codercotton

Robertson Proposes Free Linspire Engineering for Linux iTunes

codercotton — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 07:16:14 +0000

Many people have chided Apple for not porting it’s popular music software to Linux. Yesterday, in his blog post responding to Steve Jobs’ stance on DRM, Linspire Founder Michael Robertson offers a suggestion - let Linspire port iTunes to Linux.

4) Make iTunes software for Linux.

I talked to you a few years ago about making iTunes work on Linux. Apple made the leap to Microsoft Windows by releasing iTunes for that platform. Porting iTunes to Linux would be a relatively easy job and give people more flexibility in their choice of operating system. A Linux company I founded called Linspire would even do the engineering for free if engineering resources were an issue.

This would be great, one of the biggest reasons I don’t spend more time booted into Linux is the lack of being able to share my music library with my OS X installation.

I really doubt that Apple would follow this route - I believe they’d want to do all the engineering in-house. It shouldn’t be that hard though. Google has already ported their Earth and Picasa applications to Linux using the WINE frameworks, and they actually work pretty well. The open-source project also benefited from bug fixes Google submitted. I can see Apple, with their open-source ties, taking this same route to develop a Linux iTunes.

And if for some reason they actually do allow Linspire to do the engineering, I’m sure Linspire would utilize WINE as well.

-Cotton

Linux On Your Linksys - A 5 Minute How-To

codercotton — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:21:04 +0000

I was having issues with my Linksys WRT54G Ver. 6 router, and the Linksys forums definitely show others with the same problem. Obviously a firmware flaw at fault - no matter what combination of settings it just would not allow any PPTP VPN connections through. It would just hang at the authentication stage, blah.

Well, fsck that. I have heard of running Linux on Linksys, but never had a compatible router to test with. It turned out to be very straight-forward, so I decided I’d put together a quick and to-the-point how-to. This is for the WRT54G Vers. 6, 5.1 and 5 only, NOT the GS… don’t brick your router. You will also need to set the IP address of the computer to something in the 192.168.1 subnet (ie, 192.168.1.2) with 192.168.1.1 as the gateway. That said, lets get down to business.

Download vxworks_prep, vxworks_killer and DD-WRT. Unzip the first 2 files.
Point your web browser to your router, default is http://192.168.1.1. Click the ‘Administration’ tab up top, then click ‘Firmware Upgrade’. On this page, click browse and choose the vxworks_prep_v03.bin, then click ‘Apply’.
After a minute, your browser will go blank. Power cycle your router.
Go to http://192.168.1.1 again, this time you will see a different firmware upgrade screen. This time, choose vxworks_killer_g_v06.bin, and click ‘Apply’.
Wait for the ‘Success’ message! Again, power cycle your router. The power LED should stay blinking at this point.
Now we have to TFTP over the Linux distro, flashing it to the firmware.
- Windows users, download the Linksys TFTP tool, put ‘192.168.1.1′ in the Server field, then click ‘…’ on the right side to browse for file, and choose your dd-wrt.v23_micro_generic.bin file, then click upgrade.
- Mac OS X users can use the cli TFTP tool:
  - Open the Terminal application, then cd to the directory where you have the dd-wrt.v23_micro_generic.bin file.
  - Type ‘tftp’ and press enter
  - Inside the TFTP shell, type ‘connect 192.168.1.1′ and press enter. Next, type ‘binary’ and press enter to switch to binary mode, then ‘put dd-wrt.v23_micro_generic.bin’.
  - q or ctrl+d gets out of TFTP
After the TFTP transfer completes, it will take 2 or 3 minutes for the router to flash the ROM and reboot. Once you have a stable power light, you should be able to log into your new DD-WRT Linux router at http://192.168.1.1 with the username ‘root’ and the password ‘admin’.

You will have all the same options plus tons more functionality and for me, a better-running router that actually lets me VPN. There has been tons of work put into this project, the DD-WRT guys deserve much praise.

-Cotton

2007 Prius Hacks - Turn Off Reverse and Seatbelt Beeping

codercotton — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 09:22:49 +0000

In order to disable the reverse beeping on your 2007 Prius, follow these instructions:

Without your foot on the brake, turn on your Prius and make sure you are in ODO mode (not Trip A or B). Power off the Prius
With your foot on the brake, turn on the Prius. As soon as the ‘Ready’ light is lit, press and hold the ODO button for at least 10 seconds.
Keeping the ODO button pressed, move the shifter to Reverse and release, then press the Park button again. At this point, ‘b- on’ should appear on your dashboard display.
You can now let go of the ODO button, and each press of the ODO button toggles between ‘b-on’ and ‘b-off’. To disable the reverse beep, simply set it to ‘b-off’, the power off the Prius.

And to disable each of the front seatbelt warning beeps, follow these instructions:

Be sure someone is sitting in the seat which seatbelt beep you wish to disable.
Without your foot on the brake, turn on your Prius and make sure you are in ODO mode (not Trip A or B). Power off the Prius
With your foot on the brake, turn on the Prius. As soon as the ‘Ready’ light is lit, press and hold the ODO button for at least 10 seconds.
Keeping the ODO button pressed, insert the seatbelt that you wish to disable the beep for. At this point, ‘b- on’ should appear on your dashboard display.
You can now let go of the ODO button, and each press of the ODO button toggles between ‘b- on’ and ‘b-off’. To disable the reverse beep, simply set it to ‘b-off’, the power off the Prius.

These instructions may work for earlier model years as well, although 2006 and earlier models may require noone be in the seat which seatbelt is being disabled.

-Cotton