dpkg error

I just received an error while running aptitude,

dpkg: parse error, in file ‘/var/lib/dpkg/available’ near line 87 package ‘libxml-libxml-perl’: duplicate value for `Size’ field

The fix that worked for me was to issue a:

dpkg –clear-avail

rebuilding a mythtv recorded shows database

Ok, so late one night I decided to upgrade my MythTV server… Yeah, I was bored with my insomnia..

I’ve kept it with Debian stable throughout the years but this time I wanted to give it lvm and ext4 (squeeze) and decided to jump into testing instead of pining it.

It had been awhile since I backed up my database and yes, I backed up everything to and external HDD but var.. After all, I did want a fresh install and it was late at night.

Well the new installation went well and myth was working nicely but without my recordings that are on a separate drive under xfs. Sure it recorded new shows but bugger it, I wanted my old ones back.. My music and photos came back nicely after I rdiff’d my /home partition but my recordings!!???

Well this is what I did to recover them, google wasn’t so nice this time.

This is on Debian but should give you a rough idea if on another *nix

First off, create a fresh database:

$ cd /usr/share/mythtv/sql

mysql -u root -p < mc.sql

Then restore your backup:
This should work fine if your .mythtv/backuprc is present.

/usr/share/mythtv/mythconverg_restore.pl --filename /path/to/your/<mythtvbackupdir>/mythconverg-xxxxxxxxx.sql.gz

So now we have a working db up until your last backup but what about the rest of the recordings?

Thanks to Greg Froese you’ll find a perl script in /usr/share/doc/mythtv-backend/contrib/recovery/ called myth.rebuilddatabase.pl.gz

gunzip it, chmod 700 myth.re…

Run that with the options you require, I needed –pass and –dir but if you have a default setup you should be fine without any extra options.

As it goes through your recordings, it’ll prompt you for info on the ones it finds that aren’t already in the db. Although you can manually enter the details, which can be a bugger if you can’t remember what it was from the file name, “2099_20100523230000.mpg”,
I found it easier just to “enter” my way through the script and use myth itself, to fill in the blanks.

First off play the file so you can remember what it was exactly then press “M”, -> “recording options”, -> “change recording title” then fill in the title and subtitle for it.

Rinse and repeat.

You’ll now have your Myth back like nothing had gone wrong.

PS. I wrote this down late at night the following night so I might of missed something.. Let us know if I have.

Wii balance board rechargable battery pack

I just got myself one of these a few days back and had all types of trouble with the balance board. It was turning off intermittently while playing certain games on wii fit plus.

After trying several things, it turns out that the lug / terminal on the battery pack wasn’t maintaining contact during certain pressure being applied above the battery pack area on the board.

I’ve pushed the lug out a bit to allow for contact to be maintained while using the board and so far, all seems good.

I will update if I get further problems.

Asus vk226h

I just picked one of these up and can report that the webcam does work under linux.

usb 3-8: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
[ 4280.068021] usb 3-8: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 4280.076673] usb 3-8: New USB device found, idVendor=04f2, idProduct=b11c
[ 4280.076678] usb 3-8: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[ 4280.076681] usb 3-8: Product: ASUS USB2.0 Webcam
[ 4280.076683] usb 3-8: Manufacturer: Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd.
[ 4280.309790] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device ASUS USB2.0 Webcam (04f2:b11c)
[ 4280.320136] input: ASUS USB2.0 Webcam as /class/input/input11
[ 4280.336152] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
[ 4280.336159] USB Video Class driver (v0.1.0)

Cairo-dock svn script english translation.

Cairo-dock is a cool dock for the linux OS. Mav, one of the dev’s has provided a svn update script for Cairo-dock but only in French. I have done a rough translation of it into English.

If you would like to try Cairo-dock and use the translated script, you can get it from here.

Debian lenny with emerald themes for compiz-fusion

This assumes that you already have Compiz-fusion installed and are after that little extra.

First off, you’ll need to grab the emerald sources, which can be found here:

http://releases.compiz-fusion.org/0.7.6/emerald-0.7.6.tar.bz2

Do your normal unpack, cd, ./configure, make, make install.

That will work but there’s a small tweak needed to get it running. It places the needed libraries into /usr/local/lib.

Check to see that the path is in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/libc.conf. If it is, good, if not, add it. Then run ldconfig as root. It will update the paths and all should be working after that. Check with emerald –replace.

Wine Steam game links

I recently setup Steam within wine to enjoy hl2 again. All is good except when I notice Trackmania Forever on the main Steam page as a free download. Try as I might the little clicky install thingy wouldn’t do its job.

