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Andrew Donnellan And the winner is…

…Oakeshott, in a landslide.

64.14% first preference, 74.38% TCP.

Now for the people of Lyne to get used to having, you know, representation in Parliament.

Posted Sat Sep 6 11:08:59 2008
Joachim Breitner vm.overcommit_memory = 2, vm.overcommit_ratio = 0

Do you know this experience: A program, in my case subversion, has a bug and starts to eat memory. You can not interact with your system any more, only watch the memory and swap run full (if you have a display for that). Then it takes a while, while the kernel kills the (hopefully right) program. Things start to move again, until they are fully recovered from the swap and you can continue your work. Or the kernel does somehow not kill the right program, and you are screwed.

During regular work, though, your swap is hardy ever needed. Only after a while, a few megabytes of never-used RAM is swapped out, to make space for using the RAM as a file cache.

I’d like to see the kernel not give out more memory to processes than there is physical memory, because that’s plenty for normal work, and if there is more requested, then that’s most likely wrong. But I still want the kernel to use the rest of the memory for caching files, and also move some unused RAM pages to the swap file.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a settings that achieves this directly. But if you happen to have the swap about the same size as your RAM, then these settings, when written to /etc/sysctl.d/vm.conf, will do the job:

vm.overcommit_memory = 2
vm.overcommit_ratio = 0

The first one is to make sure the kernel does not hand out more memory than you tell it to, and the second is to make sure that it only hands out (swap size + 0 * RAM size) to processes.

Beware that things go wrong if you happen to have no swap any more for some reason, beause then the kernel will hand out zero memory! Therefore, you need to make sure that these settings are applied after swap was enabled. On a Debian machine, rename /etc/rcS.d/S30procps to /etc/rcS.d/S37procps. This would not be possible if you could also specify the ration of swap memory to be used. Then I could set that to zero and the RAM ratio to 100.

If anyone knows better ways to achieve this, I’m interested to hear them.

Update: For my qemu based armel package builder, this is not enough it seems. I’m now running it with overcommit_ratio = 50.

Posted Fri Sep 5 17:06:44 2008
Martin F. Krafft Swamp airports with trash

I am surely not the only one to complain about the ridiculous liquids restrictions for airplane travel. Since these new regulation are in place, I’ve challenged them, found holes, and compiled tips for those trying to blow up planes.

I wouldn’t write another story if it weren’t for an idea I’ve had at Zurich airport on my last trip to London: let’s swamp the airports with trash so that they’ll be forced to deal with Brussels and IATA to return to normal.

After checking in for my flight, I stopped by the supermarket to buy two containers of yoghurt that would make someone happy. The containers each said 150g (that’s weight, not volume) on them, and I put them into a clear, resealable one-litre bag, placed them into a tray to be x-ray-scanned separately, only to have them confiscated.

After discovering (not much to my surprise) that the security staff didn’t know the difference between weight and volume, nor understood the concept of density, I got a chance to speak to the head security officer (surrounded by five police whose attention I’d gotten), and learnt that Zurich airport has one ton of trash to discard every day, Frankfurt supposedly has to deal with four.

As I was walking onto my plane, I tried to think of non-recyclable containers that we could fill with liquids to bring along to increase that amount. My theory was that once the trash problem became too massive, the airports would have to deal with the authorities to resolve this liquid restriction, because it seems quite clear that normal people have no way to influence choices made that affect our “safety”.

Unfortunately, I see two problems:

First, we’d be dealing with trash and hence face all the environmental concerns. The airports do not recycle the millions of PET bottles they confiscate every day, so we shouldn’t make that worse. Unfortunately, I cannot think of another liquid container that wouldn’t come with similar concerns.

Second, the airports might have the burden, but they won’t carry the cost of all the trash. In fact, thanks to the security theatre related to liquids, we already pay higher airport taxes and charges. Surely it can’t be in our interest to push that further up the scale.

So in the end, swamping airports with trash doesn’t seem like a viable way forward, unfortunately.

I wish I knew what to do. I wish that the decision makers at IATA would finally admit that they overreacted and revert to normal, with sensible security measures, which focus on fending off the real threats, not fake ones. Unfortunately, nobody likes to admit that they were wrong, especially not when the decision is heavily backed up by the lobby of vending machine companies and restaurant owners, who benefit greatly from these ridiculous liquid safety measures.

NP: Pulp: We Love Life

Posted Fri Sep 5 10:54:03 2008
Martin F. Krafft New Zealand terrorism

Penny keeps me updated on New Zealand terrorism and it’s depressing to hear about it: 18 people detained and tried as terrorists for peace activism, protesting against environmental issues, and fighting for Māori rights.

