cat /dev/snapshot

Deploying weld-osgi to jcoderz.org repository

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:36:00 +0000

For deploying weld-osgi to the jcoderz.org repository the following modifications to the pom.xml files are necessary (after applying the wagon-ssh extensions to the your Maven installation, see previous post):

1. Deploy the WELD API packages

git clone -b WELD-963 http://github.com/mathieuancelin/api.git WELD-963

cd WELD-963

vi pom.xml

# Add the following XMl fragment to the maven-deploy-plugin

   <build>
      <plugins>
         <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-deploy-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
               <skip>true</skip>
            </configuration>
            <dependencies>
              <dependency>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.wagon</groupId>
                <artifactId>wagon-ssh</artifactId>
                <version>2.2</version>
              </dependency>
            </dependencies>         </plugin>
      </plugins>
   </build>

mvn -e clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true

mvn
 -e deploy 
-DaltDeploymentRepository=jcoderz-snapshots::default::scp://jcoderz.org/var/www/repos/maven2-snapshot/
 -Dmaven.test.skip=true

cd ..

2. Deploy the WELD OSGi packages

git clone -b weld-osgi http://github.com/mathieuancelin/core.git weld-osgi

cd weld-osgi

vi pom.xml 

 # Add the following XML into the <build>/<plugins> tag section

         <plugin>
           <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
           <artifactId>maven-deploy-plugin</artifactId>
           <dependencies>
             <dependency>
               <groupId>org.apache.maven.wagon</groupId>
               <artifactId>wagon-ssh</artifactId>
               <version>2.2</version>
             </dependency>
           </dependencies>
         </plugin>

mvn -e clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true

mvn
 -e deploy 
-DaltDeploymentRepository=jcoderz-snapshots::default::scp://jcoderz.org/var/www/repos/maven2-snapshot/
 -Dmaven.test.skip=true

cd environments/osgi



# Deploy weld-osgi-parent pom.xml to the repository (Is there a way to include the parent pom.xml in the previous run?)

mvn
 -e -N deploy 
-DaltDeploymentRepository=jcoderz-snapshots::default::scp://jcoderz.org/var/www/repos/maven2-snapshot/
 -Dmaven.test.skip=true

With those deployments the repository is prepared to compile the m3server project...

Maven 3: SSH deployment to foreign repository

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:08:00 +0000

Using the maven-deploy-plugin to deploy artifacts to a repository that is not the original target repository of a project is getting complicated with Maven 3 when the wagon SSH provider is not part of the Maven distribution.

The following JAR files must be added to the Maven distribution into the lib/ext extension folder:

jsch-0.1.44-1.jar
plexus-utils-3.0.jar
plexus-interactivity-api-1.0-alpha-6.jar
wagon-ssh-2.2.jar
wagon-ssh-external-2.2.jar
wagon-ssh-common-2.2.jar

Then the parent pom.xml of the project must be extended by the following lines:

<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupid>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupid>
<artifactid>maven-deploy-plugin</artifactid>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupid>org.apache.maven.wagon</groupid>
<artifactid>wagon-ssh</artifactid>
      <version>2.2</version>
      </dependency>
</dependencies>
    </plugin>
</plugins>
</build>


The settings.xml contains the user credentials and looks like this:

   <servers>
      <server>
         <id>myrepo-snapshots</id>
         <username>username</username>
         <privatekey>${user.home}/.ssh/id_rsa</privatekey>
         <passphrase>key-passphrase</passphrase>
         <filepermissions>666</filepermissions>
         <directorypermissions>777</directorypermissions>
      </server>
   </servers>

Then the deploy phase can be executed like this:

mvn deploy -DaltDeploymentRepository=myrepo-snapshots::default::scp://host:port/var/www/repos/maven2-snapshot/

Building weld-osgi

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:11:00 +0000

In case you want to use Weld inside your OSGi application you first need to compile a few branches on your own:

WELD-963 branch of the weld/api project
weld-osgi branch from the weld/core project

Those branches will soon be merged into the official Weld codebase. But in the meantime you need to follow the steps below in order to get the packages compiled.
A prerequisite is that git and Maven 3 is available

git clone -b WELD-963 http://github.com/mathieuancelin/api.git WELD-963

cd WELD-963

mvn clean install

cd ..

git clone -b weld-osgi http://github.com/mathieuancelin/core.git weld-osgi

cd weld-osgi

mvn clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true

find . -name "weld-osgi-core*SNAPSHOT.jar" -exec cp {} . \;

The last command above copies the following files into your current directory:

weld-osgi-core-api-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar
weld-osgi-core-extension-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar
weld-osgi-core-integration-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar
weld-osgi-core-mandatory-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar
weld-osgi-core-spi-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar

You can now deploy those packages into your local repository so that they can be used in your own project's pom.xml.

mvn deploy:deploy-file -DgroupId=org.jboss.weld.osgi \

                       -DartifactId=weld-osgi-core-api \

                       -Dversion=1.1.5-SNAPSHOT \

                       -Dpackaging=jar \

                       -Dfile=weld-osgi-core-api-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=org.jboss.weld.osgi  \

                         -DartifactId=weld-osgi-core-extension  \

                         -Dversion=1.1.5-SNAPSHOT \

                         -Dpackaging=jar \

                         -Dfile=weld-osgi-core-extension-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar
mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=org.jboss.weld.osgi  \

                         -DartifactId=weld-osgi-core-integration  \

                         -Dversion=1.1.5-SNAPSHOT \

                         -Dpackaging=jar \

                         -Dfile=weld-osgi-core-integration-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=org.jboss.weld.osgi  \

