Motions

It's a mont after my last post. A lot of things happened... I went to a selection for a job at the university. The termination of my contract is approaching (yes, it's only in January 2009, but I prefer moving on on time). It wasn't bad, The job was for a one year contract for the administration of the university web servers. If I'd finished studying at the university I would have won, but was second. (job related motion)

The architect is due to give me the final plan on this weekend, there were some last minute changes on the house, I'm curious to see it. (house related motion)

On this Monday I had to meet with an construction worker for a quote. I had to postpone it. In the morning, when I was driving to work my car was hit from behind, the other driver went out of the car, asked me if I was ok and the fled... I was forced to follow him and called the police. They got him after 30 minutes, I was still driving after his car and directing the police.
After all the bureaucracy I went to the hospital, I wasn't an emergency case. I was there at 10am and went home at 9.45pm. They asked me to come back the next day at 8am.
I'm now suffering a whiplash, have to wear a collar (luckily only just another 10 days) and got some medicines prescribed.
On Wednesday it became clear why the guy fled... hi didn't pay his insurance... I didn't know what to tell to the policeman that told me that on the phone, I couldn't believe it.
Of course I have to sue him now, it will be a long time until the trial... Have to look for an attorney. Those are all complication one doesn't want in his life. (spinal motion)

Anyhow I met with the construction worker on Tuesday - he was very nice, I hope that his quote will be acceptable. He gave me a good feeling. I'm waiting his quote for the week before Christmas. (house related motion)

Another motions... Two days ago I was appointed as the moderator in the newly opened Slovenian EuroBillTracker forum, there is already some people gathering, I hope it could grow in a nice community.

GSM Phone Address book sync

It was a lengthy process... First thing the version of kmobiletools didn't support the Addressbook upload. After a while I discovered a nice tools on the kmobiletools site - the Live CD. Rebooted the machine with the CD inserted, connected the phone and download the addressbook I previously saved on another machine on the network.
As simple as this...

Now I'm planning to maintain an updated copy of the addressbook in KDE, I'm just waiting to find the latest kmobiletools in Kubuntu.

And the winner is... Motorola

After intense reading and searching reviews on the net about GSM phones I found it!
Yes, I already got another one. It's a Motorola V1075 and it seems to fulfill my expectations.. Except for the ugly Vodafone firmware, but I already found some hacks, firmware, etc to change that.
The phone is absolutely superior... it just works :-)

I have some issues with transferring the phonebook from the BenQ to the new phone, I tried exporting the entries as vCard, but it can be done only for one at a time... The phones can't communicate directly because BenQ being Taiwan based was sure that everyone else in the world also uses the Big-5 encoding and let their phone send out the vCard data encoded in this way... Unfortunately the Motorola doesn't seem to support that, at least with the Vodafone firmware.

I therefore transferred one by one all the addresses to kaddressbook and sorted them a little. Right now I'm looking for a way to transfer the entries to the V1075. kmobiletools should help.

Complete disappointment with BenQ

Yes, my patience reached the limit! The S88 still has problems. Now I can't hear the person that's speaking to me although the volume is to the max. This doesn't happen with the Bluetooth handsfree, or if I use the internal handsfree. The S88 will go!
I have another problem... Which phone to buy next. It must have Bluetooth, microSD slot (I have a card to use), it must be compatible with Linux and a usable camera will also be ok.

Any ideas?

Ongoing projects & Stuff to do

• The house is the main project. I still have to contact some construction workers for the quotes
• The NanoHeli I got as a gift still doesn't go forward and I'm still waiting an answer from the company support staff
• I'm waiting for the Palm T|X to return from the in warranty replacement
• I have to send the SD card for a replacement

I hope that's enough support requests for a while... The other project are the complete redesign of the web pages of the charity I cooperate with. We have to make them visually impaired accessible in the shortest possible time. The main server at work needs some new hard discs, the old ones are beginning to fail I already have the order signed, so it's just a matter of days. I also have to rethink the central authorization server and the whole authorization process.
And there is also the collaboration I want to start... I'll have an entry test in 2 weeks. Hope they'll give me the work.

SanDisk Ultra II 512Mb SD Card

I contacted Sandisk support on the 3rd October for a 512Mb SD Ultra II card that didn't work anymore. I tried to reformat it etc, but there were problems with the size of the media not being recognized. Sandisk asked me to do a format and gave me some hints about the data recovery (basically a link to a Windows only program for data recovery). I asked for a replacement and they gave me the addresses of their two Italian distributors as I bought the card in Italy. The store where I bought the card had closed in the meantime, so this wasn't a viable alternative.
I wrote an e-mail to one of the distributors on the 5th October and got no response, so on the 11th I wrote also to the other distributor. Until today no response from both.
I phoned them today. I was bounced through 3 departments until I reached Mr. Marco, who initially tried to redirect me to the store where I bought the card, but after a while and probably after contacting his supervisor agreed to have the card sent in for a replacement. Thank you Marco!

