[Microblog] Transient Turtles

The Georgian Bay Turtle Hospital won $5000 of funding through Aviva Canada.  My housemate has been advocating it, and loving turtles, yay!

[Microblog] Transient Satisfaction

Reading Will Grayson, Will Grayson and watching snow fall outside my new home.

[General] JOSH RITTER!

One of my favourite artists (if not my favourite artist!) is coming to Ontario again this winter/spring, and will be in Waterloo in just one month!  VICTORY TO HE WHO HATH ACQUIRED THE LAST TICKET ONLINE (me!).  Tragically, I could not acquire the last two tickets online, so I can not bring a friend ;_;

[Microblog] Photo back log

I had sort of forgot to actually share the photos I've been taking, so Christmas and early January are now available.  The cabin weekend (150 photos selected out of about 400) and my birthweek (:D) to come soon. :|

[Microblog] Embarrassment

I proposed performing a spell to a pagan friend, who I thought might just stare at me like I was an idiot who watched too much TV.  She was in the midst of planning a spell, and didn't know if I'd think she was silly.  Phew, that was almost awkward.

[Technology] "sudo:effective uid is not 0, is sudo installed setuid root?"

Uh oh.

I updated from Fedora 17 to Fedora 18 Beta with fedup.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedUp
Then I followed the post-upgrade clean up guide.
http://fedorasolved.org/Members/fenris02/post_upgrade_cleanup
It told me to run this
rpm -a --setugids; rpm -a --setperms;
and rpm broke my system.

While it ran the first rpm command, there were a lot of error messages about files not being found.  That was apparently fine.  When the second rpm command ran, there were a lot of messages about being unable to set permissions.  Uh oh.

When I rebooted, GDM couldn't load (well, a GTK+ GUI still showed an error message).  Logging in to a VT, I couldn't sudo from my user to root.  I also couldn't su.  Uh oh!  sudo gave me this message:

sudo: effective uid is not 0, is sudo installed setuid root?

The issue apparently is that rpm reset permissions without re-setting the setuid bit anywhere.  Uh oh.

I could still log in as root directly from a VT's login prompt.  I did that.  I found the relevant bug 881835,and there they note a new rpm that should fix the problem, version 4.10.2.

NM was still able to connect to the Internet despite the lack of GUI (w00t!  if it doesn't for you, try using nmcli from the command-line), so I could still use yum to install the new RPM.  So, as root
# yum --enablerepo=updates-testing rpm
Then I re-ran just
# rpm -a --setperms
And suddenly everything was normal again. :)

[Technology] Fedora 18 Beta, FedUp, and GNOME Shell's excessive CPU usage

Summary:  updating to F18 caused GNOME Shell to take up too much CPU; this was because I ran fedup upgrading to F18 beta from F17, and the some of the packages at the time the F18 beta was set have versions below F17 currently, so F17 packages were kept, like my Xorg intel driver, which could no longer load in F18, and consequently GNOME Shell was using llvmpipe and running on the CPU and not the GPU.  Solution was to run yum distro-sync

Fedora 18 has been delayed by almost two months.  They delayed it by another week until next week, but I am fed up!, so I used FedUp to update it to Fedora 18's current pre-release status.  Mwahaha.

After doing so, I noticed my computer running quite hot, and that gnome-shell is consuming all available CPU.  Why?

Poking around, I noticed that yum says stuff like:
ibus-1.4.99.20121109-9.fc17.x86_64 has missing requires of libdconf.so.0()(64bit)
ibus-1.4.99.20121109-9.fc17.x86_64 has missing requires of libgnomekbd.so.7()(64bit)
ibus-1.4.99.20121109-9.fc17.x86_64 has missing requires of libgnomekbdui.so.7()(64bit)
libpinyin-0.8.0-2.fc17.x86_64 has missing requires of libdb-5.2.so()(64bit)
xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.20.16-1.fc17.x86_64 has missing requires of libudev.so.0()(64bit)
xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.20.16-1.fc17.x86_64 has missing requires of xserver-abi(videodrv-12) >= ('0', '1', None)

Uh oh, isn't that my video card driver?  Reading bug 812624 about GNOME Shell and high CPU usage also suggested that it might be being rendered via llvmpipe, on the CPU, rather than by my video card.  A quick check confirms it:
# glxinfo | grep renderer
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x301)
Uh oh.

I checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log to confirm the suspicion that the intel driver wasn't loading, and as expected,
Failed to load /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so: libudev.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Trying to do a yum whatprovides **/libudev.so.0 unfortunately turned up nothing, but googling the error gave me bug 888085.  There contained was the obvious tip of using yum distro-sync to make sure I have Fedora 18's packages and not some old ones from Fedora 17.  Sheesh.

[Microblog] Transient Errors

I once received an e-mail from a web developer containing a client's new e-mail and account name.  I later met that web developer 8 years later at a conference.

I just received someone's banking information.  Oh my.

[General] Moving Out

I'm moving.  Almost certainly.

I am going to become housemates with my best friend in Guelph.  We've considered this before, and her most recent housemate suddenly evaporated, so now's the time.

I've really enjoyed my apartment and living alone. 

• complete control; things are always exactly as I left them; no mess, no unexpected surprises; everything is to my preference
• privacy; I can do whatever I want and it doesn't matter to anyone
• guests; I can have whoever I like over!
• cleanliness; this also fits under complete control, but cleanliness is to my own standard, or if it isn't, I'm the one responsible
• kitchen; I know what's in my fridge, I know what needs cleaning; I know what doesn't; my counter is as free as I want it; it's all vegan
• quiet; I can focus and have no disturbances, besides the neighbours through the walls, which is minor
• washroom; it's ready for me whenever I need it, and isn't cluttered by weird stuff
• decor; also fits under complete control; I have my posters, and stars, and birds, and maps up

This particular apartment has had some special advantages

• high ceilings, making it possible to practise jodo and kendo and iaido at home
• close to downtown and right next to the Farmers' Market
• spacious living quarters
• buses right next door!

So, why am I moving?

• it can be lonely; having S around the past couple of months has been nice, and before then my best friend came by a lot, but that's not really feasible or reliable.  Loneliness isn't actually a big deal for me any more, but it will be nice having other humans around
• cats!; I'm not prepared to own one myself yet, but she has two!  And the bird and fish that I've pet sat for the past while
• money!; while living alone has been great, it's been expensive.  I could have saved several thousands of dollars over the past 16 months if I had moved in with housemates; let the saving begin now.
• Internet!; I cleverly use my WIND data plan for my home Internet, but with that I only have 10GB/month at full speed.  That's actually enough if I'm being conservative, but I don't always want to be conservative; I want to watch Netflix ad nauseam
• better prospect; my current window looks out at a grey building; the new apartment looks out at a nice lawn an residential houses
• closer to campus!  There are bus stops right outside for each direction, like my current place, but it's 10 minutes closer to campus than my current abode
• her!  She's an awesome friend

I'm aware of a lot of the pitfalls that come with living with friends; I've lived in enough shared housing that I feel comfortable accepting those.  If there are issues with cleaning, I'm willing to just do more of it to meet my standards, etc.  One key aspect I think will be to remember that she's a complete individual who will have different priorities than me, and I cannot expect her to comply with my priorities as I won't subscribe to all of hers.  So, don't blame her for differences, basically.  Just deal with them.

The bed, canopy, stars, and birds

The window, my plants, and dresser

The television and game cupboard, desk, dresser

My friend's piano, comic strips, etc.

