KDE 4.5.4 for Solaris 11

Hey, a couple of hours after the official release we published the binary packages of KDE 4.5.4 built on S11 Express.
A dedicated person might be able to fit them to OpenIndiana as well, but it'll be non trivial task. OTOH they should build just fine from the sources.

No screenshot today as I did not have the time to install them.

KDE 4.6 beta1 for Solaris

A few hours ago, KDE 4.6.beta1 was released. The kde4-solaris project was among the first to provide binary packages, you can get them from the kde4-solaris IPS repository. The packages were built on Solaris 11 Express, I'd expect them to be installable on OpenIndiana as well. Check [ade]'s blog for more.

Update: It looks like pkgbuild is adding the build number of the build machine into the dependencies. This blocks install on OI, as the dependency cannot be met then. We're working on a solution.

40%

I'd never say this is possible, but it happened today. The local elections are over now and Klidné město, the non-political union of people fed up by current state of affairs in Říčany, now owns 10 posts out of 21! We gained almost 40 % of the votes! Unless the remaining 5 parties show extreme disgrace towards the will of the general public, we're going to have the mayor too.
Heck, even our last candidate got by far more votes than any other party's candidate.

Now the hard work starts!

(I'm not a candidate, just a regular member of the party, sometimes unhappy with the affairs (google me))

Pirate attack

The elections are quickly approaching and one cannot make a step without being attacked by political party ads or promoters.

Yesterday I was attacked by the pirate party's chief himself:

KDE 4.5.2 for OpenSolaris & friends

Thanks to Adriaan who did all the work, the KDE 4.5.2 binary packages for OpenSolaris and other compatible systems are available.
The repo now uses a Linux port of depotd, no VirtualBox involved, so once again the downloads should be smooth. (thanks to Adriaan, again)

The repo:
http://solaris.bionicmutton.org:10101
The announcement:
http://blogs.fsfe.org/adridg/?p=992
The upstream announcement:
http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.5.2.php

pathetic google

This Monday (Oct 4) I found in my mailbox a letter from Google. They sent me an AdWords voucher for 1000 CZK (~50$). How nice. But there is a little catch.
The voucher is only worth 750 CZK if used after September 30 ...
*uckers...

Train delay

This morning my train was delayed by about 30 minutes because the train ahead of us ran over some stupid guy at Horní Měcholupy. People tend to cross the rails there as going around adds about 200 meters to the 20 meters distance to the bus station. I do it myself too.

On the photo below you can see a stream of water  used by the firemen to clean up the mess.

EKB-UCOS3-EVM

Thanks to hackaday.com I learned about a nice promo action at TI. The EKB-UCOS3-EVM - Stellaris Robotic Evaluation Board is a nice toy featuring MicroSD slot, USB host and device connectors, I2C audio with a speaker, ethernet connector (!), 96×6 OLED display, a pair of motors, optosensors and bump detectors, all driven by the LM3S9B92 microcontroller.
This uC is ARM Cortex M3 operating at up to 80 MHz, with 256 kB flash, 96 kB SRAM, a 32-ch DMA, and lots of other shortcuts. It comes with a proprietary RTOS preloaded but the chip is capable of going the opensource way too.

All that for $25 including shipping. Sounded too good to be true, but I ordered nevertheless :-)

Bycicle day in Říčany

Few days ago I got a replacement for my stolen bike. Although not as new and shiny :-), I was able to join the rest of my family and together with another 30 people take part in the annual bycicle day in Říčany. The two policemen accompanying us on their bycicles were kind enough to stop the traffic at some of the busier streets so we did not have to worry too much about the kids.

The organizer, Ekocentrum Říčany, has a bunch of photos from the event on their website.

Printformer

Were you wondering what happened to the non-reusable parts of the deceased Epson Stylus Color 580 printer?

They were reused. Sort of.

Behold, the printformer!

(the half-functional LED torch wasn't part of the printer, we found it on the sidewalk one day)

KDE4 on OpenIndiana

OpenIndiana, the spork of OpenSolaris just released the first iso images, so I grabbed one and gave it a go inside VirtualBox.
It booted just fine so I added the KDE4 publisher and tried to pkg install KDEgdm-integration - the basic KDE desktop...

... and it went just fine. There were many dependencies that were downloaded from opensolaris.org during the process. I haven't really investigated whether it's because the OI team hasn't sporked them yet or if there was some other problem.

After a logout I was able to login to a KDE 4.5.1 session and it did not feel much different from one in OpenSolaris.

Mandriva is dying

Over the past few days I've seen too many "I'm leaving" messages on the Cooker mailing list. salem, caio, olavo, blino, dams, teuf, helio, arthur, boiko, fcrozat, pterjan and now neoclust. As Fabrice Facorat put it:

- install team : empty
- kde team : empty
- gnome team : nearly
- mandriva tools : ??? cut at least by half

Sorry, except if Mandriva is just willing to be a repackaging distro,
Mandriva as a true distro is dead !

