Life Notes

Possible fix for download & installation unsuccessful Android Market issues

Andy Bird — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:27:49 +0000

There are a number of suggestions out there. I have successfully used the following two to allow the download and installation of apps from the Android market place after receiving the error “download unsuccessful”

1) Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > Market >

Then try the following : clear cache and / or Unistall Updates.

2) As above but for the Market Updater app

Try clear data and / or clear cache

3) If the above do not work try the same for Google Apps.

4) I have not tried it but I have seen people report success clearing data for the Download manager.

How to fix Contact sync deletes new contacts and edits on my Xperia X10 / Mini Pro

Andy Bird — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 18:51:34 +0000

As you can see from other posts the X10 is giving me more grief than it rightly should. Still stuck at Android 1.6 the updates to 2.1 are starting to trickle in as most other phones are moving on 2.2

The symptoms:

Synching your phone to your google app account deletes all contects from you address book. A great feature is it not!

While some people are reporting that the followng has not worked I have tested it to death and it seems to be very reliable. One thing that is good about the X10 is the number of back up options. Far better than those offered by my Samsung Galaxy S. So before you attempt to do anything back up your contacts to your sim or SD card. (menu > more > backup)

The fix:

Enter settings > data synchronisation > Google synch> Group Synchronisation

Tick both options here. No, I have no idea what they do or why they work.

Activate Contact synch and watch those contacts flow.

Pull up your google contacts and make sure you test contacts both ways. eg create a new contact on the phone and synch again. make sure it appears in Google. Delete it in Google and make sure it goes off your phone.

Fingers crossed this helps.

How to download recursive folders in linux with command line ftp

Andy Bird — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:37:10 +0000

Ok so all you want to is to ssh into your server and pull a stack of files over from another PC via ftp. Sounds simple does it now. This is linux we are talking about.. nothing is simple.

The short answer.. sod ftp use wget like

[bash]wget -r ftp://user: pass@domain/folder/*[/bash]

Long answer

And being linux all the help is just as cryptic as the manual.

So you probably tried to ftp in to the remote PC and use get to get the files… ha you hapless fool. Then you googled a bit and found that mget command gets more then 1 file so you tried
mget *

you then get sick of answering YES to every prompt.

the someone points out that if you enter
ftp> prompt
it will toggle out of prompt mode

then you realise that this is only downloading files anyway.

argghhh

eventually you google for “lunux ftp recursive” and finally you have cracked it.

Increase the size of tmpfs and leave files intact

Andy Bird — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:03:30 +0000

very cool trick

Increase the size of a ramdisk:

mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /tmp -o size=2000M,mode=1777,remount

This increases the ramdisk’s size to 2000M. No file is destroyed.

Read more: http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Tmpfs#ixzz13amAsYk1

Fix “SIM card unavailable” in Sony errikson X10 xperia

Andy Bird — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:58:35 +0000

The problem here is simple… The phone is look ing for a number on the sim. This is a special field which the phone expects to find. When it is not there it throws up an error. It appears that only sony phones use this field for any purpose and for reasons only known only to Sony you cannot edit this field with a 400 pound smart phone. The quick fix is to put the sim in an older phone and try to update the field. You are look ing for some reference to “your number” or “special number”. However it appears that only some phones will do the trick. People have reported success with other Sony phones and I can confirm that a Blackberry will do it. Goto settings>sim>advanced and you will see the blank number field. Fill this with your own number and save it. Put sim back into xperia and you should have got rid of the error. Sorted.

How to fix a range of sounds problems in Linux / Ubuntu and enable Dolby / DTS over SPDIF

Andy Bird — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 11:48:42 +0000

For the record I am trying to persuade Ubuntu 10.04 to spit out Dolby ac3 compressed digital signal via the SPDIF at the back of my Asus R1F tablet laptop. The spdif works out of the box!! An amazing achievement! However, I cant for the life of my persuade any content to be sent to my receiver as Dolby Digital. I have not quite given up yet but the answer still eludes me. The SPDIF will only send a sterio signal and will only reproduce a 5.1 setup when the compressed stream to sent to an external receiver. As far as I am aware there is no way to encode information on the fly and then send as 5.1.. which is a shame. I have the alc6660vd chip in the R1F.

One of the many things I have tried is to reinstall the ALSA sound system and associated utilities. This is a major pain in the ass. Just about every guide I found required a new google at every step to over come the next difficulties.

