from Mars

GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap is missing compiz error with gutsy

Des — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 18:29:00 +0000

I've been trying out Ubuntu's latest gutsy gibbon development version for a while now. The newest shiny, compiz (compiz fusion as of this week) was working very nicely with the open source radeon driver and AIGLX with no particular changes except xorg.conf tweaking on my old laptop (IBM T41p). Always a lover of newer and shinier, I upgraded to a T60p laptop. The open source radeon driver doesn't support the more recent ATI graphics cards. The T60p has an ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5200. The proprietary driver from ATI, fglrx, works fine with the new card (but not with older ones now!). However, it doesn't support AIGLX, so no compiz.

You then follow one of the many howtos out there to get compiz working with the fglrx driver by using Xgl. All working fine. Soon though, I began to suffer compiz (the window manager) not starting when I logged into X. In ~/.xsession.errors you can see these errors:

compiz.real: GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap is missing
compiz.real: Failed to manage screen: 0
compiz.real: No managable screens found on display :1.0

You get a terminal window, but no window manager. Starting compiz manually always works first time. What gives? It turns out that the fglrx driver is missing the GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap capability and to provide this you need to LD_PRELOAD the libGL shared object library that the Mesa driver provides (and fglrx replaces). This works just fine:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/fglrx/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa /usr/bin/compiz.real --ignore-desktop-hints --indirect-rendering --replace ccp &

However, so does this:

/usr/bin/compiz --ignore-desktop-hints --indirect-rendering --replace ccp &

Huh? The wrapper script in gutsy, /usr/bin/compiz, detects and sets up the environment as needed. The problem is if you have Gnome set to save your session on logout. Gnome saves the currently running processes and assumes they can be started in the same way. So it tries to start compiz.real on login without the LD_PRELOAD variable set, resulting in the error messages you see in ~/.xsession-errors.

To confirm, try this:

$ grep compiz ~/.gnome2/session

10,CloneCommand=/usr/bin/compiz.real --ignore-desktop-hints --indirect-rendering --replace ccp
10,RestartCommand=/usr/bin/compiz.real --ignore-desktop-hints --indirect-rendering --replace ccp

The initial number will vary. Check in System > Preferences > Sessions and uncheck "Automatically remember running applications when logging out" in the Session Options tab. Delete your session file (rm ~/.gnome2/session) and logout and back into X to verify.

Ponysection

Des — Fri, 04 May 2007 20:42:00 +0000

OMG I want a pony. Well, sometimes you only deserve half a pony. That's when you need to learn the ancient art of ponysection.

Bay Leaf Cafe is closed

Des — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 04:47:00 +0000

We took the kids to Palo Alto hoping to get lunch at the Bay Leaf Cafe on Ramona Street. We discovered it closed in October 2006 - after we visited the boarded up premises! Sounds like the owners never really made a viable business out of it, although I liked it even with the faintly disorganised air that was always a feature. Palo Alto has plenty of other restaurants to choose from, so we were never going to go hungry.

I can see mountains

Des — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 04:16:00 +0000

My family and I are visiting Mountain View, California, for just under 2 weeks. Today, we took it easy and shopped and ate. That is enough shopping for me at any rate. One thing we were absolutely amazed at was the vegan food available in the local supermarkets, especially Whole Foods Market.

Like ten different varieties of vegan sausages and two types of frozen pizza. Like 2 entire freezers full of vegan ice cream and related frozen desserts. Like 5 varieties of freshly baked vegan cakes in their bakery! We choose a large chocolate mousse cake. 9 different flavours of vegan donuts. 3 types of vegan muffins. OMG. We will not fit on the plane on the way home.

A trip to Davos

Des — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 03:42:00 +0000

Last week I was lucky enough to have a short trip to Davos in Switzerland, via Zürich, to meet up with some colleagues. Davos (pronounced Dav-OS, not DAV-os it turns out) is a nice little town up in the mountains, famous for the annual World Economic Forum. Klosters, famous for princes and celebrities holidaying there, is the next village along.

