I don’t know why this hasn’t already been posted all over the interwebs, so I thought I’d post it here. It’s amazing how some of the simplest answers never seem to make it into prominence in the Google search rankings.

Anyway, after cloning a VM today in Xen, I tried to start the DomU, and got this error:

Error: (12, 'Cannot allocate memory')

I assumed it had something to do with my Dom0 memory cache consuming nearly every last bit of free memory on my system, so I ran this to clear the cache:

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

I confirmed that that “free” reported that the cached memory dropped near zero. Great! Except it didn’t help. I then ran “xm info” to check the memory usage in Xen

total_memory : 16378
free_memory : 2

Odd. I checked the Dom0 status to see what’s up, and sure enough, my memory allocation on Dom0 is way high.

xm list Domain-0
Name ID Mem VCPUs State Time(s)
Domain-0 0 10482 4 r—– 3273110.4

But I still didn’t know how to shrink it. I knew it had something to do with memory ballooning. I also knew you could set the memory allocation of a DomU with “xm mem-set”, but I didn’t know anything about how to do it with the Dom0. A quick IRC message to my Xen guru, Jima, and I get this simple command (obvious really) in response:

xm mem-set Domain-0 512

This balloons the Dom0 host system (as well as any domain, really) memory usage down to 512MB. In my case, my Dom0 claimed to be using about 2 Gig already, so I ballooned down to 4G instead. Not sure if that was just due to some bad math or assumptions on my part, as I never run anything of significance in Dom0. After you run this, you should be able to start your DomU just fine.

My wife is pretty fun.

First, a little background…

The classic procedure for installing drivers to a printer shared via CUPS with a raw Samba frontend, usually is roughly something like this:

1. Create printer in CUPS
2. Open shared printer properties in Windows
3. Install drivers via Advanced tab

For me, this worked great, most of the time, assuming that the driver was either PS or PCL5(e). However, PCL6 drivers rarely loaded properly. They crashed upon upload, and the driver rarely ever worked, if point ‘n print even installed the driver. As I understand it, the root of the problem is that the drivers need a valid “form” database specific to the driver to be stored on the server in order to load, but valid form data can only be created by executing the driver. On Windows servers, this isn’t a problem, but Samba servers cannot execute the windows driver code in order to generate this form. PCL6 drivers are particularly finicky about this, and often times will refuse properly copy to the server.

The solution I’ve come up with is to load the driver entirely on a Windows PC first, and tell Samba to copy the drivers and related forms, ACLs, etc over. Some of the values I use here for the printer names, etc, are very generic and only specified to match the naming standards in my environment. Feel free to change your printer setup to suit your needs.

The Procedure
On a Windows PC:

1. Install the printer as you would normally for TCP/IP printing on a windows PC.
2. Rename the printer to the share name you will be using (i.e., CopierCP5000)
3. Open the printer properties
4. Share the printer using the same name (CopierCP5000)
5. Set the printer description to the printer name (i.e., Copier CP 5000)
6. Set the printer location to the office name and city (ACME Abu Dhabi)
7. Usually under the Accessories/Options tab, update/get information from the printer
        This ensures that we obtain all the correct hardware configuration information for the device (duplexer, trays, hole punch, stapler, etc)
8. Open the Advanced tab and click the “Printing Defaults” button
9. Click on each tab and allow the tab to load
        This ensures that the form values for each tab are created.
10. Still inside the Printing Defaults, change the page orientation to Landscape, hit apply, change the page orientation to Portrait, and hit apply. Click OK.
11. Close the printer properties by clicking OK

Next, on the server:

### Set up the printer in CUPS, i.e.:
lpadmin -p CopierCP5000 -L "ACME Abu Dhabi" -D "Copier CP 5000" -v lpd://192.168.xx.xx -m raw -E
smbcontrol smbd reload-config
 
### Copy the drivers, forms, ACLs, etc from the Windows PC
net rpc printer MIGRATE ALL CopierCP5000 -S mypcname -Uusername


Finally, test the driver in Windows:

1. Open the local Printers control panel (shortcut command below for Win7 users)
        rundll32 shell32.dll,SHHelpShortcuts_RunDLL PrintersFolder
2. Delete your shared printer
3. Right-click in the control panel window and select “Server Properties”
4. Open the Drivers tab
5. Select your driver and click “Remove”.
6. Proceed with removal and close the server properties window.
7. Open \\servername\
8. Double-click your printer
9. Print a test page
        If this fails, try restarting the local PC’s Print Spooler service

So far I’ve only tested this on a few of our known-problematic printers that have PCL6 drivers available, and it’s worked perfectly in each case. However it you notice this doesn’t work for you, post a comment and I’ll see what I can do to help.

