Matt's blog

Enabling IPv6 Privacy Addresses

2011-12-15T12:00:00.000-05:00

At the last UDS, we once again discussed the state of IPv6 support in Ubuntu. We're in the process of making Ubuntu really rock with IPv6, and this comes with decisions and hard work.

One of these decisions was to enable IPv6 Privacy Extensions by default. In other words, rather than having an IPv6 address that is derived directly from your network device's MAC address, you'll now have that, but supplemented with time-based temporary addresses, randomly created, used to establish outgoing connections to systems. This leads to higher privacy; because it makes it harder for an eavesdropper to identify whether different addresses really refer to the same node (that's because the *prefix*, which network you come from, would change, but never the last part of the address, unless using privext). How all of this works is described in more details in RFC 4941.

And leading to this, the hard work. We've recently enabled IPv6 privacy extensions through a new file shipped by procps: /etc/sysctl.d/10-ipv6-privacy.conf. Sysctls are parsed early on in the boot process, but perhaps not early enough; which lead to an issue: on some systems, one would see some interfaces with privext enabled, and some others without. This appears to be because some interfaces (eth0 on my system) are initialized early enough in the boot process that it comes up before the sysctl settings are applied.

With this, another issue: there are three types of sysctl settings for ipv6: default, all, and per-interface entries. According to kernel documentation and help strings; default is meant as the ... default for future interfaces that would get created. At least, that's how I get it. Per-interface entries are obvious: you're just changing the setting for that particular interface. But what about all?

Well, it turns out net.ipv6.conf.all.anything doesn't really do anything, except for forwarding and disable_ipv6. These two options are already handled specially by kernel code. The particular setting that interested me was use_tempaddr though, and isn't being propagated (to the per-interface entries) or use globally to enable privacy addresses on all interfaces; which is something you'll likely want if you are looking to enable privacy extensions at all. Take this example: if you're using a mobile system, you might have wired and wireless connected at the same time, and may want to get up, unplug wired, and move around to a different spot, with or without suspending. While NetworkManager will in time allow toggling privacy extensions per connection, you shouldn't need to manually change this for a default install, on a typical, mobile worker day.

So I started writing my first ever kernel patch: having the net.ipv6.conf.all.use_tempaddr sysctl propagate its value to all the other interfaces already present on the system when the value is changed. It's currently being reviewed before I work towards having it included in the kernel proper. Reviews for that patch are welcome on the kernel-team mailing list.

I've now tested that this solves the issue of applying that particular sysctl at boot time; much like it appears to be expected to work by just about everyone if I'm to believe research I've done on the web on that subject. If there are brave souls wanting to test this, head over to my NM PPA. You'll need to be running Precise, and the package you'll want is linux 3.2.0-4.11~mtrudel2. Since this is a custom hacked up kernel package (but I tried hard to follow the Kernel Team's procedures), standard warnings of caution and the usual "if your system gets broken you get to keep both pieces" apply... but I'm running that package too ;)

Ubuntu Global Jam event in Montreal

2011-08-31T14:58:00.000-04:00

With the Ubuntu Global Jam fast approaching, the Ubuntu-Quebec community is once again organizing an event to get together, find, track down and fix bugs, in Montreal (and inviting anyone interested in helping out to join us). The event will take place Saturday and Sunday, September 3 & 4, 2011, starting around 9 am.

Many thanks to komputes for doing the work of organizing the event and getting everything ready.

This time, our local Global Jam event will be hosted at the Canonical offices here in Montreal! Huge thanks to management for allowing us to use the office.

So if you're in or around Montreal, come join the local Ubuntu-Qc members and let's make Oneiric really rock! Just so we know what to expect, please make sure you register your presence on the LoCo directory event page. You can also watch our wiki page for more information.

Canonical Canada Limited
4200, boulevard Saint-Laurent
Suite 1200 (12e étage)
Montréal, QC
H2W 2R2
Canada

Avec le Global Jam qui arrive à grand pas, l'équipe Ubuntu-Québec récidive et organise une fois de plus un événement à Montréal et invite ses membres (et tous les intéressés!) à se réunir pour trouver, rapporter et régler des bogues. L'événement se tiendra les Samedi et Dimanche, 3 et 4 septembre 2011, à partir de 9 heures.

Un gros merci va à komputes pour le travail d'organisation de l'événement.

De plus, on tient à remercier Canonical pour avoir accepté d'héberger l'événement!

Si vous êtes dans la région de Montréal, vous êtes donc invités à vous joindre aux membres d'Ubuntu-Qc et nous aider à rendre la version 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot, vraiment parfaite!

Pour nous permettre de savoir combien de personnes sont attendues, n'oubliez pas de signifier votre présence sur la page à cet effet sur le LoCo directory. Vous pouvez également obtenir plus d'information sur notre page wiki.

Voir ci-haut pour l'adresse ;)

Hacking on usb-modeswitch, part 1

2011-06-18T15:29:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been spending time porting the usb_modeswitch_dispatcher tcl script from the usb-modeswitch package to C.

While being a great exercise at both my knowledge of Tcl (almost non-existent) and my knowledge of C; it's also been very interesting so far to look at how things were being done to "switch" USB devices from a storage mode into modem mode.

