Fail horribly apparently my summer wasn’t what i hoped for see last post. But hey I did manage to get BitleSpeak coded see http://github.com/marnold/BitleSpeak, and a major website revamp done, plus I’m on failb00k now. All in all not a total loss considering what is going on in my personal life. I’m taking some interesting courses this semester one a Sociological Study of internet culture (yes academics are interested in what goes on in the interwebz), I finally got into a high enough math so as to take a lab science Physics which is boring right now (going over the scientific method, measurement, etc) but were talking science thus it is impossible for it to remain boring for very long. My Computer Science Course in Graphics got canceled, so I am working with the Faculty to get a couple of independent study projects going. I got one Prof to sponsor “Programing the Atari 2600″, not sure how we even got that idea but it’s retrogaming, and Assembly language so I’m happy. So I should have a few interesting things to blog about soon. I know the seven people that actually read this must be waiting with baited breath.

TTFN
/Matt

How interesting it is now that a few days have passed in the Oracle v. Google soap opera there are those crowing over how Mono and .Net is less patent encumbered than Java.

This (Java Patent Grant) is more stringent than the Microsoft Community Promise that applies to .NET as the Community Promise only requires a minimum subset, it does not prevent supersets

Beyond that there is some ‘whispers’ that Oracle might be taking a more ‘open’ path than most envisioned.

When Google came to us with their thoughts on cellphones, one of their core principles was making the platform free to handset providers. They had very weak notions of interoperability, which, given our history, we strongly objected to. Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers.

There are also folks who claim that Steve Jobs, a friend of Larry Ellison, is the root of the lawsuit. Supposedly he wanted to disrupt the enormous growth of Android to ensure the iPhone / iPad OS has room to grow.

Oh, the world of high-tech silicon valley companies is so interesting. Now… back to the real world.

How interesting it is now that a few days have passed in the Oracle v. Google soap opera there are those crowing over how Mono and .Net is less patent encumbered than Java.

This (Java Patent Grant) is more stringent than the Microsoft Community Promise that applies to .NET as the Community Promise only requires a minimum subset, it does not prevent supersets

Beyond that there is some ‘whispers’ that Oracle might be taking a more ‘open’ path than most envisioned.

When Google came to us with their thoughts on cellphones, one of their core principles was making the platform free to handset providers. They had very weak notions of interoperability, which, given our history, we strongly objected to. Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers.

There are also folks who claim that Steve Jobs, a friend of Larry Ellison, is the root of the lawsuit. Supposedly he wanted to disrupt the enormous growth of Android to ensure the iPhone / iPad OS has room to grow.

Oh, the world of high-tech silicon valley companies is so interesting. Now… back to the real world.

I just got notice that my presentation and hands-on lab submissions for NYSCATE have been approved. I plan on exposing the attending educators to a series of open source applications that can be run on Linux, OS X or Windows. I would like to find some curriculum that ties in with the applications as well.

If anyone has suggestions please let me know.

I just got notice that my presentation and hands-on lab submissions for NYSCATE have been approved. I plan on exposing the attending educators to a series of open source applications that can be run on Linux, OS X or Windows. I would like to find some curriculum that ties in with the applications as well.

If anyone has suggestions please let me know.

Have you ever had one of those days? I have to admit they are rare for me, but yesterday was one of those days.

The first problem was that three of my blade servers refused to power up. After some initial troubleshooting I discovered that this is a ‘known firmware issue’. What?!? According to the vendor if the blades are up for a really long time (yes, mine were) and you remove them from power (yes, I moved them) then they will refuse to power up. The solution is to replace the motherboard. Good thing they were all under warranty.

The second problem was related to the server and storage that was just moved to a hosted data center. The data center advertised fantastic reliability; dual this and dual that for redundancy. After finally working through the blade issue I notice that my hosted server had shut down due to high ambient air temperatures. When I call the data center I find out that both AC units failed, but they are working on it. I check my server’s logs and find that the ambient air temperature had reached 47 Celsius.

This morning I get to replace the motherboards and I hope that ends my exciting “see what can happen week”.

Have you ever had one of those days? I have to admit they are rare for me, but yesterday was one of those days.

The first problem was that three of my blade servers refused to power up. After some initial troubleshooting I discovered that this is a ‘known firmware issue’. What?!? According to the vendor if the blades are up for a really long time (yes, mine were) and you remove them from power (yes, I moved them) then they will refuse to power up. The solution is to replace the motherboard. Good thing they were all under warranty.

The second problem was related to the server and storage that was just moved to a hosted data center. The data center advertised fantastic reliability; dual this and dual that for redundancy. After finally working through the blade issue I notice that my hosted server had shut down due to high ambient air temperatures. When I call the data center I find out that both AC units failed, but they are working on it. I check my server’s logs and find that the ambient air temperature had reached 47 Celsius.

This morning I get to replace the motherboards and I hope that ends my exciting “see what can happen week”.

I have seen the doom and gloom pack write about Oracle’s lawsuit against Google; they all seem to think Oracle is trying to prevent Google from using Java.

