Linux User Group of Mauritius

21May/130

LUGM meeting, 15th of June 2013. (Meeting Restylized) Venue: L’escalier.

Posted by Selven

Greetings people, due to popular demands we have decided to re-stylize our meeting formats,
and are even doing it at a different location, where, we get to discover new places
at the same time instead of the usual.

We can't do this without your presence, so please do confirm where you will be present or
not, or if the date needs to be moved. (can't be moved earlier than 8th of June, can't
be moved after 18th of July.)

I will be updating this description as times goes on with more ideas of what we shall include.

Agenda (and how i view it so far):
- Get to know a bit of ourselves, new members etc.
- Recruit new members out there (hopefully each one of you will be able to bring
some more people).
- I myself might do a very short presentation, on some intelligent tv i am
working on as hobby.
- Logan will be doing some light presentation.
- Anyone is actually free to do a small presentation of not more than 12 minutes
(Please do inform me before hand if you are planning to do a presentation.).
- There shall be internet provided via emtel.
- There'll be plenty of free food. (Please do notify whether you are veg or
non veg during the course of this week. (along with you guests).
- Some beer will be available, no hard drinks allowed. You can bring your own beer.
- Let's kick off our plans for this year, we need to actually do something
as a lug to the society, so feel free to draft ideas and bring those there ,
and hopefully be ready to command a particular project.

Again this is in the form of an opensource project, it works only if you contribute
ideas :p, so please feel free to add more to it (though you get to be responsible of
what you add.

I'll add a map shortly for the location. Its 20 minutes drive from Ebene.
You will most certainly be having people driving to come to the event, so lemme know
where you leave, i'll hook you up with someone coming here.

FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/598276533525752/598279506858788/?notif_t=plan_mall_activity

Sincerely,

Selven
Secretary of the lug.

Filed under: Uncategorized No Comments

9Jan/130

Open source DJing with Mixxx

Posted by Avinash Meetoo

20130109-mixxx

On 31 December, my mission was to make people dance from 22:00 to 03:00 in the morning. Fortunately, I could rely on Mixxx, a fantastic and powerful DJing software available for free for all platforms (Linux, Mac OS X and Windows).

Mixxx performed admirably during the five hours.

On Linux, Mixxx supports MP3 out of the box but as I had quite a lot of AAC (i.e. M4A) files, I had to compile it from source. Here are the commands I used on my Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS box:

sudo aptitude install scons qt3-dev-tools libqt4-dev g++ bzr libportmidi-dev libsndfile1-dev libtag1-dev libmad0-dev libid3tag0-dev libmp4v2-dev libfaad-dev portaudio19-dev

scons -j2 faad=1 shoutcast=0 tuned=1

sudo scons prefix=/usr/local install

The first line is to install all the required dependencies, the second is to compile Mixxx with AAC support (faad=1) and specifically for the processor I was using (tuned=1). The third line is to install it in /usr/local

Have fun DJing with Mixxx :-)

Tagged as: linux, technology No Comments

23Oct/120

VMware Player 5.0 or VMware Workstation 9.0 after upgrade to Ubuntu 12.10

Posted by Jochen Kirstaetter

The upgrade process

Upgrading Ubuntu 12.04 to latest version 12.10 - aka Quantal Quetzal - is straight forward and you only need to follow the offical upgrade instructions. Short version on the console looks like this:

sudo do-release-upgrade

This will update the repository entries, and start the upgrade process. After some minutes or hours of download and installation, you have to reboot your system once to get the new kernel loaded. As time of writing, I'm on '3.5.0-17-generic'. And as with any modification of the kernel version, you have to compile the necessary kernel modules to get VMware Player or Workstation up and running. Usually, this happens the first time you try start your VMware software and that's it. Well, again not so this time.

Getting the kernel patch

Luckily, the community over VMware is very active and you can get a new kernel patch in the online forums here. Get the download and put in a folder have write permissions. Then you extract the archive on the console like so:

tar -xjvf vmware9_kernel35_patch.tar.bz2

Then you change into the newly created folder:

cd vmware9_kernel3.5_patch/

And you execute the available shell script as root (superuser) like so:

sudo ./patch-modules_3.5.0.sh

This will stop any running instances of VMware software, patches the source files and runs the compile process for your active environment. This might take some time depending on your machine, and once completed you can start VMware Player or Workstation as previously.