One of the problems I'm hitting now is balancing between performance and disk space usage. In an attempt to cut down on installed space, usb_modeswitch data has been all compressed into one tarball, comprising 162 small text files with the necessary vendor and product IDs expected before, after switching and the magic message to do the actual switch (see Debian bug 578024 for the rationale for compressing files). Having a compressed tarball is great to save space, but would tend to cause delays at boot time when the file needs to be uncompressed (perhaps multiple times) during boot-up. On the other hand, separate files take more space, which is especially a problem for those who don't need usb-modeswitch on their systems.

I'm now working on quantifying the performance impact between compressed and uncompressed, as well as trying to figure out the actual size impact between both options for the Live CD. Theoretically, there should be little difference or even higher space usage with the compressed tarball on the LiveCD (because you can't really compressed something already compressed). I'll find out and post results here. As for the performance impact, there may not be much to look through the compressed tarball and extract one file from it, but every little bit of gain can help.

Jamming in Montreal

2011-04-03T14:55:00.000-04:00

I'll shamelessly copy Jorge's post here to present the Montreal jam:

We're doing some unity testing this weekend. We were about 11 at some point yesterday, and we're 7 this afternoon.

Sadly, we didn't happen to have our own Jason to answer user questions, so I did the best I could ;)

Global Jam in Montréal

2011-03-30T18:54:00.000-04:00

So we're doing it again!

It's obviously getting a bit on the late side to announce this, but I only got the confirmation for our location this weekend -- after work or when I had a second, I wrote the Ubuntu-Quebec mailing list invitation, dented about the event, and created the LoCo directory entry for this event already.

So once again, people wanting to help improve Natty Narwhal or who would like to know more about bugs, triaging, fixing bugs, testing the new release or even writing documentation for applications, and living around Montreal, Qc, don't hesitate to come join us at SUPInfo Montréal this weekend. The closest subway station is McGill on the green line, then about 3 minutes walking time ;)

We're holding our sessions on *both* Saturday and Sunday, from 11am to 5pm on each day.

SUPInfo Montréal
752 Sherbrooke West
Montreal, Quebec

Agrandir le plan

Idea #27250: Auto eth0 isn't very user friendly. Many people wont know what it is.

2011-03-24T12:34:00.000-04:00

The Problem

In case you didn't already figure it out, the title refers to a quite popular idea on Ubuntu Brainstorm. It also refers to a bug report against NetworkManager in Launchpad: bug #386900.

This is one issue I'd particularly like to solve soon. Although it most likely won't change for Natty (given that we're in Feature Freeze, and UI Freeze incessantly), I believe the question truly can be brought to a concensus and fixed early in the Oneiric cycle (and actually be made available upstream for everyone's benefit).

I think much of the issues coming from this bug report stem from diverging expectations of people who just care about their wired connection working and likely don't need to change it all that often, and people who actively use NetworkManager's connection profiles to achieve various things.

First, some background:

Why "Auto eth0" ?

The name "Auto eth0" comes from... well, the fact that it's a connection that was created automatically by NetworkManager with the simplest default settings (that is, just use DHCP to set an IP address), and the fact that it was created for the interface eth0. As such, people with multiple wired network cards would then get one "Auto XXXX" profile for each wired card. This profile should take care of 90% of all use cases, since most people will just want their system to be plugged in, their home router to hand over an IP address and be able to get online.

What's this with profiles ?

I just mentioned that the connection names shown are profiles. This is actually very important to me and quite a lot of people, because there are often cases where one would want to use specific network settings when at work and while at home. In other words, one could use "Auto eth0" at home with a simple setup, and benefit from a "At work" profile which sets a static IP address, or different DNS search strings (what would let your computer access "planet", instead of "planet.ubuntu.com" in Firefox, for instance).

Why so many issues ?

I guess this all falls apart when you consider that most people probably won't use alternate profiles for wired connections. DHCP tends to get most things right from the start, which make profiles not very useful unless you want to do very specific things with your connection.

Add to this the fact that not everyone knows that eth0 is what Linux calls your first wired network card (instead of say "Local Area Connection" as I believe it is on Windows), and you have a nice little mess to untangle.

Fixing all of this

I can't say I have all the answers. It's still unclear to me how much information is absolutely required, and I'm well aware that we can't really please everyone.

However, I've added a proposal to the brainstorm idea (Solution #7). It goes like this:

I'm suggesting the name of the profile to be something like "Default". It should not be tied to any particular adapter.
This way, any new connection use that profile which will have default settings to use DHCP and the usual (as Auto eth0 is set). All adapters could share it, so adding a new interface to a computer would still just "work".

For notifications, I suggest the following changes:

- The title should mention "Wired network", and probably the same of the interface (eth0 in most cases).
- The text of the notification should say:

Connection established, using profile "Default"

or whatever profile in use.

Furthermore, perhaps items in the network menu shouldn't list the full details of the network card (it's full name from udev as it does now). Instead, the interface name would be sufficient. I expect people who use multiple cards to know what eth0 and eth1 mean and refer to.

Lastly, drop the "Auto" from user-created wireless network profiles too. Since they are created by the user and carry the name of the wireless network, "Auto" is both unnecessary, and possibly incorrect (since people can change the settings after creating it).

I'd very much like anyone with an opinion on this to vote on Ubuntu Brainstorm for the idea they prefer, and comment with why my suggestion breaks things for them if it does. I certainly could have forgotten things. Comments on this blog are welcome too ;)

This weekend's GeekFest in Montreal

2011-03-09T12:44:00.000-05:00

We had a table at this weekend's GeekFest geek festival in Montreal. It was awesome! Tons of people, and even better, tons of interest about Ubuntu and our LoCo team.

