Posts Tagged ‘gnu linux’
Friday, February 24th, 2012 There two main reasons which cause incorrect clock settings on Slackware Linux.
One common reason for incorrectly set time is improper clock and timezone settings during Slackware install.
On install, one of the ncruses install menus asks an ambigious dialog question reading
HARDWARE CLOCK SET TO UTC?
Is the hardware clock set to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC/GMT)?
Some newbie Slackware users make the mistake to choose YES here, resulting in incorrectly set clock.
Second possibility for improper time is incorrect time on BIOS level. This is not so common among laptop and modern desktop PCs. However in the past impoper system BIOS hardware clock was usual.
In any case it is a good practice to check the system PC BIOS clock settings.
To check BIOS battery hardware clock from command line use:
bash-4.1# hwclock --show
Fri 24 Feb 2012 01:24:18 AM EET -0.469279 seconds
The system clock on Slackware is set via a script called timeconfig. To fix slack's incorrect host time run:
bash-4.1# timeconfig
Running timeconfig once should configure a proper timezone to be set on next system reboot, however the system time will probably still be not ok.
To manually set time to right time, use date command. To set manually the system wide time to 12:00:00 with date:
bash-4.1# date -s "12:00:00"
Anyways for time accuracy the ntpdate should be used to feth time from NTP internet time server:
bash-4.1# ntpdate time.nist.gov
...
Finally to make the new set right time permanent also for the BIOS battery clock issue:
bash-4.1# hwclock --systohc
By the way its curious fact Slackware Linux is the oldest still existent GNU / Linux based distribution. Its up and running since the very day GNU and Linux came to merge at one Free OS 😉
Tags: ambigious, Auto, bios clock, clock settings, configure, Coordinated, coordinated universal time, curious fact, Desktop, distribution, Draft, EET, feth, free os, Fri, gnu linux, hardware, hardware clock, host, host time, hwclock, improper time, incorrect time, internet time server, laptop, level, Linux, ntpdate, possibility, quot, reading, reason, script, show, slack, slackware linux, slackware users, system bios, system clock, systohc, time, time accuracy, time run, timezone, timezone settings, Universal, UTC, YES
Posted in Linux, System Administration | 6 Comments »
Friday, February 17th, 2012 Free Software (FS) is free as in freedom as well as free as in price. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is developed by geek hobbyist which voluntarily put their time and effort in writting, testing and sharing with anyone for free million of lines of programming code. This doesn't mean however the price of free software costs is 0 (zero). Though the "end product" – Free Software developed is FREE, "real" software costs as with any other product costs huge money.
I've recently read on Jeb's blog an estimation on how much is the cost of one of the major Free Software project efforts – Debian GNU / Linux
According to James E. Bromberger – the whole Debian project was estimated to be at the shocking price of $19 billion – $19 000, 000, 000 !!!
Here is how JEB got the $19 billions, a quote taken from his blog:
"By using David A Wheeler’s sloccount tool and average wage of a developer of US$72,533 (using median estimates from Salary.com and PayScale.com for 2011) I summed the individual results to find a total of 419,776,604 source lines of code for the ‘pristine’ upstream sources, in 31 programming languages — including 429 lines of Cobol and 1933 lines of Modula3!
In my analysis the projected cost of producing Debian Wheezy in February 2012 is US$19,070,177,727 (AU$17.7B, EUR€14.4B, GBP£12.11B), making each package’s upstream source code worth an average of US$1,112,547.56 (AU$837K) to produce. Impressively, this is all free (of cost).
James has done incredible job with this great research and he deserves applause.
However I believe the numbers proposed by his research are slightly different if we speak about realistic cost of Debian GNU / Linux.
The real costs of the working software ready to install on a user PC are way higher, as according to Jeb's research only the software cost based on code line count is considered.
Hence James software estimation calculates only the programming costs and miss many, many factors that constitute the software end cost.
Some of the many, many REAL COST / expenses for developing a huge Free Software project like Debian GNU / Linux to be considered are:
a) bandwidth costs for hosting free software (on the server side)b) bandwidth cost for developers or FS users downloading the software
a) Time spend to spread the word of the great added value of Debian and bundled software (Mouth by Mouth Marketing)
b) Time spend to advertise Debian and its free software components on blogs, social networks (identi.ca, facebook, twitter) etc.(Voluntary online Marketing, SEO etc.)
c) Time spend on generating ideas on future program versions and reporting them to Debian FS community
d) Time on evaluation and feedback on software
e) Time spend on managing free software repository (download) servers voluntarily (by system administrators)
f) Time spend by users on Bug Tracking & Bug Reporting
g) Time spend on research and self-actualization by software developer)
h) Time spend on software Quality Assurance
This are most of the multiple factors which should probably influence the cost of any non-free (proprietary software) project. No matter this costs apply for non-free software, it perfectly applies for free software as well.With all said if if we assume the non-programming costs are equal to the programming costs of $ 19 000 000 000 (suggested by Jeb). This means the real cost of Debian will presumably be at least $32 000 000 000. Putting $ 19 billion for all this long list of "additional" costs (besides pure source) factors is probably still very under-scored number.
