bonq.net/flipp

mythbuntu/nxclient ssh keys

flipp — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:56:20 +0000

i never did write a grumble post about the debian ssl exploit (great explanation of the issue and some motivational posters) and i’m still finding issues because of the new keys. the lastest issue i was trying to debug why i wasn’t able to connect to one of my boxes via nxclient. checking around in the logs i saw, “Offending key in /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/known_hosts”… simple enough.

after looking at that file and comparing it to /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key and /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.broken i drop in the new keys and nxclient connects just fine. i would also recommend regenerating your personal keys if you use an authorized_keys[2] file

ubuntu 8.04 + vwmware = no working special keys

flipp — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:30:45 +0000

hrm. occasionally since i’ve upgraded to 8.04 final, i’ve noticed that i completely lose ctrl, alt, or shift…. it’s really hard to use a linux system when you can’t use those modifiers. i started paying a little more attention when it would happen and i only ever lost those keys after vmware had been running for a little bit.

i updated vmware-run-any-update from v115 to v116 (here) and things are looking a little better. i think all the sysctl.conf changes i made for vmware were lost when i upgraded…. since ubuntu 8.04 is running 2.6.24 w/ the new schedulers i haven’t really had to go back and re-tweak the vmware settings anyhow.

i’m still fighting the urge to install firefox 2 so i don’t have to use firefox 3 beta 5…. it sucks not having my old add-ons… and wierd script errors are plaguing a few sites.

hrm… maybe i shouldn’t have upgraded my laptop to 8.04

flipp — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:57:36 +0000

i started a dist-upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04 on my work laptop last night. it wasn’t finished when i woke up cause i was prompted to replace a couple of system files i had modified. for the most part the upgrade was uneventful, although i did have to play the nvidia module swap game when the system booted.

nvidia module swap game
1. ctrl+alt+F1 to switch to a different virtual console
2. sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop to kill off X
3. sudo sh ./NVIDIA*.run hopefully you downloaded this before the upgrade. heh #
4. copy a working xorg.conf into place, remove any xorg.conf.failsafe
5. sudo /etc/intit.d/gdm start

i did a quick test to see if hibernate works, nope… i’ll have to poke around to see what i’m missing. no biggie since i haven’t had hibernate work for awhile anyhow. i’m still not too sure about firefox 3 beta 5 though…. i have a ton of extensions that don’t work now. boo.

lost boys 2: the tribe

flipp — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:19:09 +0000

lost boys 2: the tribe

Click here to view the embedded video.

there’s a sequel to the lost boys coming out soon and it even has 7.9/10 stars (17 votes) on imdb before the movie is even released… it’s been 21 years since the original came out, and yes… both corey’s are in it. i’m going to have to hunt down watchers which haim was in in 1988, supposedly it sucks compared to the original koontz novel, but then again that commenter also said phantoms was good. “you the bomb in phantoms yo!” – jay

using an iphone as a mythtv frontend

flipp — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:28:46 +0000

iphone mythtv frontend

Click here to view the embedded video.

check it out! chris carey just released a mythtv frontend for the iphone. not only can you stream your mythtv collection to your iphone, but you can also control your mythtv box from your iphone![here]

ubuntu 8.04 warty alt backgrounds

flipp — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:28:17 +0000

i run a lot of remote sessions from my laptop, and since 3 out of the 4 machines had the same exact stock background i decided to play around with the color/hues with the warty-final-ubuntu.png stock background and came up with a could of different color variants. nothing special but atleast i don’t have to guess which box i’m on now. warty final is out tommorrow, check out the 8.04-rc notes here to see what’s new.

these are 1600×1200… so don’t click them on small screens.

nxclient + esd

flipp — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:07:01 +0000

i’ve been having issues w/ /dev/dsp not being available lately and it’s because nxesd keeps hanging around on my system.

$ sudo lsof | grep dsp
nxesd 11945 flipp 4w CHR 14,3 10785 /dev/dsp

yup. nxclient/nxserver use esd (the enlightenment sound daemon) to manage pushing sound w/ the remote display. i’m not sure why it’s grabbing /dev/dsp for a session where i disabled multimedia support but killing off the nxesd process fixed sound. to fix it permanently, just change your sound playback device to esd in system>preferences>sound.

playing around w/ wordpress themes

flipp — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:15:03 +0000

i spent a few hours this weekend modifying the blogtxt wordpress theme to mimic my old bonq-v2 theme. i still really have issues w/ sidebars, they just don’t do it for me. as far as the blogtxt theme goes, i really haven’t had to modify anything other than the style.css to make all the changes i want.

kudos to scott/plaintxt.org for such a well-rounded theme that’s easy to modify.

i don’t think i’ll ever get used to using em vs px for defining sizes though. i’m going to poke around a little more w/ blogtxt, but i also should see what other themes are out there. there’s apparently been monster growth for the wordpress theming community though. a google search for wordpress+themes now generates 6,870,000 hits.

here’s the top few that looked like they had some useful themes.

and yeah. i just really wanted to post that picture.

