Recent blog entries for berend

Typing gem on windows:

PS D:\Users\berend.deboer> gem
The term 'gem' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spellin
g of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:4
+ gem + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (gem:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

Same on Ubuntu:

# gem
The program 'gem' can be found in the following packages:
* rubygems1.8
* rubygems1.9.1
Try: apt-get install <selected package>

Really, Windows just feels like an abandoned house, does anyone do any kind of development on this OS? Maybe all using Visual Studio, never leaving it?

Lot of pain to get Skype working properly after I switched from an increasingly complex ipfw firewall to a pf based one. Skype consistently gave me "UDP status: local: BAD". I believe that happens when Skype tries to use peers for udp traffic, instead of talking to the caller directly.

The solution was to use static ports for nat. My default rule in pf.conf was this:

nat on egress from any to any -> (egress) round-robin sticky-address

It is now:

nat on egress from 192.168.1.10 port 12345 to any -> (egress) static-port
nat on egress from any to any -> (egress) round-robin sticky-address

Skype now has UDP status local good, finally sigh.

One of Logitech's best wireless products was their Logitech ClearChat. From an audio quality perspective that it. It's manufacturing quality was disastrous, and the internet is filled with people complaining about issues with their microphone (turning silent, not turning on, turning off when you move year head).

Just very annoying to use when the microphone breaks down.

Got a different product today the Logitech H600 (there don't seem to be many manufacturers of wireless headsets). Didn't work straight out the box with Ubuntu. I.e. it turned up immediately, but there was no sound. This appeared to be a communication problem with the wireless receiver and the headset.

bhankins found a solution that works for me too. Download the pairing utility and that fixes the problems. Unfortunately the pairing utility only works on Windows (or perhaps wine, didn't try that).

Hopefully my microphone problems are now solved. But sound quality is definitely much lower than the ClearChat, but won't matter for Skype/phone calls I'm guessing.

Bad day yesterday. Lot's of fighting with Ubuntu Precise. Upgraded from Oneiric, but X would freeze regularly. Could still ping/ssh in.

I think it was an issue with the application switcher. I wasn't using the Unity one. There were other issues too. As the system was so unstable, I decided not to take any changes with conflicts, so simply wiped my ~/.config and started over (but copied back settings from apps I wanted to keep). Pretty stable now. The only issue is that I'm using the Unity switcher and I don't like the "Show desktop" option, which you can't remove. Unless you recompile the source I suppose.

The ten day sale: assault rifles now at a 50% discount, get them while stock lasts!

Had an absolutely weird case where FireFox and Chrome wait spin for over a minute, when all the data had already been received.

Narrowed it down to this only happening when accessing over https, and it also didn't happen when I turned off gzip compression. I compress most of my output automatically using Apache's deflate module.

In the end it appeared that my Eiffel FastCGI program send a Content-Length for the uncompressed content. And that was returned to the browser. The solution was not to put in a Content-Length, so the web server will put one in for the compressed size.

PS: the reason why this worked in http mode might be because I was accessing the app through a Squid 3 proxy, and that might actually be doing the right thing. Too lazy to test this now.

Replaced my RTA1320E with a Draytek Vigor 120. The RTA1320 are nice modems because you can put them in half-bridge mode, but they just keep locking up for me. And I got a bit sick of replacing them every 6 months or. They used to be really reliable for me, but somehow are no longer. Perhaps it's a bit warmer in our home now we've installed an HRV system?

The modem is setup with protocol PPPoA with PPPoE Pass-through checked. I can now configure my ppp on FreeBSD with this:

vodafone:

  set device PPPoE:fxp0

  set server 30001 mypassword

  set authname isp_login

  set authkey isp_password

  set dial

  set login

  add default HISADDR

  disable ipv6cp

  disable mppe

  enable lqr echo

  accept lqr

  deny mppe

  set log +lqm

and use -ddial mode to have it connected. Still need to test if lqr works fine, so link is brought up after some failure.

I've made a change to my firewall script as well: now using built-in nat with ipfw, so goodby nat daemon. Was actually trivial to do, should have done that earlier.

Another Zalmon ZM460 bites the dust. This one probably because the load on the server is more than 460 watts I expect. Put in a Cooler Master Silent PRO 800. And it is silent. Probably will stick with Cooler Masters for now.

Frequently get this:

$ evince

Maximum number of clients reachedCannot parse arguments: Cannot open display:

Why does Google not have an answer?

Flew to Melbourne today, for a few holidays + the Drupal Down Under. Had a problem with my K3805-Z stick, wasn't recognised anymore on this machine. Perhaps the Oneiric upgrade? According to syslog usb-modeswitch crashed when inserting the stick. The solution was to get the 1.21 usb_modeswitch, compile and install it, and that fixed the problem.

Good for performance as the always reliable K3565 Vodem worked, but is feeling a bit slow these days.

The only problem I still have is that Ubuntu itself doesn't pickup on the USB sticks anymore. It used to that, perhaps my playing around a year ago to get the K3805-Z working killed things. So need the latest vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux to connect me.