Maybe I’ll switch back to alsa. But then again: maybe not. It’s only connected to an old Yamaha amplifier I had laying around so I don’t think I’ll hear the difference.

I have a draft blog post in which I explain how I got everything running on Ubuntu 9.10. I’ll try and publish it as soon as I can And then I’ll update the schema too.

I read on OSnews about the alpha release of Haiku. It’s been several years since I installed BeOS the last time so I decided to try Haiku.

I first tried it on virtualbox but I didn’t get the networking to work flawlessly so I decided to install it on libvirt. I expected quite a hassle but it was done in a whissle.

First download the raw image of Haiku and run something like:

sudo virt-install --name="Haiku" --ram=512 --hvm --accelerate --import --file=/media/second_disk/vm-images/haiku-r1alpha1.image --vnc --bridge=virbr0

Next I had to edit the Haiku libvirt xml to change the default nic model.  I always stop the libvirt service just to be sure. Then edit this file: /etc/libvirt/qemu/Haiku.xml

Make sure the nic looks something like:

<interface type='bridge'>
<mac address='54:52:00:6a:14:17'/>
<source bridge='virbr0'/>
<model type='e1000'/>
</interface>

I first tried the rtl8139 interface but that isn’t supported by Haiku :s A list of possible interfaces can be found on the libvirt website.

I can now access it via vnc. But Ubuntu has some kind of bug in the vnc client of virt-viewer so it is sllooooooowwwww…

I’ve installed it on my home router and on the new router of my boss. Both had other routers ( a Belkin and a US Robotics) and a lot of troubles with the stupid things. After switching to Tomato we’ve had no troubles at all! Upgrading was a breeze.

At work we still have a D-link but the conncetion keeps dropping. If I set it to WPA1 OR WPA2: no troubles. But WPA1 AND 2 it can’t handle So one of these days I’ve got to pick up a nice blue Linksys and install Tomato on it.

These is the configuration I decided on:

/etc/amavis/conf.d/20-debian_defaults:

$final_spam_destiny       = D_PASS;

/etc/maildroprc:

# Global maildrop filter file

# Uncomment this line to make maildrop default to ~/Maildir for
# delivery- this is where courier-imap (amongst others) will look.
DEFAULT="$HOME/Maildir"
SHELL="/bin/bash"
MAILDIRMAKE=`which maildirmake`
logfile "/var/log/maildrop.log"

`test -d $HOME/Maildir/.SPAM`
if ( $RETURNCODE == 1 )
{
`$MAILDIRMAKE -f SPAM $HOME/Maildir`
`echo INBOX.SPAM >> $HOME/Maildir/courierimapsubscribed`
}

if ( /^X-Spam-Status: Yes/ )
{
to "$HOME/Maildir/.SPAM/"
}

/etc/roundcube-webmail/main.inc.php:

// store spam messages in this mailbox
$rcmail_config['junk_mbox'] = 'SPAM';

// display these folders separately in the mailbox list.
// these folders will automatically be created if they do not exist
$rcmail_config['default_imap_folders'] = array('INBOX', 'Drafts', 'Sent', 'SPAM', 'Trash');

Delete all the old Junk-folders:

rm -r /home/*/Maildir/.Junk
rm -r /home/*/homes/*/Maildir/.Junk

To make it extra nice:
/etc/amavis/conf.d/50-user:

use strict;

#
# Place your configuration directives here.  They will override those in
# earlier files.
#
# See /usr/share/doc/amavisd-new/ for documentation and examples of
# the directives you can use in this file
#

#$log_level = 5;

$pax='pax';

read_hash(\%whitelist_sender, '/etc/amavis/whitelist');
read_hash(\%blacklist_sender, '/etc/amavis/blacklist');
read_hash(\%spam_lovers, '/etc/amavis/spam_lovers');

@bypass_spam_checks_maps = (
\%bypass_spam_checks, \@bypass_spam_checks_acl, \$bypass_spam_checks_re);

#------------ Do not modify anything below this line -------------
1;  # ensure a defined return

And:

touch /etc/amavis/whitelist
touch /etc/amavis/blacklist
touch /etc/amavis/spam_lovers

And restart amavis:

/etc/init.d/amavis restart

I found cdw and it really looked nice so I installed it:

aptitude install cdw

After running it with “cdw” it detected my cd-writer so no configuration needed: nice. Because I once tried mybashburn (or something like that) and that piece of software needed all kinds of configuration. And I don’t like that.