I just got this email in my inbox this morning (BCC’d to me):

From: (My Boss)
To: (Our Company Sprint Rep)
Subject: Palm Pre
What are the chances of getting our hands on a couple of these when they are released?
(Other Palm User) from (Our Company) and (Muchtall) from my office are waiting patiently for these….
Thanks,
(My Boss)

Pretty awesome. Hopefully our Sprint rep can swipe us a couple before the masses clean the stores out.

Update 6/2: Just got an IM from my boss:

(11:17:23 AM) Boss: hey you available for lunch on Thur?
(11:17:32 AM) Muchtall: Sure
(11:17:43 AM) Boss: Im gonna get our Sprint reps to take us out

Sweet!

Update 6/8: So I was greeted by this email earlier this morning:

To: Boss (fwd'ed to Me)
From: Purchasing Dept
Subject: (Muchtall's) Phone
Just received call from Sprint, phone on backorder. Not sure when resupply fulfilled, will keep you in touch.

Which sucks. However, a few hours later, I get this email:

From: Corporate Sprint Rep
To: Purchasing Dept (fwd'ed to Me)
Subject: Pre
Inventory is expected tomorrow so you should have on Wednesday.

Awesome! I can’t wait!

My requirements for an RSS feed reader were simple:

I had been using FeedDemon for a while, but it missed the second half of my toaster requirement. That and for whatever reason it seems to take days to get updates to feeds, even when I’d tell it to update sooner.

I recently switched to FeedReader, and I have to say, if you’re looking for a Windows-based RSS reader, you should make this the first client you try. It will probably be the last one you’ll need.

If you aren’t using an RSS reader, I highly recommend it. They make life so much easier when you are trying to keep up to date with your favorite news sites, and most sites offer an RSS feed nowadays. It’s nice to be able to just open FeedReader and see a list of what sites have updated articles, and even limit the stories to the topics you want. In my case, it’s made keeping up with all the latest Palm Pre news a snap. Instead of periodically refreshing 10-15 different sites in Firefox, I just listen for that chirp.

After having a SourceForge account for about 10 years, I’m canceling it for one reason and one reason alone: Spam. SourceForge has this “feature” where anyone can email you at yourusername@users.sourceforge.net, and they will happily forward it on to the email address you have on file with SF. That’s great, except, I don’t want spam bots emailing me. It would be great if you could either opt out of this behavior, or even specify a human-readable anti-spam address as the forwarding address, but SF doesn’t offer either of these options. It’s either you have an account and all the crap that comes with it, or you have nothing. So I choose nothing.

Thanks for nothing SourceForge.

So I guess if I actually want to use the SF site for forum activity, I’ll have to re-create my account each time.

Update: Ok I lied, sort of. Turns out that if you delete your SF account, you can’t come back and re-create it. This sucks because I like my persona, and should I come back, I’d like to re-use it. So now I’m willing to give feedback a chance. Vote for Solution 3!: SourceForge Spam Solution

Update 10/15/2009: You complained, and SF listened. I got a Tweet last week from @sourceforge informing me that they have added an option to allow you control over your alias behavior. You can find this setting at https://sourceforge.net/account/. Go there. Now! That is all.

 
I’m dying for this thing to come out. I’m even more hopeful that I’ll get my hands on it come release day.
 
 
 

 
 
Countdown to Pre-Day

Say you have an internet radio stream that you like to listen to. You like to actually get up from your computer once in a while and go outside, so you want to play it on your iPhone/Blackberry/G1/Treo/Centro/Pre/Whatever as you’re out and about. But wait! Due to poor decision making by your beloved stream provider, your favorite stream is only in Microsoft’s poorly-supported ASF streaming format. There’s no MP3 or OGG options! Many if not all of the phones I just mentioned may/will not play these streams, at least not natively. MP3 on the other hand, is ubiquitous (though, given, not truly as free as OGG). One option you may have, if you run your own Linux server, is to download the ASF stream, re-encode it to MP3, and re-stream it via your own Icecast server. Icecast is easy enough to set up, however information on setting up the VLC portion of this workaround online seems a little slim online, so I thought I’d make a post simplifying the setup.

First off, check to make sure your VLC has “Shout” Shoutcast/Icecast output support:

vlc --list | grep access_output_shout

You should see the following in the output:

access_output_shout IceCAST output

If not, you may need to either re-install with a version of VLC that supports shout output, or recompile it with shout support.

Then run the following command, altering the items in bold for your purposes (all on one line):

cvlc "http://classicalstream2.publicradio.org/classical” ‘:sout=#transcode{acodec=mp3,ab=192,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=shout,mux=raw,dst=source:YOURPASSWORD@your.icecast.server.com:8000/mpr.mp3}}’ –sout-shout-mp3 –sout-shout-name=”MPR MP3 Restream” –sout-shout-description=”Restreaming of MPR” –sout-shout-url=”http://minnesota.publicradio.org” –sout-shout-genre=”Liberal Tripe” –loop

Assuming you have already properly set up your Icecast server, you should now have a mountpoint running the stream you have just created.

