Ubuntu Karmik and Eclipse Galileo

The great Ubuntu Karmik is just around the corner. If you happen to use Eclipse from the official eclipse webpage and you see that some eclipse buttons do not work, then apply the following hack. Make yourself a one line script to execute eclipse like follows:

#!/bin/bash

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
./eclipse

and it will work again. For tptp (the profiling tools for eclipse) you’ll need libstdc++5 package from debian.

Log4Tailer 2.0 released with SSH tailing capabilities

Log4Tailer 2.0 http://code.google.com/p/log4tailer/ has just been released. It has been a month of some thought and testing the feasability of including tailing over SSH, and this release provides just that. It will open the door for a range of more features to control remote logs scattered across a network from a single terminal, instead of having multiple terminals or windows opened. As always, the project provides a nice pdf UserGuide explaining the ssh tailing capabilities of log4tailer.

Log4Tailer 1.50

Log4Tailer 1.50 http://code.google.com/p/log4tailer provides interesting new features in order to monitor your logs. It’s a dedicated application to monitor the status of your logs regardless if your application provides its own monitoring platform or not. It is helping me a lot and this new release will help sys admins and testers alike.

In this new release, you will be able to specify regexes for every log, log4tailer will be able to update you by email every period of time you specify and lots more.

Log4Tailer 1.45 released

Log4Tailer 1.45 http://code.google.com/p/log4tailer/ has a new feature that could be interesting for many testers or engineers when they are tailing multiple logs at a time. It can tail the logs with different colors for each log, making it very easy to differentiate which log you are tailing. For instance, you could be tailing /var/log/messages in red, /var/log/mail.log in green and some other log in yellow. Just specify that in a config file and that’s it. Config file:

/var/log/messages = red

/var/log/mail.log = green

/var/log/otherlog = yellow

Then, just type:

log4tail -c configfile /var/log/messages /var/log/mail.log /var/log/otherlog

PyLazy

PyLazy is an small python app that reports the time you spend using your applications in the computer. I just published it in googlecode and the Python Package index http://code.google.com/p/pylazybreak/.

Hyphenation in LaTeX

I was typesetting my CV in LaTeX with a mix of Spanish and English when I got aware that when running pdfLaTeX it  was not uploading hyphenation patterns for Spanish. I was using Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04. After some investigation I found out that there was a bug filed in launchpad about this issue in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/texlive-base/+bug/240823. The solution to this is running in a shell the following command:

sudo fmtutil – -all

In MiKTeX using Windows, you have to open the settings manager, go to Languages Tab and select the languages you want pdfLaTeX to use.

Etiquetas de Technorati: latex,pdflatex,linux,windows,miktex,howto

Log4Tailer 1.42 released

I released Log4Tailer 1.42 http://code.google.com/p/log4tailer/ on Monday. It is just a minor release affecting mostly on the final reports once you finish tailing a log. Log4Tailer allows you to tail logs in colors amongst other features. It is very useful for software testers and developers alike. I’ve found myself multiple times tailing logs in black and white using the “Tail” Linux command line, which was a pain for my eyes to try to discern information from thousands of lines. In my career I’ve seen some software testers missing “warnings” or even “error” log4j log traces, missing important information that can lead to a bug, and a long etcetera. Some of the features maybe are not going to be that important, but the core functionality, i.e. tailing with colors is really a killer app if used properly along with top notch terminal managers like Terminator hosted in launchpad https://launchpad.net/terminator. Make your live easier and enjoy .

Sound in Amarok 2.0.2 and Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04

I really like Amarok, but apparently in Ubuntu 9.04 Gnome as a Desktop, when installing amarok it does not play sound at all. After some investigation, apparently amarok uses Phonon and you need to make sure you have the xine phonon backend. But that apparently is not enough. Installing xine-console solves the problem. I’ve read that installing xine-ui solves the problem as well.

Although I love the simplicity of Gnome, there are some Kde applications that simply rock, name it:

• Amarok
• Kile
• and Kopete, that apparently it has video built in, something that pidgin has not yet.

Yes, you can have Gnome Desktop and use Kde applications.

libmtp and Ubuntu Jaunty (mtp devices), Rhythmbox

LIBMTP and UBUNTU JAUNTY

I installed a clean ubuntu Jaunty 64 bit, and when plugging in an mp3 player I found that Rhythmbox could not found my player because of an libmtp panic error, sth like this:

PTP: Opening session
LIBMTP PANIC: Unable to read device information on device 6 on bus 0, trying to continue

Apparently there is a bug already in launchpad:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/348287

I found out that Jaunty uses 0.3.0 of libmtp which dates back from 2008.

Seeing that this is quite annoying, I downloaded the latest libmtp and compiled them by hand:

You’ll need libusb-dev library (apt-get install libusb-dev), which can be installed by means of apt-get.

Latest release of libmtp:

http://libmtp.sourceforge.net/index.php The latest is 0.3.6

as always:

./configure

make

sudo make install

By default, this installs:

:/usr/local/lib$ ls -l

-rw-r–r– 1 root root 839976 2009-05-04 18:46 libmtp.a

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 805 2009-05-04 18:46 libmtp.la

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2009-05-04 18:46 libmtp.so -> libmtp.so.8.2.1

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2009-05-04 18:46 libmtp.so.8 -> libmtp.so.8.2.1

the libmtps that come in Jaunty are in /usr/lib:

/usr/lib/libmtp.so.8

/usr/lib/libmtp.so.8.0.0

back these files up in some place in your home:

Remove those in /usr/lib and soft link to new ones:

If you are still in /usr/lib

ln -s /usr/local/lib/libmtp.so.8.2.1 libmtp.so.8

ln -s /usr/local/lib/libmtp.so.8.2.1 libmtp.so.8.0.0

Of course, you need to be root for that.

That’s it!! If you plug your mp3 and start Rhythmbox, it should work.

Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 and Ext4 really fast

I’m running a clean install of Ubuntu Jaunty with EXT4 filesystem, and I’m highly surprised on how fast it is. I already knew booting was going to be fast as for several reports, but I/O filesystem operations are very fast as well. Applications open faster as well. This is one of those times I’ve seen such a big difference between Ubuntu releases. I can definitely say, that this is one of the most powerful and advanced desktop operating systems in the world.