We gave out CDs, stickers, some extra FSF stickers I had in my backpack, and generally told people all they wanted to know about Ubuntu, gaming on Ubuntu (we had a demo of World of Goo running on one of the laptops for a good part of Sunday), and the Ubuntu Quebec LoCo team. It was very interesting to hear people tell us they already knew about Ubuntu or used it at home, at work, etc; yet still didn't know about the local community team and the help resources we offer.

One of the things we focused on was how Ubuntu Quebec has a mailing list and forum to provide help, announce events and just generally discuss things, as well as our IRC channel on Freenode (#ubuntu-qc, for those who don't know!). Lots of people were surprised to hear of a user group for Ubuntu but very interested by it. I printed and gave out nearly 40 business cards with contact information for the LoCo team.

I am very happy to have been helped by two very active members of the team: Christian Parent (Mobidoy) and Philippe Gauthier (deuxpi), and joined on Sunday by Eric Beaurivage (sipherdee), another LoCo team member. Without them, we certainly couldn't have been able to speak to so many people, and we definitely wouldn't have had any time to visit the other kiosks (can't just stay sitting... if you hold a kiosk in a conference, just got to go see the other things!).

Christian always has very cool ideas, this weekend it was to show his new laptop sticker (a mouse pad glued to the laptop).

Some other interesting aspects:

To our right was the kiosk of devLAB, a project to start programming contests, identify new technologies, etc... Did I get this all right? Sure hope so. The great thing too is that they were interested by our Global Jam ideas, so there may be collaboration on that aspect to come for this cycle's Global Jam event in Montreal. That still needs to be discussed on the mailing list.

We met with someone from Foonzo Café, a new café in Montreal near Peel metro which runs all their systems on Ubuntu! They have some 80 seated places, so we may consider holding the Montreal release party there for Natty. Check how the discussion unfolds for this on our mailing list.

And last but not least, we met with Carlos and his brother who started "Carlito's Contraptions". They work on Nao the robot to develop applications, have it do stuff... While Nao doesn't exactly run Ubuntu (it's really a stripped down Linux with the bare minimum), their development systems are Ubuntu. They were nice enough to allow us to take action shots of Nao with a Ubuntu logo sticker. First it was on a GeekFest pin attached to Nao with sticky-tack, then they put another sticker directly on Nao's right arm. Rock on guys!

Take a look at all the pictures on my Picasa Album: "GeekFestMtl 2011".

How to contribute to NetworkManager (or nm-applet)

2011-01-12T18:32:00.000-05:00

Since NetworkManager (and all of the attached parts; VPN plugins, clients, backend...) is such a complex system, we're always looking for people to help out in whichever way they can.

One of the things I'd like to focus on this cycle (even if this announcement should have come long ago), is test cases and generally getting a good grasp of what works and what doesn't with NM, the clients, or plugins. Test cases are useful for us to know that things are performing as they should and even more important where development snapshots are involved, given the "in flux" nature of the code we're providing users. It's not that it's unstable code really (in fact, it's clearly not... 0.8 is now a stable branch that got tons of bug fixes, and seems rock solid if I believe the type and number of reports we get). Still, I'm interested to know about failures. That's partly why I wrote a number of test cases on the Desktop Testing Team tracker. There's a need for more though, and that's where the help of the community comes in.

If you know of some things that are important to you in NetworkManager, nm-applet, or the VPN plugins, write test cases for them! It will help everyone make sure those remain working, iron out the small annoying bugs, and just improve on the overall usefulness of NetworkManager.

Obviously, test cases and testing isn't the only place you can help. Are you annoyed at some little thing that works, but you'd love for it to go one step further in providing an amazing experience? Then we need you.

It's also very much the way I started contributing to Ubuntu, dealing with small annoyances which would make my life easier in using the desktop every day... And it was as simple and providing support for saving group or user password for the VPNC plugin.

I can already think of a few more of these small things, such as hiding the SIM PIN when prompted for it (since it's a password)...

I've started identifying small (but important!) bugs like this in Launchpad. As for other projects, look for the 'bitesize' tag. Here's an example.
They may not all be tagged bitesize, but if there's something that almost works for you and you want to take a look at fixing it, jump in! We'll all be glad you did. The same principle applies to many of the bugs marked as Wishlist, which are good ideas, maybe some need more discussion upstream, but they are all ready to be worked on (and have varying degrees of difficulty).

If you're looking to work on NM, the first thing you may want to look at is the wiki at http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManager. It's generally also a good idea to subscribe to the mailing list (see the previous link), so you can discuss changes with the community at large. Finally, there's truly no place more useful than the DebuggingTips page even for non-technical users. It's where you can poke NetworkManager to tell you exactly what goes on. In. Details.

In the cases where changes can be reasonably integrated into Ubuntu and/or Debian directly, feel free to submit merge requests and patches. This includes helping out fixing issues in the growing indicator patch for the applet :)

Finally if you're just curious and want to help out, you should know that there is a lot of work being done at the moment to simplify NM in various ways; all of which to in time become version 0.9. If you want to know more about the plans for NM 0.9, it's here: http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManager/ApiSimplify

When I'm connected I'm always happy to answer questions and help out in any way possible, both on NM and general desktop-ish stuff. You can reach me on #ubuntu-desktop or #nm on Freenode. I'm cyphermox.