Oracle filed a federal lawsuit Thursday in San Jose, California, charging that Android breaches Java’s open source license. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, and demands a federal judge immediately block distribution of Android, the No. 3 mobile operating platform.

Read that one carefully… Android breaches Java’s open source license. Think about that. Don’t rush.

Many questions about the prospects of the suit remain unanswered, and the long-term impact of the suit is very much up in the air. Nevertheless, the suit drew a fearful response from the open source community on Friday.

Why is this the assumption? I am not saying that I know what Boies, Schiller, and Flexner LLP are thinking, but is it possible that Oracle is actually upholding FOSS principals and will argue that the proprietary code Google put in the phone must be open source? I have no reason to believe Oracle is, but I have not seen Oracle act the way Apple and Microsoft have in protecting patents. Oracle is certainly no Sun, but lets give this a little more than a day before walking the streets in folded wooden signs proclaiming that the world is ending.

I have seen the doom and gloom pack write about Oracle’s lawsuit against Google; they all seem to think Oracle is trying to prevent Google from using Java.

Oracle filed a federal lawsuit Thursday in San Jose, California, charging that Android breaches Java’s open source license. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, and demands a federal judge immediately block distribution of Android, the No. 3 mobile operating platform.

Read that one carefully… Android breaches Java’s open source license. Think about that. Don’t rush.

Many questions about the prospects of the suit remain unanswered, and the long-term impact of the suit is very much up in the air. Nevertheless, the suit drew a fearful response from the open source community on Friday.

Why is this the assumption? I am not saying that I know what Boies, Schiller, and Flexner LLP are thinking, but is it possible that Oracle is actually upholding FOSS principals and will argue that the proprietary code Google put in the phone must be open source? I have no reason to believe Oracle is, but I have not seen Oracle act the way Apple and Microsoft have in protecting patents. Oracle is certainly no Sun, but lets give this a little more than a day before walking the streets in folded wooden signs proclaiming that the world is ending.

I just checked the TWC blocked site again and saw great news.

fiordland.canonical.com is no longer blocked!! The bad news, my contact email finally ‘bounced’ over to the temporary account I setup, so I can’t really test if this worked. I will change it back and give it another test, though that may have to wait another 48 hours.

I just checked the TWC blocked site again and saw great news.

fiordland.canonical.com is no longer blocked!! The bad news, my contact email finally ‘bounced’ over to the temporary account I setup, so I can’t really test if this worked. I will change it back and give it another test, though that may have to wait another 48 hours.

One of the accounts that I used to test my @ubuntu.com email finally got an undeliverable email response. This indicated that the @ubuntu.com emails come from fiordland.canonical.com. So Canonical has chlorine.canonical.com, palladium.canonical.com and fiordland.canonical.com. Backscatter, the extortionist blacklist, has fiordland.canonical.com on its list. Neither Spamhaus or Returnpath listed it. So another decision by TWC to block a domain based on a single blacklist from an organization that extorts money from domain holders. Not acceptable. Here are the results.

This makes reference to the ‘score’ and Returnpath does list this server as a ‘high risk’.

I put in the request to unblock this email server, but I will have to see what happens. I just wish that this information could have been obtained from some sort of community documentation or perhaps in response to the tickets I put in. The fact that Canonical appears to not have the resources to respond to things that impact the people who are their grass roots marketing team is a bit frustrating, but in the end this is not Canonical’s fault. Time Warner Cable is just being really, really paranoid with their blacklist implementation.

I would like to see a community sysadmin team that could triage problems for the Canonical sysadmin team. Something similar to bug-control.

One of the accounts that I used to test my @ubuntu.com email finally got an undeliverable email response. This indicated that the @ubuntu.com emails come from fiordland.canonical.com. So Canonical has chlorine.canonical.com, palladium.canonical.com and fiordland.canonical.com. Backscatter, the extortionist blacklist, has fiordland.canonical.com on its list. Neither Spamhaus or Returnpath listed it. So another decision by TWC to block a domain based on a single blacklist from an organization that extorts money from domain holders. Not acceptable. Here are the results.

This makes reference to the ‘score’ and Returnpath does list this server as a ‘high risk’.

I put in the request to unblock this email server, but I will have to see what happens. I just wish that this information could have been obtained from some sort of community documentation or perhaps in response to the tickets I put in. The fact that Canonical appears to not have the resources to respond to things that impact the people who are their grass roots marketing team is a bit frustrating, but in the end this is not Canonical’s fault. Time Warner Cable is just being really, really paranoid with their blacklist implementation.

I would like to see a community sysadmin team that could triage problems for the Canonical sysadmin team. Something similar to bug-control.

More interesting data concerning my issue with @ubuntu.com email not working. It would appear that @ubuntu.com and list.ubuntu.com emails come from chlorine.canonical.com, but launchpad emails (which I previously tested as working) come from palladium.canonical.com.

When using several MX tools that show blacklists chlorine.canonical.com is listed as blocked and palladium. canonical.com is not.