                         -DartifactId=weld-osgi-core-mandatory  \

                         -Dversion=1.1.5-SNAPSHOT \

                         -Dpackaging=jar \

                         -Dfile=weld-osgi-core-mandatory-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=org.jboss.weld.osgi  \

                         -DartifactId=weld-osgi-core-spi  \

                         -Dversion=1.1.5-SNAPSHOT \

                         -Dpackaging=jar \

                         -Dfile=weld-osgi-core-spi-1.1.5-SNAPSHOT.jar

The pom.xml of your assembly package might look like this:

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jboss.weld.osgi</groupId>
            <artifactId>weld-osgi-core-api</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.5-SNAPSHOT</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jboss.weld.osgi</groupId>
            <artifactId>weld-osgi-core-extension</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.5-SNAPSHOT</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jboss.weld.osgi</groupId>
            <artifactId>weld-osgi-core-integration</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.5-SNAPSHOT</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jboss.weld.osgi</groupId>
            <artifactId>weld-osgi-core-mandatory</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.5-SNAPSHOT</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jboss.weld.osgi</groupId>
            <artifactId>weld-osgi-core-spi</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.5-SNAPSHOT</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>

m3player version 0.1.3 released

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:45:00 +0000

m3player version 0.1.3 has the following new features:

m3player can be run as a daemon with -d or --daemonise
The name of the UPnP Media Renderer can be configured by -n or --name. This is done by copying the XML files from /usr/share/m3player to /var/lib/m3player and filtering place-holders in some of the files.
The version of the MediaRenderer device can be configured by -r or --root. The default is MediaRendererV2.xml
The UPnP server can be bound to a network interface, specified by -i or --interface. Example: eth0

The help output shows an overview of all the parameters available:

$ ./m3player -h

Usage:

  m3player [OPTION...]

Help Options:
-h, --help          Show help options

Application Options:
-c, --config        Path to the config file
                      (Default: /etc/m3player/m3player.ini)
-p, --pid           Path to the pid file
                      (Default: /var/run/m3player.pid)
-s, --xmlsource     Path to the XML source folder
                      (Default: /usr/share/m3player)
-t, --xmltarget     Path to the XML target folder
                      (Default: /var/lib/m3player)
-n, --name          The name of the player instance
                      (Default: HOSTNAME)
-r, --root          The name of the root device file
                      (Default: MediaRendererV2.xml)
-l, --log           The name of the log file
                      (Default: /var/log/m3player.log)
-i, --interface     The name of the interface the process
                      is bound to (e.g. eth0)
-d, --daemonise     Fork the player as daemon

Turning m3player into a daemon

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:29:00 +0000

As most of the public HOWTOs seem to be either incomplete or a bit outdated and because I have no copy of the book Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, I was happy to find the following microHOWTOs:

By following the steps, described there I was able to turn m3player into a daemon. The daemon behavior can be turned on by passing the -d or --daemon switches to the command line. When the daemon switch is specified, all output (stdout and stderr) gets redirected into the log file at the default location /var/log/m3player.log or to the location, specified by the -l or --logfile switch.

m3player version 0.1.2 released

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:22:00 +0000

I just released version 0.1.2 of m3player. The new version includes:

Compilation and packaging for OpenWRT
Installation of the ipkg package on the TL-WR1043ND device
Support for command-line parameters:

config - Path to the config file (/etc/m3player/m3player.ini)
pidfile - Location of the PID file (/var/run/m3player.pid)
xmlfolder - Location of the descriptor XML files (/usr/share/m3player)
name - Set the name of the player instance (Hostname or m3player)
filename - The name of the root device file (MediaRenderedV1.xml)

Support for an INI file (/etc/m3player/m3player.ini)
Fixes to the GStreamer pipeline to work in the stripped down OpenWRT environment with only a few plugins

When launching the m3player it starts playing the first entry from the preset list.

The next version will include support for preset switching via the QSS button.

Building a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND OpenWRT 10.03 image for MP3 audio playback

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:48:00 +0000

This article gives a step-by-step description on how to get the m3ddity-player working on the TP-Link TL-WR1043ND device, using the stable version of OpenWRT 10.03 (backfire).

First you need to checkout the OpenWRT 10.03 (backfire) branch:

svn co svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/branches/backfire

cd backfire 

Then the feed for the m3ddity-player must be added:

cp feeds.conf.default feeds.conf

echo "src-svn jcoderz http://www.jcoderz.org/svn/m3dditiez/branches/openwrt-10.3/packages" >> feeds.conf

./scripts/feeds update ./scripts/feeds install -a  

Now run menuconfig and select the necessary modules:
make menuconfig

The following list shows only menuconfig entries where settings have been changed. Settings not shown here are left untouched.

