Professional Geekism

I finally got around to sending my first ping6 echos! Who knew I’d get replies on my first go?!

My ADSL provider Andrews & Arnold have provided me with a /48 IPv6 subnet, which seems somewhat wasteful at 2^80 addresses (throw that in your calculator) but certainly useful for testing nevertheless. Whilst slowly getting my head around the task that is variable-length subnetting of IPv6 ranges – painful at best – I decided to just throw in a /64 subnet and set a static gateway address on m0n0wall‘s LAN interface to see if it would ‘just work’.

The result, is a working IPv6 LAN by simply enabling autoconfig from the m0n0wall box and telling Ubuntu’s Network Manager to use it. Et voila:

teh@desktop:~$ ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:01:29:fc:37:1d
inet addr:81.187.xxx.xxx Bcast:81.187.xxx.xxx Mask:255.255.255.240
inet6 addr: 2001:8b0:ff87:1:201:29ff:fefc:371d/64 Scope:Global
inet6 addr: fe80::201:29ff:fefc:371d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1616524 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2224946 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:277202062 (277.2 MB) TX bytes:519498762 (519.4 MB)
Interrupt:18

You’ll notice that the last 80 bits of my IPv6 address on this host were assigned via autoconfig, using part of my MAC address (the part that doesn’t correspond to a certain manufacturer, IIRC) as well as some randomly-generated bits, too.

And to make my night, ping6 worked straight away, too:

teh@desktop:~$ ping6 2001:08B0:FF88:0001::1
PING 2001:08B0:FF88:0001::1(2001:8b0:ff88:1::1) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2001:8b0:ff88:1::1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=3.81 ms
64 bytes from 2001:8b0:ff88:1::1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.130 ms
64 bytes from 2001:8b0:ff88:1::1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.132 ms

--- 2001:08B0:FF88:0001::1 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.130/1.358/3.813/1.735 ms

Now to plan how I’m going to roll this out at work…

I recently needed to burn a copy of Windows 7 Pro but realisd that I’d unfortunately run out of blank DVD-Rs long ago. Fear not, for I live near an Aldi supermarket, whom sell everything dirt cheap. DVD-R’s a DVD-R, right?

Wrong. I tried at least three of the twenty I purchased (for a few quid) and none of them would even begin writing. Brasero/K3B both complained about incompatible media types.

Remembering that my DVD drive, a trusty NEC 3500A, was designed, built and purchased somewhere between 2004 and 2005 (4-5 years ago at this point) and that I hadn’t ever updated the firmware, I set about researching ways and means into doing this.

I came across this website, run by a pair of firmware hackers named Liggy and Dee whom have (between them) released, and continue to host, many firmware releases (both official and unofficial) for a wide variety of NEC optical drives.

What’s more, their binflash (or ‘necflash’) utility was even released as a Linux binary and it even provides compatibility for reading the official NEC .exe firmware releases! I was sceptical that it would work under Ubuntu 9.10 at first, but much to my delight it worked perfectly. With a little reading, I was able to dump my current firmware (2.16) to file and subsequently flash two different firmware releases: 2.58 (an OEM firmware release) and the latest, official NEC firmware 2.1A release.

The full output of my escapades for anyone curious:


~$ sudo ./necflash -flash -v -s Desktop/NECND350_v21A.exe /dev/sg2
Binflash - NEC version - (C) by Liggy and Herrie
Visit http://binflash.cdfreaks.com

Identified drive: 4 - 3031
Detected drive from Firmware: 4

You are about to flash your drive with the following firmware:

Vendor: _NEC
Identification: DVD_RW ND-3500AG
Version: 2.1A

Remember no one can be held responsible for any kind of failure!
Are you sure you want to proceed? (y/n) y

