Update on old DisplayLink drivers

An update on my earlier post of 2012.

Driver 1.1.62 (15 May 2016) is now available at http://www.displaylink.com/downloads/ubuntu and does not require any fixups for wrong USB vendor ID numbers, or patches for kernels > 4.5.0

For my HP displaylink hub I have:

/etc/udev/rules.d/50-displaylink.rules:

# DisplayLink devices always have the active configuration on configuration #1
ATTR{idVendor}=="17e9", ATTR{idProduct}=="01d4", RUN+="/usr/bin/dlconfig"

and /usr/bin/dlconfig:

#! /bin/bash

echo 1 > "/sys/$DEVPATH/bConfigurationValue"

However, I must insert the USB device AFTER logging into to X or I get two fb devices added, one owned by udl and one by evdi. I suspect this is a race condition problem.

In any case, none of it works for me -- I'm not able to view anything at all on the frame buffer. I guess my USB device is too old.

However, if I modprobe udlfb and ignore the evdi drivers, and udl then I at least get a working framebuffer that can display images with fbi. -- but the colour depth is stuck at 16.

I'm able to use it as a primary device for an X11 session with this /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
    FontPath     "built-ins"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse0"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option        "Protocol" "auto"
    Option        "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option        "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Monitor0"
    VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
    ModelName    "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Card1"
    Driver    "fbdev"
    BusID    "USB"
    Option    "fbdev"    "/dev/fb1"
    Option    "ReportDamage"    "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device     "Card1"
    Monitor    "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    16
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     1
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     4
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     8
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     15
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     16
    EndSubSection
EndSection

shell-shocked: Updaing bash on Linux Mint Olivia

shell-shocked: Updaing bash on Linux Mint Olivia

I've go some old laptops running Linux Mint, Olivia release, based on Ubuntu Raring Ringtail which is not a long term support, and so no ready fix is available.

The bug is shown with this test

rm -f echo ; env X='() { (a)=>\' bash -c "echo date"; cat echo
bash: X: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `='
bash: X: line 1: `'
bash: error importing function definition for `X'
Fri Sep 26 09:37:44 BST 2014

which wrongly creates a file called echo holding the output of the date command.

Here is what is required to fix the bash shell-shocked bug.

1. Update the no-longer supported repositories to the new location:

(You should already have done this).

You first need to make sure you have src-deb repositories enabled:

cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ 
test -r official-source-repositories.list ||
cp official-package-repositories.list official-source-repositories.list &&
sed -i -e 's/raring/trusty/g;s/^deb /^deb-src/' official-source-repositories.list

And then update the server to old-releases:

sed -i -e 's/archive.ubuntu.com\|security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' official-package-repositories.list
apt-get update

2. Install all updates for your system anyway

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

3. Build bash from the trusty sources

apt-get build-essential bash
apt-get -b source bash

4. Install bash

dpkg -i bash*deb

5. Test the fix

# rm -f echo ; env X='() { (a)=>\' bash -c "echo date"; cat echo
bash: X: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `='
bash: X: line 1: `'
bash: error importing function definition for `X'
date
cat: echo: No such file or directory

Google TV & Movies DRM on Mint/Ubuntu

Google Play Movies & TV works best under Chrome on Linux, but unless HTML5 is working for you, Flash is needed for playback and DRM Flash playback requires the long since deprecated HAL.

Fortunately an updated HAL is maintained for this purposes. The hal ppa is at:
https://launchpad.net/~mjblenner/+archive/ubuntu/ppa-hal

Most of these details are thanks to Justin Watt at askubuntu.com/questions/166760/how-do-i-play-movies-on-google-play who says:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mjblenner/ppa-ha

sudo apt-get update 

sudo apt-get install hal
cd ~/.adobe/Flash_Player
rm -rf NativeCache AssetCache APSPrivateData2

NFS/LDAP only at home

NOTE: This doesn't work reliable for only some users. It seems like nsswitch.conf needs faking earlier than that. A better answer might be to iptables-rst the ldap requests or something so that ldap fails quickly.