Having a sniff around, I came across this, comment #2. http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15263

Basically from your browser of choice goto http://store.steampowered.com/

Navigate to the game your after, click on the purchase/install link and that should open up a small popup window asking whether or not you have steam installed. Right click anywhere within that window and choose “view page source”.

Now your after a chunk of code that looks something like this:

<td
        width="260" height="115"
	align="center"
	class="gotSteam_yes" onmouseover="this.className='gotSteam_yes_ovr';" onmouseout="this.className='gotSteam_yes';"
	onclick="opener.location.href='steam://run/11020'; window.close();"
	>Yes, I already have<br>Steam installed!
</td>

The bit that we find interesting is this, “opener.location.href=’steam://run/11020′;

Open that location through wine as noted within the original comment or through Playonlinux like this

playonlinux --run Steam steam://run/11020

Debian amd64 on a Lenovo R61.

I just brought myself a Lenovo R61 (89185KM). These are some basic notes on how my install of Debian etch via an i386 net-install cd went. I had initially tried amd64 but still flakey flash, java etc.

Booted fine.

Partition table created fine. Leaving a windows partition.

ethernet card detected and working fine.
Apt working fine. I did have a hiccup at package installation but re-running it solved what ever the problem was. I only chose to load laptop support and base config at this time. I Will load up X desktop later.

Grub installed fine.

On the initial reboot, acpi support complained about no such file or directory for system-manufacturer, system-product-name, system-version and bios-version. Vbetool segfaulted.

The Proprietary Nvidia drivers installed nicely and gave me a basic X session. All good. This is with the x86-169-07.pkg2 drivers. A nice guide can be found here.

For a stable eth and for sound, you’ll need to either install kernel version 2.6.23 from source or pull it from sid although there are some patches floating around.

Note on sound. For sound to work correctly on boot, you’ll need to have the modem enabled in bios otherwise all hell breaks loose..

Moving from Nvidia to Ati on Linux

Being a gamer, I use the proprietary Linux drivers and with the recent Ati activity, have found cause to move over.
I’ve just finished my first move and found a few gotchas along the way. Here is a method to avoid them.

1.) Remove the nvidia driver.

As root, run sh NVIDIA-Linux---pkg.run --uninstall

2.) Install the ati driver in the same manner you would a nvidia one. You can get them from here

3.) If all went well, you’ll still need to edit your xorg.conf. Although the ati install had edited it, it still left behind the nvidia parts and didn’t fix the nvidia tweaks.

In Section “Module”, add
Load "GLcore"
Load "dri"
They were removed with the nvidia install.

In Section “Screen”, I found that no modes had been entered.. :/

ie. Modes “1200×1024″ “1024×768″

Lastly, you’ll need to re-add the Section “DRI”,

Section "DRI"
Group 100
Mode 0660
EndSection

This assumes your a member of the group users, if not edit /etc/group

Put a transparent terminal on your desktop using aterm and Compiz-fusion

I came across this link describing how to put a transparent terminal on your desktop using gnome-terminal. What happens if you don’t have gnome installed? Well you can get around this by using aterm. The process is basically the same except for a few points that I’ve listed below.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3254093

Part 1.

Since aterm doesn’t have profiles like gnome-terminal, the settings have to go into ~/.Xdefaults. If you don’t have it, create it.

! Setup aterm for use with compiz-fusion
aterm*transparent: true
aterm*font: 9×15
! I wanted the name to be more unique.
aterm*title: transaterm
aterm*scrollBar: false
aterm*internalBorder: 0
aterm*borderWidth: 0
aterm*borderLess: true
aterm*geometry: 80×36
aterm*shading:99
aterm*foreground:White

Part 2.

This section is much the same as the tutorial, with only personal preferences to worry about.

I left out ‘Window rules -> sticky’ as I have different backgrounds on my workspaces and using .Xdefaults we can only have one profile. Unfortunately what happens is the background on the first workspace will be carried over to the others.

In “Place windows” goto “Fixed window placement”. This is where you can appoint the position of your terminal. I always have a terminal opened in the bottom left corner of my screen so this is where I’ve placed it.

Windows with fixed positions

title=^transaterm$ 10 600

Windows with fixed viewpoint

title=^transaterm$ 0 0

Now you should be right to restart X.

Update. I recently had trouble with the transparency, whereas I would only get a black background. The workaround for this was to scrape aterm and start using tilda. :p It does true transparency and is a pinch to setup. Right click -> properties and just set it up the way you want. Easy.