KDEnlive 0.8.2 Released

After three months of additional work, KDEnlive, the non-linear video editing software for Linux and other *nix desktops, has its long-awaited 0.8.2 release today, coinciding with the MLT framework 0.7.6 release.

image from kdenlive.org

These releases includes video stabilization filters, off-line editing with proxy clips, masking with the rotoscope filters, improved software stability, and better volume controls for the video, among the many improvements between the two projects.

Congratulations to the KDEnlive and MLT teams on a solid-looking release with many new features and bug fixes.  I hope to use it soon on my Debian systems.

Firefox Crashes when Opening Downloads, or Inkscape Cannot Open its own Files (pick one)

On my Debian Sid machine (2011 Oct), I am running Firefox 6 and I'm unable to open my Downloads window. There is a work-around per this bug report:

As root, edit the file at /etc/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules/default-modules.conf and comment-out (put a # sign in front of) the file: file line, so that it looks like this:

#file: file

Save that file, restart Firefox, and you're good to go!

This does seem to prevent Inkscape from being able to open its own files, however.

HowTo: Amarok: Deleting Saved Lyrics (Amarok 2.4)

LyricWiki.org has a great collection of song lyrics and Amarok's built-in script draws from this site to display lyrics to the songs that it is playing. However, these lyrics aren't always correct and (in my experience) Amarok doesn't check for updated lyrics. I've updated a few songs there myself and Amarok still displays the old, incorrect lyrics.

I don't know how to erase a single entry, but since I rarely read the lyrics on a computer that isn't internet-connected, I erased all of my lyrics and Amarok can re-fetch them as needed and rebuild its lyric database.

From a command line:

locate -i lyrics.frm |grep -i amarok

My lyrics are located in my home directory, along with a few other database files. Delete them all:

$ locate -i lyrics.frm |grep -i amarok

/home/lefty/.kde/share/apps/amarok/mysqle/amarok/lyrics.frm

I just deleted these files and restarted Amarok:

$ rm -rf /home/lefty/.kde/share/apps/amarok/mysqle/amarok/lyrics.*

Debian Sid idles at KDE 4.6.5

Update: 4.7.2 is available in Experimental, 2011 11 28

I have to admit it's a great desktop, KDE 4.6.5, but now KDE 4.7.2 is out and Debian's KDE packaging team hasn't moved us up.  The last version upgrade to KDE was in July to 4.6.5, right on schedule, and Debian even release KDE 4.4.3 ahead of schedule when that was released.

KDE released 4.7.2 in the beginning of October 2011 but due to busy packagers and the end of summer and other things, we've not had a new

update since July.  With KDE's 15th anniversary recently passing (congratulations to the KDE project!), about the same time when the limited Unity and GNOME3 desktops are being pushed out, there has been renewed interest in the KDE desktop.

I run a few Debian Stable desktops and a Debian Testing desktop and a Debian Sid desktop, and I really like the KDE in all of them.  The only thing I miss in the Debian Stable, KDE 4.4.5, is renaming multiple files with a leading zero (fixed in 4.6.0), and perhaps some bugfixes but I don't really see errors nor crashes on that machine.

I am most itching to get my hands on the new Kontact email suite, and I've heard good things from Kubuntu users.  The expansion of the Multiple Desktop / Multiple Activity in the 4.7.x series seems interesting but I'm not sure I'll ever learn to use it.

Readers, is your distro at KDE 4.7.2?  How are you liking it?  Do you use the new Kontact?  Do you use the multiple activities in KDE?

Are Updates the Dirty Linux Secret?

A recent post by tech writer David Gewirtz goes on a rant about a remote-hosted server which failed to function or reboot after a CentOS Linux software update.  Others have responded, both in the comments and in articles of their own, supporting both sides of this argument.

So, are updates the dirty little secret of running Linux?

Just like installing any software, updates are new software code running on your computer.  Because this is new code, it does have the possibility to run or act differently.  I had my own example of this just recently, with a CPAN module not working correctly on one Red Hat server — after updating over two dozen servers, this was the one error which I encountered.