Having finally reinstalled the whole system I then stumbled across a post which explained everything and pre-empts all the gotchas that I had to battle through.

the post in its original setting can be found here : http://ohioloco.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4136189&postcount=2

Please note that none of this is required with ubuntu 10.04 as SPDIF works out of the box.

A useful command to test your speakers

speaker-test speaker-test -Dplug:iec958 -c6 -t wav -f40

UPDATE – I have finally got it all working.. Following this information I was able to listen to fully Dolby and DTS surround sound.

The problem was that i did not get surround sound from my Toslink optical cable. Only stereo. My soundcard is Xplosion 7.1 something..
Well first i didn’t get sound at all but then i enabled IEC958 output from ALSA mixer that i installed from ubuntu software center.
Now i hear stereo sound.

Now for 5.1 passthrough.
Before you remove anything and mess up everything try this. Launch VLC, go to options -> Audio. Enable”Use S/PDIF when available” AND select Output device. “Default” is NOT okay here. You need to choose ALSA audio output. Default is something else i don’t know. This will probably work for other players if they let you choose the output. But for example the normal “movie player” doesn’t work with DTS or DD for me.
This is how i got it working.. other stuff i did was:
I removed the pulseaudio stuff from my system by launching “Ubuntu Software Center” and searched for pulseaudio and removed all packages i saw.
This step might not be necessary.
And in GNOME ALSA Mixer i have enabled IEC958 5V, IEC958 Copyright and IEC958 Output.
And if you go to System -> Pref -> Sound -> Hardware tab . It is okay that it says “Digital output Stereo”. VLC will still play in 5.1 DTS or DD because its passtrough, and youtube clips will play in stereo but also through optical cable.

If this didn’t work, reeboot and try in VLC again.

————————————————————
RJ Hythloday,

I used this to get SPDIF output working on my laptop in Gusty… Here’s the procedure for installing version 4.07a of the driver in Ubuntu 7.10. NOTE: Be careful not to paste commas or periods into the terminal.

1. Go System => Administration => Software Sources => Updates and put a checkmark next to Pre-released Updates. Check for and install any updates.

2. Then restart your computer, just to be safe.

3. Download the Realtek HD audio driver for Linux to your desktop (click on link). From here

4. Right-Click on the downloaded archive and choose Extract Here.

5. Open a terminal window and type sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-generic build-essential gettext libcunit1-ncurses libcunit1-ncurses-dev libncurses5 libncurses5-dev, and press enter.

6. Just to be safe, restart your computer again.

7. Open the terminal again and type cd /home/YOURUSERNAME/Desktop/realtek-linux-audiopack-4.07a, then press enter. Obviously, substitute your own username where I have written YOURUSERNAME. This will move you inside the driver folder.

8. Type sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils stop, then press enter. Then type sudo /etc/init.d/alsasound stop, and press enter. The first one should definitely work. The second may not work now, but it will eventually. NOTE: If asked to reload your speaker icon during either of these steps, say no.

9. Type sudo ./install, and press enter. Watch your computer as it installs the driver.

10. If there are not any errors in the installation process, you should be greeted by a screen asking you to select you audio device. Choose the one the talks about Intel HD Audio (ICH7), or similar.

11. Restart your computer.

12. Open the terminal again and type cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#* | grep Codec, and press enter. This should tell you what kind of sound you have. In my case, the result was Realtek ALC660-VD. WARNING: Your modem may also show up in these results. So be sure that you are about to choose the sound and not the modem by doing some research online.

13. Look at the list below to determine the abbreviation for your sound card. For example, my Realtek ALC660-VD is represented by 3stack-660-digout.

14. Type sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base, and press enter. A file with some text should open.

15. Go to the last line of text and type options snd-hda-intel model=YOURMODEL. So for example, I have typed options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-660-digout. Be sure to save your changes by going File => Save!

16. Restart your computer so that your sound can reload itself.

17. I had to do steps 7-16 twice in order to get a successful installation of the audio driver.

18. To get your speaker icon back on your panel (also called a taskbar), Right-Click on the top panel and choose Add to Panel => System & Hardware => Volume Control => left-click on the Add button. Right-Clicking on a pane icon will allow you to move it around, or lock it into position.

19. THIS OPTION IS ONLY IF YOUR COMPUTER SUPPORTS SPDIF. Now, right-click on the speaker icon and choose Open Volume Control. The title of the Volume Control window should either have ALSA or OSS in it. Either way, go Edit => Preferences. If you are in ALSA, look for an option like IEC958. Choosing that will place on option in the Switches tab; placing a checkmark in the box there will activate SPDIF sound. It’s fine to leave SPDIF on at all times if you want to do so. If you ever need to know about OSS, you can get there by going File => Change Device in Volume Control. On my computer, OSS calls SPDIF Digital-1. If selected, it will appear in the Playback tab of OSS.