I had only a night in Zürich, but it seems a great town, hopefully I'll get a chance to get back there soon. Public transport is a strong point. When asked how to get to the train station, the hotel receptionist replied, "Why you get the train, of course". So I did. As expected, the train left precisely on time. It even arrived at some stations at precisely zero seconds on the alloted time. Uncanny.

I was able to get some fantastic vegan food in Zürich just next to my hotel, in a really popular restaurant called Tibits. It is owned by the same people who run the Hiltl restaurant, apparently Europe's longest running vegetarian restaurant, since 1898! The food is mostly buffet style, you pay by weight - they have both hot and cold food. Unlike many vegetarian restaurants in this style which I've been to, Tibits serves not just beer but a range of cocktails! Highly recommended, a great buzz about the place too.

Davos on the other hand, in part being there for work, was not so hot on the food front. A small, green salad for dinner doesn't quite rate the same.

Brothers In Arms copy protection pain

Des — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:22:00 +0000

More time wasted figuring out eventually that the copy protection software of this new game appears to be incompatible with the DVD drive I have, a Samsung SM-308B. After finally getting the game loaded it fails to start with a wonderfully helpful error:


AppName: bia.exe AppVer: 1.0.0.0 ModName: ~df394b.tmp
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 000c486b

The only options seem to be to buy a new DVD drive or follow the instructions in this forum post.

Now that I've finally got it working, I'm not sure that I like the game much. :(

Brothers In Arms fails to install

Des — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:05:00 +0000

I bought an old, new game. Published in 2005 (Brother In Arms: Road to Hill 30) and not only still got bugs but the manufacturer's support forums are full of frustrated people getting no answers. Their excuse - these are community support forums, so they are not actually trying to support the game at all. It has nasty DVD copy protection software built in.

Thirty minutes wasted of my life and it came down to this: the installed DVD burning software from Roxio (Easy CD creator) which came with the PC clashes with the stupid copy protection. You see setup.exe starting in Task Manager, spawning Imapirox.exe, then both exiting. You can't even install the game.

The solution: go into the Windows Services administration app and disable Imapirox.exe (IMAPI CD burning service).

I guess it is just another of Windows lovable little ways of reminding me why I hate it.

Feisty upgrade goes smoothly

Des — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:36:00 +0000

Only minor hiccups in the upgrade to Feisty Fawn. apt-get dist-upgrade stalled early on as it appeared to manage to install a newer version of a PHP library before upgrading the Apache version. As a result Apache wouldn't start or stop, couldn't be removed or upgraded and everything stopped. A bit of the usual poking around identified the suspects - apt-get remove of anything with php or apache remotely involved sorted it. A second apt-get dist-upgrade completed the install. Nothing remotely graphics card or X related to report, unlike with the Edgy upgrade.

I'm now enjoying Rhythmbox's cover art option and the Gnome menu bar song notifier showing the same. Still delving into the innards to see what else is new and shiny. That's what it's all about after all.

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn upgrade

Des — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 13:54:00 +0000

Been a bit lazy in posting in last few months. The latest Ubuntu release, Feisty Fawn, is nearing completion. So I thought I'd try for a dist-upgrade to the latest pre-release. It is running as we speak. Let's see how much survives, I'm guessing the graphics driver will be the usual suspect.

Dinner with Alicia Silverstone

Des — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 04:50:00 +0000

Well, not quite. I went to Hollywood this afternoon and who better to recommend a vegan restaurant to visit than Alicia Silverstone, celebrity vegan? The Internet gossip rags duly obliged, confiding that the M Cafe on Melrose Avenue is her favourite. This is a macrobiotic cafe not far from the centre of Hollywood, so after a quick trip to Hollywood Boulevard and Grauman's Chinese Theater it was food time.