- the developers use of their own computers (hardware depreciation)
- electricity bill of the volunteer (developer) working on the program or project
- electricity bills for servers where free software is stored and available for download
- volunteer developer IT skills and tech knowledge (KNOW HOW)
- Internet, network, dial up bandwidth cost
- personal time put in FS development (programming, design, creativity etc.)! here the sub costs are long:
- Costs for Project Management Leaders / Project Coordination
- The complexity of each of the projects constituting Debian
Very interesting figure from Jeb's research is the Programming Languages break down by source code figure.
Jamesresearch reveals on the 4 major programming languages used in the 17000+ software projects (part of Debian GNU / Linux):
- ANSI C with 168,536,758 – (40% of all projects source code)
- C++ at 83,187,329 – (20% of all projects source)
- Java 34,698,990 – (lines of code 8% of sources)
- Lisp – (7% of all projects source code)
His research also provides a general idea on how much the source code of some of the major FOSS projects costs. Here is a copy of his figures
Individual Projects
Other highlights by project included:
| Project | Version | Thousands
of SLOC | Projected cost
at US$72,533/developer/year |
| Samba | 3.6.1 | 2,000 | US$101 (AU$93M) |
| Apache | 2.2.9 | 693 | US$33.5M (AU$31M) |
| MySQL | 5.5.17 | 1,200 | US$64.2M (AU$59.7M) |
| Perl | 5.14.2 | 669 | US$32.3M (AU$30M) |
| PHP | 5.3.9 | 693 | US$33.5M (AU$31.1M) |
| Bind | 9.7.3 | 319 | US$14.8M (AU$13.8M) |
| Moodle | 1.9.9 | 396 | US$18.6M (AU$17.3M) |
| Dasher | 4.11 | 109 | US$4.8M (AU$4.4M) |
| DVSwitch | 0.8.3.6 | 6 | US$250K (AU$232K) |
As you can imagine all the source evaluation results, are highly biased and are open for discussion, since evaluating a free software project/s is a hard not to say impossible task. The "open" model of development makes a project very hard to track, open source model implies too many unexpected variables missing from the equation for clear calculation on costs. What is sure however if turned in money it is very expensive to produce. At present moment Debian Project is sponsored only through donations. The usual yearly budget 5 years ago for Debian was only $80 000 dollars a year!! You can check Debian Project annual reports throughout the years here , for year 2012 Debian Project budget is as low as $ 222, 677 (US Dollars)! The output price of the software the project provides is enormous high if compared to the low project expenses!
For us the free software users, price is not a concern, Debian is absolutely free both as in freedom and free as in beer 😉
Tags: Auto, average wage, cobol, code, com, count, david a wheeler, debian gnu, debian project, depreciation, doesn, download, Draft, effort, electricity, euro, foss, Free, free as in freedom, free software project, free software projects, freedom, geek, gnu linux, hobbyist, jeb, job, marketing, Modula, nbsp, Open, open source software, package, PayScale, programming code, programming costs, programming languages, project efforts, quot, real software, rsquo, Salary, software, software costs, software estimation, source lines, time, tool, total, working software
Posted in Everyday Life, Linux, Various | 2 Comments »
Sunday, January 8th, 2012 I've faced some issues with crappy sound in some of the games I'm playing on my Debian . Also I ometimes, have issues with sound while watching movies with VLC or Totem... Sound issues with Skype are also seldomly occuring during skype calls etc. etc.
Recently I've realized many of this crappy sound issues origins from PulseAudio – the sound server GNOME desktop env uses to manage all sound just before passing it through ALSA.
I've found on the internet many suggested ways on how to workaround these issues. Many of the things suggested as workarounds, however was outdated and referred to old versions of GNOME / Pulseaudio and therefore was unusable on my Debian 6 Squeeze….
What I found most helpful is fixes and workarounds for pulseaudio list compiled by people in the Fedora community on fedorasolved.org's website – http://fedorasolved.org/Members/fenris02/pulseaudio-fixes-and-workarounds
Some of the fixes and work arounds suggeted on the above link, I have already applied, others was not applicable for Debian.
Anyways the things which I found most important and I believe many people who runs Debian need to implement from the list to solve pulseaudio crappy sound issues is concluded in the below 5 steps.
