My wife has had a Samsung Galaxy S1 Android phone for over a year now and its been great. Recently though, she’d been having terrible battery performance and had noticed that after charging the phone overnight, it was only at 50% in the morning. My first thought was to buy a new battery, but then I figured I’d try updating the firmware first.

Thats when I discovered that windows couldn’t recognise the device!! This was a big issue – how could I get all of her photos off the phone?

Solutions:

1. Quite by accident, she plugged her phone into an iCoustic USB charger that we got with an iPod accessory pack – this fully charged the battery and now there are no battery issues. She’d been using my iPad USB charger previously and for some reason, this makes a difference.
2. I realized that when syncing the phone with Kies I wasn’t using the original USB cable that came with the phone. We’d been using a third party cable we’d bought after losing the original one. Since we’d found the original cable I tried that and there were no problems – Windows found the drivers, installed them and recognised the phone. Kies worked fine after that.

So, all is good now – the phone works fine, running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).

So I recently submitted a patch to the NetworkManager component: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=607731  – but it turns out to be a duplicate because this problem was addressed in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600779 – by default Bugzilla doesn’t seem to include ‘resolved’ defects in the search results. You have to go to advanced search and select all statuses.

So, if my patch wasn’t needed, and this issue has been resolved, then why doesn’t the source code in trunk have this change? Bug 600779 mentions that service providers is deprecated, but by what? Ubuntu 9.10 still uses it, because when I edited /usr/share/mobile-broadband-provider-info/serviceproviders.xml it worked fine for me.

If service providers is deprecated, then why isn’t there something on the homepage? Bugzilla doesn’t seem to report which source files were changed in a bug – something I quite like in JIRA. See comment #1:

VirginInternet would still be used for tethering a phone, but I've added
VirginBroadband.  Thanks!

But what got changed? That would give me a clue.

Checking the version I’m running:

paul@paul-laptop:~$ dpkg -s mobile-broadband-provider-info
Package: mobile-broadband-provider-info
Status: install ok installed
Priority: extra
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 180
Maintainer: Ubuntu MOTU Developers <ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: all
Version: 20091009-0ubuntu1
Breaks: libmbca0
Description: database of mobile broadband service providers
Contains service provider specific settings of mobile broadband providers in
different countries.
Homepage: http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManager/MobileBroadband/ServiceProviders
Original-Maintainer: Antti Kaijanmäki (Wellark) <antti@kaijanmaki.net>

So if Ubuntu are still using it then why wouldn’t there be patches and maintenance releases?

Now, searching for Ubuntu specific information turns up NetworkManager provider information which doesn’t have the Virgin APN I need. So how do I fix this? Well, it says:

If you discover you need provider information from here or elsewhere, please file a bug against the mobile-broadband-provider-info package so we can improve the experience for all users to a level where all providers Just Work out of the box. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mobile-broadband-provider-info

As today (16/01/09) bug #317860 at Launchpad cover a lot of Service Providers missing. (https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mobile-broadband-provider-info/+bug/317860)

I’m was stunned to find out that this type of generic information was window manager specific (GNOME) now it looks like it is distribution specific (Ubuntu). If anyone can tell me the reasoning behind this, I’d love to know. Because right now, it looks crazy to me. Especially from a point of view that I just want to contribute something. It’s kind of weird that it’s even Operating System specific really, it really just should be a web service available to anyone and everyone, and the Operating Systems just update from it. Anyway… continuing the saga…

This bug report makes interesting reading. Apparently everything was fixed last year: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mobile-broadband-provider-info/+bug/280490

It also says that the Virgin website documents the APN being VirginBroadband. But that page doesn’t exist any more. I can only find one reference to APN on their site, and thats the wrong one.

So, I’ve updated the Ubuntu wiki to add the Virgin APN to the list of providers. I wasn’t sure whether to update the Mobile Broadband Cards section with the Huawei e160e, since they’ve already got the 160 and 160g. But I can’t find any source code – I got as far as finding this: http://packages.ubuntu.com/source/lucid/mobile-broadband-provider-info – but the trail ends there.

Anyway, I’ve spent way too long on this. What started out as a simple patch has only shown me how little I know about the Linux environment, packages, and how the source is maintained. Maybe over time I’ll get more familiar with it all.

I recently bought a Virgin Mobile Broadband (Australia) PrePaid USB modem – a Huawei e160e. I activated it over the phone, and when I plugged it in to my Dell Inspiron 1525 running Ubuntu 9.10, I could see that it was connected to the network (this modem flashes a blue light every 3 seconds when connected to the mobile network). But, try as I might, I couldn’t get it connected. Every time I tried, it would just disconnect.

