get the wor(l)d

Ja das passt ja wieder mal – pünktlich zum anstehenden Liftoff geht meinem Rechner ein Licht aus. Das gute alte Thinkpad X31, schaltete letzten Samstag einfach mal das Display ab. Also besser, das backlight fiel aus, und ich stand im Dunkeln. Klar war spätestens nach einigem gesurfe, dass Notebook-Displays meist mit CCFL Röhren beleuchtet werden, und dafür brauchts nen Inverter, der aus der Notebookspannung Hochspannung zaubert. Der dann auch gern kaputt geht.

Nun, zum Glück gibts ein vernünftiges Hardware-Manual für den X31 im Netz, also Rechner auseinandergebaut und geschaut, was für ein Inverter drin verbaut ist. Dann kreuz und quer nach der Typenbezeichnung ( 91P7315 ) gesucht und schnell noch nen neuen Inverter bestellt. Mit super extra Kosten liefern lassen und nun sitz ich hier in der Warteschleife. Müsste jeden Moment kommen, oder morgen, oder so. Und hoffentlich leuchtet danach wieder alles, ansonsten muss ich noch ne neue Röhre reinbasteln, doch woher bekommen so schnell? Wir werden sehen…

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After it was quiet for some time on this blog, I added a new layout, now based on CravingForGreen. And restructured the content a little bit, to give you more fun while reading and searching and me a better feeling. An it will make the site more friendly for your eyes – hope you like it.

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or what? eigentlich blog ich grad von meinem Handy, aber niemand hat was von. Offenbar. Moeglicherweise spricht das Handy nur Hindi? Oder chinesisch? hmmmmm….

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Going to use GPRS in India to be connected at most places with my own machine, I selected the Airtel offer. You get a PCMCIA card GlobeTrotter EDGE ML2132C2 and a time-independent tariff. If you don’t use more than 500MByte per month, you have to pay only 350rp, which is around 7€. And, not to forget, best is you have some Indian who does the deal for you, else its a little more expensive.

Anyway, having the card is only half the game, so how to run a GlobeTrotter EDGE ML2132C2 with Airtel under Linux, especially Debian Etch? Some tips and the required tools can be found at http://www.pharscape.org (see [1]).

first, install the ppp-deamon and the gcom-tool (which is now named as comgt, but debain still uses the old name for the recent version of the tool).

> aptitude update; aptitude install ppp gcom

Then, create a udev rule which creates a symbolic link at /dev/modem and starts some initialisation script if the card is detected at /etc/udev/rules.d/025_gprs.rules.

# udev rules for gprs
# currently only GlobeTrotter EDGE ML2132C2 recognized
# if your card is not detected, just have a look in the system log
# to which ttySx it is bound and call udevinfo to get the right options
# (udevinfo –attribute-walk –name /dev/ttySx)

# GlobeTrotter EDGE ML2132C2
SUBSYSTEM==”tty”, SYSFS{prod_id3}==”ML2132C2″, SYSFS{manf_id}==”0×0314″, SYSFS{card_id}==”0×0007″, SYMLINK=”modem”, RUN+=”/lib/udev/gprs.hotplug.wrapper”

Create the script at /lib/udev/gprs.hotplug.wrapper. This script is called, if the card is detected and it first runs gcom, which initializes the card. After this the pppd is started.

#! /bin/sh
logger $(gcom) && logger $(pon Airtel)

To let the pppd work the right way, you have to create some configuration files for it. First create /etc/ppp/peers/Airtel and insert your mobile Number in the user line near the end of the file.

#!/bin/sh
# Description:
# Serial cable, IrDA, Bluetooth and USB pppd options for GPRS phones.
# See ‘man pppd’ for detailed option descriptions.# set the device to use
/dev/modem

# Most GPRS phones don’t reply to LCP echo’s
lcp-echo-failure 0
lcp-echo-interval 0

# Debug info from pppd:
# Comment this off, if you don’t need more info
#debug

# Serial port line speed
38400 # the card has problems if you use a speed higher than this

# pppd must not propose any IP address to the peer!
noipdefault

# Add the ppp interface as default route to the IP routing table
defaultroute

# DNS servers from the phone:
# some phones support this, some don’t.
usepeerdns

# The phone is not required to authenticate:
noauth

# Username

user “mobile number”
remotename Airtel
ipparam Airtel

connect “/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/Airtel”

Now create the chatscript at /etc/chatscripts/Airtel and you are done.