1. Install few packages related to pulseaudio
apt-get install paman padevchooser paprefs pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-module-zeroconf pulseaudio-utils
2. Edit ~/.asoundrc and include
pcm.pulse { type pulse }
ctl.pulse { type pulse }
Quickest way is by issuing:
echo 'pcm.pulse { type pulse }' >> ~/.asoundrc
echo 'ctl.pulse { type pulse }' >> ~/.asoundrc
3. Change in the pulseaudio server configuration file ( /etc/pulse/daemon.conf ):
debian:~# vim /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
Look up for the lines:
; default-fragments = 4
; default-fragment-size-msec = 25
Substitute this two lines with:
default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 5
4. Enable Simultaneous Output in PulseAudio preferences
Navigate to the GNOME menus:
System -> PulseAudio Preferences
Choose the "Simultaneous Output" tab and select:
Add virtual output device for simultaneous output on all local sound cards
5. Log Off Gnome and restart PulseAudio
To load the new changed settings in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf restart of pulseaudio server is required, right after a Logoff from the current opened gnome session;
To do so LogOff with the trivial:
System -> Log Out
Login as root in console;
Press CTRL+ALT+F1, login with root and issue:
debian:~# /etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart
...
N.B.; In some cases it might be necessery to do some adjustments are made in gstreamer properties , to change settings there launch:
Tampering with gstreamer-properties used to fix for me some problems with ALSA and PulseAudio in the past, so it might be worthy to check it out and experiment a bit with it as well.
debian:~$ gstreamer-properties
Now many of the crappy sound games or applications should start working just fine. Enjoy 😉
Tags: alsa, asoundrc, asoundrcecho, Auto, change, configuration file, crappy, debian gnu, default fragment, Desktop, Draft, fedora, file, fragment size, fragments, games, Gnome, gnome desktop, gnu linux, Install, Linux, login, look, msec, occuring, old versions, org members, origins, OutLogin, Output, padevchooser, Press, pulse type, quot, right, root, server configuration, Skype, sound server, tab, type, vim, VLC, work
Posted in FreeBSD, Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 Accidently I've removed the Gnome Volume Control while trying to remove an applet nearby from the GNOME main menu panel. Unfortunately in GNOME 2, I couldn't find a way to to return back (restore) Gnome Volume Control to the main panel. After a bit of pondering, I've managed to find a way.
Here is how I managed to restore it back:
1. Navigate to:
System > Preference > Startup Applications
2. Click on Add, then add and type the following:
Name: Volume control
Command: gnome-volume-control-applet
Comment: Launch volume control applet
Adding the gnome-volume-control-applet will launch it every time a new gnome session (with the same user) is initiated. On next gnome login you will see the icon to appear again in the notification area. Cheers 😉
Tags: applet, area, Auto, Cheers, Click, command, Comment, control, Draft, Gnome, gnu linux, icon, launch, Linux, login, menu, menu panel, Navigate, notification, notification area, panel, preference, startup, startup applications, system, time, type, volume control, way
Posted in FreeBSD, Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | No Comments »
Thursday, January 26th, 2012 I needed to enable automatic passwordless login in my Debian GNU/Linux …
GNOME and GDM desktop environments developed a lot through the last few years, achieving these simple task was doable only through gdm manual configurations. Nowdays creatiion of user to login without any password is easy via easy to use GUI program.
In this article I'll explain, few ways to enable automatic login in GNOMEThe quickest way is to navigate in GNOMEs gnome-control-center -> Login Window submenu
To do so launch gnome-control-center – press (ALT+F2) keys and type in gnome-control-center, or launch via command line in gnome-terminal or xterm:
hipo@debian:~$ gnome-control-center
While inside the control center find en launch the Login Window as in the screenshot below:
Login Window configuration can be also done directly by launching gdmsetup from command line e.g.:
hipo@debian:~$ /usr/sbin/gdmsetup
...
gdmsetup will further pop up a window asking to type in the root password to allow you to customize, how gdm will deal with user logins.
For who might not know gnome well architecture, gdmsetup is part of the gdm (Gnome Display Manager) package and is the default login program used to login the end user in most of the modern Linux based distributions as well as BSDs. gdm logins the users on many of the free software OS desktop environments like GNOME, LXDE, XFCE… Just to name a few of the many Linuces counting on GDM to handle the user logins: Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Linux Mint, OpenSUSE etc.
Once the Login Windows Prefences appears go to the Security tab.
As you can see in the screenshot, what you can do with gdmsetup it is pretty self-explanatory:
The two options of interests for user authorization without pass are:
a. Enable Automatic Login
To enable:- put a tick on Enable Automatic Login
– from user dropdown menu, choose the user which has to be configured
b. Enable Timed Login
Enable Automatic Login lets the user login without any user password input, immediately after the configured username is typed in (if gdm is with type username prompt).
In case where the usernames are represented by Avatars, (like its in most user friendly Linux distributions), once clicked avatar the user is logged in.
When Enable Timed Login is ticked and a username is choosen or typed, instead of immediately logging the user on click or username input, the user logging is delayed with a number of set seconds .
Enabling the Automatic and / or Timed Login is doable also using few simple configurations directives in /etc/gdm/custom.conf. In many distros /etc/gdm/custom.conf will be not existing and hence the file has to be created.
