Tim Groeneveld

Well, I finally got all (but one…) of the parts of my new computer. My new case, the Cooler Master COSMOS “S” is in one word: absolutely awesome. I love the fact that all of the drives can be pushed in, and with one press of a button, the drive will lock in.

This comes with the terrible actuality that my hot swap device, the Chenbro five-in-three hot-swap device fails to just slide and lock in, because of the grooves in the case that allow the normal 5.25″ drives (like a CD drive) to just plug in with out any screws. So, it looks like I am going to need to get a file, and file away these damn things.

So yes, the one thing that is stopping me from putting this computer together, is (one again, mind you) the fact that I want so much storage. If I had only known that putting so much storage in a decent case would be so much hassle.

Other then that, everything else plugs in perfectly fine, which is pretty cool. I still really don’t know why there is a SATA connector on the top of the case, especially seeing as I have nothing that will plug into it, yet…

Can’t wait to file the things that are stopping me from putting the hot swap drive bay in.

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: Chenbro, computer, Cooler Master, Linux

At Digital Pacific, where I work, I do all my work on three computers. It’s a nice life looking at three monitors all the time, however, it is not the coolest thing in the world when you have three keyboards in front of you.

When I moved here, I already knew about Synergy, it’s great software.

My setup is comprised of a Windows XP (32-bit) machine, Kubuntu [7.04] Intrepid (32-bit) machine and a Kubuntu [9.04] Jaunty (64-bit) machine. The machine that runs all my applications that I write is the new Kubuntu 9.04 machine. To allow my keyboard and mouse to be used over all three of these machines, I have the Windows XP machine run the Synergy server, and all the Linux machines run the client. The reason I have Windows XP run the server is because it’s usually the machine that’s off. That might sound strange, but I do alot of work from home, and it seems useless to have a server running that is not needed to be on the machine.

One thing that really used to annoy me with this setup however was the Windows machine would detect all keyboard repeats, but the Linux machines would not detect up, down, page up and page down repeated key presses. You could imagine as a programmer that this could get quite annoying while writing code.

This morning I got frustrated at the Linux machines and I decided it was time to go and compile my own version, with a few patches I found around the net to fix this issue.

Being the package Nazi that I am, I don’t really like to install anything, unless it’s installed with some sort of package management. This is how to rebuild Synergy, and get a perfect .deb that you can install

# wget 'http://internode.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/synergy2/synergy-1.3.1.tar.gz'
# tar -xvf synergy-1.3.1.tar.gz
# wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/synergy/synergy_1.3.1-5.diff.gz
# gunzip synergy_1.3.1-5.diff.gz
# wget http://coderazzi.net/linux/synergy.patch/synergy-coderazzi.patch
# patch -P0 <../synergy-coderazzi.patch
# sudo apt-get install patch build-essential
# cd synergy-1.3.1/
# patch -p0 <../synergy-coderazzi.patch
# chmod +x debian/rules debian/control

Edit debian/rules and after the line that says:
CFLAGS="$(CFLAGS)" CXXFLAGS="$(CXXFLAGS)"
Add the following line:
find . -type f -name Makefile | xargs perl -pi -e "s/-Werror//g"

# sudo dpkg-buildpackage
# cd ../
# dpkg -i synergy_1.3.1-5*.deb

After doing this, and restarting the Synery clients, you will have perfect key responses between all the machines.

Thanks to http://coderazzi.net/linux/synergy.patch/index.htm for providing the great patch for this post.

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: hints, Linux, Synergy, Windows

Ever since I have started using KDE with Linux/FreeBSD as my desktop replacing Windows, there has been just one thing that has really annoyed me about both of these desktops, and that is using Kodak cameras.

Yes – I know, such a simple device, but you will be amazed at how many headaches it used to cause. Photo transfers would litrally take 20 minutes with the “KDE way” using the kioslave camera:/.

Finally there is a better way!

With the help of this site, I have found out that there is an even faster way to get my files, and it literally has saved me 30-60 minutes copying all the photos of my camera.

Instead of using the provided kioslave with KDE (and the new Kubuntu 9.04, which by the way is great!) I, for the first time in the new version of Kubuntu needed to use the console.

gphoto2 --auto-detect

This command got me a list of all the camera's that I had plugged into my system.

