André Dieb

Hard drive tuning

2011-02-20T13:14:00.005-03:00

I just installed Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 on my girlfriend's netbook. I expected it to be slow, but not that slow. It's a ACER ASPIRE ONE 110 netbook, pretty simple, small SSD drive, low memory, though pretty light to carry around.

After googling around a bit, I found some common optimizations for netbooks. Here are the ones I actually did:

1. Remove journaling from ext4

Some previous research indicate that the overhead caused by journaling could be from 4% to 12%. While installing Ubuntu, you can disable the journaling right after the partitions are done (shift to a different tty and use following command). I did it another way around: boot to a live USB drive. The command is

sudo tune2fs /dev/sdN -O ^has_journal

and it removes the journaling feature flag.

2. Mount flags

"noatime" avoids updates on files' access time information for every read you perform on it. I basically prepended "noatime" to the mount flags on /etc/fstab. For more information on other special uses, check this page.

I also tweaked the initialization procedures for moving/removing unimportant stuff for the netbook's use, such as moving bluetooth initialization to user runtime, sudo checks, etc. Another thing that gave a good boost was setting vm.swappiness=20 on /etc/sysctl.conf, which will decrease swapout (throwing programs to the hard drive). This is somehow a dangerous trade-off: RAM is faster but this netbook has only 512MB, it'll be faster as long as you don't keep lots of applications open.

Cheers

Finally CC2540 gets useful

2011-02-10T13:59:00.004-03:00

After some talking with TI engineers, they figured out we were in the wrong pitch. The firmware argued to be BLE compliant indeed exists, though it wasn't the one provided in the software bundle.

One of their engineers was kind enough to provide us a build of the correct one. We can't confirm it's complete, but we managed to perform a successful LE scan and also a LE connection (using BlueZ latest developments on LE).

It seems that now we have an useful platform in our hands. We'll be planning development and syncing with the community in the near future.

Initialization script for CC2540

2011-01-25T16:43:00.004-03:00

For those interested, I'll be using the following repositories for my BlueZ-related work:

http://gitorious.org/dieb-bluez (bluez)
http://gitorious.org/bluez-hcidump (bluez-hcidump)
http://gitorious.org/~dieb/bluetooth-next/dieb-bluetooth-next (bluetooth-next kernel)

Regarding the post title, I'm glad to announce a very primitive version of a hciattach initialization script for the TI's CC2540 USB dongle I've talking about. You can check it out here.

Also, no updates regarding the dongle's firmware and BLE stack problems. We're still in contact with TI engineers trying to figure out what's wrong.

Updates on TI BLE CC2540DK-Mini on Linux

2011-01-13T16:50:00.003-03:00

Here's some updates regarding CC2540DK-Mini on Linux.

We managed to get in touch with TI's engineers regarding the kit and they confirmed the dongle provided is BLE qualified. We still cannot determine why some commands die on time out, but we made some progresses.

Kernel-side bluetooth code is incomplete regarding LE: it currently doesn't support LE-only controllers. I got some hints from #bluez-br guys (thanks vcgomes, lizardo, briglia, krau) and I'll be trying to get it working over the next couple weeks.

Cheers

Getting started hacking BLE CC2540DK-Mini on Linux

2010-12-21T14:48:00.006-03:00

One of the currently available BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) development kits is CC2540DK-MINI from Texas Instruments. We at Signove managed to get a few kits and I got to hack on these for a while. This post will describe some knowledge gathered regarding the kit.

The kit comes with:

1 CC2540 key fob (slave)
1 CC2540 USB dongle (master)
1 CC debugger, used to program both key fob and dongle

Before trying to use it on Linux, I tried to follow TI instructions on their CC2540 Mini Development Kit Quick Start Guide (pdf). It teaches you how to program both key fob and dongle using the CC Debugger, their software (BLE software stack and tools) and the flash images already shipped with their software.

The programming of the devices was pretty straight-forward, the only thing worth mentioning is to be careful when connecting the cables - follow the images on the instructions and you won't have a problem.

Once the devices were programmed, I followed CC2540 Mini Development Kit User's Guide (pdf). It is a walk-through that shows how to use the dongle and the key fob together with BTool, a very simple tool that can locate the key fob, connect, read/write attributes, and so on. All functions worked fine with my setup and I moved on to hacking it on Linux.

We managed to get the dongle basic functions working on Linux with the following steps:

1. Plug in the dongle (this step is important)

2. Check which module was automatically loaded with:

dmesg | tail

In my case it was cdc_acm and it created the device /dev/ttyACM0.

3. Check whether the dongle was detected:

lsusb

If it was detected, you may have a "Bus aaa Device bbb: ID 0451:16aa Texas Instruments, Inc." line on the output.

4. Attach the device to the BlueZ stack:

sudo hciattach /dev/ttyACM0 any 57600 flow

This step should output something similar to this:

Device setup complete

We used "any" for it to use a HCI_UART interface without vendor specific options. If you try to use "texas", it'll will complain about a missing /lib/firmware/TIInit_0.2.0.bts, which we don't know if it would make our hacking any easier. Anyways, using "any" works with our basic hacking and we're in contact with TI Low Power RF department to get some more info about it.

Now the device is attached to BlueZ, you should be able to list it on hciconfig:

hciconfig -a

In my case, my laptop only has one bluetooth adapter (hci0), so the new device was assigned to hci1. The output for the new adapter is something like this:

hci1: Type: BR/EDR Bus: UART
BD Address: 3C:2D:B7:84:0B:3B ACL MTU: 0:0 SCO MTU: 0:0
UP RUNNING
RX bytes: 271 acl:0 sco:0 events:19 errors:0
TX bytes: 121 acl:0 sco:0 commands:16 errors:0
Features: 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x60 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
Packet type: DM1 DH1 HV1
Link policy:
Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT
Can't read local name on hci1: Input/output error (5).

From this output, we can see our device is not getting detected as of BLE type. Also, hciconfig can't read its local name. If you attach a hcidump to hci1, you will see that the read local name command is not known by the dongle - incomplete firmware? yes.

But that won't stop your hacking. Now you have the dongle ready to be used within hcitool and use hcidump to observe the outcome of commands. After several attempts, we managed to get some commands (using hcitool -i hci1 cmd) working on the dongle.

One thing you might notice while playing some BLE commands is that some of them just don't work. Texas warns you about it on the TI_BLE_Vendor_Specific_HCI_Guide.pdf document, included on the software package. Basically, it says some commands/events might be discarded by the BLE stack they provided. Turns out that it actually does.

