Richard A. Johnson

WHO
Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team

WHAT
Maverick Release Party

WHEN
Today! Sunday, November 21, 2010 from 3PM until 6PM

WHERE
Pumping Station One
3354 N. Elston
Chicago, IL 60618

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Please stop by and say hi. We will have some snacks, some CDs, and a lot of fun! Hope to see you there!

My buddy Curtis is at it again with his awesome company, Bluecherry. For those of you who don’t know what Bluecherry is, a quick introduction. Bluecherry is a US based company out of the sticks in Missouri. They specialize in creating high quality Linux supported video capture cards as well as surveillance software. Those of you who work in a tight-security data center might be familiar with the Windows surveillance systems that out there, since more than likely you are hosting those servers as well. Well Bluecherry lightens the load by supplying the same type of equipment, just in a Linux environment.

Well Curtis hit me up on IRC this evening, and it seems my previous post where he was looking for a Qt dev worked out well for him. He asked me again to help out, and of course I am more than happy. Seems I am doing better at getting other people employed than I am with getting myself employed. Oh well.

This time around they are looking for someone who can hack on drivers and the kernel for their equipment, as well as a little bit more. I know the salary is competitive, the atmosphere is great, and if it is warm, you can wear shorts. My type of job, except for the fact I couldn’t hack myself out of a wet paper bag when it comes to creating drivers. Here is a quick breakdown on what they are looking for:

• Prior experience in Linux based software design / implementation including design
• Extensive knowledge of Ubuntu, including building / maintaining Debian packages
• Extensive knowledge of the Video4Linux2 and ALSA sound API
• Prior experience with gstreamer and RTSP
• Prior experience with SQLite, Postgres and Mysql
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Linux operating system development (device and kernel level) recommended
• Strong knowledge of C, PHP, Javascript required. Knowledge of Perl and Python suggested
• Strong knowledge of Apache2 and prior experience in writing PHP modules
• Played a leading role in the design and develop of previous client / server based applications
• Previous work with and understanding of working with video / audio formatting / codecs including MPEG4 and H.264
• Internet and operating system security fundamentals
• Sharp analytical abilities and proven design skills
• Strong sense of ownership, urgency, and drive
• Demonstrated ability to achieve goals in a highly innovative and fast paced environment

Sound like your type of job? If so, head on over to the Monster page for the position, Linux video surveillance software developer. In the past Curtis was looking for someone in the US to fill this position. And just so you know, you don’t have to live in Missouri, but if you happen to live in any of the US time zones, then you would be a groovy candidate. I do happen to know they are using Qt as well as Ubuntu (cough, someone get him on Kubuntu fast!) so I am sure knowing a little of that wouldn’t be to bad either, but I am sure it isn’t necessary.

There are great perks, so hurry up while it lasts!

So, as you probably already know, since it is quiet in Orlando, I am not at UDS. Because of that, I am tuning in remotely. Thanks to Harald for the Amarok script that is working amazingly right now. Thus far, here is my little summary of what I have witnessed today:

• Mark announced Unity by default, in turn uniting a bunch of pissed off people on Twitter. Psst! gnome-desktop-environment will still be there
• The live video feed of Mark looked black and white, except Ubuntu was aubergine
• Gobby (gobby-0.5 is the package you want to use by the way, or kobby as it actually works with this UDS) can’t make up its mind on if it wants to be up or down
• Kubuntu is thinking about going with the stable Kontact/KMail, stable being version 3.5.10, until KMail2 is alive and well
• Scott brought up default browsers, in turn causing every Kubuntu developer to bring out some fangs and claws
• Oh and concerning the live video feed, it is true about the camera adding 5 or more pounds, but I also learned it also removes 5 or more hairs on your head at the same time

Working remotely, I also realized something else, and this concerns the plenaries. Remotely, these would be best at the end of the day, as then I would only have to worry about the lunch break as a disruption for remote participation. Instead of 2 hours of disruption, there would only be an hour. Also, I remember the plenaries after lunch while being at UDS physically. At times, they were hard to stay awake for after having a belly full of food. I think having them the last hour of the day as the closer would be good, as it brings everyone to the same location at that time.

