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/.

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.

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.

HOWTO: Flash Player 9 for Linux

Download the player in:

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html and download the installer. It comes tarred and gzipped.

Just type tar -xzvf nameofthefile.tar.gz (in your home directory)

where nameofthefile= FP9_plugin_beta_112006

this will create the directory named:  flash-player-plugin-9.0.21.78/

Go to /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins directory and type:

sudo ln -s /home/yourusername/flash-player-plugin-9.0.21.78/libflashplayer.so .

Don’t forget the last dot.

And that’s all!!

Happy surfing with the last Flash Player!!