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.

Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 and Intel graphics

I have a laptop with intel graphics built in, and I experienced a bad performance when I upgraded to Jaunty. This problem has been discussed multiple times in ubuntuforums and other blogs. Well, following the article http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzIwOA and installing afterwards kernel 2.6.30-rc2 performance was incredibly good again, at least as it was when I had Intrepid 8.10. This pre built ubuntu kernel is in http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.30-rc2/ I had no option but to try it or downgrade, and actually it worked.

Log4Tailer release 1.0

In the last weeks, I’ve been hacking quite a lot with log4tailer and today I released version 1.0. This version is a major improvement over  the last ones, and I hope it is going to be a great tool for those who, like me, spend many time tailing logs for debugging purposes, or just for those who need to monitor logs during many hours. I released the software along with a very nice PDF manual, that I hope it is going to be very useful.

Log4Tailer’s project is hosted in googlecode http://code.google.com/p/log4tailer/

HowTo Ubuntu 8.10 64bit and Areca 6.2 (6.1) java Backup Utility

1) Go to Synaptic and install

libswt-cairo-gtk-3.4-jni
libswt-gnome-gtk-3.4-jni
libswt-gtk-3.4-java
libswt-gtk-3.4-jni
libswt-mozilla-gtk-3.4-jni

2) cd /usr/lib/jni

cp the files:

libswt-atk-gtk-3448.so
libswt-cairo-gtk-3448.so
libswt-gtk-3448.so
libswt-pi-gtk-3448.so
libswt-awt-gtk-3448.so
libswt-gnome-gtk-3448.so
libswt-mozilla-gtk-3448.so

to the areca/lib folder with names in order of appearance:

libswt-atk-gtk-3232.so
libswt-cairo-gtk-3232.so
libswt-gtk-3232.so
libswt-pi-gtk-3232.so
libswt-awt-gtk-3232.so
libswt-gnome-gtk-3232.so
libswt-mozilla-gtk-3232.so

overwriting the original ones .

3) the files:

org.eclipse.swt.gtk.linux.x86_3.2.0.v3232m.jar
org.eclipse.jface_3.2.0.I20060605-1400.jar

come from an eclipse installation actually, so if you don’t have eclipse,
download it and:

cd eclipse/plugins

and cp the org.eclipse.swt.gtk.linux.x86_64_3.4.1.v3449c.jar
into areca/lib org.eclipse.swt.gtk.linux.x86_3.2.0.v3232m.jar

and cp org.eclipse.jface_3.4.1.M20080827-2000.jar to areca/lib
org.eclipse.jface_3.2.0.I20060605-1400.jar

overwriting the original ones.

Now, the file libarecafs.so surprise, surprise is a 32 bit one, so I compiled the 64bit one.
With the 32bit one, you’ll get a couple of warnings:

09-01-22 20:44 – WARNING – com.myJava.file.metadata.posix.jni.JNIMetaDataAccessor cannot be used on this system. Got the following error : “java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError : /home/jordilin/areca/lib/libarecafs.so: /home/jordilin/areca/lib/libarecafs.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32 (Possible cause: architecture word width mismatch)”
09-01-22 20:44 – WARNING – [com.myJava.file.metadata.posix.jni.JNIMetaDataAccessor] not validated. The default metadata accessor will be used instead.

I leave a 64 bit version in http://www.jordilin.com/hackingaround/libarecafs.tgz

This same tutorial is in http://www.jordilin.com/hackingaround

4) ./areca.sh
5) done

Note. I tested this using 6.2 pre-release, but using 6.1 should be the same.

Eclipse Ganymede, TPTP and Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

It seems that configuring Eclipse to work with Ubuntu is always a bit painful, mainly tptp and subversion. This post is all about tptp (test and performance tools for Eclipse). I have tested with Ubuntu 32 bit edition. First of all, of course, you’ll need to install tptp from ganymede. When you are going to profile some java app, you’ll get an error code IWAT0435E, saying that the agent could not be started.

First fix:

You’ll need to install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2_2.95.4-27_i386.deb (no amd64 available) as the ACServer apparently was compiled against that old gcc version. Unfortunately, Ubuntu does not provide this library anymore, so you’ll have to grab it from Debian repos http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gcc-2.95

Just click on it, and Ubuntu will install it. If you like command line (like me) and use 64 bit, then feel free to open a shell and type:

sudo dpkg –force-architecture –install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2_2.95.4-22_i386.deb

Second fix:

Go to eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.tptp.platform.ac.linux_ia32_4.4.1.v200808290100/agent_controller/bin, and edit the files ACStart.sh, ACStop.sh. In first line, when it says #!/bin/sh, it should say #!/bin/bash.

The cool tptp now should work. Have fun, eclipse is an incredible ide

What do you do in your computer?

I just wrote some days ago a Python program that tells you how do you spend your time with in your computer. Take a look at http://www.jordilin.com/pyhacks. Only works for Linux and requires python.

Log4tailer, tailing your logs in multicolor

I’ve been hacking recently a lot with Python in my spare time, and to be honest, it is very powerful, lots of fun, and object oriented. It allows me to quickly transform my thinking into real code and python incredible and huge standard library helps a lot. One of the projects I’ve been hacking is log4tailer. Log4tailer is a multicolored python tailer for log4j formatted logs. If your job requires tailing logs every now and again, then you will feel the frustration I’ve had multiple times when using the linux command line “tail”. I began using launchpad and bazaar version control system to code log4tailer, but I just decided to use googlecode as I feel much more comfortable using subversion. The link to log4tailer is http://code.google.com/p/log4tailer/ and an image:

A new sleek design

From time to time I feel the need to change my blog skin. Now, it features a cool, simple and sleek design. The title of the blog has changed as well, as it is no longer true that I am a linux geek in Catalonia. As many of my readers know I am living in England. A simplistic theme, as simple as the look and feel of Gnome and Mac OS. Hope you like it!!

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