Target System (Atheros AR71xx/AR7240/AR913x)
Target Profile (TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v1)

Global build settings --->
[*] Remove ipkg/opkg status/data files in final images
[ ] Enable ipv6 support in packages

[*] Build the OpenWRT based toolchain
[*] Image configuration --->
    (192.168.0.5) LAN DNS server
    (192.168.0.5) LAN Gateway
    (255.255.255.0) LAN Network Mask
    (192.168.0.111) LAN IP Address

Base system
<*> block-mount

< > dnsmasq

< > firewall

Kernel Modules

Filesystems

<*> kmod-fs-ext3 (for USB drive)

<*> kmod-nls-utf8

Other modules

    <*> kmod-ledtrig-netdev

Sound Support
    <*> kmod-sound-core

USB Support
    <*> kmod-usb-core
    <*>   kmod-usb-audio
    <*> kmod-usb-ohci
    <*> kmod-usb-storage (for USB drive)

Network

< > ppp

< > iptables

Time Synchronization
<*> ntpdate

Multimedia

<*> gst-mod-alsa

<*> gst-mod-mad

<*> gst-mod-souphttpsrc

<*> gstreamer

<*> m3ddity-player (only with jCoderZ.org modules)

Utilities

<*> alsa-utils (for alsamixer/alsactl)

After the configuration step is completed, the image can be compiled with the following command:
make

The next steps assume that the router is already running a stable version of OpenWRT (flashed initially via the original vendor UI). If that is the case you can now connect to the router by running:
telnet 192.168.0.111 # The IP configured during menuconfig

Now copy the new image to a location on the router with enough space, for example a USB stick (/dev/sda1):
mkdir /mnt/usb
mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb
cd /mnt/usb
scp USERNAME@HOST:HOME/backfire/bin/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin .

Now drop the caches:
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Then reflash the image with the following command:
mtd -r write openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin firmware

The router will reboot and you can connect again after reboot:
telnet 192.168.0.111

Replace the USB stick with the USB audio device and run the m3ddity-player with the following command:
m3player

Now you should hear a sound as the m3player starts playing one of its presets from the config file /etc/m3player/m3player.ini.

Music player fully integrated into the OpenWRT build process

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:44:00 +0000

The m3ddity-player and the GUPnP libraries, on which the player depends upon, can now easily be build for OpenWRT, just follow the steps below:

1. Checkout the trunk version of OpenWRT

svn co svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk

cd trunk

2. Add the jCoderZ package repository to the list of feeds

cp feeds.conf.default feeds.conf
echo "src-svn jcoderz " \
"http://www.jcoderz.org/svn/m3dditiez/trunk/" \
"openwrt/packages" >> feeds.conf
./scripts/feeds update
./scripts/feeds install -a

3. Run menuconfig and select the packages as described here

make menuconfig

4. Additionally select the package Multimedia/m3ddity-player. This automatically selects the necessary GUPnP libraries.

5. Finally, you can build the image

make -j 5

But be warned, the trunk version of OpenWRT might be broken and flashing the image might result in a bricked device that can only be restored via the serial console. For the TL-WR1043ND, this even involves soldering!

jCoderZ.org

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:31:00 +0000

The OpenWRT music player, which I have blogged about recently, has found a home at http://www.jcoderz.org/m3dditiez/

Quest for a USB audio device part 2...

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:21:00 +0000

The new audio devices arrived but unfortunately they show the same glitches as the devices I tested before:

1. USB Soundkarte mit Virtual 3D Soundeffekt LogiLink®

This device is also based on the chipset Tenx Technology, Inc. TP6911 Audio Headset and has the same issues as the previous device (USB Sound Audio), i.e. the output is far too loud.

2. USB Soundkarte mit Virtual 7.1 Soundeffekt LogiLink®

The sound is good but as with the previous device a clicking noise is heard during reboot, power-off, power-on, plug-in/out. The chipset is C-Media Electronics, Inc. Audio Adapter

So both adapters use the same chipsets and show the same issues. It seems as if there are not too many different cheap USB audio devices on the market, just rebranded stuff from the same manufacturer.

... to be continued!

Seeking a cheap USB audio device that works with the TP-Link TL-WR1043ND under OpenWRT

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 20:48:00 +0000

I'm seeking for a USB audio device that works with the TP-Link TL-WR1043ND under OpenWRT. Until now I tried 2 different devices with unacceptable issues.

1. USB Sound Audio (Amazon)

The device gets detected under Linux as Tenx Technology, Inc. TP6911 Audio Headset. The following warnings are reported by dmesg when connecting the device:
usb_audio: Warning! Unlikely big volume range (=13568), cval->res is probably wrong.
usb_audio: [2] FU [PCM Playback Volume] ch = 2, val = 2560/16128/1
usb_audio: Warning! Unlikely big volume range (=6096), cval->res is probably wrong.
usb_audio: [5] FU [Mic Capture Volume] ch = 1, val = 0/6096/1

The issue with this device is that the volume level is so high that it cannot be controlled. Between mute and 10% the output sounds distorted. At 20% the volume level is at its maximum, with no audible change between 20% and 100%.

2. auvisio Visual Sound Technologies (pearl.de)

The device gets detected as C-Media Electronics, Inc. Audio Adapter.

The issue with the device is that a very loud clicking sound gets played when the OpenWRT router starts-up or during shutdown/power-off. The sound is quite loud and it will be very annoying when using the router as a music-player.

Next

Both devices are unsuitable for using them with the router. The next try will be with the following devices...

Make ALSA settings persistent on OpenWRT

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:36:00 +0000

The command-line tool alsamixer can be used to control the volume of the USB audio output:

Unfortunately the setting does not survive a reboot. Another tool from the alsa-utils package can be used for this purpose: alsactl

After setting the volume with alsamixer, the following command persists the current setting in the file-system for device 0:
alsactl -f /etc/alsa/alsa0.state store 0

During startup, the state must be restored again. This can be achieved by adding the following command to /etc/rc.local:
alsactl -f /etc/alsa/alsa0.state restore 0

Building an OpenWRT image optimized for MP3 audio playback

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:36:00 +0000

For the audio-renderer, see revious posts, I decided to switch to the trunk version of OpenWRT.
I experienced some issues with the USB audio hardware and the trunk version should prove that there are no issues with the USB audio drivers which are already fixed.
The following configuration is for the bleeding-edge version, some module names have changed so it cannot be applied to the Kamikaze (10.3) version without modification (e.g. block-mount contains the overlay functionality and kmod-fs-ext4 has support for all ext file-system versions).
NOTE: This configuration has stripped all modules which are not necessary for USB audio and Wireless LAN.

