Well it’s no secret that I’m a music fan and love to keep my music organized, and neatly tagged. ( Well, if you didn’t – now you do ). I’d posted quite sometime ago on how to keep your music well tagged and organized, so there’s pretty much no way that my files wouldn’t be tagged.

Of course, there exceptions here and there but majority are tagged. So I was rather surpised today when Amarok , during playback wasn’t showing any metadata. To verify – I installed id3v2, a CLI tool to view/edit ID3 tags for mp3 files using zypper and – guess what- it showed the meta data correctly.

ID3 tag - gone!

I tried this for few more songs so that I can reproduce this, and confident of that, fired up the bug report tool and filed in a bug for the same. In few hours, I got an email notification about change in status of the bug. Here’s what Myriam asked me:

Are those tracks in the collection? You might want to try a full collection
rescan and restart Amarok to see if it changes.

On checking, – the tracks had mysteriously disappeared from my collection. I rescanned the collection, still it showed nothing. Quit Amarok, restarted, and lo, it was there
So the bug – if the tracks aren’t in collection, then the meta data for them is not read / skipped. Why ? I don’t know. Perhaps the developersthought,

hey the track isn’t in collection, so lets not parse the meta data and we’ll skip gathering the stats.

.

Note: This is what *I* think, I’m nowhere implying that this is by design of Amarok.

It’ll be interesting to see how the bug gets tracked and what happens to it. Will keep updating it.

(PS: If you’re wondering why its irritating, well, without the metadata the last.fm scrobbler won’t pick up the song and scrobble the play. Maybe you think its stupid, but *meh*).

And the icing on the cake – its FOSS & cross platform. And it was working fine – till couple of days ago.

Eager to try out the RC of the upcoming 4.4 release of KDE, I upgraded it. Later on I got a bunch of music files from Ankit, and I set to tag ‘em correctly. Double clicked Picard. Bouncy icon starts, and then – nothing. Uh-oh. Rinse, repeat, no change. Wondering what could’ve happened, I launched Konsole and passed the command And – boom.

sathya@shaman:~> picard
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/picard”, line 2, in
from picard.tagger import main; main(‘/usr/share/locale’, True)
File “/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/picard/tagger.py”, line 21, in
from PyQt4 import QtGui, QtCore
RuntimeError: the sip module implements API v6.0 but the PyQt4.QtGui module requires API v7.0

Seems the upgrade in Qt has resulted in MusicBrainz Picard being broken . As of now there seems to be no solution – perhaps wait and watch till someone notices and fixes it ? Or dive into code and try to fix it myself ( mmm enticing). Anybody reading this has a solution ? Do drop a comment

1. Linus talks about origin of Linux – via Computer History Museum

2: Linus talks about GIT at Google:

The situation however changed when recently some bloody fucking bastard person stole my EP-630 in office – since I don’t have any other headset, I got all “enthu” about trying to get this ting working. And now all that enthusiasm has gone, and I’m on the verge of giving up again. So let me point as to what steps I *have* tried.

• bluetooth-alsa on SourceForge

Result: FAIL. Couldn’t build the required files, couldn’t get the required development files – packages do not exist as they have been obsoleted, and the method itself obsoleted.

• bluez wiki

Result: FAIL. Configured the .asoundrc file, added hcid.conf files, on testing with mplayer got an error message:

[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1607audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: Input/output error

Tried with arecord:

sathya@shaman:~> arecord -D bluetooth -f S16_LE | aplay -D bluetooth -f S16_LE
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1607audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
arecord: main:608: audio open error: Input/output error
ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1607audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)
aplay: main:608: audio open error: Input/output error

• FOSSwire article: A2DP on Linux

Result: FAIL. Tried their script, seemed to work but no. At the end of script got an error message

Starting up...
Traceback (most recent call last): File "a2dp.py", line 7, in bus_id = manager.ActivateService('audio')
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: Method "ActivateService" with signature "s" on interface "org.bluez.Manager" doesn't exist

The author mentions this error is because this method is now obsolete.

• FOSSwire:  Better Bluetooth Audio in Linux

Got stuck when I issued:

pactl load-module module-alsa-sink device="bluetooth"

Error being:


sathya@shaman:~> pactl load-module module-alsa-sink device="bluetooth"
Failure: Module initalization failed

Slick.

• IT Toolbox: Mission Impossble? Connect Bluetooth Headset to Linux

Result: Didn’t bother. Same as attempt #2.

I’ve just about given up trying to get this damn thing working. If you have any suggestions/advice, do drop a comment. FYI: I’m on openSUSE, my headset is a Sony Ericsson HBH DS970.

You can go back to the default Applications / Places / System panel pretty easily. To do this:

• Right click the bottom panel and choose add a panel
• Now right click the top panel and choose Add to Panel
• In the search input box type “menu”, and you will see about six entries, one of which is “Traditional main Menu”
• Add the menu to the panel, move it to where you like, and delete the “original” menu.

And, you’re done!

Thanks to Vinod

Please note: This is highly customized according to *my* requirements and nowhere as thorough /generalized as the official guides. Still, it might help you. Here we go -

Boot off the iso.

First screen you get once you login

run

 /arch/setup

to start install

ArchLinux setup starts

Arch comes with a fairly comprehensive install guide – check it at @ http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Official_Arch_Linux_Install_Guide

Or if you’re stuck without an Internet connection, the install guide is available on the CD, just hit Alt-F6 to spawn a new terminal, and type

less /arch/docs/official_installation_guide_en

to open it ( yes the installer gives wrong info, wonder why!)

The install guide then opens

Feel free to read it, for it is pretty comprehensive.