I’d like to help spread the word and hope that avaaz.org picks up this issue soon! If you would, please pass this on.

NP: Stars: Set Yourself on Fire

Posted Thu Sep 4 10:46:37 2008
Holger Levsen RC bug a week - week 2

Last week I started my personal RC bug quest, to get the RC bug counter down and Lenny released some time this year. Sadly, a release in September 2008 is not possible anymore.

Since last week I've been mostly with other stuff, like coming back home after ?DebConf8 and catching up on some real life issues... So I wasn't very productive and only downgraded 496967 and verified that 484045 can really be closed by now. But at least it brought the counter down a bit :-)

Last week we were at 428 open RC bugs, today it's "only" 383. If we keep this speed, Lenny will be released in 15 weeks. So I certainly hope for some removals to happen soon..! ;-)

Using the alternative BTS view, I see 359 RC bugs effecting lenny, or 339 if I exclude contrib and non-free. So "only" 13 weeks...

While writing this blog post I thought that rc-alert should be able to list only bugs, which effect a specific distro and much to my joy, rc-alert from devscripts in lenny and sid has a "-d" option :-)

Posted Tue Sep 2 15:45:37 2008
Holger Levsen patch-tracking made easy

Well done, kudos! (I noticed via 497410.)

For those who are to lazy to follow the first link: it's a system to view all patches applied to the upstream sources for packages in stable, testing and unstable.

Posted Tue Sep 2 12:23:55 2008
Martin F. Krafft Dear Firefox, you are unique

You are so unique! No other programme I know can suck up memory at such a steep rate as you. And not only that, you also keep it safe and secure, making sure never to release it. You’re awesome! I wish there would be more like you. NOT.

Update: sorry, Firefox, you’re about to be degraded!

NP: 65daysofstatic: The Destruction of Small Ideas

Posted Tue Sep 2 09:24:00 2008
Martin F. Krafft Does silence kill kids?

When Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, he probably didn’t expect the rise of the cellphones we’ve been seeing over the last 20 years. At first, there were C-net phone too huge to carry, but mobile still, as they communicated wireless. Then, devices became smaller, networks faster and ubiquitous, and today, the number of cellphones sold worldwide has exceeded the population.

Much like everything else, “it used to be better back then”. When phone calls were still ridiculously expensive, people were able to enjoy their peace and life progressed slow for everyone to think enough, not do or say without engaging their brains. Then, when the first cellphones stuffed people’s pockets, they did their job pretty much from the start: you could make phone calls. Some genius discovered SMS as a splendid tool to rip off customers, so phones grew pager abilities, but other than that, they just worked; I remember my first phone, which didn’t break in years.

Obviously, if you’re a phone manufacturer, you don’t like that, because once you sell a phone that works, the customer won’t come back to give more monies in ten years. Clever as you are, you devised two schemes to ensure your cash flow: make phones more brittle and crap, so that they break within a year, at most two; and drag ever younger people into the debt trap. For the truly stupid, sites and services offer ring tones and games and what not, and the lesser challenged you keep close by the continuous addition of new features that noone needs.

So these days, almost every phone can play music files, which is mighty convenient to spice up your work commute with some tunes, but our youngsters are overburdened by that, it seems.

I almost soiled myself laughing at a group of five Italians at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires, who were sitting around waiting for a bus, every one of them ear plugged and grooving to the beats (you know how dorky it looks when people silently sing along rap songs?). That’s not the funny part. The funny part is that every minute, one of them would say something, which would cause the others to unplug one ear, and form their lips to bleat “what” (making sure to add just a little bit extra of the tone of general disinterest, which is “cool”). This elicited one of two responses: either the original speaker would say “oh, nothing” and everyone nodded, or he’d repeat his wisdom, causing everyone to laugh and nod… before in both cases they replugged and returned to luff themselves. I wonder how they made it to the airport themselves, and why they travel as a group.

Worse than that, however, is that cellphone manufacturers remembered that their phones had speakers (for fancy ringtones) and consequently added the ability to blast tunes through them. As a result, groups of kiddies walk around or sit in trains, with one (or more) of those cellphones blaring into the environment.