Model                          Port
----------------------------------------------------------
USB PTP Class Camera           usb:

After I knew what the port was, I could literally mount the camera as part of my filesystem using this command:

gphotofs --port=usb: ~/camera

and bam! just copy the files from /home/tim/camera into the Documents folder and 300MB of photo’s were transfered in less then three minutes.

Fantastic! This is so much faster then the KDE way, I can not prove to you how happy I am that this speed bottleneck is now solved.

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: c813, kodak, Linux, photos, speed, tips and tricks, transfersm, usb

My development environment is CentOS 5. Running a library that is two and a half years old really sucks on a new Linux box, especially because I had to install three compat libraries.

The software is called “webpay”, and the actual library itself is distributed as a binary library; which would be alright apart from the fact that this is a library that is meant to financial transactions, and I want to be able to trust that this library is the actual library that I am meant to use. When you go to download the file from St. George, there is no way to validate the file, no signed GPG files – not even an sha1sum.

What was even worse, is that the webpay client refused to work in the Virtuozzo container.

rt_sigaction(SIGPROF, {0x81c0ce0, [PROF], SA_RESTORER|SA_RESTART, 0xf09dc8}, {SIG_DFL},  = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_UNBLOCK, [PROF], NULL,  = 0
open("test.blue", O_RDONLY)              = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0777, st_size=4891, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7eb3000
read(3, "", 4096)                       = 0
brk(0x9ae9000)                          = 0x9ae9000

I would like it if it “just worked”, or even better – that libwebpayclient.so came with source, so we could actually compile the library ourselves, and debug the problem further. Even though the library is from a bank, I would have no problem sending back improved code to the bank, especially if it improved the way that my software worked.

Damn banks.

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: Banking, binary libraries, Linux, Software

Today I was working on MyBanco when the thought came to me of what Linux needs to get a better market share (our ultimate goal, 100%). Then it occured to me! We need a promo, of course, not just any promo, a Li-Li-Li-Li-Linux 2.6.3 See 2:36

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: ads, advertising, Humor, Linux, promotion, Windows

Recently, a good friend of mine sent an email to the Free Software Foundation, the FSF, which was founded by Richard Stallman

History Lesson time!

Richard M. Stallman is a hacker and software freedom activist. He wished to create a free operating system called GNU (which is a recursive acronym for GNU’s Not Unix). Stallman announced the plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983. Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor, compiler, debugger, and a build automator. Many of these tools, such as gcc (the GNU C Compiler) are used today in (nearly) every Linux machine.

Back to my rant.

The Free Software Foundation now wishes us, the people who use Linux not to call Linux … Linux. I am sorry. The opperating system that I use is called Linux. This is the kernel that I use, hence, the system that I use is called Linux. When people ask what I have installed on my computer, I tell them either “Linux” or “Kubuntu”.

I think that we should not start appending or prepending anything to what my kernel is called.

For goodness sakes, if the Free Software Foundation wants me to start calling Linux GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux, I should start adding all the important software that I use on my machine.

Here was my attempt. Sorry to the people/companies and product/program names that I have missed.

GNU+OpenBSD+RedHat+Novell+ApacheFoundation
+MozillaFoundation+KDEFoundation
+kVirc+CrossOverOffice+wine/Linux+xen+openvz

Stupid!

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: GNU, Linux, open source, rants

I am disappointed,as a user of both Linux *and* After Effects that After Effects refuses to run on Linux.

Let’s face it; After Effects, and other applications in the Creative Suite are the most requested applications to be supported by Adobe on Linux.

With a growing market share, and many companies putting in quite a few dollars into supporting it (such as ASUS, and I could name much more), I think that having Adobe apps supported on Linux could be a major plus for not only the Linux, but Adobe.

Let’s face it, the people who work on Linux are geeks. They are people who really work wonders in the computer industry. They are inquisitive and smart people, who have a deep passion for software.

Just because Linux itself is free does not mean that there is not a viable place for software to grow and evolve.

I use Linux because it gives me the control that I want. If something locks sound for other programs? Well, I can lsof /dev/sound and kill the program that is doing it. I want to know *everything* that happens on my computer when it happens? All I have to do is tail -f /var/log/* and move that window to my other screen!

Adobe creates free software, such as the Flash Player, which is Adobe’s most used application – something that is free. Giving the flash viewer away for free creates the need for development kits, such as Adobe Flash to be required, making millions of dollars!