The tools I used are:

• http://www.mxtoolbox.com/
• https://www.senderscore.org/blacklistlookup/ (return path)
• http://www.spamhaus.org

Return Path originally listed the domain, but I was able to quickly ask that it be removed. I then tested several minutes later and it was no longer being listed. mxtoolbox.com still lists the site with two of its results; one of which was the one that blocks for four weeks unless you pay.

I am still waiting on a response from TWC on them white listing Canonical; I hope good sense prevails in that case, but we will see.

More interesting data concerning my issue with @ubuntu.com email not working. It would appear that @ubuntu.com and list.ubuntu.com emails come from chlorine.canonical.com, but launchpad emails (which I previously tested as working) come from palladium.canonical.com.

When using several MX tools that show blacklists chlorine.canonical.com is listed as blocked and palladium. canonical.com is not.

The tools I used are:

• http://www.mxtoolbox.com/
• https://www.senderscore.org/blacklistlookup/ (return path)
• http://www.spamhaus.org

Return Path originally listed the domain, but I was able to quickly ask that it be removed. I then tested several minutes later and it was no longer being listed. mxtoolbox.com still lists the site with two of its results; one of which was the one that blocks for four weeks unless you pay.

I am still waiting on a response from TWC on them white listing Canonical; I hope good sense prevails in that case, but we will see.

I received an email from the Time Warner systems administrators this morning in regards to my email not working.

It appears that the IP address of the sender is being blocked by one or more 3rd
party blacklist sites. While Time Warner is not affiliated with these sites, we
do take their lists into account in order to protect the whole of the Roadrunner
users from spam. They will need to contact these sites in order to have the
blocks removed. Once this is done, then you should see the errors go away. To
find out which sites they are blacklisted on, please go to www.mxtoolbox.com and
enter the IP address of 91.189.94.204. This will give you a comprehensive list
of who has found the IP address to be questionable.  They will need to contact
each individual blacklist group to have the IP removed from their listing.

So it appears that Time Warner is blocking email from Canonical due to their using some sort of blacklisting tool which queries this on-line database. When I check the database there are two sites that list Canonical as blocked

• Backscatterer.org
• SORBS-SPAM

Now this is where it gets interesting. I went to those sites and was told by Backscatterer.org that the listing would expire on August 29th unless I wanted to pay $75 for expedited removal. That seems more like blackmail than a legitimate blacklisting process. At this point it looks like I have to continue to change over all my email lists to an email that is not on my ISP and change my business cards. I am not sure what good it will do to tell my ISP that they are blocking a legitimate company due to a policy of blocking email because a domain has two block results in a large list.

I received an email from the Time Warner systems administrators this morning in regards to my email not working.

It appears that the IP address of the sender is being blocked by one or more 3rd
party blacklist sites. While Time Warner is not affiliated with these sites, we
do take their lists into account in order to protect the whole of the Roadrunner
users from spam. They will need to contact these sites in order to have the
blocks removed. Once this is done, then you should see the errors go away. To
find out which sites they are blacklisted on, please go to www.mxtoolbox.com and
enter the IP address of 91.189.94.204. This will give you a comprehensive list
of who has found the IP address to be questionable.  They will need to contact
each individual blacklist group to have the IP removed from their listing.

So it appears that Time Warner is blocking email from Canonical due to their using some sort of blacklisting tool which queries this on-line database. When I check the database there are two sites that list Canonical as blocked

• Backscatterer.org
• SORBS-SPAM

Now this is where it gets interesting. I went to those sites and was told by Backscatterer.org that the listing would expire on August 29th unless I wanted to pay $75 for expedited removal. That seems more like blackmail than a legitimate blacklisting process. At this point it looks like I have to continue to change over all my email lists to an email that is not on my ISP and change my business cards. I am not sure what good it will do to tell my ISP that they are blocking a legitimate company due to a policy of blocking email because a domain has two block results in a large list.

With a little help from my friends (Beatles reference) I was able to get the server, email address and domain that list.ubuntu.com emails come from. I would imagine that @ubuntu.com addresses are also handled through the same domain. With a little bit of testing it appears as though the domain is being blocked by my ISP; Time Warner Cable. After chatting with the support technician via the 24/7 help desk I was asked to report the issue to a particular email address at TWC (not given to protect the email address). I certainly hope to get to the bottom of this.

With a little help from my friends (Beatles reference) I was able to get the server, email address and domain that list.ubuntu.com emails come from. I would imagine that @ubuntu.com addresses are also handled through the same domain. With a little bit of testing it appears as though the domain is being blocked by my ISP; Time Warner Cable. After chatting with the support technician via the 24/7 help desk I was asked to report the issue to a particular email address at TWC (not given to protect the email address). I certainly hope to get to the bottom of this.

First let me apologize to anyone that tried reaching me with my @ubuntu email address recently. I am not ignoring you, but there is a problem with the email getting forwarded to my ‘real’ account.

The facts:
At some point in recent past my email @ubuntu.com email address stopped being received by my real email account. No failure was sent to the sender. It did not go in to any spam filter. I was alerted to this by a person who is used to my quick response and thought it was odd that I had not responded to three of their emails.

