Jacob Peddicord

Sneaky Songs

2010-07-10T03:05:33Z

I'm going on vacation (OBX!) in a week, and figured I should probably update my music player (a Sansa Fuze) for the 12-hour ride there. I've had most of it sync'd for a while, but then I noticed that a few songs were missing ReplayGain tags. Oh no! (ReplayGain ensures everything plays at the same volume so your ears don't bleed when switching songs.)

So, there were a few options:

Erase the player and re-sync 3.5 GB of songs.
rsync the changed songs after adding ReplayGain tags
Find which songs on the player were missing ReplayGain tags

The first option isn't very nice on the flash memory, and I figured there was a smarter way to go about things.

The second would have been viable if Banshee hadn't been updating playcount tags in the files, so almost everything had changed anyway.

So I dove into the third. Installed tagtool and started dumping some files. Those with ReplayGain had "REPLAYGAIN" in the output. Easy enough. It took some time, but I came up with the following command:

find . -name "*.ogg" -print -exec sh -c "tagtool --dump \"{}\" | grep -L REPLAYGAIN" \;

It looks through all ogg files (might work for MP3 too), sends them to tagtool, and then checks the output for a lack of "REPLAYGAIN" in which case it prints "(standard input)" after the filename.

So I ran this, sent it to a file, and scanned it for "standard input." Found about 20 songs. Deleted them off of the player, had Banshee re-sync, and things were back to being awesome.

Now I know what you're saying: "Why not just use Banshee's search bar?" Yes, Banshee's search is quite powerful, but unfortunately you cannot yet search by raw tag or replaygain.

/me scurries off to bugzilla

Edit: Bug 624000. Nice number!

More GSoC updates

2010-07-07T21:44:25Z

It's been a while. Well, in internet years, anyway. I've made a lot of updates to jobservice and jobs-admin in the past few weeks:

service-level settings works
sporting a new UI
speed improvements
tons of bug fixes

I'll let the video do the talking (click the image):

Shoutout to Matthew Paul Thomas who provided the feedback for this new interface. :)

You can see service-level settings in action in the video. It's shown for apport and ufw. There's been a little confusion as to what this actually is, so here's a fancy diagram:

When you click that shiny "Job Settings" button, a lot of things happen. jobs-admin tells jobservice that settings were requested. jobservice then asks each of the backends if they have any settings on that particular service. Then it goes to SLS, which first looks up an XML file, and then uses that data to parse the actual configuration files. This is all compiled together by jobservice and sent back over DBus to jobs-admin, which renders some GTK widgets with this information. When a setting is changed, jobs-admin sends the changes to jobservice, which sends it back to wherever it came from.

SLS doesn't have anything to do with services themselves, just their configuration. When you start, stop, or look up information on a job, that is all handled by the appropriate backend.

Now, there is a PPA somewhere with these changes to play around with, but I won't link it here (though it isn't hard to find). I'd like to get more things together before there's a call for testing, but I won't prevent anyone from using it.

Also: I upgraded this site to Movable Type 5. Let me know if you notice anything broken. :)

jobs-admin & jobservice new feature: it works!

2010-06-16T17:54:34Z

So this week I've hit a semi-awesome milestone with jobs-admin and jobservice: service management works!

On a Lucid system you're now able to start and stop not only System V services, but also Upstart 0.6 jobs.

A demo video is available here.

SysV jobs are currently handled using system-tools-backends, though I may look into doing another implementation that doesn't have any external dependencies.

The Upstart 0.6 backend was pretty tricky: Upstart is able to turn the jobs on and off for us, but to disable them we need to edit the config files under /etc/init. It works, though it may need some more through testing to be sure it's all good.

The Upstart 0.10 backend has not been written yet, as 0.10 currently doesn't exist.

Service-level settings still need to be implemented. This will be tricky to do correctly, but I think it will be a valuable feature.

Finally, if you're feeling brave, branch lp:jobservice and lp:jobsadmin to give things a try, though don't expect everything to work as it should. I'll have a PPA ready within a week for testing once things have stabilized.

