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OMG GRUB2 so doesn’t work with GRUB 1.5

November 15, 2009 in Computer, Linux, MythTV, Technology by Mark Beattie | 1 comment

I mentioned to both Aris and CC about not being able to get GRUB going, but as it turns out, OpenSUSE had overwritten my 1st 9.04 Xubuntu configuration’s GRUB with it’s own (I believe 1.5) but I’d installed OpenSUSE on a secondary 1.0 TB drive…. when I reformatted that 1.0 TB drive from within a Windows 7 boot cycle it decimated the MBR / GRUB setup. I thought a fresh install of 9.10 Ubuntu 64 bit Desktop would cure the “Error 17″ woes I was encountering. It didn’t. I thought, perhaps I needed to edit the device.map file or the /boot/grub/menu.lst “list” file. Nope. None of this fixed the problem. But you know what? I kept going. Because, like all things Linux, if you’re full of hate and things don’t work, that means it’s time to hunker down. FWIW there are 37 pages on the Ubuntu Forums discussing this error and that’s just one thread of many . As it turns out 9.10 Karmic Koala runs a different version of GRUB (GRUB 2, specifically) and they are not compatible. I found a utility called Super Grub Disk and booted it. It was kind enough to give me more than an “Error 17″ or an “Error 21″, it told me in fact explicitly that there was a GRUB versioning issue.

The problem was in the versioning and not where the files were pointing (hd0,0 or hd1,1 sda1, sdb6, etc). Thankfully from within the Super Grub Disk utility I was able to revert the master boot record (MBR) back to native Windows 7 boot and then from there re-booting into Super Grub I was able to boot directly into 9.10. Once in 9.10 (and not on a rescue/live CD) I was able to run Synaptic Package Managers’ update. During the Synaptic Update (code: sudo apt-get install update) 9.10 re-overwrote the MBR with GRUB 2 and it worked. I can now boot either Windows 7 or 9.10 no problem.

My hope is to try the .22 (near release) of MythTV and see if that helps me in my backend woes. MCE & Win7 work fine but doesn’t have the scheduling or Apache features of MythTV. Worst case scenario I need to make a friend at the hacker’s space in NYC (http://www.nycresistor.com/) who actually understands channel mapping tables in MYSQL for QAM ATSC (free and clear) digital cable tuning. Currently the SliconDust HDHomeRun has each of its tuners plugged into the same QAM feed, which is good because now the antenna is gone, but bad as I’ve never gotten all the free digital cable channels to work reliably in MythTV.

Super Grub Disk

Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10

: NYC Resistor Hacker’s Space

Unetbootin, Vista 32bit hell and other stories

September 24, 2009 in Computer, Linux, Mark, Technology by Mark Beattie | No comments

Zoe had a friend who was having some computer problems and I suppose to some extent I brought this upon myself. Thankfully, I now have a strategy. Of course this is probably like 10 hours where I am far too deep in to start strategizing, but I now have a strategy.

Lets pretend for a moment you have a 32 bit Core-Duo laptop running Windows Vista Home 32bit that is infected with malware and viruses and acting generally poorly, what do you do? Well, my friend, you take your 8GB flash key that has an already built 9.04 Ubuntu Kernel on it, you boot it from that and run ClamAV using the ClamTK GUI. It works. It found a couple of viruses on the backup HD and I feel safer about backup data as well as my data on my Windows 7 machine. Thankfully, since I’m principally running OS X and 9.04 MythBuntu these days we’re highly prone to viruses, but nonetheless, I was concerned about re-infection with her external USB hard drive as well as her 4GB Flash Key.

Step 1) Use Unetbootin to load a flash key with a bootable version of the Linux of your choice

Step 2) Boot up the sick (dying) notebook with that USB flash drive

Step 3) Scan all files with ClamAV under Linux, then backup all data

Step 4) Wipe the old computer clean and re-install Windows (this part is oh so familiar) & leave ~ 20GB for a separate EXT3 Linux partition

Step 5) Institute a backup as well as best practice anti-virus procedures

Step 6) Install Linux in the 20GB spare rescue partition in case this happens again!

Step 7) After about a year Windows XP will be gunked up again, so repeat! (see Step 1)

iPod Touch has 802.11n! But it’s not enabled! Zing!

September 14, 2009 in Apple, Audio Server, Computer, Mac, Mark, Technology by Mark Beattie | 1 comment

I went to the Apple Store on 5th Ave before doing a little bouldering in Central Park. Chris sent the Polish Traverse and made it look effortless. At least someone is in shape. So, I stopped by Apple and asked what they knew about the 802.11n chipset on the latest model iPod Touch. Nothing. They never know anything. Seriously, I’ve had my best experiences at these stores only in the morning on very un-busy days.

