Here is the work around I used to resolve the problem.

If you use grub2 then edit

/etc/default/grub

then add

nouveau.modeset=0

to the end of the line that reads

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet”

(“quiet” seems a typical default option), so that that line now reads

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet nouveau.modeset=0″

run

update-grub2

and reboot.

Now go through and install you nVidia drivers as per normal.

BYO Everything. (Drinks, Nibbles etc available from Convenience Stores, located conveniently in all directions.)

This is also an opportunity to meet people involved in the Hackerspace, and if you are a Hackerspace regular, feel free to bring along your projects and treat this like a regular Hackerspace meeting.

View Larger Map

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.

This is old code please refer to http://quail.southernvaleslug.org/pub/node-usage/

On the page is the number you need to add to ’service=XXXXXXX’ in the scipt below


#!/bin/bash
## node-usage.sh
## Author:
## Quail http://quail.southernvaleslug.org
## Created on 8th April 2010.
## Licensed under the GPL version 3.

## Get usage information from Internode's web page.
## requires: curl and gawk

# Set the username, password and service number
service=XXXXXXX
id=XXXXXXX
pw=XXXXXXX

# Grab the details
curl -s -u $id:$pw https://customer-webtools-api.internode.on.net/api/v1.5/$service/usage >/tmp/usage.xml

# Process the usage.xml
rollover=`cat /tmp/usage.xml |sed -n 2p|cut -d"=" -f5|cut -d'"' -f2`
quota=`cat /tmp/usage.xml |sed -n 2p|cut -d"=" -f7|cut -d'"' -f2`
used=`cat /tmp/usage.xml |sed -n 2p|cut -d">" -f6|cut -d"< " -f1`

# Break up the values into their respective parts
echo "$used $quota" > /tmp/node-text.txt
echo "Used: `cat /tmp/node-text.txt | gawk '{print $1/1000/1000}'` MB Quota: `cat /tmp/node-text.txt | gawk '{print $2/1000/1000}'` MB Period Ends: $rollover" > /tmp/node-usage.txt

# Generate the percent used.
cat /tmp/node-text.txt | gawk '{print $1/$2*100}' > /tmp/node-graph.txt
percent=`cat /tmp/node-graph.txt`
echo $(printf %.0f $percent) > /tmp/node-percent.txt

exit


Now make the script executable and run it from cron.

This how I have display the info in Conky


${color #5b6dad}Internode Usage: ${hr 1}
${color #7f8ed3} ${execi 900 cat /tmp/node-percent.txt}% ${execibar 900 cat /tmp/node-graph.txt}
${color #7f8ed3} ${execi 900 cat /tmp/node-usage.txt}


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.

You can download the source or binary G.723 or G.729 codecs from here.

This what I did to implement the G.729 codec.

Download:
First off I downloaded the binary codec for the version of Asterisk and processor type needed and the MD5SUM file on the machine I running Asterisk on.

$ wget http://asterisk.hosting.lv/bin/codec_g729-ast14-gcc4-glibc-pentium.so ; wget http://asterisk.hosting.lv/bin/MD5SUM

Checked the MD5SUM to make sure the downloaded binary is ok

$ md5sum -c MD5SUM

Installation:
Now to copy or move the binary into Asterisk modules directory as root (login if needed)

# cp codec_g729-ast14-gcc4-glibc-pentium /usr/lib/asterisk/modules/

All that is left to do is load the module into Asterisk as root

First log into Asterisk’s CLI

# asterisk -r

Now to load the module

localhost*CLI> module load codec_g729-ast14-gcc4-glibc-pentium.so

All that is left to do is to check the module has loaded correctly and that is done by typing

localhost*CLI> core show translation recalc 10

Above command will take little bit to calculate and show and ouput
Example output

localhost*CLI> core show translation recalc 10
         Recalculating Codec Translation (number of sample seconds: 10)