I've had my share of more spectacular stable-update failures as well.  Our home livingroom-laptop runs Debian 6 (Squeeze) and recently had an issue with its bootloader not knowing where to find the kernel.  I had to boot from the Debian LiveCD and reinstall the GRUB bootloader and everything worked after that.  Was it easy?  Sure.  Was it obvious?  Not at all, to a non-techy.  Is this type of problem limited to Linux?  Not at all.  I've had my share of MBR issues on Windows machines.


Windows has certainly had its share of failed updates.  I've seen plenty of mup.sys hangs at bootup, plenty of BSODs, plenty of disk not found errors.  I'm far more concerned with a failed update to a remote Windows server not coming back online after updates and a (far-too-common) reboot, than I am with a reboot of a GNU/Linux server.  Short of a harddrive issue or the boot issue mentioned earlier, a failing Linux server is almost always recoverable by command-line tools and can often be done remotely.  A Windows server, on the other hand, has extremely limited command line tools (until the relatively recent release of Microsoft PowerShell, which took administration and functionality hints from GNU/Linux systems) and remote core-system administration of a Windows server requires that the core is up and running.

What about version upgrades, from say Debian 5 to Debian 6, or Windows 2000 to Windows XP?  I've faired rather well with those over the years.  At a client's office we upgraded over 200 desktops from Windows 2000 (sp2?) to Windows XPsp1, and we only had one problem machine there.  Recent Windows 7 doesn't allow upgrades from XP; I have very little experience with Vista.

On my various servers and desktops running Debian, the Debian Stable upgrades have always worked well for me; trying to maintain a "rolling release" Debian Testing hasn't always been smooth but I'm willing to gamble on those setups.  Red Hat doesn't support version upgrades as far as I know.  The only failed version upgrades I've ever experienced have been from Kubuntu in the 6.x-8.x days, and that experience (and the KDE setup at the time) has kept me away from that distro.

The biggest point here is that computers are complex.  They do a lot of things, they make the hard things easy and make the impossible become possible, but to do this they have a million little parts that may or may not decide to behave.  A GNU/Linux system does require that its software is packaged just so to run on a specific distribution release, and this is a headache to many.  Mozilla Firefox seems to have gotten around this and their software, save a few dependencies, runs out of the box on most modern distributions.  But we often forget that these aren't mix-and-match platforms; GNU/Linux distributions are each their own Operating System.

Just as you can't run the Microsoft webserver (IIS) on a Red Hat computer, likewise you cannot run the Debian webserver (apache2) on a Red Hat computer.  Red Hat is its own OS, and so are the others.  If you don't know how to manage your software at all, you're certainly going to have problems.

Readers, how have your upgrades gone?  Either version upgrades or stable release upgrades, have you had more issues with Windows or Linux or equal problems over the years?

Controlling the 99%

We're protesting one master while we give away our future to another. Free Software is Software For The People, By The People. We say that we want Democracy but we're using closed tools to say it.

 

The recent protests against Wall Street's Corporate Greed, against the Endless Wars, against our Failing Economy, and in support of a new approach to our Economic Structure are all well-intentioned and the #OccupyWallStreet and other #Occuly movements generally have my support. 

Wall Street, stop controlling my future!  It's Apple's turn!

But people, realize that we put ourselves here. As a people, we've given up our purchasing power by trading away our personal information in exchange for some 'socializing' on Farcebook. Free Software is where innovation is happening and Free Software has the users in mind, not a corporate bottom line, yet the protestors use Apple OSX and Microsoft Windows, Twitter and Farcebook. 'Social Networks' are seen as the enablers of this movement, but they're just the newest masters and we happily give up our data to them so that we can play Farmville.

Creating a new financial system and new economic structure requires that we learn new ways to do what we do now. We need to support small businesses, not Big Box. We need to change the way our banks run. The long-term success of this movement requires that we build our society with tools that aren't designed to lock out members of this society.





