Krishna reinstall

Had to reinstall krishna - forced into it by a compromise - so mail and search services were down for a day. Luckily Mandriva 2006 and 2007.1 are not too different, so many apps worked as before with just a copy-paste of the config files. Including the databases.

wordpad corrupts IIS Metabase.xml file

Once again, after my earlier post, had this bad experience. This time even after stopping IIS and then opening the metabase. So, it is definitely wordpad's fault, notepad doesn't corrupt, so use notepad alone for editing metabase.xml. ( %SystemRoot%\System32\Inetsrv\MetaBase.xml )

copying text from a locked pdf file

1. Used PDF Edit tools from http://www.filehunter.com/ to remove the lock
2. This is shareware, adds watermark text which says

THIS IS A DEMONSTRATION
PAGE PRODUCED BY
PDFEditTools
You can order the program at
www.filehunter.com

3. Used pdftohtml - http://pdftohtml.sourceforge.net/ - to convert to html
4. Used find and replace in a text editor like kwrite to remove the watermark text after text conversion.

text formatting with vim and vi

Vim helped me out twice over the last few days.

A virus spam complaint about our postfix server - could use the "find" command to easily locate the surrounding lines in /var/log/mail/info to show that it was just bouncing a virus mail.

Find (forward) in vi = /characters_to_find
Find backwards = ?characters_to_find
Find next = n
Find next in the opposite direction = N

The next tip was from a thread in the comments section of an article on freshmeat on how to make emails palatable to the Linux community.

we vim users have an extra-nifty trick available.
gq} will reformat the current paragraph, while magically preserving > > -style quoting!
gq/^--/-1 will do it from the cursor until your signature, which is even better.

The second part is not working for me - it complains about no match for ^--

But gq} works when there are paragraph breaks - two newlines.

iBook + iCab, but no ethernet

iCab installed on the iBook, browsing is now up to par, but the ethernet port seems to be broken - switch light flashes green instead of steady green.

Getting DivX to work with TT's tutorial, updating software using the list at pure-mac.com - OldVersion.com is useful only for Windows software.

Update: Upgrading to Quicktime 6 broke DivX playback. Downgrading to QT 5 involved first removing QT6 and then installing QT5. Removing software on the mac = dragging all associated files to the Trash. Used Sherlock to find files with 'Quicktime' in their name. DivX works with QT5 and the 3ivX codec using DivX Doctor, but files with resolution 720x480, for example, play at some 10 fps, probably because the processor can't keep up.

GMail and Blogger not usable on the iBook with IE

Since the iBook had IE 5.1 for Mac, it doesn't recognize the xhtml mime type: this is discussed in the Wikipedia and elsewhere but Gmail and Blogger seem to have issues with it still. User-agent code needs a brushing up, probably. Finally got the previous post's text uploaded thru Yahoo Mail, since the USB port was recessed and the mem-key was not able to go in without an extension cable.

Short guide to the Mac for PC users

After "rescuing" the Tangerine iBook from M, I'm "trying to find it a good home". Since almost no one has used Macs here, I have this small guide to get them started.

Intro to an iBook for a Windows PC user:

1. In MacOS 9 and below, there is no Start Menu: you have to navigate to the app's location and double-click on it to start any application.

2. Menus remain at the top, closing the window doesn't shut down the app.

3. Just like Alt-F4 in Windows, use Apple-Q in MacOS to quit an app - or choose File -> Quit from the menu.

4. List of all open apps, something like the taskbar, is available on the rhs of the menu on clicking the button there.

5. The equivalent of Windows Explorer is called Finder.

6. Drag and drop the CD-ROM / removable disk icon to trash in order to eject a CD / removable disk.

7. The online Help system is quite good.

make a small planet

Daily Dose of Imagery has an interesting post on how to produce images like this.

extracting audio from DVD

To get an audio-only file: guide at http://www.dvd-guides.com/content/view/136/59/
found via videohelp.com - the guide uses DVD Decrypter and Goldwave, I used WinAmp with Disk-Writer plugin instead of Goldwave for the .wav conversion. Initially, the WinAmp playback of the mp2 file and saving to file was buggy - clicks at every second or so. Found that it was playing back fine in Windows Media Player. Found some info at this page - http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MP4_Input_Plugin_for_Winamp.htm leading me to remove the mp2 extension in the list of the Nullsoft MP1-MP2 plugin and add it to the Directshow plugin instead. Then it works fine.

Ctrl-P in WinAmp -> Plug-ins -> Input -> Choose relevant plugin, hit the configure button, add / remove extensions in the File Association Extension list.

firefox download manager

Wanted a download manager with the option to queue downloads, so that our net connection wouldn't get overloaded with too many simultaneous downloads. DownThemAll seems to be a good solution. It has options for using as a download accelerator, too.

wifi, SPDIF, tv out and dual display

More tests on the Acer Aspire laptop:

Wifi:
Wifi finally enabled thru ndiswrapper. It probably works with the Atheros driver from madwifi latest svn build, but didn't try it. Took quite a while get it working because I tried to take short-cuts which didn't work. First tried with the kernel source given in the DVD, didn't work since an update had upgraded the kernel from 2.6.17-13mdv to 2.6.17-14mdv. Then, I disregarded a forum post saying the latest madwifi patches will be needed, and madwifi stable didn't work. Then used old version of ndiswrapper on the DVD, didn't work with the Windows driver. Finally worked with latest stable ndiswrapper tar.gz. I've not tested with a hotspot, just saw that Mandrake Control Centre and ifconfig recognize the interface wlan0. Left it disabled since A doesn't have wifi at home.

TV out:
Works in Windows, NTSC, after going to Intel display properties tab after clicking display properties Advanced button, needs the connector to be plugged in before the settings appear. Doesn't work in Linux.

External Monitor:
Works in Windows and Linux, Windows has option of switching between Extended Desktop on CRT, Cloned Desktops on LCD and CRT, LCD only and CRT only modes, while on Linux Cloned displays on both is the only option. If external monitor is connected, BIOS, GRUB etc display only on the external monitor. When Ext Monitor and TV-out work, video overlays on those displays were working too - videos played in KMplayer and Xine for Windows and Linux tests.

Details of wifi exteriments:

Using http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/Mandrake/OldGuides

inside the madwifi directory, ran

make KERNELPATH=/usr/src/linux-2.6.17-13mdv 
make KERNELPATH=/usr/src/linux-2.6.17-13mdv install
cp -rf /lib/modules/2.6.17-13mdv/net/* /lib/modules/2.6.17-14mdv/kernel/net

Kernel couldn't load the module on modprobe.

)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Got new kernel source, did again. Then,

modprobe -v ath_pci

gives in /var/log/messages

Jul  2 09:43:21 aceraspire kernel: ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (0.9.3.1)
Jul  2 09:43:21 aceraspire kernel: ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.0[A] -> GSI 17    (level, low) -> IRQ 17
Jul  2 09:43:21 aceraspire kernel: wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: 'Hardware   didn't respond as expected' (HAL status 3)
Jul  2 09:43:21 aceraspire kernel: ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:03:00.0 disabled

So trying ndiswrapper instead of trying cvs and stuff.