I checked launchpad to ensure that my real address was listed as my contact address. I tried using the “contact this person” feature and got an email. I then tried, using a different email, sending an email directly to the @ubuntu.com address. Nothing. No failed message and no message received. I hit a digital abyss with my message.

I then reported the problem on Launchpad then later was directed to use rt@ubuntu.com. When I followed up on the #canonical-sysadmin channel I was told to resubmit since the original apparently never made it in to the system. The original report was sent on August 3rd at roughly 17:23 GMT. The second, sent by request, was sent August 4th at 10:48 GMT.

I still have a non-working email address and I have no idea what the status is. I look at the ticket in rt, but only see the admonishment not to put in duplicate request. No assignment. Nothing that would give me hope that this will be resolved or at least investigated.

I understand that this is a free service that Canonical is providing. I also understand that I am providing Canonical a free service as an Ubuntu advocate. A service that I perform via this very same @ubuntu.com email that is non-functional. I do not expect instant service, but I think it would be reasonable to have some feedback as to a time frame. This would allow me to change my email list subscriptions so I can continue to work with the various teams I am part of.

As a systems administrator myself I know how important email is to the people I support. I would never expect them to be happy with non-functional email that does not alert the sender to the issue. I would never expect them to accept the fact that they would not receive any updates or time estimates in regards to resolving the issue. As a community advocate, LUG leader, Python group leader, Beginners Team Council member and LoCo lead I also do not want to depend on a system that works this way. I have higher standards for myself.

This leads me to question depending on my @ubuntu.com email. Is that really the issue? Could my ISP be blocking email from the server forwarding the @ubuntu.com email? I have to make a decision and for the sake of the people I work with I need to make one soon.

First let me apologize to anyone that tried reaching me with my @ubuntu email address recently. I am not ignoring you, but there is a problem with the email getting forwarded to my ‘real’ account.

The facts:
At some point in recent past my email @ubuntu.com email address stopped being received by my real email account. No failure was sent to the sender. It did not go in to any spam filter. I was alerted to this by a person who is used to my quick response and thought it was odd that I had not responded to three of their emails.

I checked launchpad to ensure that my real address was listed as my contact address. I tried using the “contact this person” feature and got an email. I then tried, using a different email, sending an email directly to the @ubuntu.com address. Nothing. No failed message and no message received. I hit a digital abyss with my message.

I then reported the problem on Launchpad then later was directed to use rt@ubuntu.com. When I followed up on the #canonical-sysadmin channel I was told to resubmit since the original apparently never made it in to the system. The original report was sent on August 3rd at roughly 17:23 GMT. The second, sent by request, was sent August 4th at 10:48 GMT.

I still have a non-working email address and I have no idea what the status is. I look at the ticket in rt, but only see the admonishment not to put in duplicate request. No assignment. Nothing that would give me hope that this will be resolved or at least investigated.

I understand that this is a free service that Canonical is providing. I also understand that I am providing Canonical a free service as an Ubuntu advocate. A service that I perform via this very same @ubuntu.com email that is non-functional. I do not expect instant service, but I think it would be reasonable to have some feedback as to a time frame. This would allow me to change my email list subscriptions so I can continue to work with the various teams I am part of.

As a systems administrator myself I know how important email is to the people I support. I would never expect them to be happy with non-functional email that does not alert the sender to the issue. I would never expect them to accept the fact that they would not receive any updates or time estimates in regards to resolving the issue. As a community advocate, LUG leader, Python group leader, Beginners Team Council member and LoCo lead I also do not want to depend on a system that works this way. I have higher standards for myself.

This leads me to question depending on my @ubuntu.com email. Is that really the issue? Could my ISP be blocking email from the server forwarding the @ubuntu.com email? I have to make a decision and for the sake of the people I work with I need to make one soon.

To all my loyal friends and fans… I’m BACK. well sort of. I’ve got Eye surgery on the 21st, and that is a three day recovery but other than that I’m back on the Ubuntu/Debian scene officially after a month long break to recover from my crazy school year.

Thanks
Matt

We had a release party in Waterloo, NY over the weekend. We had about a dozen or so show up from around the Finger Lakes and Southern Tier. I believe had the weather not be so nice we might have had more.

Also, for the first time, a second event is being planned in New Paltz, NY at Slash Root on Saturday, May 8th. It will be going on during business hours with informative sessions and a best 'Lynx' costume contest.

A short aside... Monday starts Open Week and I will be doing my part to get logs stored on the wiki once more. I am going to need to work out few things, since the usually table links might confuse lernid.

I want to remind everyone that a New York State Release Party for Lucid lynx will happen this Saturday, May 1st at the Waterloo Holiday Inn. We will have a morning install fest starting at 10am, and speakers and party in the afternoon starting 2pm. I hope to see many new and old faces there.

Also, for the first time, a second event is being planned in New Paltz, NY at Slash Root on Saturday, May 8th. It will be going on during business hours with informative sessions and a best 'Lynx' costume contest.