Plenty to choose from, mostly soup, salad and sandwiches (it's a cafe) with a few rice and veg dishes. Plenty of seitan, tempeh and soy mozzarella if you want protein. Fish is available too in that strange combination that is macrobiotic. I went for a brown rice and seitan dish, which was great in itself, except that the veg (carrots, broccoli and cauliflower) tossed into it looked like something from Sligo. That is, chunky, looking fresh from the ground and just about boiled with no condiments. I felt so healthy.

Not to worry, the M Cafe boasts a leading vegan/macrobiotic chef de patisserie!
Unfortunately they were out of chocolate cake slices - all that was left were entire chocolate cakes at $40 a pop. Maybe a bit much. So I settled for a lemon meringue tarte...and a soy cappuccino...and a couple of cocoa truffles. Just in case.

To finish off a perfect evening I returned to find I had won a parking ticket. Los Angeles, I will remember you.

Counter Strike Dynamic Pricing

Des — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 21:46:00 +0000

I just played the new beta of Counter Strike: Source with the controversial Dynamic Pricing. What do you know? The sky didn't fall in. Adjusting the price of the weapons by a few percent at most right now (e.g. $50) it is hard to really notice that much. After a while the impact might get more pronounced I guess. As they have released this as a separate beta game you are still free to play under the old rules (static pricing).

Edgy and pam-keyring

Des — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:25:00 +0000

Ubuntu Edgy is still looking good 3 weeks on. One joy of Dapper was Network Manager and the ease of dealing with both wireless networks and switching between many networks on a laptop. Logging into Gnome and then logging in again to unlock the gnome keyring that Network Manager uses to store wireless network passwords was a pain.

All in the past, as the (unofficial) pam-keyring deb and new versions of the pam libraries in Edgy mean that pam-keyring work like a charm now. There is the occasional bump where it connects to a wireless network and after switching back and forth from wired it starts prompting for the wireless credentials again. Overall though, life is much easier now.

Remember after installing pam-keyring to add these lines to /etc/pam.d/gdm:

auth optional pam_keyring.so try_first_pass
session optional pam_keyring.so

Ubuntu Edgy dist-upgrade

Des — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 08:21:00 +0000

I got bored with Ubuntu Dapper and decided to give Edgy, the latest beta version under development, a whirl. New gnome 2.16, OpenOffice up to current 2.0.3 version, Firefox 2.0 beta, Flash sound works now, updated Network Manager, updated pam libraries. All very nice.

Suspecting that apt-get dist-upgrade would trash my Dapper installation, I backed up and burned the Edgy Knot 3 install CD, just in case I needed it. Various reports from last month had people ending up with working X or kernel. Sounds like a challenge!

CAUTION: This procedure may melt your computer! Always Be Backing Up. Have a boot CD ready first.

Get thee to a console window:
Ctl-Alt-1
Point your apt sources to Edgy:
sudo perl -pi.orig -e 's/dapper/edgy/' /etc/apt/sources.list
Update your package lists:
sudo apt-get update
Upgrade:
sudo apt-get -f dist-upgrade
"1055 upgraded, 125 newly installed, 31 to remove, 26 not upgraded" :)
Upgrade once more if it bombs out during the first dist-upgrade:
sudo apt-get -f dist-upgrade
Kernel 2.6.17-7 was installed but the default in grub wasn't updated:
vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
change the default line to (as appropriate):
"default 0"
X didn't work, as it tries to use the missing ati driver instead of the installed fglrx driver:
vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Change this line in Section "Device":
Driver "ati"
to:
Driver "fglrx"
I did a modprobe fglrx for good measure, then startx to test. Houston, we have X!
Some remaining packages complaining:
sudo apt-get install hpijs python-adns python-clientcookie python-gadfly python-htmlgen python-htmltmpl python-imaging python-imaging-sane python-jabber python-kjbuckets python-ldap python-mysqldb python-osd python-pam python-pexpect python-pgsql python-pylibacl python-pyopenssl python-pyxattr python-reportlab python-simpletal python-soappy python-sqlite python-syck python-xmpp
/sbin/reboot

All was well, and Gnome was even mostly functional during and after the upgrade (before reboot), although I stuck to the console for commands. The upgrade took about 2 hours using a 2Mb/s DSL line. I got ~200Kb/s to the local archive, ~750MB to download. Not all the upgrade time was downloading of course.