))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Using the ndiswrapper installation instructions:

lspci gave
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

lspci -n gave
03:00.0 0200: 168c:001c (rev 01)

Next to check out the windows drivers and use them.

c:\windows\system32\drivers\ar5211.sys

C:\Program Files\Atheros\Wireless\Driver\net5211.inf

With the ndsiwrapper 1.21 which was included in Mandriva 2007.1, /var/log/messages gave

Jul  3 13:29:48 aceraspire kernel: ndiswrapper version 1.21 loaded (preempt=no,smp=yes)
Jul  3 13:29:48 aceraspire loadndisdriver: loadndisdriver: load_driver(361): couldn't load driver net5211
Jul  3 13:29:48 aceraspire kernel: ndiswrapper (import:241): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:'ZwDeleteKey'
Jul  3 13:29:48 aceraspire kernel: ndiswrapper (load_sys_files:215): couldn't prepare driver 'net5211'
Jul  3 13:29:48 aceraspire kernel: ndiswrapper (load_wrap_driver:113): loadndiswrapper failed (65280); check system log for messages from 'loadndisdriver'

)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Finally installed latest stable ver 1.47 from ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net, installed wireless tools, now all ok.

making DVD slide shows

Found Windows and Linux tools for making DVD slide shows for K*R :
Windows: DVD slideshow GUI
Linux: Slideshow Creator

Edit: But they have their idiosyncracies... slcreator needs gambas, so I directly tried it's backend, dvd-slideshow. Dependencies like ImageMagick > 5.5.4, mjpegtools, dvdauthor were already on saispace2, so tried installing and running it from there. The bundled dir2slideshow script easily produces the required input text file. But Imagemagick (composite) gave errors - lines similar to these:

composite -compose src-over -gravity center -type TrueColor -depth 8

unknown option src-over.

Running dvd-slideshow on aceraspire - Running the program with the images located in a remote samba share gave an error, the smb share getting disconnected. Most probably some issue with samba on the aceraspire. Copied the pix locally and ran, all 605 pixs at once. Chugged along, each 2-second cross-fade taking nearly 15 seconds to render! But the whole process took only 2.5 hours for 1.5 hour long video file to be output as a vob.

Running DVD-slidehow-GUI on Windows on saispace2:
If captions are enabled, AVISynth subtitle engine gives an error when there are 18 or more images, saying can't find the temp file DVDsGUItemp.ssa even tho' it is in the path mentioned in the error dialog.

AVISynth Open Failure - TextSub: Can't open "q:\path\DVDsGUItemp.ssa"

I suspect it is because the program is addding too much white space at the beginning of the ssa file - with 1-2 pictues, the subtitling works, and as more pix are added, the ssa file gets more white-space at the beginning. And again, after removing the subtitles in preferences, the program works, but takes up so much memory that the system (512 MB RAM, 512 MB swap file) runs out of memory if all the 600+ images are added at once. So, doing them 100 at a time. It also takes roughly 4 times real-time - so a slide show of 5 minutes takes 20 minutes to prepare the MPEG2 file.

wget saves the day

K*R wanted some wedding pics of a relative, from a US photo site which I won't mention here. They had a painful java applet interface, one photo viewable every 30 seconds, for ordering only. Checked the code, found the path to the images, and wget was able to suck them all out easily! Used the following code from http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-to-generating-print-range-sequence-of-numbers.html to create a text file of images:

for i in $(seq 605); do echo "http://url _ $i _ .jpg"; done > list.txt

and then used

wget -i list.txt --random-wait --wait=2

java plugin problem

In spite of following the instructions given at Mandrivausers there seems to be some problem with the java plugin on the Acer, probably due to the update to Firefox 2.0.0.4 . Interestingly, Konqueror is able to pick up the plugin from the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins folder, and java is working fine with it.

blogger issue with captchas

There seems to be some issue with blogger captchas after the auto-save is introduced - every single time it refuses the captcha first entered with "ERROR - Enter the letters as they are shown in the image." if the post has been auto-saved.
Edit: searching for captcha on the Blogger help group led me to this thread, so now I've submitted the review form noting that I'm not a spam-bot.

solving audio quirks

My first laptop post was perhaps overly euphoric. There's an issue with the audio - plugging in headphones doesn't automatically mute the speakers. Thankfully, there's a solution, from linux-on-laptops.net The Acer Aspire 3680 entry noted that muting the "Surround" in the mixer, Kmix in my case, mutes the speakers, with sound still coming in the headphones. Also, the function keys - Fn-F8 for muting, Fn-DownArrow for decreasing volume and Fn-UpArrow for increasing - don't work. Another tweak which was required was to change the "Master Channel" by right-clicking and choosing 'Select Master Channel' - it was PC speaker, changed to PCM. This is so that now a single click on the Volume Control should be enough for controlling sound, without needing to open the full mixer.

Another nice link from linux-on-laptops was via the forum to this page - nice links to free audio software including Ardour.

installing java plugin

Surprisingly, Java plugin was not installed properly on saispace2. After the upgrade to firefox2, did that too. The arcana was from http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/faq.html#q2.2 and in my case, the command was

ln -s /usr/java/jre1.5.0/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

found by doing

rpm -ql jre

video player shootout

checking out media players on Mandriva 2007: Mplayer aspect ratio seems to be broken - seems to assume a 4:3 screen, and since the screen is not 4:3, is skewed. VLC and xine were OK. Totem and KMplayer seem to have a gamma problem - picture is washed out. And the players have problems with 3D desktop enabled. With Metisse, mplayer doesn't play without changing the vo option. VLC gets blocky - pixel interpolation seems to have gone for a six. Xine and Kmplayer with xine develop an interlacing problem. With Compiz and Beryl, VLC plays ok in windowed mode but black-screens on giving full-screen command. Xine is OK.

Mandriva 2007.1 on Acer Aspire 3684NWXCi

Got this machine for A - supposed to come pre-loaded with Linux, but the naughty dealer has put in an OEM version of pre-activated XP. 80 GB hdd was partitioned into 20 GB pieces, so the easy way out was to just leave everything as it was except to pop in Mandriva 2007.1 Free DVD and install it, removing the "D:" partition.

