Joe's Random Ramblings

I called Barnes & Noble digital support today to get the source for the GPL-ed parts of the B&N nook eBook reader.
They used to send out CDs from what I have read, but it turns out that they recently put the sources up on their website, at http://nook.com/legal (redirects to http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/legal/).
The B&N support people had a hard time finding this out, but they called me back and provided me with the link.

Earlier this year, Yahoo changed the login protocol for the Yahoo Instant Messaging service.
This resulted in Kopete, the instant messenger tool for KDE, to no longer being able to log into the Yahoo IM service. The background is explained in detail here.
There was a quick fix for KDE 4.x available, but people like me who are using KDE 3.5 and don't think KDE 4 is ready for primetime yet (or who just don't want to change an otherwise perfectly running system), were left out, essentially forcing us to use another IM client, like Pidgin.
Eventually, though, somebody created a patch for KDE 3.5 for Ubuntu, which solves the login issue.
I am using Slackware, not Ubuntu, though, so I used the Slackware build system to create a kdenetwork package for Slackware 12.2 that contains the fixed Kopete.
I used the source code from the Slackware 12.2 DVD, just adding two files in the source/kde/kdenetwork directory: a shell script which applies the patch during the build process, and the patch itself.
The final Slackware 12.2 kdenetwork package is here (12MB.) It can be installed in two steps:

1. Remove the old kdenetwork package: removepkg kdenetwork-3.5.10-i486-2.tgz
2. Install the new kdenetwork package: installpkg kdenetwork-3.5.10-i486-2-yahoo-login.tgz


Update: The ICQ protocol also is broken in the latest kopete for KDE 3.5.
Using the patch from here, I have now created a new Slackware 12.2 kdenetwork package that re-enables both the Yahoo and the ICQ protocols. It is just another patch that gets applied to the normal source package. The resulting binary package, with both patches applied, is here. Similar to the instructions above, it can be installed this way:

1. Remove the old kdenetwork package: removepkg kdenetwork-3.5.10-i486-2.tgz
2. Install the new kdenetwork package: installpkg kdenetwork-3.5.10-i486-2-yahoo-icq-login.tgz


Update 2: Since sometime in October or November 2010, ICQ connections started to fail. As it turns out, this has nothing to do with the protocol. AOL recently sold ICQ, and as a result, the server URL has changed. In the Kopete configuration for ICQ, in the account preferences, the default server needs to be overridden and changed to login.icq.com. The port number stays the same.

In my ongoing quest to get IPv6 tunneling working with my AT&T DSL connection, I stumbled across more stupidity...

In an effort to resolve the 15-second DHCP renewal time I was seeing on a D-Link DSL modem that I tried (mentioned here,) I first contacted D-Link tech support about the issue. Unfortunately, the technician couldn't help me, so I ended up returning the DSL modem.
I now got a Motorola 2210-02 DSL modem (originally developed by Netopia, which apparently got bought by Motorola.)
This modem has the AT&T firmware installed. This firmware allows modifying the DHCP lease time, just like my old Speedstream did.
However, and that's a BIG issue, the 2210 does not respond to pings, i.e., ICMP packets. This prevents me from updating the IPv6 tunnel at HE's tunnelbroker service. They try to ping the IPv4 address entered...
I can go through the universal Ipv6 tunnel at 192.88.99.1, though, so this modem at least doesn't block IPv6.

I was on the phone with AT&T level 2 tech support for quite some time, but this didn't go anywhere, except for trying bridge mode, where the PPPoE handling is done on the computer. For a variety of reasons, a major one being that this would prevent me from just plugging in another computer, e.g., for testing, I do not particularly like bridge mode.
The last time I set up PPPoE on my Linux box was about 10 years ago, when I still had connectivity through ISDN... I had assumed that we are past that unfriendly setup by now

And for completeness, I also tried a Motorola 2210-02 with a non-AT&T firmware. While that didn't have the ping issue and let ICMP through fine, it was only marginally better than the D-Link in that it had a DHCP lease renewal time of 2 minutes, non-changeable of course
Why can't the modem manufacturers not just provide a firmware that isn't crippled???

Until recently, I held Adaptec SCSI controllers in high regard.
But, it turns out the "RAID" support on their 39320 cards is just fake RAID, in other words, software RAID.
And they don't even provide the kernel driver module for Linux (called a320raid), except in binary form for some rather specific Linux distributions with specific kernels.
I found this out the hard way, trying to set up a RAID system with an Adaptec 39320A-R card

I have a real hardware RAID card in another Linux system, using an LSI Logic Megaraid card.
If I wanted software RAID, I could have used the raidtools on Linux without an expensive Adaptec card.

So, bottom line: Adaptec will not get any more of my money. Ever.

Some time ago, I wrote about the problems I had getting IPv6 to work through my AT&T DSL connection.
It turns out that the problem is the crappy DSL modem that AT&T gives to their customers. It is a Siemens Speedstream 4100. Siemens got out of the DSL modem business, and there are no firmware updates for this DSL modem available. On top of that, SBC apparently provided their own configuration, which may have crippled the modem even more.
So, today I finally went out and bought another DSL modem, a D-Link DSL-2320B. With that, I can use IPv6 through a tunnel at HE's tunnelbroker service just fine.
I am actually thinking of returning this DSL modem, though, since it has some other ridiculous setting that is unfortunately not configurable: it renews the IP address every 15 seconds or so... filling up my log files for no good reason. I'll never understand why they can't just provide a configuration option for something simple as that. Even the Siemens DSL modem has that...