3rd day with Evolution and it refused to start!

This would be my first time using evolution with Exchange 2007. As we all know there is no good connector for 2007 exchange, life is a little tough here. I hope Novell and evolution guys are listening.


krish@lin-hyd-dsk-07:~> evolution
*** nss-shared-helper: Shared database disabled (set NSS_USE_SHARED_DB to enable).
*** nss-shared-helper: Shared database disabled (set NSS_USE_SHARED_DB to enable).
** (evolution:4752): DEBUG: mailto URL command: evolution %s
** (evolution:4752): DEBUG: mailto URL program: evolution
(evolution:4752): camel-WARNING **: Could not find key entry for word '0000000000000000': Bad file descriptor
(evolution:4752): camel-WARNING **: Could not find key entry for word '16916000000006304': Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character
(evolution:4752): camel-WARNING **: Could not find key entry for word '16916000000006304': Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character
(evolution:4752): camel-WARNING **: Could not find key entry for word '33196880': Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character


After being reluctant to download mails from microsoft exchange 2007 for long time, I gave in 3 days ago and downloaded hundreds of MB of mails.
Today my evolution crashed with the above error:

Solution:

Quit and kill any evolution process running
$ ps aux | grep evolution | grep -v grep | awk ‘{print $2}’ | xargs kill -9

Backup your evolution directory
$ cp ~/.evolution ~/.evolution_bkup

Start your evolution again
$ evolution

Now you can either import from old files or just copy over your Inbox, Sent, Drafts and any other folders from ~/.evolution_bkup/mail/local/ to the new location.

And we should be up and running with evolution again.

LTSP Artwork

I have literally given up on Pencil due to its bugs, especially on the export output.

Currently working on Synfig, and trust me drawing is quite tough than any other program I’ve used in the past. Hopefully, the animation part could be better.
People at #synfig were too kind to pull me out of totally lost situations.
Trying to self learn it was already a brain heater and to make it worse was the frequent power cuts.
( 10 minutes on 20 minute intervals!!! ).

Thankfully, cyberorg pinged me for some artwork design, saving me from the risk of frustation. Here’s how my little artwork looks for LTSP ( Linux Terminal Server Project ):

The LTSP Lobster!

This needs more tuning to shape as a logo; but hey doesn’t it make a good poster print?

Loading vboxdrv on openSUSE 11.0

VirtualBox kernel driver not installed. The vboxdrv kernel module was either not loaded or /dev/vboxdrv was not created for some reason. Re-setup the kernel module by executing ‘/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup’ as root.
VBox status code: -1908 (VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_INSTALLED).

Result Code:
0×80004005
Component:
Console
Interface:

IConsole {1dea5c4b-0753-4193-b909-22330f64ec45}

If you’ve faced this error after installing VirtualBox, then the vboxdrv kernel module hasn’t loaded properly.

This bug existed on openSUSE 10.3 and ah it exists on 11.0 too.

So, here’s a workaround.

Run modprobe vboxdrv as root.
Relaunch your VirtualBox if already open.

This will dynamically load vboxdrv module onto the kernel.
Note that on reboot the module is not loaded. To make the module load on boot, there are two ways.

1. Open /etc/sysconfig/kernel with your favorite text editor, search for the line containing MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT, and add vboxdrv to make it look like this:

MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT=”vboxdrv”

Reboot for the changes to take effect.

Note: You may already have other modules within “” . Don’t delete them, just append ,vboxdrv to the list.

2. Going the GUI way, open your Yast2 -> System -> /etc/sysconfig Editor

On the left side of the newly popped up form, go to System->Kernel->MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT

Once there, type vboxdrv in the dropdown menu on the right and click Finish.

This should popup another dialog box. Just accept it and you’re done.

Reboot to see the changes.

Saint IGNUcius visits Hyderabad.

Probably most of you know who Saint IGNUcius is, and for those who don’t, let me introduce him. He is Richard Matthew Stallman, a hacker, software developer, founder of Free Software Foundation, and I can go on like this. May be it is better you checkout wikipedia or articles about Stallman on the Internet.

So well, I am just back from his talk at Hyderabad.  It goes without saying that it was good . I was quite interested to know the model/manufacturer of his laptop. Someone did ask (questions taken in writing) about the distro he runs which he didn’t reveal.