First looks - very impressive, with 3D desktops in three different flavours, each one configurable till one drops... Everything tried till now has worked out of the box - even the usual suspects ACPI battery monitor, sleep, WiFi, etc. The display was 1024x768 on first boot, but on opening drakconf and going to Hardware -> Change screen resolution , it prompted to change driver to the accelerated 915 driver, and then on X restart changed to 1280x800 as it should be. Then the 3D desktops - quite nice eye candy... More later.

using the dialup - backup connectivity

Leased line failure, had to go back to dialup for a week. Dnj helped PB to locate the modem in the server room itself, with a long telephone cable connection over lan cable laid in just 30 minutes. kppp on krishna connected OK, but for the connection to work, the eth1 had to be disabled - it had the default gateway. For using from another machine, connected over eth1 - like me, for example, instead of disabling eth1, just commented out the

GATEWAY=...

line in /etc/sysconfig/network . Since I'd also commented out (actually deleted) the line

FORWARD_IPV4=true

after the leased line came back online, I had to restore it using drakconf and later disable shorewall.

sssu.edu.in

The new domain sssu.edu.in is now operational. There was an error with the mail server: I'd forgotten to add to main.cf as per the readme and another thing was that I'd used a CNAME as the MX record which is not allowed, according to dnsstuff.com. Corrected.

making NTSC / PAL changes persistent

Using the video camera for skype as mentioned earlier, the NTSC setting was not being saved in the video source settings - it was reverting to PAL on reboot, when skype restarts. Googled and found a solution here. Downloaded VideoWDMControl v2.2, put it in the startup so that as soon as the machine boots up, the source can be set. But still, it would be better if the changes could remain after a reboot.

PDF Split and Merge

Via freshmeat.net, a freeware for splitting and joining PDFs for R - another idea for doing this was to print to pdf stating print pages 1-3 or whatever. This guy has a nice revenue model - asks for donations for the compiled version of enhanced version, while giving away the source, and the basic version, free.

skype with video

Over the last few days, some activity on skype, tried out the webcam feature using the Sony Handycam TRV-36. Nice, full-motion video, good even in full-screen mode, unlike Yahoo.

DVD Decrypter for reading DVDs with errors

DVD Decrypter's nice retry feature and error correction mechanism are pretty robust. In case some file is not readable otherwise, copy to hard disk using "File" mode and then run DVDShrink if necessary in "Re-author" mode to create ISO file. This way, files which Fair Use Wizard can't encode directly are also made available.

mounting various large hard disks

Some days back we'd mounted a 250 GB hd on developer on the linux machines using samba - the fstab entry is

//path/to_share /path/to/mount/folder smbfs rw,credentials=/path/to/credentials.txt,uid=500,gid=500 0 0

where the uid and the gid are the user and group ids of the user who needs rw access to the share. For finding a user's uid and gid, the command is

id username

On our Jo'berg server, the hard disk is on the same machine, so the fstab entry for mounting it is given in a previous post.

helping TB with another domain

Spent an hour with TB's manager's domain from nettigritty. Authoritative name servers for the domain were not configured properly. Logging in to http://domain.nettigritty.com/customer

In the Management console, clicking Domain Registration, Clicking on Modify Name Server in the second row, changed the name servers from ns11.nettigritty.com etc to
dns1.interactivedns.com
dns2.interactivedns.com
dns3.interactivedns.com
dns4.interactivedns.com

This did the trick. Dns changes took approx 10-15 minutes, then it started working.

copying missing files to Jo'berg hard disk

From the daily email "SGHBACK 846 : Automatic Audio files Statistics Check for SGH" copied and pasted to kwrite and made appropriate find/replace so that the lines were like

nice -n +10 cp 'ANN_BHAJANS_SWAHILI_END.mp3' ../audio -v

copied to audioold, did chmod +x and ran. Also, the new audio has noexec, since it is mounted as user. So, any such stuff needs to be run from some other partition with the full path.

new hard disk install at Jo'berg

Added to fstab

/dev/hdd1               /home/sgh/audio2         ext3    rw,user,owner   1 2

Had to do a

chown -R sgh:sgh audio2

since the files had some other ownership stamp. Stopped playout, umounted audio, mounted hdd1 as audio. Unfortunately the process was complicated by many files being missing in the new drive. Copying from the audioold directory....

iptables firewall config

saispace was giving too much trouble - bad network cable? - so connecting directly now instead of through NAT. So, set up firewall. Important part is the default

-A INPUT -i eth0 -j REJECT

just before the last COMMIT in the *filter table.

accessing Win2003 shares with Samba

The shares on Win2003 were not being seen on saiwaves komba2. Tried smbclient commandline, able to see those shares which require password. So, made share with permissions not set only for "Everybody" (which is the default), but also added the particular username for which I had the password. Then the share is seen, can be mounted. Added to fstab so that it mounts on boot. Useful info at http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Samba

The uid gid of a user can be found with id -u username and id -g username as given at http://kb.iu.edu/data/adwf.html

The encryption problem mentioned at http://allinthehead.com/retro/218/accessing-a-windows-2003-share-from-os-x is not an issue in our case, with the encryption being turned off before I started checking this problem, probably because the machine is not a domain controller.

wireless networking

Played around with the Linksys WAP54G which had landed at PDS mapping the signal strength with the Acer laptop - reaches nearly 200 feet in open air when kept outside the window. Upto corridor of our building too. But practical use? Not really - typing into USB key far easier for my needs.

problem with google apps start page

TB had some trouble with "verify your domain" in google apps start page creation. The google apps help group had this info:

I was having the same problem that you are having and I just got a
response from the Google Apps Team saying that you need to have the
"Next generation" control panel activated for "Start page" and "Docs &
Spreadsheets" to work, if you have the "Current version" control panel
activated you still can see the option for "start page" but you can't
activate it.

Steps to change control panel:
1. Log into your account and go to "Manage this domain".
2. Go to "Domain settings" (it's under "Services").
3. Go to "Advanced settings" and click on "Edit"
4. Under "Control Panel" you have the option to change to the "next
generation" control panel, select it.
5. Click on "Save Changes

After you should be able to activate the Start page.

Did that and it worked.

ubuntu

Last year I'd tried the Ubuntu 5.10 Live CD on a low spec machine - PII 350 with 128 MB RAM - and had been less than impressed. On a whim, just tried it on the Acer laptop
( http://hnsws.blogspot.com/2006/05/acer-travelmate-242x-getting-sound-to.html
http://hnsws.blogspot.com/2006/05/linux-on-acer-travelmate-2423nwxci.html
and so on ) and was favourably impressed. Display correctly set to 1280 x 800, and apparently full ACPI support - battery monitor shown on panel. Mandriva did not have any of these.

Number of subscribers to satellite radio

Saw an old email of mine, referring to a rediff.com article about WorldSpace having around 75,000 subscribers in India. XM and Sirius combined have around 10 - 15 million in the US. Interestingly, the numbers are roughly in the same ballpark range as the number of millionaires in India and US, too - around 80,000 and 8 million respectively. Not to say that only millionaires subscribe to WS, but the socio-economics of it....

toshiba laptop again

As noted in my previous post, the power problems finally brought the laptop back. External jack method was the solution, with D doing most the work. Then, the WiFi and speakers were not working - once again KR opened it and fixed it.

specialized searches

Link for "Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources" - removed from linkbar on saispace2 and put it here...