Looking in the system logs, I’d see:

Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Plugin /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.4/nm-pppd-plugin.so loaded.
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Using interface ppp0
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Connect: ppp0 <–> /dev/ttyUSB0
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Jan  6 12:43:06 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Modem hangup
Jan  6 12:43:06 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Connection terminated.
Jan  6 12:43:07 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Exit.

I tried out using usb_modeswitch, but I never really figured out how that is supposed to be used – and it looked to me like the system knew it was a 3G modem anyway.

Using another machine connected to the internet, I googled around and found an answer that worked.

A couple of notes from my experience:

• This modem was not automatically detected – I had to manually start the ‘Network Connections’ to add the connection.
• When selecting Australia and Virgin in the Network Connections wizard, it incorrectly set the APN to ‘VirginInternet’ – maybe this is for post-paid accounts, but I have a pre-pay, and the APN I use is ‘VirginBroadband’ – This is probably because for Virgin, there is only one plan to select (default) – how do we get more plans defined (i.e. post-paid and pre-paid)?
• In the PPP settings, I needed to disable CHAP – doing this in Network Connections was enough, I didn’t have to edit /etc/ppp/options
• The username and password don’t seem to matter

lsusb shows the device – interesting that it doesn’t label it e160e, but E220 / E270 ???:

paul@paul-laptop:~$ lsusb
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 12d1:1003 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. E220 HSDPA Modem / E270 HSDPA/HSUPA Modem
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 05a9:2640 OmniVision Technologies, Inc. OV2640 Webcam
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Now that I have it working, this is the system log from insertion of the USB device to connecting to the network:

Jan 21 07:37:54 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1281.336164] usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Jan 21 07:37:54 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1281.479581] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan 21 07:37:55 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1281.581686] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver…
Jan 21 07:37:55 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1281.583023] scsi5 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jan 21 07:37:55 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1281.583231] usb 2-2: USB disconnect, address 2
Jan 21 07:37:55 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1281.583324] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
Jan 21 07:37:55 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1281.583331] USB Mass Storage support registered.
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.144163] usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.287791] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.305526] scsi8 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.320440] scsi9 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.392549] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.392579] USB Serial support registered for generic
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.392646] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.392650] usbserial: USB Serial Driver core
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.406201] USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port)
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.406282] option 2-2:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.406451] usb 2-2: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.406471] option 2-2:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.406561] usb 2-2: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.406600] usbcore: registered new interface driver option
Jan 21 07:38:01 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1288.406604] option: v0.7.2:USB Driver for GSM modems
Jan 21 07:38:06 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1293.315709] scsi 8:0:0:0: CD-ROM            HUAWEI   Mass Storage     2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Jan 21 07:38:06 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1293.325975] scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access     HUAWEI   MMC Storage      2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Jan 21 07:38:06 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1293.338298] sr1: scsi-1 drive
Jan 21 07:38:06 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1293.338641] sr 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5
Jan 21 07:38:06 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1293.338970] sd 9:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
Jan 21 07:38:06 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1293.353699] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
Jan 21 07:38:17 paul-laptop pppd[2933]: Plugin /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.4/nm-pppd-plugin.so loaded.
Jan 21 07:38:17 paul-laptop pppd[2933]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0
Jan 21 07:38:17 paul-laptop pppd[2933]: Using interface ppp0
Jan 21 07:38:17 paul-laptop pppd[2933]: Connect: ppp0 <–> /dev/ttyUSB0
Jan 21 07:38:17 paul-laptop pppd[2933]: PAP authentication succeeded
Jan 21 07:38:17 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1304.425235] PPP BSD Compression module registered
Jan 21 07:38:17 paul-laptop kernel: [ 1304.431699] PPP Deflate Compression module registered
Jan 21 07:38:24 paul-laptop pppd[2933]: Could not determine remote IP address: defaulting to 10.64.64.64
…

When the system wasn’t working (using CHAP and the wrong APN), you can clearly see the failure:

Jan  6 12:42:27 paul-laptop kernel: [  332.937183] usb 2-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jan  6 12:42:27 paul-laptop kernel: [  333.080647] usb 2-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan  6 12:42:27 paul-laptop kernel: [  333.176235] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver…
Jan  6 12:42:27 paul-laptop kernel: [  333.179119] scsi5 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jan  6 12:42:27 paul-laptop kernel: [  333.179385] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
Jan  6 12:42:27 paul-laptop kernel: [  333.179392] USB Mass Storage support registered.
Jan  6 12:42:27 paul-laptop kernel: [  333.180499] usb 2-4: USB disconnect, address 3
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.752070] usb 2-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.905181] usb 2-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.921561] scsi8 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.922840] scsi9 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.948581] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.948610] USB Serial support registered for generic
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.948706] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.948710] usbserial: USB Serial Driver core
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.970568] USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port)
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.970692] option 2-4:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.970862] usb 2-4: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.970881] option 2-4:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.970976] usb 2-4: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.971016] usbcore: registered new interface driver option
Jan  6 12:42:34 paul-laptop kernel: [  339.971020] option: v0.7.2:USB Driver for GSM modems
Jan  6 12:42:38 paul-laptop pppd[2789]: Plugin /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.4/nm-pppd-plugin.so loaded.
Jan  6 12:42:38 paul-laptop pppd[2789]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0
Jan  6 12:42:38 paul-laptop pppd[2789]: Using interface ppp0
Jan  6 12:42:38 paul-laptop pppd[2789]: Connect: ppp0 <–> /dev/ttyUSB0
Jan  6 12:42:38 paul-laptop pppd[2789]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Jan  6 12:42:38 paul-laptop pppd[2789]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Jan  6 12:42:38 paul-laptop kernel: [  343.964939] PPP BSD Compression module registered
Jan  6 12:42:38 paul-laptop kernel: [  344.026662] PPP Deflate Compression module registered
Jan  6 12:42:39 paul-laptop kernel: [  344.925236] scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access     HUAWEI   MMC Storage      2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Jan  6 12:42:39 paul-laptop kernel: [  344.925960] sd 9:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Jan  6 12:42:39 paul-laptop kernel: [  344.930619] scsi 8:0:0:0: CD-ROM            HUAWEI   Mass Storage     2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Jan  6 12:42:39 paul-laptop kernel: [  344.942337] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
Jan  6 12:42:39 paul-laptop kernel: [  344.957198] sr1: scsi-1 drive
Jan  6 12:42:39 paul-laptop kernel: [  344.957525] sr 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 5
Jan  6 12:42:47 paul-laptop pppd[2789]: Modem hangup
Jan  6 12:42:47 paul-laptop pppd[2789]: Connection terminated.
Jan  6 12:42:48 paul-laptop pppd[2789]: Exit.
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Plugin /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.4/nm-pppd-plugin.so loaded.
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Using interface ppp0
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Connect: ppp0 <–> /dev/ttyUSB0
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Jan  6 12:42:57 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Jan  6 12:43:06 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Modem hangup
Jan  6 12:43:06 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Connection terminated.
Jan  6 12:43:07 paul-laptop pppd[2846]: Exit.

When I tried out usb_modeswitch, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I guessed that the parameters (-v and -p) would be those identified in lsusb.  But as for how to know what mode it was in or how to switch it, I don’t know.

paul@paul-laptop:~$ usb_modeswitch -v 12d1 -p 1003 -H -i 1

* usb_modeswitch: tool for controlling “flip flop” mode USB devices
* Version 1.0.2 (C) Josua Dietze 2009
* Works with libusb 0.1.12 and probably other versions

Looking for default devices …
Found default devices (1)
Accessing device 000 on bus 002 …
Using endpoints 0×01 (out) and 0×82 (in)
Not a storage device, skipping SCSI inquiry

Device description data (identification)
————————-
Error: could not get description string “manufacturer”
Manufacturer:
Error: could not get description string “product”
Product:
Serial No.: not provided
————————-
Sending Huawei control message …
Error: sending Huawei control message failed (error -1). Aborting.

paul@paul-laptop:~$

UPDATE:

I’ve been wondering how I get another ‘plan’ into the Network Connection wizard. If my assumption about the APN is correct (that ‘VirginInternet’ applies to post paid, and ‘VirginBroadband’ applies to pre paid) then I’d want to add a plan called ‘Prepaid’ with the APN ‘VirginBroadband’ and if possible without CHAP.

Searching around, I found mobile-broadband-provider-info which, if you browse the source you’ll find there is a serviceproviders.xml file which contains all of the definitions.

