New GNOME plugin for uploading to Rackspace Cloud Files and APT/PPA repo for CF tools.

Posted on 21 December, 2009 by chmouel

Sometime ago I made a shell script to upload directly to Rackspace CF using the script capability of nautilus. While working well it did not offer the progress bar and was hard to update. I have made now as a proper python nautilus plugin which offer these features.

The code is available here :

http://github.com/chmouel/nautilus-cloud-files-plugin

The old version is here, which is still a good example for uploading to Rackspace CF via the shell :

http://github.com/chmouel/nautilus-shell-script-rackspace-cloud-files

To make it easier for people to install all the tools I have made for Rackspace Cloud Files I have made available a PPA repository for ubuntu karmic which should work in debian unstable :

https://launchpad.net/~chmouel/+archive/rackspace-cloud-files

it contains as well the API packaged until they are going to be uploaded to the official debian/ubuntu repositories.

Posted in Rackspace | 1 Comment

XMPP notification for irssi running in a screen on a remote host

Posted on 20 December, 2009 by chmouel

Like a lot of people I have my irssi on a server in a screen. This has
been working great so far but my only concerns are the notifications
on the desktop when something happening.

Over the time I have found some different solution with mitigated
results for me :

- Use fanotify script with the libnotify-bin and SSH like mentioned here.

- Setup your irssi (or other) as irc proxy bouncer and connect with
your desktop client (like xchat) to get notification.

The fanotify is kind of very hacky on a laptop with intermittent
connection and having a cron doing a ssh every minutes or so is not
ideal, not talking about no passphrase ssh key or having to snoop the
SSH_AGENT variable to connect without password.

The via proxy method is not my thing and I don’t feel like having
xchat open all the time just for it and I anyway usually forget to
launch it.

My solution is to have a plugin for irssi notify me via XMPP if there
is a direct message addressed to me. I usually get my pidgin or gmail
alway open and if i don’t since it goes to a gmail account I got gmail
sending me an email about it.

You can find all the information about the install and configuration
here :

http://github.com/chmouel/irssi-xmpp-notify

Posted in Linux, Misc, Python | 1 Comment

Vmware vmplayer and kernel 2.6.32

Posted on 5 December, 2009 by chmouel

So you have a shiny new linux-2.6.32 kernel installed but your VMPlayer does not work anymore since the vmnet module does not compile by throwing this error :

CC [M] /tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetEvent.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.o
/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c: In function ‘VNetUserListenerEventHandler’:
/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c:240: error: ‘TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c:240: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c:240: error: for each function it appears in.)
/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c: In function ‘VNetUserListenerRead’:
/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c:282: error: ‘TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c:282: error: implicit declaration of function ‘signal_pending’
/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c:282: error: implicit declaration of function ‘schedule’
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/opt/temp/linux-2.6.32′
make: *** [vmnet.ko] Error 2

Just do the following to fix it :

make sure first you have installed the latest vmplayer (VMware-Player-3.0.0-203739.i386.bundle) at this time for me.

  • cd /tmp
  • tar xf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar
  • cd vmnet-only
  • vim vnetUserListener.c
  • go to line 37 (after the last include)
  • add this line #include “compat_sched.h”
  • exit your editor
  • cd /tmp
  • sudo tar cf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar vmnet-only
  • restart vmplayer

When recompiling the kernel module it should get it built properly and working it seems…..

Posted in Linux | 27 Comments

Toshiba Regza 32AV615DB blank screen HDMI Linux

Posted on 3 December, 2009 by chmouel

I have this nice Toshiba TV which is connected to a small Linux box which act as a media player. I have been some issue lately the things works fine under the 1920×1800 resolution most of the time. But once in a while I get a blank screen and the nvidia driver telling me this :

(II) Dec 03 17:00:19 NVIDIA(0): “nvidia-auto-select”
(II) Dec 03 17:00:19 NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 640 x 480
(WW) Dec 03 17:00:19 NVIDIA(0): Unable to get display device CRT-0′s EDID; cannot compute DPI
(WW) Dec 03 17:00:19 NVIDIA(0): from CRT-0′s EDID.
(==) Dec 03 17:00:19 NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (75, 75); computed from built-in default
(==) Dec 03 17:00:19 NVIDIA(0): Enabling 32-bit ARGB GLX visuals.
(–) Depth 24 pixmap format is 32 bpp

Spend a long time trying to debug the thing by the software but it seems that the TV has some kind of trouble and if I switch it to another HDMI connection it does detect fine which I do at about every week… not a biggie but still annoying.

