Thursday, April 17, 2008

Plotting SVN history??

Found a blog post by Samuel Jansen were he plots his subversion repository history so out of curiosity I plotted mine too...

actually nothing interesting, steady development almost linear and as you can see but it made me notice that I am almost near my 1000 mark!! when I reach it then I will have an excuse to celebrate and give a nice "1000 SVN passed mark present".

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Linux Cafe in Akihabara

Have been in Akihabara (Electric Town) several times but never saw this shop before:





If you read the details below the logo you will see this shop is been there since 2001!! and I never saw it... I must go check my eyes. Anyway if you are an Open Source person walking around Akihabara you may well pass a get yourself a nice cup of open source coffee.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Simple Mail Server (Kubuntu)

If you need a small personal mail server to send log reports and system alarms from your Kubuntu machines to a local and/or external mail address then you may use Exim4 that is the default mail server (MTA) that comes with (K)Ubuntu.

To install is very easy:


1 sudo aptitude install exim4 exim4-base



and to configure simply run:


1 sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config



and in the first dialog (image below) select "internet site". For all next options I used the defaults that would allow local users and services to send emails locally and to remote addresses (i.e. gmail accounts).


Now to test the new server you can send a simple email to your Gmail account:


1 mail -s test mygmail@gmail.com

2 test mail

3 .

4 Cc:



The "-s" switch is the mail subject. After the command simply type whatever you want in the mail body. To finish the email press followed by a dot "." and then again. After this you will be prompted with "Cc:" so press and then check your Gmail account. You should have received an email with the message and subject you used above.

Now say you want to receive LogWatch reports or any other mail directed to root in your Gmail account. Then you can simply create an alias in the "/etc/aliases" file like:


1 # Added by installer for initial user

2 root:   mygmail@gmail.com



then rebuild the aliases database


1 sudo newaliases



If you require more complex mail configurations you may check my previous posts about Sendmail and Postfix setup in (K)Ubuntu here.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Get latest ffmpeg (svn) in FreeBSD-7.0

If you want to compile the latest ffmpeg from subversion with some external libraries support like x264, faac, Theora and Vorbis in the latest FreeBSD release (7.0) then follow this simple steps:

If you do not have the ports tree installed (i.e. /usr/ports is empty or non existent) then you can use portsnap to download and update it (these commands must be done as root):


1 pkg_add -r portsnap

2 mkdir /usr/ports

3 portsnap fetch

4 portsnap extract

5 portsnap update



Install some ports to enable more funcionality in ffmpeg (these commands also must be done as root):


 1 # faac support

 2 cd /usr/ports/audio/faac

 3 make install clean

 4

 5 # vorbis support

 6 cd /usr/ports/audio/vorbis-tools

 7 make install clean

 8

 9 # x264 support

10 cd /usr/ports/multimedia/x264

11 make install clean

12

13 # theora support

14 cd /usr/ports/multimedia/libtheora

15 make install clean

16

17 # ffplay support

18 cd /usr/ports/deve/sdl12

19 make install clean



Checkout ffmpeg from subversion, configure, compile and install (only the last command needs root priviledges);


 1 # checkout ffmpeg from subversion

 2 svn co svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg

 3 cd ffmpeg

 4

 5 # export library and include paths

 6 # so configure can find the external

 7 # libraries (i.e. x264)

 8 export LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib

 9 export CPATH=/usr/local/include

10

11 # run configure with desired options

12 ./configure --enable-gpl --enable-pthreads \

13  --enable-shared --enable-swscale  \

14  --enable-libx264 --enable-libfaac \

15  --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis \

16  --enable-encoder=g726 --enable-encoder=ljpeg \

17  --enable-encoder=mjpeg

18

19 # compile using GNU Make (gmake), not BSD Make

20 gmake

21

22 # install

23 su root -c 'gmake install'



If you want to enable other external codec libraries supported by ffmpeg make sure to install their respective ports (if available) and then run the configure script with the desired libraries enabled. You can see a list of supported codec libraries with ".configure --help".

Note that this instructions were tested with revision 12684 of ffmpeg subverion but ffmpeg is a very active project and this instructions are not guarantee to work with the latest subversion revision.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Japanese Input in KDE 4.0.3 (Anthy)

So you want to try the newest and greatest KDE 4.0.3 release but you can't because you need to be able to write other languages other than English like in my case Japanese, Chinese and/or Korean??

After googling I found here that there is a scim input method that allows input of these languages in KDE4 and also fixes some problems with proprietary software like Skype, Adobe Reader, etc.

This input method is called scim-bridge and can be easily installed in Kubuntu with the command:

sudo aptitude install scim-bridge-agent scim-bridge-client-qt4 scim-bridge-client-qt scim-bridge-client-gtk

Then to enable scim-bridge as your input method you can use im-switch:

im-switch -s scim-bridge

or if you do not have im-switch then you can do it manually with:

sudo ln -sf /etc/alternatives/xinput-all_ALL /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/scim-bridge


Seems that scim-bridge is now the default input method in Ubuntu/Kubuntu but not sure, see resources below to get more detailed explanation on how to setup SCIM in Ubuntu.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SCIM
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SCIM/Kubuntu
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InputMethods/SCIM/Setup