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Lugradio Live 2008

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:32:22 GMT

LugRadio Live 2008 is happening on the 19th and 20th of July at The Lighthouse Media Center, Chubb Buildings, Fryer Street, Wolverhampton. This'll be my first time there, and so I've been very sensible and volunteered for the crew. Should be fun!

The Linksys NSLU2, part one

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:31:47 GMT

I've spent some time recently playing with a couple of Linksys NSLU2s. These are small devices which have 2 USB ports and an Ethernet port, and are intended to be used to share USB drives across a network via CIFS (Windows file sharing). The best feature of them though is that like the early WRT54G routers, it runs Linux by default, and uses Samba to share the files. This means that with a bit of hacking, it's fairly easy to extend it to make it more functional. There are a few projects doing this, the most famous being the Unslung firmware.

Another project that has been working on support for the NSLU2 is Debian. As of version 4.0 (Etch), the default Debian installer has had support for them out of the box. More information on this can be found at http://cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/. I've installed Etch on both my NSLU2s, though I found it quicker and easier to use the manual install method, which just means unpacking a tarball of the base system. This is described at http://cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/unpack.html. The instructions there are far better than I could describe, so I won't bother trying to replicate them.

So, what can you do with these things once they're running Debian? Lots of things. Just now I'm going to describe one of the most basic things I use it for, which is for serving DHCP and DNS on my LAN.

You can, if you like, run the full ISC BIND and dhcpd servers on your Slug, but there isn't really that much point. They're big, sometimes tricky to configure, and overkill for a small LAN. A decent, light alternative is dnsmasq. It's a small daemon that uses the existing /etc/hosts and other related files to handle serving the network. I run it for a couple of reasons - firstly, my ISP's DNS servers are somewhat less than reliable, so I use dnsmasq to proxy to OpenDNS. Secondly, it allows me to use internal DNS names for my machines. So, for example, rather than having to remember that my router is 192.168.1.1, if I want to go and change something in its configuration, I can just type "portal" into my browser. Similarly, my NSLU2s can be accessed by just typing "ssh kaylee" or "ssh inara". I've picked a domain name that doesn't exist in the wider Internet to ensure I don't collide with anything real.

Setting it up

dnsmasq doesn't come installed by default, but it's only an apt-get away.

apt-get install dnsmasq

After that, there is a configuration file at /etc/dnsmasq.conf which you may want to have a look at. The defaults are mostly sensible. In my setup, I have changed the following options:

# Set the domain name for hosts on this network
domain=internal.lan
# Set the start and end of the DHCP pool, and set the
# default lease time to 24 hours
dhcp-range=192.168.1.100,192.168.1.150,24h

# Set DHCP option 3 (which supplies the default route) 
# to the IP address of your router - otherwise dnsmasq 
# will assume that the gateway is the machine it is running on
dhcp-option 3,192.168.1.1

# Answer DNS queries based on the interface the request was sent
# to - the effect of this means that you will never get 127.0.0.1
# returned when looking up the name of the dnsmasq server. 
localise-queries

You can also hard-code the MAC addresses of your machines into the dnsmasq.conf file, using the dhcp-host statement, so that each machine will always get the same IP address. This is a neat trick, but personally I don't think that dnsmasq.conf is the right place to do that when there is already an /etc/ethers file that stores this information. So, for now, uncomment the "read-ethers" line in dnsmasq.conf. I'll get back to setting up that file in a moment.

Next, you want to set up your resolv.conf file. This will contain the IP addresses of the nameservers you want to use, and which dnsmasq will proxy for. In my case, I'm using OpenDNS, so I've grabbed the DNS servers from https://www.opendns.com/start. My resolv.conf now looks like:

domain internal.lan
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

To set up internal hosts on your LAN, you just need to enter them in /etc/hosts, and dnsmasq will read them from there. Beyond the normal entries for localhost and some IPv6 ones, I have things that look like:

192.168.1.1     portal.internal.lan        portal
192.168.1.5     zoidberg.internal.lan      zoidberg
192.168.1.10    inara.internal.lan         inara
192.168.1.11    kaylee.internal.lan        kaylee

You can add as many of these as you like, making sure that the domain name part of them matches what is in /etc/dnsmasq.conf, otherwise they may not work properly.

Finally, back to /etc/ethers. This is a simple mapping between MAC addresses and either IP addresses or names, as long as the names can be resolved by either DNS or (in this case) the /etc/hosts file.

00:12:34:56:78:9A zoidberg.planetexpress.lan
00:BC:DE:F0:12:34 animal.planetexpress.lan

All the hosts in this file will be issued the same IP address every time they do a DHCP request, provided they also exist in /etc/hosts. Bear in mind that MAC addresses are per interface, not per machine, so if you have a laptop with a wired and a wireless interface I'd advise having two entries, one for each. Last of all, ensure that your router or other device isn't running a DHCP server any more, and run /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart. The new settings should take effect, and all being well, everything should work.

(I have updated this based on feedback from Jason Liquorish, adding a bit about DHCP option 3 and the localise-queries option, which I forgot earlier. Thanks Jason!)

You what?

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:50:48 GMT

This is where I start to wonder if Flickr aren't taking their "How to say hello in language X" thing a bit too far...

