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Unboxing the eeePC

Michael — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:46:12 +0000

So for some of you who know me, I’ve been going on about the eeePC laptop for sometime and I recently (today) received a free eeePC 4G Surf from my bank. As I switched to some new account type and jumped through all their hoops. Needless to say I am pretty pleased so far and can’t wait to get hacking on this thing. Enough with the talk, on with the pictures.

mkdvdiso

Michael — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:17:05 +0000

A simple perl script utilizing mkisofs that takes a VIDEO_TS directory full of vobs and creates a dvd iso image. It needs a bit of further modification to make it more robost, but the basics are there and its fully usable.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# a script to create dvd iso images using mkisofs
# created by: Michael Sutherland, May 22, 2008
#
 
use warnings;
use strict;
use Getopt::Long;
 
## variables ##
my $mkisofs = '/usr/bin/mkisofs';
my $path    = '';
my $iso     = '';
my $title   = '';
my $cmd;
 
## user options ##
 
GetOptions(
        "path=s"        =>      \$path,
        "iso=s"         =>      \$iso,
        "title=s"       =>      \$title,
);
 
## sanity checks ##
 
if ( ( ! $path ) || ( ! $iso ) || ( ! $title ) ) {
 
    &usage();
}
 
if ( ! -f $mkisofs ) {
 
    print "unable to find mkisofs at $mkisofs\n";
    exit 2;
}
 
## flush the buffer ##
$| = 1;
 
## program start ##
 
$cmd = "$mkisofs -dvd-video -J -L -r -V $title -o $iso $path 2>&1";
#print "running: $cmd\n";
 
open (MKISOFS, "$cmd |"); 
 
while () {
 
    chomp($_);
    printf "\rmkdvdiso: %40s", $_ if /estimate finish/;
}
 
printf "\rmkdvdiso: %40s\n", "completed at";
 
## subroutines ##
 
sub usage() {
 
    print "mkdvdiso - a quick utility for creating dvd iso images\n\n";
    print "usage:\n";
    print "\t-path\tpath and directory containing the VIDEO_TS 
            & AUDIO_TS folders\n";
    print "\t-iso\tpath and name of iso image to be created\n";
    print "\t-title\ttitle for the dvd iso image\n";
 
    exit 1;
}

Lirc and iMon Receiver Pauses

Michael — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:14:34 +0000

Well recently I split my two myth boxes into a true slave and master configuration. I have to admit this was more troublesome that I expected. I decided my myth box in the living room would be a slave with no tuner. Since the case (silverstone lc10m) has the built in imon IR receiver, I figured I was all set.

I was even more impressed when I found out lirc now offers direct support and I no longer had to use venky’s build.

However as usual I encountered an issue. I was able to compile and install lirc without issue. Using irw produces output from the multi-median remote. But it also highlights another issue. The ir receiver just randomly stops receiving signals and hangs for about a minute. This was very frustrating and I hit the forums trying to find an answer. All I could find was from an earlier revision of lirc from around 2005, after that nothing.

As far as I can understand it, it appears that LCDproc is interfering with the ir receiver somehow. So here I am stuck with lirc that kinda works and no real solution. I will continue to search for the answer but until then, I’m stuck using a keyboard, which is not ideal.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Where’s The Disk Space?

Michael — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:12:41 +0000

Interested in what exactly is consuming most of my disk space on my laptop I took a look using Disk Inventory X. The little utility fired up and scanned my hard drive in no time.

When the scan was complete I was given a detailed map of everything on my hard drive, organized by directory. Optionally there is also a side menu showing file usage by type. This comes in very handy for finding out where all your disk space is being used.

Maybe I should just get a larger disk?

Screen Blanking MythTV

Michael — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:03:05 +0000

So very recently I setup up another mythtv pvr that runs in my bedroom. The point of this was to encourage me to get to bed at a decent hour and to put a stop to me falling asleep on the couch.

The setup went okay, although I must admit I encountered some issues with the whole frontend/backend slave setup which I will detail in a later post.

This post is about blanking the screen as I often fall asleep while watching a movie or show. This increases the chance of screen burn in, and is something I want to avoid.

I am still researching how this can be done automatically but in the interim I have come up with the following solution. I have setup the power button on my hauppauge remote to execute a script with changes the runlevel from 5, to 3. Essentially stopping the frontend and bringing the system down to a terminal.

Since most default installs automatically blank the terminal after a set period of time of inactivity I am set. Now when I am drifting off and far to cozy to get out of bed to shut off the monitor I can simply press power and let the system enter runlevel 3. Then after a few minutes the screen will blank automatically.

To get this to work I added the following configuration to the .lircrc file in /home/mythtv.

# Power Button begin
prog = irexec
button = Power
config = /home/mythtv/powerbutton.sh
end

With that done the next step is to create the actual script that will switch runlevels. (Keep in mind this assumes your mythtv user has sudo access to run the init command) The following script is run from /home/mythtv/powerbutton.sh.

