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/proc/self/jd, News from the Nix Nut.

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Most common commands

For today's presentation

Work OSX Workstation:
john-lightseys-computer:~ jd$ cut -f1 -d" " .bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 20
  88 ssh
  88 ls
  82 exit
  60 cd
  30 sftp
  30 dig
  27 vi
  20 rm
  11 unzip
  11 mkdir
   7 less
   5 man
   4 mv
   4 cat
   3 zip
   3 perldoc
   3 lp
   2 svn
   2 sudo
   2 ps


Work Development Server (jd account)
jd@jd.dev.cpanel.net:~$ cut -f1 -d" " .bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 20
    222 ls
    208 cd
     99 sudo
     96 exit
     53 mv
     52 rm
     37 svn
     29 fresh-rpmbuild-tree.pl
     28 fakeroot
     22 vi
     17 rpm
     15 nm
     14 ps
     13 cp
     12 grep
     10 less
      9 rpm2cpio
      8 ldd
      7 man
      5 cat


Work Development Server (root account)
root@jd.dev.cpanel.net:~# cut -f1 -d" " .bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 20
   1386 svn
    916 vi
    776 cd
    665 ls
    151 cpgrep
    107 rm
     75 less
     62 make
     47 man
     45 fg
     41 dig
     40 ps
     37 perlcheck
     34 exit
     32 tar
     31 zonec
     30 diff
     27 cp
     24 /scripts/rebuildhttpdconf
     23 /scripts/easyapache

Home Desktop (recently reinstalled, user account)
jd@home:~$ cut -f1 -d" " .bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 20
    192 ls
     46 cd
     41 vi
     37 rm
     26 sudo
     19 apt-cache
     18 exit
     13 du
     12 mv
      9 ./quick.pl
      9 dig
      8 tar
      8 java
      6 ssh
      6 sh
      6 ps
      4 less
      3 wc
      3 savage2.sh
      2 which

Home Desktop (recently reinstalled, root account)
home:~#  cut -f1 -d" " .bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 20
    251 ls
     61 cd
     50 rm
     22 du
     16 cp
     13 mv
     12 apt-get
     10 exit
      8 ps
      7 mount
      5 umount
      5 df
      5 chown
      4 vi
      3 less
      3 /etc/init.d/network-manager
      3 cat
      2 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager
      2 mkdir
      2 man

Laptop (user account)
jd@macbook:~$ cut -f1 -d" " .bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 20
    132 ls
     47 sudo
     40 exit
     37 cd
     30 svn
     23 ssh
     23 rm
     21 gnomevfs-ls
     17 apt-cache
     14 vi
     14 nd
      9 ps
      8 man
      6 sftp
      6 mv
      6 dig
      6 cat
      5 gpg
      3 top
      3 tar

Laptop (root account)
macbook:~# cut -f1 -d" " .bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 20
     66 ls
     49 vi
     45 chroot
     43 cd
     36 /etc/init.d/gdm
     33 apt-get
     17 less
     16 xinit
     16 exit
     15 ps
     14 /etc/init.d/flumotion
     12 sudo
     12 /sbin/ifconfig
     12 apt-cache
     11 man
     11 dpkg
      6 kill
      5 which
      5 ssh
      5 reboot

Combined Totals:
1616	ls
1455	svn
1231	cd
1073	vi
296	exit
289	rm
186	sudo
151	cpgrep
122	ssh
116	less
94	ps
88	mv
86	dig
80	man
62	make
56	cp
48	apt-cache
45	apt-get
45	chroot
45	fg
43	tar
37	perlcheck
36	sftp
36	/etc/init.d/gdm
35	du
31	zonec
30	diff
29	fresh-rpmbuild-tree.pl
28	fakeroot
24	/scripts/rebuildhttpdconf
23	/scripts/easyapache
21	gnomevfs-ls
18	cat
17	rpm
16	xinit
15	nm
14	nd
14	/etc/init.d/flumotion
13	mkdir
12	grep
12	/sbin/ifconfig
11	unzip
11	dpkg
9	rpm2cpio
9	./quick.pl
8	ldd
8	java
7	which
7	mount
6	kill
6	sh
5	df
5	chown
5	umount
5	reboot
5	gpg
3	top
3	wc
3	/etc/init.d/network-manager
3	lp
3	savage2.sh
3	zip
3	perldoc
2	/usr/sbin/NetworkManager

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Grep Switches

The LugNut isn't going to make it to the HLUG meeting on Saturday May 10th, so Pete asked me to put something together for the presentation. I'm going to do a talk about the most common commands in my bash history file, meaning we'll probably talk quite a bit about grep, svn, my favorite text editor, and file/directory manipulation.