Natty nm-applet improvements

2011-01-05T16:08:00.000-05:00

As those running Natty have undoubtedly noticed (and it has been noted on the Ayatana mailing list), we currently have a stop-gap measure (until we get connman and indicator-network magic!) for an indicator for network connections being nm-applet with a big ugly patch to make it work as an indicator.

In light of the discussion I'm referring to above, as well as a number of bugs that have been reported against network-manager-applet, I've been working on fixing these issues, including making the animations work again, re-adding icons for wireless signal strength and fixing the icons when connected to VPNs.

Most of this was coming from the fact that icons could not be dynamically composited by nm-applet when using libappindicator as it used to be doing. However, it's just about ready to all be live again:

All I'm waiting for is review of a merge request to provide the new icons needed. :)

Now, there is still a number of things that need to be fixed in the indicator patch and in the look and feel of nm-applet as an indicator. While this is still meant to remain a bridge until we can switch to connman and indicator-network, I'm looking forward to getting new ideas and to know about the issues you see in nm-applet's look right now. Jump in on the ayatana list and give us your thoughts!

Booting to ISO images from a USB key

2010-10-12T17:15:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty sure this has been done before (I recall seeing a blog post about it... if you're the one who posted on Planet Ubuntu with a similar howto, let me know as I want to talk to you, at least to say thanks), but here it is anyway:

A couple of days ago I wrote this quick script to generate a roughly correct grub.cfg from the contents of a directory filled with .iso files. The goal: generate a USB bootable key that runs GRUB and allows you to choose which ISO to boot. It could be Ubuntu desktop, netbook, etc, doesn't matter, as long as you have enough room on the key.

This is done by leveraging the loopback grub command and the isoscan parameter. But first, setting it up...

You'll need (to):

one free USB key, formatted to vfat (mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdX1) the more space the better
create a directory called "iso" on it

install grub on it:

grub-install --root-directory=/media/MOUNTPOINT /dev/sdX

this will create the boot/grub directories and install everything grub needs

copy iso files to the iso/ directory
run update-grub.py (available in bzr branch: lp:~mathieu-tl/+junk/bootable-iso-usb) from the key's mountpoint

Careful: it's only quickly tested, and overwrites boot/grub/grub.cfg from the current working directory.

Sorry for the unimaginative naming of the script.

In short, this script attempts to guess what kind of distribution is in the ISO file. I've tested desktop and alternate with success, both seem to boot and properly get you to an install (or for desktop, "maybe-ubiquity", which means you'll get a prompt for whether you want to run the live session or just ubiquity to install). All this needed was to make use of the iso naming scheme and more importantly of the contents of the ISO files, as read by isoinfo (from the genisoimage package).

Even if it never ends up being of any use, it was at least a fun little thing to write.

Looking back over the past few months...

2010-09-14T15:15:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty new as a Canonical employee overall, only having been with the company for about 7 months, but I must say I'm really thrilled to be part of a large gang of people so involved in making Ubuntu great; with so much pride in all the work accomplished. If there's one thing that has been constantly motivating me, it has to be the prospect of working every day with the community and with other Canonical employees on making Ubuntu better.

Certifying hardware

In the past seven months, I've been working as a Hardware Certification Engineer in the Montreal office. What does that mean? Well it's pretty simple: testing, testing, testing, automation, testing.

Yup. Testing. The hardware certification team is pretty much the group bringing you your daily Dell deals from behind the scenes, driving the testing efforts to make sure you can get systems available from large manufacturers such as Toshiba, Dell, HP, no matter if they are desktops, laptops or server. Getting the Big Orange Stamp of Approval(tm) on these systems so that you can get them with Ubuntu pre-installed, and truly get support from our excellent Support team (many of them working from Montreal too!).

What this truly meant for me was tons and tons of learning, with lots of experience gained. I've been identifying a lot of kernel bugs, installer issues, etc. I've learned way more about casper than I had ever dreamed :)

There was obviously not just testing involved, as there were some times where I needed to track down the location of systems, deal with manufacturers on how to get a new system from them to our labs, or quickly work with the OEM teams to get new offerings (and for that, new certified systems) out of the door. We've been privileged enough to have lots of systems shipped to us, which has always been one of the most valuable things manufacturers and distributors could do to help the Ubuntu community. I hope we still get so keen support for years to come.

On top of it all was automation of various testing efforts, one of which being maintenance of the amazing piece of work Marc Tardif started with checkbox and the kickstart / preseed systems that make daily testing possible for the many systems in the Canonical certification labs.

When you look for a cool new computer to run Ubuntu on next time, make sure you take a look at the Certification website: webapps.ubuntu.com/certification. You'll undoubtedly be happy you did.

On the side

I haven't only ever been doing certification testing. Part of the real cool things about Canonical is the fact that being involved in a lot of things, being passionate about what we do, is truly encouraged. In fact, it really couldn't be otherwise.

I've done as much as I could to help with the ISO testing efforts whenever there was some free time. This has been truly a lot of fun as well, and certainly of use, since I do have an ESX server accessible for testing Server images (especially JeOS installs), some systems on which to try out Wubi, and a lot of interest in EC2 and cloud computing.