We tried to use the Low Energy scan - "lescan" - of BlueZ's hcitool and it hang on Set Scan Enable, a basic LE command. On the other hand, when we crafted two HCI vendor commands we got from BTool, we managed to locate the keyfob using BlueZ. For our simple test, we created a new function for hcitool named "texas-lescan", a ugly hack for using the HCI vendor commands for scanning, imitating BTool. If you're interested, you can take a look at the patch here (applies on bluez git tree parent ec31eb74a9e7).

It works. It starts a LE scan by sending two HCI vendor commands and keyfob gets detected when the right key is pressed. Though, we're not sure if this is the correct approach for BlueZ or dealing with these TI devices.

The thing is, the HEX images provided by TI seem not to be fully compliant with BLE. Maybe this is why they provided the source code for them and pointers on how to build your own firmware (using IAR embedded workbench). Are they expecting us to write the full BLE-compliant firmware for these two devices?

Testing BlueZ's HDP implementation

2010-12-16T21:06:00.006-03:00

Following up epx's work on MCAP testing on BlueZ, we at Signove created one more tool for testing BlueZ against PTS (Bluetooth Profile Tuning Suite).

auto-hdp-pts is a Python script tinkered to automate the testing of BlueZ's HDP against PTS's HDP test suite. It contains *all PTS HDP test cases and suites listed and respective BlueZ calls that achieve the expected result.

It has only two possible command-line uses:

auto-hdp-pts --list: lists currently supported tests among PTS
auto-hdp-pts [PTS dongle addr] [tests file]

A basic use is to run the list command and direct it to a file, then use it with the second command, which will let you go through all test suite.

The usage within the runtime environment is basically pressing ENTER to enter (cheesy?) test suites and run commands and typing 'no' to skip.

It currently covers almost all tests from the PTS suite, except the (SRC/SNK) HCT_07 tests and (SRC/SNK)_DEP (which require unreleased IEEE stack).

The script currently lives on HDPy git repository, under scripts/bluez/pts (quick link here).

xmf/ixmf plugin updates

2010-09-07T13:12:00.002-03:00

For the past few months I've implemented a few XMF plugins for GStreamer's GSoC. The GSoC objectives and results are here:

Add XMF support into GStreamer (both creation and parsing of XMF files)
Have a base for XMF sub types (mXMF - mobile ringtones, iXMF - games, interactivity, among others)
Perform iXMF experiments
Get to know the GStreamer community, make professional contacts, learn the technologies in question (GStreamer, GObject, GLib, etc)
Get in touch with the XMF/iXMF working group

I'm glad to say we managed to accomplish these objectives. From the code POV, we have the following plugins:

xmfmux: capable of creating XMF files
xmfdemux: capable of demuxing XMF files
xmfbin: worth-mentioning experiment in which we tested how to perform some iXMF features within the gst context.

It's important to note that me and my mentor will maintain these plugins and keep them updated according to newly published specs. Although they're in a near-stable state, we're in the process of rounding them before pushing to -bad.

Concerning the community, we've held a conference call with key members of the iXMF working group. It was a great talk and they're definitely backing up our project. I joined the group and I may attend to following conference calls.

xmfbin experiments, ixmfmux

2010-07-19T00:15:00.006-03:00

This is the third report for the iXMF GSoC project. In this phase I've done experiments on an element called xmfbin, that would implement similar behavior of an iXMF engine. Me and my mentor have discussed the difficulties and aspects of this element for defining what we'll do next.

The experiments were all about learning more about the runtime environment required for ixmf. xmfbin was able to play simultaneously mp3 files embedded in a xmf file, created using our own xmfmux component. We had some problems when playing a mp3 file two times while using pulsesink, debug shows there may be a problem with discontinuity but alsasink did not present the same problem. We're still looking into it.

There are also other ideas regarding how ixmf playback could be done using GStreamer, we have stashed them and we'll probably revisit them on the next few weeks.

Now I'll start coding ixmfmux, which is just an extension of xmfmux. The addition is that it embeds special data structures used for ixmf effects (e.g fading, transitions, volume control, etc).

Project Schedule
Week	Date	Event	Status
0	May 18th	First component delivered	xmfdemux delivered
1	May 24th	GSoC officially begins	Designing xmfmux
2	May 31th	Coding xmfmux	xmfmux, unit tests
3	Jun 7th	Coding xmfmux	muxing of complex folder structures
4	Jun 14th	Second component delivered	xmfmux delivered, start designing ixmf playback engine and muxing requirements
5	Jun 21th	iXMF bin design and prototype	extended
5	Jun 28th	xmfbin experiments	xmfbin initial implementation
6	Jul 5th	xmfbin experiments	simultaneous playback tests with formats other than (e.g. mp3)
7	Jul 12th	xmfbin experiments	seeking, samplebin-like behavior
8	Jul 16th	GSoC Mid-term	GSoC midterm evaluations
8	Jul 19th	ixmf startup	start coding ixmfmux component for samples generation

GSoC Project Report 2 - xmfmux

2010-06-21T21:31:00.011-03:00

This is the second report for the iXMF GSoC project. In this phase I have created the xmfmux component, the remaining requirement for starting diving into ixmf.

Concerning GSoC timeline, here's how we're scheduled:

Project Schedule
Week	Event	We're at
0 (May 18th)	First component delivered	xmfdemux delivered
1 (May 24th)	GSoC officially begins	Designing xmfmux
2 (May 31th)	Coding xmfmux	xmfmux, unit tests
3 (Jun 7th)	Coding xmfmux	muxing of complex folder structures
4 (Jun 14th)	Second component delivered	xmfmux delivered, start designing ixmf playback engine and muxing requirements
5 (Jun 21th)	iXMF bin design and prototype	In progress

Important information:

Project repository: http://gitorious.org/gst/ixmf
Contact

Me: André Dieb Martins (andredieb on IRC-freenode) - andre.dieb@gmail.com
Mentor: Thiago Sousa Santos (thiagoss on IRC-freenode) - thiagossantos@gmail.com

XMF - introduction about the base format for iXMF
iXMF - introduction about interactive XMF
iXMF IASIG - interactive XMF working group (contains the draft spec)
mXMF - mobile XMF
Blog post by me about XMF/iXMF and the GSoC project
First report: xmfmux

Now to the report itself.

As you can see from our schedule above, we spent about 2-3 weeks coding the xmfmux component. The component is currently in its most basic form (doesn't support metadata yet) but it's able to fully mux xmf files and build any node structure specified (for instance, multiple folders, subfolders). This was a functional requirement for iXMF, as it specifies multiples folders for storing its different resources descriptors. Here we show some usage:

1. Single node structure, one root node that is actually the file (most common mxmf files have this layout):

filesrc location=file1.midi ! xmfmux ! filesink location=output.xmf

2. Two nodes owned by a root folder node:

filesrc location=file1.midi ! xmfmux name=muxer ! filesink location=output.xmf filesrc location=file2.midi ! muxer.

