Building F-Spot from source on Ubuntu

The instructions How to Build F-Spot from HEAD are mostly correct for Ubuntu/Edgy and Ubuntu/Feisty, but leave out a number of packages that need to be installed before autogen.sh is run.

Be sure to also install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install mono-devel \
libglib2.0-dev libmono-dev libmono-system-runtime2.0-cil \
libexif-dev libgnomeui-dev liblcms1-dev libgphoto2-2-dev \
libusb-dev

And instead of make install, use make -k install since it will attempt to run scrollkeeper which attempts to update /var/lib/scrollkeeper/scrollkeeper_docs.

The offending line is: scrollkeeper-update -p /var/lib/scrollkeeper -o /home/marc/unstable/f-spot/share/omf/f-spot

Moving photos around behind f-spot's back

I've been using f-spot since it showed up in Ubuntu/Breezy and have been keeping all my photos in a directory structure like this:

/PHOTOS/Photos/2006.06.30/
/PHOTOS/Photos/2006.07.01/

But sometimes I've forgotten to unclick the "Copy file to the Photos folder" box in the photos import dialog and end up with photos under ~/Photos/. Recently I checked and found there were almost a gigabytes worth of photos under there.

So this is what I did to move them to under /PHOTOS/Photos/ and keep all the tags and metadata correct.

• Back up /home and /PHOTOS to an external USB. I love rsnapshot.
  $ rsnapshot daily
  


• make an extra backup of the f-spot database
  $ cp ~/.gnome2/f-spot/photos.db photos-backup.db
  


• Start poking around the f-spot database and updating it.
  $ sqlite3 ~/.gnome2/f-spot/photos.db
sqlite> .schema photos
CREATE TABLE photos ( id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
time INTEGER NOT NULL,
directory_path STRING NOT NULL,
name STRING NOT NULL,
description TEXT NOT NULL,
default_version_id INTEGER NOT NULL
);

  


• See how many photos are in ~/Photos...
  sqlite> select count(*) from photos where directory_path like '/home/marc/Photos/%';
260

  


• Take a look at a few of them to see the path names...
  sqlite> select directory_path from photos where directory_path like '/home/marc/Photos/%' limit 0,10;

  


• Update the pathname to my prefered one. I've added an 'a' to the end just so I won't overwrite an existing directory.
  sqlite> update photos set directory_path = "/PHOTOS/Photos/2006.06.22a" where directory_path = "/home/marc/Photos/2006/6/22";
sqlite> .quit

  


• Make the directory and move the files to the new location...
  mkdir /PHOTOS/Photos/2006.06.22a
mv -v /home/marc/Photos/2006/6/22/HPIM117* /PHOTOS/Photos/2006.06.22a

  

Repeat for each directory. I did it all within emacs' shell so cut-n-paste made it a snap.

Another list of Ubuntu essentials

Mark Pilgrim has compiled his list of Ubuntu essentials -- time to add some KDE goodness to 'My Ubuntu/Dapper Configuration' page...

My Ubuntu/Dapper Configuration

I've posted some extensive notes on all the post-installation configuration steps needed to make an Ubuntu/Dapper standard install the way I like it -- dual head, personal & corporate email, network manager, f-spot, etc

Check it out: My Ubuntu/Dapper Configuration

More on Dual Monitor with Ubuntu/Dapper

This is a follow on to last week's post about Dual Monitor on Ubuntu/Dapper

I've been using the xorg.conf-ati.20060621 configuration at work with two monitors, but when at home the laptop didn't degrade down to working with the one LCD monitor of the laptop. So, here is a new configuration that lets you switch between a single monitor mode (1024x768) or one large one (2048x768) that can be 'slid over to' by using the mouse. The key press is Control-Alt-+ (the + over on the side where the number entry is). On the laptop, it is Control-Alt-blue_Fn-?

Here the is xorg.conf file:

xorg.conf-ati-works-with-one-monitor.20060624

Dual Monitor on Ubuntu/Dapper

I've noticed a number of people asking about dual head support in dapper on #ubuntu, so here is my setup:

This hp/compaq nc6000 laptop/notebook that has an ATI card:


$ sudo lspci|grep VGA
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]


I have two head monitors working with both the 'ati' and the closed source 'fglrx' drivers.