My work day rarely ever stopped when I got out of the office. Part of why I joined Canonical may have been my involvement in the Ubuntu Quebec LoCo team, organizing events and trying to motivate people to contribute to Ubuntu. I'm still as involved in the LoCo team as ever, and I'm always very happy to help people with their issues on IRC as much as on the ubuntu-qc mailing list, or even in person at the various events Ubuntu-Quebec or other Linux user groups have organized in Montreal. I've even started an Ubuntu Hour gathering in Longueuil, though to my chagrin, I've rarely had much company. I'm at least happy to have been able to use that time to get stuff done on other projects and to answer mailing list postings.

I've also been reasonably active in the Debian community, and still working towards becoming an official Debian developer (if you are a DD and would be so kind as to sign my GPG key, please ping me on IRC :). I've been maintaining concordance and congruity, two applications to control and program Logitech Harmony remotes (one CLI, one GUI), the GNU Accounting Utilities (acct), the Ethos libary (a plugin framework), as well as the Emerillon map viewer for GNOME (with the help of the Debian GNOME team. Thanks!).

And now

Those who know me well know how strong I feel about one of my favorite projects: NetworkManager. In order to further my involvement in Ubuntu and help out NetworkManager, but also other projects, and truly help making Ubuntu rock yet even more, I've just started in the Canonical Desktop team. I'm thrilled to join the others who bring you cool new toys and two (and more) awesome desktop environments with every new release.

For the future

My task won't only be to maintain NetworkManager, but also to work on maintaining ConnMan and making sure it's truly usable and useful for Ubuntu users. The rest of the stack underlying these two beasts won't be spared: I look forward to help bringing the hot new features of wpasupplicant, mobile-broadband-provider-info, isc-dhcp (version 4, nothing less!) to Ubuntu, as well as ensuring all of these won't descend in bug hell.

Another aspect of it will be helping out on the maintenance of Firefox and Chromium.

There isn't a whole lot more I can add about this, but I'm very happy I can lend a hand to Chris Coulson and the others from the Canonical Desktop Team but also everyone in the community contributing to and working on the above products. It's truly a daunting task to maintain all of these systems with so many moving parts, but I wake up every day looking forward to what I'll be doing, and certain I'll enjoy every part of it.

Broadcom driver now open source

2010-09-10T14:20:00.000-04:00

This has been brought to my attention today. I see this as a huge win for Ubuntu, since, let's face it, Broadcom devices are a large part of the WiFi device ecosystem. I'm happy to see Broadcom finally publishing some of their source code, and through this helping out Linux users of all distributions get better working WiFi. I see this as a win for Ubuntu in general because it will always make me happier to see people having fewer issues with wireless devices. This also translates to less wheel-spinning with broken drivers we could not possibly fix (since they are closed source), towards more productive work on other aspects of Ubuntu... or just a better chance of fixing driver issues :)

Of course, this is a work in progress and not all Broadcom devices are currently supported by this driver, but I believe that in due time, Broadcom could become one of the golden examples we can give to hardware manufacturers on how to provide the best kind of support they can to the Linux community.

Read more about this on Slashdot, OSNews, or read the annoucement on the Linux Wireless mailing list.

Thanks Broadcom!

Ubuntu Global Jam in Montreal: help testing and fixing bugs in Maverick

2010-08-25T11:06:00.000-04:00

We're doing it again!

Here in Montreal we're just about ready to start jamming this weekend. Rooms have been confirmed, and we already have a fair amount of interest from what I can see in the LoCo directory event listing! We're also happy to have been sharing ideas and plans with txwikinger who's been organizing the Global Jam event in the Waterloo/Kitchener area in Ontario.

Do you want to help make Ubuntu better?
Do you look forward to meeting some of the people who do testing, triaging and bug fixing on Ubuntu in Montreal, and maybe ask them to look at your own little pet-peeve bugs?

Then come join us at the SupInfo Montréal offices this Saturday, starting from 9am! All you need to bring is a computer and willingness to participate. :)

	SupInfo Montréal
	752 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest
	Montreal
	Canada
	http://www.supinfo.com/en/News0eaaf665-d9bf-4563-befb-ac97f8b035c2.aspx

If you choose to pass by, please let us know by registering for the event on the LoCo Directory... just so we know roughly how many people to expect.

You can get all of the information about our event on the QuebecTeam wiki: QuebecTeam/GlobalJam.

As a side note, we should have a local archive mirror, and copies of maverick and lucid ISO images. I've spent the past weeks preparing it on a portable USB hard drive, after getting some help in starting from Dustin Kirkland. Thanks Dustin!

Wubi: installing Ubuntu inside Windows

2010-06-28T14:48:00.009-04:00

Do you know about Wubi?

Wubi is a very nice tool if you want to try out Ubuntu for the first time. It allows you to install Ubuntu alongside Windows, without re-partitioning your hard-drive. All this from the CD-ROM if you load it in computer while Windows is running, or downloadable as a standalone app.

The Ubuntu QA team is always looking for help to test installing Ubuntu using Wubi. It's both a great way to try Ubuntu if you really still need to run Windows on your computer and want to help out with testing Ubuntu, or as any kind of first jump into testing and QA. Testing efforts are being tracked on the Ubuntu ISO Tracker. If you want to help, please read the documentation first.