         Translation times between formats (in milliseconds) for one second of data
          Source Format (Rows) Destination Format (Columns)

          g723 gsm ulaw alaw g726aal2 adpcm slin lpc10 g729 speex ilbc g726 g722
     g723    -  58   13   13       32    14   12    43  117   210    -   32    -
      gsm  350   -   21   21       40    22   20    51  125   218    -   40    -
     ulaw  331  47    -    1       21     3    1    32  106   199    -   21    -
     alaw  331  47    1    -       21     3    1    32  106   199    -   21    -
 g726aal2  349  65   20   20        -    21   19    50  124   217    -    1    -
    adpcm  331  47    2    2       21     -    1    32  106   199    -   21    -
     slin  330  46    1    1       20     2    -    31  105   198    -   20    -
    lpc10  354  70   25   25       44    26   24     -  129   222    -   44    -
     g729  358  74   29   29       48    30   28    59    -   226    -   48    -
    speex  370  86   41   41       60    42   40    71  145     -    -   60    -
     ilbc    -   -    -    -        -     -    -     -    -     -    -    -    -
     g726  348  64   19   19        1    20   18    49  123   216    -    -    -
     g722    -   -    -    -        -     -    -     -    -     -    -    -    -

As you can see our newly installed codec is working

References:
Asterisk G.729 Licensing
G.729 and G.723.1 codecs x86 (and x86_64) Linux and FreeBSD binaries for Asterisk open source PBX

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.

Note:
For this howto we will be logged in as root, I take no responsibility to what may or may not damage or happen to your system.

Installing Asterisk:

# apt-get install asterisk

Under Debian Lenny this is the packages it will download and install. A lot of the packages it installs you may not need especially if you don’t need ‘vpb-driver-source’ for Voicetronix telephony hardware, but I will go into that later in the howto.

asterisk asterisk-config asterisk-sounds-main build-essential bzip2 ca-certificates cpp cpp-4.3 debhelper dpkg-dev g++ g++-4.3 gcc gcc-4.3 gettext html2text intltool-debian libasound2 libc-client2007b libc6-dev libcompress-raw-zlib-perl libcompress-zlib-perl libcurl3 libdigest-hmac-perl libdigest-sha1-perl libfile-remove-perl libgmp3c2 libgomp1 libgsm1 libiksemel3 libio-compress-base-perl libio-compress-zlib-perl libio-stringy-perl libltdl3 libmail-box-perl libmail-sendmail-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-types-perl libmpfr1ldbl libobject-realize-later-perl libogg0 libpq5 libpri1.0 libradiusclient-ng2 libsensors3 libsnmp-base libsnmp15 libspeex1 libspeexdsp1 libsqlite0 libssh2-1 libstdc++6-4.3-dev libsys-hostname-long-perl libsysfs2 libtimedate-perl libtonezone1 liburi-perl libuser-identity-perl libvorbis0a libvorbisenc2 libvpb0 linux-libc-dev make mlock module-assistant odbcinst1debian1 openssl patch po-debconf unixodbc vpb-driver-source

Backup:
First we need to make a backup of the sip.conf and extensions.conf files that we’ll be working with in this howto.

# mv /etc/asterisk/sip.conf /etc/asterisk/sip.conf.bak ; mv /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf.bak

Now that we have moved the files we need to create a new sip.conf and extensions.conf files, change ownership and permission of them.

# touch /etc/asterisk/sip.conf ; chown asterisk:asterisk /etc/asterisk/sip.conf ; chmod 640 /etc/asterisk/sip.conf && touch /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf ; chown asterisk:asterisk /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf ; chmod 640 /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf

Configuration:
First of we are going to start with editing the sip.conf file with our favorite editor in my case nano.

# nano /etc/asterisk/sip.conf

This is basically what I have added to my sip.conf file. Stuff in bold is what you’ll have to change to what your VoIP provider has provided you and lines that start with ; are my notes and it how to comment out stuff.

; This section is how we are logging into our VoIP provider
[general]
register=account:password@sip00.mynetfone.com.au/account

; This section is how outbound calls are handle to our
; VoIP provider and the codecs we want to use etc.
[MyNetFone]
username=account
type=friend
secret=password
qualify=yes
pedantic=no
nat=yes
insecure=port,invite
host=sip00.mynetfone.com.au
fromdomain=sip00.mynetfone.com.au
port=5060
fromuser=account
dtmfmode=rfc2833
disallow=all
canreinvite=no
authname=account
allow=g729
allow=alaw
allow=ulaw

; This section is for how we connect to our VoIP provider for
; inbound calls.
[MyNetFone-In]
username=account
type=friend
secret=password
qualify=no
insecure=port,invite
host=sip00.mynetfone.com.au
fromuser=account
context=from-trunk
canreinvite=no