Mission accomplished in "just" four weeks... :-(

Ping pong

There we are, we have not yet started with the construction works and the workers already argue with the architect. Good start isn't it?
Two days ago I was around to get some quotes, but the construction companies didn't like the way the architect wrote the list of the works to be done. So I throw away a day for nothing.

I decided to change the way the list is presented to the construction workers - a cosmetic change. Instead of a list I've created a table with the description of the works and two blanks for the price per mq and the total price, will see if I can fool them... I'm pretty confident it will work :-)

How to upgrade Debian 3.1 Sarge from kernel 2.4.27-2 to 2.6.8-3

The machine for this guide was an IBM xSeries 206 with SATA. The problems arised from the different addressing of the SATA system - in the old kernel the first SATA disk was recognised as /dev/hdc, while in the newer ones it was /dev/sda

We start with a

aptitude install udev

after that you have to edit in /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf the ROOT line to the root of your system and MODULES line to "most"

ROOT=/dev/sda1
MODULES=most

create /etc/mkinitrd/files with the following entries

/dev/console
/dev/null
/dev/hdc
/dev/hdc1
/dev/hdc2
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2

the mandatory entries are /dev/console /dev/null and the lines for the disk and partition where the OS resides. After that we install the kernel image with aptitude install kernel-image-2.6.8-3-686 and check in /boot/grub/menu.lst that root= points to the correct root partitions on the right device.
To stay on the safe side we can also check the initrd image with

mount -t cramfs -o loop /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-3-686 /mnt

we check in /mnt/dev for the correct devices, /mnt/loadmodules for the ata_piix module and /mnt/script for the root location.

That should be it. Cross you fingers and reboot.

SOLVED Debian 3.1 Sarge: Error 432 cannot open dev/console

Yes!!! I managed to find the solution. It was a combination of various issues The first thing there was the change from a traditional dev to udev, after that there was a change in the module that supports the SATA controller of that machine. I solved the problem editing /etc/mkinitrd/files and /etc/mkinitrd/modules in files I added the following lines:

/dev/console
/dev/null
/dev/hdc
/dev/hdc1
/dev/hdc2
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2

while in modules it was crucial to add the module

ata_piix

and of course changing the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst to

kernel  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-3-686 root=/dev/sda1 ro

After that I also had to change the / in fstab which was not hdc1 anymore but sda1.

An interesting thing happened; the first time I rebooted the machine fstab was still pointing to hdc1 for root, but the system went up without a glitch. I'm still wondering why... Any suggestions?

PS
Thanx to avij for the brainstorming session

Scared of construction workers

In the afternoon I'll have a meeting with a construction company... I'm scared. I know that the price quote wont be made today, but I'm really scared about how high the cost will be.
Anyway, the house is bought and if we want to live in it there is no other way as to make it suitable for our needs. If there will be some exciting news, an update will follow in the evening.

Changing theme, the S88 seems to behave today, no hissing our loud singing... Hope it stays so.
I connected the phone to a Kubuntu machine and dmesg outputs this:

SCSI device sdb: 43008 512-byte hdwr sectors (22 MB)
[17186972.880000] sdb: Write Protect is off
[17186972.880000] sdb: Mode Sense: 01 0a 05 03
[17186972.880000] sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
[17186972.896000] sdb: Unit Not Ready, sense:
[17186972.896000] : Current: sense key: Illegal Request
[17186972.896000]     Additional sense: Logical unit not supported
[17186972.900000] SCSI device sdb: 43008 512-byte hdwr sectors (22 MB)
[17186972.904000] sdb: Write Protect is off
[17186972.904000] sdb: Mode Sense: 01 0a 05 03
[17186972.904000] sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
[17186972.904000]  sdb: unable to read partition table

The MicroSD slot is visible. It complains about the phone internal memory. So the previous issues seem to be SuSE related.

At work I asked our director for the authorization to enroll for a 2 courses about computer security that will be held next year. Hope he approves it. It's a few years since I did something for my IT knowledge (except for the usual reading of manuals, newspapers and websites).
I have to add a few lines to my curriculum! :-)

S88 disappointment...