I had to get a new battery once for a black Macbook and my options were: 1) schlep to Staten Island 2) buy one or 3) schlep to the 14th Street store because they are less busy. I sat around the 14th Street store for about 45 minutes, crossed my fingers and waited for a lull in the ever present traffic. The Genius there was very nice, she took pity on me and warranteed a new battery. But my other option was to come back to the 59th store at 5AM on a Friday. Their system blows, but I digress…

The employee didn’t have any specific answers about 802.11n on the new Touch. It was his belief that it works, though I imagine if this were the case I’d have read at least one technical blog mention it. Right now the word is that it has Broadcom’s mobile n chipset and it has a single antenna and it should be capable up to 30 Mb/s. Most tech writers speculate it’ll be enabled in the next 6 months. Oh well. Also, there is no camera yet on the Touch.

The image below links to the tear down, and if you’re into such things, click here for the Broadcom PDF spec sheet.

iFix it 802.11n iPod Touch Teardown

802.11n in iPod Touch

One Stop Ripping All Your FLAC Audio Needs

September 13, 2009 in Audio Server, Backups, Computer, DIY, Mark, Music by Mark Beattie | No comments

Thought I’d throw out a quick post while I was doing some searching for “best practices” in FLAC image extraction of audio CD’s for backup purposes. Basically follow this guy’s instructions:

http://hiphopiscoolagain.com/jiggafellz-step-by-step-guide-to-secure-cd-ripping-with-exact-audio-copy/

In EAC you’ll click the “Actions > Extract Image + Cue Sheet > Compressed” function using your basic FLAC settings. Also be sure to enable Accurate Rip and do the automatic detection on all the drive settings. Save a .log file. There should be three files upon final output: the FLAC image, the CUE sheet, and the .LOG. That’s it. Simple is as simple does. If you feel like embedding the CUE sheet in the FLAC you can use Foobar2000 to do such, know however that it’s non-standard as far as burning back out. Apparently it’s always handy to have a separate CUE sheet. Good to know.

UPDATE: So, two things I realized. One: XLD (X Lossless Decoder) for OS X does pretty much the same thing as EAC. However, if you’re still hell bent on using EAC and XP (couldn’t get EAC to go under Darwine) it’s important to know that it won’t easily embed cuesheets (.cue sheets) automatically as XLD does. Embedded cuesheets do make life a little easier as your playback software can look at either the .cue or the .flac file and see all the tracks from the single disc rip.

To embed a .cue using Foobar2000 right click on the .flac image file select “Utils > Edit cuesheet” a window will pop up, check “Embed cuesheet” and then “Load .cue file” from your extraction directory, click “OK” to save. Bingo bango. XLD can do this automatically. I really cannot say which is better per data integrity, YMMV. Obviously if you’re running Windows EAC is a “reference” standard.

Album art is another grey area as either the %Album Name%.jpg or simply “cover.jpg” can be used inside the album folder. Also, what about album dates? Certainly, we can agree that the album’s original release date is the important date here in metadata, and per genre conventions I tend to trust MusicBrainz. For a good read I really liked Daniel Stout’s article about simplifying down to 25 main “top level” genres and tagging comments/notes metadata with sub-genres. The moral here is you should read up as much as you can. Either EAC or XLD will do fine with rips to backup your audio CDs. Cover art and sub-genre notes I’m going to have to keep exploring.

Exact Audio Copy

Darwine you are a fine Wine.

September 10, 2009 in Apple, Computer, Leopard, Linux, Mac, Shimergo, Technology by Mark Beattie | No comments

For whatever reason I’d never played around with application compatibility layer software like Wine under OS X. Parallels and VMware are quite overkill for most people’s purposes. Usually the user may need to run one application in the guest OS and setting up an entire VM and giving 10GB or whatever over to that system, not to mention memory resources, is overkill. Certainly for developers being able to load/change machine states with VMs and sandbox their development, it makes sense, but for most end-users it’s crazy.

I haven’t checked all the applications I’d like to use, the ones I found myself booting to XP the most were A/V stuff like Foobar2000, MediaMonkey, EAC, etc. But the good news is that under Leopard Darwine v1.21.1 runs Foobar2000 just fine, a fine Wine if you will (hah). So that’s exciting. Codeweavers sells something similar called CrossOver but Darwine is free and I figured since I already had X11 installed it was worth a shot. Pretty cool stuff.

