Michal Čihař - Blog Archives for English

For quite a long time I wonder, if there is anybody looking at bugs reported in Ubuntu. Whenever I look at bugs reported in Ubuntu on some of packages I maintain in Debian, there is huge amount of them. Most of them are simple duplicates, but still it indicates that nobody have looked at them. Some are simply something what should be forwarded upstream, while some are clearly packaging bugs, which I usually fix. However I think there should be somebody at Ubuntu side looking at them and forwarding them to right place...

I finally managed to update my blog to new nanoblogger, which should work a bit faster and is easier to control, so I might get back to throwing random thoughts to world wide web.

While doing that, I modified a little bit templates, what means that I cut out most of dependency on Google - for statistics I use own Piwik instance and the advertisement is currently served by AdBard.

Well it has been released some time ago, but I forgot to announce it here, so here it comes - I have released Enca 1.12. If you don't know Enca, it is an Extremely Naive Charset Analyser. It detects character set and encoding of text files and can also convert them to other encodings using either a built-in converter or external libraries and tools like libiconv, librecode, or cstocs.

The full changes are short:

• Fixes some minor memory leaks.
• Fixes little problems in autoconf scripts.

You can download from http://dl.cihar.com/enca/.

I just put online new Wammu and Gammu website at http://wammu.eu/. The reason for this change is that I want all relevant information about Gammu and related programs to be available in one place. You can find there information about Gammu, SMSD and python-gammu as well including some information and documentation which used to be spread in wiki and various other documents.

Also all Gammu and Wammu related announcements will be published only on that website and will no longer pollute my blog (and all planets where my blog is being syndicated). If you followed RSS feed, you should update your reader to http://wammu.eu/news/rss/.

The new website also includes updated Gammu Phone Database, which will look almost same to users, but has been completely rewritten underneath, what will allow some extensions in future and allows easier management of entries for me.

What currently lacks behind old website is Czech translation. The reason is in simple fact that new website contains much more texts and I did not yet have time to translate it. If you want to help, just go to l10n.cihar.com, or just follow translators instructions. This time it will be also possible to add other translations, so if you want to translate website to other language, you are welcome!

After month of collecting little fixes flying around, I release Enca 1.11. If you don't know Enca, it is an Extremely Naive Charset Analyser. It detects character set and encoding of text files and can also convert them to other encodings using either a built-in converter or external libraries and tools like libiconv, librecode, or cstocs.

The full changes are short:

• Dropped scanf configure test which is not used at all.
• Fixes some wrong format strings.

You can download from http://dl.cihar.com/enca/.

Yes, blacklists are great, especially if wrongly used. Currently I can not renew SSL certificate I used to have from StartSSL, because they somehow use blacklist from Google to block sites with malware. The word somehow is important here, because I am not listed as being suspicious, but they still see me blacklisted.

And the more funny thing seems to be that Google found sometimes some malware on my site, but there is no way to find out what it was. Maybe it is somehow related to the broken antivirus complaining that NSIS binary contains a virus, but who knows...

As the funny story goes on, I get to know that it is because I'm on AS:15685 network. Well I am. And as well are about other thousands of servers hosted in that place. So what?

PS: Just to be sure, I just did full scan of all files on dl.cihar.com and here is the result:

----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Known viruses: 621888
Engine version: 0.95.2
Scanned directories: 133
Scanned files: 3975
Infected files: 0
Data scanned: 14546.95 MB
Data read: 2462.58 MB (ratio 5.91:1)
Time: 1093.524 sec (18 m 13 s)

Gammu 1.26.1 is out! This release just fixes few bugs in AT driver.

Full list of changes:

• CPIN reply is handled like regular one except in A2D case (bug #994).
• Fix finding first empty position when memory is empty (bug #996).
• Fixed parsing of SMS status reports.
• Fixed parsing of text messages with new lines (bug #995).

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

Debian users will find packages in unstable soon, SUSE, Fedora and Mandriva users can check repository in OpenSuse Build Service and Ubuntu in my PPA.

Gammu 1.26.0 is out! There is reduced memory usage, tons of bugfixes, better support for reading messages from Motorola phones.

Full list of changes:

• Fixed handling of RunOnReceive error code.
• Fixed crash when encoding USSD dials.
• Fixed decoding of phonebook entries on Motorola (bug #988).
• Fixed decoding of long text messages (bug #990).
• Fixed location of saved message (bug #989).
• Added ID for Nokia 1681c.
• Fixed reading of phonebook from Samsung (bug #980).
• Add ID for Nokia 3390b (bug #982).
• DCT3 dependent code reports error when phone is not DCT3 (bug #982).
• Fixed reading of DCT4 file folders (bug #986).
• Reworked RPM packages (separate libraries and SMSD).
• Huawei E160 uses encoded USSD requests.
• Better support for messages on Motorola, thanks to Quintin Hill.
• Fix reading of SMS backups without text (bug #963).
• Send message even if SendingTimeOut is null (bug #977).
• Disabled automatic OBEX for Motorola phones.
• Increased limits for message length, bump soname to 7 because of this.
• Changed SMSD tables to be able to handle longer messages from Motorola phones.
• Documented most commands in man page.
• Completed Czech translation of Gammu.
• Avoid crash on some Nokia smses (bug #959).
• Added support for Bluetooth on more BSD systems, thanks to Iain Hibbert.
• Added new command setsmsc.
• Added option to disable checking for battery and signal in SMSD.
• Fixed getting firmware revision on AT phones (bug #951).
• Added support for home/work mobile number (bug #952).
• Fixed handling of error response for security status in AT.
• Fixed segfault on systems with very low memory limits.
• Development now goes on in Git repository, please check README.
• 6510 driver now dynamically allocates memory for file caches, what reduces Gammu memory usage by 800 MiB.
• Added testcases for AT+CNMI replies.
• Fixed range parsing in AT engine.
• Added reconnect support in PostgreSQL driver in SMSD.
• Gammu debug level no longer can be controlled separately in SMSD.
• Fix loop when Nokia phone does not allow to access files (bug #954).

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

Debian users will find packages in unstable soon, SUSE, Fedora and Mandriva users can check repository in OpenSuse Build Service and Ubuntu in my PPA.

Our website currently shows a bit wrong information about file downloads. The single reason for this is that we take this data from sourceforge.net and all they exports are currently broken in some way.

Per file RSS (which was only working source of information few days ago) seems to be disabled recently, RSS for all files just repeats same metadata for all files and the old releases RSS does not list recent releases.

I did not want to blame them again, but it has been already three weeks from my last complains and bug reports and all that changed is that they broke (or removed?) the last working feed.

Gammu 1.25.93 is out! This is just a bugfix release heading to 1.26.0 next week.

Full list of changes:

• Fixed reading of phonebook from Samsung (bug #980).
• Add ID for Nokia 3390b (bug #982).
• DCT3 dependent code reports error when phone is not DCT3 (bug #982).
• Fixed reading of DCT4 file folders (bug #986).
• Fixed parsing of config file with whitespace (bug #987).

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

Debian users will find packages in experimental soon, SUSE, Fedora and Mandriva users can check experimental repository in OpenSuse Build Service.