Here are the configuration files:

xorg.conf-fglrx.20060621 -- works when booting without the second monitor

xorg.conf-ati.20060621 -- when booting with out the second monitor attached, it still thinks it is there. Some windows may pop up on the unreachable monitor.

Before you start hacking around with your xorg.conf, save a copy somewhere safe.

w32codecs for ubuntu 'hoary'

The stock Ubuntu repositories don't include the w32codecs (wmvdmod.dll, etc) so xine, mplayer can play WMV and other formats. Basically the package puts 127 DLLs in /usr/lib/w32codecs.

So, I temporarily added the following line to my /etc/apt/sources.list

deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ testing main

And then did this:


apt-get update && apt-get install w32codecs


I then commented that line out since and apt-get upgrade would have picked up a bunch of updated packages from that repository.

Migrating to Ubuntu Hoary on my laptop

I've been running Debian/Sarge (now the stable branch) on my laptop for quite a while now and its time to try a new distro for dailyl use -- Ubuntu. This week I've been running Ubuntu 'Hoary' and the transition has been very smooth.

The only configuration issue was I wanted to use ALSA on this HP Compaq nc6000 laptop. The install did detect the sound device, but did separate the speaker from
the headphone controls.

phzi on #ubuntu pointed me to the unofficial UbuntuGuide.org, specifically the section configuresoundproperly. Those instructions were perfect.

ipodder (v2.1) on Ubuntu 'Hoary'

I'd upgraded to the latest iPodder (v2.1) on my Ubuntu ('Hoary') laptop today.

# tar jxvf iPodder-linux-2.1.tar.bz2

# cd iPodder-linux

# sudo ./install.sh

(take the defaults)

The only glitch is wx libraries aren't in the default PYTHONPATH, so set this environment variable either at the command line, or pop it in ~/.bashrc

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/wx-2.5.3-gtk2-unicode/:$PYTHONPATH-unicode:$PYTHONPATH


Now clean up a little bit...


$ cd ../

$ rm -rf iPodder-linux iPodder-linux-2.1.tar.bz2


Now, you are all set to start iPodder!



$ (nohup iPodder&) # or add it to a menu bar button



Getting closer to not needing any special knowledge to get iPodder running on a GNU/Linux distro...

- - - - -

Just for searchers, this is the problem you see if you don't set the PYTHONPATH:


$ iPodder
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "iPodderGui.py", line 38, in ?
import iPodderWindows
File "/opt/iPodder/iPodderWindows.py", line 4, in ?
import listctrl as listmix
File "/opt/iPodder/listctrl.py", line 296, in ?
EVT_DOPOPUPMENU = wx.PyEventBinder(wxEVT_DOPOPUPMENU, 0)
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'PyEventBinder'


ubuntu upgrade hosed wordpress

A while ago I upgraded desktop/server at work that holds my work blog from ubuntu 'warty warthog' (initial release) to ubuntu 'hoary hedgehog' (current release). Everything
went just fine except apache2/php4/mysql had some problems and the blog stopped working.

The problem was WordPress 1.5 couldn't connect to mysql, but phpmyadmin could connect just fine. Strange. This is what I ended up doing:


$ sudo apt-get --purge remove apache2 phpmyadmin php4 (and maybe a few others that depended on apache or php)

... verify that /etc/apache2/, /etc/php4 were gone...

$ sudo apt-get install apache2 php4 phpmyadmin


At appears that one of the configuration files for either php4 or apache2 didn't get properly upgraded.

People stealing my bandwidth (and no credit to me!)

I was looking through my web logs recently and found a number of people were displaying my images
on their websites. Sure it is a bit flattering that someone liked my photo of our rug was perfect for the background of their blog or thought that embedding a 1M photo I took of John Kerry and Howard Dean in a high traffic web forums [1 | 2] was a good idea. However they sucked up nearly 200M of my monthly bandwidth quota and didn't even give me credit for the photos. You know, I think that may be the worst part.