The success of the dist-upgrade may be pretty dependent on both hardware (Thinkpad T41p in this case) and what packages you have installed above and beyond Dapper default install (a few but clearly nothing bad!).

There is a slightly annoying graphics artifact sometimes, a horizontal line ~50 pixels beneath the cursor in Gnome. The multiple login prompt for Network Manager appears gone (NM 0.6.3 changelog claims it fixed it), although I had to re-enter my WPA password once after the upgrade. Flash sound works now with the packaging of the hack /etc/init.d/flashplugin-nonfree in flashplugin-nonfree 7.0.68. I cleaned out .gnome, .gconf etc. to get a fresh set of Gnome settings.

Now to try out Network Manager PPTP and pam-keyring since all the dependent libraries are now modern enough!

Mario, Queen of the Circus

Des — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 20:34:00 +0000

I found myself in a supporting role in the fantastic show of Mario, Queen of the Circus today. A Freddie Mercury lookalike juggler and street entertainer, he was appearing as part of the free Temple Bar human circus today. I was picked out of the crowd as the "husband" character in the show and just as I thought he had forgotten about me, my time had come.

A fake jealous husband routine followed - I just had to repeat whatever Mario said about his other "volunteer". So far so good. This ended up in a duel to the death with bananas. Not being a veteran of many banana duels I made the beginner's mistake of eating my first mouth full. Once I realised that in fact you spit each mouthful of banana at your opponent, I made much more progress. I ended up in triumph with a fine shot direct to the chest, lording it over my fallen foe.

But not so fast, said he. The duel was merely the warm up to...my rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody!

Mama I killed a man...

I was crowned with a portable microphone headset and given the lyrics. Despite the allegations, I was not a plant, I am not a professional street entertainer and what laugh. Dylan's favourite was how the song ended, a classic:

...air guitar!

Ubuntu Dapper upgrade

Des — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 13:37:00 +0000

I upgraded from Ubuntu Breezy (5.10) to the latest Dapper test release (Flight 6) this morning, although Dapper (6.04) is not due for final release now til early June. All extremely smooth sailing so far.

First the basic distribution upgrade, just search and replace the word breezy with the word dapper in /etc/apt/sources.list. Then run sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. A couple of hundred of MB of downloads later and a reboot we're up and running with Dapper.

The initial difference is most pronounced in the much faster boot time to the GDM login screen, followed by the much faster startup time for Gnome 2.14. A pretty new Power Manager applet has appeared alongside the old Battery Monitor one (this is on a laptop). One click later and that's the last I'll see of Battery Monitor.

So what's the damage? Well, wireless isn't working. It looks like wpa_supplicant has been uninstalled during the upgrade. Whoops, OpenOffice got uninstalled too. Where are my beloved gstreamer plugins for my MP3s?!

So easiest first, reinstall OpenOffice:

sudo apt-get install openoffice.org

Then sort out mp3 playback (howto for mp3/dvd/flash/realplayer/java and the rest well documented on the Ubuntu wiki):

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly

Now to reinstate wireless support. So Dapper has the shiny new Gnome Network Manager, which turns out to be a very fine piece of work, supporting WPA configuration seamlessly, except...it is not installed. Perhaps it would be installed if this was not an upgrade. So:

sudo apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome

It doesn't work, :( Trying to start nm-applet gives this error:

The NetworkManager applet could not find some required resources. It cannot continue.

Turns out the Internet knows the answer to this one. Run:

sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor/

Finally, Network Manager doesn't deal with interfaces that are already configured, so comment out all references to eth0 and ath0 from /etc/network/interfaces. Delete the WPA-PSK password from /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.dpkg-bak for good measure.

