KDENLIVE and KINO

Happy New Year all.

I've been working on getting all my video footage off my DV Camera (an old school Panasonic NV-DS50) onto my media PC in the lounge.

So running Kubuntu 8.10 I installed KDENLIVE and selected the Record Mon in the Project Monitor section, selected to connect to my Camera plugged in by firewire and no go.... mm I thought, I'll try KINO, this time I saw an issue:

WARNING: raw1394 kernel module not loaded or failure to read/write /dev/raw1394!

In my search for a solution I found this in the Ubuntu forums:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=329994

Run the following from a command

chmod 777 /dev/raw1394

Or browse using Dolphin and right click and set the permissions that way.

Happy editing :)

Ping hostname from Linux

Some people have issues with pinging other computers on their network

Here's the fix:

Add "wins" to your nsswitch.conf file

To do this open up an terminal and log in as root and type the following:

vi /etc/nsswitch.conf

find the line:

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns

and add wins to the end of it, save the file by typing ":wq"

now ping a computer with the hostname.

Telecom TStick on OpenSuse 11

The Telecom TStick, also known as the Sierrawireless Compass 597, works under linux rather well, here's a run down on what needs to be done to get it to work.

I followed the instructions here and took some of the details from here to get it to work correctly. I then wrote a small script that can be run from the command line under root to connect to the internet.

Lets get connected to the web:
Download the Sierrawireless files:
For Linux Kernel 2.6.21, 2.6.22 and 2.6.23
Sierra.c Drivers v 1.2.10b
PPPD Scripts

For Linux Kernel 2.6.24
Sierra.c Drivers v 1.2.10b
PPPD Scripts

To find out what the kernel is that your running type the following from a Terminal under root:

# uname -r

My kernel was # 2.6.25.11-0.1-default

Next check to see what Sierra wireless drivers are already installed

# modinfo sierra

If the result is "could not find module sierra" then the drivers are not installed, my result was that I had 1.2.9 version installed, so updating them is a good idea.

For the rest I'll presume you have the kernel build tools installed along with the latest kernel, if not do the following from a terminal.

# zypper dist-upgrade
# zypper install make

Change to root user and "cd" to the directory where you downloaded the files and unzip the kernel files then change to the kernel files directpry.

# su -
# cd /home/downloads
# unzip v1.2.10b_Kernel2.6.25.zip
# cd v1.2.10b_Kernel2.6.25/

Remove any older versions of the sierrawireless drivers.

# rmmod sierra or modprobe –r sierra

Compile and install the new Sierra Wireless drivers

# make
# make install

Now exit root user and change to the download directory.

# exit
# cd /home/downloads

Unzip the pppd scripts.

$ tar –zxf pppd-scripts.tar.gz

Change to root and copy the pppd script files to the pppd/peers directory.
# su -
# cp –r ./ppp /etc/
# cd /etc/ppp
# chmod a+x ip-up.local ip-down.local

Now change to the following directory.

# cd /etc/ppp/peers

Edit the cdma file.

# vi cdma

To edit in vi press "i" and add the following lines to the file under the noauth line, this is the username and password to use for connecting to the Telecom network.
user mobile@jamamobile
password telecom

Place a # infront of the noauth line, this stops the line from being executed.

To save the file and exit it at the same time do the following.

Press escape and type :wq and then press enter

Now you can connect to the Telecom network, put the TStick into the usb port and type the following from the command line under root

# cd /etc/ppp/peers
# pppd call cdma

This will throw back a whole page of text as it goes through the authentication and connects to the network.

Now you can browse the internet!

I then created a small batch file in my home directory which is run under the root account.

Create the file by typing the following and then making it executable.

# su -
# vi T3G

Copy and paste the following into the file.

#!/bin/sh
cd /etc/ppp/peers
pppd call cdma

Type :wq to save and exit. Then make it executable.

# chmod a+x T3G

Now when you want to connect with the TStick type the following.

