Just Uber

The Ubuntu-UK mailing list brings news of the emergence of the ‘Pirate Party UK‘ (PPUK).

Inspired by the Swedish Piratpartiet, the PPUK is a single issue political party campaigning principally for the reformation of copyright law and patent systems.

Interested in the political/legal concepts of Free Libre and Open Source software? Give PPUK a visit.

For a while now I’ve found that ondemand CPU frequency scaling (enabled by default) makes my laptop seem sluggish under Ubuntu.

Basically the CPU speed doesn’t seem to increase quickly enough to keep up with the sudden brief bursts of demand caused when using Gmail, or playing Youtube videos for instance. Applying information found on this website seems to give a more responsive system.

echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/ignore_nice_load
echo 40 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold

This changes the default behaviour of the ondemand governor to force it to take into account background processes, and tells it to increase CPU speed when your CPU usage exceeds 40% rather than 95% (as is default).

Because /sys/ is a virtual file system created each time you boot your system, any changes you make are lost after a restart. Add the lines above to /etc/rc.local (read here for more on rc.local) to have your chosen settings applied each time you start Ubuntu.

Have fun.

Having just moved across to Kubuntu Intrepid I found that Firefox looks a little crappy by default. This can be remedied pretty quickly by grabbing this theme, created especially for KDE 4:

http://ramonantonio.net/kde-firefox/

Secondly some people suggested that they found Gmail scrolling a little slow on some computers. Disabling the Ubuntu Firefox Modifications addon (anyone know what this does anyway?) seems to give you a little extra speed if you need it.

Finally ensure you that you have ‘performance’ selected in CPU Policy. It’s easy to forget that power saving mode is on and find yourself wondering why your laptop is slow!

Lock your doors, stock up on supplies and withdraw all of your money from the bank for Google is broken!

It won’t be long now before mobs rampage through the streets destroying small businesses and legging it with pilfered tellys. This could be the end of the world as we know it!

Currently clicking on the result of any Google search brings up a page warning the user that the website is a potential risk, and does not allow the user to continue on to it.

Be afraid folks, be very afraid!

Update: A little while later Google started working properly again. Normality was restored. Sheepish looking folk gently placed nicked tellys back through the shattered windows of Currys and jogged home.

So, you’ve got a touchscreen monitor and you’re wondering why it doesn’t work properly? Lets see if we can get it up and running!

After connecting the touchscreen monitor’s USB cable to your PC and restarting, check out the USB devices on your system by running the command ‘lsusb’. If you see a line with the words:

D-WAV Scientific Co., Ltd eGalax TouchScreen

then we’re in business. I know how to set that one up!

Give the screen a sneaky tap with your finger. Marvel at how the computer seems to recognise a mouse click event (you may notice it highlights some text, or scares a small child from your PC case), but doesn’t yet doesn’t recognise mouse movement events.

Go on over to http://210.64.17.162/web20/TouchKitDriver/linuxDriver.htm and select the file called ‘Kernel 2.6.x with xorg 1.4.0 only’. At the time of writing the direct link to this file is here. It may have moved by the time you read this.

Anyway. Extract the TouchKit-2.03.tar.gz file. It contains a folder with 2 files and a tar archive in it. Good times.

At the command line move to the TouchKit folder you just extracted and run the following command:

sudo sh setup.sh

Wait a sec and be rewarded with the following menu. I’ve left in the choices I made.

(*) Linux driver installer for TouchKit controller

(I) Begin to setup TouchKit Linux driver.
(I) Checking user permission: root, you are the supervisor.
(I) Extract TouchKit driver package to /usr/local/TouchKit_x14.
(I) Create TouchKit utility shortcut in /usr/bin.
(I) Copy X module egalax_drv.so to /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input.

(Q) Which interface controller do you use?
(I) [1] RS232 [2] PS/2 [3] USB : (I) Please choose [1], [2] or [3]
(A) 3
(I) Using interface: USB
(I) Found a HID compliant touch controller.
(I) Found kernel module usbtouchscreen.
(I) It is highly recommended that add it into blacklist.
(Q) Do you want to add it into blacklist? (y/n) y
(I) Add kernel module usbtouchscreen into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

(I) Found X configuration file xorg.conf in /etc/X11.
(I) Add touch configuration into /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

(I) Please reboot the system for some changes to take effect.

Reboot your system

When the system comes back up you can calibrate and adjust your touchscreen by running sudo /usr/bin/TouchKit

Jobs a gud’un.

— Update

You may find that clicking on the desktop leaves irritating little selection box artifacts that wont go away. You can sort this out by changing the xorg.conf configuration that the TouchKit application generates.

Change SendCoreEvents to CorePointer (I edited out the default config at the top there). Problem solved.

Section “ServerLayout”
### InputDevice “EETI” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “EETI” “CorePointer”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen “Default Screen”

Unfortunately though you may find that your mouse no longer works. Swings and roundabouts!

I’ve let this blog go a little quiet lately because I’m lazy…

I noticed a fun little meme over at planet.ubuntu-uk.org so thought I’d join in to see if the old blog still works!

Snapper? Well, the conversation went on and on about him.

- Seven Troop, Andy McNab

To join in just follow the instructions below:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

It happened again!

Karoo – the demon spawn ISP of Hull’s much bemoaned monopolistic telephone overlords KCOM – has managed to yet again destroy the city’s ability to connect to the t’interweb.