Target System: Atheros AR71xx/AR7240/AR913x/AR934x)
Target Profile: TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v1

Global build settings --->
[*] Remove ipkg/opkg status/data files in final images
[ ] Enable ipv6 support in packages

LATER: Strip unnecessary exports from kernel image
LATER: Strip unnecessary functions from libraries

[*] Build the OpenWRT Image Builder
[*] Build the OpenWRT SDK
[*] Build the OpenWRT based toolchain
[*] Image configuration --->
    LAN Gateway: 192.168.0.5
    LAN Network Mask: 255.255.255.0
    LAN IP Address: 192.168.0.111

Base system
<*> block-mount

< > dnsmasq

< > firewall

Kernel Modules

Filesystems

<*> kmod-fs-ext4 (for USB drive)

Native Language Support
<*> kmod-nls-utf8

Sound Support
    <*> kmod-sound-core
    <*> kmod-usb-audio

USB Support
    <*> kmod-usb-ohci
    <*> kmod-usb-storage (for USB drive)

Other Modules (not sure yet whether they are needed)
??? *gpio* ??? (Buttons for preset-switching ???)

Network

< > ppp

Firewall

< > iptables

Time Synchronization
<*> ntpclient

Multimedia

<*> gst-mod-alsa

<*> gst-mod-mad

<*> gst-mod-souphttpsrc

<*> gstreamer

<*> gstreamer-utils (for gst-* tools)

Utilities

<*> alsa-utils (for alsamixer/alsactl)

After the configuration step is completed, the image can be compiled with the following command:

make -j 5 # on a quad-core machine

With the configuration above the compiled image is 5248kB large, which means 2944kB are free for modules and configuration in the /overlay file-system.
Then you can connect to the router with the following command (assuming that OpenWRT is already installed):

telnet 192.168.0.111

Copy the new image to a location on the router with enough space (I use a 32MB USB stick with ext2 file-system which I mount under /mnt/usb):

scp USERNAME@HOST:HOME/openwrt-trunk/bin/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin .

Now drop the caches:

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Then reflash the image with the following command:

mtd -r write openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin firmware

The router will reboot and when connecting via telnet again, the setup can be tested with the following command:

gst-launch souphttpsrc location=http://87.248.219.60/stream/swr_mp3_m_swr1bwa ! mad ! alsasink

Et viola, the USB audio device will play the radio station! Hopefully..... ;)

Using a password safe on multiple platforms

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 13:40:00 +0000

After the Playstation Network Hack I decided to change to secure passwords for all my accounts. The drawback is that nobody can remember secure passwords anymore, so there is no way around using a password safe.

The only application that is available on all the different platforms I use is KeePass (V1.x on Windows, KeePassX under Linux, and KeePassDroid on Android). Under Windows the the 1.x version must be used in order to stick to the same file format as the KeePassX and the KeePassDroid applications.

Using one database file on many different devices has proven to be a challenge as the file must be located where it can be accessed from all the different devices.

My first approach was to use a WebDAV folder which is available from hosters like web.de or 1&1 in Germany.
The Linux support for WebDAV is good, dav2fs does what I was looking for and I found absolutely no issues while using it.
Unfortunately Windows 7 64Bit support for WebDAV is severly broken. Access to the online folder was working a few days but it stopped working, being unable to connect anymore (Error 0x80070043). All the hints and workarounds I found did not work for my business notebook. I also tried the different WebDAV client tools like NetDrive for example. None of them was working reliably in a corporate environment behind a proxy and I did not want to find workarounds for the issues of the WebDAV clients.
There is also no free WebDAV support available on Android, making the protocol unusable on my phone and tablet. The consequence would be either to copy the file manually or to extend KeePassDroid in order to access databases via HTTPS/WebDAV.

After a few weeks of pain when trying to log into an account with a secure password I decided to give DropBox a try. Clients are available for all the devices I have and adding an account is very easy and can be setup in under a minute.

DropBox has been configured to create a new folder and not to sync the whole user's home folder:

Windows: C:\Users\(USERNAME)\Dropbox
Linux: /home/(USERNAME)/Dropbox
Android: /mnt/sdcard/dropbox

On all platforms the extension "kdb" has been associated with the KeePass application, so opening the DropBox folder and double-clicking/pressing on the kdb file opens KeePass/KeePassX/KeePassDroid which asks for the database password.

So far DropBox seems to be the solution to my problem. I can access the database with only 2 passwords to remember, the one for the password safe file and the other one for the DropBox account.

However, one issue with concurrent access to the same KeePass file remains. The KeePass application writes a lock file to signal that the database is being used by an instance of the application. Different instances create and delete the lock file so that the file is completely useless in the scenario, described above. The message that a lock file has been found and whether the database should be opened read-only must either be ignored or followed. When followed new entries can be added on one device only.

When you add an entry to the database on one platform this change is propagated to the other devices because of the DropBox sync. Unfortunately running instancs of KeePass do not recognize that a file has changed in the DropBox folder. Only when you add an account there and you try to save the database file you get a message that the file in the file-system has changed.
The

The solution to this issue would be that KeePass reloads the file on a regular basis as long as no entries have been added. In case a user has added an entry KeePass could do a merge of the two database files by comparing entries one by one and adding new ones to the loaded database before persisting it again.