In case that you are going to apply the patch again, the script will simply quit with the following output:

/usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/.patched found. You have already patched your sources. Exiting

You might remove the .patched file in case that you upgraded/changed your kernel and you need to apply the patch again.

Disclaimer: The patch is "as-is" and the patcher is originally created by Artem S. Tashkinov, and later modified by An_tony. Please refer to the VMware forum in case of questions or problems. There are also patches available for older versions of VMware Player or Workstation.

Tagged as: linux No Comments

15Oct/120

Reset Usb sur linux

Posted by Dominique Derrier

Problème avec un périphérique récalcitrant qui chatouille trop le contrôleur.
Effectuer un reset du port est parfois nécessaire pour éviter un reboot.

Rien de plus facile sous linux :

echo -n "0000:00:1a.0" | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci_hcd/unbind
echo -n "0000:00:1d.0" | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci_hcd/unbind
echo -n "0000:00:1a.0" | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci_hcd/bind
echo -n "0000:00:1d.0" | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci_hcd/bind
lspci, permet de confirmer le numéro de bus de votre contrôleur USB.

Filed under: Tip No Comments

29Jul/120

Enabling Nvidia Optimus on CentOS Linux 6

Posted by Avinash Meetoo

I have just bought a new Dell Inspiron laptop, a N5110, and it has two graphics chipsets: one Nvidia GPU and an integrated Intel GPU. The Nvidia GPU is powerful and power-hungry. The Intel GPU is not that powerful (so forget about games) but requires much less power and, consequently, is much better to use on a laptop when not playing games (which I personally never do on this laptop). In theory, Nvidia Optimus technology allows the laptop to change from the Intel to the Nvidia GPU and vice-versa seamlessly… but this does not work out of the box on CentOS Linux 6 which is my preferred Linux distribution for serious work.

Here is how I made Nvidia Optimus work well enough on my laptop running CentOS Linux 6 64-bits (x86_64):

Enable the ELRepo repositories:

wget http://elrepo.org/linux/elrepo/el6/x86_64/RPMS/elrepo-release-6-4.el6.elrepo.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall elrepo-release-6-4.el6.elrepo.noarch.rpm

Install VirtualGL to allow full 3D acceleration in Linux:

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualgl/files/VirtualGL/2.3.1/VirtualGL-2.3.1.x86_64.rpm/download
yum localinstall VirtualGL-2.3.1.x86_64.rpm

Install Bumblebee to add support for Nvidia Optimus in Linux:

groupadd bumblebee
yum –enablerepo=elrepo-testing install bumblebee kmod-bbswitch
chkconfig bumlebeed on
service bumlebeed start

Once this is done, the laptop will start using the Intel GPU. The optirun command can then be used to switch to the Nvidia GPU on a ad-hoc basis (e.g. optirun glxgears -info)

Now I need to make my Synaptics trackpad work!

Tagged as: linux, technology No Comments

15Jun/120

And again… VMware Player 4.0.4 on Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin)

Posted by Jochen Kirstaetter

Even with the new version of VMware Player 4.0.4 you are still required to patch their sources. So, same game as last month. Just changing the value of the required version in the kernel patch script of Stefano Angeleri (weltall) and you are done:

nano patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

Please change line 8 at the top of the script like so:

plreqver=4.0.4

Save your modification and then run the following commands:

sudo rm /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/.patched
sudo ./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh
sudo service vmware restart

And again, on first start VMware will present you their EULA which you have to accept, and everything gets back to normal operation mode.

Interestingly, one day ago the Ubuntu repositories provided a newer kernel version 3.2.0-25, so everything is running fine for now.

Tagged as: linux No Comments

4May/120

Update kernel patch for VMware Player 4.0.3

Posted by Jochen Kirstaetter

As I stated some days ago, after upgrading to Ubuntu Precise Pangolin, aka 12.04 LTS, I had a minor obstacle with VMware products. Today, VMware offered to upgrade to Player 4.0.3 due to security-related reasons.

