linux

Did I missed the old times when installing Linux on a laptop was a bit tricky? I seems so since installing the latest Ubuntu (10.10 Maverick Meerkat) on a Dell Latitude E6410 (with Nvidia graphics card) was by no means a breeze. Update 20100115: I summarized/updated all the hardware part in a separate article, check for updates. Installation All started when, full of confidence, I booted the usb stick with the Linux install expecting everything to work as a charm and ended up staring at a black screen....

The reason why I haven’t wrote much here on the blog lately is that since I’ve got my android phone I’ve spent most of the free time tinkering with it. And by tinkering I mean developing simple applications and learning the framework. From my perspective spending a few hours coding something which in the end makes a simple (and some might say stupid) blink on the screen is way more entertaining than playing AngryBirds or Teeter....

As always I’ve been waiting with curiosity the new Ubuntu 10.10 release which this year was auspiciously launched on 10.10.10. I had also heard some rumors about the new netbook “Unity” interface so I’ve decided to give it a try. I own since a few years a Acer Aspire One which despite the very slow SSD drive I still use for bedtime book reading, watching some internet recorded tv shows (mainly envoyee special) and morning news reading....

I’ve been running qmail based mail servers for years. And you can imagine how many if I am planning this migration from at least 3 years. To be very honest qmail does a very very good job. This is the reason it took so much time to actually do it. In fact qmail has only one problem: it’s stuck in the past. If you want to install something new: say SPF of DKIM you need to patch, recompile....

As a pidgin user I am used at not expecting many fancy things but one of the features I’ve wished for some time is a plugin which updates the status automatically to the last entry in a RSS feed. As an example I’d like to update the status to the last post on my blog. So, even if I don’t like perl too much here is a simple plugin which does just that....

Shooting a photo and the imediately seeing it on a large monitor is a feature I’ve always wished. I don’t say live view on a display but instant copy and display would suffice. And actually, as I found out, it’s quite easy to achieve on Ubuntu Linux (10.04) with a Canon D450. Required software Make sure gphoto2 and geeqie (former gqview) is installed. An apt will do the trick: sudo apt-get install gphoto2 geeqie Scripts I’ve written 2 scripts....

This is a small example on how you can get the MAC address in C both in Linux and Windows. The example searches in fact the MAC address corresponding to a given IP address and returns it. /* * mac.cpp * Created on: May 25, 2010 * Author: len */ #ifdef WIN32 #include <stdio.h> #include <Windows.h> #include <Iphlpapi.h> #include <Assert.h> #pragma comment(lib, "iphlpapi.lib") /** * @return the mac address of the interface with the given ip */ char* getMAC(const char *ip){ PIP_ADAPTER_INFO AdapterInfo; DWORD dwBufLen = sizeof(AdapterInfo); char *mac_addr = (char*)malloc(17); AdapterInfo = (IP_ADAPTER_INFO *) malloc(sizeof(IP_ADAPTER_INFO)); if (AdapterInfo == NULL) { printf("Error allocating memory needed to call GetAdaptersinfo\n"); return NULL; } // Make an initial call to GetAdaptersInfo to get the necessary size into the dwBufLen variable if (GetAdaptersInfo(AdapterInfo, &dwBufLen) == ERROR_BUFFER_OVERFLOW) { FREE(AdapterInfo); AdapterInfo = (IP_ADAPTER_INFO *) malloc(dwBufLen); if (AdapterInfo == NULL) { printf("Error allocating memory needed to call GetAdaptersinfo\n"); return NULL; } } if (GetAdaptersInfo(AdapterInfo, &dwBufLen) == NO_ERROR) { PIP_ADAPTER_INFO pAdapterInfo = AdapterInfo;// Contains pointer to current adapter info do { sprintf(mac_addr, "%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X", pAdapterInfo->Address[0], pAdapterInfo->Address[1], pAdapterInfo->Address[2], pAdapterInfo->Address[3], pAdapterInfo->Address[4], pAdapterInfo->Address[5]); printf("Address: %s, mac: %s", pAdapterInfo->IpAddressList....

Read track via USB gpsbabel -t -w -i m241 -f /dev/ttyUSB0 -o gpx -F test.gpx Read track via Bluetooth Find mac: hcitool scan Scanning ... 00:1B:C1:05:XX:XX HOLUX_M-241 Bind to a serial port in /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf rfcomm4 { bind yes; device 00:1B:C1:05:XX:XX; channel 1; comment "Serial Port"; } Connect the serial port: rfcomm connect 4 read track: gpsbabel -t -w -i m241 -f /dev/rfcomm4 -o gpx -F test.gpx

There was not much I expected from the new ubuntu Lucid Lynx as I was happy enough with the existing version already. But I a good tradition and because I woke up at 8:30 this Saturday I decided to go ahead and install it on my Dell D820. The install The install went smoothly, everything was detected, installed the upgrades, the nvidia drivers and some day to day packages: mozilla-thunderbird, pidgin, emacs....

Searching for a way to encrypt your files or filesystem on Linux can be an overwhelming choice. At a simple search you find different terms and solutions such as: encfs, dm-crypt, truecrypt, loopback crypt, aespipe, LUKS, etc. The answer is obviously historical. There are a lot of solutions some of them deprecated. I remember a few years ago I solved a similar problem using a tool (can’t remember which) which I was unable to find 2 years later thus remaining with a large file and lost data....