Posted in Life, Linux | Leave a comment

Nokia N95 bluetooth teethering with T-Mobile under Linux and Delll Latitude D630

Posted on 30 October, 2009 by chmouel

Spent a bit of time to configure my Nokia mobile to teethering wih my Linux and T-Mobile. Here is some steps that may help the others :

  • If you don’t have that blue bluetooth led switched on on your Dell Latitude D630 Laptop you have to enable it. I haven’t find any way to do that via the Linux Kernel module but with Windows under Vmware Player (3.0) enabling Bluetooth and installing the driver (manually not via the setup.exe) enabled bluetooth.
  • Switched on bluetooth on the Phone and attached to the laptop via gnome bluetooth applet thingy.
  • Get my phone device number from hcitool scan.
  • And did this (as root) :

cat </etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf
#
# RFCOMM configuration file.
#

rfcomm0 {
# Automatically bind the device at startup
bind yes;

# Bluetooth address of the device
device YOUR:PHONE:DEVICE:NUMBER;

# RFCOMM channel for the connection
channel 4;

# Description of the connection
comment “Nokia N95″;
}
EOF

/etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

cat </etc/ppp/chat-tmobile
ABORT BUSY
ABORT ‘NO CARRIER’
ABORT ‘NO ANSWER’
ABORT ERROR
REPORT CONNECT
SAY ‘Calling t-mobile…\n’
“” ‘ATZ’
OK ‘ATE0V1&D2&C1S0=0+IFC=2,2′
SAY ‘Modem reset.\n’
SAY ‘Setting APN…’
OK ‘AT+cgdcont=1,”IP”,”general.t-mobile.uk”‘
SAY ‘APN set\n’
SAY ‘Dialling…\n’
OK ‘ATDT*99#’
TIMEOUT 30
CONNECT “”
EOF

cat </etc/ppp/peers/t-mobile
/dev/rfcomm0
460800
idle 7200
modem
noauth
lock
crtscts
defaultroute
user “user”
password “pass”
noipdefault
usepeerdns
updetach
noccp
nobsdcomp
#novj
ipcp-restart 10
ipcp-accept-local
ipcp-accept-remote
lcp-echo-interval 65535
lcp-echo-failure 10
lcp-max-configure 10
connect “/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chat-tmobile”
EOF

Under Debian distros you can enable the connection with the command ‘pon t-mobile’ or you for the others can do via the manual way with the command ‘pppd call t-mobile’.

Posted in Debian, Linux | 1 Comment

FTP server for Cloud Files

Posted on 29 October, 2009 by chmouel

I have just committed an experiment of a FTP Server answering to Cloud Files. It act completely transparently to be able to use any FTP Client to connect to cloud-files.

There is probably a couple of bugs there but the basis of it seems to be working, please let me know if you find any problems with it.

Usage

By default it will bind to port 2021 and localhost to be able to be launched by user which can be changed via the command line option -p. The username password are your API Username and key.

Manual Install

FTP-Cloudfs require the pyftpdlib which can be installed from here :

http://code.google.com/p/pyftpdlib/

and python-cloudfiles :

http://github.com/rackspace/python-cloudfiles

you can then checkout FTP-Cloudfs from here :

http://github.com/chmouel/ftp-cloudfs

The way to install python package is pretty simple, simply do a python
setup.py install after uncompressing the tarball downloaded.

Automatic Install:

You can generate a debian package directly from the source if you have
dpkg-buildpackage installed on your system. It will give you a nice
initscripts as well to start automatically the ftp cloudfs process.