Toshiba laptop power problem

H brought in a laptop, a Toshiba Satellite M35X, with the power problem and solution as given at laptoprepairguy.com - he had done all the homework. Using the beautiful disassembly guide from irisvista.comKR opened it up with occasional help from me and did the job. On putting it back, it did not show any display. In the evening, came back and checked again, while it was charging all the while - turning the speakers on with the switch provided, heard error beeps - 1 short, 3 short, 3 short, 1 short. Was it the Phoenix BIOS motherboard bad signal 1-3-3 ?! No - I suspected the RAM. Removed it - a single 512 MB DDR, the same signal. Replaced it in the other slot, no beeps! Put it back in the first, this time seated it properly at 30 degree angle and more inside, slid in without any problem, now booted fine. But the soldering or the power jack still has problems, jiggling the power plug makes and breaks the contact. Maybe he can live with it, or maybe he wants to use the external jack method.

XP bug in handling zipped files

When XP copies files from a "Compressed folder" into another directory, that is to say, extracts from a zip file, it creates a temp folder inside

C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp 

but forgets to delete the temp folder afterwards if the files are readonly. So, the temp directory fills up...

Microsoft says call 800-MICROSOFT for reporting bugs. In case anyone in the US reads this, they can do so. Meanwhile, I'll post this on an XP Newsgroup as 'bug in extracting read-only files from zip file'.

Power problems

Power problems over the weekend. Saturday night, heard some bang, burning smell. It seems transformer is shorting. Monday night power temporarily restored using School Hostel transformer. The 1.5 KVA Numeric UPS which has input section trouble taken to Studio, from where it is supposed to be picked up and taken to ATP for repair. M, the repair guy, says the circuit board is damaged, may cost a bit for repairs.

online video documentaries

From Digg, a list of free online documentaries.

convert AMR to WAV and vice versa

DM's next query is also easily solved by Googling - the very first result gave MIKSOFT's Mobile AMR converter

ActiveSync toggle

DM's trouble was probably caused by ActiveSync remaining running while he pulled out the Bluetooth dongle - the next time he put in the dongle, ActiveSync was probably locking the previously used COM port, so the next COM port was being used. Using ActiveSync toggle to stop ActiveSync from running all the time may help - directed there from PocketPCfreeware via googling activesync startup.

bluetooth blues

DM has problems with his Bluetooth dongle syncing with his PDA - the COM port keeps incrementing, and if it goes above 20 the sync doesn't work. Googled Bluetooth COM port and found a post with the same problem which had been solved with the method given in this FAQ article using a MS KB article to remove spurious com ports.

Added three streams log processing to Analog

Using the method given for virtual hosts, added the three streams to the Analog file for combined stats. Can of course have individual stats by commenting out the other streams...

Analog configuration

Added PAGEINCLUDEs for asp and mp3 in analog.cfg on fs3 so that the requests and pages would match better in the Downloads section webstats.

Sai Inspires backups and hard disk space

From PB: Found that sai inspires messages have not been sent for the day - 9th March. Restarted mysqld and httpd (mysqld failed to start). tail /var/log/mysqld/mysqld.log showed [ERROR] Can't start server: can't create PID file: No space left on device. /var was full. Moving apachebounces cleared up nearly 2 GB, restarted mysqld... it started. But sending messages with processqueue still failed, with [ERROR] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Can't open file: 'phplist_bounce.MYI' (errno: 145). tail /var/log/mysqld/mysqld.log showed [ERROR] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Can't open file: 'query_log.MYI and so on. Googling gave solution http://www.redrook.com/faqs/mysql-error-cant-open-file-something.myd-errno-145.php

REPAIR TABLE TableName

So, logging in to the

mysql -u root -p 

prompt, did that, and issue solved.

free wav editor and bookmarklets

A had sent me these links to Bookmarklets and Wavosaur.

On-demand with announcements joined

For on-demand with announcements, for KA dialog and Bhagavad gita slokas, using mpgtx - has alias mpgjoin to join ann and main files and putting in renamed folder. Created a new set of podcast php files for renamed songs and renamed specials. Need one more where the Prasanthi Mandir Bhajan will be served from the normal location, but only the name will be changed on the fly.

fs1 C: filling up

Found fs1 C: filling up - turned out to be log files. C:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles one folder had 20 GB, another 3 GB. Moved to D: , will zip, backup and delete.

removing claps

Removing claps in bhajan recordings - well defined claps near the mic are being removed pretty well by "Remove single click now" in Cool Edit Pro's Click-Pop Elimination filter dialog under Noise Reduction menu. Filtering clicks and pops with "Old Record Quiet audio" preset does a reasonably good job of large selections.

Today's achievements

Half an hour correcting dl.asp delivering 0 bytes to IE:

set fs=Server.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set f=fs.GetFile(strFilePath)
strFileSize=f.Size

L bumped up the audio on AsiaStar, now it's fine.

Rest of the morning doing Bhajan processing.

Afternoon tracing schedule problem with DST: found probable locale change so that

if (date > #11/03/2007#) and (date < #04/11/2007#) then

has stopped working and now needs to be

if (date > #03/11/2007#) and (date < #11/04/2007#) then

So, changed it to locale independent

if (date > DateSerial(2007, 03, 11)) and (date < DateSerial(2007, 11, 04)) then

instead. We're not changing the changeover times because then the Latin Americans would have four changes to their regular programming every year - following US DST and their own DST.

And evening was spent on playlist generation.

newline in csv breaks database tables

A single bad newline in a description field had the schedule page down for the last half hour while we traced and corrected the problem... Caution needed when copy/pasting descriptions especially from text files / emails as in the case of Telugu programs!

bhajan processing

Starting slowly on Bhajan processing. Yield is roughly an hour's worth for a morning's work.

changes to add PHP 5 compatibility

The forms in maillist were not PHP5 compatible: as noted by P, in PHP5, the posted variables are not automatically available, but requires the addition of lines like

$variablename=$_REQUEST["variablename"];

Did the necessary additions by searching for the name=parts and thus the required variablename in the forms. Partially implemented, so that most frequently used pages work.

changed Daylight savings times

Changed the code for daylight savings times for USA-Canada and Israel for 2007 checking out the info from http://timeanddate.com/time/dst2007.html

on-demand links on schedule page

An interim solution implemented, which will work only for single file items. Probably, multi-file items will need a rethinking along the lines of my previous post. Current implementation uses a single extra filename field in the remote database. And the logic to automatically add this is

if ( ($CATEGORYNAME=="Special") OR ($CATEGORYNAME=="Discourse")  )
  {
  if (Strncmp($NEXT_FILENAME,$FILENAME,7))
    $DOWNLOAD_FILENAME=$FILENAME;

  if (strcasecmp(trim($NEXT_DESCRIPTION),trim($DESCRIPTION)) )
    $DOWNLOAD_FILENAME=$FILENAME;

    }

with

 $DOWNLOAD_FILENAME="";

if the condition fails.

audio distortion at AsiaStar uplink

There seemed to be considerable distortion in low frequencies, and M wanted the jingle during the start and end of Moments of Oneness to be broadcast undistorted. The line in the playout scripts was

mpg123 -o alsa09 -g 70 -q -a $DSP_DEVICE   "$line"

But the gain factor of 70% was not being set - probably some permissions issue. After IM and emails, L found the audio card bad, since using another one seems to give clear audio. But currently the DBMax is byepassed, so audio levels are sometimes low. Next task is to get it thru the DBMax.

play avi and wmv on MacOS X

Since we were mulling over the MirrorDome and such systems, just checking if DivX files play with QuickTime - this article links to some plugins to achieve this.