#!/bin/bash
 
RL=`/sbin/runlevel | awk '{print $2}'`;
LOG="/home/mythtv/pb.log";
 
if [ $RL -eq 5 ]
then
   # shutdown
   sudo /sbin/init 3;
   printf "`date`: powerbutton.sh: [$RL] switching to runlevel 3\n" >> $LOG
   killall irexec
   sleep 1;
   /usr/bin/irexec &
   printf "`date`: powerbutton.sh: starting irexec.\n" >> $LOG
   sleep 1;
   setterm -reset
   printf "`date`: powerbutton.sh: resetting terminal.\n" >> $LOG
   sleep 20;
   RL=`/sbin/runlevel | awk '{print $2}'`;
   printf "`date`: powerbutton.sh: switched to [$RL], exiting.\n" >> $LOG
else
   # startup
   sudo /sbin/init 5;
   printf "`date`: powerbutton.sh: [$RL] switching to runlevel 5\n" >> $LOG
   sleep 20;
   RL=`/sbin/runlevel | awk '{print $2}'`;
   printf "`date`: powerbutton.sh: switched to [$RL], exiting.\n" >> $LOG
fi
exit 0

With that done, all that is left is to test it out. Of course you will need to either reboot to pickup the changes or restart lircd, then the mythtv frontend.

Keep in mind this is just temporary solution and not something I plan to keep doing. I know there are probably far better ways of doing this and I will be looking into them in the future.

File Server Update

Michael — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:05:57 +0000

This is an update to my earlier filer posts (Part 1, Part 2), where I put together a windows server 2003 and set up a raid 5 array. Everything was working great for a long time, but as expected eventually a drive stopped working.

Not a problem the raid 5 array handled the failure without issue. What I suspect brought this on was a series of power failures one day. Along with the failed drive also came other issues. The primary ide controller on the motherboard no longer functioned, and I had to switch to the secondary just to boot the server.

Due to the lose of the ide controller, I had to remove the cdrom drive to put in a replacement drive. After that was done, I started resyncing the raid. All appeared to be going well until I took a look the next day and noticed the raid was still in a failed state. Taking a look at the replaced drive it was appearing as a 750GB drive. Since it was a 250GB drive I knew this wasn’t right. Checking out the drives properties revealed another issue. The system couldn’t read the drive information properly.

Great I thought, not only did the primary controller die, but the secondary controller slave isn’t working properly either. Signs to me that the motherboard cannot be trusted. I decided to swap out the motherboard from my desktop machine.

Of course the system didn’t boot, but performing an inplace reinstall, then plugging my raid drives back in brought everything back online. Not a single byte lost. I added the new drive to the raid 5 volume and started the resyncing process.

After a few hours all was well and I had a nice healthy file server.

Script Writing Contest?

Michael — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:44:28 +0000

I was surfing around the web lastnight and happened upon a site 10 linux commands you’ve never used. I went through the list. And learned a few things. With my interest peaked I headed to the main page, and thats when I saw it.

A contest, thats right a script writing contest. Now I am no expert, but I do like to write scripts, and do like to tinker. At first I had no intention of entering, but I figured I’d give it a try and see if I could improve the script.

I tinkered and I tinkered, and finally got something working, started adding features and before I knew it I had something pretty good and useful. So I submitted it. My entry can be downloaded here.

So what is it? What is it used for? Well it allows you to make http requests to webservers via the command line. You can view the header information and raw html output.

I’m not sure how I will stack up, or how many entries have been submitted, but wish me luck still the same. For me it wasn’t about winning, it was more about writing something useful.

OSX Look for Kubuntu

Michael — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:19:42 +0000

Recently my need for the nice smooth look of OSX forced me into trying to take a simple kubuntu install and seeing just how close I could get it to the osx look and feel.

I used baghira to do most of this and followed the guide located here. Now I like to think I got really close, and I was very happy with the overall look and feel of the system. But the more I used it the more problems I found.

It seems baghira doesn’t play well with common linux programs like the Gimp, Firefox, and others, causing them to show up completely black, crash, or to just run like ass.

For what it was worth it was a fun exercise, but I don’t think I will try it again. Perhaps there are other forms of eye candy for linux. I will continue to play around until I have the desktop install I want. Take a look at some of the screen shots I took of my efforts.

Creating a Win98 Restore Partition

Michael — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 05:08:40 +0000

Tired of having to work on the old family clunker every time you go home for a visit? Well I sure am. Every time I am down I find myself sitting up into the wee hours of the morning downloading utilities to help rid the countless viruses and spyware from it. Well I am sick of it, so last time I had to format and reinstall it, I created myself a folder where I placed several handy utilities such as Ad-Aware. Well its no surprise that the last time I went down, my utilities were gone and the computer was beyond repair. This time I decided something had to be done, but what? Its windows 98 for godsake.

I thought about using deep freeze, but I could just hear them complaining now. I tried to install such and such and its always gone after we reboot. I didn’t want that either, as even the antivirus would lose any updates after a reboot. So I formulated a plan. I was going to create a restore partition come hell or high water. The below describes how to do this.