It's quite sad to see the best KDE distro vanishing ...


UPDATE: See bug #60936 - Too many people leaving. In comment #11 there's a statement from the management. But I'm quite sceptical, really. You cannot restart a distro without the people...

Bike stolen

I had my bike stolen about two weeks ago.
May the thief burn in a lake of lava or, alternatively, end up behind this door of Říčany's police station:

I spent about three hours waiting next to that door before I could make a statement about the hyenous crime. The police is definitely not the most efficient part of the country.

Treasure hunt in Voděrádky

While returning from the local market with some vegetables, cheese and sausages, we noticed a notice promoting an event in a nearby village.

Since we did not have any fixed plans for the afternoon and because I realized we haven't really visited Voděrádky since we moved, there was nothing to think about.
It turned out to be the classical fairytale-popculture-quiz. There were about fifteen standpoints where local grownups and teenagers dressed as fairytale characters were giving questions or asked us to perform something based on popular czech fairytales before we could move on to another standpoint.

We do not have a TV so some of it was quite difficult :-) Joining another group really helped us to get through.

This is the last stage. The tent on the left contained  the treasure, while the rightmost one contained tombola prizes. We were lucky enough to win a musical toy for the little sister there.

The end. 50 minutes to walk back home.

Argiope bruennichi

We met this beautiful spider at the Votočnice meadow near Sázava. Although it looks dangerous it is harmless. It used to live around the mediterranean but it's spreading rapidly throughout the world.

KDE 4.5.0 & Korona for OpenSolaris

The latest and greatest stable release of KDE4 is again available as IPS binary packages at the usual place (and the usual mirror in case you hit problems downloading).
Since 4.4.5, many improvements were done in terms of packaging correctness (dependencies, linking), thanks to hnhn's adaptation of alanc's check-deps script.
Also Qt was updated to 4.6.3, Amarok to 2.3.1, Koffice to 2.2.1, as well as few other KDE dependencies.
Last but not least, kdel10n-* packages are present, providing support for 55 languages.
The upstream changes are best described in the KDE 4.5.0 announcement.

The showcase of the kde-solaris project, Korona 4.5.0, combining the powers of the late OpenSolaris b134 and KDE 4.5.0 has just been uploaded and should become available in a few hours at http://genunix.org. As a small improvement, the nepomuk stuff is disabled there and akonadi appetite has been minimized. I had to do this otherwise desktop metadata would fill the $HOME, which lead to crashes. (Note that konversation was unintentionally ommited from the live cd, sorry.)

A day in Náměšť

We visited Náměšť nad Oslavou as there was a folk music festival with many collateral activities suitable for children.

Among other things we also visited the hydroelectric power at the nearby Dalešická přehrada. It's run by the sponsor of the festival, the monopolistic ČEZ, often accused of influencing politics in this country. Unfortunately for us, the guide spent too much time explaining us what political parties are wrong for the country (and therefore for ČEZ), so we had to skip the most interesting bottom levels of the plant in order to not miss the boat ride.

Finally, at the end of the day, we came across this neat waste-water treatment plant of Náměšť:

KDE 4.5 RC3

the binary packages of KDE 4.5 RC3 are available at http://solaris.bionicmutton.org:10001
Originally I did not want to publish them, because I wasn't able to even log in, but then I figured out it was because of some Qt optimizations recently put back. With the older Qt build all works just fine, so here you are:

Some moody pics from Greece :-)

KDE 4.5 RC2 on OpenSolaris

Just some screenshots:

It feels much much snappier than KDE 4.4.5, perhaps because it's running on Qt 4.6.3, but the dbus issue is still present.

Epson Stylus Color 580

Would you expect an inkjet printer that spent 8 years unplugged in a shelf to just work?
Yeah, correct, no way.

I seemed to work correctly, with the minor detail that there was nothing printed on the paper. I put in a replacement black ink cartridge, but there was change, even after running several head cleaning routines. Suspecting clogged nozzles, I followed the guide at http://www.mk-stuff.de/artikel/epson_printhead_repair,

 and even blown air through the ink needles,

but it did not help either.

Finally, in the hope Epson keeps some secrets for their repairmen, I downloaded the Epson Service Manual

and, after getting used to previously unseen levels of English, went through the Troubleshooting section. I verified the nozzles aren't clogged, there are no airlocks, and ink is passing just fine.

So there remains a bug in the print head itself or the motherboard. For both cases the Manual suggests replacing them with spare parts :-(

I'll disassemble the printer and scavenge reusable parts, like the stepper motors and PSU.
So long, Epson, and thanks for all the fish!

Running two IPS servers on the same machine

We have an IPS server providing the KDE packages for OpenSolaris. There are bits for the stable releases, but as KDE 4.5 is approaching, I'd like to have the pre-release stuff available as well and to keep it separate. So I need to run two servers.

Somehow I thought this could be a bit complicated, but it's indeed dead simple.