The broken futon

My (text)book collection, and jars of strange things (coins)

The hallway! with bike, and sword corner, and maps

Kichen and stuff

It's a bit weird to think that this is the longest I've lived in one place since high school.  Here is a diagram demonstrating this:

[Technology] Writing a Rhythmbox Plugin: Rhythmbox DJ

I don't like being anchored to my computer, so I want it to communicate more information to me while I'm doing something else at home.  When music is playing and I want to know the artist and track name of a song, I want Rhythmbox to announce that aloud.
I previously wrote djaqua which did this, but was written in Python.  That bit rotted for me, and rather than updating it, I took an opportunity to try writing a Rhythmbox plugin in Vala.  I really like Vala.  Despite bugs, it works surprisingly well for what it tries to do, and it helps structure and simplify so much in GNOME development.  The biggest challenge I encounter with it is availability of existing bindings, which I think is important to persuading other developers to consider Vala (and GNOME), however, I can figure out how to wrap them for the most part.

The source code can currently be found here:
https://gitorious.org/rhythmbox-dj

Disclaimer: I am neither a vala nor a Rhythmbox expert, so I may give lots of bad advice below, so please send in corrections!  For now, this has worked for me, though.

For a Rhythmbox plugin based on libpeas we want

• a .plugin file describing it: generated from djaqua.plugin.in
• source code: rb-djaqua-plugin.vala
• a Makefile: generated from Makefile.am

For Rhythmbox DJ, we'll also add

• a PeasGtkConfigurable configure window, built from a GtkBuilder file: djaqua.ui
• a GSettings schema: org.gnome.rhythmbox.plugins.djaqua.gschema.xml)

And to make up for some non-existing bindings, we'll add these .vapis

• libpeas-gtk-1.0.vapi
• libspeechd.vapi

Let's start with all the smaller files and finish with the source code last.

Plugin File

The plugin file is in a  .ini like format.  We have [sections] and key=value pairs.  We want one section, "[Plugin]", and the following keys, Module, IAge, Name, Description, Authors, Copyright, and Website.  (I'm not sure which are strictly necessary; let me know if you do ;).

To manage this, we write djaqua.plugin.in 

[Plugin]
Module=djaqua
IAge=2
_Name=Rhythmbox DJ
_Description=Announces tracks at start and close
Authors=Richard Schwarting <aquarichy@gmail.com>, James Livingston <doclivingston@gmail.com>
Copyright=Copyright © 2012 Richard Schwarting, James Livingston
Website=http://www.rhythmbox.org/

Name and Description will be visible in Rhythmbox's Plugins menu, and so we want them to be localisable, which is why we create an .in file and prefix two those fields with _.  Since I haven't actually done much localisation before, I may not have done this step correctly. :D

Makefile

Cryptic autofoo here.  We will write a Makefile.am that will define many of the directories and flags we want to compile with.

These include directories,
plugindir: set to $(PLUGINDIR)/djaqua
plugindatadir: set to $(PLUGINDATADIR)/djaqua
gtkbuilderdir: optional, when using GtkBuilder for UI, set to $(plugindatadir)

Files,
plugin_LTLIBRARIES: points to our .la, libdjaqua.la
libdjaqua_la_SOURCES: set to our .vala source file

INCLUDES: set to a whole whack of things; some probably unnecessary :)
plugin_in_file: the plugin.in file that will generate our .plugin file
gsettings_SCHEMAS: optional if you use GSettings for preferences, ours is org.gnome.rhythmbox.plugins.djaqua.gschema.xml, which is a real file. :)
gtkbuilder_DATA: optional if using GtkBuilder, ours is djaqua.ui, and it's the XML file generated by Glade 3.
plugin_DATA: an expression evaluating to our .plugin file to be.
EXTRA_DIST: additional files to distribute, including our gtkbuilder_DATA file, our plugin files, and our GSettings schema.  I might be specifying the wrong plugin file?
CLEANFILES: files that you want removed during make clean, should be most generated files, maybe not all; I might be omitting some
DISTCLEANFILES: files that you want removed during make distclean, should be all generated files that you don't absolutely need.  Mine is just set to CLEANFILES right now. :)

Flags,
libdjaqua_la_LDFLAGS: Flags for linking, I use PLUGIN_LIBTOOL_FLAGS and -lspeechd (since I use speechd :D)
libdjaqua_la_CFLAGS: Any compilation flags; just using WNOERROR_CFLAGS here. 
VALAFLAGS: Since my plugin is coded in vala, I have a bunch of flags I need to pass, like --vapidir's to find custom bindings, --pkg's to specify which packages/bindnigs I will use, and for my project, --thread, --target-glib

Some rules
@GSETTINGS_RULES@: this appears on its own line.

