European Wafaa

So work provided me with a Vodafone 3G card, it works relatively well on my work laptop which just so happens to be running the more prevalent OS out there and also only one of two that Vodafone support. I want to get the thing working on my 10.3 machine, problem is I can't

I have installed UMTSmon, but that kinda bombs out on me. Has anyone managed to get one of these Option GT 3G+ cards working on 10.3?

Syslog shows the following when I slap it in:
Nov 1 21:03:01 fveult02 kernel: pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 0
Nov 1 21:03:01 fveult02 kernel: Initializing Nozomi driver 2.1 (build date: Sep 24 2007 18:43:59)
Nov 1 21:03:01 fveult02 kernel: nozomi 0000:04:00.0: Init, cards_found: 1
Nov 1 21:03:01 fveult02 kernel: nozomi 0000:04:00.0: Card type is: 2048
Nov 1 21:03:01 fveult02 kernel: PCI: Enabling device 0000:04:00.0 (0000 -> 0002)
Nov 1 21:03:01 fveult02 kernel: ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:04:00.0[A] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
Nov 1 21:03:01 fveult02 kernel: nozomi 0000:04:00.0: Nozomi driver nozomi_tty
Nov 1 21:03:01 fveult02 kernel: nozomi 0000:04:00.0: Version of card: 3
Nov 1 21:03:01 fveult02 kernel: nozomi 0000:04:00.0: Initialization OK!

When I go to run umtsmon from the run dialogue i get:

So I follow the instructions and run it from a terminal with the increased verbosity. Not pretty, it spews the following:
andrew@fveult02:~> umtsmon -v5
umtsmon version 0.6.9 .
##P2 t=057: set verbosity level to 5
installing text SIGABRT handler
##P5 t=057: TheDeviceManagerSingleton::TheDeviceManagerSingleton()
##P3 t=057: TheDeviceManagerSingleton::setupDevice(void)
##P3 t=057: TheDeviceManagerSingleton::readFromConfigFile()
##P5 t=057: TheSettingsSingleton::TheSettingsSingleton()
##P2 t=057: Settings will be saved in : '/home/andrew/.umtsmon'
##P3 t=057: Start iterating through all AutoDetectors

##P2 t=057: No valid configuration available in config file
##P3 t=057: Let's continue with the next AutoDetector

##P3 t=057: AutoDetectBase::go() for 'USB Autodetection'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_USB::traverseTrees()
##P4 t=057: Checking USB device on 002:001
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_USB::matchIDs(0x0000, 0x0000)
##P4 t=057: Checking USB device on 005:001
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_USB::matchIDs(0x0000, 0x0000)
##P4 t=057: Checking USB device on 004:001
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_USB::matchIDs(0x0000, 0x0000)
##P4 t=057: Checking USB device on 003:003
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_USB::matchIDs(0x0b97, 0x7762)
##P4 t=057: Checking USB device on 003:002
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_USB::matchIDs(0x0b97, 0x7761)
##P4 t=057: Checking USB device on 003:001
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_USB::matchIDs(0x0000, 0x0000)
##P4 t=057: Checking USB device on 001:002
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_USB::matchIDs(0x413c, 0xa005)
##P4 t=057: Checking USB device on 001:001
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_USB::matchIDs(0x0000, 0x0000)
##P2 t=057: BAD: 'No USB-based device found'
##P3 t=057: Let's continue with the next AutoDetector

##P3 t=057: AutoDetectBase::go() for 'PCMCIA (PCCard) Autodetection'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_PCMCIA::traverseTrees()
##P3 t=057: INFO: 'pcmcia_core kernel support (yenta) found'
##P3 t=057: INFO: 'PCMCIA kernel module found - cardctl support possible'
##P3 t=057: INFO: 'pcmcia browsing available'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_PCMCIA::matchIDs(0x1931, 0x000c)
##P2 t=057: GOOD: 'Detected Option Nozomi based card "Nozomi" PCMCIA card'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_PCMCIA::findPortNames()
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_PCMCIA::findNozomiPortNames()
##P2 t=057: GOOD: 'found /dev/noz* - the 'Hardwick' version of Nozomi drivers.'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetectBase::createDevice() for Device 17020177
##P3 t=057: Device creation for type 0x17020177 requested
##P4 t=057: Dectection claims AT and PPP should be different ports
/dev/noz0: Permission denied
##P2 t=057: BAD: 'Device couldn't be created'
##P1 t=057: AutoDetectBase::createDevice() failed
##P3 t=057: Let's continue with the next AutoDetector