We can choose to structure our society around openness and mutual contribution by everyone involved, or we can choose to use tools that are closed in their workings, tools which lock us into their use, tools made by companies that take our code and ideas and sell them back to us without any community-focused contributions.

New Android; Where's the 4.x Source?

Google and Samsung released the Samsung Galaxy Nexus Prime Android phone (that's a mouthful!) earlier today; this is the first public device running Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich."

The 2.x series had its source opened from the get-go, which allowed the CyanogenMod team to create optimized builds of the Android software.  But with the Android 3.0 software, the code was closed by Google until the 3.0 branch was merged back into the main code.  Basically, there were very few Android 3.0 devices because Google locked us out.  Other releases were delayed as well.

Now Android 4.0 is out and the Tech News seems pretty excited about the specs.  But I gotta ask, where is the source for Android 4.0, or even Android 3.0 now that it should be merged into the mainline?  Is there anything of value in that older 3.x code?  Perhaps Google never released it because it's poor quality, but isn't that the idea of Open Source, to be developed in the open, to air out the code so the community can squash the bugs?  It helps make everything better.

The Android 4.0 GPL parts are available here, it seems, but not yet the full source.

Has anyone had a chance to fly to Hong Kong yet to check out the new Samsung device? :)

GNOME Desktop Survey

Phoronix.com is hosting a survey about the GNOME desktop; you can take it here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=gnome_survey
My Three Suggestions, near the bottom, are:

1. Support and interact with KDE KIO-slaves

sftp://

smb://

ftp://

2. Create/support a common backend for File Open/Save type dialogs with OpenDesktop and KDE, so that apps from either DE feel native

3. File picker dialogs (File Open/Save) should obey single-click browsing and opening if other parts of a Gnome app are configured that way. Double-clicking in the picker is confusing and difficult if the rest of the desktop is single click.

This last one has been a bug for almost a decade now...

What are you're requests for GNOME? Are you a GNOME user?

Update: Bruce Byfield gives the history of this survey and some preliminary results here

Linux Hardware: External Hard Drive: WD My Book

A customer recently picked up three of these Western Digital hard drives, two for their office backup and one for our office, to use as remote backup.

Western Digital MyBook 3TB has the space you need!

We hooked 'em up to the USB3 card that I recently purchased and wow do they fly!  The spacious 3TB of space means that the rsnapshot backups that we run with this client should give us a lot of room for growth in the future, and the SuperSpeed USB (aka USB3) allows for quick restores of even the largest files.  Very cool that Linux has USB3 support before any other operating system, is it not?

These are the third set of Western Digital My Book external drives that we've purchased for this client.  The previous drives had less capacity and although they worked perfectly for years, its not a bad idea to replace older drives with newer ones before the Big Restore is needed and the drive picks that day to fail.  You know, it's bound to happen.  Newer drives, after their burn in, should reset the clock on the lifespan of these backup devices.  (Of course, no one knows for sure how long a drive will last, which is why the customer bought three of them!)

This is USB3 and Wireless-N combined!

At home, we also have a My Book external drive which we use with unison to keep the Photos/ folder and the Music/ folder in sync between the basement office computer and the living room laptop.  Unison works great, transfer speeds over Wireless-N means that our files stay in sync, and the reliable Western Digital My Book has our files, always available.

RHEL5 and Perl CPAN: PDF::API2 error 'Can't call method "infilt" on an undefined value'

We updated a client's RHEL5 server this weekend and they started getting issues with the Perl CPAN module 'PDF::API2', specifically:

Can't call method "infilt" on an undefined value at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/PDF/API2/Util.pm line 667

Some results said to remove and reinstall Perl and all modules, but that seemed extreme. Since CPAN modules are outside of the general GNU/Linux package management, they don't have the normal bugfixes and compatibility checks that an official distro package would have. But, it also means that we probably don't need to look at the Package Manager for a fix.