; Below here is a user that has been create to be able to log
; into the Asterisk server for inbound and outbound calls via
; our VoIP provider.
[6678]
type=friend
secret=1234
host=dynamic
defaultip=192.168.0.22
dtmfmode=rfc2833
callerid=”tester” <6678>

Now onto the extensions.conf file, you’ll notice some things in this file that are referred to in the sip.conf file. Again with our favorite editor this is basically what I have added to the file. As before what is bold you have change to match details given to from your VoIP provider and what is commented out with ; are my notes

# nano /etc/asterisk/extenions.conf

; Handle calls coming in from our VoIP provider to Asterisk
; are directed to the extension 6678 on Asterisk
[from-trunk]
exten => account,1,Dial(SIP/6678,30)
exten => account,2,Congestion
exten => account,102,Busy

; Sending all outbound calls with prefix 9 via our VoIP provider.
; Stripping the prefix 9 before sending call to VoIP provider.
; Dial 90881234567 will become 0881234567 for example.
[default]
exten => _9.,1,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN:1}@MyNetFone,30)
exten => _9.,2,Congestion
exten => _9.,102,Busy

Ok this basically does it for the 2 configuration file we had to play with to getting a connection to our VoIP provider.

Restarting Asterisk:
Now comes the fun part restarting Asterisk. This can be done a couple of ways.
First we can attach to the currently running Asterisk CLI by:

# asterisk -r

And you’ll get an output like this.

# asterisk -r
Asterisk 1.4.21.2~dfsg-3, Copyright (C) 1999 – 2008 Digium, Inc. and others.
Created by Mark Spencer
Asterisk comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; type ‘core show warranty’ for details.
This is free software, with components licensed under the GNU General Public
License version 2 and other licenses; you are welcome to redistribute it under
certain conditions. Type ‘core show license’ for details.
=========================================================================
This package has been modified for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution
Please report all bugs to http://bugs.debian.org/asterisk
=========================================================================
Connected to Asterisk 1.4.21.2~dfsg-3 currently running on localhost (pid = 32096)
localhost*CLI>

From here to restart Asterisk we type:

restart now

example:

localhost*CLI> restart now

Also Asterisk CLI is TAB auto complete friendly

The second way is depended on which ever way you prefer to restart services, in terminal to just type:

# invoke-rc.d asterisk restart

or

# /etc/init.d/asterisk restart

Is it working:
Now that we have restarted Asterisk, lets connect back into Asterisk’s CLI:

# asterisk -r

We need to now check that we have connected and logged into our VoIP provider and we do this by typing:

localhost*CLI> sip show registry

Example output:

localhost*CLI> sip show registry

Host                            Username       Refresh State                Reg.Time
sip00.mynetfone.com.au:5060     account           105 Registered           Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:56:29

If we done everything correctly we should be able to make and receive calls through our VoIP provider from another computer or laptop with a softphone installed like Ekiga that is logged into the Asterisk server.

Clean Up:
As I mentioned earlier in this howto that there may packages installed that you not need for example ‘vpb-driver-source’ for Voicetronix telephony hardware. As I not needed it, to uninstall it and all the development and compiler packages all you need to do is:

# apt-get remove –purge build-essential bzip2 cpp cpp-4.3 debhelper dpkg-dev g++ g++-4.3 gcc gcc-4.3 gettext html2text intltool-debian libc6-dev libcompress-raw-zlib-perl libcompress-zlib-perl libdigest-hmac-perl libdigest-sha1-perl libfile-remove-perl libgmp3c2 libgomp1 libio-compress-base-perl libio-compress-zlib-perl libio-stringy-perl libmail-box-perl libmail-sendmail-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-types-perl libmpfr1ldbl libobject-realize-later-perl libstdc++6-4.3-dev libsys-hostname-long-perl libtimedate-perl liburi-perl libuser-identity-perl linux-libc-dev make module-assistant patch po-debconf vpb-driver-source

Ending:
Now that all the hard work is over and done with, can sit back with a beer and call up a mate and have a yarn(chat) and enjoy to spoils of having our own PBX.

Every single evening, As I’m lying here in bed,
This tiny little Prayer, Keeps running through my head
God bless all my family, Wherever they may be,
Keep them warm and safe from harm
For they’re so close to me.
And God, there is one more thing
I wish that you could do;
Hope you don’t mind mind me asking,
Please bless my computer, too.