To enable delayed autologin without password for a user using gdm config:
Create the file with a text editor ( vim, joe, nano )whatever your favourity and place inside:
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
TimedLogin=hipo
TimedLoginDelay=30
The above gdm config vars can also be placed inside /etc/gdm/gdm.conf but for the sake of clarity its better if custom.conf is used.
If you don't want to bother with a text editor copy paste inside any terminal lets say mlterm :
echo '[daemon]' >> /etc/gdm/custom.conf
echo 'TimedLoginEnable=true' >> /etc/gdm/custom.conf
echo 'TimedLogin=hipo' >> /etc/gdm/custom.conf
echo 'TimedLoginDelay=30' >> /etc/gdm/custom.conf
To enable auto-login for a user on a first PC boot in /etc/gdm/custom.conf put:
[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=hipo
An auto login can also be done by using the TimedLoginDelay gdm config directive by putting insetad of the previous code a code like:
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
TimedLogin=hipo
TimedLoginDelay=0
Where hipo is my desired username that will autolog, and as you see the LoginDelay is 0 (e.g. no gdm login delay)
I attempted to also allow autologin for several users with some cinfigurations like:
[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=hipo
AutomaticLogin=other-username
as well as configurations like:
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
TimedLogin=hipo
TimedLogin=other-username
TimedLoginDelay=0
In gdm3, the location of GDM config files should be /etc/gdm3/ directory, anyways the configurations directives should be working just like in gdm2
After any configuration changes to gdm.conf or custom.conf to load the new settings in gdm a gdm daemon restart is necessery with cmd:
root@debian:~# /etc/init.d/gdm restart
...
Note that, weirdly not using the gdm init script and trying to kill -HUP $(pidof gdm) / killall -9 gdm will not make gdm to load its new configurations. So always restart via /etc/init.d/gdm restart after gdm conf change.
Another alternative method to achieve login without a password input is by creating a passwordless user account on the system. This method is not recommended though, especially for machines with real IP addresses visible from the Internet (with lets say enabled) SSHD access.
Using a passwordless system account can expose the system to a severe security risk!!! Anyways, for systems not running telnet/sshd or any other system remote access service creating a user without an empty password might be not such a bad idea.
To make a user auto login without any password input /etc/shadow file (storing all user account information) needs an edit.
This is an example user entry taken from /etc/shadow:
test:$6$OPdvXArZ$ktujC6bBh9JNaCz8E9v61yNeWcJHqQiuNk8eBzevcwcIl8KFvQzJ6aBCvVpIs0Lf5MAbHjjqftUeN9crWUfxs.:15275:0:99999:7:::Now to make the test user login directly without any pass input, one can just remove his encrypted password string. After the change the user line in /etc/shadow, should be:
test::15275:0:99999:7:::
If the user is created just from scratch e.g. (a new user) that needs to login passwordless in GDM, create it without password:
root@debian:~# adduser -d newusername
To sum it up the good thing about the remove password hash method to auto login a user is that it will allow user or users login across all Display Managers (not only GDM specific).
The bad side is it is very insecure and therefore in most times a really bad practice.
I guess the described ways to login without password in Gdm on FreeBSD should similar, unfortunately right now I have not access to BSD running desktop to test it. If someone has tested it and can confirm it works it will be great to drop a comment.
Tags: Alt, architecture, Auto, automatic login, center, config, control, custom, customize, debian gnu, Desktop, desktop environments, distributions, Draft, dropdown menu, fedora, file, GDM, Gnome, gnome control center, gnomes, GNOMEThe, gnu linux, launch, linux gnome, login, login windows, logins, manual configurations, mint, password, root, screenshot, security tab, text, tick, TimedLoginDelay, type, username, window, window configuration, xterm
Posted in Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video, Various | No Comments »
Saturday, February 4th, 2012 If you're using Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid, you have already figured out GNOME3 settings to start GNOME in Classic mode (like in GNOME 2), starts gnome in a mode where the desktop is not showing the usual Computer, Home, Trash etc.
Besides that in that strange back-compitability Classic GNOME mode its impossible to add any program as a link in desktop like in the good old GNOME 2.
Thanksfully this abusive behaviour of the backwards compitability mode is easily fixable by two simple steps, here they are:
1. Install gnome-tweak-tool – (Tool to adjust advanced configuration settings for GNOME
root@debian:~# apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
2. Start gnome-tweak tool
Press ALT+F2 and run gnome-tweak-tool or run it via xterm / gnome-terminal:
moonman@Moon:~$ gnome-tweak-tool
Change in Desktop, Have file manager handle the desktop the settings to ON
Once the Screenshot Handle Desktop is set to ON, further drag and dropping any application to the Desktop will be working.
Something really irritating is that launching applications in GNOME 3 does not work properly if you just press ALT+F2 and type in lets say gnome-terminal , to work around this weirdity you will have to install gnome-shell package.