only 5 more days to ubuntu 8.04

flipp — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:03:40 +0000

only 5 more days! i haven’t updated either one of my boxes running 8.04 beta in a few days because i finally have a stable setup for the moment. i’m planning on backing everything up on the laptop and doing a clean 8.04 install after the final comes out. the ubuntu laptop testing team has a pretty comprehensive dell latitude d620 page, and it looks like suspend/hibernate are working again. sweet!

old page: pocketpc

flipp — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:18:06 +0000

this originally was posted as a page on 11/22/07, but i’m converting it to a post.

i’ve always wanted a phone that just simply ran linux… unfortunantly there haven’t been too many turnkey linux mobile solutions. there have been plenty of open apis developed, and a few linux mobile platforms that have looked amazing… but i don’t believe any of them really were stable for day to day use. currently i’m using a tmobile wing. it’s a 201 mhz processor running windows mobile 6 professional. currently there aren’t any hacked roms to load on it, booo.

there also seems to be some memory management issues with with it also, i’m just too lazy to play with the pool size… much easier to just remember to close all the applications before trying to take a large picture or running an application that takes up a lot of memory.

the android sdk was released recently… i’ve downloaded it to my ubuntu laptop, but that’s about as far as i’ve gotten with it. i really need to sit down and watch all of the youtube promo videos to get a better grasp of the whole android environment. it does look promising though. and it IS linux!

it’s such a trip to think about how everyone expected google to release the gphone and blow everyone away… and when it finally does get released, it’s an open platform based on common open source software… not proprietary hardware/software ( /me glances at apple and microsoft )

tmobile wing links

getting started with the tmobile wing ( local link )
howardforums wing faq (not a lot of info, it’s new. duh )
howardforums mda faq ( ymmv, similar hardware but not exact )
howardforums wing tips/tricks/hacks/questions
htc t-mobile wing (atlas) wiki
xda developers htc herald wiki
xda developers herald forum
window mobile official homepage
pocketpc freeware

pocketpc links

one step closer to the google phone?
del.icio.us links [ flipp:pocketpc ] [ popular ]

tmobile wing todo

sync with ubuntu ( or atleast pocketpc usb harddrive mode )
sync with vmware winxp via activesync?
android apps? ( does the java need to be signed? check the android sdk )
setup an ftp server for pimbackup to ftp sync with
cron an ftp pimbackup
batterystatus – traylaunch enabled apps?
phatnotes – pie bookmark

pocketpc todo

which handsets will run android? ( expected no later than 2Q 2008 )
setup eclipse w/ the android sdk
compare the windows mobile sdk vs the android sdk.
research pocketpc/small screen best practices

lifesize chalkboard munny

flipp — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:08:52 +0000

Big Munny
Originally uploaded by MariSheibley

holy cow! i want one of these….
hrm. what do i need to coat a munny with to make it into a whiteboard? :

funny gifs 3

flipp — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:00:58 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

mwuahahahaha! ignore the stop frame, this is a collection of animated gifs i found on youtube. there’s some funny stuff in there.

google reader bankruptcy how-to

flipp — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:59:41 +0000

is google reader trying to cram too many feeds down your throat? do you just stockpile rss feeds like it’s your job? have you spent too much time trying to weed down your feeds just so you can stay current? don’t worry! it 3 simple steps, you too can have the peace of mind of having less than 1000 unread items.

step 1. grab an ompl export if you’re a girlie man.
step 2. go to > subscriptions > select all > unsubscribe. #
step 3. breath a sigh of relief… all items() < 1000*
* note: go smack people in your contact list for sharing so many items if all items is still high.

seriously though, it’s annoying to open a newsreader in the morning and notice you literally have a metric ton of shit to weed through. and yeah, i get yelled at if i go on a 50+ bookmarking spree on del.icio.us or share 10+ items on google reader in a day. with so many ways to share it’s hard to filter the noise of what you want to share with what you want to just tag/bookmark.

i still have an old bloglines account w/ the old feeds on it so atleast i can keep up on old stuff while i selectively re-add things into google reader.

volkswagen mkv 225/45r17 tires

flipp — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:54:01 +0000

i have 18,002 miles on the 07 gti now. the bridgestone potenza re050’s aren’t really holding up. the driver’s side front is bald in the middle tread and the passenger’s side front is almost there… i’m comparing a few at tirerack right now, definitely getting a set of all-seasons. it’s not much fun trying to drive around in winter with summer performance tires.

a quick check at the customer survey results and i think i have an easy pick… the bridgestone potenza re960as pole position’s. there’s even 35 reviews from volkswagen owners with an average rating of 8.93. there is one bad review from a mkV owner but i think i’m going to give these tires a shot anyhow. can’t be any worse than the re50’s that came stock, and with 400 tread wear rating (to the re50’s 140) they should hopefully last somewhere around their 40k warranty.

adding a secondary backend to mythbuntu

flipp — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:36:34 +0000

i have both my master backend and my secondary backend/frontend working for the most part. i do need to share the video directories so each box doesn’t need a local copy but i’m still trying to figure out the best way to do that.