Bringing it Back

2010-05-30T01:07:14Z

As you've all probably heard, Google Summer of Code "officially" began this previous Monday. I've been rather busy this week typing stuff up and getting the foundation set for the summer.

I'm working on the project titled "services-admin configuration and Upstart-ification," though the title is rather inaccurate. Trying to actually implement Upstart functionality proved to be quite a showstopper for system-tools-backends, which is what powers gnome-system-tools and in turn services-admin. So, we've decided to split off into a new project designed from the ground up to handle Upstart 0.6, the future 0.10, and existing compatibility with System V init scripts.

The project is comprised of two parts: jobs-admin, a new GTK+ frontend intended to replace the functionality of services-admin, and jobservice, a dedicated job & service management... service. Yeah, I'm not terribly creative with names. :)

The plan is to continue with the proposal submitted to Google and on the Ubuntu wiki, with the exception of replacing the existing gnome-system-tools and system-tools-backends with these new software pieces.

Here's a small mockup:

The main window on the left shouldn't feel too unfamiliar: select a service on the left, and view its status on the right. Clicking the Service Settings button will bring up the dialog on the right. This dialog is one of the special parts of the project: it adapts to whatever service you want to manage. The details for these "service-level settings" aren't finalized, but it will most likely read settings from a directory such as /usr/share/jobservice/sls in an i18n-able XML-based format. I think initially we'll ship some settings for common system services, though eventually it would be great to see packages shipping their own for easy administration.

So far I've gotten the main window to display a list of services. Doesn't sound like too much, but there's a lot of framework there for developing the rest of the features.

One of the key things I'm keeping in mind developing jobservice is that backends should be easily interchangeable. Currently there are three planned backends: sysv, upstart_0_6, and upstart_0_10. More than one backend can be in use at a time; on a Maverick system you'll likely have upstart_0_10 and sysv active. When systemd is made available, it should be pretty easy to write a backend for it.

We'll have PPAs available for Lucid and Maverick as soon as things start to stabilize. Eventually, jobs-admin and jobservice should be available in the Maverick archives. If things turn out well, perhaps you'd even see this in main or on the CD. (I'm not sure if I'm being too ambitious, here. ;) ) I'm going to write up a full specification which I should have finished tomorrow. If there's someone who can lend assistance in getting this approved, feel free to send me a ping.

There's a lot to do over the summer, but things are looking well on track. I'll keep this blog updated as things start to take shape.

Shoutout to Milan Bouchet-Valat, who maintains gnome-system-tools, for his help in determining the scope of what needed to be done (or not done, in this case) on g-s-t and for helping me realize what direction to take with the project.

And thanks to David Bensimon, who's [very patiently] mentoring me and this project and got me to wake up on time for UDS sessions. (Ah, timezones.) Looking forward to a great summer.

Shiny New Cards

2010-04-13T22:19:14Z

10.04 is two weeks away, and with that is some new branding. You know what that means: new business cards. Martin Owens has already created a nice design to use. I decided to go a different direction and create a simpler white card:

The template for Ubuntu Members is available here. Save & open in Inkscape; I haven't found any other viewer that will properly display the layout. (It won't look too well in your browser, either.)

Several notes:

Please make sure you are an official Ubuntu Member before using or printing these cards, otherwise you don't necessarily have the right to carry them.
I recommend printing with Vistaprint, because they are cheap, the cards are of good quality, and that is what I designed the template around.
It's formatted for 90mm x 52mm, based on dimensions provided by Vistaprint.
When exporting for printing, use PNG at 300 DPI (sample output here). Normally I'd recommend using PDF, but it doesn't turn out too well for this layout.
Stay inside the bleed border, shown by the light blue lines in the template, unless you know what you're doing.

Enjoy.

So I heard you like data

2009-11-01T21:47:49Z

Released Mound Data Manager 0.4.0 final early this morning, just before the DST switch.