As long as this has not been implemented the only work-around is to do some configuration on the clients so that the application/database is likely to be closed each time you switch the device.
One setting is not minimize the application window into the system tray. That keeps the window open and reminds you, when you, for example, cleanup the desktop of your business notebook in evening, to close the application. The next morning you need to reopen the database and load all entries that have been added last evening on your other devices.

A small step into the merge direction would be to notify the user when the database in the file-system has changed. If such a notification pops-up the database can be closed and re-opened again.

I have created feature requests for each of the three projects:

KeePass: 3362189 (Closed, Rejected: http://keepass.info/help/base/multiuser.html)
KeePassX: 3362184
KeePassDroid: 206

Radio presets

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:26:00 +0000

One important feature for the audio renderer is the support for presets.

I do not want to search for my mobile phone in order to select a music source when I enter the kitchen in the morning. The use-case where you turn on your analog radio and the tuning wheel is right at the position of your favorite radio station is unbeatable simple.

Therefore the audio-renderer has a list of MP3 streaming URLs where the first one will be played upon startup of the process. The channels can be switched by sending a signal to the server process:

kill -USR1 <PID of audio-renderer>

This is a good way to hijack an unused button of your router (for example the QSS button of the TP-Link WR1043ND) and write a simple script as shown here: http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/hardware.button

There is currently no support for M3U files as this is not supported by Gstreamer. The MP3 streams must be extracted manually from the M3U files.

UPnP audio renderer released

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:05:00 +0000

A very early version of my UPnP audio-renderer had been released on Gitorius https://gitorious.org/gupnp-audio-renderer (Update 2011-08-01: It has been renamed to m3player and been moved to here). It implements the necessary parts of the UPnP MediaRenderer specification.

The implementation is based on excellent frameworks like:

The initial target for the renderer is the OpenWRT platform (see previous articles about a WiFi music player). I decided to use C instead of Vala (that was a decision against Rygel) as the memory constraints are very limited and I need to save memory whereever possible. Although my C language skills are a bit rusty, I did not want to learn another language. Additionally, the usage of Vala would increase the effort to port the whole vala stuff to the OpenWRT build-system. Luckily GStreamer and GLib are already available on OpenWRT.

Update 2011-07-31: Porting Vala packages to OpenWRT seems to be less complex as many source tarballs already contain the C source, generated by the valac pre-compiler, so no valac must be available during the OpenWRT build process.

The requirements for the implementation are:

audio-only renderer (usually routers do not have displays) with a focus on MP3
small memory footprint (my router has only 32MB available)
easy porting to different platforms (not dependent to where Vala has been ported)
support for presets (which can be switched by pressing a button on the router device)

The renderer is being tested with the UPnP Control Point UPnPlay on my HTC Legend.

The next steps are:

Rounding the rough edges
Packaging for Debian/Ubuntu
Makefiles for OpenWRT
Cleaning up the codebase

Update 2011-07-31: The gupnp-audio-renderer has been renamed to m3ddity-player and it found a home here.

Compile a development version of GUPnP from HEAD

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:53:00 +0000

Follow the commands below in order to setup a local environment for working with the latest development version of the GUPNP framework.

mkdir $(pwd)/base

git clone http://git.gnome.org/browse/gssdp
cd gssdp
./autogen.sh --prefix=$(pwd)/../base --exec-prefix=$(pwd)/../base
make && make install
cd ..

git clone http://git.gnome.org/browse/gupnp

cd gupnp

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$(pwd)/../base/lib/pkgconfig ./autogen.sh --prefix=$(pwd)/../base --exec-prefix=$(pwd)/../base

cd ..

git clone http://git.gnome.org/browse/gupnp-tools
cd gupnp-tools

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$(pwd)/../base/lib/pkgconfig ./autogen.sh --prefix=$(pwd)/../base --exec-prefix=$(pwd)/../base

cd ..

Run the following commands for setting the environment to use the fresh compiled libraries instead of the OS provided ones (Empathy under Ubuntu 11.04 uses an older version of the GUPNP libraries. I ran into segmentation faults because the libraries did not match):

export PATH=$(pwd)/base/bin:$(pwd)/gupnp/examples:$PATH

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$(pwd)/base/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$(pwd)/base/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH

Now you can execute several examples or tests to check whether everything works as expected:

light-server &

gupnp-universal-cp &

The GUI application GUPnP Universal Control Point shows an entry "Kitchen Lights", which is provided by the light-server application started above.

Building a custom OpenWRT image for the TP-Link TL-WR1043ND

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 14:36:00 +0000

For my low-budget wireless music player I had to tweak OpenWRT in order to support my setup. For initial tests I decided to use the Music Player Daemon and madplay.

The following steps describe how to setup OpenWRT on the TP-Link WR1043ND. It assumes that the OpenWRT 10.03.1-rc4 firmware has already been installed, that the IP address of the router has been set to 192.168.0.111, and that an USB audio, as well as that an USB stick has been connected to the device via an USB hub.