Talking about questionnaire he faced, someone wrote to him “How SOA helps Free Software?”. Stallman modestly asked what SOA was, to which there was no answer from anyone. Seeing him looking at people for the answer, I shouted back `Service Oriented Architecture` and that it was a management buzzword.
I am surprised why the person who wrote it didn’t answer!
If he/she didn’t knew what SOA was, what’s the point relating it with Free Software anyway? Don’t ask to ask!

RMS pic @ Hyd. Excuse the crap quality.

Of all the good things in the talk, RMS’ transformation into Saint IGNUcius and preaching with that disk on his head was the best.

And of the bad things, 25 volunteers reaching the venue met with an accident and 2 were reported to be serious. I tried multiple calls to a provided number for donating blood; no avail, some problem with his phone I guess. Let’s just hope that they recover soon.

upgrade branch on launchpad

It’s bzr 1.2 on my lappie and I am unaware of the remote bazaar version on my branch at launchpad.

One fine day I started getting notification/suggestion to upgrade bazaar; this happens whenever I try to push my code on the launchpad branch.
I ran bzr upgrade and it seemed to do fine, until I tried to push again. `bzr upgrade` updates your local branch.

[krish@lappie timepass-devel]$ bzr push bzr+ssh://srikrishna@bazaar.launchpad.net/~timepass/timepass/timepass-devel
Format for lp-46042832:///~timepass/timepass/timepass-devel/.bzr is deprecated - please use 'bzr upgrade' to get better performance
Pushed up to revision 6.
[krish@lappie timepass-devel]$ bzr upgrade
bzr: ERROR: The branch format Bazaar-NG meta directory, format 1 is already at the most recent format.
[krish@lappie timepass-devel]$

I, then tried to upgrade the remote branch this way..

[krish@lappie timepass-devel]$ bzr upgrade bzr+ssh://srikrishna@bazaar.launchpad.net/~timepass/timepass/timepass-devel
Format for lp-46042832:///~timepass/timepass/timepass-devel/.bzr is deprecated - please use 'bzr upgrade' to get better performance
bzr: ERROR: The branch format Bazaar-NG meta directory, format 1 is already at the most recent format.
[krish@lappie timepass-devel]$


Nopes. That didn’t work. Spiv suggested upgrading bazaar via sftp, and here’s what happened..

[krish@lappie timepass-devel]$ bzr upgrade sftp://srikrishna@bazaar.launchpad.net/~timepass/timepass/timepass-devel
bzr: ERROR: Unsupported protocol for url "sftp://srikrishna@bazaar.launchpad.net/~timepass/timepass/timepass-devel": Unable to import paramiko (required for sftp support): No module named paramiko


Whoa! that’s an error, but nothing to worry. I just didn’t have python-paramiko installed. I quickly did that with rpmdrake and ran the sftp way again. Few minutes of waiting and lo – remote branch updated

If the branch doesn’t belong to a team, you can upgrade it this way:
bzr upgrade sftp://username@bazaar.launchpad.net/~username/projectname/branchname
and if it does then use
bzr upgrade sftp://username@bazaar.launchpad.net/~teamname/projectname/branchname

No IRC protocol in kopete KDE4

Well this is old news, but seems unfixed yet. I hate to install and run another IM client to be on IRC network.

kopete in KDE4.1 (openSUSE11.x)

Attempts to upgrade kopete in opensuse11.0 (KDE 4.1) throws more than 100MB of dependency tantrums. Thanks but No Thanks

I find myself installing irssi now

cxchromium – chrome port for linux

Quite sometime ago, I installed cxchromium from rpm available for mandriva at codeweavers. I must say the guys at codeweavers have done a fairly good job. Atleast satisfied the itch of many Linux users like me.

The browser does look very light, but it ain’t. With just one tab it runs two processes (must be a failover process) and not to forget the few wine processes it spawns. I guess spawn wouldn’t be a right word here because wine needs to be running for cxchrome to start.
The `faster loading of pages` as claimed by many, looks like illusion to me. Seems like the browsers caches more before it renders on the page.

