Nuudelisoppa

Category: Uncategorized

  • You learn something new… occasionally

    Ha, I just discovered that apt-get build-dep whateverpackage is an easy way to satisfy some, if not most or even all of the dependencies required for building whateverpackage from newer sources.

  • Making the Epson Perfection 660 scanner work with xsane

    Looks like this takes a while without ready-made instructions, so I’ll jot ’em down here for future reference.

    1. Pick up the Scan Tool zip archive from Epson’s site (not sure if the link works, but it’s in the support section. I picked Windows XP as my OS, the Linux option took me to a site which didn’t mention the 660 so I don’t know about that.
    2. Extract Euro/DATA/BIN/TAIL_061.BIN from the archive.
    3. Toss the file into a suitable directory; I chose to create /usr/local/share/sane/snapscan for this purpose.
    4. Edit /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf and fix the firmware line to point to TAIL_061.BIN in wherever you put it in the previous point.
    5. Add your unprivileged self to the scanner group. Log out and back in to make it actual.

    That’s it.

  • Swirling again

    In case anyone’s interested, I’ve branched off my Debian ramblings into a separate blog just as I did with posts related to Ubuntu earlier this year.

  • Lenny’s GStreamer plays Asao

    I just discovered that Lenny’s GStreamer plays Nellymoser’s flash audio without any difficulty. This is awesome and definitely so much easier than with Ubuntu Hardy. Back then I had to convert such FLVs’ audio tracks into MP3 using ffmpeg built from source.

  • Hardware notes for my own reference

    So the CPU inside my AMD Shuttle box (an SN45 with the latest, FN45S00W BIOS) is marked AXDA2600DKV4D, which means it’s a Barton-core XP 2600+ @ 1917 MHz with a 333 MHz bus (166 MHz external frequency) and a 11.5 multiplier. The manufacturing code, AFAICT, is AQZFA0348MPM, which in turn means the multiplier’s locked (the unlocked ones were made prior to week 39 of 2003, or 0339, according to OC forums).

    The single memory module it’s accompanied by currently is a 512 MB Elixir PC3200U @ 400 MHz, marked CL3. And apparently I just destroyed it while gathering this data.

  • Swirling towards the inevitable

    It looks like I need to have a place for making notes while tackling Debian, so I’ve set up this blog. I don’t intend to make this as formal as my Ubuntu blog, but more of a “casual scribblings” type of thingy, so reader beware!

    This initial post might be a good place to elaborate on my choice of operating system.

    I’ve been a free software proponent for a long time, not only because of political reasons, but because I often find the open solutions superior to their closed counterparts. There was a time recently where this philosophy did not extend to the OS for some reason. I don’t recall what made me switch from Debian to XP; perhaps it was just laziness, not bothering to dual-boot when I had to have Windows for some tasks. So for some years I was a slave of Microsoft.

    I mentioned Ubuntu, and what was my production machine up until recently still runs Hardy Heron, which I installed about six months ago. Initially I installed it parallel to Windows XP on a whim, after trying it out and taking a liking in how everything Just Worked. Then I discovered VirtualBox and found out I could now do MSN video conferences and other necessities through it, without having to dual-boot, so I ditched the XP partitions altogether.

    Then I found myself more and more drawn back to Debian. It’s not that there’s anything technically wrong with Ubuntu. On the contrary, I think Canonical are doing a great job with it. It’s just that I’d rather see myself supporting (with my choices) a purely community-driven distribution than one involving a company, no matter how freedom-focused they may be. I wouldn’t consider myself a socialist either, however. I believe there is room for both community-driven and commercial operating systems — even closed-source ones.

    In fact, because of my personal beliefs, I’m sometimes tempted by the BSD variants due to their licensing. In my ideal world, most code would be released under a permissive license, and despite the possibility of closed derivatives, there would be enough open, solid code for us to choose to use it exclusively, should we want to. But it may be that in real world, a GPL-type hack is required for us to have this choice. At the very least, I believe it’s required for the time being.

    But I digress.

    When I switched to a slightly lower-end machine for my desktop use, I had a chance to switch the OS as well, and the choice was more or less obvious, especially after having played around with lenny inside VirtualBox. So after some years, I’m back in Debian.

  • Debian (Lenny): How to change MAC address while installing

    It’s easy enough to change your network adapter’s MAC address once you have a Debian/Ubuntu system installed, but I needed to do this from within the Debian installer (Lenny beta 2), and it took me a while to figure out how. So I’m making a note of it for my own future reference, and maybe someone googling for the phrases I initially did will find this helpful.

    So here’s the problem: my NIC’s default MAC address is (say) 01:02:03:04:05:06, and for one reason or another, I need it to be 06:05:04:03:02:01 instead. Furthermore, I need this change to be in effect while I’m inside Lenny’s installer, so ifconfig is not available. Here’s how I did it:

    1. From the installer’s boot menu, select Advanced options, and Expert install.
    2. Work your way down the steps as needed, starting from the top, until you’ve gone through Detect network hardware. Instead of the next one (Configure the network), pick Execute a shell from further down the menu.
    3. In the shell you can check your network interface status with
      # ip link show eth0

      You might use eth1 or some other port instead of eth0, but I haven’t done this with anything other than the one NIC I had in the setup, and so haven’t used anything besides eth0.
      In my case, entering the command gives the following output:

      2: eth0:  mtu 1500 qdisc noop qlen 1000
    link/ether 01:02:03:04:05:06 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    4. Next, the spell you’ve been waiting for. Let’s change that MAC address!
      # ip link set eth0 addr 06:05:04:03:02:01

      If all goes well, ip won’t say anything. Re-run the ‘show‘ command listed in the previous point to see that it actually worked.

