Google Music Manger issue with .ogg file?

Had a very head scratching issue with the (at least the) Linux version of Goggle Music Manger. GMM claims to have uploaded all of the songs and produced some errors on some individual song titles. I didn't think much of the errors since the upload showed successful. I then went to the Google Play page to take the next step of creating some play lists. To my surprise, I only had the original group of files I uploaded a while back and the recently purchased songs from Google (practically a) give-way of albums from last week. I went back to look at the errors noted by Google Music Manager and deleted from disk the files that were named in the errors. I was left with a single error from the "Run Troubleshooter" option; and the error listed that had no filename and a error with just "Failed to upload". Kinda odd to find no filename... Finally noticed that after hitting "Apply" and "Ok" I saw a "0%" on a Al DiMeola song and went searching for it. Immediately after moving the file from the original disk location on my system, Google Music Manger had a little green icon turn on and Google Play began to see the songs. That Al DiMeola song was an otherwise legit and playable .ogg file. I can only suspect that GMM does not like OGG files at this point, but doesn't want to ignore them. Hope my pain is your gain with Google Music Manager.

Dell Server Update Utility (SUU) v6.5.3 64-bit CentOS/RHEL 6 problems

Just going to vent here for a minute, so stay with me...Why? Why would you have so many 32bit dependencies when running SUU on a 64bit OS. I mean Dell has already shown that OMSA for 32bit is not going to happen going forward. At least fix your own documentation for requirements... please.

So, to get SUU 6.5.3 functional on a 64bit CentOS 6.2 or RHEL 6.x server (and SL I bet), you *will* need to:

yum install pam.i686 libXtst.i686 libXext.i686 compat-libstdc++-33.i686 pam.i686

As noted in the comments by Carlos Capriotti, if you want to run the GUI stuff, you will need a couple more packages:

yum install ncurses-libs.i686 libXp.i686

Verizon pc770 wireless card setup on CentOS 6.x

It's a very good time in a Linux lovers life when you can just say, "it works"... Because of all of the hard work of countless volunteers (and/or paid professionals). I am pleased to announce that the crappy unount of the virtual CD ROM is no longer needed in CentOS 6.x (or SL 6, RedHat 6)!

Thank You!

1. Plug in the card
2. Select the provider
3. Follow the prompts
4. Activate the card

NICE. It just WORKS!

P.S. Sorry about the situation for CentOS 5.x, but it's, "doable".

CentOS 6.x VMware Workstation 7.1 installation issue solved.

As this writing, VMware-Workstation 7.1 has issues building vmmon on CentOS 6.2 and therefore SL 6 and RHEL 6 also. After some head scratching, google'n and lots of reading, here is the easy way to get up and running.

This install example is for VMware-Workstation-7.1.5-491717.i386.bundle at the very least. Download that from VMware as you would normally.

First, make sure you have booted to the most recent kernel before installing. Otherwise you will not be able to build the VMware modules against the kernel you are running.

First, make sure to have some basic prerequisites before you start:

yum install gcc gcc-c++ kernel-headers kernel-devel

Next install (or update) the VMware-Workstation bundle as root and valid $DISPLAY set:

bash VMware-Workstation-7.1.5-491717.i386.bundle

Follow the promps as usual.

Bummer, vmmon won't load and produces errors in /var/log/messages like:
kernel: vmmon: disagrees about version of symbol smp_ops
kernel: vmmon: Unknown symbol smp_ops

First attempt at a work around yields the ever helpful Akemi Yag (aka "toracat")  blog and the perfect *helpful* comment by NomadAU. Why is that Redhat Bugzilla entry closed anyway??


Here is the portion that is key to fixing the issue; as root:

mv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary/bld-2.6.32-*-rhel6 ~/

Finally run:

vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

How to get system-config-netboot working on CentOS 6, RHEL 6 or SL 6

Sadly, Redhat has decided to drop system-config-netboot from it's offerings for RHEL 6. I was very much accustomed to the simplicity of using system-config-netboot for PXE boot client installs. Redhat may have not included the packages to install system-config-netboot, but it is certainly easy to get running on your RHEL 6 or clone. Here is the CentOS 6 i386example (please run commands as root or sudo you guts out):

1. Make sure some pre-requisites are in place:

yum install tftp-server xinetd pygtk2-libglade gnome-python2-canvas

2. Adjust for your arch type: Download the latest CentOS 5.x system-config-netboot* and alchemist* versions:

wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/system-config-netboot-0.1.45.1-3.el5.noarch.rpm
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/system-config-netboot-cmd-0.1.45.1-3.el5.noarch.rpm
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/alchemist-1.0.36-2.el5.i386.rpm

3. Force the install of the above packages:

rpm -ihv --force --nodeps system-config-netboot-* alchemist-1.0.36-2.el5.i386.rpm

4. Move part of the installed alchemist package to the correct place... bad administrator! ;)

mv /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/* /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/

Running "system-config-netboot" through some warning message at me, but it did what I wanted it to do

Yeah, it's a bit hackish. I'm OK with it if you are. You *could* rebuild the source rpm for each of them correcting the the alchemist path etc. I will for my systems, but this is the "easy" version of the "How to get system-config-netboot working on CentOS 6, RHEL 6 or SL 6" after all...