Tags: Auto, behaviour, classic mode, compitability, configuration settings, debian gnu, desktop icons, Draft, f2, Gnome, gnu linux, Handle, Install, link, Linux, manager, Mode, moon, moonman, package, Press, root, shell package, sid, simple steps, something, Start, Thanksfully, tool, tool 2, tool change, tool tool, trash, type, weirdity, wheezy, xterm
Posted in Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 
Some of the computer DOS geeks certainly should remember Terminal Velocity / (Terminal Reality Inc. – TRI) DOS 3D Realms (ex Apogee company) game. For those who are younger or for any reason miss to play TV here is a short review. Terminal Velocity is an addictive fast pace 3D Flight Simulator game.
The ship one navigates has a mean to accelerate or down-accelerate flying speed. There is also an AFTER BURNER mode which accelerates the ship movement speed drastically while in use. TRI's AFTER BURNER game feature create unique feeling whilst in game, raising gamers adrenaline and giving feeling of great dynamics 😉
The game graphics are a bit low, the game can be switched between VGA and SVGA from within the internal game menus, anyways for the year 1995 the game graphics looks fine.
TV supports network games of up to 8 Network Players and for 1995 is among the few 3D games supporting so high number of network players simultaneously. As most of the games of its time TRI supports modem network game play. I don't know about you, but for me Modem Network game DooM peered plays brings up some nice memories 🙂
Every now and then in the levels, there are holes (Tunnels) you can enter, the tunnels is one of the most exciting part of the game as it reminds me tracking mods music culture, Future Crew's Second Reality graphics demo and the rest of the old glorious Assembly Demos – if not familiar with the aforementioned be sure to check the link cause you've missed a lot!
The ability to enter Tunnels while in the midst of the game makes TV unique and sets it apart from the rest of the games which were bombarding the 3D game flight simulator market in '95s.
Terminal Velocity MINIMUM HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS are:
486 with 8 megs of memory.
For SVGA graphics (provided only by registered game version) require 486 DX4/100 or Pentium to display at acceptable frame rate.
This requirements are nothing and even looks funny while compared to today's available hardware. Nowdays an Android ver. 2.2 OS running (PriVileg) mobile "smart" phone runs at at least 400 Mhz CPU and has a giga of memory.
Its quite interesting to see (from historic point of view) how thoroughful the TV Help manual is, and how well organized software documentation used to be in these old DOS days. If you want to take a look at it launch TVHELP.EXE (you will notice it along with other game .EXE files after extracting)
The game soundtrack is amazingly cool and is one of the main things that add to the great gaming experience.
It took me a while to find Terminal Velocity, as the game download link provided on 3drealms.com/downloads is broken and most of the websites with mirror of 3dtv12.zip file was no longer active.
After about half an hour of search!, I've finally found and managed to download 3dtv12.zip.
In order to preserve Terminal Violocity game from disappearing I've made a mirror of 3dtv12.zip you can download from here
Thanks to dosbox DOS Emulator , is playable on both GNU / Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS and Windows.
I did not have the time to check if the game runs fine on other operating system architectures besides mine – a Debian GNU / Linux codename (Squeeze). On my aptop Thinkpad R61 with hardware configuration (Dual core x 1.8 Ghz with 2 GB of Memory), the game runs smoothly with both good playable graphics frame rate and properly timed sound/music.
For all those who want to play the game in the Linux realm, you will have to have earlier installed dosbox dos emulator. Once dosbox is there you can further proceed download / unzip / run and enjoy Terminal Velocity on your Linux Desktop:
1. Download and unzip 3dtv12.zip
hipo@linux:~$ mkdir TV
hipo@linux:~$ cd TV
hipo@linux:~/TV$ wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/3dtv12.zip
hipo@linux:~/TV$ unzip 3dtv12.zip
Archive: 3dtv12.zip
� � ������ � � ����� ������ � ������ �����
� � � � � � � � � � �
�� �� �� �� ����� �� �� � �� �� � �� �
�� �� �� � �� � �� �� � �� �� � ��
������ �� ������ �� � �� �� � �� �� � �����
Running VADV 2.10 ���� ���� ������
� � � � � VirtualNet 1801001
4 Telnet nodes ����� ����� ������ FidoNet 1:311/2
VADV-PHP Website �� � �� � �� BattleNet 169:1/120
����� ����� �����
Telnet/web: lightningbbs.com
Alt: lightning-bbs.darktech.org
Full access on the first call. Simple, short and to the point newuser
questionaire. Over 50 door games online, all of them are registered.
Fun RPG games like LORD, Usurper, TEOS, Trade Wars, Clans, and Quest for Nora.
Strategic war games like BRE, FE, Global Wars, ISA, and Colonies.
Adult door games like Strip Poker, Bordello, Studs and Studette.
...