And some targets, like
%.plugin: includes a fancy rule that deals with internationalising the plugin description from the .plugin.in.  I actually don't do that yet.
%.c %.h: generate .c and .h files from the .vala source. 

Source code: in vala

The plugin system is based on libpeas, so our plugin will be a Peas plugin.  We're going to create a class named DJAquaPlugin that extends and implements Peas.ExtensionBase, and Peas.Activatable: class DJAquaPlugin : Peas.ExtensionBase, Peas.Activatable.  I believe the order there matters.
Later, we'll also implement the PeasGtk.Configurable interface.

Within our plugin class, we'll require:
a "object" member: public GLib.Object object { owned get; construct; } This will be set by Rhythmbox after constructing your object to an Rb.Shell object, so you can access it.
an "activate" method: public void activate ()  This will be called when a user first activates your plugin, and subsequently when Rhythmbox starts and activates it.  It should feature most setup.
a "deactivate" method: public void deactivate ()
an "update_state" method: public void update_state ().  I actually didn't require this, so mine is empty.

Outside of the class, as its own method, we'll want a ModuleInit method, peas_register_type:
[ModuleInit]
public void peas_register_types (GLib.TypeModule module) {
  var objectmodule = module as Peas.ObjectModule;
  objmodule.register_extension_type (typeof (Peas.Activatable), typeof (DJAquaPlugin));
}

The most important required method will probably be "activate".  To interact with Rhythmbox, you'll want to use the "object" member.  I set it to a new RB.Shell variable, like "RB.Shell shell = (RB.Shell)this.object".  You may also want access to the RB.ShellPlayer, which is a property within RB.Shell, so you can use "RB.ShellPlayer shell_player; shell.get ("shell-player", out shell_player);" to get a reference to it.  From there, you can use their APIs to manipulate Rhythmbox and connect to their signals to interact with play.

In "deactivate", you'll want to clean up anything you set up in activate () that rhythmbox will no longer need.  In my case, I set up a connection to Speech Dispatcher which I will then want to remove.

Rhythmbox plugin configuration: Peas.Configurable

I wanted the user to be able to control a few settings for the plugin, mostly which voice they hear.  For that, your plugin should implement PeasGtk.Configurable.  This binding isn't shipped right now, so I created mine own, which I'll submit a patch for, and for now will be available with my code.

So, our class signature becomes this: 
class DJAquaPlugin : Peas.ExtensionBase, Peas.Activatable, PeasGtk.Configurable {
and we impement the required method:
public Gtk.Widget create_configure_widget ()

There are some important points:

• every time you open the preferences, it calls create_configure_widget and expects a new widget
• every time you close the preferences, it destroys the widget you had previously given it
• therefore, you cannot be clever and save a reference to your widget once created and keep returning the same one; if you try, you'll encounter memory errors since your widget will have been unallocated.
• the widget should not be a window itself (in Glade, you can create top level widgets that are not windows)

I used Glade to design my UI with something like a Gtk.VBox as the top level widget.  That worked fine. I created a separate object to handle all the code for preferences, giving logic to the menus, etc.  I used GSettings to bind preferences to, so both my main plugin could read them, and my preferences object could manipulate them.

NOTE: To be able to locate the GtkBuilder file, I had to use RB.find_plugin_data_file (), which I needed to add a binding more.  I'll submit a patch for that.  There's autofoo in the Makefile.am that ensures it gets distributed (EXTRA_DIST I think) and will be where find_plugin_data_file looks.

