Michal Čihař - Archive for Jan. 1, 2008

It looks like I messed up few things in yesterday Gammu release so here is hot fix version. Changelog is quite small and fixes all regressions found so far:

• Fix model name parsing.
• Fix reading of IrMC phonebook.
• Fix visibility of HAVE_STRUCT_TM_TM_ZONE in header files.
• Increase some timeouts in OBEX driver.
• Fix compilation on s390.

You can download from usual place: http://cihar.com/gammu/, Binary packages will be available soon on all usual places (Debian Unstable, OpenSuse build service, Ubuntu PPA repository).

New version of python-gammu has been just released. It fixes possible crashes, brings compatibility with Gammu 1.22.0 and adds support for converting to and from vCard/vCalendar/iCalendar formats. Full list of changes:

• Properly use Py_ssize_t type to avoid problems on 64-bit systems.
• Properly handle phonebook Category attribute (can be a text).
• Follow new semantics of GSM_SetDebugFileDescriptor (bug #749).
• Compatibility with current gammu.
• Support for encoding/decoding vCard, vCalendar and iCalendar files.

Download from usual place: http://cihar.com/gammu/python/

After two and half months of development, new Gammu stable release is out. Since last testing version there are only minor changes in vCard export, but full changelog since 1.21.0 is quite long:

• Disable ATOBEX for Motorola V180.
• vCard can now store caller group and private flag (bug #269).
• vCard now stores location and memory type.
• Add ID for Nokia 6131 NFC (bug #775).
• Better skipping of corrupted messages in AT (bug #768).
• Autoload 6510 module if phone is S40 (bug #767).
• Add ID for Nokia 6500s (bug #770).
• Add automatic detection of Nokia phones (bug #770).
• Catch error when calls can not be deleted (bug #738).
• Better documentation of addnew (bug #734).
• Fix detection of OBEX capability on older Siemens phones.
• Try to detect wrongly formatted CMGL reply (bug #771);
• Handle phones which fail to report supported charsets.
• Fixed encoding of WAP indicator messages.
• Support for photos in vCard (bug #227).
• vC* saving now protects against buffer overflows.
• Drop own crosscompilation support, rely on CMake one.
• Also standard CMake parameters used when possible (eg. BUILD_SHARED_LIBS).
• Search does not create thread for non existing devices.
• Fixed possible crash when backing up ringtones.
• Fix possible race condition in searching.
• Fixed invoking of CMake with output to custom directory.
• Compile on platforms where ssize_t does not exist.
• Fix detection of towlower on some compilers.
• Make Bluetooth compile using BCC.
• Fix compilation if strtoull does not exist.
• Compile on platforms where intptr_t does not exist.
• Fixed compilation in BCC (see changes above).
• Check whether compiler supports FUNCTION.
• Reimplement locking and add tests for it.
• GSM_SetDebugFileDescriptor now accepts flag whether file descriptor can be closed (bug #749).
• Soname change due to API breakage (see above).
• Fixed compilation on Mac OS X, thanks to Juan A. Bertolin for testing.
• Script gammu-config can now also work with whiptail.
• Minor fixes in gammu-config script.
• Extra spaces from connection or device name are now stripped.
• Automatically reinitialize FBUS connection if it is dropped.
• Disable OBEX with Motorola Z6c, it is broken (bug #746).
• Refresh manufacturer information on second init of AT (bug #746).
• Always get charset information on AT phone initialization.
• Better handling of OBEX switching for Siemens phones.
• Fix flags for 2630 and 3109c (bug #752).
• Fix handling of caller groups and picture IDs (bug #752).
• Properly set calendar location while adding (bug #747).
• Sign Windows binaries during build.
• Detect long FM station names (bug #727).
• Add ID for Nokia 2630b.
• Handle properly very long lines in vcards (bug #728).
• Do not build and install locales if gettext is not compiled.
• Increase number of calendar entries (bug #725).
• Leak free test runs.
• Support backup of phone phonebook from Siemens (bug #732).
• Properly handle GetNextMemory on Siemens (bug #732).
• Save textual category to backup (bug #737).
• Enable dashboard testing using CTest/CDash.
• Add option to do coverage analysis.
• Properly handle debug file closing.
• Add test case for debug logging.
• Fix decoding of some SMS messages from Nokia phones (bug #735).
• Hack for (still) unknown error code (bug #733).