    5. Type exit to return to the installer.
    6. Now you pick up from Configure the network, and proceed installing from there.

    One last point: the changed MAC address won’t survive the reboot finalizing the installation, so if you want to make it permanent, you’ll want to set it after the first boot into your new system, by using the method I linked to in the beginning (editing /etc/network/interfaces). Or you could to do it from the installer, using nano (in busybox).

  • Tietokoneeni nimi -meemi

    Jos muotoilisin tämän Tietokoneeni nimi -meemin tehtävänannon suomeksi, niin se voisi kuulua kutakuinkin näin:

    Minkä nimen olet tietokoneellesi antanut, ja miksi juuri sen?

    Varsinaisen pöytäkoneeni nimi on shuttle-xpc, ja toisen, tällä hetkellä lähinnä multimediakäytössä olevan boksin shuttle-celeron. Nimet tulevat siitä, että molemmat ovat Shuttlen valmistamia XPC-mallisia koneita, ja jälkimmäisessä on Celeron-suoritin. Voi, kuinka epäomaperäistä!

    Aikaisemmin minulla oli kyllä tapana käyttää nimien keksimisessä vähän enemmän mielikuvitusta. Mutta melko epäomaperäisiä ne olivat silloinkin sikäli, että mieskäyttäjänä nimesin koneeni naisten nimillä.

  • Työpöytäympäristö käynnistyy itsekseen uudestaan

    Lähtökohta
    Olen lisännyt Kenneth Wimerin yksityisen pakettivaraston Ohjelmalähteisiin Synaptic-pakettienhallinnassa, ja asentanut sieltä työpöydälleni uuden ulkoasun.
    VirtualBoxista käytössäni on PUEL-versio 1.6.6.
    Ongelma
    Näennäisen satunnaisesti, mutta kuitenkin suhteellisen usein ja useimmiten samojen ohjelmien (VirtualBox, Epiphany-selain ja Synaptic) ollessa käynnissä, työpöytäympäristö sulkeutuu itsestään ja käynnistyy sitten uudestaan.
    /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old -tiedoston lopussa lukee uudelleenkäynnistymisen jäljiltä seuraavaa:

    Backtrace:
0: /usr/bin/X(xf86SigHandler+0x7e) [0x80c780e]
1: [0xb7f9b420]
2: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions//libextmod.so [0xb7c0a6bf]
3: /usr/bin/X(FindClientResourcesByType+0xb1) [0x8075821]
4: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions//libextmod.so [0xb7c0aeb3]
5: /usr/bin/X [0x81506ee]
6: /usr/bin/X(Dispatch+0x2cf) [0x808d8df]
7: /usr/bin/X(main+0x48b) [0x807471b]
8: /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0) [0xb7d2e450]
9: /usr/bin/X(FontFileCompleteXLFD+0x201) [0x8073a91]

Fatal server error:
Caught signal 8.  Server aborting
    Ongelman syy
    Ei vielä tiedossa.
    Ratkaisu
    Ei vielä tiedossa.
    Huomautuksia
    • Jostain syystä erityisesti Debianin (Lenny) asentaminen virtuaalikoneeseen tuntuu liittyvän usein tähän. Se voi olla vain harhaa, joka johtuu siitä että olen viime aikoina asentanut (tai yrittänyt asentaa, ennen työpöydän sulkeutumista) Debianin useita kertoja, mutta toisaalta se voi liittyä myös sen tapaan käyttää virtuaalikoneen resursseja, varsinkin salattujen levyniteiden käytön yhteydessä.
    • Mainitsin yksityisen pakettivaraston lähtökohdissa alustavasti siltä varalta, että ongelma liittyy siihen, mikä ei ole täysin poissuljettua, koska kyse ei ole pelkistä grafiikkatiedostoista, vaan uusi teema vaati toimiakseen myös uuden taustamoottorin. Otin nyt kokeeksi tuon pakettivaraston pois käytöstä, ja palautin sieltä päivittämäni paketit virallisiin versioihin (Hardy).
    • VirtualBox itsessään on tietysti sekin yksi epäillyistä.

  • Verkkominä

    Tietokoneella rennosti istuva, snorkkelipäinen heppu

    Olet 80-luvun kasvatti!

    Olet kasvanut eri tietokonesukupolvien myötä. Hallitset koneen ja verkon peruskäytön. Osaat myös kaivaa esille tarvitsemasi tiedon sekä varata netistä lomamatkasi. Haluat pysyä ajan hermolla, mutta viimeisimmät verkkotrendit sujahtavat ohi ymmärryksesi tai kuulet niistä vasta sanomalehtien kertomana. Olet todennäköisesti Facebookin kanta-asiakas.

    46 % testin tehneistä on 80-luvun kasvatteja. […] Pisteidesi perusteella muita sinua lähellä olevia Verkkominä-profiileja ovat meseteini ja supernörtti.

    Verkkominä-testi
    HS.fi via Matkalla

    Facebook? Yäääh…

    Enkä todellakaan lukenut mudkipistä mistään sanomalehdestä.