Getting to grips with Unity ... MyUnity

I've also been through my share of Debian based distros pre Ubuntu such as Storm and Knoppix. I briefly tried dabbling with non-Debian distros (Redhat and Centos) but just didn't like it. I'v esince settled happily with Ubuntu.

Having initially started with Windowmaker I would now say I'm an established Gnome (+ metacity) user. I tried KDE but it didn't work for me .. actually it worked just fine - I simply prefer the Gnome look-n-feel (maybe the big paw print struct a chord .. who knows). I wanted to like OS X but couldn't (the app / window thing .. no sorry).

So in summary I've been very happy with Ubuntu and Gnome ... until I upgraded and got Unity. Previously I tried Enlightment but reverted - but I didn't get it by default. With 11.04 I hunted and found out how to remove it - I succeeded but now on 12.04 I 'm getting constant dialog errors, etc, etc .. so I'm thinking it's time to create a new user with default settings to see if I've broken things. Along the way I'll check out Unity.

So this post is a bit about me trying Unity - hopefully positive, and capturing the little customisations, things I like and how I've managed to set them up in Unity.

Now that I'm on 12.04 I've found MyUnity .. things are looking up .. temporarily :)

Things I like

Focus follow mouse 

Easy to configure with gnome-tweak-tool and it doesn't seem to be a bad thing - i.e. it won't break Unity. Ref: http://askubuntu.com/questions/64605/how-do-i-set-focus-follows-mouse

Summary: gnome-tweak-tool is good.

Application menu in panel

A bit weird to me but I'm getting used to it (bit Mac-ish maybe?). When you have multiple windows of different apps and focus following the mouse this is a bit of a fail.

Summary: Still not convinced

Lots of horizontal workspaces 

I'm trying to figure out the how Untiy will let me keep working with lots of horizontal workspaces - myUnity can configure them  yippeee .. ah no - It seems I'm running Unity-2D (see http://askubuntu.com/questions/136324/always-boots-into-2d-mode) and likely my hardware doesn't support anything more advanced (Toshiba Portege m800).

Summary: OK so now we start failing big time


Also .. what about dragging and dropping windows in the workspace panel app thing ???

So MyUnity doesn't allow me to configure all the fancy stuff .. but some of it is not really that fancy? Why can't I configure the number or rows / columns of workspaces. Arrrgh.

So what to do - sadly I'll need to try gconf-editor and try and hack away without breaking things.

I'll update as I continue but it just seems Unity is too aggressive a proposition. There's too much lost functionality .. hey I 'could' do some good stuff .. but I can't. The Unity upgrade didn't come with a box full of free hardware.

Icon HDP for SPDIF Cubox audio

http://www.internationaldynamics.co.nz/ are the NZ distributor of the Icon HDP for $799.

This looks like a very tidy option give it's time for me to make use of SPDIF audio on the cubox.

Cubox [Part 3]: Revisited .. Asterisk 1.8 issues

Turns out there is no sound on out-bound calls so my claims of success were a little premature.

I've been trying to diagnose - asterisk debugging is not super easy to follow and nothing cries PANIC. A good way to test was to use call-recording feature on 2talk and then test outbound call to mobile (using a friend to talk on one and you on the other is easiest ;). If both voices are recorded then obviously 2talk is receiving both and having issues thereafter (simple and obvious but seems to confirm that 2talk are passing on what they receive).

Searching around I see some notes on similar (no/extremely choppy audio on outbound call issues) such as https://issues.asterisk.org/jira/browse/ASTERISK-16258

Some things to try to resolve this.

Also review iax show netstat maybe the lack of sound is due to issues with load encoding on the fly, etc.

Cubox USB bus limits?

