Alban's blog

Rivendell 1.7.0 packages for debian and ubuntu

alban — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:56:04 +0000

Fred Gleason team released Rivendell 1.7.0 on monday, Debian and Ubuntu packages are now updated.

Please follow the quick start guide for your first Rivendell installation.

As usual, you can find on debian.tryphon.org :

Debian packages : for lenny, squeeze or unstable
Ubuntu packages : for hardy, jaunty and karmic
both i386 and amd64 packages

Check if selected date is correct with cucumber

alban — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:04:05 +0000

The default web steps provided by cucumber provide a way to check the content of a text field : the "..." field should contain "...", but how to check if the date selected by default in a form is correct ?

To describe some of the features of the coming PigeBox web interface, we needed something like : the "..." datetime should contain "17:00:00".

Even if webrat doesn’t provide the builtin method to “read” a Rails datetime select, this piece of code adds the method selected_datetime to webrate scope.

With this small webrat extension, the following step becomes possible :

Then /^the "([^\"]*)" datetime should contain "([^\"]*)"$/ do |field, value|
  selected_datetime(:from => field).should == Time.parse(value)
end

In our case, it makes possible this kind of scenario :

  Scenario: Create a chunk with a single label
    Given a label exists with timestamp: "17:00:00"
    And that label is selected
    When I follow "Nouvel extrait à partir de ce repère"
    Then I should be on the new chunk page
    And the "Horaire de début" datetime should contain "17:00:00"
    And the "Horaire de fin" datetime should contain "17:00:00"

The complete gist is available.

Rivendell 1.6.0 packages for debian and ubuntu (with karmic support)

alban — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:51:17 +0000

The Rivendell development team released Rivendell 1.6.0 last thursday, Debian and Ubuntu packages are now updated.

For Ubuntu Karmic users, the distribution is now supported. Choose the right source on debian.tryphon.org.

Please follow the quick start guide for your first Rivendell installation.

As usual, you can find on debian.tryphon.org :

Debian packages : for lenny, squeeze or unstable
Ubuntu packages : for hardy, jaunty and karmic
both i386 and amd64 packages

RadiOxfam : la radio éphémère qui prend le train

alban — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:11:08 +0000

850 personnes de France, de Grande Bretagne, d’Espagne, d’Irlande, de Belgique embarquent vendredi midi à Bruxelles Midi dans un train pour Copenhague.

Mise en oeuvre par Oxfam, RadiOxfam sera la radio éphémère du périple. Au programme : débats, interviews évidemment autour du climat mais aussi sur les implications sociales que cela implique.

Même si nous ne serons que 5 à bord du train, toute l’équipe d’Autres(M)Ondes (et Tryphon) s’activent pour préparer ces 72 heures : studio dans le wagon restaurant durant les 26 heures de voyages, diffusion des programmes dans le train, mise en ligne des programmes sur le site dès notre arrivée à Copenhague, …

Pour ne rien rater de ces 3 jours d’une radio pas comme les autres, abonnez-vous au podcast de RadiOxfam. Les prochains sons dès vendredi matin 9 heures ! A suivre aussi sur Twitter : @radioxfam.

Salon Le Radio, destination Libre

alban — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:57:21 +0000

A partir de demain, nous serons parmi les visiteurs du salon SIEL – SATIS – LE RADIO. Pour Florent et moi, c’est l’occasion de voir ce qui se fait de neuf dans le monde de la radio.

Evidemment, ça n’est pas l’endroit où l’on croisera une myriade de logiciels libres … Mais c’est une manière pour nous de rencontrer pas mal de gens et de tester justement nos projets radio basés sur des solutions libres, histoire de consolider les premiers retours de notre étude de marché en cours.

Radio Amazigh, Babel et logiciels libres

alban — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:24:55 +0000

Avec toute l’équipe d’Autres(M)Ondes, nous réalisons ce soir une radio éphémère consacrée à Amazigh Kateb et son nouvel album Marchez Noir. Au programme, direct à partir du 18h depuis notre bar préféré : le Babel à Ménilmontant.

Une soirée bien sympathique que vous pourrez suivre sur le net en Ogg/Vorbis. Pour ceux qui sont dans le quartier, n’hésitez pas. Et si les logiciels libres vous intéressent dans le monde de la radio, venez nous dire bonjour

First “public” release for alsa-backup

alban — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:45:00 +0000

For a long time, we’re using continuous recording tools to record our radio broadcasts. Many of these tools were homemade and alsa-backup is the latest project of this “serie” (after jack-backup and just-record).

alsa-backup can :

record several channels,
change record file according your naming policy (… without a blank),
run as daemon,
log into syslog,
stop record and retry after errors

And many other features are coming This piece of Ruby code is more flexible than just-record. It uses the awesome ruby-ffi library which allows to use C libraries with few lines of ruby code.

alsa-backup is available as debian/ubuntu packages on Tryphon’s debian repository. Source files are available in GitHub alsa-backup repository.