##P3 t=057: AutoDetectBase::go() for 'PCMCIA Serial Modem Probing'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_Rawport::traverseTrees()
##P3 t=057: Checking for ports of type /dev/ttyS*
##P3 t=057: Checking properties of port /dev/ttyS0
/dev/ttyS0: Permission denied
##P3 t=057: - Nothing on port /dev/ttyS0
##P3 t=057: Checking properties of port /dev/ttyS1
/dev/ttyS1: Permission denied
##P3 t=057: - Nothing on port /dev/ttyS1
##P3 t=057: Checking properties of port /dev/ttyS2
/dev/ttyS2: Permission denied
##P3 t=057: - Nothing on port /dev/ttyS2
##P3 t=057: Checking properties of port /dev/ttyS3
/dev/ttyS3: Permission denied
##P3 t=057: - Nothing on port /dev/ttyS3
##P3 t=057: Checking properties of port /dev/ttyS4
/dev/ttyS4: Permission denied
##P3 t=057: - Nothing on port /dev/ttyS4
##P3 t=057: Checking properties of port /dev/ttyS5
/dev/ttyS5: Permission denied
##P3 t=057: - Nothing on port /dev/ttyS5
##P3 t=057: Checking properties of port /dev/ttyS6
/dev/ttyS6: Permission denied
##P3 t=057: - Nothing on port /dev/ttyS6
##P3 t=057: Checking properties of port /dev/ttyS7
/dev/ttyS7: Permission denied
##P3 t=057: - Nothing on port /dev/ttyS7
##P3 t=057: end of traverseTrees()
##P2 t=057: BAD: 'No usable device found'
##P3 t=057: Let's continue with the next AutoDetector

##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_PhoneModems::go()
##P3 t=057: AutoDetectBase::go() for 'Phone Modem Probing'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_Rawport::traverseTrees()
##P3 t=057: Checking for ports of type /dev/ttyACM*
##P3 t=057: end of traverseTrees()
##P2 t=057: BAD: 'No usable device found'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetectBase::go() for 'Phone Modem Probing'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_Rawport::traverseTrees()
##P3 t=057: Checking for ports of type /dev/rfcomm*
##P3 t=057: end of traverseTrees()
##P2 t=057: BAD: 'No usable device found'
##P3 t=057: Let's continue with the next AutoDetector

##P3 t=057: AutoDetectBase::go() for 'Raw USB Serial Probing'
##P3 t=057: AutoDetect_Rawport::traverseTrees()
##P3 t=057: Checking for ports of type /dev/ttyUSB*
##P3 t=057: end of traverseTrees()
##P2 t=057: BAD: 'No usable device found'
##P3 t=057: Let's continue with the next AutoDetector

umtsmon: src/controller/TheDeviceManagerSingleton.cpp:89: static DeviceCapabilities& TheDeviceManagerSingleton::getDeviceCapsRef(): Assertion `theStaticDevicePtr != __null' failed.


** umtsmon version 0.6.9 closed due to an unrecoverable program error.
** Please e-mail all of the above output to umtsmon-develop@lists.sourceforge.net,
*** Or go to the umtsmon website and file a bug.


Aborted


Please, could someone point me in the right direction. I'm sure 10.3 is supposed to be better at this mobile network hooha, I just can't work out how.

Alan I feel your pain and angst over your dictionary issues. The problem is that due to our national empathy we all too often roll over and just accept anything that is thrust upon us. The French wouldn't dream of doing the same.

We had a similar discussion over on #bongo, as a kind hearted person thought he would try and contribute to the project by spell checking the wiki using Firefox's dictionary. Problem is that the bulk of the contributing folk - jonnylamb, so_solid_moo, LanceHaig and myself - are all UK based, and halex is down in Oz. Reason it's a problem we use the Queen's English, so all the changes had to be undone nice and time consuming.

Another contributing issue to the English/British English/International English/American English issue is the fact that the bulk of software companies are based in the US. As such to them American English is English and it is us Limey Poms that talk and spell weird. So the only real way of resolving the issue is to either be belligerent, or ensure that Britain and all Commonwealth states become the centre of programming. Hhmm ok so looks like it won't be easy!

so_solid_moo just announced the next step to 0.3.0 (M3). As such now that I have a decent connection to the wide ether I give you the RPMs. These can be accessed from my OBS repository here. If you happen to be using the slinky, sexy, awe inspiring and generally worlds greatest distro (that would be openSUSE btw ) you can use the one-click facility:



Older releases do support 1-Clcik please see here.