3. Subfolders:

Desired layout:

Root

Folder1

Folder2

file1

Pipeline:

filesrc location=file1.midi name=file1 xmfmux name=muxer ! filesink location=output.xmf file1 ! muxer.Folder1:Folder2:file1

Note that in this pipeline we specified the folder structure through the pad names, folders separated with : tokens.

Now on week 5, I'm studying and designing how the ixmf bin will be implemented. Concerning the xmfmux and xmfdemux components, they still lack a couple functionalities required by ixmf:

xmfdemux: Pull pads for srcpads created
xmfmux: metadata

Week 5 will be about implementing these remaining functionalities and keep designing the ixmf bin. Next report will expose the design study results and the implementation roadmap.

Vuvuzela Filter

2010-06-16T05:26:00.006-03:00

Here we'll create a filter that removes the vuvuzela sound. We'll use GStreamer (free software) and some of its plugins (also free :)).

Requirements:

GStreamer 0.10
GStreamer Base Plugins
GStreamer Good Plugins

Ubuntu users: install gstreamer0.10-plugins-base and gstreamer0.10-plugins-good through Synaptic or apt-get.

Used files:

As you might have heard about over the web, Vuvuzela main harmonics are at frequencies 233 Hz, 466 Hz, 932 Hz and 1864 Hz. This filter is basically an array of band-reject filters for attenuating (or completely removing) the signal level on those frequencies. For this, we'll be using the audiochebband plugin, part of GStreamer Good Plugins. It's a Chebyshev band pass and band reject filter but here we'll use it in band reject mode.

Vuvuzela complete filter (run in command-line):

gst-launch-0.10 uridecodebin uri="file:///home/dieb/Desktop/vuvuzela_antes.mp3" ! audioconvert ! audiochebband mode=band-reject lower-frequency=223 upper-frequency=243 type=2 ripple=50 ! audiochebband mode=band-reject lower-frequency=456 upper-frequency=476 type=2 ripple=50 ! audiochebband mode=band-reject lower-frequency=922 upper-frequency=942 type=2 ripple=50 ! audiochebband mode=band-reject lower-frequency=1854 upper-frequency=1874 type=2 ripple=50 ! audioconvert ! autoaudiosink

Note that:

This filter is attenuating a bandwidth of 20 Hz around the target frequencies. You can tune that bandwidth down (e.g. to 10 Hz, 5 Hz) for a better output sound by setting lower-frequency and upper-frequency properties to -bandwidth/2 and +bandwidth/2, respectively (e.g. 10 Hz bandwidth at 233 Hz, lower=228, upper=238)
You can also tune the ripple for a better sound. 50dB is a bit too much, perhaps you can find a smaller value for your setup

Note that this pipeline can be used for filtering live your TV sound through your computer:

gst-launch-0.10 autoaudiosrc ! audioconvert ! audiochebband mode=band-reject lower-frequency=223 upper-frequency=243 type=2 ripple=50 ! audiochebband mode=band-reject lower-frequency=456 upper-frequency=476 type=2 ripple=50 ! audiochebband mode=band-reject lower-frequency=922 upper-frequency=942 type=2 ripple=50 ! audiochebband mode=band-reject lower-frequency=1854 upper-frequency=1874 type=2 ripple=50 ! audioconvert ! autoaudiosink

Connect your TV sound output to your computer microphone/audio input (usually pink or blue connectors) and then your PC output (green connector) back to the TV (most modern TV's have blue-colored audio input jacks on the back panel). That's it. You have vuvuzela-free world cup games :-), for free.

GSoC Project Report 1 - xmfdemux

2010-05-18T23:39:00.007-03:00

This is the first report for the iXMF GSoC project. First let's have some useful information about it:

Project repository: http://gitorious.org/gst/ixmf

Contact:

Me: André Dieb Martins (andredieb on IRC-freenode) - andre.dieb@gmail.com
Mentor: Thiago Sousa Santos (thiagoss on IRC-freenode) - thiagossantos@gmail.com

iXMF related resources:

XMF - introduction about the base format for iXMF
iXMF - introduction about interactive XMF
iXMF IASIG - interactive XMF working group (contains the draft spec)
mXMF - mobile XMF
Blog post by me about XMF/iXMF and the GSoC project

For achieving the bigger goal (iXMF), GStreamer needs to support the base format (XMF). For a better understanding of the format, we decided to start the project writing a XMF demuxer element.

I started implementing the demuxer element about a week ago and today we played for the first time a XMF file. The demuxer is capable of parsing a mxmf file (mobile XMF - audio/mobile-xmf, bundle of two audio files: mDLS + MIDI) and creating sometimes-pads for each internal file.

It seems that GStreamer does not yet support mDLS, so the test concerned only the internal MIDI file (using wildmidi MIDI decoder plugin). The pipeline used was:

filesrc location=sample.mxmf ! xmfdemux ! wildmidi ! pulsesink

Still, there are a few TODO's for this element:

Pull mode for created pads: when working in sink pull mode, it would be nice to let our created pads also work in pull mode. This can be tested with the timidity plugin which supports only pull-mode.
Finish implementing file references handlers: currently we're only parsing in-line resources data. There are a few more types of reference that should be implemented before moving forward to the next element.

I'll be working on these TODO's in the next week and there should be a report concerning the next steps, which are currently under discussion with Thiago.

I'd also like to call out our fellow GStreamer developers for help, insights, suggestions, reviews, etc. It would be great to have feedback from the community.

New nickname on freenode

2010-04-29T16:41:00.001-03:00

My new nickname on freenode (irc.freenode.org) is andredieb.

iXMF & GSoC

2010-04-14T22:08:00.007-03:00

This year I applied to GStreamer's GSoC proposing to add iXMF support, consequently XMF.

For those who don't know iXMF, it's an interative audio format/container. It's a low-overhead meta file format capable of bundling collections of different data resources into a single file.

It's designed minding games sounds/music, audio skins, artist autonomy, playback instructions and many other aspects.

To quote iXMF's background description:

This new file format will put artistic control into the hands of the artists, keep programmers from having to make artistic decisions, eliminate rework for porting to new platforms, and reduce production time, cost, and stress.

Sounds powerful, doesn't it?

Now back to the proposal, my initial idea is to start by adding XMF meta file support (parsers and writers elements). This would be useful for packing multiple audio files (possibly with different formats) into a single file.