Note that VLC seems to have problems parsing some ASX playlist files. You may need to download the ASX file with wget to investigate what the actual stream URL is. For example, the stream above came from “http://minnesota.publicradio.org/tools/play/streams/classical.asx”, which had these contents:

<ASX version="3.0">
   <ABSTRACT>The Windows Media Stream for MPR's Classical Music Service</ABSTRACT>
   <TITLE>MPR Classical Windows Stream</TITLE>
   <AUTHOR>Minnesota Public Radio</AUTHOR>
   <COPYRIGHT>2009 Minnesota Public Radio</COPYRIGHT>
   <MOREINFO HREF = "http://minnesota.publicradio.org" />
   <ENTRY>
      <TITLE>MPR Classical Windows Stream Underwriter</TITLE>
      <COPYRIGHT>2009 Minnesota Public Radio</COPYRIGHT>
      <REF HREF="http://ondemand2.publicradio.org/ondemand/joinnow.wma"/>
      <BANNER HREF="http://www.publicradio.org/applications/underwriters/images/prepend/content/joinnow.gif">
          <MOREINFO HREF = "https://contribute.publicradio.org/"></MOREINFO>
      </BANNER>
   </ENTRY>
   <ENTRY>
      <TITLE>MPR Classical Windows Stream</TITLE>
      <COPYRIGHT>2009 Minnesota Public Radio</COPYRIGHT>
      <REF HREF="http://classicalstream2.publicradio.org/classical"/>
      <BANNER HREF="http://www.publicradio.org/applications/underwriters/images/prepend/content/joinnow.gif">
          <MOREINFO HREF = "https://contribute.publicradio.org/"></MOREINFO>
      </BANNER>
   </ENTRY>
</ASX>

As you can see, the first item in the playlist is NPR’s obligatory call (**cough** commercial **cough**) for donations (http://ondemand2.publicradio.org/ondemand/joinnow.wma). The second is your actual stream URL (http://classicalstream2.publicradio.org/classical). You’ll want to use the stream URL in your VLC command.

Also, I have seen cases where VLC pukes on some ASF streams. Though I haven’t confirmed this, it appears to be a bug with downsampling/resampling (http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2009-February/056823.html). In these cases, you may need to look that the 1.0.0 prerelease versions, which may not be available on your distro release (Fedora, for example, doesn’t have it until 11). Good luck!

UPDATE 10/27/09: It would appear that the precompiled RPMs offered on the VLC site for 1.0 or higher do not contain support for shout output. Not a big deal. Just download the source RPM (e.g., from http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/development/source/SRPMS/) install the sources (rpm -Uvh vlc-1.0.3-0.1_rc.fc12.src.rpm), and edit the vlc.spec file (usually found in ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/). Look for a line that says “–enable-realrtsp \” and add a line below it that says “–enable-shout \”. Save and close the file, then run “rpmbuild -ba vlc.spec”. After it recompiles, install the updated RPMs (cd ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/ ; yum –nogpgcheck reinstall vlc-core-1.0.3-0.1_rc.fc11.x86_64.rpm vlc-1.0.3-0.1_rc.fc11.x86_64.rpm). Make sure to alter the above paths to reflect your architecture, Fedora release, and vlc version.

Could this be a hint at the release date for the Palm Pre?

http://blog.palm.com/palm/2009/04/sprints-new-pre-portal-news-videos-tweetsand-doughnuts.html

I’m taking a shot at yes. Here’s why it makes sense to me:

- Why else would you put up a countdown to zero (Doughnut, btw) to such an obscure holiday?
- As has been restated by Palm and Sprint repeatedly, the date falls in the first half of the year (albeit late).
- It’s a few weeks after the start of the just-announced Sprint vacation freeze
- It’s the weekend before WWDC, potentially stealing the iPhone 3.0 / next-gen iPhone thunder.

Now, my only skepticism of the date is how close it lands to WWDC. Either the Pre will be a massive hit, and the buzz will be loud enough going into the following week to drown out the potential iPhone announcement, OR the Pre buzz quickly loses steam following launch, drowned out by the well-established Apple fanboy crowd. The potential for loss on this toss of the dice is pretty great.

That’s why I’m making one additional prediction: Palm drops another bomb on release day. Probably some yet-unseen killer app that the iPhone doesn’t have. I’m guessing something that exploits the multitasking capabilities, and furthermore, can’t be done via push. Palm needs something more just after the release to keep the unique multitasking abilities of the Pre in the front of people’s minds right through the iPhone announcement.

If I’m right, you can say you heard it here first.

Update 5/20/2009: So close.

“Change”

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/07/1330229

Not that I have a problem with this policy. I just think it’s funny how the mass of Obama supporters assumed that this was what “Change” meant. In reality, the only Change in store is more government control over you.