Category: Uncategorized

Pulse Problems on Karmic

digitaleagle sound, Ubuntu, Uncategorized 1 Comment

After installing Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10), I was thrilled about the sound working so much better.  The latest version of Skype supported pulse directly, and everything seemed to be great.

But then, the sound quit working suddenly, and nothing would bring it back.  I checked the Alsa volume settings, I tinkered with several of the config files, and I compared to the configuration with the live CD.

Finally, what solved my problem was:

  • deleted (backed up) ~/.pulse
  • rebooted
  • turned up my volume with the applet by the clock
  • ran speaker-test
  • I heard noise!

I will continue to keep my eye out for what is breaking the sound, but at least I have a solution.  Please let me know if anyone else has this problem.

Here are some of the links that I checked:

Eclipse on Karmic (Ubuntu 9.10)

digitaleagle Eclipse, Java, Uncategorized Leave a comment

After installing Ubuntu 9.10, I realized that they have updated the version of Eclipse in the repositories.  So, I was able to install it with apt-get rather than download it manually.  Here is the version information from the About screen:

Eclipse SDK
Version: 3.5.1
Build id: M20090917-0800
(c) Copyright Eclipse contributors and others 2000, 2009.  All rights reserved.
Visit http://www.eclipse.org/platform

Eclipse SDK
Version: 3.5.1Build id: M20090917-0800
(c) Copyright Eclipse contributors and others 2000, 2009.  All rights reserved.Visit http://www.eclipse.org/platform

The one thing I had to add was the plugins that I use.  First, I found a blog post with instructions on adding a repository with additional plugins via packages.  To use it, add this repository to your software sources:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/yogarine/eclipse/ubuntu karmic main

This command will import the key:

wget http://www2.yogarine.com/eclipse-ppa.key -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

So, with that said, here are the packages that I installed:

  • eclipse
  • eclipse-rcp
  • eclipse-platform
  • eclipse-emf
  • eclipse-platform-data
  • eclipse-pde
  • eclipse-plugin-cvs
  • eclipse-wtp
  • eclipse-dtp
  • eclipse-jdt
  • eclipse-gef

Then, I added the following update sites to Eclipse.  Open the preferences with the menu: Window > Preferences.  Then, go to Install/Update > Available Software Sites.

I added Visual Swing.  See this earlier post for more information.  Here is the update site:

  • http://visualswing4eclipse.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/vs4e/

For MyLyn, I found a conversation that recommended the following two sites:

  • http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/e3.4
  • http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/extras

To install the plugins, go to Help > Install New Software.

Visual Swing

digitaleagle Eclipse, Java, Uncategorized 1 Comment

I found a nice Swing Designer for Eclipse called Visual Swing:

Eclipse Zone: Visual Swing for Eclipse

This is a project hosted on Google Code.  So far, it has worked pretty nice.  It is by no means a commercial solution, but it definitely gets the job done.

I had a little trouble installing it from the Update Site.  The first time, I just downloaded the files and manually placed them in my Eclipse Home directory.  But, today I figured out how to get the update site to work.

Here is the update site I had to use:

http://visualswing4eclipse.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/vs4e

Then, in the install window, I had to uncheck “Group items by category”.  Otherwise, it would say “There are no categorized items”.  Finally, the install window seems to have a refresh problem.  It was loading the items in the list, but it was not painting them.  I had to give it some time to load, then I had to resize the install window to make it repaint the list.

There is an outstanding bug on the Update Site: Issue #119.

Google Chrome on Linux!

digitaleagle Chrome, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I got Google Chrome for Linux!  From one of those ad links at the top of GMail, I clicked through to Chrome, and found out that they have a version that works for Linux.  I am actually using it now for this post.

First, they have a place you can enter your email address for notification when the full version comes out.  Currently, it is under development.

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/linux.html

From, that page, you will find a link to the Early Access Release Channels, which has the links to downloading Chrome.  If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will find the link to the deb package that you can install.

svnsync

digitaleagle git, Google Code, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I have decided to try svnsync instead of using git directly as I posted here and here.  Since I am a single developer, I was hoping it would be easier this way.  I found another article with tips here.