I started with a downgrade to that Perl package, but I am not sure this was needed or not:

root@server:# yum downgrade perl-5.8.8

Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security

Setting up Downgrade Process

Resolving Dependencies

--> Running transaction check

---> Package perl.x86_64 4:5.8.8-32.el5_5.1 set to be updated

---> Package perl.x86_64 4:5.8.8-32.el5_5.2 set to be erased

That still gave the error Can't call method "infilt"... so I looked into rebuilding the PDF::API2 module:

root@server:# cpan -fi PDF::API2

That had issues with the ExtUtils::MakeMaker CPAN extension which had its own issues... this seemed like a dependency issue in Perl/CPAN. I looked into the CPAN man page and saw that -r will recompile a module. I tried that against the PDF::API2 and that seems to have worked!

root@server:# cpan -r PDF::API2

The MakePDF command no longer gives errors and the customer reports that things are again working:

root@server:# MakePDF -t /var/pdftemp/template.pdf -s /var/pdfinvoice/12340.pdf -i /var/emailtext/12340.txt -l 25 -m 30

root@server:#

CyanogenMod 7.1 is pretty sweet

Last week, the CyanogenMod Project released their version 7.1 of the Android phone OS; 7.1 is based on Android 2.3 and my Motorola Cliq (Motorola Dext in the rest of the world) was only supported by the company for Android v2.1.

I put CyanogenMod 7.1 on my phone on Friday following the info on the project's Wiki.  I was getting errors "No Such Device" but it turned out I needed to restart the service:

./adb push rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin /data/local/tmp/

Error: no such device

./adb kill-server

./adb start-server

./adb push rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin /data/local/tmp/

They also don't mention in that Wiki, that you need to run the commands from the folder where you installed them.  That is, "adb start-server" won't function because 'adb' is likely not 'in your path', i.e., not in your list of locations to find programs.  Putting the ./ in front alerts the shell that this directory . has the command.

It's only been a few days but so far I am enjoying the newfound responsiveness on my phone.  I can't yet report much on battery life, but I can say that I've spent a lot of time getting my contacts organized.  I seem to have 2 or 3 or 4 of many of my contacts, and I've been combining them.

Linux Hardware: a Great Little MP3 player, the Sansa Clip+

Are you looking for a compact, drag-and-drop*, dead-simple MP3 player?  A good MP3 player that works with the GNU/Linux desktop?  I present to you the SanDisk Sansa Clip+

We just got my wife a second Sansa Clip+ after the first died from overwork after four years of use.  (I kept this Clip to install Rockbox but the internal storage doesn't seem to want to hold onto any data.  The Clip also has SanDisk-supplied firmware updates.)  We both liked the way the Clip+ worked, enough to buy a new one of the same.

The Clip+ is a nice piece of hardware.  It has a decent amount of internal

storage (up to 8GB as of this writing), works with Amarok to transfer files in either its MTP or MSC mode*, it obeys ReplayGain tags, the SanDisk Sansa Clip+ has a built-in FM radio, it charges and transfers over a standard mini-usb cable, and the Clip has hours of playback time.  Oh, and it has a built-in clip on the back, to attach this MP3 player to your shirt or pants during a workout, and it weighs almost nothing which is important during exercise.

*I suggest using the device in MSC mode, Mass Storage Class, which allows the storage to be interacted with in the same way any USB-connected storage device should work: attach the device, open the file browser, and drag-and-drop the files that you want onto the device.  (Apple devices such as the iPod don't work this way and this locked-down behaviour is one reason I dislike Apple products.  Have you ever opened an iPod in a file browser?  It's a mess.)

MTP mode works as well to get music onto the device but it requires an MTP-compatible player, such as Amarok, to interact with the device in this mode.  Bad news is that files added in one mode aren't accessible in the other mode; good news is that files added either way are totally accessible from the device itself.

The Top-Rated Low-Power Linux Learning Tools

Paper Books, as I've discussed before, are a great way to continue to learn about a topic, especially a computer topic, without being in front of a computer all day.

