Entries from July 2007

The fit-PC looks like a very interesting platform for ET projects. It is cheap ($285), small (4.7×4.6×1.6 inches), low power (3 to 5 watts) and very capable:

• 500 MHz AMD Geode LX800 processor
• 256 MB of DDR RAM
• 40 GB hard drive
• Dual 100 Mbps Ethernet
• SXGA graphics controller, resolution to 1920 x 1440
• 2 USB 2.0 high speed ports
• Audio in/out interfaces
• RS-232 serial port
• Single 5V power supply

Our web pages are in AFS space, which would be great but AFS is a pain. The security policy requires me to login with a password in order to get a token in order to access an ACL protected directory. I decided to see if I could get the emacs package tramp to help me with this. Tramp will use scp to retrieve remote files and to write them on save. How can I get it work with AFS?

Here is one approach. I created a file ~/.ssh/config with these lines:

Host swan
ControlPath /tmp/ssh_swan_gb

I already have an alias that forces ssh to use a password to login instead of my usual keys.

alias sshl='/usr/bin/ssh -o PreferredAuthentications=password'

So I login with sshl swan -M.

Now a later scp will inherit my AFS tokens. So with emacs I can type

^X^F//swan:public_html/foo/foo.cgi

to edit a file on the remote host.

• 20 ounces fresh blueberries
• 1/2 cup sugar syrup
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 8 ounces blueberry yogurt

Blend all that up till smooth, pour into ice cream maker and freeze.

This is a variation on this strawberry sorbet recipe. which was also very good.

Here is what I had to do to get rdesktop to connect to XP Professional installed on VMware Workstation 6 running on Feisty.

In the guest XP system added a password for my account and turned on Remote Desktop in the System control panel applet on the Remote tab.

I edited /etc/vmware/vmnet8/nat/nat.conf and added the line

3389 = 192.168.72.128:3389

in the [incomingtcp] section.

Then I edited /etc/systl.conf to change the IPv4 forwarding line:

# Uncomment the next line to enable packet forwarding for IPv4
net.ipv4.conf.default.forwarding=1

Then I rebooted.

Now I started VMware and activated the guest XP system. Now the command:

rdesktop localhost

Works as expected.

Lots of pages out there address problems people have getting sound to work with VMware running on Linux hosting Windows but none of those solutions did it for me. VMware Workstation 6 insists on using /dev/dsp which for some strange reason I didn’t have. I noticed I had /dev/dsp1 through /dev/dsp5 but no plain /dev/dsp. A few minutes fooling with Audacity showed me where each of those played, and /dev/dsp3 seems to play through the speakers on my Audigy 2 so I knew that was the one I wanted it to use. I simply did: sudo ln -s /dev/dsp3 /dev/dsp and that seemed to do the trick.

Now I bet there is other magic, probably some that I accidentally invoked, that is making this work. I’m going to attach the .asoundrc files to this post so that if I lose sound later, maybe I can reconstruct the current state.

asoundrc
asoundrc.asoundconf

Update: I notice my symbolic link gets killed on reboot. Either I’ve got to figure out how to make it persistent, or I need to make VMware use /dev/dsp3.

Update 2: This page on writing udev rules taught me that I can get a symbolic link created on bootup just by adding a rule. I made a new file /etc/udev/rules.d/62-gb-symlinks.rules and in it I placed the single line:
KERNEL=="dsp*", DRIVERS=="EMU10K1_Audigy", SYMLINK+="dspAudigy"

This rule says (I think) look for a device with a name that matches /dev/dsp*, and has a Audigy driver, then make a symbolic link to it named /dev/dspAudigy.

Then I simply edited the .vmx file for my VMware virtual machine and changed the sound.fileName line to read
sound.fileName = "/dev/dspAudigy"

Now that always points to the sound channel I want my virtual machines to use.