I have this pre-init script in /etc/init/autofs.conf

start on runlevel [2345] and net-device-up IFACE=wlan0
...
pre-start script
    modprobe -q autofs4 || true
    if iwconfig | grep 00:18:84:26:7E:1B 
    then sed -e 's/ #ldap/ ldap/' /etc/nsswitch.conf > /var/tmp/nsswitch.conf && mount /var/tmp/nsswitch.conf /etc/nsswitch.conf -o bind
    else ! true
    fi
end script

and these lines in my /etc/nsswitch.conf

passwd:         compat #ldap
group:          compat #ldap
shadow:         compat #ldap

When I'm on my home wireless network (detected by the access-point mac address, autofs will run to mount home directories, and ldap will be enabled and used to validate user accounts.

Otherwise it is a standalone laptop and will revert to built in accounts and home directories.

Fix Charging on Acer ZG5

My Acer One ZG5 was not charging for the last year or so. I took it for repair to my local friendly and trusted Wizard Electronics but the chap there was too wise. Armed with the knowledge that it failed to charge two different batteries but yet would boot up under charger power he could conclude quite well that it was not the charger, the connector or the batteries and some troubleshooting on the system board was required. I already knew this of course which was why I took it to him; but he suggested it would be cheaper to replace the main board and a quick look at ebay prices for smashed screen netbooks showed that he was right.

However, to my surprise, while googling to find what the motherboard fault might be I found a clue that it might be (and was!) fixed with a BIOS update!  http://www.acer.com/worldwide/support/download.htm and one version 3110 release later and I was charging both batteries again!

Acer Aspire SD slots on bootup

My jmicron SD card slots not being recognized by Linux Mint unless a card was in the slot when booted. And there were two slots.

early hacks

This post http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=10842957&postcount=62 shows a way that works for me to re-scan and detect slots that now have a card in (although the card may need to be removed and re-inserted).

sudo echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan


Tricks here http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=10842957&postcount=62 that use setpci don't work for me, failing to select the device if it isn't already detected, or the pciehp driver which doesn't seem to be present on my installation.

Success

I got auto-detection to work by following these tips https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/258446/comments/61 by adding the following files to /etc/modules

pciehp
acpiphp
jmb38x_ms
sdhci-pci
flash_bd
xd_card
jmb38x_xd


rebooting, and running: update-initramfs -u so that those modules would be built in to the ramdisk; and then rebooting again.

Nothing else was required; no use of pciehp, no edit of /etc/default/grub.conf and no creation of files in /etc/modprobe.d/

Media Buttons on Mint 14 Nadia

Sadly keyboard multi-media control buttons still have no effect on Mint 14 when logged in using the Gnome2 fork Mate desktop.

Gladly, Matteo Italia has written a short python script to convert the DBUS events into MPRIS2 events.

http://pastebin.com/N0Jv2W5Y

Start the script on login and media keys work! Thanks Matteo

#!/usr/bin/env python

'''
Created on 30.05.2012

@author: Matteo Italia <mi_1@mitalia.net>
'''

import dbus
import dbus.mainloop.glib
import gobject

app_name = 'mmkeys-mate2mpris2'
Version=0.1

MediaKeysObjName = 'org.mate.SettingsDaemon'
MediaKeysObjectPath = '/org/mate/SettingsDaemon/MediaKeys'
MediaKeysInterface = 'org.mate.SettingsDaemon.MediaKeys'

MPRIS2Prefix = 'org.mpris.MediaPlayer2'

ActionMappings = {
        'Play': 'PlayPause',
        'Pause': 'Pause',
        'Stop': 'Stop',
        'Next': 'Next',
        'Previous': 'Previous'}


def onMediaKeyPress(app_name, action):
    sb = dbus.SessionBus()
    # Get the compatible players
    players = [n for n in sb.list_names() if n.startswith(MPRIS2Prefix + ".") ]