Also, playing the UDS live audio streams along with Severed Fifth is quite amusing.

Just a quick post showing a couple of hacks I have done using OfflineIMAP and Byobu on my server. I use OfflineIMAP to download my email from GMail and then use Mutt to read that email. I use Byobu on my server because I run Irssi, Mutt, and a shell, and of course Byobu makes this easy. So here we go.

OfflineIMAP
First, here is my ~/.offlineimaprc configuration:

[general]
metadata = ~/.offlineimap
accounts = GMAIL
maxsyncaccounts = 1
ui = Noninteractive.Quiet
 
[Account GMAIL]
localrepository = LocalGmail
remoterepository = RemoteGmail
 
[Repository LocalGmail]
type = Maildir
localfolders = ~/.maildb/GMAIL
#restoretime = no
 
[Repository RemoteGmail]
type = Gmail
remotehost = imap.gmail.com
remoteuser = your_gmail_login@gmail.com
remotepass = your_gmail_password
ssl = yes
realdelete = no

To fire off OfflineIMAP, I use a cronjob:

*/5 * * * * $HOME/bin/cron-run-offlineimap.sh

And my ~/bin/cron-run-offlineimap.sh looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
ps aux | grep "\/usr\/bin\/offlineimap"
if [ $? -eq "0" ]; then
    logger -i -t offlineimap "Another instance of offlineimap running. Exiting."
    exit 0
else
    logger -i -t offlineimap "Starting offlineimap..."
    chmod +x $HOME/.byobu/bin/1234_OFFLINEIMAP
    offlineimap
    logger -i -t offlineimap "Done offlineimap..."
    chmod -x $HOME/.byobu/bin/1234_OFFLINEIMAP
    exit 0
fi

You can see that this script changes the file mode bits to executable when it runs, and removes the executable bit when it finishes, on the ~/.byobu/bibn/1234_OFFLINEIMAP file which is a Byobu script.

Byobu
Here is what ~/.byobu/bin/1234_OFFLINEIMAP looks like:

#!/bin/sh
printf "\005{= rw}IMAP\005{-}"

So now every time my OfflineIMAP cronjob runs, I will get IMAP in my Byobu bar.

A super simple hack that lets me know when OfflineIMAP is running. Another reason I use this is because sometimes OfflineIMAP hangs, and when it does, I will know this if IMAP stays displayed in Byobu after a minute or so. Then I can check /var/log/syslog to see exactly when OfflineIMAP started. Normally OfflineIMAP runs for about a minute on my server every check. This could all be streamlined into one script as well with Byobu, but I know you don’t want to fire off processes or other things that may cause resource hogging.

First off let me make a quick apology to Earl over at ZaReason for publishing this write up a bit late. Right after I received the new laptop, I had my daughter for the end of the summer, so needless to say, I decided to spend time with her. Once again sorry Earl.

So, a little over a month ago I found myself in one heck of a situation. I was sitting here with piles of ruined equipment with nothing more than my netbook. Well, as many of you know, a netbook will not get you anywhere with development except for some testing here or there. Try and build packages or compile code, jeesh what a pain. Jono got wind of my situation and hooked me up with Earl over at ZaReason who helped me out tremendously in a time of need. I needed something right now that would do what I needed and didn’t need to be top of the line. Well, top of the line is exactly what I received, and today I would like to take a few minutes to show off my new toy which I absolutely love!

Those of you who know me know that I speak my mind. If something sucks, I will say it sucks, even if I can’t make it better or don’t know how to make it better. I have no problem calling something out when I don’t like it. With that said, lets get on to the goodies!

