Blograscheln : /tech/index.html

Tue, 23 Dec 2008

Downgrading from KDE 4 to KDE 3

I have been using KDE 4 for some months now, but a couple of days ago it simply could not take it anymore. It simply unbearably slow on some crucial things like ALT-F2, and to add insult to injury, everything seems to be made more gnome-ish but more unusuable. The last straw was trying to add a launcher for Opera onto the main panel, and ending up instead with my KDE menu un-moveable on the right edge of the main panel next to the clock (I will skip the details). So, downgrade time! I had installed the KDE 4 packages from the experimental repository and had added an entry to the /etc/apt/preferences, so that packages once installed from experimental would be included on apt-get upgrades, like this:

Package: *
Pin: release a=experimental
Pin-Priority: 101

A quick Google reminded me of how to downgrade in Debian: I added an entry for the normal unstable with an elevated priority:

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 1001

And after that, it was a simple matter of cycling through apt-get (dist-)upgrade and apt-get -f install until all packages where downgraded and their dependencies resolved. A apt-show-versions -b |grep /experimental provided me with a list of packages that remained to be removed manually. Finally, I had to apt-get install kde-base to have the KDE choice in KDM again, and I had my old KDE back- even the config remained intact, KDE 4 on Debian uses ~/.kde4. The only thing I miss is Dolphin and the nice integration on removable media.

Sun, 21 Dec 2008

Fixed comments

Comments now work without giving an error when you leave out the E-Mail address. Furthermore, the notification mail is actually delivered.

Sun, 10 Aug 2008

Zattoo on Debian Unstable - Or: what are you typing all the time?

This week I got my new laptop (rented from the University), a Dell Latitude D630. Almost everything worked right out of the box with Debian Unstable, only the Hotkeys are not working yet. I guess thats the price for not choosing Ubuntu :). I tried to install Zattoo (Sunday is Tatort-day), but it failed because it depends on libxul0d, which is not included with xulrunner 1.9 in Sid. After setting up a pbuilder environment and a local Apt-Repository with Reprepro, building xulrunner 1.8 from Ubuntu Hardy was a matter of waiting some minutes (2x2.2 Ghz + 4 Megabyte cache :). I love pbuilder. After adding the compiled results and the Zattoo binary-package into the repository, apt-get install zattoo installed the package and its dependencies. Zattoo started and logged in, but complained about missing the Adobe Flash plugin, which was installed (flashplugin-nonfree) and segfault'ed after buffering. This could be fixed by linking /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/xulrunner/plugins.

Sun, 17 Feb 2008

My K750i and Linux

First post in english, maybe its of some use for somebody else.

I finally got around setting up backups of my Sony Ericsson phone again. First, I added an udev-rule to fix the permissions of the /dev/rfcomm0 device which gets set up automatically by Gentoo if configured right.

/etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf

 rfcomm0 {
  # Automatically bind the device at startup
  bind yes;

  # Bluetooth address of the device
  device 00:AA:BB:CC:DD:EE;

  # RFCOMM channel for the connection
  channel 1;

  # Description of the connection
  comment "description";
 }

udev-rule
```
 KERNEL=="rfcomm[0-9]*",GROUP="dialout"
```
Now we can access the phone via /dev/rfcomm0 as soon as we turn on bluetooth and plug in the adapter.

I tried some applications with this:

Gammu: this Gnokii-Fork also supports non-Nokia phones. There is a good GUI available (wammu), but I wasn't so lucky so I sticked to plain gammu.
- ~/.gammurc:
```
[gammu]
connection = at
port = /dev/rfcomm0
logfile = gammulog
logformat = textall
```
- A backup of the whole phone can be done with:
```
gammu backup <filename>
```

This will dump everything in one file.

OpenSync: this is the successor of MultiSync, the GUI for it did not build for me, but the commandline client msynctool does work. First, I tried a group of syncml for the phone, kdepim for Kontact and file for something 'solid' ;), like this:

Configuration was pretty easy once I figured it out:

# create group
msynctool --addgroup jan_private
msynctool --addmember jan_private kdepim-sync # -> member 0
msynctool --addmember jan_private file-sync # -> member 1
msynctool --addmember jan_private syncml-obex-client # -> member 2
# discover capabilities
msynctool --discover jan_private 0
msynctool --discover jan_private 1
msynctool --discover jan_private 2
# disable everything beside contacts
msynctool --disable-objtype jan_private event
msynctool --disable-objtype jan_private note
msynctool --disable-objtype jan_private data
msynctool --disable-objtype jan_private todo

Config for the plugins:

kdepim has no options

File: msynctool --configure jan_private 2

  <directory>
    <path>/home/ja/docs/sync</path>
    <objtype>contact</objtype>
    <objformat>vcard30</objformat>
  </directory>
</config>

SyncML (see OpenSync wiki): msynctool --configure jan_private 3

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
  <bluetooth_address>00:AA:BB:CC:DD:EE</bluetooth_address>
  <bluetooth_channel>8</bluetooth_channel>
  <identifier>Sony Ericss</identifier>
  <version>1</version>
  <wbxml>1</wbxml>
  <username></username>
  <password></password>
  <type>2</type>
  <usestringtable>0</usestringtable>
  <onlyreplace>0</onlyreplace>
  <onlyLocaltime>0</onlyLocaltime>
  <recvLimit>0</recvLimit>
  <maxObjSize>0</maxObjSize>
  <database>
     <name>Contacts</name>
     <objtype>contact</objtype>
     <objformat>vcard21</objformat>
   </database>
</config>

Now we can sync (I need to try twice so it does the slow sync):
```
msynctool --sync jan_private
```

This gave me a duplicates everytime I synced.

Since it was a long time since I used my old addressbook, it took quite some time to hand-merge the backuped contacts (one for each number - wtf sony?) with the two other addressbooks (in Kontact). After that, I deleted all my contacts on the phone, tried - and it fucked up, because there were all the duplicates still in the file-backend. Ok, new group, only kdepim and syncml in it, delete all contacts on the phone again, sync - and everything is nice. Even syncing seems to work. Only Kontact doesn't show the Names of new synced contacts until you save them again.

Blograscheln

Tue, 23 Dec 2008

Downgrading from KDE 4 to KDE 3

Sun, 21 Dec 2008

Fixed comments

Sun, 10 Aug 2008

Zattoo on Debian Unstable - Or: what are you typing all the time?

Sun, 17 Feb 2008

My K750i and Linux

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