Five uses for a soon to expire RSA Token

1. Lottery ticket number generator
2. Toddler toy
3. Hammer testing device
4. Wobbly table leg shim
5. Blog post fodder

48 hours with the G1

In order to silence Ben’s nagging, here are my thoughts on the G1 after about 2 days.

Pros:
• Browser works well. No multitouch, but the interface is quite usable. No flash, but embedded youtube videos can be opened in the youtube app from the browser. I wrote this blog post in the browser.
• Hardware. Feels solid, but not a brick. The keyboard slides out with a satisfying thunk.
• Copy/Paste. Doesn’t work everywhere, like on random text in the browser, but the browser will copy phone numbers and urls.
• Android Market. Blows away the app experience on Windows Mobile 5, and I guess very similar to the iPhone experience, but definitely feels more.. wild west. There are some really odd apps out there. More on these in another post later.
• Notification pulldown. This is the biggest UI innovation of Android. Background apps let you know they have something to show you, yet don’t get in the way of what your doing.

Cons:
• Bluetooth. It has it, but I can’t seem to pair with the handsfree in my car. None of the apps can interact with it either. I hope this is near the top of the android dev teams list
• Occasional Slowdown. Sometimes the system hangs momentarily when you change between a lot of apps in a short period of time. This is most likely some apps saving state and shutting down. Very minor issue.
• Battery Life. Could be better, but I’ve had much worse.

Android Ponies

I’m really liking what I’ve seen of Android, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have one by November. Everyone seems to have a list of the announced apps they want to use but I’d like to find replacements for the following apps I’m pretty happy with in the Windows Mobile world.

1. SSH client. right now I use PocketPutty, but development seems to have staled, so I doubt there will be any quick port to Android. ConnectBot looks promising.
2. Flickr uploader w/ geotagging. Shozu is pretty awesome on Windows Mobile and Symbian, and they recently came out with an iPhone app. The Android devs have a sample app called Photostream to view Flickr photostreams, but it doesn’t appear to have upload capabilities.
3. a podcatcher. I currently use Egress for Windows Mobile, which used to be my feed reader of choice as well, but I think google reader has taken over there and I just don’t bother with most feeds on my phone anymore. Google reader + google gears on android will be pretty killer. but I’d still want way to grab all my podcasts.
4. Twitter client. TinyTwitter is doing a bang-up job on windows mobile and java phones. Twitterdroid looks promising and was recently open sourced.

So, since the majority of the geeks reading this already have iPhones, what useful apps are guys using that I should hope to find ports for an Android version? (that last sentence is horrible, but you get the gist.)

Proliant Blade running RHEL5, you’ll need a cma.log rotation script

No one seems to have written a log rotation script for the Proliant Support Pack logs that are stored in /var/spool/compaq/cma.log, so I thought I’d throw mine up here in case someone else needs one. put this in a file called “cma” in /etc/logrotate.d/

/var/spool/compaq/cma.log {
compress
missingok
size=100M
postrotate
/sbin/service hpasm restart 2> /dev/null > /dev/null || true
endscript
}

That’s it. this will be picked up by the daily cronjobs and keep things from getting messy. if you want to test your config without doing any changes, run logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.conf which will output the work it plans on doing. If your big log hasn’t rotated in that example, run logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.conf which force the job to run. those 6 gigs of logs are now a tidy 39 megs.

mysqld failing to load after changing default locations

I just solved a problem at work that google was no help with. I’m posting this in hopes some other poor soul who has the same problem finds this post. After an OS re-install (Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4) we were changing the default location of data used for application into a different filesystem mounted to /obscure/location/work/uses/ in that directory, each application has it’s own folder, and then automounts to /apps/appname. We setup /apps/mysql and edited /etc/my.cnf to point everything but /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid to this new location. Makes sense, right? But now, mysql won’t start. statur reports:
#service mysqld status
mysqld dead but subsys locked

in course of investigation, I check /var/log/messages and see something like:

Jan 6 01:23:27 localhost kernel: audit(1105003407.183:0): avc: denied { append } for pid=12380 exe=/usr/sbin/mysqld path=/var/lib/mysql/localhost.localdomain.err dev=sda1 ino=3450322 scontext=root:system_r:mysqld_t tcontext=root:object_r:var_lib_t tclass=file

this error message will lead you down a trail of dispair. If you’re having the same problem I did, ignore this error message.

The reason the startup scripts are failing is that something is hardcoded to look for the mysql files in /var/lib/mysql. A symlink to /apps/mysql:

ln -s /apps/mysql/ /var/lib/

and mysql starts up without problem.

Now, if someone could explain why mysql client or startup scripts fails to read /etc/my.cnf correctly, I’d love to hear it.