Catch it live at 2:00pm at HAL-PC in Houston, or watch the live video feed on this server.

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Retooling

I spent last weekend completely reorganizing my AMD64 desktop system. It had 1GB of RAM, 500GB of drive space over four SATA-150 drives (RAID 1,0...I'm not that crazy) and a Debian Sid AMD64 install that predated Debian support for AMD64 by quite some time. It was a big mess and had been driving me to use a laptop for everything.

After a full weekend of work, the machine has a fresh Lenny install, 4GB of RAM, a single 1TB SATA-300 drive and a vastly reorganized home directory. I managed to get rid of 200GB of garbage in the process.

Now I just need to find time to fix all the castle-combat bugs that have accumulated lately.

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New Server

After much deliberation I finally took the plunge and moved my domains from the dedicated sever at Rackshack/EV1/ThePlanet that I've been using since 2003 to one in the Netherlands at Leaseweb. The price was more affordable, the hardware is significantly better, and Debian was offered. So far I'm quite pleased with the responsiveness of the machine. Considering that the old box was 20 miles away and the new one is halfway around the world, it's quite impressive.

We'll have to see if anyone at HLUG notices the video archive responding slower.

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Back from Debconf

Lots of fun in Helsinki, but plenty of work left to do. Right now I'm fighting with these two stupid IDE drives full of video files I brought back. One keeps powering off for some reason and I'm concerned that it may give up the ghost. There are about three days worth of talks left to be done and I have the only copy of this material. I'll pick up a 500GB drive to make another copy after I get back from the HLUG meeting tomorrow.

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The Hell Known as DRI CVS

I've been trying and trying to build a new version of the dri-trunk-sid packages but each DRI CVS checkout I've tried has one problem or another. All versions of DRI after 2005-04-20 have a nasty Radeon bug that makes some textures flash black and white. CVS versions from 2005-04-17 to 2005-04-20 have a compilation bug in posix_tty.c that I really don't feel like isolating. I'm working my way back from that date to find the last good CVS checkout. You might say "so what if there is a Radeon rendering bug, DRI covers many other video chips." Well, out of 100-200 different emails commenting on the dri-trunk-sid packages only a handful were related to anything other than ATI Radeons. There are a few people using these packages with old ATI Mach64 cards, VIA, Savage, and Matrox, but Radeon is the favorite by an order of magnitude. Any new version of these packages that has obvious Radeon rendering problems will fill my email inbox with an endless stream of complaints.

I'd like to fix drm-build so that dri-trunk-sid will work properly on PPC and AMD64 machines. I'd also like to package up driconf, but damn it's taking a long time to find a working CVS checkout date.

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Kino with Samsung SCD103

I've had frequent problems importing video over firewire from my SCD103 DV camera. Today I think I found a definitive solution. Using Linux kernel 2.6.11 with the dv1394 module, I can get Kino's AVC controls to turn on and play, fast-forward, rewind, etc. I can't get Kino to start capturing from this camera by simply pressing the "capture" button, but it turns out that's not as big of a problem as I had previously imagined. The simple solution is to activate the AVC controls, hit the play button in kino, wait for the camera to start playing, then hit the capture button. No more iMovie for me.

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More DVD Madness

Well, it turns out that my last batch of DVDs did have audio sync issues. It's difficult to spot these problems without playing into a disc for an hour or so, but after waiting and watching the problem was still there.

