Virtualbox to Qemu

Migrating from virtualbox to qemu can be as simple as this:

vditool COPYDD vbox-image.vdi raw-image.img
qemu-img convert -f raw raw-image.img -O qcow2 qemu-image.qcow

Kvm problems on intel

Kvm can sometimes just abort when trying to install a new OS in an image (Like Ubuntu 7.10). The solution is to install with the -no-kvm flag but it is just very slow

kvm ubuntu.img -cdrom ubuntu.iso -boot d -no-kvm

once installed you can run the image with the flag and run at full speed :-)

kvm ubuntu.img

Ubuntu 8.10 on Dell studio

I tried to install Ubuntu 8.10 on a new Dell studio desktop PC but encountered some problems with the sound card. After some browsing and trying different proposals this is how I got it working on my system:
1) Follow this instructions to install the latest alsa
2) use this line in your modprobe:

options snd-hda-intel model=6stack-dell probe_mask=1

3) reboot and adjust the volumes.

Wiimote in Elisa

After trying the tutorial for activating the wiimote in linux I saw that there where some parts missing in the wiki. You also need some info from here.

sudo apt-get install wminput libbluetooth2 bluez-utils mouseemu lswm
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe uinput
sudo mkdir -p /opt/etc/wiimote

Edit the /opt/etc/wiimote/wminput-elisa file

# This is the /opt/etc/wiimote/wminput-elisa file
Wiimote.A = KEY_ENTER
Wiimote.B = KEY_SPACE
Wiimote.Up = KEY_UP
Wiimote.Down = KEY_DOWN
Wiimote.Left = KEY_LEFT
Wiimote.Right = KEY_RIGHT
Wiimote.Minus = KEY_UP
Wiimote.Plus = KEY_DOWN
Wiimote.Home = KEY_F23
Wiimote.1 = KEY_SPACE
#Wiimote.2 = KEY_Q

Check that the wiimote is working

lswm

and start the wiimote as a remote control

wminput -w -c /opt/etc/wiimote/wminput-elisa

Oprofile run

So, oprofile is setup correctly now run it:

sudo opcontrol --start
sudo opcontrol --reset
... do your stuff here
sudo opcontrol --stop
opreport -l ~/build/lib/* ~/.gstreamer-0.10/plugins/* ~/build/lib/gstreamer-0.10/* -t 5

So opreport will dump it with all the symbols (-l) and with a minimum % of 5 (-t 5). you need to add a list with all the interesting libraries.
Result then is something like this:

CPU: PIII, speed 1862 MHz (estimated)
Counted CPU_CLK_UNHALTED events (clocks processor is not halted) with a unit mask of 0x00 (No unit mask) count 100000
samples % app name symbol name
48443 58.7865 libgstdeinterlace.so gst_deinterlace_transform_ip
10351 12.5611 libgstffmpegcolorspace.so yuv420p_to_rgb32

So, now you know where the CPU eathers are :-)

Oprofile setup on ubuntu

Installing oprofile on ubuntu goes like this

sudo apt-get install linux-kernel-devel fakeroot build-essential
sudo apt-get source linux-image-`uname -r`
sudo apt-get build-dep linux-image-`uname -r`
cd linux-source-`uname -r`
sudo make oldconfig
sudo make vmlinux
sudo apt-get install oprofile
sudo opcontrol --setup --vmlinux=`pwd`/vmlinux
sudo opcontrol --start

and then you should see something like this

Using 2.6+ OProfile kernel interface.
Reading module info.
Using log file /var/lib/oprofile/oprofiled.log
Daemon started.
Profiler running.

If you see some error's check if you sh is pointing to bash.

cd /bin
sudo rm sh
sudo ln -s -T bash sh

x2x

x2x allows the keyboard, mouse on one X display to be used to control another X display. It also shares X clipboards between the displays.

Install it on ubuntu is as easy as:

sudo apt-get install x2x

start it up on the server:

ssh -XC laptop x2x -east -to :0.0

Voila, now your keyboard,mouse and clipboard is shared with another x server...

microBCN

Nintendo 8 bit video

It's Awesome

If you want to play with a new window manager, but don't want to drop your current setup just yet, you can run this WM in the same session with Xephyr. I'm trying out awesome. So I have a script like this to lunch awesome in fullscreen mode in my current session.

#!/bin/bash
Xephyr :2 -ac -fullscreen &
sleep 2
export DISPLAY=:2
awesome
kill $!

The sleep is needed because Xephyr needs some time so setup the new display and awesome already expects that the display is available at startup.

Isn't that awesome ?

Fire Emblem: Radiant dawn

Yesterday I bought probably the best Wii game for the moment. At least if you are a fan of the Fire Emblem series. The new game is Fire Emblem: Radiant dawn.

One of the big advantages of this game is that it does not force the Wii to use all of its controller features. This means that you can you the normal Wii Remote, the GameCube controller but also the classic controller

Unrar for the NSLU2

A Colleague pointed me to this site that has the "non-free" version of unrar available for the NSLU2. It looks like this unrar program can handle more rar-files than the unrar-free package available from the debian-arm repositories.

N810 ordered and arrived

After reading this I checked and ... TADA ... The discount code also worked for me (Belgium shop). So an N810 is on its way ...

Update: N810 is arrived ( 2 workdays) and looks good :-)