Once done, the fun part jumps in. Being an interactive audio format, iXMF playback is designed to be somehow event-driven (or signal-driven), e.g. a game application signals play (shot_sound). Additionally, these packed audio resources can contain scripts that allow transitions (e.g. crossfade) and playback parameters (e.g. volume, pan, etc). For example, the shot_sound resource could specify a play cross-fade effect.

Concerning this engine, I have discussed some implementation details Thiago and Stefan,

elder GStreamer developers. I have been pointed to http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/wiki/SampleBin, which seems to be a good idea to be aggregated here. I also gathered lots of mxmf samples (mobile XMF), which can validate the parser/writer elements.

Eager as I am, I already done some research on simultaneous play of multiple audio files (with different formats) and wrote a simple element called decoderadder which does the basic job of decoding and adding the different resources. A simple test pipeline could be

gst-launch filesrc location=background.mp3 ! decoderadder name=a ! pulsesink audiotestsrc freq=100 ! a. audiotestsrc freq=200 ! a.

which plays an mp3 audio file (e.g. a game background music) and two sin waves with frequencies 100Hz and 200Hz.

Currently I'm researching how to implement seek in decoderadder and adding signals for scheduling plays / stopping resources. I'm also researching a way for caching/predecoding samples for almost-instant play (Stefan pointed me to buzztard's memoryaudiosrc element).

I must say I'm very excited about this project, so, fingers crossed!

Eupnp-AV

2010-02-18T08:41:00.003-03:00

Hello,

I'm glad to present the first actual showcase of Eupnp: a UPnP browser. It's a simple Elementary-based application capable of browsing any UPnP-capable media servers. Here are some screenshots:

Browsing multiple media servers

Browsing folders and files of a MediaTomb server

Although it's still a first crude version, it'll follow up with some UI improvements, playing media using Emotion and possibly pictures using elm-photocam.

Where are you?

2009-10-19T20:24:00.004-03:00

Hello,

I've been quite busy the last couple months with the university and I'll probably still be until December. Too many exams, course-projects and etc.

Until then, I'll be focusing on:

eupnp: end-user applications, documentation, tutorial, libeupnp-av. Any help would be really good!
(university) annoy-clock: project for the digital systems archicteture course
(university) voice-scrambler or de-esser: project for the communication systems course

GSoC final report

2009-08-19T17:06:00.003-03:00

We've just passed the firm pencil's down date. Here's a final report for Eupnp GSoC project:

Discovery, Description, Control features completed (which provide a basic control point functionality set)
Multi-toolkit: one can easily integrate Eupnp with Qt, Glib, Ecore or any other toolkit/framework that provides the basic functionality required. We already have integration with Ecore (EFL)
Event Notification incomplete (we're able to subscribe for events but for now you're only able to receive raw messages)
Internet Gateway Device configuration tool incomplete (able to list IGD devices)

Even though the program ended, I'll obviously keep working on Eupnp. Here's an updated TODO list:

Finish implementing Event Notification
Finish IGD configuration tool
Finish API documentation, write a tutorial
libeupnp-av (UPnP Audio/Video specification) extension library

Ideas/future features:

Universal control point
Python bindings
Maemo porting
Canola plugin
Device building ability (UPnP server)

PS: Big thanks to Gustavo Barbieri (my mentor) who helped me throughout problems and taught me lots of programming techniques. Also thanks to EFL guys (raster, Sachiel, vtorri, cedric, etc) who had the patience to read my patches and answer my stupid questions on IRC :-P.

Eupnp & GSoC

2009-08-10T02:25:00.004-03:00

Hello,

I've just finished implementing the last requirement (embedded devices parsing) for our IGD client.

Concerning the project as a whole, we have the following features and TODO's:

Features:

Discovery: SSDP client
Description: fast and light SAX parsers for devices and services description files
Control: SOAP support implemented
Integration interface for external toolkits/libraries (ecore, glib, qt)
eupnp-ecore: integration library with ecore library
Command line control point application example
IGD GUI application listing devices

Missing/TODO (by order of priority):

IGD GUI controlling IGD devices
Event Notification: subscribing for variables updates
Docs, tutorial
UPnP Audio/Video extension library (libeupnp-av)*

Also, it's good to remind that today is the suggested GSoC pencil's down date. To quote the timeline:

August 10: Suggested 'pencils down' date. Take a week to scrub code, write tests, improve documentation, etc.

Concerning their sugestion and the timeline, we are almost on schedule (on the original plan we had item #2 on the first release and item #4 on the second release*). Items #1 and #3 will certainly get done on time (before August 16). I also wish to deliver item #2 on time, which is an optional UPnP feature but is very important and widely used.

* libeupnp-av has been postponed in favour of the IGD GUI as the A/V specification is extremely extensive and the IGD GUI is a simpler showcase for the project - at least for now.

Enough with the talk, pants on and code!

Eupnp, Elementary, IGD

2009-08-07T20:45:00.004-03:00

Nothing fancy for now, but we're on our way to end user tools :). This little application already lists and searches for Internet Gateway Devices using Eupnp and Elementary.

Next step will be about adding a dialog for controlling these devices (easy to do) but I need to strike-through one last TODO item before adding it (embedded devices parsing).

Finally!

2009-08-03T20:58:00.002-03:00

I finally managed to get XML fetching (devices and services) done. I lost a lot of time going against libcurl directly, so the solution my mentor proposed just fit: export a core download function that is provided by the integration toolkit (e.g. ecore_con_url from ecore toolkit).

I'll try to make up for the time lost and move on now for controlling!

Cheers

Eupnp: last sprint

2009-07-31T21:17:00.002-03:00

I just finished implementing the SCPD (service XML descriptor) parser, which leads me to the next phase: Control.

I'll be implementing Control in the next two weeks, which will be about using libcurl to perform HTTP POST calls with some attributes wrapped in a SOAP XML. The biggest problem about this is making libcurl work properly (I have just had two days debugging a stack corruption which lead nowhere, result is feature suspended).

Finished this task, I'll implement a simple application using elementary for listing local devices and information about them (i.e. universal control point). This is good to demonstrate functionality.

This will be followed by the control point A/V spec, task which hopefully I'll finish before GSoC pencil's down date (16 August).

