yet another draggy weblog

hi folks!

i’m a little bit angry. angry about proprietary software. especially products you need for your hardware, which were not cheap. i’m talking about my iphone and the software is, yeah you know it already, itunes. i’m not willing to be forced to buy a proprietary operating system for a free tool (itunes) i need to communicate with the purchased hardware (iphone). so i’ve decided to try my best with wine. i’ve heard that wine has solved its teething troubles and it’s now ready for the big world. hehe, you wish … but here the whole story and all my steps to my spoilage:

first i’ve tried the easy way, installing wine from the repository. so i wrote this to my sources.list:

• deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt intrepid main

now a simple “apt-get install wine” was everything i need to start up. “download the newest itunes and install it”, was my next thought. but hey, that would be to simple. and for true, “wine iTunesSetup.exe” went completely wrong. the installation process didn’t even really start, and i got the message “the installer encountered errors before itunes could be configured”!?

so it was necessary to gain on some useful informations. this howto [1] helped me to find older versions of itunes. on oldapps [2] i tried some of them. till to the version 7.7.1 i had no success. but this version has no remote function for the iphone, and my first intention was not fulfilled. back to the start.

so i searched at the winehq homepage for more hints, and i found a patch for the current wine version [3,4]. this patch should permit the installation of the newest itunes. after downloading the sources of wine [5], applying the patch and installing all development packages for compiling [6] i’ve started the compiler … i was curious, really expecting the best. but everything turned out differently. it was really odd, the installation process finished successfully, but after executing itunes for the first time – surprise, surprise – there were no icons!!! no play-icon/button, no small icons at the left sidebar, no buttons, nothing. so i tried to change the configuration of direct3D (winecfg), but nothing happened – again no icons appeared!

i’m gutted … … welcome back, dear vmware!

[1] mini howto – itunes on ubuntu
[2] oldapps
[3] itunes8 on winehq
[4] itunes8.1 on winehq
[5] github wine
[6] building 32-bit wine on a 64-bit system – the easy way

hi folks!

i have had a little bit of time today, so i was experimenting with my iphone. i wanted to gain access to the pictures on it without jailbraking [1]. and, clear and brief, it works! here are the necessary steps [2,3] on a ubuntu system …

• install libplist [4]

  
  getting the sources:
    git clone git://github.com/JonathanBeck/libplist.git
  
  installing necessary packages (on ubuntu/debian systems):
    apt-get install build-essential cmake libglib2.0-dev libxml2-dev \
                    python-dev swig
  
  to compile run:
    mkdir build
    cd build
    cmake ..
    make && make install
  
  linking the libplist:
    cd /usr/lib
    ln -s /usr/local/lib/libplist.so.0.0.10 .
    ln -s libplist.so.0.0.10 libplist.so.0
    ln -s libplist.so.0 libplist.so
  

• install libiphone (first the old one [3], and then the new one [2,5])

  
  getting the sources of the old version (necessary for libiphone-initconf):
    git clone http://git.matt.colyer.name/2008/libiphone/
  
  installing necessary packages (on ubuntu/debian systems):
    apt-get install build-essential automake autoconf libtool libgnutls-dev \
                    libusb-dev libfuse-dev libglib2.0-dev libxml2-dev \
                    libreadline5-dev
  
  to compile run:
    ./autogen.sh
    ./configure
    make && make install
  
  and now everything again with the new version (its the simpliest way):
    git clone git://github.com/MattColyer/libiphone.git

• install ifuse [6]

  
  getting the sources:
    git clone git://github.com/MattColyer/ifuse.git
  
  installing necessary packages (on ubuntu/debian systems):
    apt-get install build-essential automake autoconf \
                    libfuse-dev libglib2.0-dev
  
  to compile run:
    ./autogen.sh
    ./configure
    make && make install

• start libiphone-initconf [2,3]

  
  run their utility to generate keys for iphone communication as the user
  you want to connect later:
    libiphone-initconf

• mount the iphone [2,3]

  
  mount the iphone’s root filesystem including the media partition:
    mount.fuse.ifuse -afc2 none /media/iPhone
  
  or mount the iphone’s media partition only:
    mount.fuse.ifuse none /media/iPhone

if you want it in a automatic way, do the following:

• edit /etc/fstab

  
  add following line:
    none /media/iPhone fuse.mount.fuse.ifuse rw,nosuid,nodev,afc2,allow_other 0 0

• edit /etc/hal/fdi/preprobe/10-iphone.fdi

  
  write those lines into the file:
  
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <deviceinfo version="0.2">
    <device>
      <match key="usb.vendor_id" int="05ac">
        <match key="usb.product_id" int="1292">
          <merge key="info.ignore" type="bool">true</merge>
        </match>
      </match>
    </device>
  </deviceinfo>

after those steps its very easy: plugin the usb-cable and for example nautilus will show you a “Apple, Inc. iPhone” device. if you want to see all the information i used to setup everything right, here are some links:

[1] ifuse main page
[2] easy installing
[3] older references
[4] github libplist
[5] github libiphone
[6] github ifuse

hello!

i made it … upgrading the iphone out of a vmware win-xp guest system works.