Use a M-Audio Delta 66 Rev E with alsa

alban — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:32:48 +0000

I’ve installed this week a Rivendell station with a M-Audio Delta 66 Rev E sound card. As experienced in 2008, the alsa ice1712 driver can’t be loaded with (some ?) Delta 66 Rev E :

[   11.605252] invalid CS8427 signature 0x0: let me try again...
[   11.606638] unable to find CS8427 signature (expected 0x71, read 0x0),
[   11.606687]    initialization is not completed
[   11.606732] CS8427 initialization failed
[   11.606784] ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:05:01.0 disabled
[   11.606790] ICE1712: probe of 0000:05:01.0 failed with error -14

Same problem occurs with alsa 1.0.17 on lenny or 1.0.18 on jaunty.

Several tips are available in forums … but the only way I found to use the card is to patch (again) the alsa driver to disable the cs8427 initialisation.

But this time, here are all the required resources to make your Delta 66 Rev E work with alsa :

Resources

patch to disable cs8427 initialisation for Delta 66 Rev E
Lenny packages (alsa source and modules)
Jaunty packages (alsa source and modules)

The complete recipe under debian or ubuntu

1. Install alsa driver package source :

apt-get source alsa-driver
sudo apt-get build-dep alsa-driver
cd alsa-driver-xyz

2. Install the patch

wget -O debian/patches/disable_spdif_delta66e.patch \
http://blog.tryphon.org/alban/media/2009-09-20-disable_spdif_delta66e.patch
echo disable_spdif_delta66e.patch >> debian/patches/series

3. Update changelog and make local the release

dch --local delta66e "Skip Delta 66 E spdif init"

4. Build package

dpkg-buildpackage

5. Install the built alsa-source package

cd .. ; dpkg -i alsa-source-xyzdelta66e1_all.deb

6. Build and install modules

module-assistant a-i alsa

Thanks to fredux from Radio Campus Bruxelles and their Ubuntu jaunty with another Delta 66.

First steps to Rivendell … 5 years ago

alban — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:54:28 +0000

1. First email

On 18 August 2004 (01:24 AM) my first mail to Fred Gleason, my first mail about Rivendell :

Hello Fred,
After your email last evening, I downloaded the Rivendell source files and started my tests.
I didn’t experience serious problems to compile libradio and rivendell tools. I can send you some of my notes about it (a bad version of gpio.h into libradio, etc ..). Rivendell was installed successfull yesterday evening (it was late). I configured mysql and continued the test this evening. Few small

problems, no serious ones. Some of the error messages don’t give enough information. But with the sources .. and strace, I found the solutions (/var/snd is harcoded into rdlibrary for instance .. and I believed it was read in to rd.conf.  I can send you my notes.
The jack support seems to work fine .. but rdlibrary stays silenced and rdairplay crashs at start (I’ve got the gdb trace if you want). I suppose that I have a configuration problem with the internal card/port settings (audio port ?). I didn’t find into rdadmin menus to edit the audio ports (like the

website screenshot). I found related sources (something about matrixes, etc ..). What can be the solution ?
I noted that the sound formats are wav and mp3 .. we work with flac and ogg (but the music library is still mostly in mp3). I looked quickly the code about the audio format (RWaveFile, rdimport, etc ..). But I didn’t find a TODO or planned features in the web site. Do you think about a flac and ogg support ?
Rivendell seems to be a nice application. It’s a great work. What’s its story ? Did you find contributors since the license change ? I didn’t find details of the development activities (cvs repository, mailing-lists, etc ..).
Thanks so much for your work.

2. First sound

After 3 days, a first sound in Rivendell :

3. First debian package release

On 24 August 2004, the Rivendell debian package is created.

4. First live with Rivendell

On 8 September 2004, Rivendell is on air for 10 days :

@Fred: thanks

Rivendell 1.5.2 packages for debian and ubuntu (with jaunty support)

alban — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:48:35 +0000

Rivendell 1.5.2 has been released yesterday, Debian and Ubuntu packages have been updated this night.

Good news for Ubuntu Jaunty users : daemons failures are resolved. Thanks to Ayoli for the trace

Please follow the quick start guide for your first Rivendell installation.

As usual, you can find on debian.tryphon.org :

Debian packages : for lenny, squeeze or unstable
Ubuntu packages : for hardy, intreprid and jaunty
both i386 and amd64 packages