Moblin Image Creator for Ubuntu 9.04

Although MIC1 is deprecated and replaced by MIC2, I think it is still the best Ubuntu image customization tool. It is pity to throw it away. I would like to resume the development and extend it to build image for latest Ubuntu version like 9.04 . The first prototype is ready. It could build image for Ubuntu 9.04. The source code is available in my github account.

Reference:

• Moblin Image Creator for EeePC

Backported Qt 4.5.2 and Qt Creator 1.1.0 to Ubuntu Hardy

The Ubuntu hardy's official repository only support QT 4.4 , but I am now doing QT 4.5-based development on my X60 notebook with Ubuntu hardy. I have backported QT 4.5.2 and Qt Creator 1.1.0 from karmic to hardy. The packages has been pushed to Launchpad PPA. If you also need it , you may add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/benlau/hardy-backport-qt/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/benlau/hardy-backport-qt/ubuntu hardy main

More packages from : hardy-backport-qt

Running OLPC 8.2 in VirtualBox

It is well known that OLPC build 767 (8.2) can not be run in VirtalBox / VMWare due to the absent of 3Dnow instruction in the virtual machine. 3DNow is an extension to the x86 instruction developed by AMD. As VirtualBox / VMWare don't have any plan to support 3DNow instruction , it need to customize the OLPC image by ourself in order to run on those platform.

The method is not available in wiki.laptop.org , therefore , I have to figure out by myself. And it is the result:

(The instruction is not completed, because I am not familiar with Fedora. Please feel free to comment and suggest improve method. Soon it is ready , I will post to wiki.laptop.org )

Preparation:

1. Follow the instruction Virtual Box - OLPC
   
1. Download the ext3 image
2. Setup the Virtual Machine
3. Convert the ext3 image by using the "VBoxManage convertd" command
2. Download Ubuntu Live Image (e.g 8.10)
   

Boot the virtual machine with the Ubuntu Live Image.

1. Mount OLPCRoot by using the menu : Places -> OLPCRoot

2. Open Terminal , run the command below:

mount -t none /dev /media/OLPC/dev -o bind
cp /etc/resolv.conf /media/OLPCRoot/etc/resolv.conf
chroot /media/OLPCRoot
mount /proc
mount /sys

3. Now you are under a chroot environment , you need to edit few files and install few packages:

3.1 Edit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo

Found the line "include=file:///etc/yum/olpc-exclude" and comment it

3.2 Install standard kernel :

yum -y install yum-allowdowngrade

yum --allow-downgrade -y install kernel.i686

3.3 Add the new kernel config to /boot/grub/grub.conf

title Standard Fedora Kernel
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25-14.fc9.i686 ro vga=0x317 video=vesafb:ypan sellinux=0 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 emu
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25-14.fc9.i686.img

3.4 Reboot the Virtual Machine , and remove the LiveCD iso image. Now VirtualBox should be able to boot OLPC 8.2

Known Issue:

1. USB auto mount is working , but the mounted drive can not be shown in Journal
   

Ditz Commander 0.4 released

Ditz Commander is a simple GUI frontend for ditz (light weight distributed issue tracker).

Project page : http://code.google.com/p/ditz-commander/

ChangeLog (v.04):

• Added "New" window button in toolbar to create new window of commander
• Prompt dialog if the opened path is not a valid ditz repository to ask to run "ditz init" command
• Refresh button is renamed to HTML button
• Supported shortcut keys binding for toolbar items
• Ctrl+N - Create new window
• Ctrl+O - Open repository
• Alt+Left - Go to previous page
• Alt+Right - Go to next page
• Ctrl+R - Reload page
• Alt+Home - Go to the index page
• Ctrl+Q - Quit

Ditz Commander 0.3 released

Project page : http://code.google.com/p/ditz-commander/

Changelog:

• Added new Tool buttons : Go back & Go forward
• Added extra command list for non-common command
• Implemented commands : "add-release" , "add-component" , "set-component" , "Unassign" , "Stop" , "Raw Edit"
• Added "Recently opened folder" menu
• Raw Edit Command - Launch $EDITOR (default is vim) and open raw issue file
• Bug Fix - It is now able to handle relative path as input argument of command "ditz-commander"
• Change window title according to the current loading page

Screenshot:

From Blog

Ditz Commander

Ditz Commander is a simple GUI frontend of ditz (light weight distributed issue tracker).

Features

• Integrate HTML browser and terminal in a single UI window
• Short cut to ditz commands like "add" , "edit" , "comment" and "html"
• Auto determine the Issue ID of loading page for ditz commands like "edit" and "comment". No need to copy & page issue ID from HTML page.
• A single "refresh" button to generate HTML document and refresh browser content

Screenshot (v0.2)

Project page : http://code.google.com/p/ditz-commander/

GStreamer pipeline description generator

rvtk-gst-pg is a GStreamer pipeline description generator that will be released togather with Rvtk 0.3. It is a GUI utility to generate GStreamer pipeline description for tools like gst-launch , ARToolkit-based applications , and any GStreamer based applications.

It is getting more number of applications use GStreamer for video playing. That include few webcam applications (e.g. Cheese) and computer vision software (e.g. Lasertraq). Although they are working fine , they usually lack a user interface to tune camera parameter. User may only use default camera parameter unless they know how to construct GStreamer pipeline description, which is too complicated for end-user.

Example of pipeline description:

# Capture image from a webcam with resolution of 320x240 and 30fps.

gst-launch-0.10 -v v4l2src name=source queue-size=2 ! video/x-raw-yuv,width=320,height=240,framerate=30/1 ! ffmpegcolorspace ! ximagesink

# Play a AVI file.
gst-launch-0.10 filesrc location=video.avi ! decodebin ! ffmpegcolorspace ! ximagesink

The usage of rvtk-gst-pg is quite similar to zenity. It will display few Gtk+ dialogs , and return the user input to standard output for shell scripting:

$ rvtk-gst-pg --help
Usage:
rvtk-gst-pg [OPTION...] [sink element]

Help Options:
-?, --help Show help options
--help-all Show all help options
--help-gtk Show GTK+ Options

Application Options:
-v, --var Export variable name
--display=DISPLAY X display to use

Example script: play video from webcam or local media by gst-launch:

PIPELINE=`rvtk-gst-pg xvimagesink`
if [ ! -z "$PIPELINE" ]
then
gst-launch $PIPELINE
fi

Firstly, it will prompt a dialog to ask for the location of media source. The first tab contains the detected capture device list , another tab shows a file selection browser to choose their local media file.

If a capture device is chosen , it will prompt another dialog for more options of capture device. That include the image format , resolution and FPS.

Finally , rvtk-gst-pg will print out the pipeline description according to the media chosen and the passed argument to standard output.

Example video : rvtk-gst-pd + levelhead



Although Rvtk 0.3 is not released yet , the source of rvtk-gst-pg is already available in Launchpad: https://code.launchpad.net/rvtk