20. Each program will behave differently with SPDIF audio. Movie Player (Totem) behaves very well. In Movie Player, you can activate full digital surround sound (Dolby Digital, DTS, etc) by going Edit => Preferences => Audio and choosing AC3 Passthrough from the drop-down menu. On the other hand, some audio-related options within the VLC media player can wreck the sound on your entire system! The good news is, you can always fix any damaged caused by VLC by repeating the above steps. Just be careful…

The following are webpages where I found all of this information:

Here is a list of audio devices: Please note that in my case none of this was required with Ubuntu 10.04
Model name Description
———- ———–
ALC880
3stack 3-jack in back and a headphone out
3stack-digout 3-jack in back, a HP out and a SPDIF out
5stack 5-jack in back, 2-jack in front
5stack-digout 5-jack in back, 2-jack in front, a SPDIF out
6stack 6-jack in back, 2-jack in front
6stack-digout 6-jack with a SPDIF out
w810 3-jack
z71v 3-jack (HP shared SPDIF)
asus 3-jack (ASUS Mobo)
asus-w1v ASUS W1V
asus-dig ASUS with SPDIF out
asus-dig2 ASUS with SPDIF out (using GPIO2)
uniwill 3-jack
fujitsu Fujitsu Laptops (Pi1536)
F1734 2-jack
lg LG laptop (m1 express dual)
lg-lw LG LW20/LW25 laptop
tcl TCL S700
clevo Clevo laptops (m520G, m665n)
test for testing/debugging purpose, almost all controls can be
adjusted. Appearing only when compiled with
$CONFIG_SND_DEBUG=y
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

ALC260
hp HP machines
hp-3013 HP machines (3013-variant)
fujitsu Fujitsu S7020
acer Acer TravelMate
will Will laptops (PB V7900)
replacer Replacer 672V
basic fixed pin assignment (old default model)
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

ALC262
fujitsu Fujitsu Laptop
hp-bpc HP xw4400/6400/8400/9400 laptops
hp-bpc-d7000 HP BPC D7000
benq Benq ED8
benq-t31 Benq T31
hippo Hippo (ATI) with jack detection, Sony UX-90s
hippo_1 Hippo (Benq) with jack detection
sony-assamd Sony ASSAMD
basic fixed pin assignment w/o SPDIF
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

ALC268
3stack 3-stack model
toshiba Toshiba A205
acer Acer laptops
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

ALC662
3stack-dig 3-stack (2-channel) with SPDIF
3stack-6ch 3-stack (6-channel)
3stack-6ch-dig 3-stack (6-channel) with SPDIF
6stack-dig 6-stack with SPDIF
lenovo-101e Lenovo laptop
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

ALC882/885
3stack-dig 3-jack with SPDIF I/O
6stack-dig 6-jack digital with SPDIF I/O
arima Arima W820Di1
targa Targa T8, MSI-1049 T8
asus-a7j ASUS A7J
asus-a7m ASUS A7M
macpro MacPro support
mbp3 Macbook Pro rev3
imac24 iMac 24” with jack detection
w2jc ASUS W2JC
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

ALC883/888
3stack-dig 3-jack with SPDIF I/O
6stack-dig 6-jack digital with SPDIF I/O
3stack-6ch 3-jack 6-channel
3stack-6ch-dig 3-jack 6-channel with SPDIF I/O
6stack-dig-demo 6-jack digital for Intel demo board
acer Acer laptops (Travelmate 3012WTMi, Aspire 5600, etc)
acer-aspire Acer Aspire 9810
medion Medion Laptops
medion-md2 Medion MD2
targa-dig Targa/MSI
targa-2ch-dig Targs/MSI with 2-channel
laptop-eapd 3-jack with SPDIF I/O and EAPD (Clevo M540JE, M550JE)
lenovo-101e Lenovo 101E
lenovo-nb0763 Lenovo NB0763
lenovo-ms7195-dig Lenovo MS7195
haier-w66 Haier W66
6stack-hp HP machines with 6stack (Nettle boards)
3stack-hp HP machines with 3stack (Lucknow, Samba boards)
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