I finally managed to produce a DVD that looks and sounds right. I had to go back and export both mpeg video and mpeg audio directly from Cinelerra, then use tcmplex to mux the streams together, but the end result looks good. This leads me to conclude that either (a) Cinelerra is exporting a bad Quicktime DV file, or more likely (b) mplex is messing up the final mpeg file. Since I have a good iso for the last presentation, I'm not going to mess around with it any more. For the next presentation I'll try doing everything normally except using tcmplex for the mux.

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DVD Audio Sync Issues Resolved

After far too many hours of poking, proding, waiting and searching, I believe the answer to my DVD problems has appeared. The workflow that seems to result in FUNCTIONAL DVDs that don't show horrible, seconds long, audio lag after playing for an hour goes like this:

- Import from DV camera with kino
- Load .mov files into cinelerra
- Edit and export as "Quicktime for Linux" selecting DV video and audio
- Convert the resulting .mov into an avi: mencoder -o [output.avi] -ovc lavc -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=mp3 -srate 48000 [input.mov]
- Convert the avi into mpeg audio and video: transcode -i [avi-filename] -y ffmpeg --export_prof dvd-ntsc --export_asr 2 -o [output basename] -D0 -s2 -m [output basename].ac3 -J modfps -export_fps 29.97
- use mplex to create the vob files: mplex -f 8 -o [basename].vob [basename].m2v [basename].ac3
- Create a dvdauthor xml input file by hand or using qdvdauthor
- use dvdauthor to create the directory structure: dvdauthor -o [output directory]/ -x [input.xml]
- use mkisofs to create the iso image: mkisofs -dvd-video -o [output.iso] [input directory/]
- use dvd+rw-booktype to mark the DVD disc as a DVD-Rom.
- use growisofs or cdrecord-prodvd to burn the ISO.

I was worried that the conversion to AVI would kill the video quality since a 15GB quicktime file is being squeezed down into a 498MB AVI, the expanded back into a 1.2GB VOB. The picture and audio quality both seem excellent though, and the sync between the two is dead on.

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More video editing fun

I've been trying to catch up with all of the old HLUG video footage that I've been sitting on. I believe I have a good system worked out now.

1. Import the video using Kino
2. Export the video to a single quicktime file
3. Use the viewer window of Cinelerra to split the video into clips that start at the same point in time
4. Use keyframes to fade between the two video inputs
5. Render back to a quicktime video file
6. Import the quicktime video back into Kino
7. Create a DVD or VCD.

It's a shame that Cinelerra doesn't have better import/export functionality. Kino is terrific in this regard, but it's not very powerful when it comes to editing the video.

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Installing Debian Sarge on a Mac Mini

1. reboot into OSX install CD
2. Hit Installer->Open Disk Utility on menu bar
3. Split the space on the hard drive, lock the second partition, set the type on the first partition to "free space", and Rename the second partition "Macintosh HD". When you're happy, hit the "Partition" button.
4. Go back to the installer and continue installing OSX. Might as well hit "customize" on the installation type screen and add X11.
5. Wait.....forever....and.....ever....
6. Reboot, reregister.
7. Eject the OSX install CD and insert the Debian install CD.
8. Shut down the computer then power it back on while holding down the 'c' key. If your keyboard is connected via a KVM, you'll probably need to unplug it and connect directly.
9. Hit return at the boot prompt to start the installation.
10. The Debian installer is straightforward. When you get to the partitioning stage choose the option for "guided partitioning" using the largest block of free space. You need a properly constructed boot partition for yaboot to work correctly and Debian knows how to set it up for you.
11. All done, another reboot. Load up OSX once to make certain nothing went wrong there then reboot back into Linux and finish the install.
12. Timezone, root password, user password, manual package selection, "q" once aptitude starts, done.
13. Log in as root. If you want to run Unstable rather than Testing, change /etc/apt/sources.list now. "apt-get update ; apt-get -u dist-upgrade" to pull down the latest updates.
14. "apt-get -u install kernel-image-2.6-powerpc kernel-headers-2.6-powerpc" to install the latest kernel.
15. Reboot into Linux again.
16. "apt-get -u install gnome-core x-window-system synaptic gdm".. Let's get a clean deaktop up.
17. Select "ati" as the video driver and leave the bus identifier blank. Say no to the kernel framebuffer.
18. Reboot or "/etc/init.d/gdm start" to bring up X.