From piecing together odds and sods from various sources (and from being one of the poor buggers having to use KC) it looks like the outage downed all internet services delivered by KCOM.

The fault which lasted over 8 hours, is alledged to have downed essential services, residential broadband, and businesses utilising credit card equipment connecting back through an ADSL connection.

As usual users from the unofficial karoo forums have jumped onto the problem and are debating it, so if you’re interested, jump in and have your say!

Karoo last dropped Hull off the internet in January this year, and August last year. Bad times.

The Register are covering the story here.

Do you ever have one of those days when no matter what you try, you just can’t get a web application to work? I suffered the angst of this recently when trying to install SugarCRM 5 on a Plesk based shared hosting server.

No matter what I tried, in step 2 of the installation process I got an error about the writable session save path not being valid. I checked the path in the /etc/php.ini file, created a php test page using phpinfo() and checked that the php session location was writable. Still, the installer brought up the same error message.

Finally I resorted to hacking the install script. I thought I’d share the hack with you here just in case you suffer the same error as I! Open up the install/installSystemCheck.php file. Check out the example below, and notice that seventh line from the bottom, I have changed the variable $error_found = true; to $error_found = false;

That should move you onto install step 2.

// session save dir
$session_save_path = session_save_path();
if (strpos ($session_save_path, “;”) !== FALSE)
$session_save_path = substr ($session_save_path, strpos ($session_save_path, “;”)+1);
if(is_dir($session_save_path)){
if(is_writable($session_save_path)){
installLog(”Session Save Path is “.$session_save_path);
}else{
$save_pathStatus = “<b><span class=’stop’>{$mod_strings['ERR_CHECKSYS_SESSION_SAVE_PATH_NOT_WRITABLE']}</font></b>”;
installLog(”ERROR:: {$mod_strings['ERR_CHECKSYS_SESSION_SAVE_PATH_NOT_WRITABLE']}”);
$error_found = true;
$error_txt .= ‘
<tr>
<td><strong>’.$mod_strings['LBL_CHECKSYS_SESSION_SAVE_PATH'].’</strong></td>
<td class=”error”>’.$save_pathStatus.’</td>
</tr>’;
}
}else{
$save_pathStatus = “<b><span class=’stop’>{$mod_strings['ERR_CHECKSYS_SESSION_SAVE_PATH_NOT_SET']}</font></b>”;
installLog(”ERROR:: {$mod_strings['ERR_CHECKSYS_SESSION_SAVE_PATH_NOT_SET']}”);
$error_found = false;
$error_txt .= ‘
<tr>
<td><strong>’.$mod_strings['LBL_CHECKSYS_SESSION_SAVE_PATH'].’</strong></td>
<td class=”error”>’.$save_pathStatus.’</td>
</tr>’;
}

Take a deep breath, unwind and relax. Setting up your Ubuntu Linux powered PC for mobile internet access isn’t half as hard as you thought it’d be.

My brother just got a £7.50 a month deal with Three, for 3 GB per month of internet access over 3G (HSDPA). I installed Ubuntu onto a PC for him and had a bash at getting the 3G dongle up and running.

Here is the easiest way to get this up and running.

1.) Plug the dongle into a spare USB slot and restart the computer.

2.) Download the Vodafone Mobile Connect Card Driver for Linux. The version I’m using is 1.99.17 (Beta) and comes as a .deb package.

3.) After installing, run the Vodafone application that you’ll now find in Applications > Internet.

4.) If the application doesn’t detect your dongle restart your PC and try again (although it should).

5.) Insert these settings if you’re using the Three (UK) network.

Username: three
Password: three

Preferred connection: 3G preferred
Authentication mode: Default
APN host: 3internet

DNS Servers: 4.2.2.4 and 4.2.2.3 (Figured out by Alec Cawley in the 2nd comment of this post, thanks Alec!)

6.) That’s about it. You should be able to see a signal strength bar at the bottom of the app screen, and connecting to the internet is a simple as pressing the big green connect button.

The vodafone application itself is pretty good. Particularly useful is the usage indicator. It allows you to restrict the amount of data transferred to help ensure that you don’t breach your monthly limit. Check out the screenshot below. Cool eh?

Enjoy mobile internet on Linux!

Fortunately Ubuntu has packages for Asterisk and Destar located in the Universe repository, so running the following command will grab and install them for you.

sudo apt-get install asterisk destar python2.4

Hardy ships with Python 2.5 but DeStar throws errors unless it’s running on Python 2.4. Therefore you need to tell destar to use Python 2.4 instead.

edit /usr/share/destar/python/destar.py

so that the top line reads:

#!/usr/bin/python2.4

Asterisk needs to be configured to allow DeStar to manage it. To do this, create a file called destar.conf in /etc/asterisk/manager.d/ Change the secret to a password of your choosing.

[destarman]
secret=123342342
deny=0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
permit=127.0.0.1/255.255.255.0
read=,system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user
write=,system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user

Try DeStar now by going to http://servername:8080 The default username is admin and the password ad26. (don’t forget the dot at the end). You should change it.

In the DeStar web GUI go to Configuration > Options > Management API Access and ensure that the secret there is the same as the secret in your destarman.conf file.

You should now have Asterisk installed and DeStar configured to manage it!