Let me first describe the hardware I have to work with. The PC itself is a Intel Pentium 266Mhz with 64MB DIMM and a 8Gb hard disk.

The first step was to create 3 partitions on the hard disk, because its windows 98 I was limited to using a single primary partition, and two logical partitions. I gave c: 2GB, d: 1.5GB and e: the remaining space. The d: partition is going to be for me. A secret partition where I can keep all my files and the restore image. When done, I formatted each partition and ended up with the following layout.

c:\	2GB	System
d:\	1.5GB	Restore
e:\	4.5GB	Data

With that done, I installed windows 98 as normal, and installed all applications and updates as necessary. I also installed Partition Magic as we will need to convert the Restore partition to a primary partition so we can boot from it later. Once the system is the way you want it and any data is restored as needed. In this case anything on e:\ will not be wiped when the system restore is launched, So I pointed silly stuff like My Documents to e:\ and moved a lot of the user files there.

As you will need Ghost for this project, its wise to install it now as well, using it to create a ghost floppy, once you have the floppy created copy ghost.exe to the d: partition. Also copy the ghost.env file from the c:\program files\ghost\ directory to d:\. You will need this so we can automate the restore process. I placed both of these files in a directory called d:\apps\ghost\. Once that is done you can uninstall ghost. Also now is an ideal time to use partition magic to convert the d: partition to primary. It will complain about possible file corruption but just ignore those warnings.

Next from a command window, I created a system on the restore partition.

C:\>sys c:\ d:\
System Transfered
C:\>

Once that was done, I copied all the files from my windows 98 boot disk. Be advised this is not the same as the windows 98 setup boot disk. Instead its just a standard boot disk. If you don’t have one, you can get one from bootdisk.com. I also copied doskey, choice.com and mouse.com to make my life a little easier. I then modified the autoexec.bat to read as the following.

@echo off
path=c:\;c:\apps\ghost\
mouse
doskey
call restore.bat

My config.sys contains the following.

device=himem.sys

And finally after an extensive battle, I was able to write this batch file that prompts for confirmation before beginning the restore. *Please note when using the dos command choice, the order you detect the ERRORLEVEL is crucial. As if the first IF statement returns true, the ERRORLEVEL is set to 1, and your logic will be out of whack.

@echo off
 
cls
echo.
echo This will restore the system.
echo All data on c: will be lost.
echo.
choice Continue restore 
IF ERRORLEVEL 2 goto cancel
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 goto restore
goto end
 
:restore
cls
echo.
echo The system will now be restored.
echo.
c:\apps\ghost\ghost.exe -clone,mode=pload,src=c:\sysimage\win98.gho:1,dst=1:1 -sure
cls
echo.
echo The system has now been restored.
echo Please restart the system.
echo.
pause
c:\restart.com
goto end
 
:cancel
cls
echo.
echo System restore cancelled.
echo.
echo Your system will now restart.
pause
c:\restart.com
 
:end

With that out of the way, I installed a boot manager called XOSL (Extended Operating System Loader). Which is available for free at ranish.com. It comes with extensive documentation and installs easily. I installed it to the d: partition as later I will hide this from windows 98. Thus keeping it safe and out of the reach of my family. When its installed, reboot and setup a new boot option for the restore partition. I also took the time to edit the windows 98 option hiding the restore partition. Also take the time to set passwords on the configure and options menus.

With that complete boot back into windows, removing applications your family shouldn’t be using, such as partition magic and ghost. Complete everything, and configure any thing else that still needs doing or that you would later receive a call about. When the system is to your liking, its time to create the ghost image. Reboot and select the boot option for system restore.

This will boot d: and launch the batch script provided above. When prompted for confirmation select N, then to return to the prompt without having the system reboot, Ctrl+C at the pause menu, terminating the batch job. This will return you to the c:\ prompt, which is actually our restore partition d:\ in windows. Here we will use ghost to create the image of our system. Start ghost and select “partition > to image.” Select the 2GB partition and create the image in c:\sysimage\win98.gho.

Thats it. The hardest part of this is figuring out the switches necessary for ghost to work without prompting. But since that is all in the batch file restore.bat this should work for almost everyone.

I hope this helps someone as I was unable to find any guides on doing this, but I knew it had to be possible.

Raids Take a Long Time

Michael — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 05:03:25 +0000

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. I have officially encountered my first raid problem. Seems that during the recent batch of power outages, one of which was longer than my UPS was able to cover. Transformed my raid volume from healthy to degraded.

I didn’t even notice, it just kept plugging along with one of the drives considered to be missing. A reboot allowed the system to see the drive again and I am currently resyncing. But fishing through the event viewer has shown a lot of bad blocks detected on the first drive.

*Sigh, seems I will be needing new drives sooner rather than later. I also need to set my UPS to power down my system, and to find some sort of monitoring software.

On a side note regarding “raids”. And you know who you are. I believe you promised to scp me a couple of files? After your raid…sound familiar? It should. I am still waiting, I guess Joe was right. “Raids do take a long time.”