$ su -
# /home/your username/T3G

iPod and the 1415 error

My wife just won herself a iPod Nano 8GB. They're quite nice if you can get the past the whole proprietary formats. One of the issues I found was that whenever I tried to update the firmware it would crash with the following error "could not update iPod unspecified error (1415)" other things that were happening as well were iPod disconnecting randomly, not starting up iTunes when the iPod was plugged in and disconnecting even while synching.

This is the fix I found:
Shutdown iTunes and unplug your ipod, paste the below into notepad and save as a cmd file, then run the file, it took about 1-2 minutes to finish though so just be patient.

regsvr32 /s softpub.dll
regsvr32 /s wintrust.dll
regsvr32 /s dssenh.dll
regsvr32 /s rsaenh.dll
regsvr32 /s gpkcsp.dll
regsvr32 /s sccbase.dll
regsvr32 /s slbcsp.dll
regsvr32 /s mssip32.dll
regsvr32 /s cryptdlg.dll
regsvr32 /s initpki.dll

When iTunes was installed it didn't register the dll files correctly, either because Windows was still using them or it just didn't register them. Now she can enjoy the new iPod with no problems :)

Codecs in OpenSuse 11

Took me a while to find all the codecs for running video files in Novell's new OpenSuse 11, I should have just looked on the Community Build site..idiot :D

How easy could it get!

Go here for all the details.

If you using OpenSuse 11.1 go here.

Adobe Reader 9

Adobe has just released Adobe Reader 9.

Edit: you can now download the Adobe Customwiz 9 from Adobe, linky makes life much easier!

I've only just created the Application Object in ZENWorks ready for deployment so have not had a chance to test the features at all.

Apparently it has faster startup times along with some security updates and a few additional features, nothing that really says that you should definitely install this though, other than the faster start times I suppose, I'll see how it goes over the next week though before I role it out to about 500 plus users.

For deployment I use Orca and followed the instructions posted on AppDeploy.com, added the parameters into the application object and you're set to go.

Road to Kubuntu 7.10

Been a while since I blogged, hehe just been too lazy I guess and doing house stuff along with some study :)

While I've been lazy I thought I'd install Kubuntu 7.10 the latest and greatest and all that.

The install went well, I did however forget to check my backup of my home directory from OpenSuse 10.3 and ended up loosing a few important docs, big oopppps there!!

The install went well and over all I feel that it is a good desktop operating system with very few issues except the following:

My wireless card flakes out now and then, I solved this by installing ndiswrapper (download and instructions at http://www.ndiswrapper.org ), now it works great.

Dolphin, this is the replacement for Konqueror, this is similar to Explorer for all those Windows people out there, and it works great for what it does, I like the new options down the right hand side: edit as root, archive etc there a nice touch. I'm a fan of shortcut keys, my favourite is Alt+Left Arrow (just like hitting the back button) but this doesn't work straight off the mark with Dolphin. This is easily changed under Settings and then Shortcuts, the default is Backspace though.

My other issue was that when I closed Dolphin I would get the error: "unable to save bookmarks /home/.kde/share/apps/Dolphin/Bookmarks/... etc"
To solve this do the following:
cd /home
sudo chown -R username:username username - (username is your username)

One major issue I had was that Kubuntu thought that I had a screen resolution of 1280x1024, this had the unfortunate side effect of slowing the boot process considerably, even though once it got to the desktop the resolution was fine (1024x768), I solved this by doing the following from within Konsole:
sudo nano /etc/usplash.conf
Then change the size to the correct one for your screen size.
Then type the following again in Konsole:
sudo update-usplash-theme usplash-theme-kubuntu
Boot time is now well under one minute for me :D

Another problem I've had is that 7.10 wants to update itself to the latest version of Kubuntu 7.10, which is very strange considering it already is the latest. This issue is now fixed the latest updates in the last couple of day.

More to come maybe...