Apart from being generally inconsiderate, what I don’t understand is how they put up with the sound quality. It’s mostly hip-hop music — you know that genre that makes some homies out there install 5000 watt subwoofers into their cars so make sure the windows rattle with the base — but these phones have a frequency spectrum comparable in width to that of your grandfather’s, way further up the scale (meaning they just don’t do base). Playing hip-hop through those is like putting a flute concerto on a subwoofer, just worse, because high-pitch tones are harder to filter by those who don’t want to hear them.

And yet, I see it all over the place, kiddies “listening” to music through cellphone speakers. Is it because silence would kill them?

NP: 65daysofstatic: The Fall of Math

Posted Tue Sep 2 09:20:59 2008
Andrew Donnellan T-5d

Five days until the by-election. Things are still looking OK for Oakeshott, but I’m still really annoyed with the way Rob Drew and the Nats are campaigning. Just got yet another mailout today, again using the ’strong message to Rudd’ theme. Do the Nats think we’re stupid or something? First-time Opposition backbencher sending a strong message to Rudd? I don’t think so. Oh, and like all politicians, he claims he’ll fix Australia and make the world a better, more happy place to live, but he doesn’t have much to back that up with.

I find it suspicious that the Nats have chosen green and yellow as their colours. I wonder if there’s been any research into the effects of ‘patriotic’ colours in advertising.

Anyone in Lyne: http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=62596290396

Posted Mon Sep 1 07:29:54 2008
Martin F. Krafft Recovering a lost default route

Tired and under the influence of beer, I tried to remove the currently broken IPv6 default route from my primary mailserver via an SSH connection and accidentally executed instead:

ip r d default
# I meant: ip -6 r d default

Unfortunately, I didn’t immediately realise what I had done, and then it was too late.

Robert Collins told me that I could have saved the session because even without a default route, packets still reach the machine. Unfortunately, due to Nagle’s algorithm, you pretty much only have one shot, so the next time this happens to me (or you), quickly type

ip r a default via <gateway>

into a separate window, then copy and paste it into the SSH session and you may get lucky.

Update: one lesson I learnt from this is to add specific routes for at least the IPv6 tunnel peer, and possibly another machine (or two) under my control out there. I now have that in place on all machines I own.

NP: The Phoenix Foundation: Pegasus

Posted Sat Aug 30 14:06:56 2008
Olivier Berger Debian on Zonbu mini PC

I had bought a Zonbu mini-pC and had barely used it until recently. I have started over, and decided to install a Debian lenny distro over it.

The installation went quite well, but requires the use of a bootable USB key Debian installer (see reference here and here). I had to use the syslinux of testing or it wouldn't work. The BIOS had to be configured appropriately : "Hit Delete on boot to enter BIOS. Enable Port 64/60 Emulation and disable BIOS EHCI Hand-Off in the USB configuration menu to boot from a USB hard drive."

Warning : this article is a work in progress : I noted various bits elsewhere and need to complete the reference info (URLs), and other missing bits. But still, I hope it's useful.

Once installed, several things need to be tweaked to get it fully operational :

  • Wifi : I have the version with a mini-PCI internal wifi card, which is uses VT6655 Via chipset. There are several possibilities to use it with GNU/Linux, although all are using proprietary software :
    • using the Via windows driver over ndiswrapper : the windows driver, over ndiswrapper, seems to work fine, even with WPA2. Note that there is an archive with an auto-extractor for Linux providing drivers pre-compiled for various distributions in the Viaarena download section under the Linux category... but it's rather old. I preferred to install the recent ndiswrapper provided in Debian lenny, and download the most recent Windows XP driver from viaarena (on a side note, to extract it I had to use wine, to get access to the @@C:\windows\vnDrvBas@@ that it tries to extract).
    • compiling a Linux driver provided by Via : the (proprietary) driver (version ''1.1.18.02 - 08 August 2008'') compiles nicely for Lenny for 2.6.25-2-486 but I experienced a really SLOW connection with my ?FreeBox over WPA2, when I tried it... so will prefer the other solution :(
  • Video driver for X : the embedded video card from Via works with default generic vesa X driver, but I installed the openchrome X-server video driver available in lenny, and it works fine. Note that you need to configure an additional option to use software pointer (SWCursor true option in xorg.conf).
  • RNG : Using the embedded Random Number Generator (RNG). The CPU provides the padlock RNG, so I suppose it's better to use it by loading the kernel module padlock (in /etc/modules) (see reference here)
  • CPU frequency scaling : one of the advantages of such a mini-pC is the green orientation : using less power, etc. As the processor supports frequency changes, why not use it (although it is discussed if it has an impact on power saving, heat dissipation, etc.) ? There is a e_powersaver cpufreq module for the Linux kernel (again in /etc/modules) which makes it work with powernowd for instance (see reference here).