Entering safe mode
Sending firmware to drive at 0x006000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x00e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x016000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x01e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x026000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x02e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x036000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x03e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x046000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x04e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x056000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x05e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x066000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x06e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x076000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x07e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x086000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x08e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x096000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x09e000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0a6000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0ae000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0b6000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0be000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0c6000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0ce000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0d6000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0de000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0e6000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0ee000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0f6000
Sending firmware to drive at 0x0fe000
Sending checksum to drive
Erasing flash block 2
Erasing flash block 3
Erasing flash block 4
Erasing flash block 5
Erasing flash block 6
Erasing flash block 7
Erasing flash block 8
Erasing flash block 9
Erasing flash block 10
Erasing flash block 11
Erasing flash block 12
Erasing flash block 13
Erasing flash block 14
Erasing flash block 15
Erasing flash block 16
Erasing flash block 17
Erasing flash block 18
Writing flash block 2
Writing flash block 3
Writing flash block 4
Writing flash block 5
Writing flash block 6
Writing flash block 7
Writing flash block 8
Writing flash block 9
Writing flash block 10
Writing flash block 11
Writing flash block 12
Writing flash block 13
Writing flash block 14
Writing flash block 15
Writing flash block 16
Writing flash block 17
Writing flash block 18
Leaving safe mode

Whilst the 2.58 OEM release didn’t fix my problems, 2.1A did and I now have a freshly-burnt copy of Windows 7 Pro to go and play games with. Nice one, Liggy & Dee.

Yesterday a few of you will have heard the news that Google recently launched a new programming language, named ‘Go‘.

Whilst I’m not a programmer, and exist far from the plain of ever pretending to be one – I do have some professional interests in playing with this. I’ll probably update this post a little later with some more, specific information when all can be revealed, but for now here’s a little taster:

root@gotest:~# 6g hello.go
root@gotest:~# 6l hello.6
root@gotest:~# ./6.out
hello, world

It works! This machine is an openvz container, running Ubuntu 9.04 x86_64 and it works a treat, with the only exception that I couldn’t build Go with the standard ‘all.bash’ make script. I had to use the ‘make.bash’ script, instead for it to work – something about probing the network devices not working with the former script. Thanks go to Rob Pike from Google, whom seems to have been working pretty darn hard in the #go-wild IRC channel on Freenode recently!

Update: 34SP.com are now offering Google Go development environments, for those wishing to dabble!

I’ve had a re-occurring issue with pidgin randomly screwing with my CPU usage; actually maxing out a single core for no apparent reason and/or crashing thereafter. In actual fact, I think I can even attribute a few recent gnome-panel crashes to this behaviour, as well.

Today I’ve been informed (by my darling girlfriend) that her buddy icon was out of date: she’d changed it a while back, yet my client was appeared to be stubbornly displaying the old icon, even weeks later. As I couldn’t find a method for forcing the buddy icon to update within the program itself, I navigated to ~/.purple/icons (finding approximately 1,660 cached icons!) and deleted the lot.

Since restarting pidgin it’s taken a while for the buddy icons to repopulate for some reason, but after a few tests, it does appear that they’re updating properly when changed by the other party. As a side effect, I believe I’ve found (and fixed) the cause of pidgin’s leak/loop/error! Hopefully someone else will find my serendipitous bug-squashing useful.

I may even launch a bug report, given that I couldn’t find one. Now all I need is time to do so…

Oddly enough, only a day after my post concerning some odd differences between two Ubuntu Flash 10 packages, I received an e-mail from the Ubuntu mailing list to tell me that the next hug (bug) day is actually centred around flashplayer-nonfree!

Quoting the e-mail for any of you not on the list:

Fellow Ubuntu Triagers!

This week's HugDay target is *drum roll please* flashplugin-nonfree!
* 78 New bugs need a hug
* 53 Incomplete bugs need a status check
* 35 Confirmed bugs need a review

Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!
* 5th of March, 2009
* http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20090305

Can't stress it enough: everyone can help!

Have some time? Triage boogz! I won't be upset if you get a headstart~
Have a blog? Blog about Hugday!
Have some screen space? Open #ubuntu-bugs and keep an eye out for
newcomers in need.
Have minions? Teach THEM to triage for you!

Wanna be famous? Is easy! remember to use 5-A-day so if you do a good
work your name could be listed at the top 5-A-Day Contributors in the
Ubuntu Hall of Fame page!