After unzip is complete you will have the following list of files and directories:
hipo@linux:~/TV$ ls -1
FILE_ID.DIZ
INSTALL.EXE
LICENSE.TXT
TV/
TV12S.SHR
As you can read in the unzip notice the .zip file was taken from Telnet/web: lightningbbs.com
I was happy to find out that lightningbbs.com BBS is still up and running in both web and telnet mode! I took the time to telnet to lightningbbs.com and it was charming. lightningbbs.com is a real place of "living computer history"! For people who have never experienced the days of BBS use, I warmly recommend you do telnet lightningbbs.com and check it out. Issue in console/terminal:
hipo@linux:~/TV$ telnet lightningbbs.com
��VADV32 v4.4.110325 - (c) 2004-2011 Aspect Technologies - www.vadvbbs.com
o NetFoss - Revision 5 FOSSIL - Com Eng v1.03 - (c) 2001-2010 pcmicro.com
Connected @ 11520 to Lightning BBS on line 3
Virtual Advanced 2.10 for DOS
Multi-User Multi-Network Graphical Bulletin Board System
Serial #99608791
...
...
2. Run and enjoy Terminal Velocity 😉
The game itself is extracted automatically in TV sub directory. To launch it directly enter TV/ and run GAME.EXE , e.g.
hipo@linux:~/TV$ cd TV/
hipo@linux:~/TV/TV$ dosbox GAME.EXE
Running the game through the game launcher TV.EXE or GAME.EXE worked but the game sound was missing music and sound FX 😐
The no-music and sound issues were however pretty normal and expected. Back in the DOS era setting your exact Sound Card device type was required before the first game launch.
Configuring the exact screen resolution (EGA / VGA / SVGA) and Sound Blaster or PC Speaker type (Sound Blaster 16 / Sound Blaster Pro) in TV is done through running SETUP.EXE .
Actually SETUP.EXE used to be like a standard for almost all DOS games I've encountered.
To make Terminal Velocity sound work I had to choose from SETUP.EXE main menu:
Sound Setup -> Sound Blaster 16
or
Sound Setup -> Sound Blaster Pro
Choosing any of the two SBs produces the same sound / music effects. I guess this is the case becase dosbox emulates a number of sound cards compatible with soudn blaster.
After choosing the SB you should select Save and Launch TV to run the game with sound.
If you quit the game and try to relaunch it with dosbox GAME.EXE unfortunately runs the game without sound fx and music again. Hence the only way to make TRI run properly with music is to everytime configure sound blaster type with SETUP.EXE . TV also supports joystick and it was nice my Genius JoyPad worked like a charm with TV under dosbox emu 😉
To play the game in full screen mode with dosbox press ALT + ENTER simultaneously.
An interesting fact which is not related to the game is Terminal Velocity is a physics term, here is a quite from Wikipedia:
"In fluid dynamics an object is moving at its terminal velocity if its speed is constant due to the restraining force exerted by the fluid through which it is moving."
On 3drealms.com, I've found also a collection of Terminal velocity mod music – tvmods.zip. For the sake of preservation tvmods.zip from disappearance I've made a mirror of tvmods.zip on here
TV has also 20 cheat code words which can be typed in while playing the game for various goodies like Invisinbility, Shield Restore, Power up all weapons, skip level etc. Complete list of Terminal Velocity cheat codes is here
If you're an absolute TV addict and you want to set a TV screenshot on background Check the TV Planet 1024×768 Background resolution
TV has also a game editor, could be valuable if you want to make yourself some custom game levels here is a mirror you can download tvcad10.zip.
I've made also a quick research if someone in the Open Source / Free Software realm is not busy working on a fork of TV, but as of time of writting it seems there is no effort to make an "open source" Terminal Veolocity game. As TV is starting to disappear from the scene and 3DRealms are not existing for so many years now, it would be nice/wise if the company publish some of their prior games source. If they don't, so many great games (like TV)'s source code will be probably lost in max 10 / 15 years time.
We know 3DRealms release some of their source code for Duke Nukem 3D, I think it is now time to release source of TRI and the other old forgotten games.
Tags: apogee company, Auto, bit, BURNER, cause, com, company game, Crew, demo, door, dos game, download, Draft, dtv, dx4, exe, feature, flight simulator game, game doom, game feature, game graphics, game menus, game version, gnu linux, graphics demo, hardware, hipo, Linux, minimum hardware requirements, movement, movement speed, network game, number, pace, Play, quot, reason, second reality, ship movement, shooter, svga graphics, terminal, terminal velocity, time, tunnels, VGA, year
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, System Administration | 1 Comment »
Saturday, October 15th, 2011 Since some time, I don’t know exactly where, after some updates of my WordPress running on a small server with FreeBSD 7.2. I’ve started getting a lot of Apache crashes. Often the wordpress scripts stopped working completely and I got only empty pages when trying to process the wordpress blog in a browser.
After a bunch of reading online, I’ve figured out that the cause might be PHP APC stands for Alternative PHP Cache .