I wanted to burn the debian sid iso with cdw but I couldn’t find an option for doing so. After some searching I found out that I had to go to “preferences” and change the value of “Default image file”. WTF? That’s not very nice I thought. But I tried it. But a no-go. The path to my iso was to long to fit in the box. So I couldn’t even select it.

Don’t get me wrong: cdw IS nice for burning music cd’s or just some files to backup. But isos…. pfff

So I resorted to cdrecord. It’s got a bit of a “hacker” feeling to it but it did the job nicely:

cdrecord driveropts=burnfree /home/leon/debian-live-sid-amd64-xfce-desktop.iso

What I don’t understand is why I have to manually enable burnfree. I mean: the last 5 cdr drives I had, all had burnfree. I’m doubting if they even make cd recorders without burnfree. So why not make it the default? Because apparently “Maybe it causes problems with *some* drives withput burn-free support”. Hja, retards.

But there might be a solution to this problem. Cdrecord checks for “/etc/cdrecord.conf”. And there you can change the default cdrecord parameters. My “/etc/cdrecord.conf” now contains:

driveropts=burnfree

But if it’s correct of if it works: I don’t know. I haven’t yet tested it.

It consists of:

• Antec Veris Media Fusion Remote Silver
• Coolermaster 460WATT PSU ExtremePower Plus
• Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850E AM2
• MDT 2048 MB DDR2 800 / PC6400
• Asus EN8400GS/Silent/HTP 512MB PCI-E
• Scythe Ninja Mini
• Some old harddisk I had laying around
• Ubuntu server 8.10
• 15″ touchscreen

The Antec case really looks nice and seems to be built well. Especially the way the harddrives are suspended in mid air

I’ve now got the motherboard in the case and mounted the cooler on the cpu. I’ve attached the power-switch stuff, USB connections and mainpower of the motherboard. I still have the second videocard that has to be connected.

The powerswitch was a little tricky though. You have to connect the powerswitch not comming from the LCD display to the back of the display. And the powerswitch cable comming from the LCD has to be connected to the motherboard. But if you know it, it’s simple

I’m first going to install KVM for a Windows XP and Windows 2000 server installation. More on that in my next post.

The LCD display is nice but is a little hard to read. Maybe with some good software on my Ubuntu Linux 8.10 installation it gets better. If I manage to get something working I’ll post it here. For example the LCD display, fan monitoring and NVIDIA VPAU and AMD UVD2. Sure hops the latter two work.

Here’s a little impression of the work in progress:

After some searching I found that it was because of a process keeping a hold of some deleted files. So after shuttding down some processes I found the right one and df reported a dropping disk usage %. After starting mysql again we were back up again.

I shot 10×3 pictures, uploaded them to my laptop and started looking for some HDR/tone-mapping software for linux. Qtpfsgui looked very nice and I tried it out. It was available from the ubuntu repositories. I have the Intrepid repositories enabled and installed hugin-tools (a dependency for qtpfsgui) from there. The added benefit was that qtpfsgui could align the pictures for you. I used a tripod but I didn’t use a remote control. So some pictures were not perfectly the same.

Qtpfsgui seemed like everything I needed: a nice gui, automatic aligning of images and a lot of different algorithms for creating tone mapped images.

But I couldn’t create a realistic tonemapped image. Qtpfsgui creates a lot of those fantasy-like HDR images. Nice if you like the style, but I wanted realistic images. Exit qtpfsgui.