• my host machine: Linux meschmobile 2.6.27-9-generic #1 SMP Thu Nov 20 22:15:32 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux; Ubuntu 8.10
• the vmware:  VMware® Workstation 6.5.1 build-126130
• the guest machine: Win XP SP3

now, how it works: start the upgrade process out of the itunes. the first initial process works out of the box, but after the first longer progress bar at itunes, you will see that your iphone gets also a progress bar. this is the time you maybe see some popup’s at your host-system with following error: “Unable to mount Apple, Inc. iPhone Error initializing camera: -1: Unspecified error”

now hurry up and start a console. if you look after your loaded modules, you will see, that there are a lot more usbmodules than before. type following two commandos as root (or use sudo):

rmmod usbhid snd_usb_audio

rmmod snd_usb_lib

back to the vmware, and “reconnect” the phone. you won’t see a usb-symbol anymore, its now a loudspeaker-symbol! Disconnect it – and afterwards connect it immediately! Haven’t tried to plug in and out the usb-cable… think, it would be the same (but caution, the host system could reinitiate the usb-modules again).

after a couple of seconds, the iphone starts the upgrade … and the progress bar rises up!!!

hi leute!

böse stimmen behaupten, ich hätte windoof kurzfristig auf meinem rechner ausprobiert … wo, was, wann, wie!??? ICH !??? niemals … oder doch?

nun ja, ich hatte ja probleme mit dem einen oder anderen feature von intrepid, wie zum beispiel das laaaaaaaaangsame resume und die troubles mit der grafikkarte … alles gelöst – einfach mal die 64-bit version von intrepid installiert, und /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/20-video-quirk-pm-lenovo.fdi geändert auf:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″?> <!– -*- SGML -*- –>
<deviceinfo version=”0.2″>
<device>
<match key=”system.hardware.vendor” string=”LENOVO”>

<match key=”system.hardware.product” prefix_outof=”6457BBG”>
<merge key=”power_management.quirk.s3_mode” type=”bool”>true</merge>
<merge key=”power_management.quirk.s3_bios” type=”bool”>false</merge>
<merge key=”power_management.quirk.vbemode_restore” type=”bool”>true</merge>
<merge key=”power_management.quirk.save_pci” type=”bool”>true</merge>
</match>

</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

… und alles rennt bussi fein!

grund genug, auch meinen desktop einwenig aufzupeppen … man verwendet gdesklets und auch wieder compiz (wobei da folgender rat beherzigt wurde):

install the compizconfig-settings-manager package, then go to System –> Preferences –> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. Click on General Options, go to the Display Settings tab, uncheck the Detect Refresh rate box and drag the Refresh Rate slider to 60. Also, check the Sync To VBlank box. This will improve the smoothness of the window animations significantly if you’re sensitive to the choppy animations.

achja, das problem mit dem internen mikro ist auf folgende art und weise behoben worden:

The microphone is muted out of the box. In order to enable it, double click on the the speaker icon in the task bar or run $ gnome-volume-control. Under File > Change Device, select “Capture: ALSA PCM on front:0 (AD198x Analog) via DMA (PulseAudio Mixer)” and set the master slider to about 75%. Make sure that the mute and recording buttons below the slider do not show red Xs.

Go back to the Change Device menu and select “HDA Intel (Alsa mixer)”. Then go to the edit menu and select preferences. In the window that opens, make sure that the boxes for Capture, Capture1, and both instances of Input Source. The Volume Control panel should now have four tabs: Playback, Recording, Switches and Options. In the options tab, select Internal Mic for the internal microphone or Mic for the mic input jack for both Input sources. As far as i can tell, the second one down doesn’t seem to actually do anything. Now in the recording tab you can mute Capture 1 and adjust the sensitivity of the mic with the Capture slider. You can use Sound Recorder in Applications > Sound & Video to test out your settings.

alles perfekt! und ich glücklich

hi folks!

here we are: a new version of ubuntu is out (8.10 intrepid ibex)! here are more details … if you want to update your machine please be aware of possible problems – i’ve lost one of the important features: suspend-to-ram. so, check the net for your machine, if there are any known problems. another hint: boot up the live cd to check for your own.

wish you luck, i’m back on the old kernel!