Using

find / -name serviceproviders.xml

I see the file exists at

/usr/share/mobile-broadband-provider-info/serviceproviders.xml

Editing this file, I can add the following under the Virgin provider, in the Australia region (just search for Virgin):

<apn value=”VirginBroadband”>
<!– username and password can be anything, but password cannot be empty –>
<username>guest</username>
<password>guest</password>
<name>Prepaid</name>
</apn>

Now, I can open Network Connections and add a connection, selecting my new pre paid plan, and all I have to do is remember to disable CHAP as an option.

I love how open this all is and how easily I could find all this out. It took only a couple of minutes, while on the train traveling home from work. Awesome.

Looking at the README file in the source lead me to the information about ServiceProviders which includes how to contribute.

Now I just need to email this info to the code maintainers so that others have an easier time connecting to Virgin. And, I still have to investigate if there is any way to disable CHAP via the config.

It started off simple enough: “Can you install Photoshop Elements please?” – A friend got Photoshop Elements for xmas, since it was plugged as an easy, effective way to manage and share photos. (Toshiba laptop, running Vista)

Installing it was easy enough, but when coming to share photos via email it got a bit scary because, he uses Yahoo mail, not a fat email client. When I started looking at it I though okay, I just need to set up Outlook with the mail server settings. Going into the help menu in Yahoo mail gave some pretty clear instructions on how to set Outlook up – but it didn’t work. It kept asking for the username and password, which never worked. Searching around the web showed people talking about POP access to Yahoo mail, some suggesting it was a paid feature. But the Yahoo documentation didn’t make any mention of needing a paid account.

After wasting too much time on this, I just set up gmail – I knew I could easily access POP and SMTP here. So after creating a gmail account I set the reply to email in Outlook to be the Yahoo account and told gmail to forward any mail to Yahoo. Thus the gmail involvement would be pretty much invisible. I’ve sent a test email to the gmail account and I’m still waiting for it to arrive at yahoo…

So now I can share photos via email okay. Great. Not particularly easy for the novice user, and how come I can’t just tell PSE to use a web mail provider? AND, it looks like PSE maintains its OWN list of contacts. Not related to the Yahoo or Outlook contact lists. Jeeezz.

Next, to upgrade AVG virus checker. I was stunned to find AVG Free wouldn’t let me switch the Firefox search box provider to Google. Apparently it switches your default to yahoo, and denies you when you try to change it. I think its all configurable, but thats a crazy thing to deny you by default. Crazy.

So, I download the 1MB installer. Which then proceeds to download who knows how many MBs – but it takes a LONG time over a mobile internet connection (Three). Then the install starts, and promptly stops telling me to uninstall Microsoft Live OneCare – which I do, which means a reboot, and then when I restart the installer, it downloads everything again. This time, I did not install the link checker hoping to avoid the “cripple my computer” feature.

The last thing to do – disable the touch pad when the usb mouse is plugged in – was easy (via the control panel mouse settings).

3 Hours later I’m done. But we’ve got a long way to go baby! This was way too hard. I hope I’m totally wrong – Perhaps there are easier ways, but they weren’t obvious and I don’t have another 8 hours to figure it out. If I was a billionaire, I know what I’d be doing – sorting this sh*t out!

SpringSource Roo
I just found out this week about SpringSource Roo – a rapid development tools that promises:

Working applications within 10 minutes of finishing the download

I haven’t used it yet, but at first glance it looks like a Grails/Rails type tool but being plain Java based as opposed to Groovy or Ruby based. This is a great move, since enterprises just don’t seem to be able to get comfortable with dynamic languages – I mean, why continue worry about every little nut and bolt when Grails takes care of all that detail – Roo may just be the ticket for those too afraid to make the jump to Grails.

SpringSource STS
I’ve been using Netbeans 6.7 for Grails development these days (with what little time I have), but I’m thinking about trying out the latest SpringSource Tool Suite (STS) – I’m a big fan of everything SpringSource does, and I’m keen to see what their Groovy support in Eclipse is like.

Replacing a DVD drive in Mythbuntu
When I originally set up Mythbuntu media center, I had a CD-RW drive and DVD-RW drive (both IDE). The DVD drive recently stopped working (could never eject) so I bought a new SATA DVD+RW drive. When I went to install it I found I’d run out of SATA power connectors (I’ve got 4 disk drives and apparently only 4 power connectors). No problem, I just had to buy a Molex-to-SATA power adapter cable – this plugs in to the power sockets I was using for the IDE drives on one end, and presents a SATA power connector on the other (costs approx AUD$5.50).