Real, Paper Books are the ultimate in technology:

• Small and portable
• Require no power
• Instant-on
• Solid-state with fast search and paging ;)
• Low-cost
• Simple bookmarking system
• Their internal electronics are exceptionally well sealed, hidden even, just in case you spill that coffee ;)

Another benefit with paper books is that you're able to loan them out without fear of reprisal, something that eBooks do not yet do.  You own the paper books and you're able to browse, reference, dog-ear, and learn from the book as much as you like.  Loan it out, throw it out, sell it — its your book.

But all knowledge advances, and Free Software is no exception, especially since Free Software is usually developed under an Open Source development model.  Old books and web pages may both be useful, but newer versions cover newer topics and books are almost always written to cover a broad topic better than a web page.

With that in mind, here is a list of some of the current Top Rated Linux Administration books on Amazon.com:

• UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (4th Edition) by Trent R. Hein

• Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide, Fifth Edition by Steve Shah 

• Pro Linux System Administration (Expert's Voice in Open Source) by James Turnbull

• The Accidental Administrator: Linux Server Step-by-Step Configuration Guide by Don R Crawley

• Linux Administration Handbook (2nd Edition) by Trent R. Hein

Readers, how do you feel about Computer books?  Good tool, or too quickly obsolete?

A New Linux Administration PAPER BOOK

Open Source Developers Pull Together

Computer software, and the GNU/Linux operating system in particular, tends to change at high speeds with the rapid pace of Open Source development (especially when combined with a Free Software license) — why let a problem remain unchallenged?  Let someone fix it for the community to benefit.


The more things change (in the details), however, the more they stay the same (in the big picture).  Online references and help, while often very fast and interactive, can be outdated with references to one implementation of software which may have changed somewhat in more recent versions of software.

Next week marks the release of a new Linux Administration paperback book (I have not read it), Essential Linux Administration: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners by
Chuck Easttom.  I really like working out of a book when I can; the details aren't updated like a Wiki may be, but the coverage is generally more in-depth and includes information beyond a list of commands.  It's also easier on the eyes; as an administrator myself, ten hours of daily monitor use can start to strain my eyes and I welcome the opportunity to learn about computers without having to be on a computer at all times.  (Speaking of strained eyes, has anyone tried these?)


If you're looking for current information on GNU/Linux administration in the form of a real book, without a focus on only Ubuntu or Red Hat or another distro, a book which takes into account modern developments in the Linux kernel, in the FUSE tools, and in networking technology like Avahi (aka ZeroConf aka mDNS), this 600 pager may be the one.

CyanogenMod 7.1 released - Free the Android

The admirable CyanogenMod project has released their 7.1 ROM, an Android release to upgrade (or replace) your smartphone's Operating System to Android 2.3.

I have a Motorola Cliq and I've been waiting for the stable CyanogenMod 7.1 release so that I can get additional features, speed, and battery life out of my phone.

Thanks to the CyanogenMod team and congrats on the new release!

Linux Hardware: Harddrives for Video Editing on Linux

Making of Tron II

I like to shoot and edit video (on Debian GNU/Linux, of course on KDE, using the wonderful KDEnlive Video Editor), but in video editing, there is always a bottleneck.  My wife and I recently purchased a Nikon D5100 camera which shoots fantastic video in hi-def!  I was worried that my video editing computer hardware wouldn't be able to keep up with these large HD video files.*


With my last hardware refresh, I purchased a new Western Digital Caviar Green harddrive; the Green drives spin at a lower rate (5400 RPM) which I worried would impact my video editing performance: this drive was planned for long-term data storage only, not for live video editing.

What a cache!

I was pleasantly surprised to lean that this drive can keep up with my video editing needs just fine.  Maybe its because the Caviar drives have such a large cache at 64MB?  Is it the SATA2 and SATA3 speeds?  And at the current prices for moving drive storage, its hard not to like what these drives offer: good performance, fantastic 64MB cache, low-power use, huge size, SATA3 interfaces, and at a great price.  Two terabytes for under one hundred dollars!  Amazing times.

