Ben Lau and Open Source

Moblin Image Creator for Ubuntu 9.04

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:30:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:05:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:41:00 +0000

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:

Follow the instruction Virtual Box - OLPC

Download the ext3 image
Setup the Virtual Machine
Convert the ext3 image by using the "VBoxManage convertd" command

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:

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

Ditz Commander 0.4 released

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:30:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:14:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:11:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:34:00 +0000

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

Realtime Video Toolkit (RVTK) - Release 0.2

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:35:00 +0000

ChangeLog

* New GObjects:
- RvtkMap, Associative container of GValue type
- RvtkHal, Access to system resource
- RvtkMedia, Abstraction class of media Source
- RvtkFrame, Abstraction class of video frame
- RvtkCapture, Video Capture Device
- RvtkV4L2Frame, V4L2 Video Frame
- RvtkV4L2Capture, V4L2 Capture Device

* New header: rvtk/rvtk.h

* Utilities:
- rvtk-scan, Scan capture devices
- rvtk-viewer, example camera viewer using RvtkFrame and RvtkCapture

* libv4l2
- Fixed memory leark in v4l2CaptureRelease
- Few API changed

* Added pkg-config scripts
- rvtk.pc
- rvtk-uninstalled.pc
- rvtk-ui.pc
- rvtk-ui-uninstalled.pc

* Document
- Support for Devhelp

TODO for Release 0.3

Deprecate all GOB code
Enrich the API of widget set.

Download

Linking OpenCV with ffmpeg 20080706

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 06:10:00 +0000

The API of ffmpeg has been changed a lot , but the OpenCV package in Debian SID is not ready for the API changes. Another distribution like gentoo has already been fixed. Ubuntu is stilling using old version of ffmpeg , so it is also fine.

But Debian SID has been migrated to newer version of ffmpeg , and quite a lot of packages are depended on that version. Therefore, it is very trouble to rollback ffmpeg version to old one , which just to make OpenCV works.

In order to make Debian SID's OpenCV work with newer ffmpeg, I have submitted two patches for the issue. If you encounter similar problem like the one below, or OpenCV can not load AVI and image files. You probably need the patches:

Compiling an application and and then linking against libhighgui fails with:
/usr/lib/libhighgui.so: undefined reference to `img_convert'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

The bug report and patches

libhighgui-dev: Linking against libhighgui fails

Moblin Image Creator for EeePC701

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:06:00 +0000

I have extended the moblin-image-creator to build image for EeePC 701. The feature of the final image :

Support to generate Writable Live USB image that don't require to install
Using squashfs + unisonfs like the default Xandros's distribution. The system only use 1GB of disk space(can be even smaller). 2.6GB disk space leave for use.
Using linux-eeepc kernel from array.org which support madwifi and eeepc-acpi
Applied the changes from http://wiki.eeeuser.com/getting_ubuntu_ … _perfectly

EeePC 701 specific changes:

Make EeePC shut down properly
Enabling processor scaling
Wifi Hotkeys
Audio after suspend/resume

EeePC 701 specific changes for gnome (based on the RiceeyTweak.sh ) :

Smaller toolbars icons
Disabling UI sounds
Fixing mute key
Fullscreen with -F11
Setting suspend when closing lid, blank screen
Don't display battery warning
Unconstraining windows to the top of the screen

As it is only an experimental release, I don't provide ISO/Image now(may provide later) . You may build your own image by using the moblin image creator. Furthur information:

http://www.moblin.org/projects/projects … reator.php

Instruction to get Moblin Image Creator for EeePC

git clone http://repo.or.cz/r/moblin-image-creator.eeepc.git
cd moblin-image-creator.eeepc.git
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc
sudo dpkg -i ../moblin-image-creator_0.45_all.deb

And then run :

sudo image-creator

Steps.

1. Create a platform project with type eeepc-i386-ubuntu-hardy-ppa
2. Create a target with fsets: eeepc-701-config and ubuntu-desktop . (You may also choose netbook-remix , but the default config for Gnome is not ready. Will add later)
3. Build image by press "Live RW USB" or "Install USB" button.
4. Press "Write USB Image" for the image generated.

Default user name : ume
Default password : (empty, just press enter when it prompt for password)

Customization:

You may customize the image by press the "Terminal" button, it will create a chroot environment and you may install any package you want. I would suggest to remove "tracker" package from your image.

apt-get remove tracker

Remark

Test your image with "Live RW USB" is safe , as it won't touch the SSD. But if you choice to create a "Install USB" image. It will format your SSD without any notice!

Related pots:

Moblin Image Creator for Ubuntu 9.04

Ubuntu Netbook Remix quick installation in EeePC platform

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Lau) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:18:00 +0000

If you have tried to install Netbook remix in your EeePC , you probably know that after the installation of packages, it take few more steps to adjust gnome environment to fit for the UME launcher. In case that you need an extra account , or reinstall the system , you have to do it again.

In order to simplify the process, I have made a package which did the configuration , so that you don't need to set gnome for netbook remix environment:

Source code :

https://code.launchpad.net/~benlau/ubuntu-eeepc-config/trunk

Installation (include netbook remix):

Add the lines below into source list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu hardy main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/benlau/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/benlau/ubuntu hardy main

then

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install go-home-applet human-netbook-theme maximus ume-launcher window-picker-applet eeepc-netbook-remix-config

Newly created account would use netbook remix environment automatically. For existing account , it take one more step to complete the installation . (Warning! It will delete gnome's bottom panel and remove all of the applet in your top panel)

Type the following commands in your terminal:

gconftool --recursive-unset /apps/panel
gconftool --recursive-unset /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager

Then restart gnome. Netbook remix will be running on your machine.

Reference:
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=35526