Checkout the 10.03 branch (currently 10.03.1-rc5)
$ svn co svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/branches/backfire
$ cd backfire

Download and install all packages:
$ ./scripts/feeds update -a
$ ./scripts/feeds install -a

Run menuconfig and select a few more items so that they are available without the need to install packages first:
$ make menuconfig
-> Target Profile: TP-Link TL-WR1043ND
-> [*] Build the OpenWrt Image Builder
-> [*] Build the OpenWrt SDK
-> [*] Build the OpenWrt based Toolchain
-> [*] Image Configuration
() LAN Gateway:
(192.168.1.1) LAN Network Address: 192.168.0.111
Exit
-> Base System
<*> block-hotplug
<*> block-extroot
Exit
-> Kernel Modules
-> Filesystems
<*> kmod-fs-ext2
Exit
-> USB Support
<*> kmod-usb-core
<*> kmod-usb-audio
<*> kmod-usb-ohci
<*> kmod-usb-storage
<*> kmod-usb-storage-extras
<*> kmod-usb-usb2
Exit
-> Sound
mpd
mpc
madplay
Exit
Exit

On quad core machines you can run make with 5 parallel jobs:
$ make -j 5

Install the new image by running the following commands:
$ telnet 192.168.0.111
$ scp USER@HOST:HOME/workspaces/openwrt/backfire/bin/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin .
$ cd /tmp
$ mtd -r write openwrt-ar71xx-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin firmware

Because WLAN will not be configured after flashing a new image, you need a cable connection.
After the reboot is finished you can connect to the device like this:
$ telnet 192.168.0.111

Because mpd and madplay consume more space than the router has available on its root partition, the extroot feature must be enabled. Enable extroot for the USB stick by modifiying fstab:
$ vi /etc/config/fstab
================================
config mount
option target /overlay
option device /dev/sda1
option fstype ext2
option options rw,sync
option enabled 1
option enabled_fsck 0
================================

Reboot the device again so that the extroot overlay becomes available:
$ reboot

Connect to the device again:
$ telnet 192.168.0.111

I have setup an Apache on my desktop machine in order to easily provide the packages to the device. For using the local HTTP server, opkg must be configured like this (my desktop machine has IP 192.168.0.17):
$ vi /etc/opkg.conf
================================
src/gz packages http://192.168.0.17/packages
...
================================

When this is done you can update the package list:

$ opkg update

Now the packages mpd, mpc, and madplay can be installed:
$ opkg install mpd mpc madplay

The mpd daemon needs some special folder setup:
$ mkdir -p ~/.mpd/playlists

Make sure mpd starts when the device boots up by adding the follownig line to rc.local:
$ vi /etc/rc.local
================================

mpd /etc/mpd.conf

================================

In oder to disconnect the wired LAN connection, you need to setup WLAN:
$ vi /etc/config/wireless

Change the following entries:

================================

config wifi-device radio0
...
# REMOVE THIS LINE TO ENABLE WIFI:
#option disabled 1

config wifi-iface
...
option mode sta # Client mode
option ssid mySSID # Your SSID
option encryption psk2 # WPA-PSK2
option key 12345678901234567890 # Your network key
================================

Configure DHCP so that the device asks the DHCP server for an IP address:
$ vi /etc/config/network

Change the lan interface (eth0.1) like this:

================================

config 'interface' 'lan'
option 'ifname' 'eth0.1'
option 'proto' 'dhcp'
================================

Now you can start WiFi like this:
$ wifi up

After that you can unplug the LAN cable. The router should be connected to your WLAN and it should acquire an IP address from your local network DHCP server. Make sure that you do not gave a MAC Filter enabled in case it does not work ;)

For an intial test you can updload a MP3 file to the device:
$ scp USER@HOST:HOME/test.mp3 /tmp

With madplay the MP3 can be played like this:
$ madplay /tmp/test.mp3

With the following script running on your desktop machine you can make the Music Play Daemon play a Shoutcast audio stream:
$ export MPD_HOST=192.168.0.111
$ mpc add http://89.179.179.5:8040
$ mpc play

Low-budget WiFi Music Player

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 11:17:00 +0000

After searching the net for quite a while I could not find a pure wireless music player for small money. In case
you want to equip multiple rooms in your house with a music player it will cost you a lot of money. All products
on the market come with a lot of features, of which most are not necessary.

The following links show interesting hacks on how to build your own WiFi music player based on OpenWRT:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-your-own-Wifi-radio/
http://robhardwick.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/3/
http://devices.natetrue.com/musicap/
http://neophob.com/2008/02/openwrt-mp3-player-screenshots/
http://www.thilloy.com/integrations/musicplayer.html
http://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/10/building-a-wifi-radio-part-1-introduction/
http://blog.josefsson.org/2007/09/25/home-audio-server/
Using routers as a platform is a very good choice as they produced in high volume and thus the price for the
hardware can be very low. Every platform evaluation board is much more expensive, especially when you
want to have WiFI connectivity (> EURO 150). Those evaluation boards or development kits are produced
in very small volume and thus the price is not competitive.

I decided to use a router as the base for my player. My current setup is this:
TP-Link TL-WR1043ND: EUR 43,59
3D-Sound USB-Audio: EUR 7,48
Delock HUB USB 2.0 extern 4 Port: EUR 12,49
32MB USB Stick: EUR 3,00 (for a 1GB Stick) 
This makes EUR 66,56 for the music player without loud-speakers. I guess the price can be further reduced
because the sound-card was more expensive than expected (additional shipping costs), and there are much
cheaper USB Hubs available, but this one I already had around.
The router TP-Link TL-WR1043ND is the TP-Link flagship consumer product, choosing another (maybe a
used one) one where you can easily solder a USB port, would also do.

For the second version of the music player I expect the price to drop around EUR 30.