    # Send them the command
    for n in players:
        # TODO: it doesn't make sense to perform the action on *all* the players!
        # find a sensible criterion to choose the "best one"
        sb.get_object(n, '/org/mpris/MediaPlayer2').__getattr__(ActionMappings[action])()

if __name__ == '__main__':

    # DBUS boilerplate
    dbus.mainloop.glib.DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default=True)
    sb = dbus.SessionBus()

    # Get the media keys notificator object
    mediaKeysObj = sb.get_object(MediaKeysObjName, MediaKeysObjectPath)

    # Register to receive media keys notifications
    mediaKeysObj.GrabMediaPlayerKeys(app_name, 0, dbus_interface=MediaKeysInterface)
    mediaKeysObj.connect_to_signal('MediaPlayerKeyPressed', onMediaKeyPress)

    # Start the main loop
    mainLoop = gobject.MainLoop()
    mainLoop.run()



HP Displayport Adaptor on Mint or Ubuntu

[Note: updated information here]

I post a correction on these notes: http://libdlo.freedesktop.org/wiki/DeviceQuirks which over-specify /sys (as well as hard-wiring it) as well as bConfigurationValue.

/usr/bin/dlconfig:
#! /bin/bash

if [ -e "$1"/device/bConfigurationValue ]; then
  echo 1 > "$1"/device/bConfigurationValue
fi;

if [ -e "$1"/bConfigurationValue ]; then
  echo 1 > "$1"/bConfigurationValue
fi;

/etc/udev/rules.d/60-displaylink.rules

# DisplayLink devices always have the active configuration on configuration #1
SYSFS{idVendor}=="17e9", SYSFS{bConfigurationValue}=="2", RUN+="/usr/bin/dlconfig %S%p"




These cause the VGA adaptor to be intialized properly on each insert.

Goodbye Ubuntu - probably

Ubuntu has been great. I've had years of top-notch software, for free, and with access to the source code which I have had to hack about from time to time.

But it may be time to say goodbye. Ubuntu's direction is entirely their concern but it is getting in my way.

So if I can't like it, and I don't want to lump it, I may have to leave it.

The Ubuntu/gnome strategy seems to be to replace a nearly-done application with a much less done application which will catch up real soon.

For instance:

• gthumb image viewer gets replaced with eog (eye-of-gnome) which can't print more than one photo to a page
• rhythmbox gets replaced with banshee
• beagle gets replaced with tracker
• gnome 3 shell gets replaced with unity
• tomboy gets replaced with gnote

and so on.

And then there are problems with using launchpad their issue-tracker. The typical ubuntu bug-report scenario is like like this:

1. file a bug
2. wait 1-2 years
3. bug gets marked as invalid
   This doesn't mean it isn't a valid bug, it means the bug team can't/won't work with it - perhaps because the person who reported the bug got a new computer after a couple of years, and so wouldn't be able to confirm if a fix was ever released.
4. If you are lucky, the bug was fixed upstream and you may get the fix in a future Ubuntu release, along with some different long-term bugs.

Bug reports languish dreadfully. For instance, the bug lifecycle for printers is twice as long as I keep a printer for. I can be on my third printer before a fix comes out.

Ubuntu use of launchpad seems designed to disuade people from using launchpad. Rather than the point of "report all bugs" it is the point of "being insulted for reporting any bug".

In an effort to fix this (it seems) bug reports are now automatically closed if no-one from the Ubuntu team has responds in an arbitrary the time-frame.

What makes it worse is that Shuttleworth abandoned his bug-bounty idea; so it is impossible for individual users financially support Canonical or Ubuntu, or get support or contribute to support on issues that matter.

Individual users (non-enterprise customers) are reduced to the level of beggars who can contribute if they don't mind being insulted by launchpad. But any value in the contributions will likely leak away through inaction.

I like ubuntu but they don't like me, and there is no way to pay them any money as I'm not corporate enough to be worth bothering with.

I think that Mint is where it is at; while ubuntu is "debian done nicely" - Mint seems to be: "ubuntu with the bugs actually fixed"

so long, and thanks for all the fish.

It's been really great, and if it's been mostly one-way, it's not for want of trying.