I was not sure if the PHP running on the server had an APC configured at all so I used a phpinfo(); script to figure out if I had it loaded. I saw the APC among the loaded to show off in the list of loaded php modules, so this further led me to the idea the APC could be really causing the unexpected troubles.
Thus first I decided to disable the APC on a Virtualhost level for the domain where the crashing wordpress was hosted, to do I placed in the VirtualHost section in the Apache configuration /usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf the following config directive:
php_flag apc.cache_by_default Off
These get me rid of the multiple errors:
PHP Warning: require_once() [function.require-once]: Unable to allocate memory for pool. in /usr/local/www/data-dist/blog/wp-content/plugins/tweet-old-post/top-admin.php on line 6
which constantly were re-occuring in php_error.log:
Further after evaluating all the websites hosted on the server and making sure none of which was really depending on APC , I’ve disabled the APC completely for PHP. To do so I issued:
echo 'apc.enabled = 0' >> /usr/local/etc/php.ini
Similarly on GNU/Linux to disable globally APC from PHP only the correct location to php.ini should be provided on Debian this is /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini .
Tags: apache, apache configuration, apc, blog, browser, cause, conf, config, configured, correct location, domain, error messages, freebsd, function, gnu linux, httpd, idea, ini, level, line, line 6, Linux, location, memory, OffThese, online, php cache, php error, pool, reading, scripts, time, virtualhost section, Warning, Wordpress, wordpress blog, www, www data
Posted in System Administration, Various, Wordpress | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 14th, 2011 After setupping a brand new Qmail installation following the QmailRocks Thibs Qmail Debian install guide , I’ve come across unexpected re-occuring error message in /var/log/qmail/qmail-smtpdssl/ , here is the message:
@400000004e9807b10d8bdb7c command-line: exec sslserver -e -vR -l my-mailserver-domain.com -c 30 -u 89 -g 89
-x /etc/tcp.smtp.cdb 0 465 rblsmtpd -r zen.spamhaus.org -r dnsbl.njabl.org -r dnsbl.sorbs.net -r bl.spamcop.net qmail-smtpd
my-mailserver-domain.com /home/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw /bin/true 2>&1
@400000004e9807b10dae2ca4 sslserver: fatal: unable to load certificate
I was completely puzzled initially by the error as the sertificate file /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem was an existing and properly self generated one. Besides that qmail daemontools init script /service/qmail-smtpd/run was loading the file just fine, where the same file failed to get loaded when sslserver command with the cert argument was invoked via /service/qmail-smtpdssl/run
It took me quite a while to thoroughfully investigate on what’s wrong with the new qmail install. Thanksfully after almost an hour of puzzling I found it out and I was feeling as a complete moron to find that the all issues was caused by incorrect permissions of the /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem file.
Here are the incorrect permissions the file possessed:
linux:~# ls -al /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem
-rw------- 1 qmaild qmail 2311 2011-10-12 13:21 /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem
To fix up the error I had to allow all users to have reading permissions over servercert.pem , e.g.:
linux:~# chmod a+r /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem
After adding all users readable bit on servercert.pem the file permissions are like so:
linux:~# ls -al /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem
-rw-r--r-- 1 qmaild qmail 2311 2011-10-12 13:21 /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem
Consequently I did a qmail restart to make sure the new readable servercert.pem will get loaded from the respective init script:
linux:~# qmailctl restart
* Stopping qmail-smtpdssl.
* Stopping qmail-smtpd.
* Sending qmail-send SIGTERM and restarting.
* Restarting qmail-smtpd.
* Restarting qmail-smtpdssl.
Now the annoying sslserver: fatal: unable to load certificate message is no more and all works fine, Hooray! 😉
Tags: amp, argument, certificate, com, control, dae, dnsbl, error message, exec, file, gnu linux, guide, incorrect permissions, init, installation, Linux, log, moron, njabl, pem, pemTo, qmail installation, qmailctl, qmaild, QmailRocks, rblsmtpd, reading, rw 1, script, script service, sertificate, smtp, spamhaus, sslserver, Stopping, vr, zen
Posted in Linux, Qmail, System Administration | 3 Comments »
Monday, February 13th, 2012 
Does your camera show video correctly in cheese but shows captured video upside-down (inverted) in skype ?
This is an issue a friend of mine experienced on his Asus K51AC-SX037D laptop on both Ubuntu and Debian Linux.
As you can see in the picture above it is funny as with this bug the person looks like a batman 😉
As the webcam upside-down issue was present on both latest Ubuntu 11.10 and latest stable Debian Squeeze 6.02, my guess was other GNU / Linux rpm based distro like Fedora might have applied a fix to this weird Skype inverted video (bat human like) issue.
Unfortunately testing the webcam with Skype on latest both Fedora 16 and Linux Mint 12 appeared to produce the same webcam bug.
A bit of research for the issue online and try outs of a number of suggested methods to resolve the issue led finally to a work around, thanks to this post
Here is few steps to follow to make the webcam show video like it should:
1. Install libv4l-0 package
root@linux:~# apt-get --yes install libv4-0
...