Reboot and Network Manager kicks in. Nothing to do at all for eth0, for ath0 I get prompted for my WPA password, a master password to lock the password store Network Manager keeps the WPA password in and that's it. Each time I log in Network Manager prompts me to unlock my password database and connects to wireless when it is available.

With Breezy wpa_supplicant started up after the interface was configured at boot time, so ath0 didn't get properly configured until I ran sudo ifdown ath0; sudo ifup ath0, which I never got around to dealing with. Once the upgrade edges are smoothed off, Dapper is much more straight forward. A really nice improvement, looking forward to finding out what else is new over the coming weeks.

v2go Belfast has shut

Des — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 17:53:00 +0000

Vegetarian fast food is not terribly common place so v2g0 was pretty unique, certainly in Ireland. Their time in Belfast appears to be at an end though, friends have reported seeing their outlet stripped bare on their last visit. They did veggie burgers, veggie hot dogs, Mexican burgers, falafel (all suitable for vegans too) along with a couple of quiche options and all the side orders. Burger meal (with chips and soft drink) started at £2.95. Not too shabby. The kids loved it. Even their non-vegetarian cousins loved it.

They still have an outlet in the Arndale Centre in Manchester at least.

McDonalds chips now with extra beef, dairy and wheat

Des — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 18:15:00 +0000

Fresh from being sued for misleading vegetarians by hiding the fact that their chips (aka french fries aka freedom fries) contain beef extracts, McDonalds are making friends in the vegan and coeliac communities too. They have apparently quietly changed their advice that their chips are free from milk and wheat allergens to say that they actually do contain dairy and wheat products after all. Oops. Don't? Do? Easy mistake to make.

So a vegan (no to dairy) in Los Angeles and parents of a coeliac (allergic to gluten from wheat) child are both suing good old McDonalds. Even Motley Fool, the online business site is running the story as McDonalds: Allergic to Common Sense.

McSpotlight has more fun McDonalds facts and fiction.

More Ireland sightseeing

Des — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:15:00 +0000

Browsing around Google Maps I've added a few more places to my Ireland Sightseeing mashup:

Granuaile's Tower - Achill Island
Giant's Ring, Albert Clock, City Hall, Milltown Cemetary - Belfast
Fin Barre's Cathedral - Cork
Vinegar Hill, Enniscorthy Castle - Enniscorthy
Thiepval Barracks (British Army HQ) - Lisburn

There is a nice Google map for visitors to Enniscorthy at enniscorthytown.com.

Let me know of anywhere else fun you find on Google maps in Ireland, or any inaccuracies in my map reading. :)

FOSS Means Business

Des — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:15:00 +0000

From Ciarán O'Riordan, there is an upcoming event in Belfast featuring Richard Stallman and Bruce Perens, (Free/Open Source Software) FOSS Means Business. It's on the 16th March in Spires Conference Centre.

Richard Stallman and Bruce Perens will keynote at this event targetted at fueling transitions towards Free Software solutions in the IT departments of businesses and the public sector. CEOs and CIOs may particularly be interested in the business angle of Bruce Perens, and Richard Stallman will speak on the updating of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) and "Free Software in Ethics and Practice". Other speakers from the public and private sectors are to be announced soon and there will be many opportunities for networking at the event.

Google are even sponsoring it. :)

Jortosh Ministry targets young girls in Dublin

Des — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 11:50:00 +0000

A group of evangelic Christians have set up in East Wall and are targeting young girls directly for conversion (it would appear). We have received invitations for girls, most aged 5-12 , to go to a pyjama party without their parents where various sweets and presents will be given to the children whilst they hear Bible readings. The same people rented a bouncy castle recently for local children to play on as a warm up event and invited our children playing in the street into their house. They have started pressuring our daughter to go to this event, even leading her by the hand down the street out of sight, seemingly to help with targeting other young girls to come. She has been left in tears between their insistent promises of free sweets, make up, goodie bags, movies and our refusal to let her go.