So if you chose to download Wubi's standalone application, double-click on its icon, or load in the Ubuntu CD-ROM you may have just burned (or received from shipit or your LoCo team).

If you're using a CD-ROM, Wubi should start automatically (or in Windows 7, you should see an autorun dialog).

The install application gives you three choices. The first one being to reboot your system and use the CD-ROM directly to demo and install Ubuntu, the third sends you to the Ubuntu website.

For the purpose of this post I will instead walk you through option 2, which is to install Ubuntu alongside Windows, from within Windows.

You will then be presented with all the questions that make sure the installer knows everything it needs to know about the installation of Ubuntu you want to do. Choose your username, password, and where you want to install Ubuntu (which Windows harddrive, C:, D:, or whatever), what language you want to see Ubuntu in, etc.

If you're using the standalone Wubi app, you will need to wait a bit while the Ubuntu CD ISO image is being downloaded. The image is necessary, as the standalone app does not contain the required packages for the install.

Wubi will then proceed to the next part of the installation, which is to copy everything it needs to your hard drive in a ubuntu folder on the hard drive you selected in the preceeding screen.

Once the first part of the installation is over, select what you want to do... my preference is to reboot right away and carry on with the rest of the installation procedure.

Once your computer has booted, you will be presented with a menu. That menu will time out and default to Windows after a few seconds. Choose Ubuntu to continue with the installation.

You are now booting into the real thing: at this point you are in Ubuntu, but the installation isn't quite done yet, so grab a (quick) coffee while the last tidbits get copied and configured.

At the end of the second part of the installation, your computer will reboot again, present you again with the first menu where you will want to choose Ubuntu, and show an additional menu where you can choose to start Ubuntu in recovery mode, should you need to fix a broken installation. From there, you can also go back to Windows.

Voilà, the installation is done. At this point, all that is left to do is click on your username in the lis and enter the password you chose back in Windows during the first phase of the installation to get to the Ubuntu desktop.

HP Mini netbooks mic/headphones adapter

2010-06-15T08:55:00.009-04:00

Engineers at HP have been having these wonderful ideas in hope of saving space (I guess). On some of their netbooks, in particular the Mini 1000, there is only one 3.5mm port to be used for both the microphone and headphones.

I needed to tests this system in order to confirm the status of bug #532958. If you're like me and didn't get an adapter with the system, here is how you can make one.

Requirements:

1 cable: 3 RCA plugs to one 4-channel 3.5mm plug - costs about 2$ to 10$
2 1/8 (3.5mm) female jack, of the type you prefer (I used chassis) - cost less than a dollar each

Process:

Note the type of cable I'm using: it is somewhat important. You could of course use any type of cable with at least 3 wires, but you would then have to find a 4-channel 3.5mm plug, which is a little less easy to find. This cable already has it, so just remove the RCA plugs, and skin these ends to reveal the signal wire and ground.

You'll want to then attach the wires to the 3.5mm jacks as shown in the pictures below.

Headphone end: use the yellow and red RCA wires. Attach the colored wires to the ring and tip (the name for the metal tabs that carry actual signal when everything is connected, at the bottom of the jack), then attach both ground wires to the ground tab (the tab sticking out to the side).

Microphone end: use the white RCA wire, attach to either the ring or tip, then ground it.

Result:

If the jacks aren't properly grounded or the RCA cable you have used uses a different pinout, you will get no sound, or mono sound, or just very low volume. If so, detach everything and start over, maybe using different color mixes.

Once done correctly, you will retain stereo sound for the headphones, and will be able to use an external microphone, though the internal mic is disabled when this adapter is connected and the setting in Sound Input is at "Microphone". To use the internal microphone instead, you would want to use "Line Input"... but then you probably don't need this adapter and would be better off using standard headphones.

Note: after more research, I found out that an iPhone headset might be the easiest way to go. I however do not own an iPhone, and only found out after finishing up the adapter.

If you're filing bugs: please don't be selfish!

2010-05-18T17:13:00.005-04:00

<rant>

If you're filing bugs, I understand that you feel strongly about the issues you're seeing, and that you feel like your problem is important and deserves immediate attention. I also want "my" bugs to be dealt with as soon as possible, and as a Ubuntu contributor I also want *your* bugs to be fixed in a timely manner. However, you usually should not just add information to an existing bug because the symptoms are vaguely similar.

My point is, if you're seeing that something is wrong with your hardware (because this type of issue is quite frequent with hardware-related bugs), please don't hesitate to open a new bug. Developers will often be quite pleased that you did, and will be happy to mark something as a duplicate of another bug for you. Other bug reporters will also be happier, because it allows their own, often unrelated issue to be dealt with rapidly. Your own bug will also likely be fixed earlier, since developers need to sift through less information related to a specific issue: they then need to decide whether a specific attachment or comment is relevant in far fewer cases.

It just helps making the experience more enjoyable to everyone.

Also, if you're suggesting in a bug report against a specific package to use another package, you're not being helpful. Sure, you help the reporter by fixing their immediate problem, but you're not helping the underlying issues being resolved. What we want is to have all projects improve and squash their bugs, which cannot be done if you, say, suggest using Wicd in a bug against NetworkManager for a broken wifi driver.

