fidzu : Ubuntu

This week I will be attending Linaro Connect Q1.12 in Redwood City, California. Infact, I'm in an American Airlines plane at 34,000 feet heading there now. In-flight WiFi is awesome!

Over the past two months Michael Hall and myself have been doing a large amount of work on The Summit Scheduler to get it ready for Connect this week including modifying more than 2,400 lines of Summit code. You can find out more about that in my previous post.

I have a few things that I want to get out of Connect. The first is that I want to get feedback on the changes to Summit, as well as figure out what other things we may need to change. The second thing that I want to do is to learn more about the Beagleboard-xM that I have and how to use it for the many different things it can be used for. The third thing that I want to do is to learn about Linaro's LAVA.

LAVA is an automated validation suite used to run all sorts of different tests on the products that Linaro produces. The things that I would like to get out of Connect in relation to LAVA are how to setup and run LAVA, how to set it up to run tests, and how to produce results and display those results the way that I want them.

If you are at Linaro Connect, and would be willing to talk with me about Summit and the way you use it and your thoughts on the changes, please contact me and we will set aside a time to meet.

05 Feb 2012 6:13pm GMT

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05 Feb 2012 2:33pm GMT

Another Linux distro updated now with Lubuntu in its core: DEFT Linux 7. This is a great recovery and forensic distro with lots of tools to aid for repairing partitions, damaged clusters, recover lost data, make network tests and configurations, etc. I can't write the whole list of apps included in this release, not enough space :) Mmm, thatartwork sounds familiar to me... :D

04 Feb 2012 8:24pm GMT

In playing with some tools I've run into at $work, I've tried loading in some Ubuntu datasets in some fun and interesting ways.

Today, I've chosen to map all Ubuntu Members with a public lat/lon, sized by Karma.

The sizes relate to if the Karma is greater then:

1: 10

2: 50

3: 100

4: 500

5: 1000

6: 2000

7: 7000

8: 15000

9: 25000

10: 50000

So, without further adieu, here're some maps!

04 Feb 2012 5:04pm GMT

We're going out for the Planning Curry for season five of the Ubuntu Podcast this week. Over the years, it has become a tradition for all the presenters to go out for a curry before the start of the season. It's a time to catch up in person, as we haven't seen much of each other since the end of the last season. But it's also a chance to discuss any changes we want to make to the show and throw ideas for new segments around. So, if there's anything you'd like to see in the new season, whether it's an idea for a segment or a change to something we already do, please let us know. You can leave a comment on this blog post or get in touch using any of the methods on the show website. Thanks!

04 Feb 2012 4:01pm GMT

FCM reader Brian has pulled together my Scribus tutorials from the early issues of FCM and even added updated screenshots to it. So, if you're thinking of creating a publication of any kind, you might want to check out this special edition.

http://fullcirclemagazine.org/scribus-special-edition/

04 Feb 2012 3:38pm GMT

I have been passionate about Free Software for a long time now. My contributions have always revolved around helping people make amazing things happen and realize what they are really capable of. I've shown many people that small niche that just fits them perfectly and seen them grow from there and make a difference.
Along the way I've always come accross two problems:

1. "I can't do X (usually programming), how could I ever be useful to a project"
2. "This is so overwhelming, I don't even know where to start."

I've done a lot of things to overcome this but it wasn't ever enough somehow. Today I am at FOSDEM presenting a book, that will be another step towards fixing these problems. Today I am releasing Open Advice.

Open Advice is the result of the collaboration of more than 50 people from all across Free Software. It is a collection of short essays about key things the authors wished they had known when they started contributing to Free Software. It'll give a headstart to everyone who wants to contribute. It'll also be useful for existing contributors who want to know a bit more about other projects and areas of contribution.

The book is available as a paperback and free PDF and is licensed under CC-BY-SA.

What are you waiting for? Download the PDF version today or order a printed version.

Additional goodies: The LaTeX source is available and a bug tracker exists as well.

A year ago I started working on this project and today it is reality. If you're at FOSDEM I'm sure you can see me bouncing around with joy

04 Feb 2012 12:30pm GMT

It's that time again. Alpha 2 was released yesterday, here is one members experience:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1919854

There have also been several threads on kernel panics with the 3.2 version:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1913073

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1896087

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1910857

My own problem was solved by removing an SD card from the card reader, but that really is only a work around. The problem looks to be solved with the next kernel release.

