First few contacts on 6 Meter ..

Couldn't hold my excitement .. I've tried few times working on 6 meter, most of the time by listening to 50.110 but most of the time, it returned with just load of noise .. nothing much excitement coming from 6 meter band .. so I thought until I call on CQ this afternoon .. did my call at 3:30PM MYT and thanks to the following VK6 stations for the contact:

VK6KXW (Peter) - 55 to 57

VK6ADI (Barrie) - 53 QSB

VK6JJ (John) - 42 and lost you on your last transmission

VK6IA (Andrew) - 53

VK6IQ (Glen) - 55

Thanks all for the contact, you guys really made my day today. Sorry if I missed to wish all of you Merry Christmas & Happy New Year ..

Using Ubuntu Karmic Koala for remote logging

I've few routers running DD-WRT and OpenWRT in my house, one acting as the main router, another one as AP only and the last one running APRS4R package to gate traffics from APRS/RF to APRS-IS and vice-versa. These routers are running on limited memory and I do need to sometime check the log when some of them suddenly stop working, so logging into the router itself is kind of useless (it will be gone when I restart the router) and added to the problem.

Since I've Ubuntu Karmic Koala running on my LHS, this is the best time to use it fully. One thing I'm not so sure is, how to enable remote logging. I had Debian Lenny running on my Buffalo before and I don't need anything fancy.. it works out of box.. but doesn't seem to be with my current LHS. I did search around the net with even more confusion .. but finally, I found a discussion about the logging system on Karmic .. it no longer using syslogd but rsyslogd now. Yes, that is it .. so, I went to look on how to enable remote logging via rsyslogd and found this document:

www.ubuntu.com/system/files/CentralLogging-v4-20090901-03.pdf

Remove the comments for UDP/TCP syslog receptions from /etc/rsyslog.conf and rerun the rsyslog seems to solve this problem.

New mailing list for APRS users in Malaysia

It seems that the number of APRS users in Malaysia has been increasing steadily of late and as such, having a mailing list to discuss issues and suggestions to make APRS even better assimilated within the amateur radio operators is the best way. Currently, APRS is mainly concentrated in KL, Penang, JB and Kota Kinabalu with some others are coming up with the infra and slowly adapting.

From my past few weeks experience going around Peninsular Malaysia, it seems that the setup in Penang is more toward having one way igate, with JB following suite but I believe there is at least one working digipeater somewhere in Tampoi. Hopefully with this new mailing list, we could share our knowledge locally and discuss what the best to improve the adaptation of APRS among Malaysian radio amateur operators.



For those who're interested, our mailing list is: myaprs @ yahoogroups.com.

What things running on my LHS?

It has been more than three weeks since I built my own headless Linux Home Server out of Intel Atom processor & motherboard running Ubuntu 9.10 server edition. I've been adding new things as I go along, getting more servers running to max out and justify me running it as it is .. a server. So, what've been running now?

1. samba - network storage for all PCs in the house (5 PCs running WinXP & 1 MBP on Snow Leopard)
2. aprs4r - APRS igate/digipeater to pass packets to and from aprs-is (amateur radio)
3. torrentflux b4rt - filesharing stuff
4. cups - sharing a single HL2140 laser printer for the whole house
5. firefly - streaming media files to iTunes media player
6. mediatomb - streaming media files to PS3

I think the LHS is still "under utilised" and thinking of adding more as time goes. For now, it is worth it to replace my old Buffalo LS2 to a full-fledge Linux Home Server.

C200 windscreen wiper problem

My wife came back today with one thing, her C200's windscreen wiper got stuck to the windscreen's trim, passenger side. Searching on the net and found a similar problem here:

http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/showthread.php?t=42678

Will try the following DIY, else .. Mill.Merz I should go! :)

http://202tech.mkosonen.com/howto/wiper.html

Update 1: Opened up the bonet, taken all the things open .. no juice .. WD40 couldn't help either.

Update 2: Went to Hakitrade/Puchong and got myself the wiper assembly minus the motor.

Update 3: DIY aborted, I couldn't fit the motor to the arm assembly that I bought second from Hakitrade. I need to go back and get the one that is compatible.. it seems that though both having the same part number, mine is the newer one and has six holes instead of three..

Update 4: OK, got a replacement .. but I will not go to Hakitrade/Puchong anymore. They overcharged me, went to Kemuning one and his younger brother charged RM120 less than the one at Puchong. Put back everything together in less than 30 minutes. Hopefully won't break again..

CRM: Copying attachments from service ticket to follow up document

I've got another request which I hope will be easy to implement. Copying all attachments from a service ticket to a follow up document. Hint: CL_CRM_DOCUMENTS.

To get all attachments:

CL_CRM_DOCUMENTS=>GET_INFO
Supply BUSINESS_OBJECT (instid = order's GUID, typeid = order's object_type, catid = 'BO'

To copy to another business object:

CL_CRM_DOCUMENTS=>COPY
Supply BUSINESS_OBJECT & NEW_BUSINESS_OBJECT

It seems that we don't need to use GET_INFO to be able to use the COPY function to copy all documents from the original service ticket to the follow up document. This has yet to be proven by me.. I'll implement it tomorrow and update this blog again.

Update 1: The COPY method is spot on! No further processing needs to be done.

Samba 3.4/Ubuntu 9.10 problem

For the last ten days, I did not realised that I'm not able to share my files in the LHS with the rest of the PCs on my LAN.. and just to find out that .. I couldn't access it from my own MBP. I thought this has to do with my network until I tried looking at the log .. it was complaining about:

[2009/11/15 15:07:51, 0] smbd/server.c:456(smbd_open_one_socket)
smbd_open_once_socket: open_socket_in: Address already in use

Searching the keywords on the net and found that I'm not the only one having this problem. Though some do not have problem, but I do .. and reading from discussions found on the net .. there are few things need to be done .. but I just couldn't get those suggestion to work.. removing winbindd, changing the sequence on how things loaded in smb.conf didn't help. Helpless .. I did an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade just now .. there seems to be an update for Samba .. so, downloading it right now .. hopefully all are well after this .. will report back!

Update: Samba/network drives are back on now .. so it seems that the samba package which comes with the Ubuntu 9.10 has problem.. Running an update will solve this problem.