Its been awhile since I blogged. I have not seemed able to shake the funk that seems to surround me. I have discovered that at moments when I code the funk seems less. In the last year, I have dabbled in a few personal projects and some with existing code most are available from my launchpad account.

Despite the funk, I have set up a New York State Release Party for Lucid lynx on Saturday, May 1st at the Waterloo Holiday Inn. This time we are holding a install fest in the morning starting at 10am, as well as our traditional talks and party in the afternoon starting 2pm.

Also, I have and am logging the open weeks in #ubuntu-classroom. I have been told that irc format should be used when placing the logs on wiki, but I cannot get over the table borders in that format. I can understand the reasons and hope someone or myself can fix the formatting.

Email is probably easiest to reach me. I would love to see some of my coding get packaged. I would love to see a great turnout for our Release Party and for it to be successfu. I would love to see irc formating on the wiki get changed. Possible good things to look forward too, lets hope they are foretelling and not wishful.

Today, I stumbled across an awesome free e-book with over seventy mini-essays from various authors called "What Matters Now". Many essays seem to have a pro-Free-Software take, while others relate to what makes a community best. I feel that everyone will be able to take something and help them to reach farther.

I have spent many a spare moment since Jaunty trying to understand why my Kodak digital camera import became broken. I am fairly confident it has to do with the switch to gphotofs. For what ever reason, it finds two devices of the same name and attempts to mount each causing a 'lock error' to be raised for the second attempt. I have chosen to blog about this regression after having my lp bug languish during Jaunty only to get worse in Karmic.

Now on Karmic, it is crap shoot whether the 'locked device' situation allows any functional import window to show. At least in Jaunty, I was able to just dismiss the error dialog and import the images from the first. I am currently using 'sneaker-net' to enable me to pull images with the SD card in the camera onto my Mini 9.

I have tried the gphotofs terminal tools and caught the following log with and without the external SD card installed:

[...]
0.362264 gphoto2-camera(2): Setting abilities ('Kodak DX7590')...
0.362302 gphoto2-setting(2): Setting key 'model' to value 'Kodak DX7590' (gphoto2)
0.362342 gphoto2-setting(2): Saving 4 setting(s) to file "/home/ausimage/.gphoto/settings"
0.362513 gphoto2-port-info-list(2): Looking for path 'usb:' (12 entries available)...
0.362561 gphoto2-port-info-list(2): Getting info of entry 5 (12 available)...
0.362600 gphoto2-camera(2): Setting port info for port 'Universal Serial Bus' at 'usb:'...
0.363814 gphoto2-port(2): Setting timeout to 5000 millisecond(s)...
0.363865 gphoto2-port(2): Setting settings...
0.363903 libusb(2): gp_port_usb_update(old int=0, conf=-1, alt=-1), (new int=0, conf=-1, alt=-1)
0.363940 gphoto2-setting(2): Setting key 'port' to value 'usb:' (gphoto2)
0.363977 gphoto2-setting(2): Saving 4 setting(s) to file "/home/ausimage/.gphoto/settings"
0.364566 foreach(2): Executing action 'List Files' for folder '/'.
0.366917 gphoto2-camera(2): Listing files in '/'...
0.366991 gphoto2-camera(2): Initializing camera...
0.367040 gphoto2-port-usb(1): Looking for USB device (vendor 0x40a, product 0x57f)... found.
0.367078 gphoto2-port-usb(2): inep to look for is 81
0.367112 gphoto2-port-usb(1): Detected defaults: config 1, interface 0, altsetting 0, inep 81, outep 01, intep 82, class 06, subclass 01
0.367166 gphoto2-camera(2): Loading '/usr/lib/libgphoto2/2.4.6/ptp2'...
0.367486 gphoto2-port(2): Opening USB port...
0.367528 libusb(2): gp_port_usb_open()
0.367614 libusb(2): claiming interface 0
0.367687 ptp2(2): maxpacketsize 64
0.367768 gphoto2-port(2): Setting timeout to 8000 millisecond(s)...
0.367815 ptp(2): PTP: Opening session
0.367859 gphoto2-port(2): Writing 16=0x10 byte(s) to port...
0.367900 gphoto2-port(3): Hexdump of 16 = 0x10 bytes follows:
0000  10 00 00 00 01 00 02 10-00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00  ................

0.369300 ptp2/ptp_usb_getresp(2): reading response
0.369343 ptp2/ptp_usb_getpacket(2): getting next ptp packet
0.369384 gphoto2-port(2): Reading 512=0x200 bytes from port...
0.370300 gphoto2-port(2): Could only read 0 out of 512 byte(s)
0.370344 gphoto2-port(3): Empty hexdump of empty buffer
0.370383 gphoto2-port(2): Reading 512=0x200 bytes from port...
0.371298 gphoto2-port(2): Could only read 0 out of 512 byte(s)
0.371339 gphoto2-port(3): Empty hexdump of empty buffer
0.371373 ptp2/usb_getresp(0): request code 0x1002 getting resp error 0x02ff
0.371409 ptp2/camera_init(0): ptp_opensession returns 2ff
0.371444 ptp2/device_reset_request(2): sending reset
0.371479 gphoto2-port(2): Writing message (request=0x66 value=0x0 index=0x0 size=0=0x0)...
0.371524 gphoto2-port(3): No hexdump (NULL buffer)
0.372291 ptp(2): PTP: Opening session
0.372336 gphoto2-port(2): Writing 16=0x10 byte(s) to port...
0.372376 gphoto2-port(3): Hexdump of 16 = 0x10 bytes follows:
0000  10 00 00 00 01 00 02 10-00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00  ................