The classroom session effenberg0x0 and I put on at UDW went well, but we found we had to much information for the length of the session. We are in discussion about doing some sessions using the Community Learning Project.

04 Feb 2012 12:29am GMT

You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
Christina Perri - Jar of Hearts

I bet at four o'clock this morning you weren't in a police station.

Or, at least, if you were I bet you were drunk and I bet it wasn't voluntary.

After the usual Friday night poor showing from my local pub (people who follow me on twitter will be aware that the torture of watching a hundred people think they're affirming their lives by singing Mr Brightside at the top of their voices is a regular part of my balanced weekly diet), I walked home, on a cold and cloudless night. I live about ten minutes walk from town, so the walk's no hardship, except that I was dressed in shirt and no coat and it was, as mentioned, cold.

I need to be clear about this. Ten degrees below zero, Celsius, is seriously chilly when you're standing in it in shirt-sleeves. I'm sure people in actually cold places like Canada or Minneapolis or Refrigeration, North Dakota will be laughing mockingly at this point, but firstly, bugger off, secondly I bet you lot bother to put a coat on when you go out, thirdly it's not two in the morning for you, and fourthly bugger off.

Anyway, I get home and... no door key in my pocket.

You know that feeling when the Fist of Fear grabs your balls when you realise something disastrous has happened? (I don't know what the Fist grabs for women. Feel free to fill me in, or actually maybe not.) Anyway: yeah, that. I went through the usual search-all-pockets-and-then-search-them-all-again routine, just in case a mischievous cold-tolerant leprechaun hid my key from the first search and then put it back, and... no door key. Oh dear.

I'll tell you this; the walk back to the pub again seems a much longer trek. Nowhere near as long as the second return to the house without my key, though, after it turned out no-one had handed it in. And now, what the hell to do, eh? I'm not prescient enough to hide a key in the garden, especially since that's a damned good way to come home one night and find no television where a television used to be, so... locksmith? Do they have 24-hour locksmiths? I can't be the first moron to have done this.

If you're bored today, I have a suggestion for you. Go and find a dude who claims to be a 24-hour locksmith and punch him in his stupid lying face.

Incidentally, how in Jah's name did anyone manage in this situation five years ago without a smartphone, huh?

Not that the internet helps when no-one frigging answers their supposedly-24-hour phone. Also, it turns out that about four of the local 24-hour locksmith companies are actually the same company, who did answer their phone, agreed to send someone, and then after an hour of me standing in the freezing bloody freezing cold confessed that they didn't actually have anyone to send.

It's now half three in the morning, and the shivering is starting to get on my nerves, and I can't get into my house without destroying something like a double-glazed plate glass window which will cost me hundreds of pounds to fix and my hands are shaking enough that I can barely light a cigarette, let alone throw a brick through a door that probably wouldn't break anyway, and I'd like to avoid the police showing up since I have no way of proving that I actually live here except for being able to describe where all the broken bits of skirting-board are, and everywhere is closed and the doors are all locked and it's really spectacularly bone-shudderingly mightily arse-clenchingly ridiculously psychopathically cold, and what to do? I tried sleeping in the shed. Now, cold is not like wind. Being inside a thin empty wooden building does not protect you from it. I was shivering like a jackhammer on a bouncy castle and it was becoming clear, even in my not-very-operational brain state, that lying on the floor at minus ten with only a shirt on could quite possibly lead to me actually freezing to death for real.

Well, if the police came, either I'd get into the house or they'd arrest me, and being arrested would at least make me warm, and right now I'd cut my right hand off if Pol Pot showed up as long as he brought a pair of gloves and some soup.

And then, through the frozen and frosty neurons came the sparkling thought that the police station would be open, wouldn't it?

I actually felt warmer just at the thought. Not much warmer, though.

Anyway, that's how I came to be sitting in the cop shop voluntarily at four am. One lovely copper even made me a cup of tea after I poured out my tale of woe in one long sentence, breaking only for my teeth to chatter together like I was trying to bite through the world.