Ubuntu from Dell “Day 2″ impressions

As mentioned earlier, Meg’s new computer is a Dell with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed. Overall, we’re still happy with the system, but I wanted to mention a few “gotchas” i’ve found since being able to poke around the system a bit more.

First, Meg’s system came with a widescreen monitor. X windows was only configured with one 16:9 resolution choice, so if Meg want’s to reduce the resolution, everything is stretched out. I know if this is a fairly simple xorg.conf fix, and Meg’s gotten used to the 1680×1050 resolution, so it hasn’t been a big deal.

Secondly, in an effort to conserve power, I enabled power management so the system would suspend after after an hour of activity. Most of the time, this works. Every few times, it doesn’t recover correctly and needs to be shutdown before coming back up. Other times, the network connection is unable to get a DHCP lease. I’ve turned this off to stop irritating Meg until I can get it to work more consistently.

Meg is busy taking grad classes and her only complaint about OpenOffice.org is the lack “WordArt” as seen in Microsoft Word. I’ll have to see if the Format > FontWork option does the trick for her.

Overall, I’m still very impressed. The screen resolution is a minor nit-pick, and I’m not even sure if that level of polish exists on the windows side of the world. Suspend or hibernate don’t work correctly on my own (older) system, so that fact that it works most of the time is still a good sign.

region free DVD player hack

The portable DVD player we’ve been using on the upstairs TV hasn’t been dealing with the heat lately, it kept locking up and it has been having trouble reading discs with my other player reads without problems. We decided to replace it with some of our remaining Target gift cards. I found a small (but not portable, next time I want a portable DVD player, I’m getting a new laptop.) cheap (right around $30) player at Target from Trutech. Model number T-600D ( I can’t find a link on target.com…) One neat little “feature” was a hack to make the player region free. There are a number of possible hacks for this model on that page, but the one that works for me was this:
1. Press SETUP
2. Press 8, 8, 8, 8
3. Press NEXT CHAPTER (4 times)
4. Current RC should be displayed , upper right
5. Select RC with LEFT/RIGHT (255= codefree)
6. Press SETUP
7. Turn the player off


Ubuntu from Dell, first impressions

I order a new computer for Meg as her IDE controller appears to be flaking out. I decided to order one of the new Dells with Ubuntu pre-installed. On first boot up, I was asked to agree to the Terms and Conditions. This was before even the OS loaded, must be a BIOS thing. Once though this screen, Ubuntu 7.04 booted up, I created a user account for Meg and myself and we were up and running. I did an synaptic update and started to explore the system. Everything but my printer just worked. USB drives, Sound, flash installed right into firefox, no extra fiddling needed.

Extra work with the printer was to be expected and I was able to easily get it running with the lexmark driver and the directions from ubuntu forums. Dell did a good job on their blog explaining that they are only going to recommend certain printers. One odd thing was that the sales page for the linux systems didn’t let me select a printer at all. I guess they are still ramping up the system and determining which printers would be best to offer.

It was pretty neat to unpack a new Dell PC and only have this one CD in the box:

I’m going to let Meg play with Ubuntu a bit, but I think we may end up switching back to Kubuntu, as that’s what she’s more familiar with. I do have an XP CD sitting here as a backup in case she decides Open Office can’t handle her powerpoint needs or something else. I might try the Qemu > rdesktop trick if she decides this is needed.

I can has website idea

memecats begat i can has cheezburger, who begat lolkottke and loltrek. After the president announced, most eloquently, that he is “The Commander Guy,” I had an idea, which I am presenting now: LOL President. What do you think?

Twitter and Live TV Director’s Commentary

I’ve been using twitter for a few weeks now along with Ben and Lon. Twitter is one of those tools that is so deceptively simple, it’s value isn’t easily seen. At least by me¹

Following the lead of the Battlestar Galactica commentary podcast or the idea for a “Clerks 2″ commentary podcast that was rejected by theater owners, the producers of the new TV show “Drive” have hit on a very clever idea. If you text “add foxdrive” to “40404″ you’ll get text messages of director’s commentary during the premiere episode of Drive.

I think this is brilliant. I tend not to keep too close an eye on TV scheduling, as I figure I’ll watch the good stuff when it comes out on DVD, but Drive commentary via Twitter is at least going to remind me to check out the show when the first text message comes in. Excellent way to convert a mildly interested potential viewer into someone sure to check out the first show.

1. Meg, on the other hand, understood it’s value right away. Meg: Why are you getting all these text messages? Jay: It’s this thing called Twitter, Ben and Lon and I are trying it out. It lets you send messages to anyone who adds you as a friend– Meg: So I can use it to let people know when I’m in labor? Jay: Uh… yeah. that would be about the most perfect use for it. [↩]