ALC861/660
3stack 3-jack
3stack-dig 3-jack with SPDIF I/O
6stack-dig 6-jack with SPDIF I/O
3stack-660 3-jack (for ALC660)
uniwill-m31 Uniwill M31 laptop
toshiba Toshiba laptop support
asus Asus laptop support
asus-laptop ASUS F2/F3 laptops
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

ALC861VD/660VD
3stack 3-jack
3stack-dig 3-jack with SPDIF OUT
6stack-dig 6-jack with SPDIF OUT
3stack-660 3-jack (for ALC660VD)
3stack-660-digout 3-jack with SPDIF OUT (for ALC660VD)
lenovo Lenovo 3000 C200
dallas Dallas laptops
hp HP TX1000
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

CMI9880
minimal 3-jack in back
min_fp 3-jack in back, 2-jack in front
full 6-jack in back, 2-jack in front
full_dig 6-jack in back, 2-jack in front, SPDIF I/O
allout 5-jack in back, 2-jack in front, SPDIF out
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

AD1882
3stack 3-stack mode (default)
6stack 6-stack mode

AD1884
N/A

AD1981
basic 3-jack (default)
hp HP nx6320
thinkpad Lenovo Thinkpad T60/X60/Z60
toshiba Toshiba U205

AD1983
N/A

AD1984
basic default configuration
thinkpad Lenovo Thinkpad T61/X61

AD1986A
6stack 6-jack, separate surrounds (default)
3stack 3-stack, shared surrounds
laptop 2-channel only (FSC V2060, Samsung M50)
laptop-eapd 2-channel with EAPD (Samsung R65, ASUS A6J)
laptop-automute 2-channel with EAPD and HP-automute (Lenovo N100)
ultra 2-channel with EAPD (Samsung Ultra tablet PC)

AD1988
6stack 6-jack
6stack-dig ditto with SPDIF
3stack 3-jack
3stack-dig ditto with SPDIF
laptop 3-jack with hp-jack automute
laptop-dig ditto with SPDIF
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)

Conexant 5045
laptop Laptop config
test for testing/debugging purpose, almost all controls
can be adjusted. Appearing only when compiled with
$CONFIG_SND_DEBUG=y

Conexant 5047
laptop Basic Laptop config
laptop-hp Laptop config for some HP models (subdevice 30A5)
laptop-eapd Laptop config with EAPD support
test for testing/debugging purpose, almost all controls
can be adjusted. Appearing only when compiled with
$CONFIG_SND_DEBUG=y

STAC9200
ref Reference board
dell-d21 Dell (unknown)
dell-d22 Dell (unknown)
dell-d23 Dell (unknown)
dell-m21 Dell Inspiron 630m, Dell Inspiron 640m
dell-m22 Dell Latitude D620, Dell Latitude D820
dell-m23 Dell XPS M1710, Dell Precision M90
dell-m24 Dell Latitude 120L
dell-m25 Dell Inspiron E1505n
dell-m26 Dell Inspiron 1501
dell-m27 Dell Inspiron E1705/9400

STAC9205/9254
ref Reference board
dell-m42 Dell (unknown)
dell-m43 Dell Precision
dell-m44 Dell Inspiron

STAC9220/9221
ref Reference board
3stack D945 3stack
5stack D945 5stack + SPDIF
intel-mac-v1 Intel Mac Type 1
intel-mac-v2 Intel Mac Type 2
intel-mac-v3 Intel Mac Type 3
intel-mac-v4 Intel Mac Type 4
intel-mac-v5 Intel Mac Type 5
macmini Intel Mac Mini (equivalent with type 3)
macbook Intel Mac Book (eq. type 5)
macbook-pro-v1 Intel Mac Book Pro 1st generation (eq. type 3)
macbook-pro Intel Mac Book Pro 2nd generation (eq. type 3)
imac-intel Intel iMac (eq. type 2)
imac-intel-20 Intel iMac (newer version) (eq. type 3)
dell-d81 Dell (unknown)
dell-d82 Dell (unknown)
dell-m81 Dell (unknown)
dell-m82 Dell XPS M1210

STAC9202/9250/9251
ref Reference board, base config
m2-2 Some Gateway MX series laptops
m6 Some Gateway NX series laptops
pa6 Gateway NX860 series

STAC9227/9228/9229/927x
ref Reference board
3stack D965 3stack
5stack D965 5stack + SPDIF
dell-3stack Dell Dimension E520

STAC9872
vaio Setup for VAIO FE550G/SZ110
vaio-ar Setup for VAIO AR

Zip files corrupted on download in internet explorer no FF or Chrome

Andy Bird — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:39:29 +0000

Aghh the joys of working with websites..