traditionally on a single backend/frontend you would just toss your videos in /var/lib/mythtv/video , but now i need a different structure to allow for me to mount the remote video directory w/out stomping on the local video directory. i’m thinking the easiest way to do this is to create a host directories in the default video location and see what happens.
( knoppmyth nfs howto | sharing video with a remote FE | optimizing performance )

ha! it works. watching a video over the network in mythvideo. i’m going to have to monitor my network for a few days to see how much traffic is being generated, but i’m really happy with the way mythbuntu 8.04 is looking. 10 days till ubuntu 8.04 is released so it’s not long till the mythbuntu 8.10 release either.

ubuntu 8.04 beta + nautilus + gvfs

flipp — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:46:31 +0000

hrm. i’m having some wierd issues w/ network copies and i’m was fairly certain that the culprit is gvfs #. i started 2 large transfers from a sshfs mounted partition to a local partion and they died part way through. nm, it wasn’t gvfs although i have seen issues w/ $HOME/.gvfs not being mounted. a reboot usually fixes that.

i used rsync to copy over the files vs sshfs mounting and then using nautilus to do the copy. silly me for not using the cli the first time.

i’m gonna have to go poke around in the hardy heron development forum to see what the current bugs are and what’s new…. (that forum closes on april 24th. and unless you like to upgrade you system a few times a day i wouldn’t recommend running the beta just yet. there’s a lot of updates rolling through)

mythbuntu 8.04 beta

flipp — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:19:47 +0000

i was a little bummed to find out that you couldn’t just update between the mythbuntu alphas… i finally got around to tossing the 8.04 beta on my mythtv frontend and firewire input/capture WORKS! i also moved the pvr500 into the t105 and got that working. the only issue i’m having right now is figuring out how to get the primary backend and secondary backend to play nicely.

i also figured out how to get nxclient to work in mythbuntu. i never did figure out how to get xfce to start properly (it wouldn’t start in a window and it would render xfce over my current window manager) so i cheated and just installed ‘ubuntu-desktop’. not gnome, or gnome-desktop…. heh, yeah i’m slow.

bye bye hp tx2000z

flipp — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:30:10 +0000

as excited as i was about adding the hp tx2000z to my collection of hardware, after the whole experiences i’m feeling the exact opposite. the digitizer/touchscreen worked very well, but as far as the tablet itself i’m not even considering hanging on to it. if hp had actually qa’d the system before they shipped it to me i most likely wouldn’t have had the horrible unboxing/setup experience that i did. it’s a shame too, cause now i won’t even bother looking @ their $500 linux umpc that’s coming out.

03/24: ordered | 04/02: shipped | 04/03: delivered

10 days build, 2 days to ship, .25 days before i consider returning it. the unboxing was uneventful, setting up vista on the first boot took over 2 hours, and creating my recovery cds took almost twice that. i don’t think 3+ hours of setup time just to have an updated machine is really that acceptable. from what i’ve read most of the initial setup was the hp customizations vs anything to really do with vista.

i spent a little time cleaning up the customizations and loaded the latest vista/hp updates and noticed that the screen’s colors just seemed off. vista said i was running @ 32-bit, but some parts of the screen were definitely lower than that. i thought maybe the nvidia go 6150 was having some issues keeping up with the desktop effects so i switched to a windows classic theme, but that didn’t help. i topped out the shared memory for the go 6150 in the bios and also set the laptop to run at the highest performance…. still having wierd color issues.

i also noticed that whenever you adjusted the display or put any pressure pretty much anywhere on the keyboard/hinge that the video just went nuts. it really liked to do it while i was typing if the display wasn’t angled just properly…

after dealing with hp support i decided to just return the laptop. and yes, their voip does suck. i lost about every 4th word in the conversation. it’s annoying to have to ask someone to repeat what they just said every few seconds. i’m still very interested in a linux tabletpc, but next time i’m not going to let a $500 discount sway my decision.

disclaimer: i’m still grumpy @ hp. yes i was trying to get technical support on a weekend, but that really shouldn’t matter since they outsource all their support. once i did get a hold of their customer service (only mon-fri) they offered to send me a replacement but at that point i just wanted to get rid of the tx200z, period.

ubuntu: gnome-do

flipp — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:11:48 +0000

i’ve moved away from deskbar to gnome-do as my primary launcher.

gnome-do [plugins] there’s a few plugins available that most ubunut/linux launchers already have, but the interface is the solid selling point gnome-do. i also haven’t had any issues with it, unlike deskbar which will randomly lock up and require a reload.

there are even plugins for gmail contacts and google calendar, but they look like they might be bleeding edge. i’ll have to look into the google api plugins to see how to get them installed/working, but any of the other plugins i tried are installed and working.

software raid goodness

flipp — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 02:01:15 +0000

in 78 minutes i will have 600gb of raid 5 disk space. perhaps cooler than doing this in less that 5 commands is the fact that i was doing it remotely on the t105. dynamic dns is a good thing and since nxclient just uses ssh traffic i didn’t have to port forward more than one