Police stations: while I appreciate that you're generally there to deal with miscreants and so on, it wouldn't kill you to get rid of two screwed-to-the-ground plastic chairs and put in, say, a chaise longue. After switching my phone to airplane mode I managed to eke out enough battery life that I could sit and read while huddled up against the radiator for five hours until nine o'clock this morning, whereupon I went and fetched the spare key from my estate agent after the longest and coldest and most sleepless night I have ever experienced.

So, tips, for surviving a similar situation.

1. Have a spare key. Note: I do not have a spare key hidden in my garden, burglars, so don't go looking for it. I do not know how to have a spare key somewhere where you can get at it but thieves cannot; suggestions welcomed.
2. Have a girlfriend so that there's someone to let you back in.
3. Next time you see a policeman, be nice to him.

I think I might have a nap now.

04 Feb 2012 12:00am GMT

I prefer the following CSS:

<html>
<body>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
        @import url(/css/style.css);
      </style>
</head>
</body>
</html>

But not all browsers support @import. I wanted to see exactly which ones didn't so I used browsershots.org with a simple test.

Here are the results: http://browsershots.org/http://volatileminds.net/import_test.html

Black means it supports it. White means it doesn't.

03 Feb 2012 11:07pm GMT

We have uploaded a new Precise linux kernel. Please note the ABI bump. The most notable changes are as follows:

* Rebase to upstream stable v3.2.3 and essentially v3.2.4

The full changelog can be seen at:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/3.2.0-14.23

03 Feb 2012 11:05pm GMT

Even though some of these tools have been around for years, I have only recently started using them.

03 Feb 2012 10:15pm GMT

A new great tool ready for using with our beloved Lubuntu: LxScreenshot! This is another brilliant creation from the Stefano, the same author of LxFind. You can imagine what's its purpose, creating screen captures with ease and a simple interface, with timing capture (in seconds) and the option to choose the folder to save it on. You can install this tool just by looking for it with

03 Feb 2012 10:14pm GMT

Haven't tried LxFind yet? For those who doesn't know it, it will be the default file and document search tool or Lubuntu. For trying it (remember, it's not an ultimate comilation) put this on a terminal: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubuntu-desktop/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install lxfind If you already added our PPA just install the package "lxfind".

03 Feb 2012 9:55pm GMT

0 A.D. is an awesome cross-platform game that is fun, has stunning graphics and is completely open source.
There's even a PPA for Ubuntu.
It works wonderfully on both my laptops.

They are looking for a round of donations to pay for some more development work, and as of this moment they're $634 USD short. I've just sent $50 their way.
If you've got a few bucks to spare, please send some money their way. Or maybe you want to get into some development work, they have detailed instructions on how to do just that!

03 Feb 2012 7:43pm GMT

It took a while to get some apt resolver bugs fixed, a few packages marked for multi-arch and some changes in the Ubuntu LXC template, but since yesterday, you can now run (using up to date Precise):

• sudo apt-get install lxc qemu-user-static
• sudo lxc-create -n armhf01 -t ubuntu - -a armhf -r precise
• sudo lxc-start -n armhf01
• Then login with root as both login and password

And enjoy an armhf system running on your good old x86 machine.

Now, obviously it's pretty far from what you'd get on real ARM hardware.
It's using qemu's user space CPU emulation (qemu-user-static), so won't be particularly fast, will likely use a lot of CPU and may give results pretty different from what you'd expect on real hardware.

Also, because of limitations in qemu-user-static, a few packages from the "host" architecture are installed in the container. These are mostly anything that requires the use of ptrace (upstart) or the use of netlink (mountall, iproute and isc-dhcp-client).
This is the bare minimum I needed to install to get the rest of the container to work using armhf binaries. I obviously didn't test everything and I'm sure quite a few other packages will fail in such environment.

This feature should be used as an improvement on top of a regular armhf chroot using qemu-user-static and not as a replacement for actual ARM hardware (obviously), but it's cool to have around and nice to show what LXC can do.

I confirmed it to work for armhf and armel, powerpc should also work, though it didn't succeed to debootstrap when I tried it earlier today.

Enjoy!

03 Feb 2012 6:26pm GMT