Website, Mk III

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:03:59 GMT

I have rebuilt my website once more. This time, I'm using eZ Publish, which I know better than Wordpress. I've also mostly managed to import my weblog entries from the old Wordpress install, though I haven't got the comments to come across yet. It should work later though. The site is a bit of a work in progress, there's not much content yet and the theme looks bare in Firefox and probably completely broken in IE. Not that you should be using IE, of course...

theyworkforyou.com In Scotland

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:22:46 GMT

TheyWorkForYou.com is a great resource for tracking what UK Parliament MPs are up to, however there isn't currently a version of it covering the Scottish (or indeed the Welsh) Parliaments. There is a mailing list set up for people who are interested in a Scottish version here but there doesn't seem to be a lot happening. I intend to sign up and say hello, to see if there's anyone there. On the off chance that anyone else reads this, perhaps they could too...

You will distract me no longer

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 20:38:39 GMT

michael@firefly:~$ vim /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 bloglines.com www.bloglines.com
:wq

More about the Creative Zen

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 23:46:02 GMT

I've had it for a few weeks now, and I like it. The screen is very nice, and it's pretty easy to use. I started using my Shure e2c earphones with it, and it sounds pretty good. The Windows software is good when it works, though the Explorer extension that appears in My Computer crashes quite a lot, taking explorer.exe with it - not good. A couple of minor issues are that on some MP3s there is a sort of crackling noise that appears - I'm not sure if it's a certain audio frequency or a problem with the way the MP3 is encoded that causes it, and I haven't really investigated it. Also, normally I have it on shuffle and I leave it unlocked so I can skip things I don't want to listen to, but if you don't lock it the screen stays on all the time, which eats battery life.

I haven't used its video capabilities yet, nor have I done much with its photo handling (although the first time I plugged it in, it copied most of the My Pictures directory over). You do need to be quite careful with ID3 tags though, otherwise you get lots of songs called by from the album .

As for Linux compatibility, I have been using Gnomad2 to handle it, which is a little quirky but works well enough. Both this and the Windows software allow you to pull files off the device (unlike iPods or Sony devices), which is nice.

Overall, I'm happy.

Creative Zen Vision:M

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 19:16:19 GMT

I just got one of these through the post from Amazon. I had ordered it on about Thursday last week, kind of hoping it would get here by Saturday, but unfortunately no such luck. When it did arrive the Amazon box it came in was pretty battered as well - though the actual packaging was OK. That'll be ParcelForce then...

It's currently attached to the laptop and charging, and I can't quite inspire it to turn on yet so I'm going to wait and hope that it's meant to do that. What I can say is that the Windows software installation is about the most annoying thing I have ever seen. The wizard moves the mouse around to what it thinks is the option you want, then it will go full-screen and get in the way of anything more useful that you happen to be doing, and pop up occasional dialogue boxes to steal the focus. Then when you reboot it will launch a full-screen Flash gizmo to register the device, before something to do with Audible comes along and does something similar.

Final gripe so far - the headphones it comes with are pathetic. I'm not sure why they do that - surely better headphones give a better impression of the device. I didn't have any intention of using them though. I'll either continue to use the slightly battered Sony things I have or give my E2cs another shot. I seem to have the smallest ears in the world, and even the very smallest rubber parts for them don't properly fit me.

I'll write some more when I've got the thing up and running, including if I have to mess about to get it to work in Linux.

Sgrìobh

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 21:30:28 GMT

Tha mi ag ionnsachaidh Gàidhlig còmhla ri Sabhal Mòr Ostaig - tha mi a deanamh an Cùrsa Inntrigidh.
For those who haven't a clue what I said I am currently learning (Scottish) Gaelic through the Cùrsa Inntrigidh distance-learning course run by Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Skye. I will probably start posting in Gaelic as I start to get more confident - we'll see.

While browsing around Sabhal Mòr Ostaig's site, I came across a link to a company called IleTec who, amongst other things sell a word processor called Sgrìobh. I had a quick look at the site, and thought it looked familar - I recognised the GTK-type theme and what I think is the Tango icon set. It turns out that it's based on Abiword. This is quite cool - an entirely Gaelic desktop application. However, it appears that you can't get hold of it without paying £40 for the privilege, and it comes with a Gaelic keyboard (I wonder how this works) and a screensaver. Legally this is fine, there is nothing to stop anyone charging money for distributing GPL software to cover media costs etc. but if you then look at the price list the screensaver itself costs £5 and the keyboard £20. Basically the money seems to be to cover the cost of the dictionary and the localization work. It seems to me that this isn't quite in line with the spirit of the GPL - though that might just be me. Still, it looks well done.

I'd quite like a Gaelic translation for my desktop, preferably GNOME though KDE would be fine, as it would probably help me learn more faster. I suspect that asking for a Gaelic translation for Windows is a bit less likely. I've already taken to using Google in Gaelic, though it's more or less a matter of typing something in a box and hitting Enter, and there's not really much of an interface there to translate. Canonical's Rosetta system looks pretty good for doing translations of software, however I'm not yet in a position where I'd be able to contribute much. Looking at the Dapper Drake entry for Gaelic in Rosetta indicates that 3 out of a possible 326711 items have been translated. I'd love to kick off a project to get this started, either by the community or by professionals - or perhaps some combination of the two?

On a related note, I have bodged the OpenOffice.org Gaelic spellchecking dictionary to install into Firefox 2 and Thunderbird > 1.5, once I have cleaned it up and made it a bit more robust I'll release it.

Edit: I've updated it with some more information from Graham from Iletec, who commented below. Thanks!

Running XUL in IE

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:06:10 GMT

This appears to be the coolest thing I've seen for at least a couple of weeks. It describes how to convince XULRunner to run as an ActiveX control to support XUL and SVG in Internet Explorer. Could be useful for those situations where you just have to run IE...