0.373293 ptp2/ptp_usb_getresp(2): reading response
0.373329 ptp2/ptp_usb_getpacket(2): getting next ptp packet
0.373367 gphoto2-port(2): Reading 512=0x200 bytes from port...
0.374299 gphoto2-port(2): Could only read 0 out of 512 byte(s)
0.374343 gphoto2-port(3): Empty hexdump of empty buffer
0.374381 gphoto2-port(2): Reading 512=0x200 bytes from port...
0.375297 gphoto2-port(2): Could only read 0 out of 512 byte(s)
0.375337 gphoto2-port(3): Empty hexdump of empty buffer
0.375372 ptp2/usb_getresp(0): request code 0x1002 getting resp error 0x02ff
0.375407 ptp2/camera_init(0): ptp_opensession returns 2ff
0.375441 ptp2/device_reset_request(2): sending reset
0.375474 gphoto2-port(2): Writing message (request=0x66 value=0x0 index=0x0 size=0=0x0)...
0.375589 gphoto2-port(3): No hexdump (NULL buffer)
0.376290 ptp(2): PTP: Opening session
0.376331 gphoto2-port(2): Writing 16=0x10 byte(s) to port...
0.376370 gphoto2-port(3): Hexdump of 16 = 0x10 bytes follows:
0000  10 00 00 00 01 00 02 10-00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00  ................

0.377292 ptp2/ptp_usb_getresp(2): reading response
0.377328 ptp2/ptp_usb_getpacket(2): getting next ptp packet
0.377366 gphoto2-port(2): Reading 512=0x200 bytes from port...
0.378299 gphoto2-port(2): Could only read 0 out of 512 byte(s)
0.378342 gphoto2-port(3): Empty hexdump of empty buffer
0.378381 gphoto2-port(2): Reading 512=0x200 bytes from port...
0.379297 gphoto2-port(2): Could only read 0 out of 512 byte(s)
0.379338 gphoto2-port(3): Empty hexdump of empty buffer
0.379372 ptp2/usb_getresp(0): request code 0x1002 getting resp error 0x02ff
0.379407 ptp2/camera_init(0): ptp_opensession returns 2ff
0.379440 ptp2/device_reset_request(2): sending reset
0.379473 gphoto2-port(2): Writing message (request=0x66 value=0x0 index=0x0 size=0=0x0)...
0.379512 gphoto2-port(3): No hexdump (NULL buffer)
0.380307 context(0): PTP I/O error

*** Error ***              
PTP I/O error
0.380406 gphoto2-port(2): Closing port...
0.380526 context(0): An error occurred in the io-library ('Unspecified error'): No error description available

*** Error ***              
An error occurred in the io-library ('Unspecified error'): No error description available
*** Error (-1: 'Unspecified error') *** 
[...]

The docs and searching has not produced much in answers. I would love to see this remedied for Lucid Lynx in April. It is things like this that will make it or break it for users of Ubuntu. Feel free to contact me if you have a solution.

The New York State Ubuntu Community held their Karmic Release Event on Sunday. We had an awesome event once our first speaker actually showed up about an hour late. Our two talks were about FOSS and Ubuntu. Elizabeth, pleia2, gave an abreviated introduction to contributing to FOSS. We had time after the talks to enjoy pizza, pop, and have discussions about Ubuntu and computers.

Hello everyone, well I’ve finished my first semester at Morrisville with flying colors see below. Now after a short rest I am back working on Ubuntu and Debian as of today. I already have one sync pending in the queue and another on the way. In Debian related news I intend to complete the adoption of bsdgames and do a few QA uploads. As to my other wnpp bugs one is pending on REVU just need a few things fixed, one is dead upstream as far as I can tell and one I am no longer interested in. This is good for me because it allows me to concentrate on my renewed interest in retro gaming. Debian and Ubuntu are already well stocked with emulators and utility programs, but I have noticed in particular the lack of an N64 emulator, and the absence of a Kaillera protocol server such as Emulinker. I will shoot off my long-delayed introduction to the Debian Games Team later today or tomorrow and see what I can do on both counts. Also I said I would help a friend of mine get two of his projects into Debian and Ubuntu. Combine that with normal merges and syncs as well as trying to get date, plus IRC related work and I have a very busy couple of weeks ahead of me.

/Matt

You know who you are,  if you consider me stupid now or at any point in the past.