The two young women involved are around 20 from a US outfit called the Jortosh Ministry, which has previously targeted vulnerable children in Uganda and South Africa, but now have decided that "inner city Dublin" is the next place to save.

Here are some excerpts from their invitation (made up to look like a childrens' party invite):

Although we invited the girls to come in their pyjama's (sic), please be advised that this is not a sleepover.

We will be giving out "goodie bags" before the girls go home. ...

The theme of the evening is "Love Yourself" and we will be referring to a verse in the Bible to emphasise this theme. We understand that religion is a sensitive issue, but we want you to know - we are Christians but we are not trying to convert your daughters or shake the spiritual foundation you may have already laid. ...

We look forward to 'hanging out' with your beautiful daughters....

Here is what they say on their website:

We believe that children are extremely important to God and in the life of the Body of Christ. They are not cute showpieces but should be trained up to become strong disciples of Christ and be trained up at the earliest age to be ministers of the Gospel in prayer, worship, evangelism and all other giftings. Jortosh Ministries International seeks to raise up a new generation of godly children and youth, through the mobilizing, training and empowering of individuals, churches and organizations both locally and around the world.

I don't know whether to laugh or call the Gardai. Several children in the area are apparently going to go - "Love Yourself Girls Night" is this Saturday night. Free food, presents and babysitters on a Saturday night is a powerful lure for both parents and children.

Has anyone else heard of Jortosh Ministry? They appear to have been in Dublin for a few months - has anyone heard of evangelists in Dublin directly targeting young children in this way? Am I under or over reacting to this?

Enhanced Google Maps imagery is available from API

Des — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 22:41:00 +0000

Like many others I initially thought that the enhanced satellite imagery just updated in Google Maps for places like Belfast (and loads more) was not available via the API. I was wrong. My new mashup, Ireland Sightseeing, uses the updated imagery.

So what's the secret? Blindingly obvious - use version 2 of the API. Whilst v.2 hasn't stabilised yet and requires minor changes to your version 1 maps, in return you get the new imagery. It looks to me like the v.2 API gives you two less zoom levels than Google Maps itself on the new imagery, but c'est la vie.

If you want to find out more about version 2 of the API, this tutorial should tell you everything you need to get started (by Mike Williams).

Ireland sightseeing on Google Maps

Des — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 22:24:00 +0000

Have a look at some sights visible on Google maps including some of the enhanced satellite imagery available for Northern Ireland with my basic Google maps mashup for Ireland sightseeing.

As well as the places from my last post, see a bit of the Peace Line on the Falls Road in Belfast, Carrickfergus Castle, Kilmainham Jail or the Crown Bar (at least from the air!). Plus a pile more.

Belfast sights on Google maps

Des — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 09:48:00 +0000

Now that the Google Maps satellite imagery of Belfast is drastically improved, here are a few interesting sites to visit:

Oil rig in Belfast harbour
Samson and Goliath - the giant cranes in Harland and Woolf
Stormont Castle - where all the best spies hang out
Belfast Castle

Political party headquarters:

Sadly the Google Maps API is still using the old imagery, which is extremely low resolution for Belfast, so links will have to suffice for now.

Wine from Lebanon

Des — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 15:47:00 +0000

Those nice people at Chateau Musar in the Bekaa Valley in the Lebanon confirmed that their red wines are vegan. I've updated the Vegan Wine Guide with their wines. I also got a list of almost 50 Brown Brothers wines (Australian) that are vegan, another nice addition (thanks to VeganVoltaire)! Finally all of the Andrew Peace red wines from Australia are vegan (thanks to Jared!).

Vegetarian Ireland updates

Des — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 09:12:00 +0000

I've added a couple of dozen more places to the Vegetarian Ireland map, covering a bit more of the country. I've updated the main website too - you can add your own places directly, plus you can now search by restaurant type as well as name and location:

Enjoy.