GSoC report on Eupnp

2009-07-05T16:56:00.002-03:00

Though my release plan on the original schedule wasn't completely met on 30th June, I managed to finish some very important parts:

eupnp-core (code): virtual core module of the library, responsible for fd handling, timers and idlers. It's designed to make simple the integration with common event loops out there (ecore, gobject, qt). It's basically a mapping to event loop functions, see eupnp-ecore below.
eupnp-ecore (code): library that integrates eupnp with ecore event loop. Already contains a working example.
UPnP step 2, description: parsing device root XML description and services descriptions. This part is almost finished and will be followed by controlling devices (Step 3, SOAP support)

It's very likely that I'll finish SOAP support in these next two weeks. The other remaining task (event notification) will be easy to implement since most of the code is already done (HTTP message parser).

The second release will be using the library on end-user programs for controlling media devices and internet gateway devices (routers, etc). I hope I can finish this part on time and have more time for docs (which are already being written along with the code) and bug fixes.

Links:

General information: http://wiki.github.com/dieb/eupnp
Source tree: http://github.com/dieb/eupnp/tree/master

Contact:

dieb_ @ irc.freenode.org #edevelop
andre.dieb at gmail.com

Update

2009-06-06T13:55:00.002-03:00

Updated about me, ohloh, links, blog layout and so on... Because if you don't do it now, you'll never do!

http://genuinepulse.blogspot.com/2008/03/about-me.html

Eupnp event bus and new deps

2009-06-04T01:44:00.004-03:00

Since UPnP is event-driven itself, I have implemented a Event Bus. It is a channel onto publishers can publish events and into which subscribers can subscribe for a specific type of event (one-to-many).

The goodies about this bus is that it centralizes all eventing in one point, so, gets simpler to implement, debug, optimize and also use. The API got very simple and short, an example can be found on my example-test program.

One thing I'm still thinking about adding in this stage is multiple events subscription. I'm defining the events with independent constants (powers of 2), so it's possible to subscribe to a set of events by combining them with bitwise OR. One thing that I'm still wondering about is the frequency users would use this.

Apart from that, I have chosen two new dependencies:

libcurl: will be used to fetch XML's, perform soap POST's
libxml2: I'll use a SAX XML parser for "read-as-you-go" parsing, harder to implement but benefits in almost every way comparing to DOM.

I want to give the fetch result directly to the SAX parser, but I'm still studying the APIs to learn how to do it properly. While the XML doc is received and parsed, it'll be mounting the DeviceInfo object, without requiring a memory-expensive DOM tree.

Projects status

2009-05-19T18:59:00.003-03:00

Last week I was very busy with the university and finishing up BRisa tasks, so I didn't have time to code for Eupnp, even though I couldn't take it out of my mind (ideas!).

The status is:

BRisa: almost ready for release (may happen sometime this week, we expect friday)
Eupnp: detected a 8 byte leak on inet_ntoa (well known in the community), next steps will be implementing a cache for known devices (SSDP), add filters for search targets (CP) and starting the device builder module

I'll be working on these tasks this week and on the next week I'll have to halt a bit for some university tests. I expect to have some results until friday.

Real coffee

2009-05-19T18:55:00.002-03:00

It's been a while since I accidentally broke my coffee jar while washing it.. and since it's specially designed for that - and I didn't have time to go look for another jar of this brand - I've been drinking instant coffee Nescafe since then (bad!).

Today I managed to do a workaround with the coffee machine and another jar, so, real coffee again!

Hoorai.

Zaroo Leaks!

2009-05-06T05:35:00.005-03:00

Grinding Leaks:

cd eupnp
./autogen.sh
make
Create the lt binary under .lib: EINA_ERROR_LEVEL=3 ./src/bin/eupnp_basic_control_point
Valgrind it: EINA_ERROR_LEVEL=3 valgrind --leak-check=full --num-callers=6 --show-reachable=yes src/bin/.libs/lt-eupnp_basic_control_point

Outputs

==17842== ERROR SUMMARY: 0 errors from 0 contexts (suppressed: 23 from 1)
==17842== malloc/free: in use at exit: 0 bytes in 0 blocks.
==17842== malloc/free: 36 allocs, 36 frees, 7,265 bytes allocated.
==17842== For counts of detected errors, rerun with: -v
==17842== All heap blocks were freed -- no leaks are possible.

Zaroo leaks!

Test construction failure leaks: two instances, one binds to the address, the other can't bind, check for leaks

Output:

[eupnp_udp_transport.c:85] eupnp_udp_transport_prepare() Error binding. Address already in use
[eupnp_udp_transport.c:135] eupnp_udp_transport_new() Could not prepare socket.
[eupnp_ssdp.c:324] eupnp_ssdp_server_new() Could not create SSDP server instance.
[eupnp_control_point.c:86] eupnp_control_point_new() Could not create control point.
==18183==
==18183== ERROR SUMMARY: 0 errors from 0 contexts (suppressed: 23 from 1)
==18183== malloc/free: in use at exit: 0 bytes in 0 blocks.
==18183== malloc/free: 23 allocs, 23 frees, 1,490 bytes allocated.
==18183== For counts of detected errors, rerun with: -v
==18183== All heap blocks were freed -- no leaks are possible.

GSoC Eupnp Progress

2009-05-04T08:04:00.005-03:00

Project:

Repository: http://github.com/dieb/eupnp/tree
Cloning: git clone git://github.com/dieb/eupnp.git
Testing: ./autogen.sh, make, make install, try the binaries under src/bin with EINA_ERROR_LEVEL=3 if you want complete debug.

These are the features I already pushed (see update below):

UDP transport component;
SSDP HTTP basic request parser;
SSDP Discovery Request (M-Search);
Control Point and SSDP classes;
Working basic control point for testing features described above

Update: Gustavo Barbieri (project mentor) helped me a lot improving everything and also fix the repository tree that had a 'trunk' folder. So I created a new tree and pushed the files already improved.

From now on, only incremental commits! :-)

GSoC 2009: let the games begin

2009-04-27T02:58:00.004-03:00

For this past week I've been learning autotools as fast as I could, and as pragmatic as I could. I don't want to lose much time with this. I also managed to finish a lot of pendencies, so I'll have more time to write early code - before May 23 (official start-coding date).

GSoc 2009: accepted!

2009-04-20T16:38:00.004-03:00

I'm very happy. I've been accepted as student for Google Summer of Code 2009. My project is associated with The Enlightenment Project organization and it will be implementing a UPnP control point library in C. A brief description of the project can be found here.

I have already started coding a bit and done some bits on the SSDP server (finished the multicast listener).

The code will be available on a git repository on github. You can access the tree here and I'll be pushing the stuff soon.

Wish me luck!

Finally!

2008-12-22T19:03:00.002-03:00

Finally college activities are over for this year. All in all it was a good year.