I rest my case

I’m 20 as of April 18 2009

A vulnerability was found in OpenSSL in Debian-based distros, so you'll want to do your apt-get update && apt-get uprade as soon as possible.

You'll also need to update your OpenSSH keys as well. The Ubuntu packages look like they will re-generate all the keys in /etc/ssh.

This bug probably shouldn't have happend, but at least the response has been quick. The same can't be said about certain other software companies.

Note: All About Ubuntu was a beta site and is no longer active. Please visit our new site, Works With U — www.workswithu.com — which offers non-stop coverage of Ubuntu Linux. We cover Ubuntu on mobile, desktop and server systems — in academic business and consumer markets. In short, we cover the business value of [...]

The Rochester chapter of the Ubuntu-New York LoCo will be having the Hardy Heron release party on Saturday, May 3. We're holding it at The Distillery at 3010 Winton Road South and meeting at 1pm at the bar.
If interested, please RSVP to hardyheron@nerdsonlinux.com so that we can get a general idea how many people to expect.
Hope to see you there.

Contrary to recent rumors, Dell has no plans to introduce Ubuntu pre-loads on its servers, according to The VAR Guy, our sister Web site. Details here.

Installing Ubuntu Linux onto a laptop ranges from simple to challenging, depending on the hardware you choose. What is that experience like? Here is how it went for me and where I found the support to do it. In a recent post, Qhartman described his experience in trying to find the perfect laptop to buy [...]

The Everex Cloudbook is one of the more recent entries into the realm low-power portable computers that come pre-loaded with Linux. In the case of the Cloudbook, it comes with gOS “Rocket,” which is based on Ubuntu. It is the perfect companion to the Sager laptop I recently purchased and reviewed, in that it virtually [...]

All About Ubuntu has been silent for a few days now. Sorry about that. I’m pleased to tell you all of us here at Nine Lives Media Inc. are working on something very special for the Ubuntu industry, but we need a few more weeks to bake it. So stick with us for a few [...]

After recently installing Ubuntu 8.04 Beta, I have seen numerous improvements that will bring welcome change to users in the near future. Now in beta stage, Ubuntu is stable enough for me or anyone else who is interesting in testing the new version. While I have not seen any problems, it is not recommended for [...]

I’m seeking to purchase a Hewlett-Packard all-in-one device (printer, scanner, copier, fax) that is network-enabled and works with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04. It must also print color and black-and-white. I realize there is an Ubuntu WiKi listing compatible printers (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/) but I’d like to hear from Ubuntu users directly. Can anyone recommend specific HP small [...]

As a nearly full-time Linux user, it can be frustrating when exciting new hardware comes out. My enthusiasm is often squelched when I find out that the new device offers no support for my beloved OS of choice, Ubuntu. That has been the case when investigating cellular Internet services from many carriers. I discovered recently, [...]

When Sun announced a major open source initiative targeting small and midsize businesses this week, a lot of people failed to realize that Sun would include servers certified for Ubuntu. Here’s the scoop, from our sister site, The VAR Guy (www.thevarguy.com). Sun’s SMB move comes only a day after The VAR Guy predicted server vendors [...]

Having multiple computers can be a blessing when trying to multi-task, but trying to control them all at once can take a lot of room. Hardware options are available. They are called KVMs, which is short for keyboard, video, and mouse switches. However these hardware options require a constant hardware connection. This makes it impractical [...]

Wow, I have been horrible at updating this. I figured I would move this to a full blogspot.com address as my ISP's web space is severly limited.

In my last posting last year around this time, I was debating whether or not to put together a MythTV box. Well, I have and here is my setup: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/User:BigDaveyL

In October, I attended Ontario LinuxFest, as I could not make it to Ohio LinuxFest this year.

I'm thinking of having a MythTV box. Just a few thoughts:

1. I'm considering using one of my big, ugly boxes for this purpose. This will be ugly in the living room. I'd like a box that runs horizontal so I can easily put it in my TV stand
   
2. I have a network connection that comes up through the floor behind the TV. However, I can slide it back though and get it behind my basement TV.
3. My living room TV is an HDTV
4. My living room has the receiver, for surround sound. But, it is running out of ports.
5. No cards that I know of support the Time Warner Digital cable directly.

This past weekend I attended Ohio Linuxfest. Here is the list of topics and presentations I attended:

• Mysql optimization
• Postgresql
• "20 things you can do with Apache webserver"
• Openldap
• Google and open source
• Ubuntu and Gnome
• Securing email
• "Open source: The next steps" - A talk given by Jon "maddog" Hall

Overall, it was a pretty good conference and woth the 14 hours of driving.

I finally got this beige G3/333 with 160MB RAM to boot off an older Gentoo CD - On to the next problem- trying to get the Open Firmware on the box to point to the right drive/partition and get the best to boot. I spent the better part of the day trying this, but it has been a big pain.