I did face some issues with the port though, and googling tells me that the native version on windows has its share too.

Some shots:

faulty rendering of pages

cxchromium frequent crash

Chrome is itself in beta and cxchromium isn’t a guaranteed port; it’s just for try out.
It would be interesting to see how `soon` Google would release the linux version.

Yay, Software Freedom Day!

Happy Software Freedom Day. It is one of the days worth celebrating (atleast for believers of free software) and we did.

mbuf had taken it forward on the lists and we got flyers printed too. While attendees may have thought it would be some session types, we had surprise packed in.
No prizes for guessing what that could be! It was a special chocolate cake to be celebrated and I bet everyone loved it.
While that was surprise for others, I had my share too. Nikhil turned up for the celebrations; I hadn’t seen him since college and it was a pleasant surprise considering the fact that he was the first linux geek I met when I stepped in new to the Linux addiction.

Software Freedom Day

mbuf gave a brief session on installation – concepts, and methods, FOSS – history, and communication tools. Manish gave a demo on Compiz and I showed some LiveCD stuff.

ubuntu 8.04 were distributed to attendees and we closed the celebrations with loads of tech discussions and cake stuffed in our mouth

laptop woes

I bought a new acer 4315 laptop this April; started using from Mid-may since I already had compaq v3000 from one of my clients.
May, June, July passed happily, but things started heating up in August (yeah this month).

I suddenly notice my laptop getting warmer at the left side of keyboard. Losing no time I purchased a cooling base for my lappie (yeah I love my laptop). The cooling base does a wonderful job, though I still feel that the left side of keyboard is warmer than the right; it is quite less than former heat.
Few days pass by, and just when I was beginning to feel comfortable again, I notice this weird flicker on my screen! (2 days ago.) For a moment I thought it could be a power surge, but then I realized I was running on battery.

To describe the flicker is quite hard, its like very thin vertical multicolored lines on your screen for fraction of a second.
This happened twice that day and again twice next day.

Worse was today. Happened 5 times and the fifth time the screen went black for a second. Fifth flicker today was long; about 2 seconds. My heart almost stopped.
I know acer service center closes at 17:30 IST and there is no use calling them now. Probably will get an auto responder.

I remember that I couldn’t register my purchase on acer site because it wouldn’t open the calendar in one of the form fields on firefox. I tried my luck again today but no use.
(For hasty suggester:
1. I know acer.co.in is written is an asp.NET content written in C#
2. I have Java Runtime and Java browser plugin (1.5 on PC and 1.6 on laptop); I’ve tried registering from both.
3. If you think I should use Microsoft Internet Explorer to do it – Please buy me an original Windows.
4. I dont want IE running on my GNU/Linux distro. )

Also, acer.co.in isn’t serving pages. You have to google for it and get to this link http://www.acer.co.in/home/index.asp?sid=511857353

Let me carry-in my lappie to their service center and may be they can help without blaming it on GNU/Linux.
(Oh yes, I’ve heard of many support centers that start blaming on whatever they don’t/don’t want to understand.)

launchpad changes look

For people who are new to the term – Launchpad, is a collaboration place for project management and code hosting for free software. It is supported by Canonical Ltd.

Probably the most famous project that uses Launchpad is ubuntu

Launchpad had a nice green top and left side menus. Green has been one of my favorite colors.
With the new look, there are no green menus’, the left side menus are shifted on the right and there are other features added which are aimed towards a simpler interface.
If you are searching for the left menu to change details, update ssh keys etc., on your profile page, check under ‘Personal Package Archive’ available as a top menu on the same page.
Also, there are now easily accessible menu items arranged on top at your profile page.

I also noticed a tag cloud type listing on https://code.launchpad.net/, may be I should call it a branch cloud; it looks nice, though I am not sure if this is one of the new features of Launchpad 1.2.4

Another very nice feature is that you can now post on mailing lists without subscribing. This is very useful when you want to make once-off posts.
Spammers – Do not rejoice, such posts are moderated before they can appear on the lists.

If someone wonders what I didn’t like about this new change, here they are
1. Green menu’s were removed
2. New Launchpad logo
3. New launchpad favicon.

Anyway, these don’t stop me from using launchpad.