TODO :

  • Sensors : TBD

Note also that I found out that the hardware I bought from Zonbu actually seems to be a MSTI eBox 4854 system.

Posted Fri Aug 29 20:46:07 2008
Olivier Berger Amanda backups to VFAT partition on external (USB) drive on Debian

I have setup a mini-PC on which I have installed my network backup infrastructure, using Amanda.

In this post, I try to summarize some useful options and links... to be improved, of course : comments most welcome.

It has a big disk (500 Gb) connected through USB (previous attemps at using the same disk as a NAS (with something like this) were not so much succesfull), which is formatted as a big VFAT partition.

So Amanda must be configured to use virtual tapes to save on the disk, but with specific tuning so that :

  • it doesn't need to use symlinks on the filesystem (since it's VFAT), so using the chg-multi changer
  • it won't try and use backup files of sizes over the VFAT limit of 4Gb (so using tapes chunks, and multi-tape backups).

I was using ?BackupPc for quite some time, but it takes resources (CPU mainly) out of one of my desktop PCs and don't want it to eat my CPU on that one. And moving it to the small mini-PC is not valid I think... moreover, it wouldn't work with a VFAT partition as a backend, I think. I hope amanda will be cool CPU-wise in the new setup.

Here are bits of my configuration :

tapecycle 25 tapes # 25 tapes rotation... not so sure of that one...

runtapes 10 # won't be able to save more than 50 Gb in one run

holdingdisk hd1 {
     directory "/mnt/nas/AMANDA/holdingdisk"
     use 50 Gb # won't be able to save more than 50 Gb in one run
     chunksize 4095 Mb # preserve VFAT filesize limit
}

tpchanger "chg-multi"           # the tape-changer glue script                                                                                               
tapedev "/dev/null"     # the no-rewind tape device to be used                                                                                               
rawtapedev "/dev/null"  # the raw device to be used (ftape only)                                                                                             
changerfile "/etc/amanda/DailySet1/chg-multi.conf"
changerdev "/dev/null"

tapetype HARD-DISK

define tapetype HARD-DISK {
    comment "Dump onto hard disk"
    length 5Gb      # arbitrary size of my virtual tapes (directories)                                                                                       
}

define dumptype global {
    comment "Global definitions"
    # This is quite useful for setting global parameters, so you don't have                                                                                  
    # to type them everywhere.  All dumptype definitions in this sample file                                                                                 
    # do include these definitions, either directly or indirectly.                                                                                           
    # There's nothing special about the name `global'; if you create any                                                                                     
    # dumptype that does not contain the word `global' or the name of any                                                                                    
    # other dumptype that contains it, these definitions won't apply.                                                                                        
    # Note that these definitions may be overridden in other                                                                                                 
    # dumptypes, if the redefinitions appear *after* the `global'                                                                                            
    # dumptype name.                                                                                                                                         
    # You may want to use this for globally enabling or disabling                                                                                            
    # indexing, recording, etc.  Some examples:                                                                                                              
    index yes
    # record no                                                                                                                                              
    # split_diskbuffer "/raid/amanda"                                                                                                                        
    split_diskbuffer "/mnt/nas/AMANDA/diskbuffer"
    fallback_splitsize 64m
    tape_splitsize 4095 Mb # preserve VFAT limit for tapes chunks (files)
}

The rest of the chg-multi is pretty standard, wrt the HOWTO.

Note that until recently, the chg-multi wouldn't work in Debian lenny... but since bug  #486384 I had spotted was fixed, it's usable again.

Posted Fri Aug 29 20:46:07 2008
Holger Levsen One RC bug per week

Probably still affected by jetlag, I've decided at the end of last week while going through my Debian mailinglists backlog, to (try to) fix one RC bug per week from now on until Lenny is released. I guess I was also influenced by Neils talk about Lenny at ?DebConf8 :-) At that time, which it is merely nine days ago, there were 378 RC bugs open in Lenny. Today we have 428 :-(

Also I decided I will blog about this regulary, in the hope that others pick up similar procedures for them, so that we can release Lenny sometime soon. We, as a project, need to gain speed in fixing these issues, this will only happen if more people start fixing these bugs. After that, we can happily go back to adding more features! ;-)

So for now I closed (or contributed to closing) three bugs: #492299: downgraded & closed, generic bug report, users didnt provide moreinfo, #495587 (bug in atd, caused by a bug in lsb-base, suggested to forcemerge), #438885 (downgraded, as all blocking bugs for this one have been fixed).