First, export the configuration of the existing server:
$ svccfg export svc:/application/pkg/server > pkg.xml

Modify to suit your needs:
$ diff -u pkg.xml.orig pkg.xml
--- pkg.xml.orig 2010-07-10 01:31:21.520139723 +0200
+++ pkg.xml 2010-07-10 01:32:29.530018365 +0200
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM '/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1'>
<service_bundle type='manifest' name='export'>
- <service name='application/pkg/server' type='service' version='0'>
+ <service name='application/pkg/server-devel' type='service' version='0'>
<create_default_instance enabled='true'/>
<dependency name='fs' grouping='require_all' restart_on='none' type='service'>
<service_fmri value='svc:/system/filesystem/local'/>
@@ -38,8 +38,8 @@
<propval name='ssl_key_file' type='astring' value='none'/>
<propval name='threads' type='count' value='10'/>
<propval name='writable_root' type='astring' value=''/>
- <propval name='port' type='count' value='10000'/>
- <propval name='inst_root' type='astring' value='/export/home/test/repo'/>
+ <propval name='port' type='count' value='10001'/>
+ <propval name='inst_root' type='astring' value='/export/home/test/repo-devel'/>
</property_group>
<property_group name='pkg_secure' type='application'>
<property name='read_authorization' type='astring'/>


And import the new service:

$ pfexec svccfg import pkg.xml


Is it there? Yes it is:

$ svcs -a|grep pkg/server
online Jul_08 svc:/application/pkg/server:default
online 1:40:43 svc:/application/pkg/server-devel:default


Now I only need to initialize it:

pkgsend -s file:/export/home/test/repo-devel create-repository --set-property \
publisher.prefix=kdeips-dev-devel --set-property publisher.alias=kdeips-dev-devel


And I can start publishing into it!




So where are the fresh packages, may you ask? Being uploaded, stay tuned!

KDE 4.4.5 packages & Korona 4.4.5

KDE 4.4.5 packages for OpenSolaris are available. The primary mirror http://solaris.bionicmutton.org:10000 is known for dropping connections when download speed reaches ~100kB/s, so you might consider using the alternate mirror http://pkg.osladil.cz:30000.

As concerns changes from 4.4.4, there's nothing at all on the Solaris side, only the upstream changelog applies (a bunch of bug fixes).

Korona 4.4.5 is being uploaded to genunix.org - there are also no Solaris specific changes since Korona 4.4.3 (Korona skipped 4.4.4, as I was struggling with a bug in distro-constructor), apart from the KDE update also the following packages were bumped: amarok, boost, icu4c, konversation, libassuan, qimageblitz, qtcreator.

Several applications are starting and sometimes running slowly, most notably konqueror, this seems to be related to dbus - patches welcome.

HowTo switch from Cooker to Mandriva 2010 Spring

The release of Mandriva Linux 2010.1 is just behind the corner. I switched from MDV 2010 to Cooker (the development branch) a month ago, since it was already quite stable.
But as soon as 2010.1 is released, Cooker will reopen and become unstable again. So I'll have to return to the stable branch again.
How to do that? Fortunately other people asked that question, and here's the digest:

Once 2010.1 is official, open your Mandriva Control Center > 'Configure media sources...' and remove all from the list.
Then go to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org and add media '2010.1'. It'll generate a script that handles it all*. It might take zarb a few days before 2010.1 is listed there.

Due to bug #39975 you'll have to run:
urpmi.update -a --force-key
to avoid invalid signing key errors after the rpms are resigned with stable keys.



*or in the command line simply:
urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist 'http://api.mandriva.com/mirrors/basic.2010.1.i586.list'
for x86 or:
urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist 'http://api.mandriva.com/mirrors/basic.2010.0.x86_64.list'
for x64

Lessons Learned with a Toshiba Satellite Laptop: 10-FC12-0017 error

Sometimes repairs stop being about a quick fix and become a vendetta. This is one of those instances.

Recently, a Toshiba Satellite L305 was given to me for repair. The OS had been accidentally removed, but the person had the Vista 32-bit recovery disks. I figured no problem, I can do this in a hour.  Well, the recovery went find until disk 2 went into the recovery process and hit about 30%. I received a 10-FC12-0017 error.  A search of the net found nexperts (net experts) divided between bad recovery disks or bad hard drive.

The hard drive wasn’t acting or sounding bad. Plus ,my friend had said the only reason she ran the recovery disks originally was because the touchpad wasn’t working. It’s ok to laugh. I assumed the HDD was fine since she didn’t complain of operating issues.  So I figured it was the recovery DVD’s, as they had some serious scratches on them even after I cleaned them.

The L305 had a 64-bit processor so I figured, let me try my OEM 64-bit Vista disk.  It actually installed fine with no errors.  However, I had no valid product code and the product key on the bottom wasn’t validating.  So I knew I had to use the recovery disks.

Toshiba has quite a racket with these recovery disks. It’s $25 for a new set. I wasn’t about to go that route. 