Check out our other recent Linux Hardware reviews for a USB Wireless-N Dongle and for a SuperSpeed USB3 PCIe card.


* For anyone interested in what video format the Nikon D5100 shoots, here is output from the 'ffmpeg -i FILE.MOV' command:

ffmpeg -i FILE.MOV
Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264, yuvj420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 5696 kb/s, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 24k tbn, 47.95 tbc

This is shooting at 1280x720 (720P) 24fps.  The drive can also handle 1920x1080 at 24fps and 30fps, but I don't need that high of image quality and I prefer the film-like 24fps.

Best Use for an Old Laptop (version 1): TinyCore Linux

Like many computer geeks, I have more unused computers than I know what to do with.  Old hardware is often considered to be obsolete when often the preinstalled MSWindows operating system went pear shaped.  I know that Linux can breath new life into almost any hardware, so I have a hard time letting older machines go.  Unfortunately, they often don't have the needed components to be fully usable — what good is a computer these days without networking?

TinyCore Linux is an ultra-small Linux desktop; the 4.0 release is just under 12MB.  TinyCore is stripped down, so don't expect the bells and whistles of a more active desktop, such as KDE or OSX or Windows has.  Instead, its claim is that it runs in RAM and it runs fast, which is great for older hardware.

Recently I wrote a brief review about a fantastic little USB Wireless-N card from Edimax.  This hardware is supported in Linux 3.0 and in the later 2.6.39 kernels, and the recent release of TinyCore Linux 4.0 includes the Linux 3.0.3 kernel.  This sounds like a winning combination!

Let me tell you, it is a winner.  I downloaded and installed* TinyCore to an old NEC Versa FXi laptop (P3) which has 192MB of RAM.  I installed Firefox 7 (well, Minefield 7, an unbranded Firefox) and I disabled as many of the startup programs as I thought I should, leaving behind only wifi, firmware, pci-utils, and minefield7 to start at boot.  My Edimax USB network works perfectly and Firefox 7 is great, and the whole Pentium 3 boots up in about 40 seconds.  Not a speed demon, but it works.

(* Firstly, its come to my attention that the TinyCore4 ISO mightn't have the installer; you must download that from the package manager.  MultiCore, on the other hand, is what I tested and it does have the installer and its available in the same place.  Just make sure to boot into MultiCore, and install TinyCore, not install MicroCore (which is included in the MultiCore ISO).  Get it?  Whew.

Second, and I'm not sure why, but after the OS installation I was unable to install software; I had open user permissions in the system directory with this at a command prompt:
sudo chmod -R u+rwX /mnt/sda1/tce/
and after that, everything worked fine.  I tried a few 'sudo' fixes and the like, but only this worked.)


Unfortunately,  nearly all of my RAM and my swap is filled when running Minefield7, so browsing isn't as smooth as I'd like; adding swap space (192000) to /mnt/sda1 helped a bit.  I also installed Dillo which is a much smaller web browser and works well for most of my needs, so Minefield may be moved to an on-demand app instead of on-boot.  There is also a Firefox v2 browser available, which is rather small also.  Either way, the laptop is usable for web reading, document work, emailing, and the like.  Video is out of the equation, including Flash like YouTube.  Good enough for many of my needs and its rather zippy if I respect its limitations.

I've only tried it on my NEC Versa FXi Pentium 3 laptop, which doesn't have any of its own networking hardware (not even ethernet), but TinyCore works great.  My laptop doesn't even have a scroll option on its touchpad, so within Firefox I've installed the Firefox extension "Grab and Drag," and I set its Preferences to Reverse so that its more like a touchpad scroll.  Next up will be my Pentium II laptops... how old is too old?

If you have any older computers I suggest repurposing them with TinyCore and this Edimax USB network dongle.  I plan to keep this laptop in the kitchen, perhaps wall-mounted, to help display recipes.  Thanks to the TinyCore team for their excellent work on the TinyCore distribution!

If you have any experience or tips with TinyCore or another lightweight OS that I should try, such as Puppy or SliTaz, please let me know in a comment!