For 475036 (removal of kernel-package requested by maintainer) I updated status in the bugreport and notified the kernel-team, that they are one of the two last users of this package in Debian. Not sure which change is more appropriate now: fix kernel-package, so that it can stay in Lenny, or change the linux-2.6 build-system.

The other package which uses kernel-package is cdfs-src, but I'm not sure we should with that package anyway, see 482075.

That's it for this week. Oh, I forgot to mention why I choose one RC bug per week: it's a goal I can fullfill. If I'd choose more, I might not manage to keep up with my plan and stop it altogether. So I choose something which I hopefully can manage over a some period of time ;-) I'm aware this is not very much, but at least something.

What's your plan to help releasing Lenny on time?

Posted Mon Aug 25 14:42:26 2008
Marcos Marado Got myself an Eee PC 701 I'm back from my vacations, and there's lots of stuff I want (and will) blog about. But this one had to be now: I got myself a new Eee PC! Well, as a matter of fact both me and Paula wanted an Eee PC, so this one is from and for us both (even if the possibility of getting another one was already discussed). As you might have noticed thanks to the previous blog posts I made about ASUS EEE PC, which made several people think I already had one, I really fancy this cute little laptoy. I only have it for a couple of hours, and the time with it is between me and Paula, so I still didn't have the time to play with it as much as I wanted to: I built a backup USB stick and a backup of the system as it was, fiddled a little with settings and preferences, played with some of the software it has (which includes playing ?OpenArena and hedgewars O:-)), and got it connected to the internet via Kanguru (3G service). And I had to do this blog post using it, the same as I did when I got my blackberry phone :-)

The next step is already decided: install Debian here!

And for those wanting pictures... Well, I'm sure that either me or Paula will be uploading some of those in the near future :-) Posted Sat Aug 23 15:05:00 2008
Holger Levsen DebConf8 video prereleases available for download

All "low quality" videos (which in fact have better quality than the streams had) from ?DebConf8 are now available for download at the usual location. Enjoy!

I expect the rest of the high quality ones to appear during the next 48h, after that I'll start with the remaining post processing, which will take a bit longer, probably some weeks, hopefully only a few though :-)

Currently there are 57 events available in low quality (4,9G in size) and 30 in high (14G). The SPI event is the only one I know that is missing, but I still need to check if we have it on tape and if there are more missing.

If you notice any non-obvious problems with these videos, please don't tell me, but do describe the problem in our todo list. Thanks!

To make that a bit more clear: There is only one kind of obvious problem: more than one file per event. It's obvious that these need to be merged. All other issues, like a completly missing event, missing beginning of an event, or silence instead of audio, etc. should be noted in our todo-list. Your help here is very much appreciated.

Posted Sat Aug 23 12:54:34 2008
Holger Levsen Custom Debian Distributions shall now be called...

Debian Integrated Solutions. (DIS, pronounced "dish".)

Or at least, that's what seems to become the result of this thread on thedebian-custom mailinglist (and some RL discussions at ?DebConf8).

I've not yet participated in the renaming discussions, at the moment I can only say what others already said: the terms "custom" and "distribution" both have several problems and renaming won't be easy. Now that I've said that, it occurs to me that I do have something to add: renaming established names is never easy, but can very well be worth the effort, if the established name is problematic / has shortcomings and the new one is way better.

And there I have my doubts. TTBOMK or IME, neither Debian Med nor Debian Edu qualify as "solutions", but are a (great) basis to build solutions...

Hmm, I mostly started to write this blog post, to make more people aware of this discussion and not to add new arguments. This should better be done on the debian-custom mailinglist. Please reply there :-)

In not totally unrelated news I'm back in Europe and catching up on my various backlogs. Tomorrow I plan to connect the harddrive with the Debconf8 videos and start/continue with that backlog... If you notice any problems with the already released videos, please don't tell me, but put them in that wiki page. Thanks!

Posted Thu Aug 21 22:42:08 2008
Olivier Berger (pro) Towards more CAS-related packages in Debian (SSO for web apps)

We have setup a collaborative maintenance project named pkg-cas for Debian.

The goal is to have more packages available in Debian to be able to use the CAS SSO (Single Sign On) framework for web applications.

More details at : http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianCASPackaging

Feel free to join !

Posted Wed Aug 20 14:46:41 2008
Holger Levsen Thanks to the videoteam!