I booted freedos off a CD and made sure all the partitions on the drive wiped before attempting a new recovery, With a raw drive, I attempted the recovery again, using the recovery disk to setup the partitions. It failed again.

At this point I was frustrated. I also think Vista sucks. I re-wiped the drive with freedos and attempted an install of windows 7 32-bit. It is what I had laying around. It failed with a “cannot install on this hardware error.”

At this point I knew something was up. I then ran CHKDSK on the drive and it took damn near 8 hours to complete.  I ran the recovery and it failed again.

So extremely frustrated, I put a spare SATA drive in it, and ran the Vista recovery disks. 

After about 14 hours of attempted recovery, the OS came to life.  So error 10-FC12-0017 on a Toshiba recovery, is a bad hard disk.  Save yourself the trouble and just replace the HDD.

What is most frustrating about this is the touchpad never did work, it was bad. The owner opted for an external mouse instead of paying to fix it.  It didn’t work during the recovery. That should have been my clue that more hardware (like the HDD) could be damaged.

And that is one of the lessons I learned.  The other lesson is, check the disk before running a recovery (something I normally do anyway for computers I don’t know the drive’s history).  The third lesson is never detour from your usual practices because you are doing a favor for someone.

I hope someone finds this helpful.

Also, if you aren’t reading this at http://beavmetal.blogspot.com, you should be.

 

Technorati Tags: Toshiba,10-FC12-0017 Error,Vista,Recovery,Windows,L305,Satellite

del.icio.us Tags: Toshiba,10-FC12-0017 Error,Vista,Recovery,Windows,L305,Satellite

LiveJournal Tags: Toshiba,10-FC12-0017 Error,Vista,Recovery,Windows,L305,Satellite

HowTo merge two IPS repositories

I wanted to merge a repository with KDE 4.4.4 packages with another one with KDE 4.4.5. First I went through the pkgsend/pkgrecv man pages but only succeeded in the pkgrecv part (pkgsend just stalled without any hint on what's going on). Then I asked at the #opensolaris IRC channel and it turned out to be really simple:

$ export TMPDIR=/var/tmp
$ pkgrecv \
-s file:///export/home/pkgserv/repo445/export/home/test/repo \
-d file:///export/home/pkgserv/repo 'pkg:/*'

Setting TMPDIR properly is quite important, because pkgrecv by default caches the files in /tmp, which is practically your RAM and the repo has ~1.6 GB ...
/export/home/pkgserv/repo445/export/home/test/repo is a directory containing repository with KDE 4.4.5
/export/home/pkgserv/repo contained KDE 4.4.4 and now contains both

Mining aluminium - we're the champions

Our kindergarten participates in the 'Těžíme hliník' (Mining aluminium) competition. This year we're the best in the town.

The goal is to put aside any aluminium waste and deliver it separately. It's organized entirely by volunteers and any money made come directly to the participating organizations. Which is around 5000 Kč (200 €) this year.

Last year our family had some leftovers from the cellar, but this year we were completely dependant on yoghurt lids and a couple of beer cans donated by friends, so I doubt we made more than ~1 kg. Apparently the other kids more than compendsated for it and the average was 2.4 kg per kid.

Awesome!

Upgrading Mandriva to Cooker

I was needing some fresher system libraries and since the release of the next stable Mandriva Linux will be in just a few days, switching to Cooker (the development branch of Mandriva) was the easier option.
Here are the steps to switch Mandriva Linux to Cooker, taken from the Mandriva wiki:

1. First, remove media for the stable release : urpmi.removemedia -a
2. Add the required media for Cooker : urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist 'http://api.mandriva.com/mirrors/basic.cooker.$ARCH.list'
3. Update all installed packages : urpmi --auto-update

I had to repeat the 3rd step several times, partly due to lagging mirrors. 

So far, I haven't noticed a bug, it seems 2010.1 will be one of the best releases ever.

Contact lens

Today I went to my ocularist to give contact lens a try. I am wearing glasses for 25 years already and never tried lens before, so it was a brand new experience to be able to see sharply with a full field of vision and nothing on my nose. I'll have one test round before deciding if this is what I want, but so far, so good.

Oracle Solaris Studio Express 6/10

Couple of days ago the beta version of the SunOracle compiler was released. I'd swear it did not list OpenSolaris as a supported plaform five days ago, but now the download page, as well as the Customer Feedback mail I just received say: "will be available for OpenSolaris in the near future". I'd say it's a good news for OpenSolaris (where the long silence regarding its future is making many people nervous) and Studio as well.

I did install the tarball version successfully on b134 and was able to compile cmake 2.8.1 without a glitch.
With the rest of the kde4 workspace I unfortunately hit a bug, so in case we start using it, we'll have to use a wrapper for the CC command to sort the options. I developed something like that a couple of months ago, but never got as far as to commiting it to the workspace.

KDE 4.4.4 for OpenSolaris

I've just published binary packages of KDE 4.4.4 for OpenSolaris. We did not need to modify any of the 4.4.3 patches, so it went pretty smoothly. A bunch of other packages were bumped along the way, most notably Amarok, Konversation and QtCreator. More details in the forum.