For now, lets get on with the Install. Hit Alt-F1 to go back to install screen. As the screen shows, you have lots to do, so lets start one by one

We’ll start with Option 1- Select Source which allows you to choose CD as source or the ‘net. If you’ve chosen the CD install image, choose CD,else if you’ve downloaded net install image, choose the second option

Next, we move onto Option 2: Set Clock!

Select the region and timezone. We’ll select Asia/Kolkata and the proceed to set the time. The next option is where most people select wrong and then whine saying “Linux can’t set my time!”

Linux expects the Hardware clock ( your BIOS/Real Time Clock (RTC)) to be set in UTC time and applies timezone offsets according to Region, while Windows expects time to be set at localime. Anyways, for now select localtime

Confirm the time and correct it, if it is not correct. For now, the time is correct and we shall move ahead

Next comes, what is probably the toughest part of most OS installs, hard disk preparation. Most people are used to Windows style partitions of C:\, D:\ drives, while *nix OS don’t follow that architecture. *nix treats all devices as files, and so your c:\, D:\ drive gets mapped as funky names like /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 and so on. While it seems confusing at first, in reality, its not that hard.

/ – refers to “root” or the topmost structure in the hierarchy.

- – dev – refers to special devices such as hard disks, CD drives, USB devices and what not.

- – - – /sd – refers to SCSI device. Earlier the nomenclature was hdx for IDE devices and sdx for SCSI devices, but now SATA devices are designated as sd.

- – – – - -a,b.. refers to the hard disk connected (a= first hard disk, b=second hard disk and so on)

- – - – - – - — – - -1,2.. refers to partitions.

Combine them, you get, /dev/sda as the first hard disk, /dev/sda1 as first partition of your first hard disk

So lets select Hard disk preparation choice. You get another menu

Option 1 – Is probably best if you want to dedicate an entire hard disk to Arch ( in my case, since I’m using a VM anyway). In the context of this guide, this isn’t the best option

Option 3- Puts you in the nitty-gritty of partitioning. Lets not get into here either.

We’ll jump into Option 2- Manually Partition Hard Disks. Selecting that will launch cfdisk – and it should show you available hard disks:

Confirm the hard disk that you want to partition

So once cfdisk is up, you’ll be treated to a barebones interface. Yes, I mean /barebones/.

Since I don’t have any existing partitions, I’ll just create one by selecting New -> Prirmary

I’ll create a swap partition first ,so I’ll allocate 1GB to it

Add partition to beginning of the drive

We’ll create another partition – and allocate all remaining space to it

Next, mark the type of the partitions – first is the swap

On selecting type, you’ll get a huge list of values

Hit enter, and type 82 to choose swap

Now,do the same for the other partition, except that you’ll have to enter 83 for filesystem type.. So once you’re done with partitioning, it should look something like this:

Before we’re done, we’ll have to mark the Linux partition as bootable, so that it handles booting.

Finally, choose Write to write all changes to the drive ( so far, nothing has been written, so you can always back out) and then exit.

Now that the partitions have been created, we’ll have to assign mount points.

You’ll get a Warning message, just click no and move ahead

Earlier, I’d mentioned that sda1 is chosen for swap, so lets select swap as the type:

Do the same for other partition, selection ext3 as the type. When asked for the mount point select “/”

Now, lets move on to 4th option, select pakages where you get to choose which packages to install.Arch follows the policy of install bare minimum first, whatever you want later, so for now you get only a barebones console package. Do select base-develop if you wish to do further tinkering

Just hit OK, wait for a bit, and then you’ll be taken back to the main menu. Proceed with installing the packages.

Once install is done, we’ll move ahead with configuring the system.Select nano as the editor. Proceed with editing the files only if you know what you’re doing!

Otherwise just leave them as it is.

I’ll start with editing /etc/rc.conf since I want to change my hostname ( name of my computer)

Remember: If it doesn’t make sense, don’t touch it! Hit Ctrl-X and type Y and hit Enter to save changes, else type no.

Before you leave this screen, don’t forget to enter a new root password, – and remember Do NOT forget this password!

Choose done to return to the main menu.

Now for the last step – to install bootloader. Just select grub ( or none, if you want your existing bootloader to handle it). Once grub config is generated,

nano will open with menu.lst, where you can do any changes, if needed. Hit Ctrl+X and save, if needed

And that’s it! Install is completed, choose exit, and type reboot to start your newly installed ArchLinux !

On rebooting you’ll be prompted to login. Bear in mean there are no users created yet, except for the root user. So login with username as root and password you entered above.

Part II: Creating a new user, setting up GUI – coming soon

I entered the boot command of the “recovery console” manually by finding it out from grub.cfg through the Live CD. After getting to the repair option I selected the option “Update GRUB”. Then the system did something I dont know. Then after returning to the options I selected the option similar to Boot Normally (whatever the exact wording was). Now, that was a miraculous finding. I restarted and boot worked like it should.

P.S-Something or the other helps me huh??

I replaced initrd.img file of my kernel version with “initrd.lz” file from the Ubuntu LiveCD and edited my grub.cfg file (equivalent of menu.lst in older Ubuntu releases), to boot using initrd.lz

In other words, wherever there is an entry like initrd.img.2.24-16 or similar just replace it with initrd.lz and in my case I also copied over the vmlinuz file and made necessary entries (just in case). Now, am back in action with Ubuntu.

To do so, just open the Terminal and type the below:

mount <path-to-wubi-root-disk> <path-to-where-it-should-be-mounted> -o loop

This will make the kernel auto detect the filesystem type and try to mount it. Alternatively, if you’re sure of the filesystem type, mention it explicitly

mount -t <fs-type> <path-to-wubi-root-disk> <path-to-where-it-should-be-mounted> -o loop

Would come in very handy if someone were to migrate from Wubi install to a full install, just copy over the /home files and all files saved.

Thanks, Bharath.