If you have no idea what that is, see this post before reading the rest.

Click the above image for a video.

Main features of this release:

New UI that shows snapshots on the main window
Importing/exporting of snapshots
Translatable

The biggest feature is probably the exporting of snapshots. If you want to quickly take your data to another computer or deploy it to multiple systems, you can now easily do so.

Imported snapshots are checked to make sure that the data matches the application. This means that you can not actually modify the snapshot or Mound will refuse to import it. (Technical details: Mound modifies the gzip header when exported and checks it upon import to prevent importing of any random archive.) You can, however, still extract them like regular tar.gz archives to quickly get your data out or use scripted deployments.

If you're interested, give it a try! It's been fairly well-tested since 0.2, and the snapshot logic has not changed much so your data should still be as safe as it always was.

Launchpad source downloads: https://launchpad.net/mound
PPA: https://launchpad.net/~jpeddicord/+archive/mound (ppa:jpeddicord/mound)

If you're feeling productive, why not help out translating Mound Data Manager into your own language? See Launchpad Translations for more information.

Also, congratulations to Paul Tagliamonte on his new role as the team contact for Ubuntu Ohio! It's been a fun couple of years with the Ohio team, and I'm sure Paul's got the skills to make the Ohio team kick some ass.

OLF Karmic Demo Videos

2009-09-27T18:39:51Z

I'm still a little exhausted from Ohio LinuxFest yesterday. To be blunt, it was great; if you missed it make it a point to go next year. I'm sure you'll hear more about it from others over the next few days.

Many people were asking about the demo reel running on one of the System76 laptops at our booth, so I'm posting the videos here.

http://people.ubuntu.com/~jpeddicord/files/olf-karmic-videos/

They were recorded with gtk-recordmydesktop the night before. Some were mildly trimmed with PiTiVi. They were played using a simple repeating playlist in Totem.

If you want to re-use the videos, go right ahead. They are available under CC-BY or GFDL (you choose).

40 Years is almost here

2009-09-14T01:36:46Z

Hey! You! Sitting in front of the computer screen. You don't like being left out of things, do you? Plan to pack your bags and head to Columbus, Ohio for the greatest event of the year: Ohio LinuxFest!

Why should you?

It's free! You can't beat that price. There's no fee to get into this conference. The only thing you have to do is register.
40 years! 40 years of UNIX. Don't miss out on the anniversary or your OS will be sad.
Plenty of opportunities to meet people in the free software world.
Ubuntu will be there in full force. Great speakers, including Jorge Castro, Pete Graner, Mackenzie Morgan, and Daniel Chen will be speaking on subjects from testing to the kernel. Meet and talk with plenty of other Ubuntu folk and see Ubuntu Ohio at the Ubuntu booth!

The only catch: you have to register by September 18! That shouldn't be a problem, though, as it only takes a few minutes and is free.

Encourage your friends on your favorite social networking site to do the same.

Or take a snazzy banner to pass around.

Don't be left out.

Free Memes

2009-09-10T14:14:53Z

So close!

$ vrms
               Non-free packages installed on chunky

tangerine-icon-theme      Tangerine Icon theme
unrar                     Unarchiver for .rar files (non-free version)

               Contrib packages installed on chunky

ttf-mscorefonts-installer Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts

  2 non-free packages, 0.1% of 1745 installed packages.
  1 contrib packages, 0.1% of 1745 installed packages.

Echoing Adi Roiban's thoughts on tangerine-icon-theme, either it doesn't ship copyright info, or vrms doesn't like CC-BY-SA. Regardless, I use Tango, but apparently I can't remove this without taking out ubuntu-desktop. Is it possible to drop this from Depends to Recommends? :D

Using Intel graphics (i945), Intel wireless with iwl3945. No restricted-modules packages installed (in fact, I can't find those packages in the karmic archives anyway).

I hate unrar, and wish unrar-free worked a little better or that people would stop using the rar format.