No screenshot today, I did not even try to install it. Lets hope it ain't borked.

mBank, the no-fees bank, starts charging $$

Hey, it's been two weeks since I created an account at mBank, the bank with a no-fees image, two days since I activated their credit card ... and now they're announcing a change in the pricelist. This includes a wild web of confusing rules and fees so I need to double check if it's still worth it. Thanks to my laziness I haven't moved anything yet, so I'm still quite flexible.

Kooky returns - slightly overestimated

We went to see Kooky in the cinema yesterday and, to be honest, I expected more.
There weren't many things that I haven't already seen in the trailer. Also too much time is spent on car chases, I'd prefer to explore the facinating world of the "little gods" instead. And the last 10 minutes of the movie should've been cut off without mercy.
Last but not least, Jan Svěrak shouldn't really make the movie as family business. The kid is played by his son is so expressionless and von Hergot is inconvincibly narrated by his father. ...

kohovolit.eu

Today is the election day here in the Czech Republic. Before giving your vote, do not only consider the promises, but check how the parties represented your own interests in the past!
At kohovolit.eu you can try voting for a set of laws and the site will then show you which of the parties matches you the best - based on real voting in the parliament.

Korona 4.4.3

Korona is the live DVD combining KDE4 and OpenSolaris. I just uploaded the latest Korona 4.4.3 (with, eh, KDE 4.4.3) to genunix.org, it should appear there in a couple of hours.
Thanks to hnhn, the process list and other system info now work in ksysguard (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200646)
Also, Korona is booting directly into a KDE session again.

When running the iso inside VirtualBox, I was observing high CPU utilization by the kernel, this is likely related to bug 12799; it runs ok on real hardware.

Also konqueror crashes on startup, which is weird as noone of those running KDE 4.4.3 from the bionicmutton repository has reported that.

Last note - the bionicmutton.org site (hosting the kde-solaris packages and mercurial repository) is down due to some severe hardware failures, please be patient.

The hell's getting colder

After all those years when pkg, the OpenSolaris packaging system, was solely network-oriented, the on-disk format is coming.

For those uninitiated to OpenSolaris intricacies - so far, when someone creates software for OpenSolaris and wants to distribute it, he has to either run his own install server (!) or provide the package in the legacy SVR4 format.

Would you like your software to be mirrored by other people? Good luck trying to convince them to run the pkg server. 

Same goes for people running OpenSolaris in their internal networks - you want to update them but don't have access to the Internet? Run your own server! It takes several months to have a new network service approved? Bad luck, man ...

All this is soon to become the ugly but distant past. Check out the ON-DISK FORMAT PROPOSAL

God bye, Česká Spořitelna!

I just created an account in mBank. I'll be transferring our regular payments from Česká Spořitelna over the course of the next few weeks. The goal is to save around 1000 CZK (40 €) annually on fees and give the stagnant banking market in the Czech Republic yet another impulse towards competitiveness.

I'll have to keep the Česká Spořitelna account for some time, it's part of the mortgage deal, but reducing it as much as possible cannot hurt.

Community compost & Extreme parkour freerun chalenge ve Skate parku v Říčanech

Today was the Open Day of the new elementary school in Říčany (extremely bad web design btw, let's hope they improve it). We spent there about two hours, exploring the classrooms, watching the dancers and jumping in the Bouncy castle. It's a shame the school is about 30 minutes walk from our home, a bit too much for a first-grader IMO. But let's not make quick conclusions and wait for the first users' rating. After all, fresh teachers can make a big difference.


Then we headed north-west to see some of the Extreme parkour freerun chalenge. On the way there we discovered a community compost hidden in the shrubs near a playground, serving the nearby block of flats:

Note the labels with detailed instructions. Cool!

I liked the parkour stuff. It looked like the kids were organizing a big part of it themselves and it went quite smoothly.

There's a lot of kids doing parkour/freerun in our surroundings (or they are easier to spot :-) and it seems Mik likes it as well :-)

The ramp in the Skate park has been closed for some time due to some noise complaints by the neighbours. I'm not sure if the neigbours are happier with the anti-noise walls now ...

What is the motherboard model? In Solaris ...

So that I don't forget:

to find out the motherboard model in Solaris, use the

smbios

command.

# smbios
... 
ID    SIZE TYPE
2     59   SMB_TYPE_BASEBOARD (base board)

  Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
  Product: P4C800                    
  Version: Rev 1.xx                  
  Serial Number: MB-1234567890 
...

A bad surprise

This was really an unpleasant surprise for the little swallow who started to build it's nest on our balcony. We let them have it the last year but the rubbish was too much to let them repeat it.
Sorry little fellow, please find another place.

Download Youtube(and other) videos and batch convert them to mp3

This is a quick article on how to download videos from youtube (or any other supported site) and batch convert them into mp3 files.