Starting to see some USB bus contention / limits being hit on cubox (ref: http://www.solid-run.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=635)


I have 2 usb sounds card(s) and 1x usb HDD (will move to eSATA when I get a new housing) running off an unpowered hub on USB bus 2 .. i.e.


root@cubox:~# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 020: ID 0d8c:000c C-Media Electronics, Inc. Audio Adapter
Bus 002 Device 019: ID 0bc2:3300 Seagate RSS LLC 
Bus 002 Device 018: ID 145f:0090 Trust 
Bus 002 Device 017: ID 05e3:0606 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB 2.0 Hub / D-Link DUB-H4 USB 2.0 Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

The USB HDD is powered .. I've seen other posts recommending using a powered hub and ensuring devices are shared over the 2 ports .. any limits here. I was hoping to run a second USB HDD to pair the existing for back-up. Over-night I found mpd had stopped (possibly during maintenance - still investigating). During 'working' operation MPD is, on occasion, reporting ..



Jun 17 09:20 : output: "Lounge Speakers" [oss] failed to play: Write error on /dev/dsp2: Broken pipe
Jun 17 09:20 : output: "Lounge Speakers" [oss] failed to play: Write error on /dev/dsp2: Broken pipe

I'm also seeing the following in syslog

Jun 17 09:20:34 cubox kernel: [829633.363960] orion-ehci orion-ehci.1: sitd_submit: can't schedule iso stream
Jun 17 09:20:34 cubox kernel: [829633.373964] cannot submit datapipe for urb 0, error -28: not enough bandwidth
Jun 17 09:20:34 cubox kernel: [829633.390285] orion-ehci orion-ehci.1: sitd_submit: can't schedule iso stream
Jun 17 09:20:34 cubox kernel: [829633.397412] cannot submit datapipe for urb 0, error -28: not enough bandwidth

Cubox [Part 4]: usb wifi + kernel build

Ideally a Ralink so I grabbed a cheap D-Link Wireless N 150 USB adapter:


[93379.042492] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using orion-ehci and address 2
[93379.211469] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=07d1, idProduct=3c16
[93379.218616] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[93379.226201] usb 1-1: Product: 11n Adapter
[93379.230249] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Ralink
[93379.234729] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 1.0
[93379.240455] usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[93861.002520] backlight power down

Debian wiki shows the way forward http://wiki.debian.org/rt2870sta 

Sadly the modules that have been built for the stock kernel .. however in the wonderful world of openness the lovely folk at solid-run.com have the kernel on github   https://github.com/rabeeh/linux-2.6.32.9 so I can simply clone it and build (no huge reason to make a massive jump yet).

Watch this space ...

Cubox [Part 3]: + Asterisk 1.8 .. fully operational

As mentioned I rebuilt the Cubox with Debian 'squeeze' and got mpd running (see previous post). The bigger hurdle for me was to get Asterisk running and complete migration of an old Centos / Trixbox set-up .. Centos was just too awkward for me.

Failing

I began fooling around trying to migrate the config from the Trixbox server to the default Asterisk config files that came installed via apt-get on squeeze. Whilst both were 1.6 I realised the Trixbox ones were quite modified in set-up by use of freepbx gui to configure them. I got to the point where I was coping over the php agi scripts to find they weren't php5 compliant ... OK this isn't going to work cleanly .. back it up.

Thinking about it:
I'm actually pretty happy with freepbx I just don't want the Centos that Trixbox comes with
My Asterisk config is actually pretty simple

1. 1 x IAX2 trunk 
2. 1 x SIP trunk 
3. 1 x out-/in-bound routes 
4. 1 x Ring Group (ring all extensions .. in NO ANSWER hand over to VM IVR) 
5. 1 x VM IVR (leave message for whom?) 
6. 3 x Extensions (2000 - Dect phone, 2001 - Me, 2002 - Mrs and more to follow I'm sure) 

.. so decided to change tack.

Cubox [Part 2]: mpd, usb HDDs and sound cards

Not much to say .. all just an apt-get install and migrate over from old music server.

I have /etc/fstab with labels set-up for the USB HDDs (only one operational but I will boot two for back-ups).

Also need to monitor power consumption as I plan to have 4-5 USB devices hanging off a usb hub - only the drives are powered.