Now I know that it’s unusual, To bless a motherboard,
But listen just a second, While I explain it to you, Lord.
You see, that little metal box, Holds more than odds and ends;
Inside those small compartments, Rest so many of my friends.
I know so much about them, By the kindness that they give,
And this little scrap of metal takes me in to where they live.
By faith is how I know them, Much the same as you.
We share in what life brings us, And from that our friendships grew.

Please take an extra minute, From your duties up above,
To bless those in my address book, That’s filled with so much love.
Wherever else this prayer may reach,
To each and every friend;
Bless each e-mail inbox, And each person who hits ’send’
When you update your heavenly list,
On your own great CD-ROM,
Bless everyone who says this prayer
Send up to GOD. com

Amen

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

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.

Now to setup up NTP to talk / work with the GPS by editing the /etc/ntp.conf file:

# nano /etc/ntp.conf

This is what I added to my /etc/ntp.conf file:

# LinuxPPS: GPS + PPS (comment out either this whole section or the next one)
server 127.127.20.0 minpoll 4 prefer
fudge 127.127.20.0 flag3 1 flag2 0

# SHM: PPS filtered mean (comment out either this whole section or the previous one)
server 127.127.28.0 minpoll 4 prefer
fudge 127.127.28.0 refid PPS flag3 1

Now we need to restart the ntp server cause the changes we made to the /etc/ntp.conf file

# /etc/init.d/ntp restart
Stopping NTP server: ntpd.
Starting NTP server: ntpd.

To confirm that the ntp server is using the GPS all we have to do is:

$ ntpq -p

And you get and output like this:

$ ntpq -p

     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
+mirror.dedicate 128.250.36.3     2 u   52   64   17   55.405    3.643   0.953
+203-80-162-195. 203.12.160.2     3 u   54   64   17   43.456    2.346   0.880
*a.pool.ntp.uq.e 130.102.152.7    2 u   51   64   17   57.256    1.722   2.129
+ds001.hostingsh 128.250.36.2     2 u   50   64   17   55.676    1.890   1.111
xGPS_NMEA(0)     .GPS.            0 l   10   16  377    0.000  -827.80   7.543
 SHM(0)          .PPS.            0 l    -   16    0    0.000    0.000   0.001
 192.168.1.255 .BCST.            16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.001
 192.168.2.255 .BCST.            16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.001

These couple lines show that the NTP server is using the GPS to update the time:

xGPS_NMEA(0)     .GPS.            0 l    5   16  377    0.000  -827.34   8.128
 SHM(0)          .PPS.            0 l    -   16    0    0.000    0.000   0.001

That is all that is needed to be done, now you don’t need to be connected to the internet to update you NTP server to have the correct time.

References:
NTP Documentation
GPSd

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

# 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.

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
ISDN = off
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Baud = 460800
Init = ATZ
Init2 = ATZ
Init3 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init4 = AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”internode”
Init5 =
Init6 =
Init7 =
Init8 =
Init9 =
Phone = *99#
Phone1 =
Phone2 =
Phone3 =
Phone4 =
Dial Prefix =
Dial Attempts = 0
Dial Command = ATM1L3DT
Ask Password = off
Password = change me
Username = change me
Auto Reconnect = off
Abort on Busy = off
Carrier Check = off
Check Def Route = on
Abort on No Dialtone = off
Stupid Mode = on
Idle Seconds = 0
Auto DNS = off
;Domain =
;Nameserver = 192.231.203.132
;Nameserver2 = 192.231.203.3
;Minimize = off
;Dock = on
;Do NOT edit this file by hand!

Now to make the connection to Internode:

$ pon.wvdial -C ~/.wvdial.conf

To disconnect just type:

$ poff

Now you are ready and setup to surf the web.

Notes
If you are not comfortable using terminal you can install gnome-ppp to control the connection for you as it uses the ~/.wvdial.conf file.

# apt-get install gnome-ppp

The only other problem I have noticed is that you may have to edit /etc/resolv.conf file on the fly after making connection to Internode as you not get the correct DNS servers. This is easy to fix by editing the /etc/resolv.conf and adding the DNS servers.

# nano /etc/resolv.conf

And at the top of the file add:

nameserver 192.231.203.132
nameserver 192.231.203.3