First, how do you get the videos downloaded from youtube? I use the software from http://www.downloadhelper.net/   . It is a Firefox plug in.  Unfortunately, I have not found a Chrome equal.  SO I used Firefox for this task.

Using Download Helper, you just select download from its toolbar when you find your desired video.  You can select between flv and m4p file types.  I choose flv as personal preference.

Now the real reason for writing this, step 2: converting the video to a mp3.  I spent a portion of today trying out freeware that is supposed to do this easy task.  It all pretty much angered me.  Let me tell you what I tried so you don't go down the same path:

Freez FLV to MP3 - Not Free, can use once before getting a registration prompt. If you don't register, the program closes.  It also wouldn't batch encode more than 30 items.
FLV2MP3.org - It kept giving me 0 byte mp3 files.
A file from richapps.de: It wasn't a batch converter.

The program I ended up using, was VideoLan player.  It is an absolute favorite program of mine. There is no batch conversion feature of VideoLan.  However, a quick and dirty BAT file will do the trick.  I found the following code on the videolan help wiki and changed it for flv files.

Create your BAT file (How to create a bat file) in the top most directory where you downloaded your FLV files.  I plan to use this frequently so I called mine vlanFLV2mp3.BAT. It will convert all the files in that directory and in all the sub-directories below it. For instance, if you downloaded the flv files into C:\Documents and Settings\MYPC\Desktop\FLV and then have sub-directories of musical artists, you would want the BAT file in that top ..\Desktop\FLV directory.


Here is the code you need to past into the BAT file:

@ECHO OFF
REM ########################################################################
REM # A Windows XP cmd.com script to batch convert flv files to mp3. #
REM # #
REM # Copyright (C) 2008 Andrew Boden #
REM # (boden@graduate.uwa.edu.au) #
REM # #
REM # This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify #
REM # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by #
REM # the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or #
REM # (at your option) any later version. #
REM # #
REM # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, #
REM # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of #
REM # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the #
REM # GNU General Public License for more details. #
REM # #
REM # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License #
REM # along with this program. If not, see .#
REM # #
REM # Version 1.0 (June 27th 2008) #
REM # Uses VideoLAN VLC 0.8.6h (www.videolan.org) #
REM # Gracefully handles commas and apostrophes in file names. #
REM # Not aware of any other characters needing graceful handling. #
REM # 512kbps encoding with 44100 sampling. #
REM ########################################################################

@ECHO OFF
FOR /R %%G IN (*.flv) DO (CALL :SUB_VLC "%%G")
FOR /R %%G IN (*.flv.mp*) DO (CALL :SUB_RENAME "%%G")
GOTO :eof

:SUB_VLC
SET _firstbit=%1
SET _qt="
CALL SET _newnm=%%_firstbit:%_qt%=%%
SET _commanm=%_newnm:,=_COMMA_%
REM echo %_commanm%
CALL "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc" -I dummy -vvv %1 --sout=#transcode{acodec="mp3",ab="512","channels=2"}:standard{access="file",mux="raw",dst="%_commanm%.mp3"} vlc://quit
GOTO :eof

:SUB_RENAME
SET _origfnm=%1
SET _endbit=%_origfnm:*.flv=%
CALL SET _newfilenm=%%_origfnm:.flv%_endbit%=.mp3%%
SET _newfilenm=%_newfilenm:_COMMA_=,%
COPY %1 %_newfilenm%
DEL %1
GOTO :eof

:eof


This is the original code, it might be easier to copy.  Remember to change m4a to flv if using the linked code.


If you already have all of the software, it isan easy 2 step process. 1: download all the videos you want. 2: run the bat file.

Beer explosion

How long does it take for a can of beer in a freezer to explode?
According to my unintentional experiment it's about 10 hours.
The blast was strong enough to open the fridge door and it broke a part of the transparent lid.

WTF is dbusmenu-qt ?

Since two days ago, kdelibs started requiring something called DBusMenuQt and the nightly builds were failing with

...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- The following REQUIRED packages could NOT be located on your system.
-- You must install these packages before continuing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   * DBusMenuQt  <git clone="" dbusmenu-qt.git="" dbusmenu="" git:="" gitorious.org="">
     API to import export QMenu instance using DBusMenu protocol
     dbusmenu-qt is a standalone library providing a way to import and export QMenu instances using the DBusMenu protocol.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I googled a bit, but did not find anything apart from some mentions in the sources of various projects. In the end asked at the kde-buildsystem mailing list and got a pointer to libdbusmenu-qt homepage (sort-of). So, if you're not really into checking out random revisions from repositories, the regular releases of libdbusmenu-qt are available at http://people.canonical.com/~agateau/dbusmenu/

 I added it to the kde-solaris project repository as well. It builds relatively smoothly, only requiring one patch for avoiding the __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ gcc extension.