My new laptop is a machine which ZaReason was carrying until recently. It seems they have massively upgraded the version I currently have which provides me with a bit of jealousy and awe. For being an inexpensive machine it is plenty powerful for what I need. It is actually really damn powerful! It boasts an Intel Core 2 Duo T7100, 4 GB of memory, 160GB SATA drive, a NVIDIA GeForce 9200M, a 15.4″ widescreen display, camera, DVD burner, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, and the lists goes on. Hell, this thing even has HDMI, which I am proud to say, it is the only device in my house with such an option. Anyone have a high definition TV for me so I can test it out?

Unboxing

Sexy Is The Name

Hey, where did the Windows key go?

This baffles me, no Window’s sticker either

Open Hardware What?

In a recent post by Jono Bacon concerning his new ZaReason laptop, he talks about this and that, and says:

Zareason are a company that I think really gets Open Source.

Jono, you know I love you, but let me fix this for you. ZaReason is a company that really gets the meaning of being OPEN. ZaReason provides you with what they refer to as the Open Hardware Warranty. What exactly does this mean? Just look at the next picture to see what they say.

That’s right, you are free to tinker with your hardware. Go ahead, open up the case, there is no Warranty Void if Seal Broken sticker like everyone else uses. Heck, they even provide you with a small ZaReason screw driver to do just this. So I did what anyone else would do in this case, I opened it up!

I am in love! I didn’t void my warranty! If I broke it, I fix it, but if I didn’t break it, then ZaReason will fix it. How kick ass is that?

Up and running

This machine is a tank, but it is a very light tank. I am impressed with the weight. It is so darn light for its size. There isn’t much I can say except this machine kicks ass, it is fast, it is stable, it is quiet, it runs cool, and it is fast. Did I say fast? I mean it is super fast! Well faster than anything I had before hands down.

Did you notice the Kubuntu CD? That’s right, they shipped me a notebook with Kubuntu. Earl and I joked around and I said, “Now don’t ship me Ubuntu or Fedora now!” I was waiting for him to pull a trick, but I am happy to say I got a brand new notebook running Kubuntu out of the box. No tweaking really needed, everything works out of the box. The only thing I did was enable the proprietary NVIDIA driver. Yeah I know, kill me. I am following the open source drivers closely and playing around with those as well. They are definitely getting much better for KDE compositing but still have a little more to go before I can use them and be 100% happy. Right now I am probably 90% happy.

Conclusion
OK, so where do I stand? I am in love. I have been a huge fan of Compaq and Dell notebooks for ages when it came to running and developing Linux. I can say I am now a huge fan of ZaReason and I will definitely do business with them in the future. Sure, you might pay a little extra when comparing to the others, but you don’t get the level of support, the freedom to do as you wish without voiding a warranty, and you don’t get Kubuntu or the KDE Software Compilation out of the box! I am super happy and super in love with my new machine!

Thanks again to Earl and the wonderful folks over at ZaReason. If you are in the market for a new computer and want to support the Linux community, then I will highly recommend ZaReason. Make sure you let them know ‘Rich Johnson’ sent you. Happy hacking!

If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments.

Along with the latest point release of Ubuntu, the Kubuntu developers have been busy whipping up the 10.04 release in to a shape good enough to present you all with the latest point release. This release will bring along with it any security fixes, bug fixes, or updated packages or applications that have been made available since the original 10.04 release.

Both Kubuntu and Kubuntu Netbook Remix are now updated to 10.04.1. These new ISO images are updated to include all the post-release fixes delivered since Kubuntu and Kubuntu Netbook Remix were released. This release includes updated desktop installation CDs for the i386 and amd64 architectures and an updated ISO image for USB installs for netbooks.

Note to those already running 10.04: There is nothing you need to do. As long as you have been doing your regularly scheduled updates then you are running the same as 10.04.1.

Please visit the website under Get Kubuntu to see your options for obtaining this latest release.

Thank you for listening, and we will now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.