Windows media components for Quicktime is supposed to let you play Windows media files on Mac.

renewing postgres database from dump

My local copy of the SGH postgres database was out of date, so I picked up the dump from saiwaves

pg_dump sgh > /home/sgh/sghdbdump

Before loading onto my system, I had to remove the existing database with

dropdb sgh

then create it again with

createdb

and then run

psql -d sgh -f sghdbdump

Sirf kuch hi lamhon mein apka swadisht database tayyaar!

downloadable links on the schedule

For implementing downloadable links on the schedule page, we'll need some database changes at our end also - a "flag" saying allow/don't allow download - so that the appropriate data can be dumped into the csv file for import into remote database. Experimenting with adding a filename field to the AsiaStar schedule table...

new on-demand code

Quietly removed the embedded XSPF player from the on-demand pages, replacing it with the mp3player from http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=Flash_MP3_Player opening in a new window using a simple target="_blank" In replacing the old pages' code, learnt some regular expression syntax from KWrite's regular expression editor -
1. Reg Exps have to be only on a single line - end of line symbol $ terminates the regexp.
2. object.*$ means object followed by any characters till end of line.

Watch TV online

Got this link from Digg or Wired or somewhere:

http://www.onetipaday.com/2007/02/14/updated-list-of-places-to-watch-tv-for-free-online/

iPod repair

Saw a Wired article on "iPod mechanics" repairing broken iPods, and checked out www.NYCiPodDoctor.com But the cost of replacing a hard disk on the old broken 1st Gen iPod is greater than the cost of buying a new flash-based mp3 player....

used iMacs

Found some nice deals via a google ad for used iMacs at megamacs.com - Apple iMac 233MHz Bondi 96MB, 4GB, CD for $29.99! But unfortunately we can't get them by normal shipping methods - there's a $200 anti-dumping duty, it appears!
http://www.emergic.org/collections/tech_talk_letter_to_arun_shourie.html

http://www.ieport.com/Cus2004/Tariff/not30.htm

virus attack

Like almost any all-Windows shop, the PDS was hit in 2nd half of Feb by a virus/worm which was creating a fun.exe in all folders, and spreading to all machines via shared folders. Norton Enterprise antivirus was not catching it or maybe because it was already loaded into memory, it was recreating instances. P finally cleaned it with AVG free + using msconfig to stop it from loading on startup.

problems connecting to our playout server

In the first part of Feb, we had some trouble connecting to our playout server at Melbourne. The traceroute was taking too many hops. Now, for example, the traceroute reaches the server in around 22 hops. A little on the high side?

traceroute to <snip> , 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
 <snip>
 3  203.200.24.1.ill-bgl.static.vsnl.net.in (203.200.24.1)  6.730 ms  6.518 ms  6.491 ms
 4  202.54.86.63.ill-bgl.static.vsnl.net.in (202.54.86.63)  7.045 ms  7.027 ms  7.012 ms
 5  203.197.162.54.ill-bgl.static.vsnl.net.in (203.197.162.54)  8.562 ms  7.862 ms  8.308 ms
 6  202.54.12.249.ill-bgl.static.vsnl.net.in (202.54.12.249)  10.766 ms  7.818 ms  7.894 ms
 7  59.163.16.250.static.vsnl.net.in (59.163.16.250)  109.642 ms  105.444 ms  105.941 ms
 8  59.163.16.250.static.vsnl.net.in (59.163.16.250)  106.086 ms  105.597 ms  114.480 ms
 9  203.131.241.157 (203.131.241.157)  272.903 ms  273.216 ms  272.864 ms
10  ge-2-3-0.r00.newthk01.hk.bb.gin.ntt.net (203.131.240.205)  277.114 ms  277.567 ms  277.532 ms
11  p4-1-1-0.r00.tokyjp01.jp.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.50)  279.050 ms  279.150 ms  280.268 ms
12  p4-3-0-0.r00.sydnau01.au.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.162)  398.757 ms  446.588 ms  398.916 ms
13  ge-0-0-0.a02.sydnau01.au.ra.gin.ntt.net (202.68.64.222)  399.456 ms  400.323 ms  399.194 ms
14  202.68.65.18 (202.68.65.18)  354.208 ms  377.895 ms  355.543 ms
15  * connect1.sybr4.global-gateway.net.nz (203.96.120.122)  352.962 ms  359.593 ms
16  so-4-1-0.cre1.hay.connect.com.au (202.10.4.93)  367.183 ms  354.246 ms  372.219 ms
17  so-5-0-0.cre1.bur.connect.com.au (202.10.0.251)  368.156 ms  368.916 ms  376.512 ms
18  so-0-0-1.dst2.mel.connect.com.au (202.10.0.134)  370.836 ms  367.982 ms  375.395 ms
19  gigabitethernet0-1.cor6.mel.connect.com.au (203.63.170.183)  369.349 ms  388.766 ms  398.202 ms
20  AUS130611-3.gw.connect.com.au (203.63.104.101)  370.382 ms  378.105 ms  416.715 ms
21  worldspace-gw.ozonline.com.au (203.23.159.193)  375.345 ms  376.441 ms  409.865 ms
22  * * *

Force Refresh browser window

To force a refresh of cached content:

shift+reload in Mozilla-based products and control+refresh in Internet Explorer

remove from print queue

As root, to remove all print jobs from print queue

lprm - 

trying de-clipping tools

Trying de-clipping tools like Cool Edit Pro's built-in and Acoustica's built-in on bhajan recordings. No use. Since it is the singer mic alone which has the distortion, and since it is added to all the rest, the mixed signal can't be cleaned by these sw.

H2H virtual folder

Changed the H2H virtual folder journals into a physical folder with a single line asp page redirecting to media.radiosai.org/journals

site outage

Our web-hosting provider had a looong outage - "corruption in Plesk and SQL server". Finally they reset and reloaded the server with backups circa Dec 2006! Last night uploaded newer files when ftp access was finally restored. This morning, set MX and other DNS records and set pls MIME type (without which IIS returns 404 for pls files!). Now we have to wait for the day-long DNS TTL for the changes to propagate. Email, other sites etc all affected...

