theboywho.me.uk

Some packages in Gentoo require kernel sources to be installed. In my case it was the DRBD kernel module.

The system I wanted to install it on is actually a Linode. They provide the sources for the VPS kernels but I needed a way to pursuade Portage that it didn’t need to install gentoo-sources before drbd-kernel. I didn’t want to use –nodeps.

I found the solution in chapter 5 of part 3 of the Gentoo Handbook:

1. Create a file called package.provided in /etc/portage/profile. You may need to create that directory:
2. Add a line corresponding to the package you want to inject:

   sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.25-r1

Note: The package name you provide must exist in portage. You can’t inject virtual packages and you have to provide a full package name with version number. The following don’t work:

virtual/kernel-sources
sys-kernel/gentoo-sources
=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-*

While discovering how to get MobileMail to use multiple ‘From’ addresses, I found that the Accounts.plist file can spontaneously change format.

Well not quite spontaneously. I copied the file from my iPhone: it was plain text. I went into Settings, on the phone, and added a new Mail account, copied the file again: it was no longer text. According to the ‘file’ command it had become an ‘Apple binary property list’. (more…)

MobileMail’s configuration options on the iPhone don’t allow you to specify multiple addresses for a single e-mail account. I found this article which provides a long winded method – you add a new account for each address you need. Thankfully, if you have a jailbroken iPhone, there is a much easier way.
(more…)

A friend asked me: “Do you know how to stop Windows making noises when you backspace into nothing?”

The solution is to set the Windows Default Beep sound to nothing:

1. Control Panel->Sound
2. ‘Sounds’ tab
3. Set the ‘Default Beep’ to (None)

Voilà!

My little NanoBlogger experiment has ended. As much as I like the console and using nano to create posts I have to admit to loving richer web-based interfaces like the one provided by WordPress.

My old NanoBlogger posts should re-appear soon. Once that’s done I will be posting some iPhone-related stuff!

While researching the original iPhone I decided to try and find out if T-Mobile supported EDGE on their network.

First a little background:

GPRS stands for General Packet Radio Service. Simply put, it is used to provide Internet connectivity to mobile phones. GPRS allows a maximum download speed of 80kbit/s, which isn’t a lot faster than a dial-up modem (max: 56kbit/s).

EDGE is an upgrade to GPRS which is sometimes refered to as EGPRS. It provides for download speeds of up to 236.8kbit/s.

The original iPhone only supported EDGE, and in the UK, O2 spent a lot of money upgrading their network to supported. Since over here we all use 3G (UMTS) for out high speed mobile internet.

According to Wikipedia, both Orange and Vodaphone have EDGE networks. T-Mobile is listed along side them as a ‘Multi-country operator’, but no list of nations is given. Though it does appear in the list of ‘Single country operators’ – multiple times.

Though I can’t recall the acutall URLs now, I read in a few forums that some people thought that T-Mobile UK did have an EDGE network. To cut through all the ambiguity I decided to ask T-Mobile directly. I recieved a succint reply from Priyanka’ of the ‘Customer Services Email Team’:

Thanks for your email, asking me whether we support EDGE/EGPRS.

I’d like to tell you that we don’t support EDGE/EGPRS, we support only UMTS, 3G and GPRS.

So there we have it: T-Mobile: No EDGE, GRPS and 3G Only.

I upgraded to Firefox 3.0 today and discovered that one of my favourite extensions, MinimizeToTray, isn’t supported. Luckily it can be fooled in to working with the new version.

These are the instruction I found at addons.mozilla.org:

1. Download latest version 0.0.1.2006102615+
2. Rename it to *.zip
3. Open install.rdf in edit mode
4. Replace 2.0.0.* by 3.* in Mozilla Firefox section.
5. Save file and rename zip archiv back to .xpi
6. Install and enjoy

or you can just get my already modified version here

I tried to play jRisk today and received this lovely error:

~ $ jrisk
Locking assertion failure.  Backtrace:
#0 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0x7f14b31229dc]
#1 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0(xcb_xlib_unlock+0x1c) [0x7f14b3122ac9]
#2 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6(_XReply+0x10a) [0x7f14b336d999]
#3 /opt/sun-jdk-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/amd64/xawt/libmawt.so [0x7f14b3891786]
#4 /opt/sun-jdk-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/amd64/xawt/libmawt.so [0x7f14b38724eb]
#5 /opt/sun-jdk-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/amd64/xawt/libmawt.so [0x7f14b38727bd]
#6 /opt/sun-jdk-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/amd64/xawt/libmawt.so (Java_sun_awt_X11GraphicsEnvironment_initDisplay+0x12) [0x7f14b3872a32]
#7 [0x7f14be6e9878]
java: xcb_xlib.c:82: xcb_xlib_unlock: Assertion 'c->xlib.lock' failed.
Aborted

After much Googling, I arrived at the Ubuntu forums where there was talk about using ’sed’ to alter the awt library. I, however, had a vague recollection that there was some environment variable that could be used to work around the problem.
And lo:

export LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK=true

There it was in the Ubuntu forums. I’m off to conquer Europe.