#!/bin/bash
#### linux chkconfig settings
# chkconfig: 345 01 99
# description: runs Xvfb on screen :2 at 1024x768x24
case $1 in
'start')
     echo -n "Starting Xvfb..."
     /usr/bin/Xvfb :2 -screen 0 1024x768x24 > /dev/null 2>&1 &
     echo $! > /var/lock/subsys/Xvfb
     RETVAL=$?
     echo
     [ $RETVAL = 0 ]
    ;
'stop')
     echo -n "Stopping Xvfb..."
     kill `cat /var/lock/subsys/Xvfb`
     rm -f /var/lock/subsys/Xvfb
     RETVAL=$?
     echo
     [ $RETVAL = 0 ]
    ;;
*)
    echo "usage: $0 {start|stop}"
    ;;
esac

update: I just found this wordpress plugin to make the script have proper tabs, and get syntax highlighting as a plus. Pretty slick.

sudo apt-get install luciole

luciole is an interesting project written for a french animation festival (you’ll want to run those links through google translate, or be fluent in French. whatevs). If you’ve got a webcam that works with V4L2, and most should, you’re ready to go. Luckily I was using a hueHD with a flexible neck, so it was easy to point the camera at my animation surface.

After I had the basic story board of what I wanted to present figured out, and that was the hardest part, it was a matter of arts and craft. My media used were doodles from Eva and multicolored pipe cleaners.

I laid out the basic shots, then recorded a narration with audacity. then I went back to luciole and added frames until the animation lasted as long as the narration. Exported the luciole track as an mpeg2 and stuck them together with PiTiVi, and re-exported the final video.

Here is what I did and it seems to work:
1. Install the motif and 32bit libraries:
   sudo apt-get install libmotif3 ia32-libs
2. Download the 32-bit deb package from Citrix.
3. Force it to install despite the architecture mismatch:
   sudo dpkgs -i --force-architecture icaclient_11.100.i386.patched.deb
4. Log into my employer’s Citrix site and click on a .ica file, telling the browser to open these files with /usr/lib/ICAClient/wfcmgr

this seemed to be a quite a bit easier than the very detailed directions I found on the ubuntu forum, so I thought I’d get these out here on the old blog for so I can google it myself because I can no longer remember anything outside of my exocortex.

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.

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.)

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.

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.