ZyGrib and OpenCPN on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS – Free weather information and navigation tools

OK, sailing season is getting closer and I have stop dreaming of equipping my (future) bluewater cruiser, which I plan to furnish (in my dreams, since subject of the available budget) with an integrated solution from a serious company like Raymarine, who uses Linux in their instruments. Also, instead of offering the boring iPad option they have an Android version of their navigation software. Promising !  Meanwhile, as a no-money-solution, and why not as a future practical solution, I have slowly built up and got myself familiarized with a no cost travel planning and PC based navigation. In my previous articles about OpenCPN on MeeGo/Ubuntu and how to use a Bluetooth GPS device with it I have shared some of my acquired insight. Now, I got yesterday with my favourite sailing magazine a ‘free software‘ to download and browse the weather forecast information. Only that after registering myself after having consulted my attorney, etc. there was, of course only a Windows version of this software which I will never look again.

But, hey ! There must be a similar software available for Ubuntu ? Of course, it is called ZyGrib. Snatch to install. Let’s try it. Hmm, cannot download GRIB files, says that the program version is old ? No worries, the development of ZyGrib continues even if not endorsed by Ubuntu Co. and by quick search I found a solution.

 

Nokia GPS LD-3W Bluetooth for OpenCPN on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Still out of office for the New Year I can think about Open Seas … As you all know (?) I am a long time fan of OpenCPN navigation tool and I have promoted its virtues on an Linux system  in an article. Now, I have this new Clevo 270EM laptop with (C)Ubuntu 12.04.1 pre-installed and I would like to use my excellent Nokia LD-3W GPS Bluetooth Appliance with it (just for learning, for the future box which I would actually build for the maritime usage one day). Unfortunately not manufactured anymore, the Nokia LD-3W is some excellent small piece of hardware ! I use it everywhere, especially in my car. But it excels also in the city, being always available and accurate even when walking on narrow streets, beating easily any phone with built-in GPS device. The battery life is excellent. So why not maritime use, since it seems to resist well the humid conditions as proven by my multiple trekking trips.

 

(C)Ubuntu 12.04.1 rsyslogd does not … log

One more, for the sake of the annoyances.org in 2012 ! :-)

I got this strange (French) Cubuntu distro of Ubuntu with Cinnamon, Unity, Gnome. It came pre-installed with the Taiwanese Clevo laptop I purchased recently so I kept it because I’ve done enough Linux installations to enjoy the challenge anymore. But with Linux,  something strange happens always, no matter how glittering the paper which was used to wrap it up.

At some point, the kernel was updated and some other updates came up. Good, now I can see all eight core temperatures of my mighty i7 !

canne@clevo:~$ sudo su -
root@clevo:/var/log# uname -a
Linux clevo.homenet.org 3.5.0-18-generic #29-Ubuntu SMP Thu Oct 25 07:26:14 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Earlier I got a problem with SD card reader but it is known bug, which I fixed with the help of Realtek Card Reader RTL8411 Device 5289 (PCI 03:00.0) Driver and udisks Rule bug.Ok, with the new kernel I had to repeat the operation, not  a big deal. I wanted to see what happens when inserting a SD card and for that I said

tail -f /var/log/syslog

Wait, there is nothing but old messages in there and no new lines appears ?

I did some debugging:

initctrl stop rsyslogrsyslogd -c5 -f /etc/rsyslog.conf -N1

Says that “no such device as /dev/xconsole“. OK, edited /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf and changed xconsole to console. No errors reported after that.

Still nothing in the log file but hey, it works in debug mode !

rsyslogd -c5 -d

Went to bed because who cares about system log, anyway. Well, my brains, to start with because they found the obvious reason while sleeping: the owner of the log files must be somebody else than root.root they told me first thing in the morning ! I tested it the following way to find out who is the rsyslogd anyway:

initrd stop rsyslog
  ( or pkill -9 rsyslogd if still running in debug mode )
logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf initrd start rsyslog

Bingo!

-rw-r----- 1 syslog            adm          16914 Dec 30 15:54 syslog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root              root       8709162 Dec 30 15:17 syslog.1

That’s it. From the above configuration file I deduced that I better change the owner (with chown syslog.adm <filename>) of

root@clevo:/var/log# ls -l | grep "1 syslog"
-rw-r--r-- 1 syslog            adm              0 Dec  6 11:39 auth.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 syslog            adm          10304 Dec 30 15:54 kern.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog            adm          16914 Dec 30 15:54 syslog
-rw-r----- 1 syslog            adm              0 Dec 12 11:43 ufw.log

The moral of the story ? The log file rotation would have struck the first day of 2013  and I would not have even spotted that there is a problem ! Oh, why I am so curious about the inner life of these things ? Ignorance is a bliss !