Make a difference; we will be in #ubuntu-bugs (FreeNode) all day and
night, and will be ready to answer your questions about how to help.

If you're new to all this, head to

http://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs

Have a nice day,
Martin Mai
[From the BugSquad]

That’s quite a lot of bugs. Hopefully the Ubuntu ‘Jaunty Jackalope’ 9.04 release will iron these issues out.

Bizarrely, I’ve noticed that the Canonical-supplied Adobe Flash 10 plugin isn’t working as well as the Adobe-supplied version.

You could regard this as a possibly moronic statement at first, but there’s a little evidence to back it up. Firstly, I’ve been using the ‘adobe-flashplugin’ package provided via the Canonical Partner repository for some time. I think it works a heck of a lot better than Flash 9, and I’ve been much happier with the experience. That isn’t to say that it’s perfect, but at least Firefox doesn’t crash with every 3rd/4th Youtube video I play.

By standard of course, the Canonical Partner repository is disabled within a fresh Ubuntu installation. So when my girlfriend mentioned that the videos on Llewtube.com weren’t displaying, I wasn’t surprised to find that she was using the latest version of the ‘flashplugin-nonfree’ package:

sudo dpkg -l | grep flash
ii flashplugin-nonfree 10.0.22.87ubuntu1~intrepid1 Adobe Flash Player plugin installer

Given that I could view the videos on the aforementioned website without a single issue, I went to check my plugin version:

ii adobe-flashplugin 10.0.22.87-2intrepid1 Adobe Flash Player plugin version 10

So we’re supposedly using the same version of the Flash plugin, but from different packages. Would anyone like to explain why one package works and the other does not?

Getting around the problem was a simple task for her: simply enable the Partner repository by navigating to the Software Sources configuration utility (via System -> Administration -> Software Sources) and (after giving your password) checking the two ‘partner’ lines under the Third Party tab. If you don’t have them, you can add them (one at a time) with these two lines:

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu intrepid partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu intrepid partner

(If you’re reading this, and you’ve not yet upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10; the bulk of this guide should work with 8.04 also. You will, however, need to swap out ‘intrepid’ for ‘hardy’! )

When you’ve enabled the partner repositories (check the boxes) it’s a matter of closing Software Sources and letting it reload the package sources when prompted. After that, simply open a terminal and paste in the following:

sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree && sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin

If you restart Firefox, you should now be sorted. If in doubt, search in Synaptic (System -> Administration -> Synaptic) for ‘Flash’ and see what is (or isn’t) installed.

For those of you who don’t follow XKCD, you really are missing out. It’s just genius, and today’s comic really did tickle me.. (Click for a larger image!)

This really is a true story, and she doesn’t know I put it in my comic because her wifi hasn’t worked for weeks.

Well, I laughed at least. And it reminds me of a famous euphemism, too!

Nick: “Jon, why have you locked your door?”
Jon: “I’m re-compiling my kernel!“

Many people already know that I dabble with Asterisk on a daily basis. Our Linux distribution of choice here at work, also happens to be Gentoo.

Now, when updating Gentoo’s ‘world’ package base, you do get some problems occassionally. This is a downside to being ‘on the cutting edge’ and, it’s obviously no wonder why distributions such-as Ubuntu, Red Hat and SuSe, stick to well-tested release schedules.

Recently, after a well over-due profile update (from 2006.0 to 2008.0) and the following emerge -av –newuse –deep world command, Asterisk simply stopped working. No warning, and it took a while for me to notice.

Once I had noticed, it became apparent that something was really quite awry. Asterisk wouldn’t start via the init script (with has a seemingly immortal, and hideously annoying process), nor via just calling the executable. I eventually realised, with the help of this bug report and the /var/log/asterisk/full logfile, that Asterisk was failing to find the speex modules it required.

Long story short, as per the bug report, you need to downgrade (and mask for good measure) speex to 1.1.12 to retain functionality on anything older than a January/Febuary release of Asterisk 1.4.x.

The fact that Portage still only has Asterisk 1.2.x, means that unless you switch to using the voip overlay, you’re going to find this issue will affect you.

Oh Gentoo, how I love and hate you!