I like both of these projects, I want both to succeed equally, which means that bugs need to be reported and respected so that we can fix the issues that arise and deliver a better user experience to everyone; while allowing all projects to grow and improve. This is what suggesting that project X is a failure (that's usually not the words used, but you get the idea), and that project Y is better (because it doesn't have that specific issue), will never achieve.

It all boils down to being nice to others. Nice to other bug reporters, because everyone has the same chance of getting their bugs fixed, and nice to other projects because they all get their share of bugs and success stories.

</rant>

You're invited: Montreal Lucid Lynx release party!

2010-04-27T12:05:00.005-04:00

The Ubuntu-Quebec team is having a party here in Montreal (and in other cities too!!!) once more, this time to celebrate the release of Lucid Lynx. This will once again be held at the Bar Le Saint-Sulpice:

Bar Le Saint-Sulpice
1680, Saint-Denis,
Montréal, Québec,
H2X3K6,
514 844-9458

Everyone's invited to join us there this Thursday, April 29th.

Lots of people have already either RSVP'd using the wonderful LoCo Directory event pages, and many others have confirmed their presence already...

There's going to be a couple of other parties going on this time in the province: another one in Montreal on May 20th, Dummondville and Quebec city on the 5th and 6th of May; if you want to know more, don't hesitate to visit our wiki page for the Lucid release parties organized by Ubuntu-Quebec: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuebecTeam/LucidParty

Join us and have a chance to meet other Ubuntu enthusiasts like you :)

In retrospect: the good and the bad about the Global Jam event in Montreal

2010-04-07T17:00:00.004-04:00

Well, it's better late than never. The bad is obviously how it has taken me more than a week to get to writing this blog post about how well our Global Jam event went :)

Seriously though, I did notice there were slightly fewer people this time around, but this can be inputed to a number of variables, so I really have no reason to complain, we had a great time, found a great number of bugs that were reported (and/or triaged), and it's essentially a clear success. Thanks to all those who participated in making this a great event.

If you want to look at the pictures for our event, you can see them here. There was also a live video made by r2mxr, but I can't find the link to it anymore... I promise I will update about it soon.

Thanks to Fabian Rodriguez and David Bensimon who joined in and helped out a lot in finding bugs, testing, reproducing, and confirming bugs.

Thanks to Philippe Gauthier who did a terrific job at a number of things, including setting, at least in my eyes, the record for the quickest testing process ever. Wine with a Windows app, as well as other Linux applications installed in record time :)

Obviously, thanks to the presenters for a great time: Ronan Jouchet, Michael Faille, Jeff Fortin... You did great, and I learned a lot. I'm sure a lot of others did as well.

Thanks to the SUPInfo students for visiting, you boosted our numbers and gave us a new and different outlook on various issues, which was a clear benefit.

Thanks to ETS, and in particular to Oleg Litvinsky for doing an awesome job at the logistics. I've never seen a room get set up so fast, I felt useless :)

Finally, thanks to those who came in to join us to see presentations or help out with bugs, it was great to see you all and meet new people, or others who we discuss with on the mailing list but rarely have a chance to talk to, face-to-face.

News about the Global Jam in Montreal

2010-03-22T14:46:00.008-04:00

I'm amazed by the amount of interest we're gathering here in Montreal for the Global Jam and the new version Ubuntu in general. I'm very eager to put in lots of work on triaging and helping people understand how to create packages or prepare patches to packages, but I've been contacted by a few people and thought it would be good to share on the awesome presentations and presenters we'll be able to see here this weekend:

A presentation MythTV and video capture, by Marc-André Gingras
Club Capra / a robotics project that was migrated from Windows to Ubuntu, and how that was done, by Michael Faille
An overview of PiTiVi and video edition, by Jeff Fortin (surely along with a bug jam blitz on PiTiVi?)
A presentation on UbuntuStudio, JACK, and Ardour; by Ronan Jouchet

To get all the juicy details, check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuebecTeam/GlobalJam10.03

I seriously can't wait until Friday!

Global Jam à Montréal: on récidive!

2010-03-07T18:40:00.002-05:00

Il me fait plaisir d'annoncer que la participation des utilisateurs Ubuntu montréalais au Ubuntu Global Jam se fera encore une fois, un peu avant la sortie officielle de Lucid Lynx (la version 10.04, présentement en développement), à l'École de Technologie Supérieure!

Les locaux ont été officialisés: du 26 au 28 mars, nous pourrons passer la fin de semaine dans les locaux de l'ETS, soit les salles de classe A-1300 et A-1238 (en haut des escaliers de l'entrée principale, puis à gauche). N'hésitez pas à consulter la page wiki QuebecTeam/GlobalJam pour l'horaire exact ainsi que les directions pour s'y rendre!

Un gros merci à l'administration de l'ETS pour bien vouloir supporter l'événement (et donc Ubuntu!), et à Clod Patry et Oleg Litvinski pour leur aide avec les détails administratifs.

Vous êtes donc invités à participer à des efforts d'identification, de tri et de "patchage" de bogues avec nous, ainsi qu'à venir poser des questions, essayer la nouvelle version "live" ou l'installer, ou même simplement essayer Ubuntu pour une première fois sur votre ordinateur, dans un environnement convivial où vous pourrez vous sentir bien à l'aise de demander de l'aide si vous en avez besoin... Où simplement venir rencontrez d'autres utilisateurs pour discuter de tout et de rien!