Everything but sound works at this point. The snd-powermac module gets loaded without any problems, but /dev/mixer and /dev/dsp are not working. Glxinfo shows that direct rendering in enabled. Glxgears shows around 632 fps. OpenGL performance looks reasonable.

The lack of sound sucks, but others have reported the same problem. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

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DRI and more

Every now and then I'll google around for references to the dri-trunk-sid packages I keep building. I'm mostly interested in seeing if the folks who mention them indicate that they're building the DRM kernel modules as they should or if anyone has decided to fork them.

Occasionally, I'm surprised to see something like this where someone notices a problem with my web server. In this case the message seems to be noting that the index at www.wazzim.com mentions that my server was stolen.

This is a note I put up on that domain many moons back. The server was stolen by the colo I was running it through and all of the content on that domain was lost in the process. I probably should have put a less menacing explanation on that domain. The main point was to explain why the content that was previously there was no longer available.

Lots of links seem to be pointing at the new Xorg DRI packages in http://www.nixnuts.net/files/experimental/ I really didn't want these to spread too far until I get all of the kinks worked out of the packaging. There's no worse feeling than finding out that a package you've created has caused someone hideous problems. Even when the problem someone has is completely unrelated to the work you have done.

So....what am I saying here? In a nutshell, please write to me about problems with the software or websites here before you spread the news to the masses. The ISO mentioned in that other thread was downloaded over 400 times and only one person had a problem with the download.

As far as dri-trunk-sid goes.... I'd still love to see someone else taking over these packages. I'm definitely not the best person to be maintaining them. Until that happens though, I'll keep working on them and trying to improve them. Over the past few days I've been working on an automated DRM module build system that will eliminate the need for end users to know about the DRM build process. I'll just hook it into the postinst script and the DRM will be built automatically.

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Screw the RocketRaid


I finally gave up on the RocketRaid 1640 after I updated my kernel and ended up with an unbootable system. Using a proprietary driver, compiled outside the kernel tree, to mount the root filesystem is needlessly complex. Since I still want a RAID 1 array and I don't want to waste CPU cycles on it, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a 3ware 8506-4lp card. This device fits the bill nicely since (1) the driver is GPL and included in the 2.6 kernels, (2) Debian detects the card and creates the proper initrd on its own, (3) it's a true hardware RAID array. The only downside of the 8506 is that the card doesn't let your create a RAID 1 array by duplicating the data from one drive to the other...when you create the array you kill the contents of both drives.

Anyone in the market for a slightly used RocketRaid 1640?

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Bar Business

Last week I spent a ton of time up at The Speakeasy Bar trying to put the place into good working order. This week I'll try to get a mailing list up for the bar and see what I can do about adding some signs to promote the bands that will be playing there. It's a great place, but we need to attract more customers.

On a different subject, here's a picture of my wife Shazia and I from a few months back.



I'm also working on two more HLUG videos, new DRI packages, and a new XMMS Infinity package.

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Damn You Maxtor!

My 240GB Maxtor drive on my primary workstation bit the big one last thursday. It seems like the second half of the drive is gone and the first half is unaffected. Part of /home is still useable, but all of /usr/local is gone. Since this is the 3rd time I've lost vast amounts of data due to a disk failure in as many years, I decided to set up a RAID 1 array with 2 massive drives. Oddly enough, my wife felt that $500 for a crash-proof RAID array was reasonable (I may have lost a few hundred pictures from our last few vacations) so I picked up a RocketRaid 1640 card and two 300GB SATA drives.

The RocketRaid isn't a perfect solution, but it seems to be working reasonably well. My biggest complaint is that the drivers and RAID management software are proprietary. Aside from that, I'll have to make a new initrd with the hpt374 module every time the kernel gets updated. Installation was reasonably straight forward though. Hook up both drives, install Debian onto the first drive, create the new initrd with the hpt374 module, sd_mod, and scsi_mod, edit /etc/fstab to look for the partitions on /dev/sda instead of /dev/hde, reboot and have the card mirror the first drive over the second drive, install the management software, done.