However, after I powered it up, it was registered as /dev/dvd3. This didn’t work with MythTV because it expects to use /dev/dvd for playing disks. Since I’ve removed both the CD and DVD drive I *want* it to be /dvd/dvd – I mucked around with symbolic links for a while, but had no success. I don’t know anything about Linux devices, but I managed to stumble my way through, and found the answer in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules. This file seems to map each device to a symlink, so all I did was comment out all of the listed devices and rebooted – after the restart, the dvd was correctly registered at /dev/dvd. Apparently it IS easy when you know how.

Unfortunately when I went to test DVD playback, I must have managed to pick up the ONE disk in my collection that was just never going to work. I spent the rest of the night trying to find out why I couldn’t play it, suspecting it was a CCS/encryption problem only to try another disk several days later without any problems – I *should* know better by now.

Restoring Vista
I recently had to reinstall a friends Vista powered laptop. It was a 1 month old Toshiba, and it just wouldn’t start. I guessed a reinstall was in order, so I booted an Ubuntu Live CD so I could back up any personal data. These days you don’t get the physical install disks any more – there is a hidden partition on the hard disk which can be used to restore the disk image. It seems you can access this restore program by holding down 0 (zero) while powering on. Restoring the disk image worked, although it took an incredible amount of time to complete. After it finished, I noticed that c: had 43GB used. I don’t know what Toshiba had there besides Vista, but 43GB for the base install is incredible. Last time I installed Ubuntu 9.04, it used less than 2GB! Laptop disks are still around the 250GB mark so after a 43GB operating system you’ve lost 20% of it. I assume the hidden restore partition is also eating into this disk space?

While trying out my new Morph Grails hosting account, I installed the morph-deploy plugin and then promptly discovered that ‘grails war’ failed with

Error executing script War: No such property: stagingDir for class: _Events

It turns out this is a known problem with Grails 1.1 and the solution is to delete the _Events.groovy file in

[your home dir]/.grails/1.1/projects/[your application]/plugins/morph-deploy-0.1/scripts

I wish all books were available as PDFs. I don’t like the physical space real books take up, and I don’t appreciate paying for delivery, or waiting for delivery. Some books are available for Kindle, but I just want a PDF.

Recently I wanted to buy 4 books – my first instinct was to go to Amazon:

Item(s) Subtotal: AUD 97.92
Shipping & Handling: AUD 39.50
Total AUD 137.42

I’d prefer not to pay $40 for delivery, so I thought I’d check more local places to compare:

	Dymocks.com.au	Fishpond.co.nz	Amazon.com
Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read	AUD32.95	NZD48.99	USD19.79
ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income	AUD42.95	NZD46.69	USD16.49
Outliers: The Story of Success	AUD61.51	NZD52.98	USD15.39
The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging	N/A	NZD33.96	USD10.20
Total	AUD137.41	NZD182.62 (AUD150.85)	AUD137.42

So from Dymocks, 3 out of the 4 books cost AUD137.41. I don’t know about delivery, I had so much trouble with the site – no response, server errors, and when trying to check out it tells me my basket is empty.

From Fishpond, all books were available, total cost of NZD182.62 with free delivery.

So Amazon wins easily. But delivery might take a month. Sigh.

A recent Computerworld article referenced Linux, Mac OS X and Windows Vista. They linked Mac OS X and Windows Vista to their search but they didn’t link Linux. Conspiracy? Oversight?

I wanted to convert some CDs to MP3 – normally I’d use OGG, but you can’t always rely on devices being able to play that format (i.e. DVD players). I was relieved to see it is easy in Ubuntu 8.10:

1. enable multiverse and universe repos
2. sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse  sound-juicer
3. start sound-juicer and go to Edit/Preferences and switch the format to MP3

It was that easy. I seem to remember having to do a lot more with previous versions of Ubuntu.

I’ve been wondering for a while why people spam blogs with comments like:

Your site is so cool, thanks it really helped me!

Or any of the many variations. Its usually obvious for several reasons (spelling and just completely out of context) that this is spam.

But why bother?

It turns out that some blogging software is set up so that if a user has commented, and the administrator has approved that comment, then subsequent comments from that user will be published automatically (without requiring admin approval). That means, once approved, that user is trusted and can comment freely.

So, if you accidentally approve this spam bait (innocently believing it to be a genuine complement) expect much more less innocent comments to appear.

In Wordpress, this setting can be found in ‘Discussion settings’ under ‘Comment author must have a previously approved comment’.