I'm even more sure that the BenQ S88 was a wrong buy. Yesterday I had the phone silenced and with vibration only. My mother called me at the same time that I was calling her and taking the phone to the ear I heard a whispering tone - in fact it was my ringtone. I finished the call and removed the muting. The ringtone (a mp3 file) was heard in all it's beauty and there was no way to stop it. I tried loading another mp3 in the player to get some control over it, but the phone told me that it's an invalid file...

I had to turn it off. After I switched it on it was ok, but today when I turned it on in the morning a his could be clearly heard coming from the phone. Again I had to switch it off and on again to resume normal operation.

Anybody wants to buy a nearly new BenQ S88 with the latest software?

I guessed it...

BenQ S88 update - USB troubles

After the software upgrade I noticed the first problem, there are issues with the phone being recognised as a USB mass storage device.

In fact the device hangs as soon as the USB cable is connected and comes back to life when the cable is pulled out.

The only workaround I could find was powering the device off, connecting the USB cable and powering the device on. After that the device doesn't recognise automatically the USB connection and you have to enter the Tools menu and enable it on the last line.

But unfortunately this still has no influence on SuSE Linux 10.0 where in the logs I found this:

SCSI device sdc: 43008 512-byte hdwr sectors (22 MB)
sdc: Write Protect is off
sdc: Mode Sense: 01 0a 05 03
sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
sdc: unable to read partition table
sdc: Unit Not Ready, sense:
: Current: sense key: Illegal Request
  Additional sense: Logical unit not supported

The output of *#300# (S88 Firmware version) is:

Type:HYPB1A
HW ID:1
SW:1.28
PID:00
Date:2006/06/02
Time:17:25:31
LPV:1.28
LPID:25
MMP:1.28
FV:
PPF:HYPB1A_BenQ_DE_NSL_25120j1_111.p
13/04/06 11:03

Construction workers & Phishing Site

Finally, on next Wednesday I scheduled a meeting with a construction company for a price quote on the works we have to do in the house. I'm excited by the idea of starting the REAL work on the house, but also a little bit afraid of the price they will ask for it.

Today I reported a phishing web site to Netcraft. By the way, if you have not yet installed their toolbar, do so. It's a great tool to stop the paypal. ebay etc. scams. The site I reported was trying to convince me (in Italian) that I haven't paid an invoice for some 290 € and to download a copy of the invoice which was in a 'strange' executable format... Of course I downloaded it... But on my SuSE Linux box and scanned it with clamav. It found the Trojan.Startpage-417

DANGER: The page is located at http://www.acquadirose.com/fatturazione/index.htm l (if you really wish to visit it remove the space in ".htm l")

Harvesting and celebrations

The weekend was intense, on Friday evening we celebrated the 50th birthday of a colleague. There was lots of wine and food and the colleague was very happy when he received the birthday present of all of us - a guitar.

Saturday it was a working day... We had to harvest our vineyard - in fact 3 vines - but the harvest was great. Four of us, me and Maja and our mothers, worked for 2 hours and the result was 44kg of Isabella and Baco Noir, which was later processed into juice. I thought for a while to do some wine from it, but it's not worth it... Maybe some other year.

On Saturday evening there was another celebration, my mother had her Name day and that day ended again with a dinner where lots of wine and food were served... I guess I should start with a strict diet ;-)

I didn't touch a computer the entire weekend... It was great!

Rants...

Where to start? Debian... It was nice when we were young and innocent, after that money come in to play and nothing was as before. I'm referring to the Dunc Tank and all the problems and debates that initiated because of that... I found very interesting the position of Martin 'Joey' Schulze a senior Debian developer. I really understand his point, everybody will want to be paid for what he is working for, why have some "volunteers" have to be paid? The entire Debian community will have to be divided into volunteers and "paid volunteers employees".
Debian was IS great, but if the schism continues it will seriously loose it's main mission - provide a free operating system for all. To tell you the truth I started testing Ubuntu as a server OS.

This are more philosophical questions, to go more lowlevel: it's 3 days that I'm struggling with the upgrade of a Debian 3.1 Sarge server from kernel-image-2.4.27-1-386 to anything else... I installed the new packages [kernel-image-2.6.8-2-686|kernel-image-2.4.27-2-686] and after the reboot it doesn't go anything... kernel panic with an error 432 in init which can't find the /dev/console. I installed udev etc. No way! I found out that the problem is the change from devfs to udev, but finding a solution is still far away. And yes, I searched for a solution everywhere and also asked about that twice on #debian, but nobody answered me - in fact it seemed that nobody even noticed my cry for help... So far the kindness... Ok, really no problem I'll find a solution alone, I'm used to it