One step forward another step back.

Scenario

You have zipped files available for download from your site, blog, CMS etc. When you test the download process our in IE you get an error:

The Compressed (zipped) Folder is invalid or corrupted.

However, when you test the download with Firefox or Chrome all works fine. You may even be able to open the file via 7zip or Winrar. However, normal people (non-geeks) will not be able to enjoy your amazing zipped files. This can be especially irritating if you are trying to sell downloadable files via Magento or similar. The problem is probably related to the way in which you have told apache to gzip your site. Check to make sure that you (or your software package) have not applied the following in either .htaccess or httpd.conf

SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

This essentially tells apache to compress all files being sent to the browser. Fine unless you have already compressed a file. This double compression clearly damages the files in transit leading to the problem above. I have yet to figure out why FF or chrome seem to compensate for this. Either way you need to be more specific in how you tell apache to compress what.

Something like this should be used

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml application/xhtml+xml application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript application/x-javascript
#AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-php

BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|bz2|sit|rar)$ no-gzip dont-vary
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:pdf|doc)$ no-gzip dont-vary
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:avi|mov|mp3|mp4|rm)$ no-gzip dont-vary

The top block explicitly tell the server what type of files to compress. The middle block targets the browsers. The final block will exclude php generated media formats which again do not need to compressed twice.

Publish wordpress to twitter

Andy Bird — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 12:58:28 +0000

Having just spent all morning getting grief from she-who-must-be-obeyed I am having a bad PC day. Her command was simple enough

MAKE MY BLOG POST TO TWITTER

hmm. 1st it was “who the hell would want to use twitter” then it was like “make my facebook page talk to twitter” now its “make my wordpress blog talk to twitter”. The facebook talking to twitter was a bit of a pain but I figured wordpress would be a doddle. I used the built in plugin search / install tool to try about 5 different twitter integrators and none of them would work. Alex King who produces the most popular plug in Twitter Tools was starting to lose his cool so it is clearly a problem with some esoteric combination of servers and twitter.

Eventually at the bottom of the plugin search page is WP to Twitter by Joe Dolson. Finally!! This worked a treat 1st time around, supports bit.ly and a few other shortening services and is very easy to use. Is these words are true there should be a link flying its way over to twitter right now pointing back to this page

How to extract .tgz or .tar.gz

Andy Bird — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 12:26:54 +0000

To extract .tar.gz or .tgz files from terminal or via ssh

tar -zxvf file.tar.gz

tar -zxvf filename.tgz

I don’t know about anyone else but 99% of the time when faced with a compressed tar file I want to extract it to its own folder and view the progress of the decompression. So why it is that every time you seek the answer to this question do most linux support sites feel the need to explain over 1500 words every single possible switch and variant of the tar command coupled with the historical development and legacy options of the command. WE DON’T CARE.

SSH as a different user on remote linux box

Andy Bird — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 12:12:05 +0000

Scenario:
You are sat at a linux box (ubuntu, fedora, suse etc) and want to ssh into another linux box (probably your webserver). By default typing ssh remote-domain.com will attempt to log you in as the user you are currently logged in as. However, you may want to log into the remote machine as someone else.

Short answer:

in a linux terminal enter

ssh user@remote.com

Long answer:

Arghh!

Digging into the linux world as a traditional windows user can be hit and miss. When working through IT puzzles I have always figured that if I can think of the need then someone somewhere will have figured away to do it and all I need to do is to figure how to ask Google the right question.

With linux things are slightly different. It is almost as if there is some unwritten linux user constitution that says that when explaining the solution to a problem they will only give the vaguest clues and insinuations. It is as if actually spelling out in plain English the answer to a problem would be ‘too easy’. Heck, I am surprised that some of the answers are not in anagrams just to make things hard.

After trying various google searches the answer was eventually half way down the second page.

In Windows the usual way to ssh into a server is via Putty and this is probably the cause of the frustration. In putty you give the remote domain you want to connect to and when the connection is made you are asked for a user name and password. IT MAKES SENSE!!. On a linux box (ubuntu trying to connect to CentOS in my case) it assumes you want to connect the remote computer using the username you are currently logged in as. Why? I mean what are the changes of two computers expecting the same username?

As with many linux problem-answer combos the answer is easy.. once you know how. Part of the reason I stated this blog was to stick info like this somewhere so the next time I forger I know where to look and help others who are in the same situation. As always if you find somthing useful check out the sponsors