ABORT BUSY ABORT ‘NO CARRIER’ ABORT VOICE ABORT ‘NO DIALTONE’ ABORT ‘NO DIAL TONE’ ABORT ‘NO ANSWER’ ABORT DELAYED
# modeminit
” ATZ
# ispnumber
OK-AT-OK “ATDT*99***1#”
# ispconnect
CONNECT \d\c
# prelogin

If you are now inserting the card in the pcmcia slot, udev should start the script and automatically connects with the pppd over GPRS. It takes a while, the blinking code of the datacard might give you some hints about the status. After inserting it blinks approximately every second, if it is connected to Airtel the red LED is flashing for a somehow longer time and is starting a nervous double blinking, which should indicate that everything is fine (by the way, who invented the first flashing red LEDs to indicate some no problem state?). This is the time the pppd starts to run, a few seconds later you should be online. If you like more information on what’s going on, have a look in your logfiles.

Hope the description helps somebody, feel free to comment if you have any questions.

3 Comments »

Once again some days passed by, but a lot of things happened, so can’t say I was completely lazy But it was time to come back to the Virtual Identity extension and repair some bugs and add some options to make all of us more happy these days. The result is the new version 0.4.3, which is by now available as a pre-release cause some testing and translation-work has to be done before the ‘real’ release.

Whats new?

• added a new option to dynamically switch on/off an email signature if using a virtual identity. To use this option you have to install the Switch Signature Extension. Thanks to Alex for the idea and thanks to Achim Seufert for the nice extension which I could use for this feature.
• added a feature called ‘Smart Timestamp’ which simply changes the address of any new email you are going to compose by adding a epoch-timestamp in the name. This way you can use a unique address for any message you send and check where your mail-addresses go. Thanks to JensMartin for the idea.
• added an option to warn you if the mail should be sended with any stored (unchanged) identity. Valdaran had the idea to blank the From: field, which is not really an option, to many other things are relying on this. But maybe a warning will do nearly the same nice job? Thanks to Valdaran for the idea.
  
• removed some old bugs, added some fresh ones Thanks to all who reported their problems.

The new version is now available for testing. Feel free to use it and report bugs and problems or help to translate the extension.

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Hi,

after being quiet for a while I just went through all bug-reports and finished a new version of virtual identity.

bugfixes:

• If Smart-Reply found (for instance) an existing identity, sending works ok and was not tampered by the extension. But Thunderbird doesn’t remove the window, it ‘recycles’ the window. Next time you compose a message, this one shows the same old identity but uses a different one behind the scenes. So I changed Virtual Identity to remove Window completely if message was sended, Window-Recycling is this way disabled (thanks to Charles, john and Henrik for the report).
• repaired Dialog to choose which Virtual Identity to choose, was completely broken (thanks to Mark for the report).
• Connected (and this way limited) usage of newsgroup Identities to the switch which enables Virtual Identity for newsgroups (thanks to Dave for the report).

You can download the new version at http://absorb.it/hacked/thunderbird/virtual_identity-0.4.2-tb+sm.xpi
and soon from addons.mozilla.org.

15 Comments »

It took longer than I expected, but I think it was worth to include a lot of feature-requests and get rid of some bugs. Many thanks to you all who gave me reports and suggestions and translations and thank-you-mails, without this feedback the extension would have been not even half as nice as it is by now. So as you see, I like the result of the last weeks work, and I hope you will enjoy it too. Don’t like to mention the list of bug-fixes again, just the list of new features compared to version 0.4.0:

• you can now sort the header any way you like, also exclude ‘to’ or ‘cc’ as you like it, but you have to tell Virtual Identity that it has to use those headers. So change your settings and add ‘to’ and ‘cc’ to the list of headers. A header name now refers to all headers of that name, not like before only the outmost one of you mail. To select a specific header, just use the number of it’s occurrence, so for instance “:3″ and add it to the headername. And if you wish to use only the email address and not the name, then simply add “:@”.
• reading the headers was in version 0.4.0 dependent on installed mnenhy or enigmail. Now it’s independent on other extensions, so you are free to use whatever you like (but to protect the freedom of having secrets the same way as the freedom of choice or the freedom of speach, you might choose to install enigmail anyway)
• added a nice debug-window, which helps you understanding what Virtual Identity really does. using complex filter rules you might get very creative, and this is the place to look if it doesn’t work as expected. This debug information is also helpful for me to understand how and when problems occur if you are sending a bug report.

Ok, here you can find the recent release 0.4.1, and, tadaa, there will be a documentation soon (have a look at the work in progress)

19 Comments »

Than I had to install some additional software to enjoy the Mac, we’ll see if I keep them for my mother.

First, there is Adium, an Instant Messenger which is able to handle ICQ, Jabber and doesn’t bug you with .Mac (like iChat does). Nice one, but till now I don’t have found how to keep the program at the dock after starting – it always shows you the contact window. Continue Reading »

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Nearly as fast as I got the MacBook, I received the printer I bought at eBay. Just told you, I bought an HP Deskjet 995c, cause this one has bluetooth included and I liked to make the system as flexible as possible. First impression, it’s an heavy printer – the weight of around 6,5kg remembered me on some russian technology… Continue Reading »

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