dhcp problem

In the Phy Dept, there was an issue with a new Dell desktop with a wifi dongle not getting an ip address from the wireless router. Both were Netgear products, working fine on an identical machine on the next table. WG 111 (v3) Netgear wifi USB dongle, router was a Netgear WPN824.

After many tries with WinXP "repair" and the command-line

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

and other such stunts, even a wired connection to the router failed, and pings showed a strange character in the destination's place,

Pinging <strange wing-dings character> with 32 bytes of data:

Finally it was wiped and the dell recovery CD was used to re-install WinXP, then everything started working again.

keychain: command not found

Bash reported

keychain: command not found

every time we logged on to krishna via ssh. Googled, found that it was a bug in Mandriva, fixed it by editing .bash_profile by adding an if [ -x /usr/bin/keychain ] like

 if [ ! -d $HOME/.keychain ]; then
     if [ -x /usr/bin/keychain ] ; then
                keychain
     fi
fi

The [space] before the -x is important....

improving speed on WinSCP

In my previous post, I'd mentioned the speed penalty of sftp on Windows. Checking out the WinSCP FAQ, found that using Blowfish instead of AES made the transfers as fast as on Linux! Load a saved session, go to the SSH settings on the left pane, move Blowfish up above AES, save the session, overwriting the previously saved session.

listening to SGH on mobile

Using a cell-phone to listen to any Shoutcast stream requires a suitable player. For Nokia phones, the official Nokia Internet Radio lists SGH:
http://europe.nokia.com/A41107005
http://europe.nokia.com/A41121127
For Nokia phones not supported by this app, there is the S60 Internet Radio.

The user instructions say that you need to copy the pls files of the stations of your choice. For SGH, the pls files are linked from the listen now links:

http://www.radiosai.org/Pages/AsiaStream.pls
http://www.radiosai.org/Pages/AfriStream.pls
http://www.radiosai.org/Pages/AmeriStream.pls
http://www.radiosai.org/Pages/BhajanStream.pls
http://www.radiosai.org/Pages/DiscourseStream.pls

Please note that if your internet connection is slow, you will hear choppy audio with breaks.

For Windows mobile, there is GSPlayer. For phones with Java, Glassplayer - not free, costs $5. Will add more players here as I find them.

RSS feeds or email updates for any page on the Net

A listener had sent us the tip long back, using dapper.net one can make RSS feeds or email updates or a flash widget or an alert for any page... The TFD page and my blog are already Dapped...

follow-up on installing indic support on XP

Here is a bit more detailed account of the Indic support install on Windows: as the Indic IME readme says,

IMEs cannot be installed or upgraded on a system that doesn't already support IMEs in the same language that you are installing. To enable Indic IME, go to control panel - > Regional and Language Options. Select Language Tab, and check the option "Install files for complex scripts and left-to-right language and insert Win XP CD in your CD-ROM drive.

After installing and rebooting, once again go to Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages -> Details -> Add , choose your language, and in the drop down below, choose the newly installed IME if you want to type in phonetic English characters, or choose Inscript or other keyboard layout if you prefer that. Again you may need to restart. The Wikipedia Indic support page says that XP SP2 is required for Malayalam support, but Devanagari and the other South Indian languages can do without SP2. Blogger's transliteration help is here, which notes that the transliteration is also available as a separate product here.

downloading files with lynx

When using remote access, it is convenient to use text-based browsers like lynx instead of hogging bandwidth with X over ssh. When you want to save files like pdfs, hit the d key (instead of enter or g) when the link to the pdf is highlighted. Then you can retrieve it from the remote machine using sftp. The putty suite also has an sftp client. Winscp is also available if you want a gui and don't mind file transfers being slower.
Edit: The Putty suite's PSFTP seems to be as slow as WinScp - commandline on Linux is still faster.
Edit: See this post for improving speed on Windows!

FF3 installation issue

Could not get FF3 installed on Mandrake 10 - the problem is outlined here. A real pity...

Checking out Indic language support

Saw a good site with lots of song lyrics, http://guruguha.wikispaces.com/. Checking out Blogger's support for Indic languages and copy-pasting between languages, here goes....

यह हिन्दी में है - Yeh Hindi mein hai

ഇതു മലയാളത്തിലാണ് - ithu malayalathilAnu

ఇది తెలుగులో - idi telugulo

ಇದು ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ - idu kannadadalli

இது தமிழில் - ithu tamizhil

Blogger does not allow copy-paste between languages as far as I can see - the pasted script remains as Malayalam or Hindi or English or Tamil or Kannada or Telugu. The Language Tool on the toolbar does the magic, with Spell-check, too! Nice. Should try out some desktop Indic tools, maybe.

Edit: Tried various tools including Microsoft's Indic support site and Iwrite32. Using the Microsoft IME (Input Method Editor), text can be entered nicely in all apps, but transliteration between scripts is possible only in MS Office or some limited apps. I tried and did not succeed with Notepad, Wordpad, typing in IE or Firefox. Google docs, too can use the MS IME, but no transliteration. The best of the lot seemed to be online tools - wikipedia page on Indic support has lots and lots of good info and links. The online transliterate tool girgit looks interesting.
Edit: corrected a typo in the Tamil.

using the JW flash player for our radio streams

Multi-platform support, and the ability to show "Now playing" and "Coming up next" etc on the page where the player is embedded. Actually, the player has to be on an html page which is on the streaming server itself: otherwise the flash security measures will prevent "content from another domain". So, implemented using an iframe on a page on www.radiosai.org , the iframe's src is a page on stream.radiosai.org . The JW player's home page is here.

imported contacts successfully, google docs and gears

As mentioned in my previous post, tried out importing the "Gmail csv" exported by Gmail's contact manager, adding more stuff in exactly the same format, this time it worked. But to do that, had to go through a few hoops.