Fujitsu Stylistic LT Tablet PC

Trying out the old Fujitsu Stylistic LT Tablet PC lying around at PDS. Unfortunately, either HDD or HDD controller is bad, so it freezes at random and sometimes doesn't boot. Win98 without generic drivers for USB mass storage - at least, it didn't recognize a 32 MB USB mem key I put in. Couldn't get the IR wireless keyboard to work either - probably because the AAA cells were dead. Won't spend any more time on it since frequent random freezing is just too aggravating.

spikes in traffic on festival days

Taking a look at Google Analytics graphs for saicast, spikes are seen for the Ati Rudra Maha Yagnam's Poornahuti, Birthday and Shivarathri. So, maybe we should put content on the site so that on festival days people can see previous years' festivals on the home page?

Wikipedia SOS CD - finally made for Sony Reader

As mentioned in my previous post, things are not so easy since the Sony Reader doesn't understand html, and also doesn't follow links to external files. Final solution chosen was HTML2LRF, with each alphabet as a separate file. Each article then gets listed in the Table of Contents of that file.

Nitty-gritty of making the files:
1. cd L:\wpcd\wp\b
2. dir /B > l:\direct.txt.html
3. Open direct.txt.html in Mozilla and copy / paste to wordpad - this removes the carriage-returns.
4. Find/Replace .htm with .htm l:\wpcd\wp\b\
5. Copy / Paste into command prompt which is already in the bin directory of HTML2RTF (otherwise doesn't work) with the suitable -o -t and so on.

Finally uploading to esnips public folder - http://esnips.com/web/Wikipedialrf

And as a single zip file with at badongo.com
Edit: The single zip file no longer available there, will post a new link if and when I get hold of the original file.

First Generation Airport Base station (Graphite) with Windows

As noted in my earlier post the Airport Base station needs a Mac for configuration. Even after that, tho it is set up to do DHCP, it doesn't give IP addresses to a WinXp client. May be a bug with this particular Base Station. Anyway, manually giving an ip in the client works well enough. Range, when Airport is in PDS server room, covering both studios and reaching nearly, but not quite, to front of R1.

spam from our forms

Preventing spam from our forms - validating all fields which go into the headers, removing \n and \r as suggested in http://www.twologs.com/en/services/test/spamrelay.asp
and then testing with http://www.twologs.com/en/services/test/formtest.asp

Airport 4.2 for Windows

Airport 4.2 for Windows doesn't seem to work with the old (graphite?) Airport Base Station. After resetting the base station, ping to 192.42.249.13 works, but the admin utility doesn't recognize the base station. Using the "Other" button and giving the ip + pwd => An error occurred... Error Code -6753

Edit: Apple's site says Airport Admin Utility 3.2 for Windows "does not work with the original AirPort Base Station (Graphite)."

and also confirmed by a compatibility chart.

Will try with the Mac @studio.

where does all the time go?

08.40 Seeing if there are urgent emails
08.50 Finding 2 tonne AC gone bad, starting CDs import
09.30 SGHM0156 has already been entered.
09.35 realized I don't need to import to db, since my db is out of date
09.40 directly deleting the "sent" files checking CDs.
10.10 shutdown - power failure at 10.
10.12 power returned, restarting everything.
10.25 finished deleting. Checking leftover files in "sent" folder...
10.35 found most of them in SGHM0149 in db
10.36 clearing some space in audio directory - no - all Telugu already deleted.
10.38 checking if all streams are on schedule - yes
10.45 checking the complaint about out of schedule stream
10.51 found it to be outdated. Finishing subscription mails.
11.00 adding "maxlength" to all fields in Subscribe.htm and Feedback.htm
11.50 lunch
12.30 googling form injection email spam asp code - TB says he'll try for an hour.
13.00 2 Telugu prg normalize
13.15 uploading them to playout servers from krishna
13.25 updating Description and annlink on saiwaves after importing to db
13.50 AC - condenser change may solve fan problem
13.50 address book additions to google address book
14.10 Cover story of H2h new issue
14.30 To Mandir for recording after tea.
18.00 @ studio installing XP Volume Licence key edition on Acer Laptop
18.30 Microsoft's key change tool does not work with Volume Licenses.
18.45 Running an "upgrade" install over existing install to get the VLKey in place.
19.45 searching for wifi driver on driverguide.com etc, not found
19.50 Acer's ftp site not responding
20.00 Installed wifi driver from Acer CD, trying to connect with Airport base station
21.00 Installed Airport for Windows from Apple site.
22.50 Various ip address/pw combos not working to configure Airport, will try tomorrow.

downloading windows media stream

I'd done this a long time back, just verified that it worked with the "latest" site too - using Ethereal, got the rtsp url, fed it to Net Transport.

update on X forwarding with Putty

Update to my previous post. Now the X forwarding jumping over two hosts is working, when I changed the "Remote X auth protocol" in Putty from XDM to MIT Magic Cookie.

miscellaneous

Various miscellaneous jobs.

1. Processing Moments of Oneness - 8 episodes in one hour.

2. Installed Skype, Xming (X server) and Yahoo messenger on Windows because now onwards most of my time I'll be doing audio work. Installing Skype with the default options in the installer works ok, but changing the install folder to a different drive, for example, was causing skype to crash. Another problem is that saiwaves X apps don't work on Windows. Incorrect X authentication, it seems.

X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
annlink: Fatal IO error: client killed

3. Writing backup CDs of various stuff and removing from HDD - wmv, SW, audio, etc.

4. AfriStar had some playout skipping at 0515 GMT - wonder why. BOC operators report some restarts over the last 2-3 days, too. 0530 changeover seemed to have solved the problem. Later, didn't connect - as suspected, the DHCP had changed the IP, waited for the next dns update at changeip.com, and two minutes later, connected as usual.

5. Strange problem with Cool Edit Pro on saispace2 similar to earlier problem on dharma - saving wav files with some sort of header info so that the file appears to be a RIFF file to SF. Saving as au files as a workaround. Solution was to toggle on and off the setting Options -> Settings -> Data -> Auto-convert all data to 32-bit on opening restarting Cool Edit Pro after the change. Also changed Multitrack premixes at Options -> Settings -> Multitrack to 16-bit Premixes

ssh problem resolved

I'd been unable to log into another account with ssh on krishna, using the method I'd mentioned before, RSA Auth. The problem was with directory permissions on the .ssh directory in that user's home directory - needs to be 700 - 600 is not enough. Changed, now it works.

Huawei SmartAX MT882 ADSL Router

Configuring the Huawei SmartAX MT882 ADSL Router is very similar to the earlier configuration steps I'd written for the MT 841 earlier. Until PPP is clicked in the WAN settings, the username/password boxes don't appear.

Flying Air Deccan

I've got some more posts backlogged. Will catch up in due course. Meanwhile, here's a howto on flying sans frills.

Check on their website and/or call-centre to verify that flight is on time, just before going to the airport. Go to the airport to arrive an hour before the flight. Check-in begins upto 2 hours before the flight, but since we're talking of a 70 seater ATR 72, the crowd is not much, and one can afford to be casual.