Without a doubt there are better choices for a SATA RAID card. I didn't want to go too crazy on price though.

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DVD Notes

Creating mpeg2 video and audio suitable for a vob file:

transcode -V --export_fps 0,4 --export_asr 2 -x mplayer -y mpeg2enc,mp2enc -F "8,-q 4" -w 9000 --encode_fields b -Z 720x480 -E 48000 -i input_file -o output_file

Joining mpeg2 video and audio:

mplex -f 8 -o output.mpg input.m2v input.mpa

Split the file into block with vobview using "i". (creates /tmp/image.iso)
Join it back together and make menus with qdvdauthor

In unrelated news, it's election day, the DRI CVS checkout I was trying to build didn't work, and Duilio Protti the upstream author of xmms-infinity agrees that getting rid of the infinite_states binary data file is a good idea altogether.

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Infinity Done and More

Reading binary data from infinite_states was the main problem with xmms-infinity. I went ahead and swapped all of the int, short, etc with gint32, gint16, etc just to cover all of the possible problems with different architectures. After submitting the package it looks like xmms-infinity is working across all Debian supported architectures now. The upstream author liked the patch and says he'll integrate it into the next release.

Right now I'm compiling a new version of the Debian packages of DRI CVS. I tried building packages of this code several times over the last week, but DRI has refused to compile for quite a while now. From discussion on DRI-Devel it looks like this version might have problems with R100 video cards. Hopefully I'll get some free time to test my Radeon 7000 and Radeon 7500 with the new version.

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XMMS-Infinity

I think I've tracked down the bug in XMMS-Infinity on big endian machines. It looks like effects_load_effects is swapping the byte ordering of the data read from infinite_states. I'll play around with this some more after getting some sleep.

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DRI Benchmarks

It's been several months since I did the initial run of benchmarks on DRI compatible video cards. I started another run of benchmarks but stopped after a only a few cards. Too little had changed at that point to make the effort worthwhile.

Since then there has been a good deal of improvement on the Savage and R200 drivers. I'm not certain what improvements have been made on other chipsets, but I assume it's not much. For the next iteration of benchmarks though I'm going to make some substantial changes.

1. Adding additional video cards:
- Radeon 7500 64MB
- Radeon 8500LE 64MB
- Radeon 8800 FireGL 128MB
- Radeon 8500 128MB (Standard, not AIW)
- Nvidia Geforce 256 128MB
- Radeon 9200 256MB
- Voodoo 3
- Intel 740? Does it work?

2. Changing the demos used:
- massive1 Quake2 demo instead of demo1
- UCGuideDemo1 and UCGuideDemo2 Quake3 demos instead of demo four
- adding RevShogo demo
- maybee adding UT2K4 and Doom3 for the Radeons?

3. Adding the Summit drivers to the comparison?

4. Fixing some problems I caused:
- The Mach64 driver does work when set up properly
- The sis and r128 drivers might be more reliable with a bit of tweaking

It will be quite a bit of work, but the feedback on the original benchmarks was very encouraging. I'm not the only geek wondering whether a 256MB Radeon 9200 is better or worse than a 64MB Radeon 8500LE.

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DRI Developments

A newer version of my DRI packages for Debian is in the works. A great deal of progress has been made with the r200 (Radeon 8500 and better) branch of DRI. For months Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004 have been unplayable due to frequent lockups. For months Descent 3, HeavyGear 2, and Shogo have been unplayable due to problems with projected textures. Though I haven't tested recent versions of the DRI CVS yet, talk on DRI-Devel indicates that these problems should be mostly, if not completely, fixed.

I've also filed an ITA (Intent To Adopt) on the xmms-infinity package in Debian. I'm already maintaining four other XMMS visualization plugin packages. Infinity is another good visualization that needs a bit of work. The current version is completely broken. Hopefully I can get a new one in before Debian Sarge is released.

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First Post!

Every blog has to start somewhere. This is the first post of mine.

I intend to use this area to voice random thoughts, news about the different projects I'm working on, and political nonsense that my wife doesn't want to hear about.
If you have comments about anything written here, send them to john _@_ this domain.

Have fun everyone.

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