First, Google Docs did not allow me to just copy-paste from one spreadsheet to another. Had to go through the pain of publishing as csv using the 'More publishing Options' from one spreadsheet, importing it as external data on a new sheet on the destination spreadsheet, then linking the data to another sheet. But once I installed Gears, everything became simple again. I could just highlight cells on one spreadsheet, copy, highlight cells on the other spreadsheet, paste. Gears really adds to the functionality, but maybe the Google folks are leery of publicising its virtues too much due to its privacy issues - not safe to use with a public computer....

wonder why gmail contacts regressed

Generally Google products improve over time, but for some reason, the contacts browser in Gmail seems to have regressed very badly. So many features broken in the new version whose only advantage seems to be eye-candy:

• Search doesn't match for any field other than contact name
• Does not allow deleting of more than 20 contacts at a time
• Import is more finicky - csv files which work with old version don't work with new version!

Thank God the Google team have retained the "Older version" link at least! But I hope the GMail team cleans up the contacts mess. Reason for ranting right now is that I'm trying to import a csv file, with field headers Name, Email Address, Phone - but GMail old version insists on making a Notes field and putting Phone: 9999999 there. New version refuses to import at all. Will try making a csv file exactly like the "GMail csv export" which Gmail exports.

google apps user export

There was a migration to google apps for domains over the weekend, and one of the features the admin wanted was an easy way to export list of all users. I didn't find it, he found it himself - the Download user list as CSV link at the bottom of the Email addresses tab.

java vnc viewer's scaling support

Saw on tightvnc site that the java viewer also has scaling support like the Win32 viewer has. Tried to get it working from saiwaves. Copied the class and other files to /usr/share/vnc/classes/
Edited the index.vnc file by adding the scale factor parameter. But adding scaling causes the refresh to break - cursor trails everywhere - and also the auto scaling was not working in spite of using the open new window parameter. Probably because of the old version of vnc server running on saiwaves. So currently better to stick to no scaling on Linux.

manually adding files to the audio search database

Some Musings talks were not accessible by the audio search page since they were not played since early 2007, and a listener requested. So, added them using dummy csv files dated 2007-01-01 and 02, with values entered by hand. Have to remember to

1. not have a semi-colon or CR-LF after the last entry
2. fill in the duration in minutes correctly
3. make sure there are no spaces in the download-filename.
   

dharma's AGP slot bad - maybe

Dharma refused to boot a few months back, beeping a lack of display. Tried PCI card, still no go. So snuck in an old ISA VGA card to make it boot. Only 16 colours, but boots. Today tried other AGP cards - Matrox Marvel G400, G200 - no go. Tried the PCI card, still no go. Then tried the PCI card in a different PCI slot + ISA card, booted, saw that the PCI card was listed in device manager. Then tried with PCI alone, booted OK, recognised the Sis 6215 card and loaded the correct driver. So, restored the system to using the PCI Sis card. Maybe the AGP slot has gone bad?

portable DVD / VCD player smoothing issue

MS brought in a portable DVD / VCD player for consultation. It was a circular disk around an inch thick, the size of a DVD, with a 3 inch LCD screen on top. Apparently he was trying out some settings and from then on the video was just coloured blocks. Went through the menu system - while displaying the menu the screen was fine, so it was not directly a display problem. Under video settings or something, found a Smoothing option which had been turned on. Turned it off and voila! The video renders fine. Probably the smoothing doesn't work for VCDs?

problems with flash video

flv files served from media.radiosai.org using the JW FLV media player appeared to be broken - not working from any of the machines at the studio. Then all video sites appeared broken! Including youtube, google videos and all the players listed at Wikipedia. Obviously this was unlikely. Checking the flash version number using this page, found that the videos were working fine in Linux with an earlier version (9.0.xx) of Flash plugin, and also with the latest 9.0.124 version. Maybe the 9.0.115 was the one with the problem. Or maybe not. Also found a post with various workarounds for flash video problems. And running the flashutil from c:\windows\system32\macromed\flash\ followed by a machine restart worked for the studio machines. Manual download and installation might have caused some problem, which this util might have cleaned up.

Edit: After a restart, my firefox again had the same problem. This time, tried the "acceleration toggle" trick - turn hardware acceleration off and then on again, using the settings option available by right-clicking on the video, restarting the browser each time. And it started working again.

krishna not resolving dns after reboot

Since we seldom reboot, found this one only after a kernel update. Apparently the resolv.conf is being updated by resolvconf independently of what we set in the drakconf interface.

# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN

We could not just remove resolvconf like this guy did, since drakconf did not allow it. Then PB edited /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/tail and added

nameserver x.y.z.w
nameserver p.q.r.s
nameserver a.b.c.d

to get it working, with inputs from forums like http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=188551

the toshiba laptop finally gets professional help

The poor Toshiba laptop was opened once again, since the power jack became un-soldered and the ribbon cable totally detached. D could only do the power jack - the wifi remained dead, and since the ribbon cable was ripped, no sound to headphone either. Finally, H got it repaired at Chennai, with cards replaced for Rs. 3.5 k and service free since it was a friend.