Benq is officially on my no-buy list. I was fooled by the name of the Benq-Siemens S88 GSM phone into thinking that it was a successor of the glorious Siemens S business line. Wrong! I bought it in July and it immediately presented itself as "somehow" different... Here is an excerpt from the mail I wrote to the Benq support:

On the paper the phone is amazing, the design is great and the functions it offers, despite the lack of UMTS connectivity are gorgeous. So the first impression was great, until I tried to send my address book from the phone to another device. My previous phone being an Siemens S55 I was expecting to have the same level of ease of use. Not in that case. I couldn't find a way to send my entire phone book via Bluetooth, just one address a time. Ok, I somehow managed to get through it. Then I installed the PC software. Nice design etc., but it's not compatible with the previous Siemens software, or at least I couldn't find an easy way furthermore it's Windows only. Another annoying thing regarding the address book management is the fact, that if you have the same number on the SIM and in the phone it appears twice. Back to the phone itself. I write SMS messages mainly in Slovene, so I decided to turn of the T9 writing aid for the languages I don't use. No way! After I turn off the phone, the settings returns back to everything enabled. Quite frustrating, especially when I discovered, that even if I didn't turn the phone off the settings will mysteriously return to the default value after a while. When I tried the Bluetooth stack there were some other problems. I have a handsfree device - an SBS V600. It basically works... I have to connect almost every time to it using the phone menu and not with the button on the V600. The turning on and off of the Bluetoothh is awfully slow. Another thing that annoys me is that there is no way to set the locale settings. I live in Europe, our week starts on Monday, but there is no way to set this on the phone.
I furthermore couldn't find the setting to let the phone vibrate, when a SMS arrives.
I tried to connect the phone to my Linux box (OpenSuSE 10.0 x86_64) and set it to mass storage and the result was that the phone memory was not visible, just the MicroSD card.
Sadly, those are all features, that an Siemens customer expect to have on a phone. I'm sorry, but my first experience with a Benq-Siemens phone is not very satisfactory.

At the beginning the Italian support answered me that because the S88 is not sold in Italy they can't help me and I have to ask the German support wasn't there supposed to be something about an EU warranty somewhere?). So,the German support answered me that probably some of the problems could be solved with a firmware upgrade, but unfortunately it has to be done by a Benq Service partner of course in Germany and they gave me a few addresses. In the beginning of September my father went for a business trip to Germany and took the phone with him, there began the real adventure. On both the addresses Benq gave me for Munich they couldn't help him, they didn't have the correct cable or they will have done it, but in 2 weeks, which was absolutely to much. One of the employees finally gave my father a hint, somewhere in the near there was a Siemens service partner (of whom Benq hadn't the address) and that he could try there. The Siemens service partner was worth it's name they did it in 1 hour there was no problem at all it was all done under warranty.

This is the difference between Siemens and Benq, they fire the people working in Germany, the situation can't get any worse all they wanted was the Siemens brand and now, after a year their strategy is clear. Shame on you Benq!

When the phone (and my father) returned from Germany I immediately tried it; it's better, the Bluetooth stack works as it's supposed to work and the T9 doesn't kick in anymore, but it still isn't a Siemens :-/

Welcome, Dobrodošli!

And finally, after a long time the decision has fallen... I started a blog. It should touch various topics that are interesting to me.
I want to make a blog that really transposes me and my life on the Internet, so there will be some posts in various languages that I speak, namely Slovene, Italian, English and German. I started studying Spanish, but I'm still not good to write in it.

Let me introduce myself:
I was born in 1975 in Trst (Trieste for the Italians, Triest for Germans/English speaking) I live on the Karst above Trst. As you have probably noticed I'm part of the Slovene minority that lives in that area since the 6th century.

My interest are quite a few; computers, that also become my work, reading, I read a lot and everything. A few years ago I also started with a great open air activity called geocaching. I'm also involved with the EuroBillTracker translation into Slovene.

In my opinion DRM is a bad thing and should be changed to leave more freedom to the people.
I'm working almost exclusively with Linux or GNU/Linux to be precise. My favorite distribution was SuSE for the Desktop and Debian for the servers, but in the last months I started to appreciate more Kubuntu. I really love the opensource movement and IÃ m trying to promote it whenever I can.

Then there is the most important person in my life... Maja. After 4 years and a half being together we got officially engaged this year on the15th of August. We bought an old farm house in Slovenija, 7km from where I live, a year ago and now we have finally managed to redesign it for our needs with the help of our architect. I guess you will read more about that house next spring when we will start rebuilding the house.