So, DebConf8 is over (currently we have three machines left in the network, the video storage server, the video encoding server and my laptop...) and IMO it rocked! I really enjoyed being here, meeting many many known faces and getting to know quite some new ones and learning a bit here and there, even though I was mostly doing videoteam work :-)

And this should be the main message of this blog post: many many thanks to all the different members of the videoteam. You have been awesome! The camera operators, the sound and video mixers, the moderators (which strictly speaking are not part of the videoteam but nonetheless helped us very much), those of you who reviewed the videos, the debconf network admins, the localteam members who prepared the venue fantastically, those who prepaid for hardware (and Debian for paying in the end) and took it here, those who helped with the set up here, the hotel staff who generally were very helpful (for example they agreed to dig holes in their walls), the absent team members who helped via irc and very much Damián Viano for his awesome work on pentabarf and Ben Hutchings for dvswitch and most of the debconf-video package.

Also I like to thank Amaya very much for bearing with me and for all the love and joy you give me! Te quiero!

Thank you all! Very very much.

(And now I'm curious who I forgot...)

I'm also really happy we got videoteam t-shirts this year and at the same time this is probably the biggest regret I have regarding the videoteam: We didn't have enough t-shirts for everyone who deserved one. But things can definitly be worse :-)

Recordings, as much as we have them, are being uploaded at the usual place. You can help us with post processing by adding comments about problems (non-obvious ones only, please. If a event is split into two files, thats an obvious problem), to our todo wikipage.

See you! Have fun!

Posted Sun Aug 17 05:00:10 2008
Marcos Marado How to use your blackberry as a modem in Debian [ATENTION: this blog post was updated!]

After aquiring a ?BlackBerry cellphone, I wanted to use it as a modem for my laptop, running Debian. I still didn't figure how to use it via bluetooth, but here's how to do it via USB:

I recommend you read all this procedure before starting


  • Install barry (so you can use the cellphone via USB, this makes it chargeable too

  • Install ?XmBlackBerry

  • connect your mobile phone to your computer, via USB

  • sudo ?XmBlackBerry

  • clicking in the options menu you'll see in the stderr (console where you
    run this app) a /dev/pts/something , which is your GPRS device

  • click "connect" and see if your phone tells you that you're connected to the desktop

  • sudo vi /etc/chatscripts/blackberry :


    ABORT BUSY ABORT ‘NO CARRIER’ ABORT VOICE ABORT ‘NO DIALTONE’ ABORT ‘NO DIAL TONE’ ABORT ‘NO ANSWER’ ABORT DELAYED ABORT ERROR
    SAY “Initializing\n”
    ” ATZ
    SAY "ATE\n"
    OK 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","wap.voicestream.com"'
    OK 'AT'OK 'ATDT*99***1#'
    SAY "Dialing\n"


  • (change "device" here) sudo vi /etc/ppp/peers/blackberry


    debug debug debug
    nodetach
    /dev/pts/device
    115200
    connect "/usr/sbin/chat -f /etc/chatscripts/blackberry"
    nomultilink
    defaultroute
    noipdefault
    ipcp-restart 7
    ipcp-accept-local
    ipcp-accept-remote
    lcp-echo-interval 0
    lcp-echo-failure 999
    modem
    noauth
    nocrtscts
    noipdefault
    novj
    usepeerdns
    user ""
    password ""


  • sudo pppd call blackberry



And you're on!

Yeah, but how to install ?XmBlackBerry?



Here are the steps to install ?XmBlackBerry:

* get and install libmotif 2.3.0 debian packages here
* aptitude install xaw3dg-dev xorg-dev x11proto-print-dev autoconf libtool libopensync-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev
* As root, run
ln -s /usr/include/X11/Xaw3d /usr/include/X11/Xaw
* Install Xlt (tested with 13.0.13): get it here, untar it and, in its directory...
*

./configure --with-motif-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib --prefix=/usr
make && make install

* Install ?XmBlackBerry:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@xmblackberry.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xmblackberry co ?XmBlackBerry
cd ?XmBlackBerry/
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@libusb.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/libusb co libusb
cd libusb
make && make install
cd ..
./CVSMake
./configure --enable-maintainer-mode --disable-shared --with-motif-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib
make
sudo make install
sudo ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.so.4 /usr/lib/libXm.so.4


And how to install Barry?


In Pearl's case you need CVS version of it.

* Install barry:
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@barry.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/barry login 
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@barry.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/barry co -P barry
cd barrysh
buildgen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install
sudo cp udev/*b* /etc/udev/rules.d/.
Posted Sat Aug 16 17:33:00 2008

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