Rhythmbox plugin configuration: GSettings

GSettings requires a schema file be installed, as well as code to read and set your settings.  You should have a namespaced ID for your settings.  My namespaced ID is "org.gnome.rhythmbox.plugins.djaqua".  My file is pretty simple, and looks like this
<schemalist>
  <schema id="org.gnome.rhythmbox.plugins.djaqua" path="/org/gnome/rhythmbox/plugins/djaqua/">
    <key name="output-module" type="s">
      <default>'espeak'</default>
      <summary>Speech Engine</summary>
      <description>The installed system to synthesise voice for you.
      Different systems have different sets of voices and
      quality. Some examples are flite, espeak, festival, etc.  You
      may need to install them.</description>
    </key>
    <key name="voice" type="s">
      <default>'MALE1'</default>
      <summary>Voice</summary>
      <description>The voice to speak in.</description>
    </key>
  </schema>
</schemalist
I only have one schema in my schemalist, the one for my plugin.  I have two keys; these can be numbers, sets of options, strings, etc.  In my case, each key is associated with a single string value (the "s" for type indicates string).  Each key has a default value, a summary (name), and a description of what the key is for.

NOTE: while working on this, I was installing everything under ~/.local, rather than into my system.  GSettings currently only checks for setting schemas installed under XDG_DATA_DIRS (e.g. /usr/share and /usr/local/share) in a glib-2.0/schemas directory.  That's fine, but you can't extend XDG_DATA_DIRS easily in your .bash_profile in the same way you can PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc.  Trying to do
XDG_DATA_DIRS=$XDG_DATA_DIRS:$HOME/.local/share
results in an almost broken GNOME session because XDG_DATA_DIRS isn't a known, set variable right while reading .bash_profile. :(  Instead, for testing, I do
XDG_DATA_DIRS=/usr/local/share:/usr/share:$HOME/.local/share
in .bash_profile.  Let me know if you have a better solution.  I intend on filing a bug some day.

For code with settings, I created a GSettings object for my schema, and connected to its "changed" signal, so if a preference changed in the preferences dialogue, I could change the plugins behaviour (e.g. change the voice).

Inside my preferences code, I created its own GSettings object (my preferences code is in its own class), and bound the Gtk.ComboBox's I use to their corresponding GSettings.  In particular, I set the "id-column" property on my Gtk.ComboBox's to be the string I needed to give Speech Dispatcher, and then bound the "active-id" property for the Gtk.ComboBox's to the settings.   It got a bit confusing, but you can see the code yourself if you need something similar.

Custom Bindings

Vala can access other compiled libraries written in other languages: hooray!  Unfortunately, it needs a .vapi file to tell it how to provide a Vala API for that library.  Boo!, but necessary.  There are parts of libpeas that are not bound yet, and libspeechd (Speech Dispatcher) was not bound at all.  So, when working in Vala, sometimes you'll have to bind additional methods, or an entire library.

I created two custom bindings

• libpeas-gtk-1.0.vapi
• libspeechd.vapi

I really need to submit patches for both so they can be more widely used.  :)

Writing VAPI files is not that hard.  You can look in /usr/share/vala-*/vapi to model a custom one off of those.  In the .vapi file, you generally

• specify a namespace
• specify enums and classes, that will want to know things like what 
• the name of the underlying C structure is, 
• what .h file declares its methods, 
• what prefixes its types go by
• names of its public members
• names of its methods (and corresponding C names)
• any special considerations (e.g. how to handle array parametres)
• free, destroy, copy, and constructor functions

I don't fully understand what I'm doing when I create them, but creating a rough one and submitting it as a patch at least gets the ball rolling, and helpful people on bugzilla can point you in what needs work. :)

[General] Feeling happy and exercise

Yesterday, my friend Liljana suggested my soul was dead.  I didn't know how to respond, but I understood what she meant.  I sort of had no will to do anything.  That obviously cannot be allowed to persist, so knowing that regular exercise makes me happy, I resumed my morning exercises (on vacation while I was on Christmas vacation) and forced myself to go to iaido.  By the end of it, I was back to my chipper self.   I wonder how consistent the effect is for me.