Support

Albeit I am working for Rackspace Cloud this is not supported by
Rackspace but please feel free to send a comment here if you have any
problems.

Posted in Rackspace | 25 Comments

Accessing to Rackspace Cloud Files via servicenet (update)

Posted on 20 October, 2009 by chmouel

Last week I have posted an article explaining how to connect to Rackspace Cloud Files via Rackspace ServiceNET but I actually got it wrong as pointed by my great colleague exlt so I had to take it down until figured out how to fix it.

I have add that feature properly to the PHP and Python API in version 1.5.0 to add a ‘servicenet’ argument to the connection and updated the blog post here :

http://blog.chmouel.com/2009/10/14/how-to-connect-to-rackspace-cloud-files-via-servicenet/

It should give you all the information for the howto use that feature.

I have released as well a minor update in 1.5.1 to allow you to define the environment variable RACKSPACE_SERVICENET to force the use of the Rackspace ServiceNET this allow you to don’t have to modify the tools and have a clean code between prod and testing.

Posted in Programming, Python, Rackspace | 2 Comments

How to connect to Rackspace Cloud Files via ServiceNET

Posted on 14 October, 2009 by chmouel

If you are a Rackspace customer and you are are planning to use Rackspace Cloud Files via it’s internal network (ServiceNet) so you don’t get billed for the bandwidth going over Cloud Files this is how you can do.

The first thing is to make sure with your support team if your servers are connected to ServiceNet and if you have that connection then there is a small change to do in your code.

The second thing is to use the just released 1.5.0 version on GitHUB for PHP :

http://github.com/rackspace/php-cloudfiles/tree/1.5.0

and for python :

http://github.com/rackspace/python-cloudfiles/tree/1.5.0

(you need to click on the download link at the top to download the tarball of the release).

Afer this is just a matter to set the argument servicenet=True, for example in PHP :

$user='username';
$api_key='theapi_key';
 
$auth = new CF_Authentication($user, $api_key);
$auth->authenticate();
$conn = new CF_Connection($auth, $servicenet=true);

In Python you can do like this :

username='username'
api_key='api_key'
 
cnx = cloudfiles.get_connection(username, api_key, servicenet=True)
Posted in Programming, Python, Rackspace | 4 Comments

Rackspace Cloud Files helper scripts

Posted on 24 September, 2009 by chmouel

Since working a lot with Rackspace Cloud Files I have put some quick
scripts using the python-cloudfiles API to do some ls rm and cp of containers or objects..

It’s really a collection of quickly written stuff put in the same file
but at least if not useful for you it would give you an idea how the
python-cloudfiles works. It is all available here :

http://github.com/chmouel/cloud-files-helper

Posted in Programming, Rackspace | Leave a comment

Emacs transparency with mouse wheel

Posted on 16 September, 2009 by chmouel

Emacs is playing fancy on the latest version (since emacs 23) it has now support for transparency at least on Linux when you have a composited Windows Manager.

As explained on the Emacs wiki here everything is controlled by this frame parameter like this :

 (set-frame-parameter (selected-frame) 'alpha '(85 50))

I have automated the thing to allow the transparency to increase or decrease when combined with the alt key just put this code somewhere in your $HOME/.emacs or $HOME/.emacs.d/init.el :

(defun my-increase-opacity()
  (interactive)
  (let ((increase (+ 10 (car (frame-parameter nil 'alpha)))))
    (if (> increase 99)(setq increase 99))
    (set-frame-parameter (selected-frame) 'alpha (values increase 75)))
)
 
(defun my-decrease-opacity()
  (interactive)
  (let ((decrease (- (car (frame-parameter nil 'alpha)) 10)))
    (if (< decrease 20)(setq decrease 20))
    (set-frame-parameter (selected-frame) 'alpha (values decrease 75)))
)
 
(global-set-key (kbd "M-<mouse-4>") 'my-increase-opacity)
(global-set-key (kbd "M-<mouse -5>") 'my-decrease-opacity)
</mouse>
Posted in Emacs | 2 Comments