Sorry, for the one confirmed reader of my blog I haven't update this thing more often. Here's what I have been up to lately:

• Gentoo Linux on a Pentium? Yes! I built the system on my main computer, a 2.8 GHz, now with 2.5 GB RAM, mainly because I'm not that much of a masochist. Unfortunately, I fubared the kernel and I am rebuilding it. I did not enable xfs support. I had Ubuntu on these boxes, but the amount of bloat (i.e. unnecessary packages like Bluetooth support) made me switch to Gentoo. Since hard disk space, RAM and processor speed is very limited, I have more value (i.e. things I want vs. things I don't need) per byte with Gentoo.
  
• I acquired a beige PowerMac G3. Trying to get anything other than MacOS to boot on the thing is a pain.
• Hard disk failure. Looks like my attempts to revive a disk on one of my workhorse boxes, even using the disks low level utilities. I'm going to have to do some swapping and an OS rebuild.
  

How could they?

I recently decided to install Ubuntu on some older computers just to run some small tasks/daemons.

One odd thing - on one of them, the network wouldn't come up. I do have a work around - I added a line above "iface eth0 inet static". It is:
auto eth0

An interesting article was brought to my attention. A paper entitled The Effects of Moore's Law and Slacking on Large Computations proposes that it may be more efficient to wait until faster computers can tackle the problem.

The author proposes, that if you have a significantly large computation to do, it may be better to wait some amount of time before the hardware is purchased. Then the computation will take less time (and you may be able to do more work with the hardware than initially anticipated) and still meet a deadline. This may be beneficial to departments and projects where money may be an issue.

However, your boss may not like this arguement.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I could not compile gaim-blogger on my Gentoo system. The quick and dirty hack I came up with was to create a symbolic link called /usr/include/cairo.h to /usr/include/cairo/cairo.h.

gaim-blogger doesn't compile on my Gentoo system. It would be cool to update my blog directly from gaim. It appears that there is some missing C header file somewhere, because I see this message fly by:

/usr/include/gtk-2.0/gdk/gdkcolor.h:30:19: cairo.h: No such file or directory

Which obivously causes the build process to puke because there are undefined structures and functions.

Maybe I'll have to do some searching tonight and this weekend, and I won't have to bust out too much C.

I heard about a program last night called EtherPEG. It is a program for MacOS X that sniffs traffic and displays images that go by. Personally, this should scare you if you have an unencrypted wireless network, since all traffic can easily be sniffed.

Sorry I haven't blogged much the last few weeks, but between the holidays and vaction...

Just a few tech observations from my trip...

• For you laptop carriers, Royal Carribean's Soverign of the Seas offers wifi access in may places around the ship as well as many public terminals, but getting out to the Internet carries a $0.50/min charge which is probably the most expensive I've ever seen.
  
• At a Hampton Inn, I saw public terminals running Linux (Linspire). Only caveat - these terminals were logged in as "root".
  
• The restored Saturn V rocket at Cape Canaveral is pretty impressive!
  

A few weeks ago, I was having problems booting my main computer. I had problems booting an SMP kernels with Hyperthreading enabled in the BIOS (a more formal description of the problem is here on the Gentoo Forums). However, Windows XP Professional detected everything ok.

Seems that, for some odd reason, the culprit was loose cables in the back of the box.

Linux magazine is running a series of articles called "What's GNU in Old Utilities." Part three deals with cp, mv and ln.

Another "vintage" computer for running Linux has been added to the arsenal. Originally, I thought my power supplies were bad, but it helps if you wire things right. I guess you just got to rtfm.
Another feature neglected from my KDE 3.5 review was "autorun." Whenever new media (i.e. CD, DVD, etc.) is inserted, it prompts you, asking what you would like to do (i.e. play it or open a window showing it's contents).

Recently, I had someone ask me to wipe the hard disk on her old PII Compaq laptop. I wanted to do this in a secure fashion. The UNIX program dd will allow me to write zero's or random data to every byte on the disk.

Since the computer had only 32MB of RAM, many modern Linux LiveCD's would be extremely sluggish. I decided to try a floppy distro called bootE Linux. Download the binary image file. In order to make a floppy disk out of this file, I ran the command:
dd if=bootE-0.20-r2.img of=/dev/fd
will write the image to the floppy. This assumes that the device of the floopy disk is /dev/fd0 and the image I downloaded is bootE-0.20-r2.img.

Next, boot the machine you would like to wipe with the floppy you created. It will boot you into a shell, where you can execute:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
will write zero's to /dev/hda (assuming this is the hard disk you would like to wipe). This will take a bit (patience is a virtue).
For the ultra paranoid, execute this several more times, using /dev/urandom.

After this completes, the drive is completely wiped, and then can be trashed, or partitioned, formatted and your OS of choice installed.

I've been playing with KDE 3.5.0 RC1 on my Gentoo box. A few small things I've noticed:

• About the same speed/responsiveness as KDE 3.4
• Random freezes when try to logout (but the "Restart" and "Shut Down" buttons work
• Different animation in the task bar
• Can't seem to get GAIM to play nice with Arts

The experience is about the same as 3.4, but 3.5 is slightly more polished. KDE 4.0 seems to have some new features - a feature list is here