Some Issues and Challenges

The excessive amount of work has kept me away from my blog, that's true.  However, the fact that my Linux distros have been performing beyond my expectations has also, in a way, stopped me from writing here.  

I mean... There's very little to write about when nothing breaks.

But then I noticed several problems:

1.  Insync and OpenMandriva Lx:

The upgrade to OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 removed my Insync client on my laptop.  I do not know what the problem was (a Python issue, maybe?).  I have not been able to make it come back.

2.  Insync and PCLinuxOS:

The update I applied yesterday produced the same problem with Insync that I had in OpenMandriva.  So, my laptop cannot sync files with Insync in PCLinuxOS, either. 

3.  Mesa updates and sound problems in Mageia 8:

This is something I have seen before in my desktops.  Four Mesa-related packages ask me to uninstall Steam, which I do not want to do, so I've been postponing such updates for a long time.

Then I noticed that VLC stopped working and that my repo database in MCC was acting weird, refusing to install certain tainted packages.  This led to mute audio in videos played with SMplayer, Mplayer, and Kplayer.

I decided to experiment with these because I need the audio in the desktop to work, so I installed the four Mesa-related files and, sure enough, Mageia got rid of Steam.

My year with Fedora helped me there.  Instead of using MCC, I opened Konsole and used DNF following these instructions from the Mageia Wiki:

 

• If nonfree or tainted repositories are desired, they can be activated using dnf config-manager as shown with this example for 64 bit system (replace x86_64 with i586 for 32 bit):
  

dnf config-manager --set-enabled mageia-x86_64-nonfree updates-x86_64-nonfree
dnf config-manager --set-enabled mageia-x86_64-tainted updates-x86_64-tainted

• 32-bit repositories are turned off by default on 64-bit x86. If you need them:
  

dnf config-manager --set-enabled mageia-i586 updates-i586

With that, after running dnf-update, I could get steam, vlc, ffmpeg, and other packages back.  This repaired the problem with video sound, but VLC is still not operational.

I'll try to fix this.  When I get some time.

 

 

From Junk to a Security Station; How Mepis Gave New Life to a Discarded Computer

Last week, a project that had been brewing for quite a while became a reality. 

We wanted to set up a basic security camera for the office where I work but, as the University is short of budget, all we were given was a webcam.   With that contribution, the whole idea was pretty much a long-term goal (or a dream, to be more honest, given the circumstances).

However, I learned that they were discarding some "old equipment", which included computers.  I asked for one of those machines marked as "not-working" and could get a computer in which Windows XP ran so slowly that you could literally age before being able to type a letter with it.

With that poor wreck of a system, the webcam, and Megatotoro's help, we could make the security system dream a reality.

First, Megatotoro wiped out the HD and installed Mepis 11 to it.  Boy, what a difference a good OS makes!  The computer started performing decently.  To use an analogy, it went from snail speed to that of a marathon runner. 

Second, as the webcam was a Logitech model, Mepis recognized it instantly, without the pain of go driver-hunting.  Ah, and since Mepis has VLC, everything was ready for starting the security cam project.

The streaming capabilities of VLC made it easy to capture video from the webcam and store it as a local file.  I learned how to do this by accident a while ago and the process is rather simple:

1.  Under the menu FILE, I clicked on streaming.
2.  In the window that opens, I selected the tab CAPTURE DEVICE
3.  Now, this is the interesting part.  In the line SELECT DEVICE, I typed /dev/video0, and then clicked on STREAM.  A new dialog (Streaming output) opened and I clicked "next".
4.  Then I selected "show locally" and used the drop-down menu to select VIDEO THEORA+VORBIS (OGG)
5.  Finally, I clicked STREAM and voilà, the webcam started showing and recording video!

The humble computer is now there, working non-stop, like a true champion...And the rest of the workers became interested in Linux when they saw what it can do.

After all, who would have said that a discarded computer was going to resurrect as a modest, but effective security station? And for a total cost of $0? All thanks to Linux, free software, and people who know that the Windows paradigm is not the only reality that there is.

The Quest of Getting Midi and Karaoke to Work in Mandriva 2010.2 and Mageia 2

There are times in which a seemingly simple task becomes a challenge.  For me, this happened when I was called to substitute a Japanese teacher and wanted to use a .kar file in the class to practice.

