Quails home away from the nest

This is a rework of the script from Internet Usage Monitoring – conky style! But the only problem I found is that it not wanted to work with my NodeMobile account. So here is my rewrite of parts of the script to use the other Internode Usage API url.

One thing you need to find out for this script to work is the service number for the account you want to get the usage for. That can be easily obtained by pointing your web browser to https://customer-webtools-api.internode.on.net/api/v1.5/ and logging in.

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DISCLAIMER:
You might still have to pay royalty fees to the G.729 patent holders for using their algorithm

With Asterisk when you place a call or receive a call you’ll get a warning about translation from ulaw to g729.
For example:

[Dec 16 09:48:56] WARNING[1143]: channel.c:2811 set_format: Unable to find a codec translation path from ulaw to g729

With little googling I found out this is rather easy problem to fix.

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Prerequisites:
Lots of caffeine
Long finger nails (they will be short by the end)
Needing a hair cut (might be bald by the end)

Note: I am just joking about the prerequisites, I found it hard to get stuff right cause a lot of howtos out there are bit vague and cryptic. So here is my attempt to make it a bit easier for others to setup Asterisk and connect to a VoIP provider.

What is Asterisk:

Asterisk is software that turns an ordinary computer into a voice communications server. Asterisk is the world’s most powerful and popular telephony development tool-kit. It is used by small businesses, large businesses, call centers, carriers and governments worldwide. Asterisk is open source and is available free to all under the terms of the GPL.

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I have GREAT news for the 4810T owners the 2.30 BIOS[1], we now have backlight control keys working

There is a catch after you upgrade[2] to the 2.30 BIOS you will get a freeze type effect on the desktop (well I did). Also I noticed that my WiFi went funny to and I could not ping anything even tho Net. Mgr. was say I was connected to AP.

So DON’T play with backlight key till done the below changes.

You have to change from

xrandr –output LVDS –set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL native

to

xrandr –output LVDS –set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL kernel

or

xrandr –output LVDS –set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL combination

References:
[1] http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/downloads_gd.html
[2] Howto BIOS Update

This is just a quick how to to setup NTP to update from a GPS

Installing software needed for the GPS:

# apt-get install gpsd

If you already not done so connect the GPS to your computer you are wanting to run it on and confirm it is connected with lsusb

$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 067b:2303 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port

My GPS is a USGlobalSat BU 353

Now to configure gpsd:

# dpkg-reconfigure gpsd

There just a few questions to answer.
First question asks you if you like to have gpsd to start at boot, I answered YES
Second question ask you to were tthe GPS is connected, in my case it was /dev/ttyUSB0
The last 2 questions I just left them as is.

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UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for a variety of Linux distributions from Windows or Linux, without requiring you to burn a CD. You can either let it download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file if you’ve already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn’t on the list.

I found this UNetbootin very useful to put FreeDOS on my USB flash drive to use to update the BIOS on my laptop. UNetbootin is also in the Debian repository too.

References:
UNetbootin
Debian Repository
Howto BIOS Update

First we need to install a couple packages:

# apt-get install ppp wvdial

Now to create the most vital configuration file for the connection:

$ nano ~/.wvdial.conf

Copy and paste the config below and change the username and password to yours supplied to you by Internode.

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I have noted that this GPS unit has a prob when been powered off for ~72+ hours. The problem is that it resets itself back to binary mode, the quick way to tell this is there is no LED activity on the side of the unit. This unit optimally needs to be run in NMEA mode. To get this unit in to running in NMEA mode is very easy, while the unit is plugged into your computer you just have to issue it a command.

The command string to issue to it is:

$ gpsctl -n -s 4800 -t SiRF binary /dev/ttyUSB0

After running the above command you’ll notice that the LED on the side has come alive and will be steadily flashing. Now you’ll beable to use your GPS unit to its full potential.

For further info and help:

$ man gpsctl

$ lspci
….
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
….

This is just a workaround at the moment so the Backlight can be manually be adjusted with xbacklight

Installing xbacklight

# apt-get install xbacklight

Now we need to set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL

$ xrandr –output LVDS –set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL native

Now we can adjust backlight like this for example

$ xbacklight -set 100

$ lspci
….
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100
….

Add the Debian Backports repository to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free

Update the list of available packages and install the debian-backports-keyring package.

# apt-get update
# apt-get -t lenny-backports install debian-backports-keyring

As your system does not yet have the GnuPG archive key of the backports.org repository installed, you will be asked to confirm installation of a package from an untrusted repository. Enter Yes when prompted.

Install a 2.6.30 kernel image appropriate for your system, along with the firmware-iwlwifi and wireless-tools packages.

# apt-get update

# apt-get -t lenny-backports install linux-image-2.6.30-bpo.1-$(uname -r | sed 's,.*-,,g') firmware-iwlwifi wireless-tools

Restart your system and boot with the newly installed kernel, and the necessary kernel module should be automatically loaded.

As the new kernel was booting I noticed it made mention to that the microcode was out of date. To fix this problem simply download the new microcode from Intel Wireless WiFi Link Drivers for Linux.

wget -c http://intellinuxwireless.org/iwlwifi/downloads/iwlwifi-5000-ucode-8.24.2.12.tgz

Uncompress the microcode

tar xvf iwlwifi-5000-ucode-8.24.2.12.tgz

Now all we need to do is to change into the directory of where the microcode is and then copy it to /lib/firmware

# cd iwlwifi-5000-ucode-8.24.2.12/
# cp iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode /lib/firmware/

Restart your system and the newly added microcode will be loaded and used.