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ramdyne

Getting usb cardreader to work on Fedora

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>From <a href="http://www.goermezer.de/content/view/38/131/lang,en/">goermezer.de</a>:

</p><blockquote>Fedora Core 2 with Kernel 2.6 you only have to add the following line to the file /etc/modprobe.conf:

options scsi_mod max_luns=8

After that you should restart the scsi_mod (rmmod scsi_mod and then modprobe scsi_mod)or you can reboot you mashine.</blockquote>

My FC3 install will now automount automatically the correct cardslot, instead of having to do this by hand like you have to do on older Fedora versions.

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This is unsupported, but will work

ramdyne

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Ever since I installed Fedora Core 3 I couldn't get my Dell Truemobile 1300 mini-pci wlan card to work. It needs ndiswrapper and Broadcom windows driver to work but, unfortunately, the kernel works with 8k pages and the Windows driver expect 4k pages (whatever that may be). This makes the Windows drivers not work at all, it seems this can even crash your kernel...

After a couple of days I decided to buy a new wlan card, but I had these requirements:

  • native linux support, no ndiswrapper

  • at least 54mbit/s support

  • mini-pci

  • should fit Dell Inspiron 5150

After some careful research I found two candidates * <a href="http://support.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/pro2200bg/index.htm">Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG</a> * <a href="http://www.tijdhof.com/product_info.php?cPath=30_74_55&amp;products_id=149">Senao 5354MP+A2</a>

The Intel has two problems, it is not readily available and is only supposed to be used on Centrino hardware and my Inspiron is NOT a Centrino based laptop. The Senao is expensive, around EUR 100 compared to the Intel's EUR 35. I liked the Senao because they are supposed to be very high quality. But for the price difference I decided to take the gamble.

The result is: A Dell Inspiron 5150 just works with the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG. I can now remove the LAN cables from my livingroom again! The only difficult part was finding the <a href="http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php">binary firmware</a> and copying it to /lib/firmware.

GStreamer weirdness

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>For some reason GStreamer on my laptop lost its settings and changing the settings with gstreamer-properties was also not easy. The default settings were gone and I couldn't find out how to retrieve them.

Some applications thought they were talking to aRTS, but in reality were talking in some strange way with Alsa. This resulted in very poor sound quality. I almost started to think a recently ripped CD had some new copyright "protection" on it.

Anyway, I got fed up with this situation and started looking for a solution. Running "gst-register-0.8" solved all my problems. Even with the sound quality! Very strange.</p></body></html>

You can now see what I'm playing currently on my mp3 player

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>I've added something "cool" to this blog. On the right in the sidebar there's now a section called "Now playing". This information is updated every time <a href="http://www.xmms.org/">XMMS</a> changes to a new song. So every time I load a new track, the title and artist information is updated.

The XMMS "Song Change" plugin is configured to call a shellscript with the song title as a parameter. This shell script then uses curl to send the song title to a PHP script that adds the title to a row in the wordpress options database. Every time the sidebar template is loaded, the plugin outputs the "currently playing" MP3.

In the future I might add something to show that the information is very old if necessary. I'm also thinking about removing "Various" or "Various artists" from song titles when necessary.

<strong>[update]</strong>

This is really nice, I've noticed that when XMMS is closed, the "Song Change" plugin sends an empty song title to my script. So an empty field in the database means nothing is playing. Also, "Various" and "Various Artists" is removed from the title, including additional adornments like - or / and spaces.

<strong>[update]</strong>

You can download the first release of this plugin at the new <a href="http://www.ramdyne.nl/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/">Wordpress plugins</a> page.

<strong>[update]</strong>

Version 0.2 is available at the <a href="http://www.ramdyne.nl/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/">Wordpress plugins</a> page.</p></body></html>

New couch for this potato

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>Today I received my new couch. It's a 3-seater <a href="http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10101&amp;storeId=12&amp;productId=52976&amp;langId=-1&amp;parentCats=10114*10296">Sandhem</a> and footstool from <a href="http://www.ikea.com/">Ikea</a>.

<a href="http://www.ramdyne.nl/images/dscf0042.jpg"><img src="http://www.ramdyne.nl/images/dscf0042_thumb.jpg" alt="Sandhem by Ikea"></a></p></body></html>

Update to fedora core 3

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>I've finally made the jump from FC1 to FC3 on my laptop. I wanted to use some new software and a new kernel and since I wasn't that happy anymore with the speed of the laptop I just reisntalled it completely. So far it's not entirely a success. Ican't get my Dell Truemobile wirelees card to work. It seems the default FC3 kernel, ndiswrapper 1.something and the windows driver refuse to work together. I'll probably go for a new mini-pci card and choose one with (more or less) native Linux support instead of the ndiswrapper kludge.</p></body></html>

Wordpress update

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>I've updated to a new version of <a href="http://wordpress.org/">Wordpress</a>. The new default style is just what I like, so I've kept it instead of trying to wrangle my old stylesheets into it.</p></body></html>

Release Sarge

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>There was a link to a cool banner add here, but they replaced it with a picture of a really ugly fat guy so I'll spare you the shock ;-)</p></body></html>

You'd better Wait()

ramdyne

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Sometimes just mindlessly browsing though the online CLI help will teach you something:

<pre> asterisk*CLI>show application wait asterisk*CLI>

-= Info about application 'Wait' =-

[Synopsis]: Waits for some time

[Description]:

Wait(seconds): Waits for a specified number of seconds, then returns 0.

seconds can be passed with fractions of a second. (eg: 1.5 = 1.5 seconds)

asterisk*CLI> </pre>

So far I'd never seen an example which used franctions of a second. I've been wanting to do something about that, because waiting for a whole second is often way too long. Fortunately Wait() already has the functionality I needed.

building chan-oh323 for Asterisk

ramdyne

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<html><body><p>I'm building a SIP and H.323 capable Asterisk server. Here's what I've done so far:

</p><ul>

<li>Installed Debian sarge from scratsch and updated it.</li>

<li>Downloaded Asterisk and some other stuff from <a href="http://www.asterisk.org/index.php?menu=download">CVS</a>. I've decided to go for Asterisk 1.0.

</li><li>Built the ztdummy module using <a href="http://www.ramdyne.nl/index.php?m=20041014">a howto I wrote earlier</a></li>

<li>Built Asterisk as shown on the <a href="http://www.asterisk.org/index.php?menu=download">Asterisk website</a>.</li>

<li>I've chosen to not use the default Asterisk H.323 channel because of the age of the OpenH323 software version it requires. Unfortunately <a href="http://www.inaccessnetworks.com/ian/projects/asterisk-oh323/">asterisk_oh323</a> from InAccess Networks also requires an older OpenH323 version, but not that old. The current version for Asterisk 1.0 is <a href="http://www.inaccessnetworks.com/projects/asterisk-oh323/download/asterisk-oh323-0.6.5.tar.gz">0.6.5</a>, it requires PWLib version <a href="http://http://www.voxgratia.org/releases/pwlib-Janus_patch4-src-tar.gz">1.6.6.3</a> and OpenH323 version <a href="http://www.voxgratia.org/releases/openh323-Janus_patch4-src-tar.gz">1.13.5.3</a>

</li>

<li>Build PWLib and OpenH323 using configure/make/make install.</li>

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