Quelques présentations devraient être planifiées d'ici fin mars. Entre autres, un élève de l'ETS, Michael Faille, nous fera la présentation d'un projet robotique réalisé pas un groupe de l'ETS et roulant sur Ubuntu (depuis sa migration de Windows!). On prévoit certainement encore présenter de façon survolée l'entrée de bogues dans Launchpad, ou alors le tri de ceux-ci si vous voulez aider les développeurs.

Cette fois-ci, beaucoup d'emphase sera mise sur le travail direct en équipe sur les différents bugs qui pourront avoir été soulevés. Il reste à déterminer la formule exacte, mais le but sera de démontrer l'intérêt de notre équipe dans la qualité de la distribution :)

D'ici là, il reste un tas de choses à planifier. Si vous voulez aider dans la réalisation de l'événement ou vous avez des idées, n'hésitez pas à en faire part sur la liste de distribution Ubuntu-QC ou sur notre canal sur Freenode: #ubuntu-qc.

L'École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS) est située au 100 rue Notre-Dame Ouest, soit à deux minutes du métro Bonaventure, au coin Notre-Dame et Peel.

Ubuntu-QC Karmic Release Party

2009-10-26T23:22:00.002-04:00

The Ubuntu-QC LoCo will be hosting a release party on October 31th, 2009, to celebrate the launch of the latest Ubuntu release. If you're in or near Montreal, come join us at Bar St-Sulpice, at 17pm.

For more information, consult our wiki page!

As usual, there will also be a party held at Taverne Urbaine MO, in Quebec city; you can also get more information about that party on the link above.

Here is the official invitation text :)

Ontario GNU Linux Fest is this weekend

2009-10-19T15:54:00.004-04:00

Awesome! Back from vacation and started work today, and I've registered and booked everything already to go to Ontario GNU Linux Fest at the end of the week. Girlfriend will be there too. At the very least, it's going to be an interesting little trip to Toronto for the weekend.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.onlinux.ca" target="olf"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src="http://www.onlinux.ca/files/OLF480x60.jpg" alt="Ontario GNU Linux Fest 2009. Register Now!" &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

It's obviously still not too late to register, and there will be lots of very interesting talks :)

Can't wait 'til Friday...

Debian/Ubuntu package for emerillon

2009-10-14T20:47:00.003-04:00

Following the (very) recent release of emerillon 0.1.0, I'm pleased to announce that emerillon has a debian package created, and now available in my PPA for Emerillon:

https://edge.launchpad.net/~mathieu-tl/+archive/emerillon

If you use Ubuntu Karmic 9.10, almost all dependencies are already available... Except libethos.

For libethos, you will also need, for now, to add the PPA for audidude (Christian Hergert):

https://edge.launchpad.net/~audidude/+archive/ppa

This is until I have the time to rebuild the packages for that library and publish them to my Emerillon PPA.

There's already work started to include it into Debian, but it still requires packages that aren't ready yet. Same idea for Ubuntu. One of the major blockers are libethos, but I will discuss its inclusion with the upstream maintainer (who is audidude, in any case), and hopefully get it included very soon. From then, emerillon should be fairly easy to upload to Debian.

For the curious, Emerillon is a map viewer for GNOME, very nicely designed, which uses OpenStreetMap maps to allow you to search, add placemarks, etc. Think of it as a Google Maps for your computer, but fully open :)

For more information about Emerillon, see the Launchpad project page: https://edge.launchpad.net/emerillon

Happy mapping!

Pictures from the Global Jam in Montreal

2009-10-06T15:48:00.005-04:00

Well, it's obviously never too late to report back on the fun we've had this weekend with the Global Jam. There was a constant attendance of a good number of people throughout the weekend, which I am particularily happy about. Lots of interest in the development and contribution aspects, as well as a couple of others who were curious about Ubuntu and wanted to know more. Overall, a great success!

We've touched a great number of subjects, including the obvious bug reporting and triaging, as well as the French translations for a number of utilities and some fixes for bugs that were discovered during the Jam.

Thanks to the École de Technologie Supérieure for hosting us in great and really well equipped rooms. Thanks to LANETS for providing us with a really kick-ass wired network rig, and thanks to Guillaume Grasset and Clod Patry for helping out with the administrative portion of getting the rooms :)

Ubuntu Global Jam in Montreal, this weekend

2009-09-30T17:25:00.005-04:00

There's really only a couple of hours left until our Global Jam event in Montreal kicks off: a truly awesome setup, that can be run thanks to the amazing help of komputes and the rooms gratiously granted to us by the ETS (École de Technologie Supérieure), GULL-ETS, and Clod Patry. Thanks all.

So this is my official invitation: are you an Ubuntu enthusiast in the region of Montreal? Are you interested in helping out fixing bugs, getting to know more about your favorite OS or even just getting to know what all this fuss with "Linux" and "Ubuntu" is about?

Then come join us at ÉTS, for this three-day event: we've got all kinds of really cool stuff planned, as well as interesting presentations on packaging, bug triage, Asterisk, to only name a few. I'll be presenting on a couple of subjects myself, such as sysadmin tools and helping out with coding.

Here's the deal:

École de technologie supérieure (http://www.etsmtl.ca/)
October 2 (16h to 23h), and 3-4 (12h to 18h),
1100 rue Notre-Dame Ouest
Salles/Rooms A-1300 et A-1238
More information at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuebecTeam/GlobalJam2009

Everyone is welcome!