After doing some more research I found a commandline utility called enfuse. There were some very positive and exciting comments on it, so I decided to check it out. I wanted enfuse, which is part of the enblend package on ubuntu. But the newest enblend package on Ubuntu was 3.0. And I needed something newer for enfuse to be part of it. So I had to compile it from source. What I did:

sudi aptitude install build-essential
sudo aptitude install pkg-config libtiff4-dev libboost-graph-dev libboost-thread1.34.1 liblcms1-dev libglew1.5-dev libplot-dev libglut3-dev libopenexr-dev libopenexr2ldbl libxi-dev
cd ~/src
wget http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/enblend/enblend-enfuse-3.2.tar.gz
tar -xzvf enblend-enfuse-*.tar.gz
cd enblend-enfuse-*
./configure
make

You can optionally do:

sudo make install

I decided to first try it from the build directory:

cd ~/Pictures/test
~/src/enblend-enfuse-3.2/src/enfuse DSC_080* -o enfuse_test.tiff

And it worked perfectly. Without any tweaking of the parameters, it resulted in a nicer, better looking image than with a fully tweaked qtpfsgui.

But…. what if your images aren’t perfectly aligned as in my case? Install the latest hugin-tools package which contains the align_image_stack program:

sudo aptitude install hugin-tools=0.7.0~svn3191+beta5-1ubuntu1
align_image_stack -a aligned_ DSC_080*
~/src/enblend-enfuse-3.2/src/enfuse aligned_* -o enfuse_test_2.tiff

Perfect! I would really recommend enfuse.

Maybe I’ll create a small ruby script to ease this process.

Ook zijn bij Bol wireless sensor bars te bestellen (een stuk of vijf verschillende).

En natuurlijk draait een beetje klusser er zijn hand niet voor om om de draadjes weer aan elkaar te solderen. Ik dat gedaan, maar dat werkte niet

Na wat zoeken op internet bleek dat er nog een soort coating over de draadjes zit. Die moet je er eerst even afbranden en dan werkt het perfect! Met dank aan deze guide.

But, the trick question: what components? Pffff, I don’t know anything about hardware anymore so I had to brush-up my knowledge about this stuff. After reading a lot of forum posts, reviews and the lot, I came up with the following hardware components:

Case: Antec Fusion case

A nice looking case with a lcd display with Linux drivers for it available (I think). And also an infrared receiver. And the price is not too high like some other cases.

Motherboard: Gigabyte vs. Asus

I’ve got two options: The Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H or the Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI. I also thought about a similar Asrock motherboard. Because they use very little energy (so I’ve read). But it’s a bit of a hassle to find a dealer who sells these boards. So I think I’ll stick with the former two.

Why one of these? They both have the new AMD 780G/SB700 chipset which supports full HD hardware encoding. So if I’m gonna us it as a HTPC it does it work descent.

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4450e

Low power usage and only a couple of euro’s more than it’s brother the 4050. I think it supports amd-v/svm, but it’s not too obvious if you read the AMD site. So I hope I got it right

Cooler: Scythe Ninja mini

I want the system to be passively cooled. And this is the best small heatsink I could find.

Memory: 2 x 2GB

I don’t care what kind of memory goes into it. As long if it’s enough to support a couple of VM’s.

Hard disk: 32GB SSD

This one is hard! Is this worth the 160 euro’s? Well it is fast, silent and reliable! And it’s enough for DomU + some VM’s. All my  data is gonna be saved on another (network) diskdrive. But still….

So I’ve installed FreeBSD (only in Virtualbox for now). And it worked! Last time I tried to install FreeBSd, it hang on some network-driver issue.

Why FreeBSD? Well, I’ve read some good things about the ports system and it really is nice how you can mix binary/source packages. What’s also nice, is that you can adjust the compile options for each package. Handy for suexec for example!