So this evening I googled around for the magic Apache configuration commands that would prevent
JPG/GIF images from being embedded in someone else's web page. (ie: one not hosted on
nozell.com)

For the record, just pop this in a file named ".htaccess" in the same directory as were the images
are located and it will refuse to let GIF/JPG images to be loaded from other sites.




SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://.*nozell.com/" local_ref=1

<filesmatch ".(gif|jpg)">

Order Allow,Deny

Allow from env=local_ref

</filesmatch>



Read Ken Coar's Preventing Image 'Theft' tutorial for complete details.

Getting the bleeding edge iPodder on Linux (debian/sarge) mini-HOWTO

Lately, I've been using the bleeding edge version of iPodder from CVS (which confusingly is in the
iSpider directory) Here is how you can grab a copy for yourself:

$ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ipodder login
CVS password: (press return)

$ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ipodder co iSpider

[tons of informational messages about downloading iSpider]

$ cd iSpider
$ export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/wx-2.5.3-gtk2-unicode:$PYTHONPATH-unicode:$PYTHONPATH
$ python iPodderGui.pyw

... And fire up your favorite dev tools!

iPodder GUI on Linux (debian/sarge) mini-HOWTO

I've been using the ipodder beta on
my laptop that runs GNU/Linux Debian/Sarge in the command line only mode. But over the holidays there was and update to wxpython that gets the GUI working.

This is what you need to do:

$ alien --to-deb ipodder-1.1.2-1cl.noarch.rpm
$ sudo dpkg -i ipodder_1.1.2-2_all.deb
$ export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/wx-2.5.3-gtk2-unicode:$PYTHONPATH-unicode:$PYTHONPATH
$ /opt/iPodder/iPodderGui.py

and enjoy...

festival speech synthesis on my debian laptop

Last night I was mucking around with festival, the text to speech tool (ala the old DECtalk. On my [laptop](http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-64295-89315-321838-f33-367367.html) it was speaking too fast.

The solution is found in the Festival FAQ: Running Festival

Create the file festival/lib/siteinit.scm (if you don't already have it) and add the following



(Parameter.set 'Audio_Method 'Audio_Command)

(Parameter.set 'Audio_Command "sox -t raw -sw -r $SR $FILE -c2 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp")



On debian, you put those two lines in /etc/festival.scm

Configuring Debian/Sarge for Dynamic DNS

Out of the box, when debian/sarge requests a DHCP address, it doesn't send up a hostname for a dynamic DNS server to use.

It is simple, but seemingly different on each distribution. But for debian/sarge, create a file /etc/dhclient.conf and put this in it:


send host-name "yourhostname";


Of course, you can put other options for dhclient in there too.

Looking for how to do this for Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Look here

Configuring Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Dynamic DNS

Out of the box, when Red Hat Enterprise Linux requests a DHCP address, it doesn't send up a hostname for a dynamic DNS server to use.

It is simple, but seemingly different on each distribution. But for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, create a file /etc/dhclient-eth0.conf (or /etc/dhclient-eth1.conf for eth1, etc) and put this in it:


send host-name "yourhostname";


Of course, you can put other options for dhclient in there too.

If you poke around in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup you'll see how it is used.

Looking for how to do this for Debian/Sarge? Look here

Create a new ssl certificate for imapd (imapd.pem) on debian

It has been a year of using imaps and the certificate expired.

On the imap server, do this:

# cd /etc/ssl/certs/
# openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -out imapd.pem -keyout imapd.pem -days 365b>
Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key
..........++++++
.....................................++++++
writing new private key to 'imapd.pem'
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:New Hampshire
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Merrimack
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Wildcat Learning 
Solutions
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Home Server
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:Marc Nozell
Email Address []:marc@nozell.com
#

Making mutt *not* use mozilla to view html body/attachments

I don't know why it is non-obvious, but I finally tracked down to how have mutt use a text web browser (lynx|links) to display email with HTML bodies or attachments.

In your ~/.mailcap, put this:

text/html; lynx %s; nametemplate=%s.html

A cryptic reply here pointed to the right part in the Mutt manual