Initially, I thought that this update might have the patch for kernel 3.2.0 integrated but sadly that is not the case.

'Hacking' the kernel patch

My first intuitive try to run the existing patch against the sources of VMware Player 4.0.3 failed, as the patch by Stefano Angeleri (weltall) is originally written explicitely against Workstation 8.0.2 and Player 4.0.2.

But this is nothing to worry about seriously. Just fire up your favourite editor of choice and modify the version signature for VMware Player, like so:

nano patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

And update line 8 for the new version:

plreqver=4.0.3

Save the shell script and run it as super-user (root):

sudo ./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

In case that you previously patched your VMware sources you have to remove some artifacts beforehand. Otherwise, the patch script will inform you like so:

/usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/.patched found. You have already patched your sources. Exiting

In that case, simply remove the 'hidden' file and run the shell script again:

sudo rm /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/.patched
sudo ./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

To finalise your installation either restart the vmware service or reboot your machine. On first start VMware will present you their EULA which you have to accept, and everything gets back to normal operation mode. Currently, I would assume that in case of VMware Workstation 8.0.3 you can follow the same steps as just described.

Update on VMware Player 4.0.4

Please read this article for VMware Player 4.0.4

Update on VMware Player 5.0.0

Please read this article for VMware Player 5.0.0 in Ubuntu 12.10

Tagged as: linux No Comments

3May/120

Vim | Templates

Posted by Dominique Derrier

En ce moment je fais quelques pages html, pour tenter de garder une ligne standard de format, je me suis dit qu'un template était la bonne solution.

Mais comment utiliser des template avec VI ?
... Rien de plus facile !
En Trois actes:

Créer un répertoire Template
Mapper les noms de fichiers avec les Templates
Rulez !

Tagged as: autocmd, BufNewfile, template, Tip, vi, vim Continue reading

30Apr/120

Small hiccup with VMware Player after upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04

Posted by Jochen Kirstaetter

The upgrade process

Finally, it was time to upgrade to a new LTS version of Ubuntu - 12.04 aka Precise Pangolin. I scheduled the weekend for this task and despite the nickname of Mauritius (Cyber Island) it took roughly 6 hours to download nearly 2.400 packages. No problem in general, as I have spare machines to work on, and it was weekend anyway. All went very smooth and only a few packages required manual attention due to local modifications in the configuration. With the new kernel 3.2.0-24 it was necessary to reboot the system and compared to the last upgrade, I got my graphical login as expected.

Compilation of VMware Player 4.x fails

A quick test on the installed applications, Firefox, Thunderbird, Chromium, Skype, CrossOver, etc. reveils that everything is fine in general. Firing up VMware Player displays the known kernel mod dialog that requires to compile the modules for the newly booted kernel. Usually, this isn't a big issue but this time I was confronted with the situation that vmnet didn't compile as expected ("Failed to compile module vmnet"). Luckily, this issue is already well-known, even though with "Failed to compile module vmmon" as general reason but nevertheless it was very easy and quick to find the solution to this problem. In VMware Communities there are several forum threads related to this topic and VMware provides the necessary patch file for Workstation 8.0.2 and Player 4.0.2. In case that you are still on Workstation 7.x or Player 3.x there is another patch file available.

After download extract the file like so:

tar -xzvf vmware802fixlinux320.tar.gz

and run the patch script as super-user:

sudo ./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

This will alter the existing installation and source files of VMware Player on your machine.

As last step, which isn't described in many other resources, you have to restart the vmware service, or for the heart-fainted, just reboot your system:

sudo service vmware restart

This will load the newly created kernel modules into your userspace, and after that VMware Player will start as usual.

Summary

Upgrading any derivate of Ubuntu, in my case Xubuntu, is quick and easy done but it might hold some surprises from time to time. Nonetheless, it is absolutely worthy to go for it. Currently, this patch for VMware is the only obstacle I had to face so far and my system feels and looks better than before. Happy upgrade!