Couple weeks ago I upgraded my mothers computer from Microsoft XP to Linux Debian Lenny (testing). Everything is working except sound with pogo.com java games. After couple weeks searching for a fix and reading ALSA documention and tinkering around.

the problematic soundcard is

$ lspci
...
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 70)
...

This is what I ended up with to get the sound to work with the pogo.com java games. First I created the ~/.asoundrc file, and this what I added to the ~/.asoundrc file.

!defaults.pcm.card 0
defaults.ctl.card 0
defaults.pcm.device 0
defaults.pcm.subdevice -1
defaults.pcm.dmix.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.dsnoop.device defaults.pcm.device

After saving the file we have to restart ALSA

# /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart
Shutting down ALSA…done.
Setting up ALSA…done.

Note: this fix may not work for everyone.

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Today Debian LiveCD was announced

The Debian Live team[0] is pleased to announce the first beta of Debian
Lenny’s Live images.

Although we missed releasing images for Etch along with the installer
images, we are now prepared to release live images within the regular
Lenny release process. This is the first official release of Debian Live
and the whole team has been working hard during the past 2.5 years[1] to
make Debian’s own[2] live systems become a reality.

Nevertheless, we do need your help to find more bugs and improve the
live systems, so please try them out. The images are available at:

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/lenny_live_beta1/

Read the full announcement email here

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The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) has issued a warning for what it calls “active attacks” against Linux-based computing infrastructures using compromised SSH keys.

The attack appears to initially use stolen SSH keys to gain access to a system, and then uses local kernel exploits to gain root access. Once root access has been obtained, a rootkit known as “phalanx2″ is installed, US-CERT said in a note on its current activity site.

Read the full article here

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Nvidia closed source driver has to be modified (for all (71.86.04, 96.43.05, 169.12 and 171.06) but the latest driver (173.08)) in order to run on 2.6.25 as detailed here.

When you apply the patch and generate the custom executable, the install works as advertised.

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Jonathan Oxer (ex Linux Australia President) was on the channel 7’s Sunrise program yesterday morning showing off his technological house.

Read the full article here

Download the segment via torrent here

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This is a great article about Jonathan Oxer, whose entire house is connected to a central computer and can be controlled remotely via a computer or mobile phone.

Teeming with technology, the abode conjures up images of The Jetsons but, much to the surprise of visitors, the house looks no less ordinary than a typical suburban dwelling. Wires, switches and gizmos are concealed, true to Oxer’s philosophy of “having everything work invisibly”.

Read the full article here

View the Photo Gallery here

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ITShare SA will be hosting a BarCamp on Sunday 16th of March.

When: Sunday 16th of March 10:30am onwards
Where: ITShare Workshop, Mount Barker Road Bridge Water

Your invited to bring any projects you are currently working on and tell people about them, or just look at what other people have brought along. There is a BBQ at the hall, so feel free to bring along food and drinks. Power and Internet access are available on site.

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It is amazing to see where Linux is being used in the community and the corporate world, and how it is being put to use.

There has been a long standing rumor regarding NASA running Fedora which all of us in the Fedora community have been always intrigued by. Is it true? What are they doing with it there? Why don’t they run RHEL. Fortunately enough, a couple of weeks ago, I got to experience NASA behind the scenes, first hand, and hang out with the coolest members of the Fedora community, and find out the answer to these questions and lots more.

Read the full article here

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For the people that want to run TeamSpeak and Urban Terror together on the one machine here is quick howto to stop TeamSpeak hogging the audio.

1) You need to install alsa-oss

sudo apt-get install alsa-oss

2) goto Applications => Internet, right click on TeamSpeak and add launcher to Panel or Pesktop
3) Right click on the TeamSpeak launcher on Panel or Desktop and goto Properties => Launcher
4) In the command section add ‘aoss‘ in front of ‘teamspeak‘, eg - ‘aoss teamspeak‘
5) close the Properties window and launch TeamSpeak from your modified launcher

enjoy

Notes:
Thanks to MatthewV with his help with testing

This HowTo should work with other games but I have only tested it with Urban Terror

Reference:
Ubuntu alsa-oss

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These examples is going to how to create a diff file with the differences between the original source directory and the patched directory. And how to patch the original source directory with the changes done in the patched directory.

Creating the diff file:

diff -Nuar source -orig/ source -patched/ > patch-file.diff

The patch is ‘applied’ using the ‘patch‘ command.
cd into the original directory (without the changes)

patch -p 1 < ../patch-file.diff

The ‘-p 1‘ option removes 1 path/directory from the top of the patch.

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