2 months pause

Wow! It was almost 2 months after the last post... Have to write something more ;)
Today I'm going to see the neighbours and try to convince them to let us raise the house. Hope it goes well. In the meantime my girlfriend is writing her thesis. She plans to finish it before autumn. After she finishes university we will start living together - probably not in our house yet, but in an apartment. She will not go back to her mom and neither she wants to live at my place with my parents and sister. I completely understand her. I was already looking for an apartment in the neighbourhood, but it seems that now in summer it is not the right time... Only one with an reasonable price.
A few days ago I finally got some news about the car incident I suffered in December. On the 30th August I will have a examination from the "legal" doctor of the "Street Victim Found" that will reimburse me of the expenses instead of the guy with the false insurance. The only catch is that they won't pay the first 500€ of the material damage. I'll have to try and get those expenses from the guy. I also contacted the Police about the investigation they are conducting and they assured me that it's going on - that means they know nothing because now it's the court that conducts it.

The most enjoyable thing in those two months since the last post was that on the 17th June we released our first Travel Bug!!! A travel Bug is a Geocaching item that wanders from cache to cache with a precise mission. Our TB is named Žirafa Brina and she wants to visit all continents, while on the road she sends us back some postcard from the places she visits. The gallery of the images for here trip can be visited here. Right now she is somewhere in the Czech republic waiting to go overseas. She already traveled some 500km in roughly a month.

In the last days I played a little bit with some browsers under Linux changed Firefox with Swiftfox, tried Iceweasel and finally stopped with Swiftweasel. Of course I installed the i386 version on my AMD64 system to get rid of all the annoyances with the plugins. Under Kubuntu (and Debian) it just takes a --force-architecture and that's it :)
Later I'll try to post my favorite plugins for Firefox & relatives.

Geocaches

And we finally did it! We placed our first geocache.
We selected and easily accessible area near our home. So that the maintenance should not be a problem. The approval was also very fast, we placed it in the afternoon and on the same evening it was already listed (Thanks kazuma!!!). On the 27th April there were already 2 visits to the cache (or better to say one - as we found out later the 2 geocachers were part of the same family). After this great success we decided to place another cache, this time on a more steep elevation. So on the 1st May we climbed on the mountain Nanos (1260m) which is some 20 km away from us and placed our second cache. Let's hope it gets approved before the weekend.

VMware server virtualization

At work we had an old server with Suse 8.1 installed. While planning to convert it to Debian and install some new SATA controllers and disks I had the idea of converting it to a virtual server to minimize the down time.
I started the machine with a rescue CD and did a dd image of the physical hard disk on an external USB 2.0 drive.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/external/server_hda.img

and then converted the image to a VMware image

qemu-img convert -f raw server_hda.img -O vmdk server_hda.vmdk

You can find the qemu-img utility in the Debian qemu package.

After that it was just a matter of copying the vmdk to the machine on which the VMware server was to be installed.

VMware server was downloaded from http://www.vmware.com/download/server/ (about 100 Mb).
I selected the tar.gz because the target OS was Debian.
To let it work correctly in Debian I also had to download the vmware-any-any update from http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/

I also downloaded the Management Interface from the VMware site to my workstation, and installed it. It provides a nice GUI for the virtual servers.
After extracting the downloaded files I launched the provided install scripts.

First the VMware server as root with ./vmware-install.pl, but didn't start the configuration. The any-any update has to be applied with ./runme.pl
For the configuration and rebuilding of the VMware modules some tools are needed, which can be installed with

apt-get install libx11-6 libx11-dev libxtst6 xinetd build-essential

this is probably somewhere redundant

apt-get install gcc binutils-doc make manpages-dev autoconf automake1.9 libtool flex bison gdb libc6-dev gcc-2.95-doc

and because it didn't work the first time I installed also

apt-get install libxt6 libxrender1

So the underlying software was ready. It was time to configure the virtual server. I started with the advanced version and defined the VM as a Suse Linux and that I already have a disk file and then started the new VM.
It booted immediately.

When I was in the console of the virtualized system I checked the /etc/fstab and removed all the unused entries. The second thing was to let the system load the appropriate module for the network interface. I therefore looked at /etc/modules.conf and changed the line with
alias eth0 somemodule to alias eth0 pcnet32
which is the module for the virtual Ethernet card.