Howto get network card vendor, device or kernel module from the /proc and/or /sys filesystem

Work in progress - place to keep notes to myself - may help someone else - cheat sheet kinda page ;)

1. How to get NIC/network card vendor information (scripted example)

for i in `ls -d /sys/class/net/eth*`
do
  ETH="`basename $i`"
  echo -n "$ETH "
  NICID="`cat /sys/class/net/$ETH/device/vendor|cut -c3-`"
  grep "^$NICID" /usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids
done

2. How to get the NIC/network card MAC address (simple example)

cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address

3. How to get the NIC/network kernel module and PCI device info (DETAILS). This can also derive the vendor and device info like above (simple example)

VENDOR="`cat /sys/class/net/eth0/device/modalias |cut -c6-13`"
DEVICE="`cat /sys/class/net/eth0/device/modalias |cut -c15-22`"
grep -i $VENDOR /lib/modules/`uname -r`/modules.alias | grep -i $DEVICE

OR generally

grep `cat /sys/class/net/eth0/device/modalias |cut -c-22` /lib/modules/`uname -r`/modules.alias

External important links for PCI or kernel module information for Linux:
http://www.pcidatabase.com/

4. How to find the WWN for a SAS end device (the arrary for example) card on RHEL 6, CentOS 6 or similar (simple example)

cat /sys/class/sas_device/*/sas_address

5. How to find the WWN for a SAS card on RHEL 6, CentOS 6 or similar (simple example)

cat /sys/class/sas_phy/*/sas_address

OpenGTS client connection test with gps2opengts-free

WORK IN PROGRESS!!!

Just recently started playing setting up a GPS tracking server. Here is a follow up client connection on my Android phone with the free version of  gps2opengts. Here are some (incomplete) notes so far.

I hope you can at least find and install the gps2opengts-free on your own. I will skip that ;)
I will leave it up to you to figure out how to tunnel/port forward through your firewall as required.

OpenGTS server config change for "GPRMC" type of connections based on info from HERE.
Edit /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/track/WEB-INF/webapp.conf and uncomment the the next 2 lines from the "# --- GPRMC properties" section:

gprmc.parm.account=acct
gprmc.parm.device=dev

Rebuild and deploy the tomcat container as noted from my server setup page:

ant all

ant track.deploy

ant gprmc.deploy

(re)Start tomcat:

service tomcat6 restart

OpenGTS web based vehicle setup for gps2opengts-free (should also work with GPS2OpenGTS_Pro):

1. Log into your OpenGTS server as a user "demo" (just playing with the demo install at this point!). 

1. From the "Main Menu" -> "Administration" tab -> "Vehicle Admin" -> create a new "Vehicle ID" of "test01".

2. From the "View/Edit Vehicle Information" section -> select the new vehicle and then "Edit" button.

3. "Unique ID" is required and will be the "test01" that is the only option for the free client gps2opengts-free. Otherwise add info to as many fields as you know/want. Make sure this vehicle is also "Active" = "Yes" and hit the "Change" button to save.

gps2opengts-free android app client setup:

I hope to document this tonight...

Note: As part of the frustration of initial install, I needed a little help from tcpdump to help figure out what was/was not happening. Again, my lack of tomcat knowledge was the reason for my issues:

tcpdump port 8080 -vvvvvv and not host THE_HOST_YOU_MAY_HAVE_SSHd_FROM

Note: I was hoping to find a handy to use wget to make local connection attempts. The assumption is that you are connecting via the "demo" default account like:

wget --post-data='/gprmc/Data?acct=demo&dev=test01&gprmc=$GPRMC,172413,A,3848.8028,N,08957.3521,W,0,000.0,171111,,*16' http://localhost:8080

But I have been unable to get this kinda thing to work. Wireshark shows the wget doing an http/1.0 post that is different that the gps2opengts_free http/1.1 post :(

Log information can be gotten from the /var/log/tomcat6/catalina.out  $GTS_HOME/logs/w-gprmc.log $GTS_HOME/logs/TrackWar.log or any other file in the $GTS_HOME/log/ directory.