You can download from usual place: http://cihar.com/gammu/, Binary packages will be available soon in all usual places (Debian Unstable, OpenSuse build service, Ubuntu PPA repository).

Just seen on #gammu:

<nijel> do you have some usb-serial convertor?
<fenix> yes,
<fenix> i use a usb-serial convertor
<nijel> that might be a problem because cables which do not have manual switch [...]
<fenix> you mean ? i don't use usb-serial convertor
<nijel> what? sentence ago you wrote that you use it....
<fenix> i see . i don't use usb-serial convertor  do it .
<nijel> so how exactly is the phone connected? usb cable? serial cable? serial cable + usb-serial convertor?
<fenix> i use  a serial cable + usb-serial convertor
<nijel> fine, so the problem is most likely in the convertor - [...]
<fenix> my pc have a serial port , i will use it . thank you nijel

Why the hell do you use usb-serial convertor, which is usually piece of crap, instead of native serial port?

Hmm, again another general resolution. Yes, but this one seems to be really tricky. During discussion, several almost unrelated options have been merged into single vote, what really does not make it easy to understand and choose preferred option. Yes they are related in the way that they will affect time of Lenny release, but I think splitting it into several votes would make more sense.

On the other side, Lenny release is getting delayed more and more and boycotting this vote also does not seem as a good choice to me. Such choice will practically delay Lenny release after another decision will be made or all firmware issues will be solved. And neither of these choices seems to be possible to happen in a timely manner...

After more than one year, I decided it's time to resurrect pub reviews category on my blog. The delay was partly caused by my half year trip to Japan meanwhile and lack of motivation to blog, but I think now I'm ready to push some more reviews.

This time I'll recommend Kozlovna (sorry no web pages exists, address is Lidická 20, 150 00 Praha 5). I randomly found it when walking in the city centre and I was really positively surprised by quality of beer (Velkopopovický Kozel 11° Medium), food and service. On my first visit I had great ribs, on second deer fillets and both were just delicious.

The interior perfectly matches name of the restaurant and the brewery which ships the beer (Kozel = billy-goat) and you can find horns or goat shapes all around. Another plus is that half of the restaurant is non smoking, so you don't have to smell that ugly smoke.

Can somebody tell me, why ICECC_VERSION variable is used as path to file with used toolchain? Why does help say "see create-env" when there is no such thing I could see? Why does not it properly tell, that I have to use icecc --build-native and then use absolute path to resulting tarball as ICECC_VERSION and then it will start to work?

Quick notes for future:

icecc --build-native
export ICECC_VERSION=`pwd`/b98eeead34edf15d2edf2383c2c4e317.tar.gz

New Gammu testing release has just born. The largest changes are in vCard handler. It now supports photos in vCard and should properly handle error states which previously would lead to crash. This also leads to changed API for encoding/decoding vCard/vCalendar/vNote entries. Rest of changes is usual amount of bug fixes.

Full list of changes:

• Better skipping of currupted messages in AT (bug #768).
• Autoload 6510 module if phone is S40 (bug #767).
• Add ID for Nokia 6500s (bug #770).
• Add automatic detection of Nokia phones (bug #770).
• Catch error when calls can not be deleted (bug #738).
• Better documentation of addnew (bug #734).
• Fix detection of OBEX capability on older Siemens phones.
• Try to detect wrongly formatted CMGL reply (bug #771);
• Handle phones which fail to report supported charsets.
• Fixed encoding of WAP indicator messages.
• Support for photos in vCard (bug #227).
• vC* saving now protects against buffer overflows.

You can download from usual place: http://cihar.com/gammu/,

Debian users will find packages in experimental soon.

I just discovered (not new) feature of OpenSSH, which allows to have several sessions over a single network connection. If you are once connected to the server, all other sessions can use existing connections and this makes much faster things like working with remote SVN or shell completion of remote filenames.

All you need in config file to make it work is something like this:

Host *
    ControlPath ~/.ssh/sock/%r@%h:%p
    ControlMaster auto

Today I published set of changes to phpMyAdmin website, which add microformats attributes where applicable. Currently hCard and hAtom were added. The first one enables you to grab contacts directly from web page (if your browser supports it, currently you need some extension such as Operator). I also added some rel attributes to links, so application browsing the website can know relevance of some links.