The statue of the pioneer gets more contemporary

The statue of the pioneer/builder of communism, a remnant of the distant age, overlooking the gigantic shopping mall Centrum Chodov, already provides a slightly bizarre view, but yesterday it moved to the area of contemporary art:

(the shopping cart's gone now, so it was perhaps a 'temporary art' experience)

DBD::mysql - Do you need to predeclare BAIL_OUT?

I was installing DBD::mysql from CPAN on a Solaris 10 8/07 Sparc today.
The install command failed with the infamous

Running make test                                                                                                                            
PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/perl5/5.8.4/bin/perl "-MExtUtils::Command::MM" "-e" "test_harness(0, 'blib/lib', 'blib/arch')" t/*.t                  
t/00base....................String found where operator expected at t/00base.t line 20, near "BAIL_OUT "Unable to load DBI""                 
        (Do you need to predeclare BAIL_OUT?)                                                                                                
String found where operator expected at t/00base.t line 21, near "BAIL_OUT "Unable to load DBD::mysql""                                      
        (Do you need to predeclare BAIL_OUT?)                                                                                                
syntax error at t/00base.t line 20, near "BAIL_OUT "Unable to load DBI""                                                                     
syntax error at t/00base.t line 21, near "BAIL_OUT "Unable to load DBD::mysql""                                                              
BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at t/00base.t line 22.                                                                      
# Looks like your test died before it could output anything.                                                                                 
t/00base....................dubious                                                                                                          
        Test returned status 2 (wstat 512, 0x200)                                                                                            
DIED. FAILED tests 1-6                                                                                                                       
        Failed 6/6 tests, 0.00% okay

Googling for help revealed tons of people with the same problem and the lucky ones who resolved it did so by giving up CPAN and installing from rpm/whatever else.

I finaly found answer here, or rather here.

The Test module was outdated ... so to solve it:

cpan> install Test::Simple 

isn't it simple?

But that was not the end. The next issue was:

#   Failed test 'use DBD::mysql;'
#   at t/00base.t line 21.
t/00base....................NOK 2#     Tried to use 'DBD::mysql'.
#     Error:  Can't load '/.cpan/build/DBD-mysql-4.014/blib/arch/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.so' for module DBD::mysql: ld.so.1: perl: fatal: relocation error: file /.cpan/build/DBD-mysql-4.014/blib/arch/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.so: symbol mysql_real_escape_string: referenced symbol not found at /usr/perl5/5.8.4/lib/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm line 230.

I guess this is due to the fact mysql is 64 bit while perl is 32 bit. Let me investigate later.

ICVERIFY 4.0 - user manager - admin password issues

I am posting this because I couldn't find a solution to the problem online while I was working with ICVERIFY 4.0.  It is a relatively dated program used to process credit cards.  Basically it is just a GUI on top of a few SQL databases.

In the past, if some one changed or lost the admin password to the user manager and forgot it, deleting the UserDB files from the SQL directory and reinstalling the app cured the problem.

However, yesterday, I was doing a new install on a XP machine. I choose a custom user name and password for ICVERIFY, as is an option, then completed the install.  When I went to open ICVERIFY, it thew back an error saying invalid user name password. After making sure I wasn't making a typo, I tried the default password and it didn't work.  Neither password would let me into User Manager either.

So I did as above, deleted the database files, uninstalled user manager, rebooted, then reinstalled. I tried to let it use the default login info this time.  I kept getting errors saying invalid login basically.

There was a great deal of trial and error after that.  I won't go into it.  However, my fix is the following: Uninstall ICVerify, User Manager, and the MSDE.  Go into Windows Explorer and delete the ICverify data, and the SQL data.  Use Regedit, to remove any instance of ICVERIFY, UserDB, and the SQL path.

Now, I was using a user account that was set as a local admin.  But after removing all that info, I went into my actual local admin account and reinstalled everything.  Worked fine for all users on the machine after that.

Last note, don't bother with calling their tech support line anymore.  I called today and once about 3 years ago.  Prior to today, I got a English speaking person who was well acquainted with the software and solved my problem quite quick. Today, the tech support number got me to what was obviously a 3rd party, English as a second language shop. Dude actually made it worse poking around turning off services and crap.  When he couldn't solve the problem, he gave me the "Oh you don't have a 2nd tier support contract, please buy one to continue" speech.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone out there.

KDE dashboard now documented

A number of KDE developers, including the KDE-Solaris team are running a nightly build of the SVN KDE4 to detect breakages early.

There's a nice dashboard collecting the results at http://my.cdash.org/, where you can also subscribe to modules of interest and be notified when they break. It's also a useful source of links when filing bugs :-)

So far the dashboard wasn't really advertised, but today Alexander Neundorf unveiled a very descriptive Dashboard builds HowTo, that will make you up and running pretty fast, should you decide to help KDE4.

Stealing from the ZOO with opencard

Today we visited the Prague ZOO (BTW 7th best ZOO in the world, according to the Forbes magazine) and while buying the tickets I noticed a sign saying something in the lines of "It's really worth having an Opencard". I asked what that means and was told a holder of Opencard has a 5% discount.