After that I rebooted the system to be sure that all the services come up right and the "new" server was ready.

News

After a long time, finally an update ;)
About the car incident I have no news, except that I had to drive to car to some insurance experts, to make a report for the street victims found, that will refund the repair, but only the sum over 500€.
With the house there are some problems... They told me, that if we want to make the house higher we have to obtain a signed agreement of the neighbours. :(
We have luck... we have just 2 of them :)

In the last days I was busy at work with the updates to Debian 4.0 Etch. They were pretty straightforward, except for the upgrade of amavisd-new. There was a change in the configuration layout. From a monolithic file it was split in various files. The change was needed, the next upgrades will be easier, but I lost some hours figuring out where to insert my customizations.
Next week there will be a major update on the main server - change OS from SuSE to Debian. I'm a little bit worried, but somehow I have to manage it.

At home I finally ordered and got an analogical telephony card that works with Asterisk. Let's hope the configuration will not be too difficult.
In my free time I finally decided to give something back and started helping with the Slovene translation of *ubuntu in Launchpad.

Yesterday a friend from Perugia wrote, they had their second baby! Little Maria Cristina was 3.020Kg at birth. I wish her the best!

Legal & construction update

On Friday I managed to go to the police and filled a complaint about the person who hit my car from behind in December. They were very happy to have to talk to this person as it seems that he was driving a car with a fake insurance. I guess the situation has gotten worse for the guy. Not that I feel pity for him - he's just going to get what he was looking for. At least I hope he will get it. I'm still having physiotherapy and the situation with my back and neck is getting better, but I'm still not OK. Yesterday I tried to help my father mounting some lamps - I immediately felt pain in my neck when I wanted to look up.

On the house construction front things are finally moving. On Saturday we had a meeting with our architect and the construction workers. After they talked about half an hour we arranged a meeting with a local architect and as it seems in some three month we could have all the paperwork done and could start building. Of course the other architect's work will not be without a cost, but that's the way those things go.
So, today I have to make the final arrangements with the local architect and deliver him some papers so that he could start working on it.

Euro in Slovenia

For New Year we (my girlfriend an me) were in Ljubljana, she studies there so we stayed in her apartment.
We met some friends and had a very good time. We were also eagerly waiting the adoption of the Euro. On the 1st of January I changed the last Slovenian tolars by simply buying a hot dog. The money they gave me back was in Euro. It was a magic moment - those nice shiny coins all new. I was proud of Slovenia.

After that we started inserting in EuroBillTracker the money we got in Slovenia. It was nice, finally the "black hole", in which a lot of the money we were tracking was going, disappeared.

On the 4th January a new Slovenian user published an article in one of the major Slovenian new sites and started a true avalanche. In just seven days 2174 new users joined from Slovenia and inserted 17065 Euro notes into the database. That made Slovenia jump to rank 10 - just above Ireland and Greece, that are in the Euro-zone since 5 years.
Everyone at EBT was very happy and was looking with astonishment at those numbers. Let's hope that the users will continue to insert notes and be active.
On my side I'm trying to publish another article about the Slovenian users joining EBT. That could start another wave. I hope to have it for tomorrow.

Today I've got the quote from the construction company. I looks good, not as good as I was hoping, but still a reasonable price.

Long silence...

I didn't post anything for almost a month. Bad things happened.
On the 21st December my best friends girlfriend died. She was 22. I was shocked. Because of my injury I couldn't be so much with him as I wanted to. It was a hard experience when he was asking me why that happened, why to them...
I had no answer. I usually have an answer for almost everything or at least try to logically analyse everything. Not for that...
There is no logic, there is no answer. I wanted to cry myself, but managed not to because of my friend. I felt I have to be strong and try to support him.
It was probably a worthless effort, he has to get over it by himself. It would not happen in a day. I want to help him. I have to be with him.

There are so much things you take for granted... a smile a hug from the person you love... being together and planning the future. In a snap it goes away and you remain there... lost.

Today was her funeral...
I hope, Ana, you are in a wonderfull place now!

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")