I will now focus on the remaining tasks of BRisa 0.7.2 release, which are:

Refactor the plugin architecture (plugin.py) for auto id generation for virtual containers and also the plugins affected
Ship brisa-media-server-conf and brisa-media-server together
Copy brisa-media-server-conf command line part to brisa-conf for general configuration of the framework
Fix brisa-media-server-conf command line part to be specific to the media server with more direct commands

In remembrance

2008-12-20T19:03:00.001-03:00

Evergrey - In Remembrance

I remember your voice and your dreams
Your smile when you laughed
And your pain when you screamed
I'll follow your footsteps let them be my guide
Can you save me from being myself?
It's hard to be strong when you're stuck in a shell
If you don't desert me I won't let down

In remembrance
Of all the things you used to do
In remembrance
Of all the faith I had in you
In remembrance
And when I walk, I walk for you
In remembrance of you

I remember when we used to run
Against any threat united as one
We faced all our fears
And we chased all the clouds blocking the sun
And through the haze my sorrow created
I heard your voice and the promise you stated
And I...
Won't let you down

In remembrance
Of all the things you used to do
In remembrance
Of all the faith I had in you
In remembrance
And when I walk, I walk for you
In remembrance of you

Cause I never saw you deserted
Or you never spoke so I heard it
Cause I would never let you down
Did you call me and I didn't listen?
Did I force you to make a decision?
Did I?

In remembrance
Of all the days we planned
And all the things we said we'd do
In remembrance
Of all the times we had
And the fate I shared with you
In remembrance
You'll always be my truth
Cause what I know I've learned from you
In remembrance of you
Of all the things you used to do
And all the faith I had in you
Cause when I walk, I walk for you
In remembrance of you

Dream on...

2008-12-16T08:23:00.001-03:00

Simply amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7ACCDQwfIc

Can you feel a little love

As your bony fingers close around me
Long and spindly
Death becomes me
Heaven can you see what I see

Hey you pale and sickly child
You're death and living reconciled
Been walking home a crooked mile

Paying debt to karma
You party for a living
What you take won't kill you
But careful what you're giving

There's no time for hesitating
Pain is ready, pain is waiting
Primed to do it's educating

Unwanted, uninvited kin
It creeps beneath your crawling skin
It lives without it lives within you

Feel the fever coming
You're shaking and twitching
You can scratch all over
But that won't stop you itching

Can you feel a little love
Can you feel a little love

Dream on dream on

Blame it on your karmic curse
Oh shame upon the universe
It knows its lines
It's well rehearsed

It sucked you in, it dragged you down
To where there is no hallow ground
Where holiness is never found

Paying debt to karma
You party for a living
What you take won't kill you
But careful what you're giving

Can you feel a little love
Can you feel a little love

Dream on dream on

Can you feel a little love
Can you feel a little love

Dream on dream on
Dream on dream on

Depeche Mode - Dream On

Share keyboard and mouse with Synergy

2008-11-21T23:58:00.006-03:00

Today I'm a happy geek. Why? I discovered Synergy (actually I saw some guys at the lab using it). It allows you to share your keyboard and mouse with multiple machines.

I found it amazingly useful. At the lab, I used to use a single LCD monitor and the times I was with my laptop there, it was always a pain to stretch for typing or moving the cursor (just for the record, I'm not fat!). Now with Synergy I can share smoothly my desktop keyboard with my laptop (also at home).

On Ubuntu, you may find Synergy and Quicksynergy (graphical interface for synergy - very good and simple) at Synaptic Package Manager. Just type in "synergy" and install both.

Between Linux machines, just use Quicksynergy. On the server machine (the one you want to share from) go to the Share tab and type in the machines hostnames (cat /etc/hostname for retrieving the hostname if you don't know) on the positions you want. On the clients (that will use the shared peripherals) just go to the Use tab and type in the hostname or the IP address of the server.

If you want to add a Windows machine as a client, it's as easy as on Linux. Install Synergy from their website and just type in the IP address or hostname of the server.

If you want to have your Windows as server, you'll need to do some configuration. On the configuration Screen, click on the Configure button besides "Screens & Links".

Synergy main window

Screens & Links configuration window

On the top of the window you may see the Screens frame. There you will add which screens you'll use. I didn't read the documentation, so I really don't know if this is correct: I supposed screen name is just the name that appears on windows Synergy application, and the aliases should be the hostnames. Anyways, it worked this way.

(Here's one of my screens config. you really don't have to do much here, just type in the hostname in aliases).

Once you added your screens, you must now add the links. They're all about positioning your screens the way you want it. It's very intuitive, and I think this one you should try yourself. :-)

Have fun!

Learning how to use BRisa through code

2008-11-12T14:33:00.003-03:00

For the brave users who hate to read documentation or long texts:

Basic dictionary:

media server: hosts media
media renderer: plays media
control point: selects media from a server and tells a renderer to play it
brisa: provides a server and a renderer

Basic procedure:

Don't panic
Configure the media server with your music, picture and video folders (brisa-configuration-tool)
Start your media server (brisa-media-server)
Start a media renderer (optional)
Start a control point
On the control point interface, select your media server
On the control point interface, select a media renderer (perhaps yours, if you done step 3)
Use the controls on the control point interface: play, stop, pause, next, previous and be happy

Basic procedure (with commands):

$ svn co https://garage.maemo.org/svn/brisa/tags/python-brisa-0.7.1
$ svn co https://garage.maemo.org/svn/brisa/tags/brisa-configuration-tool-0.1.0
$ cd python-brisa-0.7.1
$ sudo python setup.py install
$ cd ../brisa-configuration-tool-0.1.0
$ sudo python setup.py install

Select your media folders on the audio, video and pictures sections:
$ brisa-configuration-tool
Save, exit

Run your media server
$ brisa-media-server

Done! Just use a control point to select media and a media renderer to play the selected media.

Control points are short in the market. If you own a N800/N810 there are two I'd recommend: Media Streamer and Canola UPnP.

Brisa provides a media renderer, which can be run on any machine on the local network. If you want to use it, just type in:

$ brisa-media-renderer

You can naturally want to play media on another machine. Just follow the same steps above for installing and then run brisa-media-renderer on the machine.

For the brave who want to follow/test latest brisa:

Getting latest BRisa:

$ svn co https://garage.maemo.org/svn/brisa/trunk
$ cd python-brisa
$ sudo python setup.py install
$ cd ../brisa-configuration-tool
$ sudo python setup.py install

Select your media folders on the audio, video and pictures sections:
$ brisa-configuration-tool
Save, exit

Running your media server
$ brisa-media-server

Running a media renderer
$ brisa-media-renderer

Help can be found at #brisa on irc.freenode.org.