Opencard is really something special. It's a chip card with RFID that serves as public transport pass, metropolitan library pass and something with parking.
Not mentioning the obvious privacy issues, the problem is the project was extremely overpriced and Opencard is a synonym for corruption in the czech media now.
Not only this, the project is not really successful and the only reason it's not a complete failure is because they raised the public transport prices for people not using the card, so people like me just got it to save some cash.

The municipality, facing both public and political (elections are near) backlash, is pressed to do something to save their asses. They've recovered a minor part of the wasted money and are now trying to convince the public that the project is useful after all. Since they cannot directly pump more money into it, their nasty fingers are into other people's purses - municipality sponsored theatres, the ZOO and others are now forced to give discounts to Opencard holders. I'm wondering whether their lowered incomes will be refunded by the municipality (bad) or not (just as bad).

I'm not really happy I saved 8 crowns on the ticket today.

baby prams forbidden at the Prague's main railway station

I noticed that all the conveyor belts at the Prague's main railway station  forbid baby prams. The belts are the only means of getting to the trains from the ground level, so this looks like a full ban.

Transition a smf service to maintenance

I was trying to trace a bug that appeared when a Solaris service was being cleared from maintenance. To reproduce it I needed to move the service to maintenance.

Here's how to do it, so you don't have to break the service first:

svcadm mark maintenance name-of-the-service

Machinarium & Samorost 2 on Linux

I got both Samorost 2 and Machinarium for a bargain price, the only disadvantage being that the media do not contain version for Linux.
With Samorost 2 this was not a problem, it installed and run fine in Wine (wine-1.1.32, Mandriva 2010, 32 bit), however Machinarium was a bit tougher. It installed ok, but when I tried to run it, it just produced a black window, eating 100% CPU, doing nothing else.

The solution was rather simple, using the exe2swf utility:

./exe2swf ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Machinarium/machinarium.exe
firefox ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Machinarium/machinarium.exe.swf

Haircut

Spring's here, so after several years I had my hair cut :-)

I feel safer in Česká spořitelna now

... knowing that the safety of my money is of the utmost importance to them ...

... but I am slightly worried that they chose the world's least safe web browser and operating system to present me this information ...

get Machinarium & Samorost 2 extremely cheap

Hmm, 99 Czech crowns (~6 USD) for the first one and 49 crowns (~3 USD) for the latter, including soundtrack in MP3.
Unfortunately the CD's don't contain the Linux version, but I'm going to take the risk running them inside Wine.

http://machinarium.net/blog/2010/04/08/machinarium-a-samorost2-na-dvd-v-ceskych-a-slovenskych-trafikach/

Unbelievable became reality

In Mandriva, the packages in the official stable repositories only receive updates  for bug fixes. In addition to that, there is an extra repository called backports which contains latest versions of some packages. However these packages are completely unsupported.

As a completely retar^Wbizarre design decision, rpmdrake (the Mandriva package management tool) used to treat the backports repository as a source of updates, even when the user specifically disabled it. So you can imagine the mess it had beed causing.

Unfortunately the rpmdrake developer stood quite firm in his position and only a few days ago another Mandriva guy João Victor Duarte Martins submitted a patch that was just accepted.

After almost two years, one hundred comments, twenty-three votes and eight duplicates, the infamous Mandriva Linux bug #40556 (rpmdrake lists packages from disabled media source) has been fixed today.

There is still some hope in the world.

Thanks João!

hajma se stěhuje

na http://blog.hajma.cz/ . Bylo to tu fajn, ale je na čase zvednout kotvu. Na jednu stranu přijdu o víceméně garantovaných 1000+ přečtení každého výpotku,

na druhou stranu se už nebudu při publikování zápisku v angličtině cítit provinile. A poslední dobou o linuxu taky moc nepíšu, beru ho víceméně jako pracovní nástroj, který (dokud člověk nevybočí z prošlapaných cestiček) většinou funguje, a tak přestává být zajímavým, takže většina věcí, o kterých jsem chtěl poslední dobou psát by tu byla off topic. blogspot.com (na kterém to běží) mi taky nabízí daleko přítulnější prostředí, třeba přidání obrázku je otázka dvou kliků. Sice chápu, že je to určitá forma obrany proti puberťačkám s poníkama, ale editovat html mě prostě ve 3. tisíciletí už nebaví (a ten editor to opravdu nezachraňuje).

výhody abclinuxu.cz:

1. Vysoká čtenost

2. Odborné publikum

3. Dobrá zpětná vazba



nevýhody abclinuxu.cz:

1. Uzavření se do "ghetta"

2. Averze vůči cizojazyčným zápiskům

3. Obtížná navigace pro anglicky mluvící čtenáře

4. Mizerná podpora čehokoliv mimo prostého textu

5. Unifikovaný strohý vzhled

KDE 4.4.2 - first screenies

It took some time to really start working on it, but now it's moving forward. So far it looks like only small adjustments are needed to the spec files, so if I knocked the wood I could say the packages will be ready for Easter.