But why not Gentoo? I’ve tried Gentoo a couple of times. I even had it for a desktop for a while. But it kept giving conflicts between packages and everything is from source. So I find Gentoo a little bit too time consuming for a day-to-day use. Oh, and FreeBSD has a nice installer. Gentoo has not. And it the next version of FreeBSD there may be even a graphical installer! Thumbs up!

The first thing I did after I installed FreeBSD:

pkg_add -r portupgrade fpkg

And what I’ve learned so far: If you use the -P parameter with the port* utilities, it uses binary packages instead of the ports.

I took me a while to figure that one out I was looking for a pkginstall command, but I couldn’t find it. So after reading some docs, it looked like port* was the answer, only you must use different switces.

The second thing I did, was to get rid of the csh shell. What a piece of crap! I installed bash and configured my profile to use bash. After editing /etc/passwd and messing it all up, I found out there was a command to change shell chsh to the rescue.

When I’ve found out how installing packages all works and when I’ve messed up my system for the first time, I think I’m gonna install it on a real computer. Maybe even try FreeBSD with Gnome.

When I say “525″ in this post, I of course mean the Logitech Harmony 525.

My boss gave me a Mediamarkt gift coupon and this week I decided to buy something for it. I chose a universal remote control, because my current tv (also from my boss ) had no remote control. I believe his daughter bit it to pieces :p

Logitech seemed a wise choice. I think it’s a trustworthy brand, and I really like their squeezebox line.

I plugged it in and of course linux doesn’t have any descent support for it

But Virtualbox to the rescue. I had already have it installed, so I fired it up, but the logitech remote didn’t show up in Windows. Hmzz, after reading the virtualbox FAQ I added this line to my /etc/fstab:

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=664 0 0

Restarted my box, fired up Virtualbox and voila: I could now access the remote from Windows XP. After installing the driver and signing up for an account I was of. Added my xbox, dvd player an tv to the remote and it worked! Not like a charm, because not all of the features of the original remote of my tv (a Sanyo CE28FWH2F-C) were added to the 525. A search on google didn’t return anything useful so the only solution was to copy the infrared codes from the original remote. But I didn’t have it so I took my chances with a cheap 1,49 remote from Action. And because of the nice Harmony remote software it was easy as pie.

2.5 & 2.8

(front & rear)

When I look at my old blog: v2.vanutsteen.nl, I think my average there is about two posts every month or so.

The difference is that I’m now using WordPress instead of Joomla! And WordPress is sooo much simpler for a blogsite then Joomla! You can use Joomla! for your blog. Even with comments and all. But the way WordPress is set up, every moron (as me) can just start blogging. They made it really simple. And they should keep it that way! No fancy stuff in the default wordpress installation. If you want to get fancy, just install all plugins.

I’ve got to plugins installed. One for generating google sitemaps and another for caching my pages. The first one is a bit slow and I really don’t like it. The caching plugin (wp-cache 2) is really nice. Install, activate and go. And my website flies instead of crawling like it first did.

I’m using Joomla! during the day at my job. So Joomla! is buying my bread and paying my house and I know Joomla! through and through. I make webshops, coporate sites, intranets, etc. with Joomla!. But I wouldn’t use it for a blog. WordPress is the way to go!

edit: I saw I haven’t added the sitemap to the above image. So here goes:

• Red: WordPress
• Blue: Joomla!
• Yellow: Drupal

I daily read a lot of blog posts. To keep up with what’s happening in the ruby/linux community and what’s the latests buzz in the webdeveloper world.

I’m now using google to keep track of the RSS feeds. I’ve used some desktop applications in the past (like rssowl and liferea). I think I’ll switch to a desktop application again. Liferea has the nicest gui. So I think about using that one.

I also found Blam! and Straw. But blam looks very gtk1-ish and the news for Straw hasn’t been updated in 4 months and has no screenshots. And you have to have good documentation as an open source project.