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This evening I’ve set up irssi’s proxy module, following some tips from Dave2 in #lugradio and http://www.garion.org/irssi/irssi-proxy.php. It’s as easy as:

/load proxy
/set irssiproxy_password = something
/set irssiproxy_ports Blitzed=6667 Freenode=6668

The networks have to be defined already in ~/.irssi/config. The ports specified are the ports that client systems use to connect to the proxy, not the port on the remote IRC server to which the proxy connects. Multiple client systems can connect to the same irssi proxy session, allowing you to use the same nick from multiple client systems. You need to start a different connection from the client for each server the irssi proxy session is connected to. So you do

/connect myhost 6667 something
/connect myhost 6668 something

And there you have it. Obviously the irssi session needs to keep running, so start it in a screen. One plus is that the irssi session is still usable over SSH, so you can pick it up at any point.

I was a very lucky boy at Christmas and was given a TomTom GO 300. I think it’s a cracking piece of kit with an impressively thought-out interface. These things run embedded Linux and the SD card in them appears as mass storage devices via a USB cable. I was poking around the contents of the SD card trying to work out which bits I needed to backup to keep my custom locations safe.

On the SD card is a splash.bmp file, which is the splash screen that is displayed whenever the device is powered up or down. The default one is a green background, with a white silhouette of a hand operating a TomTom device. I thought it would be cool to customise that splash screen to show off proudly the Linux-y nature of the device. So I came up with this splash screen after a couple of hours with the GIMP.

Here’s how it looks in action:

If you have a TomTom and want to use this splash screen, you need to download this rotated version and convert it to a 24-bit bitmap (BMP). Gallery doesn’t cope with BMPs apparently, so I had to convert it to a JPEG for uploading.

Last time I was at my parents’ house they gave me load of floppy disks of mine that they’d found whilst clearing out. Most of them were full of rubbish or corrupted, but one had a few pictures I’d taken whilst at St. Bede’s with an early digital camera. My best guess is that they were taken during 1994, but I could be wrong. If you were at St. Bede’s during that era, you might like to check them out.

The next meeting will be a Bring-a-Box meeting at Park Hall Church Hall in Aldershot on Saturday 4th March. If you have not attended one of our meetings before, please read the information about the venue on the wiki. All the regular B-a-B procudures also apply.

Post on the mailing list if you have any questions or want a lift. The usual requests for snacks and Greeting People apply.

As you might have gathered from yesterday’s post I’ve moved my desktop over to Ubuntu, following the success with my laptop. The installation itself went fine, although there’s still no kernel support for the third IDE channel on my AOpen motherboard (it’s a weird IDE channel that actually runs through the SATA controller). Not long after the installation had finished the main hard disk started reporting SMART errors and needed replacing. Can’t blame that on Ubuntu though but it’s still a major annoyance. I had some help fixing it though:

Today the hard drive in my external caddy died. I hope these things don’t come in threes. I can’t afford many more hard disks. I’m really annoyed that it just died like that but grateful it wasn’t my primary laptop HDD when it did so…

I’ve just got my ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] graphics card working under a dual-head set up under Ubuntu Breezy. I had a working configuration under Etch, but I’m pleased to find out that the Ubuntu configuration is actually slightly cleaner. It uses the open source “radeon” driver, rather than the propriatory “fglrx” driver. Using a dual-head setup means that 3D acceleration doesn’t work, but I believe that is also the case for the “fglrx” driver. 3D acceleration did work under the “radeon” driver before switching to a dual-head mode.

Being GNOME rather than XFCE, enabling the Xinerama extension means that I can move windows from one panel to the other and not have them maximise across both panels. (Most window managers aren’t aware of things like “middle edge” detection under Xinerama and treat the whole display as one unbroken space.) I only have the “window dressing” (menu, application bars) on the first screen. At least that’s the default arrangement - panels can be moved to other locations on either panel by dragging. Maximising a window causes it to fill just one panel, not both. I’m happy with this arrangement. Commenting the Xinerama options out means that I have a separate set of window dressing on each monitor but can’t move windows between the two.

The end result looks like this:

For the record, here’s my xorg.conf:

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the /etc/X11/xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type “man /etc/X11/xorg.conf” at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section “Files”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/misc”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/cyrillic”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/Type1″
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/CID”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi”
FontPath “/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi”
# paths to defoma fonts
FontPath “/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType”
FontPath “/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/CID”
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load “GLcore”
Load “i2c”
Load “bitmap”
Load “ddc”
Load “dri”
Load “extmod”
Load “freetype”
Load “glx”
Load “int10″
Load “type1″
Load “vbe”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Generic Keyboard”
Driver “kbd”
Option “CoreKeyboard”
Option “XkbRules” “xorg”
Option “XkbModel” “pc105″
Option “XkbLayout” “gb”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “mouse”
Option “CorePointer”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice”
Option “Protocol” “ImPS/2″
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “true”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “DVIport”
BoardName “ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon 9200 SE (RV280)”
Driver “radeon”
BusID “PCI:1:0:0″
Screen 0
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “VGAport”
BoardName “ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon 9200 SE (RV280)”
Driver “radeon”
BusID “PCI:1:0:0″
Screen 1
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “SyncMasterL”
Option “DPMS”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “SyncMasterR”
Option “DPMS”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “VGAScreen”
Device “VGAport”
Monitor “SyncMasterR”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 1
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 4
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 8
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 15
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 16
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “DVIScreen”
Device “DVIport”
Monitor “SyncMasterL”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 1
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 4
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 8
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 15
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 16
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1280×1024″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “720×400″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen “VGAScreen”
Screen “DVIScreen” LeftOf “VGAScreen”
InputDevice “Generic Keyboard”
InputDevice “Configured Mouse”

Option “Xinerama” “on”
Option “Clone” “on”

EndSection

Section “DRI”
Mode 0666
EndSection

Today’s HantsLUG monthly meeting was enjoyable, quite busy and as normal I’m really tired afterwards. There’s the normal wiki page showing what went on. Media from the talks including slides and videos will be appearing online soon.