BTW, Happy New Year 2013 – whatever is the box you are struggling with !

 

How to make MfE in Nokia N9 to stick with Hotmail/Outlook.com

I got this problem that somehow I was able to create the initial MfE (Mail for Exchange) account with my Outlook.com e-mail/Contact/Calendar account using the Exchange ActiveSync services the MS is providing. How to use these services is explained in many places, for example here (it is for Android but pictures are nice..).

 

Manage Your Data in Cloud = Manage the Risk

This subject has been in my mind for long time: how I can make the best use of the Cloud to store and secure my data while I inherently understand that the Cloud itself is not secure? I have been floating around with Google Drive, Amazon, M$Live, Dropbox, you name it. But I have not got a clear strategy until now. But then I read this article about the pathetic failure in cloud of  Wired Magazine “professional” who (almost) “lost his digital life”. Well, he trusted the almighty Apple and that did not pay off (at the end he was thanking thanking thanking the same divine entity who got him in the trouble in the first place …). Anyway, what I have done myself to avoid such a disaster?

 

KeePassX on Nokia N9 – some effort required

Since I announced my bad idea to purchase a Vietnamese-branded N9 (in France, that’s the only reason it was a bad idea), I guess I’ve bricked my phone at least twice to the point that even with flasher I wasn’t sure about the resurrection. Now I have decided to work only in user-space which allows me at least to avoid the painful work of  re-entering and re-entring all the account passwords all over again after each unsuccessful hack attempt.

Ok, ok, you want know about KeePassX on N9, right?  And where is that god-damn download button?

 

Connect to N9 MeeGo from Linux Mint with SSH and VNC

I was unable to resist and I’ve got the awesome N9 as the title indicates … While waiting the purchase decision trigger, Harmattan v1.3 update let’s see how I can connect to this fantastic MeeGo system from my Linux Mint 12 LXDE HTPC box.

 

Building a HTPC + Filtering Wireless Gateway using ZOTAC ZBOX Nano A10 and Linux Mint 12

I have been testing alternatives for my low-budget HTPC (Home Theater PC) using my Samsung N150 laptop with JoliOS v1.2 with my TV, combined with Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard N5902 it proved to be very comfortable. For the final configuration, I decided to go for ZOTAC ZBOX Nano AD10 Plus.

The hardware is pretty impressive, AMD E-350 CPU/GPU provides a lot of beef, benchmarks look good. JoliOS v1.2 was quickly dropped because it is getting rapidly too old, being based on Ubuntu 10.10 and it is lacking hardware support for some chips in the new hardware (I tried it, of course). Linux Mint 12 with LXDE desktop was my next try. I do not regret, what a great Linux distribution that is !

Because I am a professional using Linux every day to resolve quite complex problems, I cannot avoid setting  myself some ambitious goals by making some functional requirements (this project-talk is totally useless and over-killing, probably – if you just want to watch the bl%$$#@ TV – but hopefully somebody over there will profit of the outcome).

I decided to divide my modest household in two areas, the Living Room Zone and the .. Other Zone. The humble Nano-Box needs to stream my multimedia in the living room while somebody else is playing an Internet game based game in the other zone. Therefore the Nano-Box needs to be an WiFi access point and Content/List based filtering gateway ! Wow, isn’t that ambitious for a small box like this !? Not a problem for Linux.

The below picture (click to see the description, then click again to see the full size picture) illustrates the full system configuration.

ZOTAC ZBOX Nano A10 - Home Network -Two Security Zones

Read 2 more pages about Multimedia + 7 pages about Wireless Access Point with Web Content Filtering

 

ZOTAC ZBOX Nano A10 – Installation with Linux Mint 12 LXDE

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ZOTAC ZBOX Nano A10 – Installed next to a black Wii - Wireless multimedia keyboard Lenovo N5902

I downloaded 32-bit Intel Linux Mint 12 with LXDE desktop and prepared a bootable USB stick with the tools and instructions provided by the Linux Mint pages and the community.

 

ZOTAC ZBOX Nano A10 – HDMI TV – Image, Sound = Multimedia

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By default Linux Mint behaves well and it installs only Open Source software. One of such items is the fglrx graphics device driver which is need on Nano-Box for it ATI/AMD Catalyst portable device graphics chip-set. It works fine by all means, but does not support reportedly 3D. Additionally, I could not get the sound work over the HDMI device when using the default fglrx device driver.