Flash for Linux has been a great thing, I have seen it evolve from the days when it was poorly supported, and you could not play flash files if any other sound application was running, to now where I think it is *almost* better then the Windows version.

IBM for years has said that Linux is ready, and show this in what is my *favorite* ad, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4 released in 2003, announcing to the world that Linux is ready. Its learning and it’s evolving.

Now, those terms have become the present. It has evolved. It has learnt.

I believe that releasing a version of Adobe Creative Suite for Linux could do some really amazing things. It would change the way that people think about Linux.

I, being a person who has many friends who work actively with computers, in many diverse areas knows what the usual response is when you talk to someone about Linux.

Usually, it’s one of two looks. There is the look that says straight away “There is no retail visual effects programs for Linux” or “There is no ‘uber’ professional photo editors for Linux”. The other look is the one of ‘Well, there goes Halo’.

I am of the belief that releasing Adobe for Linux would help it’s market share to grow higher, as it’s a highly available, stable operating system.

Please, think about a version of Adobe CS3 or future versions of the Creative Suite for Linux. It’s not that we want them, but rather, we need them.

The lack of having Adobe After Effects on Linux is *the only* reason I still have Windows on my computer. I don’t want Windows. I dislike it, I hate not being able to have an uptime of more then seven days.

With Linux, I have seen an uptime of around 120 days! Try and do that on Windows!

Linux is ready. Please, see that!

That is the contents of a letter I just wrote to Adobe. Please, if you read this, and you want to help support this cause, drop Adobe an email at one of their ways to contact them, or blog about how you would like to see Adobe supported on Linux.

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: Adobe, After Effects, Linux, Open Letter, Software, Video, Windows

The new version of MyBanco will be out within the next few hours, boasting a few new handy features, such as:

• An installer, which will insert the SQL dump into MySQL automatically.
• A few minor bugs fixed.
• Patches for SMF to enable the ability for people people to gain money for posting on a forum.

Watch this spot

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: anounce, coming soon, excitement, Linux, MyBanco, MyInfo, updates

No! When I Xen, I am not talking about a relationship to foreign material. Well, that is – not exactly. Xen is an open source hypervisor. Think: VMware, but much, much cooler.

I was talking to Tim Post, about a project that I was completing for ShareSource2. Basically, the conversation came to the point where I said that I was using OpenVZ for my server virtualization. Tim then came to me and said “Why don’t you just use Xen”.

Well, I was not born yesterday – I did tell him that I had tried Xen, and that when I tried it – it just refused to work.

Then Tim pointed me to Xen unstable, a mercurial repository containing a version of Xen that does not need a new CPU to actually boot up.

Xen unstable, the version I checked out yesterday, is actually tagged as being “3.2.0-rc4″, which probably means that it is coming it’s way to becoming a nice stable Xen product that people other then me have actually been able to use.

This is what I used on my Debian to be able to install a Xen-enabled kernel:

~# mkdir Xen
~# cd Xen
~# hg clone http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-unstable.hg
[[ wait for around 3 minutes while it grabs Xen's history
~# cd xen-unstable.hg
~# apt-get install bin86 bcc
~# make world
[[ Note: this step will also check out a 2.6.18.8-xen kernel ]]
~# sudo make install

Then I had to add an entry to my /boot/grub/menu.lst which looked like this:

title Xen 3.2 / XenLinux 2.6
kernel /boot/xen-3.gz console=vga
module /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18.8-xen root=UUID=66559e96-e405-4a1d-be28-b8caf5b5b89d ro console=tty0
module /boot/initrd-2.6.18.8-xen.img

Reboot, select my new kernel, and faster then you can say “WOW IT WORKS” it was booting me into a brand new (well, actually, my OpenVZ kernel was 2.6.20 – so a brand old) kernel

To try Xen out, just go over to http://jailtime.org and download an image of a nice operating system (I chose CentOS 5.1). When you have downloaded your image, do the following:

tar -xvf {downloaded image name}
ls -lar
xen create -c {smallest file (usually)}

and Voila! First thing you should be introduced to is a nice Grub screen welcoming you to your Xen experience.

I am still as of today yet to actually have built my own Archlinux or Frugalware Xen image. If anyone knows how to do this successfully, please drop me a line or leave a comment!

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: Debian, Linux, OpenVZ, Ubuntu, xen