Good luck and have fun!

python-brisa 0.7.1 released!

2008-11-12T14:11:00.005-03:00

python-brisa-0.7.1 has been released for maemo devices. Though it can be found at maemo-extras repository, this release is kinda not-meant-for-users (since it does not contain menu shortcuts, icons, applet and the configuration tool is still a bit ugly).

Here's an update on python-brisa-0.7.2 (actual development version):

Major refactor on the brisa.config package: sections and parameters are no longer stored on a text file, but on a sqlite database
brisa.config holds a configuration state for each brisa instance and the state can be saved on the persistence or updated with new persistence data.

Holding a runtime state for configuration makes it easy to deploy new interfaces for the configuration tool, since it can be viewed as Model of the MVC architectural pattern. Also, it provides a dynamic configuration which will be very useful with the dbus control interface (for example, turning plugins on and off dynamically without pooling configuration files).

Concerning dates, python-brisa-0.7.2 will be tagged and released in the next couple weeks, and python-brisa-0.8.0 hopefully in the beginning of december.

I'm also pasting here the latest changelog, as promised :)


python-brisa 0.7.2-dev, xxxx-xx-xx (development release)
----------------------------------
- removed extern/python-id3 which is not a dependency anymore
- created a colored logging module for developers
- configuration persistence moved from text file to sqlite database
- configuration API holds a runtime state that can be save()'d or 
update()'d with the configuration persistence


python-brisa 0.7.1, 2008-11-11
------------------------------
- API change: modules from brisa/utils/python moved to brisa/utils
- added watch facilities for SQLLite databases and objects bool attributes
- partial optimization on the filesystem plugin persistence
- fixed bugs #2980, #2950
- fixed examples with old import names


python-brisa 0.7.0, 2008-10-30
------------------------------
- control point API cleaned: now contains a basic control_point.py and a A/V implementation
- removed SQLObject dependency
- removed Twisted dependency
- removed sqlite2 dependency (sqlite3 is being shipped with python2.5)
- removed pymad and libmad dependency (now we use python-mutagen)
- new implementation of XML DIDLite generation
- plugins browser methods can return all matches or perform internal optimized sorting/slicing (has_browse_filter flag)
- added maemo multimedia and canola plugins
- added UPnP-UP (User Profile) initial implementation

BRisa UPnP Framework

2008-10-29T20:08:00.005-03:00

BRisa is a UPnP framework for creating and managing UPnP devices, specially MediaServer/MediaRenderer. It offers a plugin architecture enabling new services such as Flickr, SHOUTCast, PicasaWeb, Orkut, FaceBook, Youtube and Canola as UPnP services.

As a project decision, BRisa team is now up to faster releases (obviously with smaller increments).

Concerning versions, heres an update:

python-brisa 0.7.0 (22 Oct 2008): finished, packaged, ready for shipping (project page[1], blogs and lists) - will be released sometime during this week

python-brisa 0.7.1 (28 Oct 2008): finished but not tagged yet

python-brisa 0.7.2 (development)

Changelog will soon be posted, but for the eager there's one few-hours-old version which will be updated asap.

[1] - Project Page

Simple GIT vs SVN

2008-10-22T06:12:00.003-03:00

Tired of all those detailed technical reasons why Git is better than SVN? Yeah, me too. This article showed up on slashdot to change that. It explains how Git works with development (branching, collaboration, stashing) and compares it with how you would do it using SVN. Soon I'll have "jumped on the Git bandwagon". :)

Embedded lab. now with pastebin

2008-10-21T15:02:00.002-03:00

That's it! Embedded now has a pastebin. It is a very useful resource for developers and thanks to bozo (support team) we now have one.

Address: http://pastebin.embedded.ufcg.edu.br/

Enjoy it!

Next personal project!

2008-09-09T21:44:00.000-03:00

http://www.cheaphack.net/2008/01/turing-alarm-clock.html

Enlightenment: CVS to SVN

2008-09-01T16:16:00.003-03:00

(not so) recently the enlightenment project changed its repository from cvs to svn.

For the interested, there's already an adapted version of easy_e17 available here. It does all the dirty work for you (checkout/update/install/merge/fix-conflicts) and provides lots of options.

Have fun :)

Final Lap

2008-08-10T17:41:00.003-03:00

Two weeks, seven tests, nine reports, much coffee and less sleeping.

Wishes

2008-07-23T18:50:00.003-03:00

Keeping me busy:

Experimental Physics experiment report (six!)
Physics III (lots of tests)
BRisa webserver and bug hunt/fix for the next release
Other subjects tests (Mechanics, Calculus III)
Formatting and setting up my laptop again

I wish I had time for:

Play with EFL, code for edje_editor
Learn QT, gst, protocol buffers
Configure my gentoo server
Playing StarCraft
Learning new useful stuff (and posting them here, obviously)

Python objects evaluating to False

2008-07-19T03:49:00.004-03:00

Hi! Today I'm writing here to relate a little problem I had today, its fix and a lesson learned! [Thanks 'fumanchu' at #cherrypy for helping me debug some problems I was having with BRisa's webserver (the problem was not with CherryPy but debugging inside it made me find the problem on the webserver).]

The problem was that CherryPy wasn't finding (404) my resource, but it was there and it was exposed properly. Something else was keeping cherrypy from calling my handler. After some prints inside CherryPy, I found the bottom line of the problem: at _cpdispatch.Dispatcher.__call__. It had an evaluation of the handler function to be called, something like this:


if func:
# Set the handler
# ...
else:
# Raise NotFound exception (which leads to a 404 response)

So, the only possible explanation left was that my class was evaluating to False. I wasn't aware that python had this __nonzero__ method and this was a very particular case where I needed it. Just to sum up the my situation, let one class be named A, and let B inherit from A and from "dict" (!). Then, if "B's dict" is empty, bool(B) will evaluate to False (doc). So, when CherryPy did that evaluation on my instance of B, it was evaluating to False and returning 404. One "fix" (not really a bug) to this is to overwrite __nonzero__ and make it return True (if this is the behavior you really want).

Lesson learned: be careful with inheritance!

Important (for brazilians)

2008-07-18T14:54:00.000-03:00

http://www.petitiononline.com/veto2008/petition.html

Symbian to Go Open Source, Nokia plans to purchase Symbian

2008-06-25T07:35:00.002-03:00

Nokia recently announced its plans to purchase Symbian and formed the Symbian Foundation with the intention opening the software platform over the next two years. Symbian is already present on 60% of all cellphones in the world. With such a massive install base, open source Symbian has a much better chance of taking off than platforms like Android, which are starting on the ground floor.

