Tag Archives: linux

Vagalume 0.8 with Last.fm API v2.0

Personal, , ,

Over the weekend I got an update alert on my n810 for Vagalume, the Last.fm player I’ve been using. Without checking the changes I went ahead and updated, unfortunately it caused the player to stop working. At first I thought it was a configuration issue but after some research today l ran across this thread which spelled things out. Though I’m not to sure I want to get an API key knowing it could be disabled at any time for violating the terms of service. So the free ride was good for a while and there are still players out there that use the old API, which will work until it’s shut down. It is a great site and three dollars a month is not that much when you think about the library you have access to. Honestly if you haven’t been there head over and take a look.

When the time comes I’ll get a subscription, until then I’ll have to roll back.

G1 Contact Sync

Technology, , ,

Just after updating my G1 to 1.6 I was struck again with problems syncing contacts. Mind you it’s not a huge deal, I don’t meet 20 people a day and need there digits. It has been a common problem and was well documented based on the posts I found. The consistent fix from the Google Mobile Help forum was clearing contact data on the G1 and then sync. That worked and syncing is back.

This might be a good argument for turning on synchronization but that tends to limit battery life. If all else fails I can fall back to this but I’m hoping if I sync more often, and not make changes in both places then sync, the problem will go away. We’ll see.

SSH Public Key Authenication

Technology, ,

Last week I had an occasion to test public key authentication from OpenVMS to Linux. With the dayjob we have an implementation where data will be sent in batch via sftp to a Linux box. To get a better idea of “the entire process” thought I should take my Debian box and test authenticating to it. Once I got through all the quirks it wasn’t that difficult.

The biggest challenge has been getting past access violations when executing ssh commands on some OpenVMS servers. What I found on HP’s ITRC forum referenced UIC in RIGHTSLIST needing to match what’s in SYSUAF, for a user executing SSH commands. Even though OpenVMS TCPIP version 5.6 ECO 1 release notes comment about this as being fixed we have experienced it with ECO 2. None the less updating the RIGHTSLIST resolves the problem.

As for set up it wasn’t to bad. Here’s the steps (summary) I used.

OpenVMS

  1. Enable the SSH Client in TCPIP$CONFIG.
  2. Create a sub folder for the user of [.SSH2], making sure your logged in as the account in question.
  3. Set default to that directory and create a key using ssh_keygen. (In order to use ssh_keygen you must first execute sys$manager:tcpip$define_commands.com.)
  4. Create an IDENTIFICATION. file with a line of. 
    KeyID <private key name>
  5. Push the public key (.PUB) to the Linux box.

Linux

  1. Log in as the user you’ll be connecting with, create a .ssh subfolder if it does not already exist.
  2. Take the public key (.PUB) from the OpenVMS box and put it in the authorized_keys file.
    $ ssh-keygen -i -f openvms.pub >> authorized_keys

note:  keep in mind where default is in relation to .ssh/authorized_keys the above would assume
your in ~/.ssh when executing ssh-keygen.

This was with the default config for sshd on Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (lenny). Something to also keep in mind is from a security perspective ensuring access to the key files is limited to the user would be a good practice on both systems.

Flash not working in Ubuntu

Technology, ,

There seems to be a lot of discussion about Flash not working from time to time in Ubuntu and I to have had that problem in the past. I was late upgrading to Jaunty and after doing so it came up again. Mind you most times I don’t do a dist-upgrade but a fresh install, with $HOME on it’s own partition. This time I tried gnash and swfdec but for some sites it didn’t do the trick. So this evening I thought I’d sit down do some research and fix it.

After a bit of googling I found my way to this forum thread. It is dated but gave me a direction, so I followed the advice and did the following. 

$ sudo apt-get clean
$ sudo apt-get autoclean
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get remove -y --purge flashplugin-nonfree
$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Unfortunately the result was the same, but all was not lost the plugin was installed I just needed to point it to firefox. That wasn’t quite it. See I had installed gnash and swfdec and removed them so I thought but there was still something overriding firefox from using the flashplugin-nonfree package. So when trying to play a flash movie from the browser I right clicked on the embeded player in the page and selected “About”. What came up was SWFDEC, and there in lies the problem.

I’m not positive at this point if the package was something I installed or loaded by default but removing swfdec-mozilla fixed my problem. 

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge swfdec-mozilla
$ sudo apt-get autoremove

Reload the page and we are up and running… YMMV.

Cheers.

Android 1.6 on the G1 Dev Phone

Technology, , ,

Tonight I had some time and wanted to load the latest version of Android on my g1. This was one reason why I got it, even though I skipped over the 1.5 update and was still running 1.1. I haven’t been bold enough to load any custom ROM images yet so I go to the Android Dev Phone 1 site at HTC and grab an updated radio and recovery image. As time goes by I might go another route but for now those versions do the trick.

It has been a while since I blogged about the g1 and some things have changed. The T42 I was using fell victum to the well documented ThinkPad GPU reflow problem, probably the result of a fumble while at the Avis rental counter in the Denver airport back in April. I replaced it with another T42 from ThinkPad Depot a couple months ago and have been happy with it so far.

    Interesting those sound like topics worthy of a blog post but there are none !!! Will try to rectify that in the future.

So needing to start over I first grabbed the Eclipse for RCP and then the Android sdk. I followed the upgrade instructions and managed to have a problem with the adb tool that I think I ran into when I first got the phone and flashed it with 1.1. None the less I did some googling and found where the SD card should not be mounted and adb needs to run as root.

    The “needs to run as root” can be resolved with the right tweeking I believe but I haven’t spent enough time one it yet.

That said the flash went without a hitch for both the radio and recovery image. I’m looking forward to some of the new features, although I’m not sure about the virtual keyboard since it eats up half the screen. The nice part is if it’s a bust I can always try something different or go back.