To solve this problem, I resorted to several programs: Pykaraoke, Timidity, VLC, Audacious, and Kmid2.  Here is the story.

Chapter 1.  The adventure of enabling midis/.kar files in a Mandriva 2010.2 PowerPack Desktop PC and a Mandriva ONE 2010.2 netbook


When I realized that I was not ready to play .kar files (nor any midi), I checked Megatotoro's entry here on how he had done it in Mepis.  The process seemed pretty straighforward, so I started by downloading Pykaraoke.  However, it would not run.  Pykaraoke was not my winning card. 

Then I remembered that Timidity was not installed, so I grabbed it from the Mandriva repos.  To my despair, although the installation was successful, Timidity simply refused to launch.

In my search for answers, I saw several plugins for midi in VLC and Audacious.  I gave those programs a try, too.  Concerning the latter, I installed first:
fluidsynth, fluid-soundfont-gm, audacious-fluidsynth, and whatever dependency that the system required.

Audacious playing a midi

With everything in place, I  ran Audacious and hit CTRL+P for the preferences dialog.  I navigated to "PLUGINS" and selected the tab "input".   There, I selected AMIDI-PLUG and clicked on the "preferences" button at the bottom.  Then I selected "Fluidsynth backend" for the AMIDI plugin and clicked on the Fluidsynth button next.  there, I used the add button to go to /usr/share/soundfonts and select the 2FluidR3_GM.sf2 file.  With that, Audacious started to play the midi sound, but no lyrics could be displayed yet.

The next candidate was VLC, which stubbornly gave me a warning that MIDI playback was not supported and that "there was no way to fix the problem", a pretty discouraging message that I chose to ignore because I had seen a plugin to that purpose in the PLF repositories (vlc-plugin-fluidsynth). So, I installed it, ran VLC and clicked on the Tools menu and went to "Preferences".  That gave me a window.  To the left, I saw the "INPUT AND CODECS" button.  However, before I clicked on it, I went down and selected "ALL" for the adjustments.   That converted the panel to the left in a tree-like structure with more options.  I selected "INPUT/CODECS", audio codecs, Fluidsynth and wrote the following path in the panel:   /usr/share/soundfonts/FluidR3_GM.sf2.  That enabled midi playback with VLS alright, but still no lyrcs were displayed.

Then I installed Kmid2 and all its dependencies.  When I ran it, I went to the Preferences menu and then "Configure Kmid".  When I clicked the button "synthetizers" and then went to the Timidity tab, I finally discovered what the problem with Timidity was: Kmid2 reported a missing timidity.cfg file in /etc/timidity/

My Mandriva PowerPack 2012.2 PC running Kmid

The reason why the file was not there eluded me, but I installed Timidity on the netbook from the repos and the program launched perfectly: the .kar file started to play and displayed the lyrics.  That took care of my work situation, but I wanted the Desktop PC to do the same.  So, in the netbook, I went to /etc/timidity/, snatched the timidity.cfg file, and dropped it to the same directory in the desktop PC.  That got Timidity running at last and Kmid2 could also play and display the lyrics in the desktop PC. 
 
Chapter 2.  Getting the Elusive Kmid to Cooperate in a Mageia 2 laptop

With all this learning, I turned on my Mageia 2 laptop and tried to install Kmid2.  At first, I did not find it in the repositories, so I enabled all the repositories I could and tried again.  The Mageia control center displayed it, so I selected it with all the dependencies (fluidsynth and its own).  After the installation, I started Kmid2 but it failed to lauch, reporting that the machine could not play midis or that snd_seq was missing in the modules (something about permission denied).  As the latter problem sounded unsurmountable to a non-technical user like me, I decided to rule out the former first.  Thus, I repeated the steps to enable midi playback in VLC and Audacious and, to my relief, both programs played the sound of the.kar file.

Without a lot of confidence in my ability to fix the missing module problem, I searched the Web and found that this had been reported as bug 5892 in Mageia.  According to the report, a user had solved the problem by going to /etc/module and simply adding the line
snd_seq

Although I followed the path, I saw no file called module, so I got the most similar one (/etc/modules.load.d) and edited the file modules.conf with Kwrite, adding the line to it.  That got Kmid2 to work in Mageia 2 as well.

I hope this experience helps those with some karaoke woes in Mageia and Mandriva.