If the font situation improves in the future, mscorefonts won't be needed. Perhaps it has improved already; I'll admit to having not tried other font sets.

Updates: Removed ttf-mscorefonts in favor of ttf-liberation, and liking it so far. Also filed 427401 regarding tangerine-icon-theme.

I've also realized that I'm using Adobe Flash, but it's their own amd64 library that I manually installed.

20 days

2009-09-05T13:20:56Z

You know you don't have anything better to do on the 25th. Quit procrastinating.

Re: Mound; I've released 0.2.1 which should fix problems those of you on Jaunty were having.

Another project: Mound Data Manager

2009-09-04T16:05:50Z

In the trend of short, quick applications comes Mound Data Manager. If you've ever swapped out profiles for applications or wanted to snapshot them, this is your new friend.

Mound will try to find applications it is able to manage on your system. Any application that appears can have snapshots taken of its data and have data deleted, among other tricks.

In addition to plenty of sanity and safety checks, snapshots are taken and restored using tar, so your data should be just as safe as its always been.

As an example, I took a snapshot of Htop above, which manages only my local .htoprc. I then was able to mess around with some Htop settings and take another snapshot. These two snapshots can now be used to either restore default settings, or my custom ones. (Another quick way to restore defaults is to simply delete the data, which is available on the Application menu.)

In the future it will be possible to export these snapshots for use on other systems. They are stored as plain tar.gz archives currently, so you can do so already yourself, but there are no checks to make sure the data is valid yet.

Mound works by reading through your installed applications. Inside each application it will attempt to look for an X-UserData line inside the desktop entry, and if found, makes the application visible in Mound for managing. If one is not found, it will search through /etc/userdata (supplied) in attempt to find a default to show.

A UserData line in the desktop entry or in /etc/userdata tells Mound what files are available to manage. See a line for Empathy as an example:

empathy $CONFIG/Empathy;~/.gnome2/Empathy

$CONFIG is a shortcut for ~/.config using XDG directories. (Others are available, such as $CACHE and $DATA.) The two directories there are then scanned by Mound, and then the user is able to take snapshots of this data, delete the data, and revert older snapshots in place.

The shipped userdata defaults file currently only has support for 36 applications (those that are currently installed on my system). Give Mound a try, and if you see some applications that aren't listed that should be, be sure to let me know.

There are two ways to allow your application to be managed:

Add an X-UserData line to your application's shipped desktop entry, with a value of a semicolon-separated list of files/directories to manage.
Add a default line in /etc/userdata by contacting me or by making a merge request in Launchpad with your changes. No packaging changes required on your end.

I understand that most people will pick the second option -- this is perfectly acceptable, especially since this stuff is completely new. :)

And finally, the download links:

Download, give it a try, and let me know what you like and what you don't. Enjoy.

I'm dead serious

2009-09-02T02:24:05Z

If your application has a File menu that has items that have nothing to do with files, get rid of it.

Choice Thoughts

2009-08-08T16:20:48Z

Back from vacation. Went on a last-minute trip to Cedar Point on the way back (third time this year).

Actually bought one of the on-ride videos. Embedded below for your viewing pleasure; here is the YouTube link for you RSSers.

Earlier in the day accomplished the same feat on the Millennium:

Really wanted to try the chess board, but it was probably a little risky.

Also, I've moved this blog to Movable Type because I'm really tired of dealing with WordPress quirks. Please poke me if you notice any oddities.

FYI

2009-08-02T11:21:16Z

I'm on vacation with little to no Internet access from today (Aug 2) until Friday Aug 7. If you've sent me something, I'll probably get to it by Saturday.

software-properties gets PPA love

2009-07-15T02:24:45Z

Ohhh, this is sweet.

It even goes through the trouble of finding GPG keys for you. Seems to be working as of software-properties 0.75, which also brings along a command-line tool to accomplish the same thing: add-apt-repository.

Huge thanks to whoever worked on this. It is simply awesome, and will certainly make many developers' lives easier.

(And because threads are better than blog comments: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1213538)