GUPNP: Failed to get SCPD: Cannot resolve hostname ((null))

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 16:23:00 +0000

The following message occurs when the tag of the root device description is empty when trying to autoconnect actions:

** (process:25888): WARNING **: Failed to get SCPD: Cannot resolve hostname ((null))

Changing it to http://localhost fixes the issue.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root xmlns="urn:schemas-upnp-org:device-1-0">
<specVersion>
<major>1</major>
<minor>0</minor>
</specVersion>
<URLBase>http://localhost</URLBase>
<device>

</device>
</root>

The message is a bit misleading. I was first trying to find an issue with my DNS configuration.

Compiling GUPnP on Ubuntu 11.04

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:55:00 +0000

Because the GUPnP stack is lacking some documentation I describe my experiences with getting it complied under Ubuntu 11.04.
The commands will setup an environment that does not interfere with the Ubuntu provided packages, which are older than the ones compiled here. The library files will be installed under the location: ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp

Download:
mkdir -p ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp
cd ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp
wget -O - http://gupnp.org/sites/all/files/sources/gupnp-igd-0.1.11.tar.gz | tar xvfz -
wget -O - http://gupnp.org/sites/all/files/sources/gupnp-0.16.1.tar.gz | tar xvfz -
wget -O - http://gupnp.org/sites/all/files/sources/gupnp-igd-0.1.10.tar.gz | tar xvfz -
wget -O - http://gupnp.org/sites/all/files/sources/gupnp-tools-0.8.3.tar.gz | tar xvfz -
wget -O - http://gupnp.org/sites/all/files/sources/gupnp-dlna-0.6.1.tar.gz | tar xvfz -
wget -O - http://gupnp.org/sites/all/files/sources/gupnp-av-0.8.0.tar.gz | tar xvfz -

wget -O - http://gupnp.org/sites/all/files/sources/gssdp-0.10.0.tar.gz | tar xvfz -

wget -O - http://gupnp.org/sites/all/files/sources/gupnp-vala-0.8.0.tar.gz | tar xvfz -

Prerequisites:
$ sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-dev uuid-dev libsoup2.4-dev libxml2-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev gtk+3.0 libgtk-3-dev valac-0.12 libgee-dev libgconf2-dev

Compilation:

cd gssdp-0.10.0

./configure --prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp --exec-prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp
gssdp-0.10.0$ make && make install

cd ../gupnp-0.16.1
gupnp-0.16.1$ PKG_CONFIG_PATH=~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp/gssdp-0.10.0 ./configure --prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp --exec-prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp
make && make install

cd ../gupnp-av-0.8.0
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp/gupnp-0.16.1 ./configure --prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp --exec-prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp
gupnp-av-0.8.0$ make && make install

cd ../gupnp-dlna-0.6.1
./configure --prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp --exec-prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp
make && make install

cd ../gupnp-igd-0.1.11

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp/gupnp-0.16.1 ./configure --prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp --exec-prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp

make && make install

cd ../gupnp-tools-0.8.3

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp/gupnp-0.16.1 ./configure --prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp --exec-prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp

make && make install

cd ../gupnp-vala-0.8.3

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp/gssdp-0.10.0 ./configure --prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp --exec-prefix ~/workspaces/openwrt/upnp

make && make install

The gupnp-media-renderer (version 0.1) is out of scope here as it is not maintained anymore. The code has been integrated into Rygel.

VirtualBox 4.0.2 on Ubuntu 11.04

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Sun, 29 May 2011 11:55:00 +0000

After an update to Ubuntu 11.04 VirtualBox was not running anymore. Startup fails with a hint that the kernel modules exited in error and that I should use DKMS to reconfigure the kernel module.

Running the vboxdrv setup command also led to an error:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
[sudo] password for desktop:
* Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules * done.
* Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules * done.
* Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 2.6.38-8-generic (x86_64)
Consult the make.log in the build directory
/var/lib/dkms/vboxhost/4.0.2/build/ for more information.
* Failed, trying without DKMS
* Recompiling VirtualBox kernel modules
* Look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out what went wrong

The log file indicates that a header file was missing:

less /var/lib/dkms/vboxhost/4.0.2/build/make.log
...
fatal error: linux/autoconf.h: No such file or directory
...

The following link led me to the solution (workaround):
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=38584

...
ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/generated/autoconf.h /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/linux/autoconf.h
...

After the link has been created, the vboxdrv setup command just ran fine:

micha@micha-desktop:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
* Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules * done.
* Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules * done.
* Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS * done.
* Starting VirtualBox kernel modules * done.

New version of smpppd-web

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 04:46:00 +0000

The original versions of smppd-web by Christopher Hofmann neither support adding and removing links on the fly nor do they support dial-on-demand ISDN interfaces. That is the reason why I extended the original codebase by these features.
Further more the users for which I developed the software are german speaking only so that gettext support was also an important feature. Initially I added support for german and english languages.

As I'm not a SuSE user in general, the new version probably does not follow the SuSE directory guidelines and it does not come packaged as a RPM. Therefore it would be great if someone with SuSE RPM packaging know-how would create a successor RPM package out of Christopher's original version. Or even better Christopher packages a new version for OpenSuSE ;)

Please see the README in the tarball for more information.

