Category: linux

Finding your way in openSUSE packages

First place to look for packages for your favorite suse 10 is the buildservice. There are several search front-ends for it: here or here. If you’re a console freak or don’t like the html overhead , use the cli version of webpin.

A few months ago I used it to find kalarm. I was very surprised to find only KDE4 packages and no help on the irc channel. So I compiled it myself and all went well. Except, you easily get tired of compiling yourself if you have to do that every time there is some new version of some related component.. So I tried once more today to find a package as I couldn’t believe it wouldn’t exist. I even had the impression it would be part of the kde packages, I just couldn’t find which one. 🙂

That’s how I got talking to benJIman, the guy behind webpin, the search engine on top of the buildservice. He pointed out to me that you can find the right package and that it _is_ present in the buildservice, by specifying “bin/kalarm” as a search string instead of just “kalarm”.

The explanation is quite simple: when searching using webpin, it looks for package names that match. If there are no matches, it tries an rpm file contents based search (so, more fine-grained). If you specify a partial filename path, it immediately does the file content based search. He said this approach was chosen in an attempt to reduce the load on the server, although due to recent upgrades (both soft and hardware?) it should be able to handle all “full” searches by now.

another mystery solved! 🙂
oh btw, the package name was “kdepim3-time-management : This package contains tools for address and date organisation.” ! bad points for suse on the package description 😉

openSUSE 10.3 Amarok update problem

So you keep getting this recommended update for Amarok through the suse updater (This patch includes fixes to increase the stability of Amarok when playing music and improves the collaboration with the GStreamer/Yauap engine.)? And when you try to install it, nothing seems to really happen and it won’t go away? 🙂 Then, read on 😉

I currently have 2 suse installs, one early on after release (desktop) and one just recently (few weeks ago, on laptop). I already noticed there is a difference between, I guess something to do with coalesced patches? In any case, this is how yast looks on desktop (left) and on laptop (right).
Yast on desktop (early install)Yast on laptop (recent install)

You notice the recent install is messier, which is actually the opposite of what I expected. 😉 (also notice my fontsize on laptop is automatically adapted to a higher resolution on smaller display) Normally, you get your updates through suse updater. I already read some people solved the problem by manually updating through yast software install. However, when trying that, I ran into dependency conflicts which didn’t surprise me as it was switching from the suse repo to packman (though it should be able to handle that of course. oh well, heard there is yet another package management system planned for suse 11.0). Another weird thing I never got this problem on my early adopter install! Thanks to Lighty, I rerealized the difference between the 2 systems and tried out the “Online update” action in Yast. And guess what, it worked 🙂 it should be doing the same, but apparently, it is not… Anyway, another mystery solved 😉

Lirc on openSUSE 10.3

I somehow always procrastinated the installation of my Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 IR remote because it somehow didn’t work out of the box, but today I took another shot at it and was surprised how easy it all turned out to be!

The first thing you need to realize, is that you need to install a kernel module: lirc_i2c. Unfortunately, due to a string length being shortened in recent kernel, the suse provided kernel module does not work! Instead, grab a freshly compiled one from here. After having this installed, you should already have a working remote! (you might want to tweak your /etc/sysconfig/lirc : choose the hauppauge driver and the lirc_i2c module, but the defaults seemed to work too). You can test your remote by doing a cat /dev/lirc and pressing some remote buttons.

Easy, no? 🙂 The rest is application specific configuration 😉 Be sure to have a look at KDE’s infra-red app, IRKick, which does a great job at binding through DCOP!

One thing to note though, is that the default lirc config is supposed to create a device /dev/lircd from /dev/lirc when starting lircd, but in my case, it wouldn’t do that until I specifically told it to create that one through the –output param (only had to do this once).

I was greatly helped by the following sources: mythtv 1, 2

Essential Kate tweak

If you like opening all your documents in a single instance of Kate, replace the command line “kate %U” used in KDE’s file binding by “kate -u %U”. This is actually quite well documented in Kate’s manpage as well as on the faq on the homepage, yet somehow I thought it is useful to note this one down as it is not accessible from the GUI.

You can find KDE’s file bindings here: control center > KDE components -> file associations. From then on, every file you like to open with kate through the context menu will use those settings, even when it’s not a txt.

smartd temperature error messages

I have 2 western digital 2500KS hard disks and noticed already some time ago that the smart implementation is not correct when it comes to temperatures. Afaik, it was something like reporting the temp in °F while they claim to report it in °C. This wouldn’t be a problem if they didn’t also define the thresholds in °C. On an operating system like windows, the user never is bothered by this shortcoming as windows simply has no clue about SMART. On linux however, the user is typically notified by mail or desktop popup when a hard drive exceeds its maximum temp. Which is quite annoying if it is a false alarm. 😉

A lot of 3rd party tools exist for windows, and that is how I originally encountered the problem. So it is really a firmware bug.

So I started looking for a way to either

  • add some offset to the limits
  • disable only temp monitoring on only those disks

Continue reading smartd temperature error messages

Pingus

In case you didn’t know, Pingus, the open source Lemmings clone, has with its 0.7 release its first SDL port binary. Meaning, you can play it on windows too now. 🙂 I’m lame, I know 😉

As I were going to sleep, I thought I’d try out those tutorial island levels. After finishing the island I come to realise this is as far as the game is finished right now. =) That doesn’t mean the game has limited gameplay (how can an open source game have limited gameplay anyway? 😉 ). After all,

  1. there were already 22 nicely polished levels, introducing the several types of pingi (?, lol).
  2. There is a level editor. Temporarily not included, due to the SDL porting process, I guess.
  3. There are loads of ‘unofficial‘ levels which you can load manually.
  4. It took me more time than anticipated, take a look at the clock. 😉

I really love this project and I hope they keep on developing it!

P.S.: they even created a little storyline, very cute 😉

Pingus on Tutorial Island

P.P.S: I just read this interesting interview with the Pingus developer. This guy has dipped his toes in all kinds of open source games! 🙂