Walk into the departures lounge. The security guard may want to see your ticket since visitors are not allowed inside. Then he'll wave you through. If the check-in time has begun - can be seen from the flight status notice boards too - you can go to the Air Deccan counter and show your ticket to be issued the boarding pass. You'll need to check in extra luggage for baggage handling now. "Photo identification" is required now, but just a formality - xerox of PAN card etc should be fine. Probably won't even ask you. Even the CISF people for the security check were quite relaxed and smiling. Due to the small number of passengers, maybe.

Air Deccan ground staff seemed to take being on time seriously - they probably want to retain their statistics lead or whatever - so they were in quite a hurry to make up for the ten minutes delayed arrival of the flight. Walk out to the aircraft waiting just outside the terminus... or take a bus there if your airport is bigger.

Free seating - I've heard of people "rushing for seats" and so on, but none of that on this flight, since it was only half full. Leg room is of city bus variety, just like on Indian Airlines A320 last year, but the seats here recline only 2 inches. Anyway, it's only an hour in the plane, so it's all right. After all, can't expect to recline in a no-frills airline. No free food either, of course - not even toffees. The noise level inside was lower than the Airbus - the turbo-props are quieter. And the ride was quite smooth - no different from a large jet - may be different in bad weather, I suppose. But overall, the experience is OK for an hour's commute.

The air-hostesses came up with coffee for Rs. 20 and sandwiches for Rs. 40 and so on. Cookies for Rs. 10 were the hot items which "ran out" by the time they were half-way up the aisle. And the comments about air hostesses on Indian Airlines being more human than the rest are probably right - these ones, maybe because they were young and nervous, were finding it difficult to smile. And totally stumped by my question, "Is this a Dornier or an Avro?" (It was an ATR, of course). The Indian Airlines lady was quite confident of her reply, "26,000 feet" or something like that, for my question last year on how high we were flying.

Touchdown, walk out if you have no baggage to claim. At Bangalore airport, penny-pinching travellers like me can just walk out of the Airport, 10 minutes of brisk walking gets you to the bus stop where there are buses to the city centre ("Majestic") every 10 minutes or so.

An interesting footnote. In the plane, the airhostesses were hawking some wares, passing on some coupons which the passengers tick for buying some items. In the APSTRC bus, later, an enterprising pair of guys were carrying out an auction of various cloth material, shawls and so on, with free gifts of combs and so on to anyone who participates in the auction. I suspect the latter had more sales volumes.

war stories of migration

1. PB added a module to SGH.mdb named "ImportCSV"... it had a line "Am*.csv" - unfortunately this was somehow matching with not only AmerStream.csv, but also AsiaStream.csv and AfriStream.csv! This was causing AmeriStream schedule to have 114 items instead of 38, for example. Changing it to Amer*.csv solved the issue!

2. maillist and shoutstats have issues with PHP5. shoutstats updated to new version 0.8.4, solved issue of not displaying multiple servers. automailer.php is currently not taking the args supplied as a GET request. Current workaround is to supply the date by hard-coding in the php file by find-replace!

3. afristream dies when ameristream or asiastream changes playlist. Don't know why, current workaround is to run auto_africa.sh just after the changeover.

4. saiwaves audio directory has only 2 GB left. So, currently krishna's audio directory (which has 24 kbps files) is mounted with smbmount on saiwaves

5. radiosai.asp has some code-changes to reflect the three change-over times instead of a hard-coded single change-over time. The date calculation for the page displayed when visited for the first time has to be fine-tuned - if cookie exists, must take appropriate changeover time instead of the hard-coded one to calculate date.

6. running main_ftp.sh etc on saiwaves - not working initially, since SEQUENCES were not existing. PB manually created them with psql:

CREATE SEQUENCE file_id_fileid_seq  START 16279;

and so on.

certificate renewal

Got an email The certificate for localhost.oT5171 will expire in 27 days

Ran the latter prg as per email's recommendation

The certificate needs to be renewed; this can be done using the '/usr/bin/openssl' or the '/usr/lib/ssl/apache-mod_ssl/gentestcrt.sh' programs supplied with Mandrakelinux.

Hope it worked, tho probably something more than just running that script is required.... like maybe copying and pasting the generated cert and so on.

Edit: Probably the last few lines of the tutorial here: http://www.unix-tutorials.com/go.php?id=472

Edit:
Was quite simple - the mail said that the file /etc/ssl/apache/server.crt was causing the error.

Ran '/usr/lib/ssl/apache-mod_ssl/gentestcrt.sh'

This generated server.crt and server.key in pwd

mv server.crt /etc/ssl/apache/server.crt
mv server.key /etc/ssl/apache/server.key

service httpd restart

Adding a new broadcast centre

1. Added code to scripts/playlist_import.sh copy-pasting from orig code for other centres.

2. Created sub-folder in playlist folder, like
/home/sgh/playlist/ASIASTREAM


3. Created entry in broadcast_centers tables in sgh pgsql database.

That's it!

Then, of course, other things have to be updated - like the schedule page and playlist email subscription page on the website.

And then the php scripts for generating the csv files and automatically emailing the schedules. Ah! That's where the sphagetti code resides!

Mandir microphones

There are the products I believe are currently used in Mandir:

Swami's mic - ATM Gooseneck Model 857 - AT857QMLa

And most important, the Wind Shield (pop filter) for Swami's mic is the High Performance one from Shure - A99WS Microphone Windscreen.

The mic used at the Indoor Stadium was tied to the edge of the glass teapoy like structure used as Swami's podium - the Shure EasyFlex mics 18 inches.

Shoutcast server quirks

One of the methods suggested for starting Shoutcast server(s) automatically on Windows is to create a "Scheduled Task". But as far as my experiments go, this works only if
1. you have auto-login enabled
2. you are starting only one instance of shoutcast.

If not, then srvany is the way to go.

And another thing is the way Shoutcast handles "Backup file". It will play a looped file for currently connected listeners if the source drops connection. But:
1. the path to the file should not have spaces, you can't put quotes in the ini file either
2. a source must connect and then disconnect for this functionality to work.
3. the source cannot be a relay - it has to be a conventional source, and this shoutcast server must not be configured as a relay. the server can be a relay also - but....
4. new listeners will only get "Service Unavailable" - only those who connected before the source disconnected will get the loop.
5. enabling intro files does not modify this behaviour - new listeners will still get "Service Unavailable" if the source disconnects.

creating our own services in Windows

The method of using srvany to create our own services: with download link from here. But Microsoft site says this doesn't work for batch files. But the included srvany.wri file says

OPTIONAL: under the above key, create an 'AppParameters' value of type REG_SZ and specify the parameters for your app.

So that should solve our problem. It says on installing a service,

Make sure that you go into the Control Panel and use the Services applet to change the Account Name and Password that this newly installed service will use for its Security Context.