Onwards to start skype directly from terminal and test the camera type:
hipo@linux:~$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
This is the work around for 32 bit Linux install, most people however will probably have installed 64 bit Linux, for 64bit Linux installs the above command should be little different:
hipo@linux:~$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
Once skype is launched test the camera and see if the camera capture is now uninverted, through menus:
S -> Options -> Video Devices -> Test
2. Create a skype Wrapper script Launcher
To make skype launch everytime with exported shell variable:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so
A new skype wrapper bash shell script should be created in /usr/local/bin/skype , the file should contain:
#!/bin/sh
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so
/usr/bin/skype
To create the script with echo in a root terminal issue;
root@linux:~# echo '#!/bin/sh' >> /usr/local/bin/skype
root@linux:~# echo 'LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so' >> /usr/local/bin/skype
root@linux:~# echo '/usr/bin/skype' >> /usr/local/bin/skype
root@linux:~# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/skype
3. Edit the Skype gnome menu to substitute /usr/bin/skype Skype Launcher with /usr/local/bin/skype
Gnome 2 has a handy menu launcher, allowing to edit and add new menus and submenus (menus and items) to the Application menu, to launch the editor one has to click over Applications with last mouse button (right button) and choose Edit Menus
The menu editor like the one in the below screenshot will appear:
In the preceeding Launcher properties window, Command: skype has to be substituted with:
Command: /usr/local/bin/skype
For console freaks who doesn't want to bother in editting Skype Launcher via GUI /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop file can be editted in terminal. Inside skype.desktop substitute:
Exec=skype
with
Exec=/usr/local/bin/skype
As one can imagine the upside-down video image in Skype is not a problem because of Linux, but rather another bug in Skype (non-free) software program.
By the way everyone, who is using his computer with Free Software operating system FreeBSD, Linux etc. knows pretty well by experience, that Skype is a very problematic software; It is often a cause for system unexpected increased system loads, problems with (microphone not capturing), camera issues, issues with pulseaudio, problem with audio playbacks … Besides the long list of bugs there are unexpected display bugs in skype tray icon, bugs in skype messanger windows and at some rare occasions the program completely hangs and had to be killed with kill command and re-launched again.
Another worrying fact is Skype's versions available for GNU / Linux and BSD is completely out of date with its "competitor" operating systems MS Windows, MacOS X etc.
For people like me and my friend who want to use free operating system the latest available skype version is not even stable … current version fod download from skype's website is (Skype 2.2Beta)!
On FreeBSD the skype situation is even worser, freebsd have only option to run Skype ver 1.3 or v. 2.0 at best, as far as I know skype 2.2 and 2.2beta is not there.
Just as matter of comparison the latest Skype version on Windows is 5.x. Windows release is ages ahead its Linux and BSD ver. From a functional point of view the difference between Linux's 2.x and Windows 5.x is not that much different, what makes difference is is the amount of bugs which Linux and BSD skype versions contain…
Skype was about 6 months ago bought by Microsoft, therefore the prognosis for Skype Linux support in future is probably even darker. Microsoft will not probably bother to release new version of Skype for their competitor free as in freedom OSes.
I would like to thank my friend and brother in Christ Stelian for supplying me with the Skype screenshots, as well as for being kind to share how he fixed his camera with me.
Tags: Asus, Auto, bash shell script, batman, BSD, Button, camera capture, camera show, camera type, debian gnu, Desktop, distro, Draft, exec, fedora, file, gnu linux, gt options, hipo, laptop, launcher, ld, linux rpm, menu, Microsoft, person, PRELOAD, quot, root, root linux, rpm, Shell, show, Skype, software, squeeze, terminal, test, Ubuntu, ubuntu linux, video, video devices, web camera, webcam, work, wrapper script
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Skype on Linux | 29 Comments »
How to restore accidently removed Gnome volume control in GNOME in GNU / Linux
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012Accidently I've removed the Gnome Volume Control while trying to remove an applet nearby from the GNOME main menu panel. Unfortunately in GNOME 2, I couldn't find a way to to return back (restore) Gnome Volume Control to the main panel. After a bit of pondering, I've managed to find a way.
Here is how I managed to restore it back:
1. Navigate to:
System > Preference > Startup Applications
2. Click on Add, then add and type the following:Name: Volume control
Command: gnome-volume-control-applet
Comment: Launch volume control applet
Adding the gnome-volume-control-applet will launch it every time a new gnome session (with the same user) is initiated. On next gnome login you will see the icon to appear again in the notification area. Cheers 😉
Tags: applet, area, Auto, Cheers, Click, command, Comment, control, Draft, Gnome, gnu linux, icon, launch, Linux, login, menu, menu panel, Navigate, notification, notification area, panel, preference, startup, startup applications, system, time, type, volume control, way
Posted in FreeBSD, Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | No Comments »