kind of used it as a device for when i didnt want to take my laptop it worked ok for that apart from it didnt have all the things i wanted on there but i got by. it runs windows mobile 5 or something like that i always kind of wanted linux on there so i could  put the apps i use on there.

i stared to look   for a version of linux for it, i came across this website http://www.gnulinux.biz/files/Universal/ it had the files there and also some instructions btu here is how i did it (on Kubunutu)

i have a 2GB SDcard in my so i  put that in my laptop
open a terminal and write replacing mmcblk0 with the name of your sd card

sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

then when in fdisk i deleted all the partitions on the device to start over, then i created the new partitons
i created a fat16 at 256MB and linux ext2 with the rest of the device's space

then you download and extract the files found in the link above

i tried the X11 and the openmoko ones
the openmoko one is more like a phone with contacts etc
the X11 one is more like a desktop with the layout etc

so wichever one you decide to try you put the CAB file on the FAT partiton on the SDcard

and you extract the image to the linux parttion on the SDcard
i just copied the file over and then ran bunzip2 ./filename
and then tar -xvf ./filename.tar
then you should have a file system appear on the partiton

ok unmount your SDcard parttions then you put the SDcard in to your xda
browse the SDcard and install the CAB file you put there …follow the onscreen prompts
when its installed go to programs >boot linux  …..and run the loader you chose

the machine will start to boot in to linux then, it does take some time and does look like it has hung on ocasion but just let it run.

then you can play away with your linux xda ,

i am working on getting all the applications i need on there , so that will be updated later

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Another Hardy Update!

After using hardy now for i guess about a month
i am still liking it but other bugs have become apparent.

Flash – always a problme on linux had been doing peculia things, sometimes it just doesnt work and some sites dont load …i think it really is a versioning problem as i am on flash 9 and i think some of the older ones dont work , youtube works but just some things dont

by far the most anoying thing for me is , Evolution crashes , i have disabled all the plugins that i dare and it still crashed , after it crashes it recovers and then i need to open evolution twice to get it to run…. very strange …..after it recovered it did leave the preview pane off . which i didnt like to quickly re enabled . it was crashing all the time , now i have left the reading pane off and so far it has not crashed …but i dont really hold up much hope as i dont think that is the problem …. we will see!

but apart from that and ofcourse i still havnt fixed the see through screen lock……it is all pretty good … it is still fast and hasnt totally locked up ….receovers well from teh programs crashing never has got unstable so all in all good good.

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OS Upgrade To Hardy

Well i finally did it.
After putting it off for 5 months i finally upgraded to the latest Kubuntu, i was worried after all the problems i had installing gutsy on my laptop with audio and kernel problems etc, but there was no update to firefox 3 and no update to amsn so i though time to get the latest.

After installing it i was so surprised no problems like the moto it just worked.
so i installed all my software and decided to give it a whirl and i have to say …i like it.

a few bugs with the compiz , you can turn on desktop effects in the kde menu just enable it and comiz is instaled and setup and you just select the amount of effect you want , but be warned if you decide to disable compiz it uninstals it and leaves you with no window manager so you have no little x to click to close it.
i did have a problem with evolution i had to open it twice to get it to read the mail …that was a strange one. just fixed its self
kaffene asked for codecs when i wanted to play a file and promptly downloaded and installed them …. thats how it should be 🙂

when you lock the screen (i do this all the time) it doesnt blank it …its just dimmed and you can see the Desktop althoguh its greyed out and when you move the mouse it blacks out and asks for pass but revert back to being greyed and you can see it ….now that for me …i just dont like and i am sure tis a bug…. i will have to look for a resolution.

So the verdict is that i like it ! and Kubuntu  just keeps getting better

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