Default being Local System account. The default seems to be OK for us. But in the procedure given, one inconsistency found by trial and error: It does not matter if the filename given in 'Application' value has spaces in the path, no quotes are required. But if the 'AppParameters' has a path with spaces, it needs to be enclosed in quotes. AppDirectory behaves similarly, and also requires that it should NOT end with a \ - so, our value in AppDirectory should be "C:\Program Files\Shoutcast" - not "C:\Program Files\Shoutcast\".

pdfs on the Sony Reader

Some user-generated pdfs work fine on the Reader. No resizing, of course, but the page-turns are quick enough and links work fine. Example book Oliver Twist from beta.feedbooks.com. Also another "Survey - The Brain from the Economist" which has some illustrations too. Transferred using PRSUtil (works fine after .NET framework was installed) and Connect reader SW - in both cases, the results were the same.

using the Reader without Connect software

I'm trying to add files (PDF and RTF) to the Sony Reader PRS500 without going through the Connect SW from Sony. User developed utils from mobileread forums.

PRSUtil - tried, but it says

The system cannot execute the specified program.

- Is it because .NET framework needs to be installed? Let me check.

libprs500 - Involved process:

Following the wiki, I've downloaded and installed the other items. Running
L:\Python25\scripts\easy_install libprs500 ran for a while, then stopped with

error: Python was built with Visual Studio 2003;
extensions must be built with a compiler than can generate compatible binaries.
Visual Studio 2003 was not found on this system. If you have Cygwin installed,
you can try compiling with MingW32, by passing "-c mingw32" to setup.py.

So I tried downloading the PyXML-0.8.4 tar.gz manually, went into the directory, ran setup.py install -c

mingw32

No, that's not right, it error: option -c not recognized

Then tried setup.py build -c mingw32

This time it said error: command 'gcc' failed: No such file or directory

So I checked in the mingw32 bin directory (which was installed with QT).

Added L:\MinGW\bin to the PATH by going to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables

RESTARTED the system (or else path is not updated) and then tried

setup.py build -c mingw32

OK, worked.

Then setup.py install - still gave the same error of VS2003 not found. Oh, it's trying to build it again. So,

checked

setup.py --help - install has options --skip-build as well as --no-compile. Aha! Did

setup.py install --skip-build

Worked!

Ran L:\Python25\scripts\easy_install libprs500

This time it gave

error: Couldn't find a setup script in c:\docume~1\sgh\locals~1\temp\easy_install-vvkkzb\pyusb-0.3.5.win32.zip

This is in spite of having already copied the contents of this zip file to the site-packages directory before the install. Probably because this compiled version is for Python2.4.

So,

running prs500 info gave

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "L:\Python25\Scripts\prs500-script.py", line 5, in
from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
File "l:\python25\lib\site-packages\setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg\pkg_resources.py", line 2479, in
File "l:\python25\lib\site-packages\setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg\pkg_resources.py", line 585, in require
File "l:\python25\lib\site-packages\setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg\pkg_resources.py", line 483, in resolve
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: pyusb>=0.3.5

OK, now try to compile pyusb from source. Downloaded from sourceforge pyusb-0.3.5-py25.zip - but this just had the same 80 kB usb.pyd which I already have in site-packages! So, checked the pkg_resources.py mentioned above, the path itself doesn't exist, because the setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg is a binary file, so no wordpad editing possible. So I'm stuck.

update on BookCreator

Got BookCreator running inside VMWare player by deleting the disk images and all files and starting from scratch. But it's not very impressive - useful for layout junkies, but not for bulk conversions, I think.

Trying to get Wikipedia CD into Sony Reader

Tried out various options to get links to work so that I can get the Wikipedia CD onto the Reader with complete hyper-linked goodness. Links to the SW below are on the Mobileread forums.

1. flatLRF - was creating only LRF of first file to which it was pointed, no recursion, no links.

2. HTML2LRF from MobileRead forums - no links work except those within the same html file - and that too if referenced only with label.

3. Librie Toolbar from the Librie Yahoo group. Results same as above - only to be expected since HTML2LRF was made with the toolbar's dll. But it makes a Table of Contents and keeps images... very useful tutorial at http://www.xtmotion.com/librie/ - the wayback machine has a working link.

4. Installing BookCreator in a Virtual Machine as detailed in http://silicondependency.googlepages.com/bookcreator%40librie - details below.

5. BookDesigner on XP - needed Word installed (which I didn't have) for best results. But with the "reformat completely" option it was able to open html files - but no links. "Failed" when trying to export as Sony Librie (lrf). Later succeeded in exporting lrf by changing output option to not use "advanced Word doc and rtf export"! But still no links...

6. BookDesigner on Win98, which had Word2000. Yes, the links are seen as underlined text at least! But very very slow. More than 10 minutes for a single page! On a PII 400 MHz. And seeing the posts about BookDesigner problems, not encouraged to try more http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7897

BookCreator in VMWare was, of course the most time-consuming, especially since I had to do it twice over an hour each time since the first time I "forgot" the installing Japanese part, and landed in the soup. Without Japanese, BookCreator gives error "Standard fonts not installed". And I can attest that without the "mysterious TTEdit" which also installs along with BookCreator, BookCreator refuses to start. Installing the fonts by adding support for East-Asian languages as given in the readme of the "English" BookCreator, the BookCreator crashed every time and refused to uninstall - path not found. And somehow the clock reset and Windows wanted Activation! The Windows install takes around 45 minutes. The Ethernet refused to work at first - not pinging. A series of checking and unchecking the connected checkbox on the VMWare Player Ethernet menu and changing from Bridged to Host-Only seemed to do the trick. Somewhere along the line, the BookCreator has realised that the trial period has expired, tho' the VMWare player shows Jan 2 2005!

Finally, the result is: no working links as of now, since I can't try BookCreator. Best bet seems to be HTML2LRF, with the Table of Contents it makes, make a separate book for each alphabet. Doing

dir /B

redirecting to a file, formatting it with Find/Replace so that all the filenames come on a single line with full path and separated by spaces....

Edit: March 15 2011 - changed the Librie Toolbar link to a wayback machine link.

Google Apps for Your Domain

Now Google Apps for Your Domain is really compelling - free email hosting, free webpage hosting, no public ads!

CD writing SW

Last month, GSS told me that GS had a problem with his CD writer, SAMSUNG RW-52-24-52, not being recognized by his CD-writing SW - some version of Nero or something. Downloaded and sent him Deepburner Free since it was smaller than (and probably also more polished than) CDBurnerXP Pro. Actually, searching on Sourceforge gives many more results for free cd burning SW based on .NET.

vnstat

Installed by PB - gives useful info by running as a daemon. On my machine there is knetload, of course, but it runs only when I'm logged on....

mount iso file

This is something we sometimes need to do....

mount -o loop -t iso9660 filename.iso /mnt/mountpoint/

Jo'berg connect problem on Fri-Sat

The Joburg link was down. So I got on yahoo messenger, requested the
operator wsjhbboc to please restart the router. He did it, and after an
hour when the hourly dns update was sent, I am able to logon.