Source: http://www.hackaday.com/2008/06/24/open-source-symbian/

Dependency removal & others

2008-06-23T01:04:00.000-03:00

It's been a while since the last time I wrote here. I'm now working on BRisa project at embedded. It's a very interesting project and I'm very excited about this change. I've been removing twisted dependency out of BRisa because of its long loading time, and it's working (the modified parts), although I haven't tested it on Maemo devices yet. I got some trouble finishing BRisa's WebServer, but I think it's really close now.

Moving on to another subject, Edje Editor occupied my spare time for the last two weeks, it's been fun exploring its (and Edje's) source code and actually doing some code myself! DaveMDS really made it easy for me commenting out the code and writing some samples, thanks man!

Comments and ideas are welcome!

Captchas

2008-06-17T21:09:00.000-03:00

Alternative way for installing EFL

2008-05-03T03:56:00.000-03:00

This worked just fine with Ubuntu 8.04. First, add the repository from this older guide with your respective ubuntu version. Then...

sudo apt-get install libevas0 libecore0 libedje0 libedje-bin libeet0 libeet-bin libewl1 libetk1 libemotion0 libepsilon0 libefreet0 efl-dev e17-devel-extras

If you have installed the needed libraries from this post (the first command listed), then you should be able to compile anything checked out from cvs.

Just did this on a fresh machine and compiled the python-bindings with almost no effort. Better than compiling everything by hand :)

*EDIT* had to run "apt-get install libevas*" because some engine stuff didn't come with the previous command.

Pindaiba 0.0.0 released!

2008-04-30T18:58:00.000-03:00

Pindaiba has been released at his garage homepage. It's a financial calculator for maemo, implemented using python and the GUI uses Edje|Evas.

As Thiago said on the release note @ garage, test it, find bugs and report them please! :)

Building the base for developing with EFL

2008-03-30T19:26:00.000-03:00

This post describes how to build e17 libraries and the python bindings, getting the base for developing on EFL :).

In this first moment, sit back and relax, it might take a while to download the needed packages:

sudo aptitude install build-essential cvs libtool libltdl3-dev automake1.9 autotools-dev libpopt-dev libcurl3-dev libx11-dev x11proto-xext-dev libbz2-dev libid3tag0-dev libpng12-dev libtiff4-dev libungif4-dev libjpeg62-dev libssl-dev libfreetype6-dev bison flex gettext libimlib2-dev libxml2-dev libxcursor-dev libgtk1.2-dev autoconf pkg-config libxine-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev libtagc0-dev libtag1-dev giblib-dev libxcomposite-dev xorg-dev fort77 python2.5-dev libedbus0-dev python-pyrex

After that, you can run the easy_e17.sh script. It will checkout from CVS and compile the libraries. Before running, set it +x with chmod (chmod +x easy_e17.sh).

The alternative building method is to manually checkout and compile the modules. Instead of the script, I chose this alternative, because when the script stops in one library, you'll have to run it again, and I guess it starts from the beginning again (or not!). By going manual, you can see what dependency is missing and install it.

If you prefer to go manual, start by checking out from the CVS (this step should take a while):

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17

After that, cd to the e17/libs dir and compile (the libraries in this order:

imlib, eet, evas, ecore, epeg, embryo, edje, epsilon, esmart, efreet, ewl, emotion, edb, etk

With the following commands (replace libfolder :)):

cd libfolder
./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

After you compiled all these libraries, cd to e17/proto and compile the apps you want to use. I myself installed edje_editor, edje_cc and python-efl. I compiled these apps. with the commands above (for installing the libraries). If you want to compile the python-efl bindings, first install Cython (Download):

tar -zxvf Cython-0.9.6.12.tar.gz
cd Cython-0.9.6.12/
python setup.py install

Then you should cd to the directory and run the install script:

cd e17/proto/python-efl
sudo ./build-all.sh /usr

Test it by importing "evas" or "ecore" on the python command line :).

If you missed any library install earlier, it will be accused here clearly, so, you go back and install it the same way you installed the others. If you've got problem with dependencies, try googleing it with your distribution name appended (e.g. "ltdl.h + Ubuntu"). By doing that, you may find the package with includes the dependency (or the package-dependency itself) and you can install it via apt-get or aptitude.

If you googled it, asked on #e (freenode.org), prayed, cursed god and done every step here, but you can't still get something compiled, you can leave a comment ;-)

Good luck! (you'll probably need it :))

Enlightenment 17 on Ubuntu (Gutsy): Theme and Entrance

2008-03-29T13:46:00.000-03:00

I found myself Enlightenment 17 default theme kinda weird, not ugly, but weird. There is a pretty common theme called BlackTheme, it looks very nice on the Desktop, you should try it out :). To install it, you can left click on your desktop, then go Cofiguration -> Theme and import the theme browsing. It will automatically copy it into E theme folder (which is ~/.e/e/themes).

Now for the login manager, I must say I always wanted a different one from GDM. Entrance showed itself a great solution and if you want to install it, just type on the terminal (supposing you have the correct repository from the previous post):

sudo apt-get install entrance

At the end of the installation, it should ask you which login manager you want to use, obviously, choose Entrance :). The default Entrance theme is also weird so I'm using Entrance_BlackTheme.

In order to install it, cd to the download directory and execute this in the terminal:

cp Entrance_BlackTheme.edj /usr/share/entrance/
sudo entrance_edit --theme Entrance_BlackTheme.edj

This will set the theme to the new one. I think you'll need to reboot in order to see the new login window...

Enjoy :)

Enlightenment 17 on Ubuntu (Gutsy): Installing

2008-03-28T18:08:00.000-03:00

Run (terminal):

wget http://lut1n.ifrance.com/repo_key.asc
sudo apt-key add repo_key.asc

The file should be downloaded and after the second command an "OK" message should be printed out.

Append the following to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://e17.dunnewind.net/ubuntu gutsy e17

Run as root:

apt-get update
apt-get install e17

It should install just fine.

(Planning on a post with config. tips and tweaking)

Note: If you're using feisty or hardy, changing 'gutsy' to yours will probably work (since they're on the repository).

About Me

2008-03-22T18:05:00.002-03:00

Hi, my name is André Dieb Martins, I'm an Electrical Engineering undergraduate student at UFCG (Universidade Federal de Campina Grande - PB, Brazil).

I'm currently participating in research projects at Embedded (Laboratory of Embedded Systems and Pervasive Computing) and on Google Summer of Code 2009.

My research interests are:

Software Development
Embedded Systems
Industrial Automation
Mobile related subjects

CV: Portuguese, English

(updated on 6 June 2009)