First, let me just check my installation:

skp@pecan:~$ svnsync --version
svnsync, version 1.5.4 (r33841)
 compiled Aug  7 2009, 01:44:11

Copyright (C) 2000-2008 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.tigris.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

The following repository access (RA) modules are available:

* ra_neon : Module for accessing a repository via WebDAV protocol using Neon.
 - handles 'http' scheme
 - handles 'https' scheme
* ra_svn : Module for accessing a repository using the svn network protocol.
 - with Cyrus SASL authentication
 - handles 'svn' scheme
* ra_local : Module for accessing a repository on local disk.
 - handles 'file' scheme

Here are some other quick discoveries that I found:

You can get help by typing

svnsync help

This will give the list of commands supported: init, sync, and copy-revprops.  Then, you can get help on a specific command, such as init, with:

svnsync help init

One of the things I noticed was this warning which has me worried because I have already started committing to the repository with git:

You should not commit to, or make revision property changes in,
the destination repository by any method other than 'svnsync'.
In other words, the destination repository should be a read-only
mirror of the source repository.

So, lets go for it.

First, I am going to make my local repository:

mkdir project-sarah
git svn clone --username myusername https://project-sarah.googlecode.com/svn/trunk

Now, I am going to try to initialize the syncing:

svnsync init --username myusername --password mypassword  https://project-sarah.googlecode.com/svn file://home/skp/app/git-workspace/project-sarah

Here is the message I got back:

svnsync: Cannot initialize a repository with content in it

So, I guess unless I want to try to get Google Code to delete the repository and start over, I am out of luck here.  Maybe this will help someone else though.

Resources

How I moved my code repository to Google Code

Trying to Upgrade PulseAudio

digitaleagle sound, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I first tried to install from this respository, but it wouldn’t install.  There was an error message about maybe one of the packages being held, and it could resolve everything.

So, I found another blog post that had a better repository to install from.  So, I followed these directions:

How to Install the Latest PulseAudio (0.9.15) in Ubuntu Jaunty

Here is a quick summary:

Installed repository:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/themuso/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Installed key:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys B88A1AA8

Updated all of the packages

Now:

pulseaudio –version

pulseaudio 0.9.15

So, I rebooted, and I will let you know if things start working better!

PulseAudio Log Busting

digitaleagle sound, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I have started looking into several of the messages that I have been seeing in my logs to see if I can get rid of some of the bugginess.  For those who like the GUI, I have found a nice app for looking at the logs: Administration > Log File Viewer.

Please comment if you have any ideas on any of these.  At this point, I haven’t tried any fixes.

Message:

Sep 15 06:25:01 pecan pulseaudio[3559]: module-console-kit.c: GetUnixUser() call failed: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: Method “GetUnixUser” with signature “” on interface “org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session” doesn’t exist

Links:

Bug #390528

Message:

Sep 14 13:59:19 pecan pulseaudio[3559]: alsa-util.c: Device hw:1 doesn’t support 2 channels, changed to 1.

Here are the bug reports I have been looking at:

One possible solution is from this post, where I could make some edits to the /etc/pulse/default.pa file.

I think I might try adding this repository and upgrading to a later version first.  I noticed they are listing version 0.9.17 currently.

Message:

pecan pulseaudio[3559]: protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

This message was while I was on a Skype call.

Links

sounds stops working in 8.10 (Ibex)

They mention that one possible fix is to change the default fragments settings in the default.pa file.  Another suggestion is that upgrading to the latest version might fix it.

Skype + PulseAudio

digitaleagle Skype, sound, Uncategorized 1 Comment

I have been fighting to get Skype to work so that I could make calls.  Getting PulseAudio to work with Skype has been a challenge. (“Back to Alsa”, “Sound in Jaunty”).

I recently found out that the latest version supports PulseAudio natively!  You can download it from here.  Currently, they are at version 2.1.0.47.

Previously, I had downloaded from the Medibuntu repository, which you can see here.  But, they only offer version 2.0.0.72.

One thing I noticed is that they recommend version 0.9.15 or greater.  You can check to see what version you have with this command:

pulseaudio –version

So, here is a screenshot of the audio setup screen for this new version of Skype.  Notice that PulseAudio is an option now.

screenshot