PLEASE NOTE IF YOU HAVE AN OLDER 0.2.0 BASED INSTALL THE UPGRADE PROCEDURE IS A BIT UNSTABLE. UPGRADE AT YOUR OWN RISK (atm at least. Come the final release of 0.3.0 it will be fixed)

I've got a couple of webcams and getting the blighters to work on linux can be a pain in the backside - even after confirming that it is recognised etc. I have a Labtec clone drone of a dull thing, and I also have an Intel Pro, both have pretty low res but at the end of the day I was never going to use them for video conferencing. The Labtec is the biggest pain as it doesn't work at all, the Intel on the other hand does work - I won't say 100% as sometimes it appears as if it can't be arsed to do anything ( a bit like me so I won't hold a grudge against it).

Seeing as I knew it was working (thanks to the Gstreamer Properties option in GNOME, I wanted to test it out and Cheese seemed like a fun app to try out. I know I've mentioned it before, but here goes again You can install Cheese with the delightful 1-Click option

Here you can see some images taken with Cheese:


Photo with no effects


The Dice effect


The Edge effect


The Warp effect


The Vertigo effect


The Saturation effect


The Shagadelic effect

You can also combine effects if you wish:


Saturation and Shagadelic effects together

Cheese isn't just limited to stills, it can do video too. Saying that this is one aspect that my Intel webcam really can't be arsed with So if I could ask folk to try it out and let me know what your milage is, that would be great. Also if people can recommend a webcam that works flawlessly with openSUSE that would be handy. So for now, happy snapping.

So yet another review of openSUSE 10.3 is published, this time by LugRadio, they also had Fedora8 Mandriva2008 and Ubuntu7.10. Can anyone guess what the outcome was? Yup, they rubbished it. What was their biggest gripe? The installer took too long and asked too many questions. Sorry chaps, are you telling me that you would rather fart around after install configuring this and that rather than having a system that is how you would like it to be from the get go? They also moaned about the fact that it wasn't a Live CD install, why is it deemed so damned important to install from a Live CD, their test was of the installing and using the distro so why the heck would you choose a Live CD over a standard CD/DVD?!.

Yet again their review was using the GNOME desktop, and not KDE. Now I personally use GNOME for almost all of my work, with a splash of KDE here and there, but if I was going to review a distro I would review the whole distro. So that means both major DEs. openSUSE's heritage is KDE and is growing the GNOME side of things, so to all those reviewers of distros out there - get off your lazy arses and do a proper job of reporting a distro's pros and cons. As with almost all journalism whether it be professional or amateur no bugger does any research any more.

Why am I ranting about this? In a nutshell it is something that oh so many of the openSUSE community are hacked off at, people automatically think that because Novell bought Ximian that SUSE in general is now a GNOME centric distro - bollocks! It is DE agnostic, it is down to choice, you want a DE? choose which one. You want a screen resolution? choose what ever you like (providing your hardware supports it obviously). openSUSE gives the user the choice with the same support mechanism regardless, unlike other distros (you may supplant which ever you would like here). So if you are curious about openSUSE, try out all options. openSUSE aims to give you what you want, not give you what will suffice. Oh and Cheese is available on openSUSE!

I would like to thank Alessandro, Clark, ruurd and Frank for replying to my call for help.

Alessandro and Clark, I never knew of the vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux it is a near match to the native Windows one thank you for that. ruurd, that may well work but it seems a bit messy and not as "user-friendly" to me. Frank, you hit the nail right on the head. It was a simple permissions issue, the error reporting could be a bit better here but hey ho.

Once again thank you folks for helping.

Firstly I would like to congratulate the inaugural openSUSE Board on their appointment.

I have done a bit of a rename exercise of packages, and I've added a distro to the builds on the OBS.

Firstly the rename, the "Unstable" packages are now known as "Snapshot" and as such have the snapshot suffix. These are from the SVN's trunk, so at the minute that means the 0.2.0 line. You can install them here:


Secondly, you can now get packages for Fedora 8 via the Great and Mighty openSUSE Build Service. Just add the following repository to yum/PackageKit/SMART/etc:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:FunkyPenguin/Fedora_8

Please test them out and let me/the rest of the team know of any problems.

I am not a preacher, but as a former member of Her Majesty's Royal Air Force Regiment please take a moment to say a prayer/give a wish/reflect on those that have laid their lives down in the service of their country in both war and peace. Rememberance Day is no longer about the First or Second World Wars, it is about the armed forces in general and is now encompassing all nations not just those from the Commonwealth.

This is something I do feel strongly about, almost as much as openSUSE, as I have seen the help that is given to former service men and women through the Poppy Appeal and other charities first hand and it is greatly needed. I have had former colleagues injured and killed due to training accidents and military action, and I would like to make sure that they are not forgotten. May you recover from your wounds and lead a fullfilling life, and may your souls rest in peace now. My thoughts and those of my family are with you and your loved ones.