Darwine

Gunks’ V4 – early bike rides & Bing!

July 14, 2009 in Bikes, Climbing, Computer, Mark, New York, Shimergo by Mark Beattie | No comments

Ryan and I went to the East Trapps yesterday to Boxcar and Andrew’s Boulder problem. I mananged to send the normal Andrew’s V4 problem by late in the afternoon. No luck on the Black Rock V5, and the V3 Baby Hole almost went, but we wanted to save a little skin and tendon strength for Andrew. The heel hook to toe catch seems to be crucial, there are some more challenging variations on it, including the roof, so I look forward to going back to it.

Went for a bike ride in Central Park at 06:30 with some co-workers. Seems crazy, but I feel good. Zoe informed me that Bing! is not finding my page yet, and I know there are quite a few optimizations I can make to get more hits of out of this thing. Wordpress has gone to 2.8.1 so I probably should upgrade which might help. That’s about all I got. Lots of Gimme! fresh roasted Platinum Blonde blend these days, should’ve brought a samovar with me to the Gunks yesterday, I think it would’ve helped assist more sends.

WWDC no 802.11n in on the 3G S iPhone!? Drat!

July 2, 2009 in Apple, Backups, Coffee, Computer, Linux, Mac, MythTV, Technology by Mark Beattie | No comments

So, with the new iPhone 3.x OS you will not be purchasing an 802.11N enabled wireless chipset. Apparently the new 3G S model does support 4G HSDPA but not 5 GHz 802.11N wireless with the new lower powered Broadcom BCM4325. Apparently the 3G S model is a bit snappier. When is the 802.11n iPod Touch coming out? That’s what I’m waiting for. I saw that Garret had a very small LG phone that’s basically free from Verizon, if I could find that used/new and then go with a Touch remote… we’ll see how it goes…. Windows 7 RC is OK. It works, for what it’s worth.

I like Ubuntu 9.04 with MythTV…. I’m going to go back to that but probably do a dual boot leaving Win7 RC just in case…. Sadly, for Netflix playback due to Silverlight DRM a Windows XP/Vista/7 VM or even an OS X VM is necessary for Netflix streaming…. or buy a Roku box, unfortunately our TV doesn’t have 2 HDMI inputs… I’m surprised no one has been able to reverse engineer the Roku Box’s chipset and put the Silverlight DRM code out there…. Or even just have a “Roku Box VM”…. Why not, right? Seems possible, when you consider how almost all old video console games can now be played and fit on one flash drive.

I brewed with the Yama 5 Cup Vacuum brewer today. Thank you Conor and Leigh, awesome gift BTW; best of luck in your trip West. The coffee is very good, very clean, very smooth. I currently am grinding Gimme’ Coffee’s Picolo Mondo variety. Thank you Japanese vacuum brewing technology and to Chris for the awesome vintage German Peter Dienes grinder which does it job remarkably well for a hand grinder over twice as old as I am.

Yama Vaccuum Brewing by Digital Colony

My Vintage PeDe looks similar, all metal on top though

Hackable? Image from ehomeupgrade.com blog

Linux is a temperamental mistress

May 20, 2009 in Audio Server, Computer, DIY, Linux, MythTV by Mark Beattie | No comments

There is not doubt that you get out of MythTV what you put into it. I spent a good day, post system build, just getting things going. I upgraded to the 180.51 stable NVIDIA driver for the 9400 GT card that I have, at first it presented some problems, but I used Synaptic upgrade manager with Jean-Yves’ Avenard.org optional kernel builds with VDPAU support and the machine seems to run pretty cool. Yes that Antec 120mm fan is loud but I think I can run it on the low setting. Why Antec builds cases with fan holes that seem to be able to produce noise is beyond me. Since it’s an exhaust you’d think they might as well make it a super open mesh or just an open circle.

The Apple “mini” Remote still doesn’t work. I was able to get LIRC to recognize it via the HDHomeRun IR input, and it wrote to some .conf file somewhere, but it’s unclear exactly how to set it up from within Myth. But Apache works, I need to install Avahi and Netatalk again so I can get access to all the recordings from the other computers on the LAN. I still wouldn’t mind having a low powered server as a dedicated back-end, especially if I could run MT-DAAPD on that, ideally it’d be gigabit and something like an old Sempron 3000+ headless with say over 2 TB’s of free space.

I fixed a floor pump today that had a bad O ring using only teflon tape. Science. Also I had a double Americano using Stumptown beans at City Girl cafe on Thompson this morning. So good… wicked Sláinte.