Update 20060113: Christopher Hofmann was so kind to create a RPM for OpenSuSE 10.0 and promised to feed it into OpenSuSE 10.1: smpppd-web.spec

Fri Jan 13 2006 cwh@suse.de

  version 3.00

- now supports adding and removing links on the fly

- support dial-on-demand interfaces

- supports multiple languages with gettext (currently included is

  german and english)

Creating an ISDN Gateway with SuSE 9.3

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 05:31:00 +0000

In Germany flatrates are available for DSL only, so people, living in areas where DSL is not available, have to pay expensive time based fees for slowly connecting to the Internet. The problem is that M$ Windows and many of the installed tools are known for initiating internet connections although the user did not ask them to do so. Therefore it is crucial to reliably disconnect the ISDN line so that those unwanted connection attempts will not succeed. ISDN routers, which might be of help here, are hard to find nowadays and do not offer the comfort as new DSL routers do.

A solution should fulfill the following additional requirements:

provide secure internet access
provide a secure way to do remote administration
provide centralized storage
provide a Wiki for documentation
should also be usable as a client machine

After doing some investigation I found the following possible solutions:

Tools on a Windows server
Linux Diskless Router based solution
Scripts from a Windows client executed on the Linux Server
Linux server with a web based approach

The first category solutions, for example Internet Remote Control, fall short because the Windows machine is connected directly to the Internet and thus vulnerable to all kind of attacks (Who really trusts the Windows XP firewall?).

With software from the second class it is not possible to provide centralized storage via Samba. I know that this is by far the most secure way but it would mean booting another machine with no other purpose than Internet access.

The third and fourth solution can be deployed together on one Linux server machine, which can also be used as a desktop. This machine provides secure Internet access via ISDN and at the same time centralized storage to the Windows clients on the network. The script based solution has one deficiency, it does not allow continous feedback on the connection state of the ISDN interface. Therefore the last solution is by far the one with the greatest flexibility and has been chosen to build a final solution.

The machine has been installed with SuSE Linux 9.3 as a desktop machine. The following services have been enabled:

Apache2
Samba
SSH

The ddclient package is used to update dyndns.org records when the ISDN connection is established. This allows easy remote administration, as the IP address gets updated automatically.

As a little gimmick I added the script xsend.py from the xmpppy project which sends a message with the ippp0 configuration to my Jabber account so that I get notified when the machine is connected to the Internet.

Both scripts xsend.py and ddclient are executed when the connection is established. This is done by the script /etc/ppp/ip-up.local which gets called by the ISDN stack upon connection establishment.

The excellent tool smpppd and smpppd-web is used to manage the ISDN connections.

Setting up a free Microsoft C++ compile environment on Windows XP

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Rumpf) — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:43:00 +0000

This is a guide on how to install a free Microsoft C++ development environment on Windows XP SP2. The Detours 1.5 package is used as an example in this guide. When following the steps outlined below you will be able to compile the Detours package and run the Detours examples.

At the beginning the following packages need to be downloaded and installed. NOTE: Do not use the default install folder as they contain spaces in folder names, instead use similar short folder names as shown in the list below.

Platform SDK XP SP2 (236MB):
c:\msdev\platsdk
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package (23MB)
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 (106MB):
c:\msdev\dotnsdk
Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 (31MB):
c:\msdev\vc2003
Detours 1.5 (0.5MB):
c:\msdev\detours

The following batch script can be used to initialize the environment (Store the batch file under c:\msdev\setenv.cmd):

@echo offecho "Setting M$ C++ environment..."
call c:\msdev\dotnsdk\v1.1\Bin\sdkvars.bat
call c:\msdev\platsdk\SetEnv.bat
call c:\msdev\vc2003\vcvars32.bat
set path=c:\msdev\tools;%path%

Unfortunately there are additional tools bscmake.exe and lib.exe that are missing from the packages downloaded and installed before.
The bscmake.exe tool is provided only in the purchased version of Visual Studio. It is responsible for creating class browser files that are read by Visual Studio. The fake bscmake.exe utility that can be downloaded from this page makes nmake believe that the class browse information generation was successful so that the build process continues.
The second tool is lib.exe which is used for creating lib files from dynamic link libraries. The functionality of this tool is also present in the Microsoft linker with the following command line switch: link.exe /lib. To simulate the lib.exe utility create a batch file lib.cmd with the following content:

@echo off
if "%1" == "" goto nocmd
echo %* > cmdline.tmp
link /lib @cmdline.tmp
del cmdline.tmp
goto end
:nocmd
link /lib
:end

Put both tools into a folder c:\msdev\tools which has already been included in the PATH variable settings above.

Now everything should be ready to compile the Detours example project. Type the following commands to start the build process:

cmd /K cd /D c:\msdev && setenv.cmd
cd detours\src
set CFLAGS=/nologo /DDEBUG /DWIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN /W4 /WX /Zi \
/FR "/Fd$(LIBD)\detours.pdb" /MTd /Gy /Gs /Gi- /Gm- /Zl /O \
-D_WIN32_WINNT=0x403 /wd4733
nmake /E
REM Wait for the DLL compile to complete
set CFLAGS=
cd ..\samples
nmake

After a successful completion you can check whether the compile was successful by starting the logging demon example provided by the Detours package with the script Test.bat in the folder samples\syelog. This batch script will start the logging demon and a test application that sends some logging messages to the demon. NOTE: You might need to exclude these applications from the Windows XP Firewall when the firewall warning message pops-up.

This guide has been derived from the following references that cover the same topic of a free C++ compile environment but for different projects. If you want to compile other projects and are missing some build tools you should have a look at the references below as they might already explain where to get those tools from.

Symbian C++ Development FAQ: FAQ-1099 BSCMake.exe (Link no longer available)
Building Tcl with the free VC++ toolkit
MaxDB - MS C++ Toolkit (Link no longer available)
Installing WxWin For MS Free Tools&lt
Free MSVC tools + Activestate to compile CPAN Modules