Please do not take out your anger over whatever conflict the troops are engaged in on them, they are doing what their country has asked them to.

I was curious as to what was happening in the rest of the Linux Universe, so I decided to look at other distro planets and saw Rolando's post on Planet Ubuntu. The video clip conveys the message pretty well, and as with Rolando I feel it could be applied to my distro of choice - openSUSE. Saying that though, I think it could be applied equally to Open Source and Open Standards.



I have an idea in my head as to how to re-make this video with a Linux/Open Source spin. Problem is I'm about as artistic as a used colostomy bag If anyone would like to hear my ideas and make a good video, let me know.

Surely those purveyors of fine looking hardware, the goliath corporation that is Sony, are not totally anti-Linux and Open Source? I ask the question as I have a fine specimen of theirs - a VGN-AR11S which is now almost two years old. This fine beauty has the following innards according to Windows' version of hwinfo I can't remember where I put all the documentation for it now:

2GHz Intel Core Duo T2500
2GB PC2-4200 RAM
Intel 82801GHM SATA RAID Controller
2 x 100GB hard disks
Matshita BD-MLT UJ-210S Blu-ray drive
256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 GT graphics card
17in 1920 x 1200 TFT 1080p display
AverMedia Hybrid H/W MPEG Card M115S (analogue/digital hybrid TV tuner)
Intel Pro/100 VE Ethernet
Intel Pro 802.11a/b/g WLAN
3 x USB 2.0 ports
mini-FireWire
Bluetooth
HDMI output
VGA output
S-Video in/out
Type II PC Card slot
ExpressCard54 slot
3-in-2 memory card reader
Built-in VGP-VCC2 Motion Eye webcam
MCE remote control

I tried installing SUSE 10.1 but that wasn't an overly great experience as too many things just didn't seem to work. This time round however I am super keen to get openSUSE 10.3 on there. I have made a couple of attempts to get 10.3 on there in the past, benJIman has even helped a bit. I am willing to go through a certain amount of pain this time round to get it done, the previous installs have all been hosed for one reason or another; I have even tried other distros in the hope of taking notes and then emulating that under 10.3 but no joy. My main issue is hardware, apparently Sony love to do the proprietary voodoo, so this is where I would love you the community to help. I am installing 10.3 now with both KDE and GNOME now and I will post more specific problems when I hit them.

If people now what info they need from me to be able to point in me the right direction, let me know so I can get it as soon as the install is finished. I promise that everything I learn I will feed back to the community. Oh and before anyone says it, yes I know I need to be more careful what hardware I choose; but this is one of the hurdles that Linux needs to overcome as the average punter will not necessarily be picky on technical reasons - mostly on what looks/sounds good.

Currently reading a great book on the train/tube/anywhere on my N800, it is The Banjo Player Must Die. This is truely a literary masterpiece by Josef Assad.

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time, and it is also licsenced under Creative Commons. I haven't finished it yet, but at this rate it won't be long. My only quible is that ODF isn't a format available for download - but don't let that stop you.

Great work Josef, when is the next one?

So the "respected" Matt Asay, prefers closed source, proprietary formats after all. For those that don't know who he is, you can read his blogs here and here.

I read yesterday that the big Open Source Pundit actually prefers not to walk the talk when it comes to voice communications; rather farcical really considering the lambasting he levels at Novell, openSUSE, their employees and the communities they support.

I appreciate that there is indeed instances where proprietary products work better (possibly easier) for a company, but Alfresco has always made so much noise about being an Open Source company. When I had an interview with Alfresco earlier this year they appeared to have great plans, and if my memory serves me right they were trying to get their product to work seamlessly with other big commercial OSS products like SugarCRM and Zimbra; although it did seem to be very focused around RHEL as the platform . I did manage to get them to have minor convulsions when I suggested they should use GroupWise for their messaging instead of their current set up, I tried to push Bongo but they weren't too keen on that (I think Bongo was higher up the list than GroupWise though)

If they would prefer a proprietary solution what about the likes of Gizmo? They at least use an open standard, there is also OpenWengo which is Open Source. Heck, why not use Asterisk or one of the other OSS telephony projects and get Alfresco to integrate with it? That way they could really create a Cartel of OSS projects.

Mr Asay, before you start firing your blunderbuss at Novell, openSUSE their employees and communities hows about you decide whether you're going to be a proponent of Open Source or just use it as a means to gain notoriety and fame (your certainly not trying to gain anyone's respect for you). Try walking the talk, not just talking the walk. I for one only read (occasionally) your blogs and listen to you on Open Season is so that I can scream, shout and beat the crud out of my poor laptop. Thank you for being my Web 2.0 punch bag!