sadevil.org

I’ve moved hosting, from Lunar Pages to OVH. Lunar Pages is a good hosting, but their overselling and price hikes in the last few years made me look for something else.

Other reasons:

• speed: transfers are a LOT faster (especially in peak hours)
• SSH access ;)
• Full DNS zone access
• Cheaper prices for domain names
• …

If you encounter any oddities, feel free to let me know…

Yes, I’ll be going to FOSDEM 2010!

Well, happy newyears to all of you! May your wishes/desires/hopes/ come true!

I wanted to test some crap in VMWare, didn’t feel like messing with the entire server thing so went for the player. Unfortunately, this thing doesn’t work against the 2.6.32 kernel.

After installation, you can fix it with as follows (as root):


cd /tmp
tar xf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar
tar xf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmci.tar

cd vmnet-only
sed -i "/vnetInt.h/ a\#include \"compat_sched.h\"" vnetUserListener.c

cd ../vmci-only/include
sed -i "/compat_page.h/ a\#include \"compat_sched.h\"" pgtbl.h

cd /tmp
tar cf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar vmnet-only
tar cf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmci.tar vmci-only


and rerun vmplayer.

Note: This is at your own risk. If you fry your phone, your problem, not mine.

I recently got an HTC Hero. Great phone, I’m loving the Android platform. Pity that you don’t have full access to it, and I actually wanted to merge my old phone (Nokia E65)’s SMS database into this one, so I needed full access.

(Un)fortunately, these days the HTC Hero comes with the latest firmware, 2.73.1100.5, which on the one hand makes rooting harder (fixes several bugs and fastboot no longer works) but on the other hand makes the phone respond a lot better.

After some twiddling and reading on the XDA Developers Forum, I came up with this recipe:

Downloads needed:

• asroot2.zip (current root exploid for Android, works on HTC Hero): http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=244212&d=1257621154
• Superuser.zip (for the su binary and the Superuser.apk): http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=211569&d=1249225060
• Android SDK (for the HTC Hero, it’s the 1.5 platform): http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-1.5.html

Howto:

• Download the Android SDK, and install/extract it somewhere. I’m using Linux and put it under /home/<user>/android/
• Download asroot2.zip, superuser.zip, and extract them in a directory of your choice. For instance, /tmp.
• Change to the Android SDK directory and in that one /tools (here: /home/<user>/android-sdk-linux_86/tools/
• Start adb (Android Debug Bridge): ./abd wait-for-device
• Put your phone in HTC Sync mode: drag the notification bar down and activate HTC Sync

After a while adb should return to the prompt. Should mean your phone has been found.

• Copy asroot2 and su on the phone in /data/local:
  ./adb push /tmp/asroot2 /data/local/
./adb push /tmp/su /data/local/
• Open a shell to the device: ./adb shell
• Make asroot2 executable, and launch it:
  chmod 0755 /data/local/asroot2
/data/local/asroot2 /system/bin/sh

Your phone should greet you with:

[+] Using newer pipe_inode_info layout
Opening: /proc/564/fd/3
SUCCESS: Enjoy the shell.
#

At this point, remount your /system filesystem read-write.
Before remounting, executing the mount command should return a line containing:

/dev/block/mtdblock3 /system yaffs2 ro 0 0

Now, remount the fs:
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
(this returns no output)

And now executing mount should return a line like:

/dev/block/mtdblock3 /system yaffs2 rw 0 0

and copy the su binary into /system/bin:
dd if=/data/local/su of=/system/bin/su
and make it executable with root permissions:
chmod 4755 /system/bin/su

Next, copy the Supseruser.apk to the SD card and install it.
Then, reboot your phone (power off and on).

Restart your abd shell, and execute su in your adb shell: su, and on the phone it should come ask if you want to allow root permissions:

Tap “Allow”, et voila, you now have a rooted phone.

Another shameless advertisement for the upcoming Nacht van FCP&D organised by the Flemish Caledonian Pipes & Drums – Clan MacKenzie, for our 20^th year anniversary. We’re playing together with the Royal Fanfare St-Cecilia Teralfene.

The place to be? St-Bavo Humaniora, Lange Boomgaardstraat, in Ghent. The underground Reep parking is less than 100m away.

View Larger Map

As I detailed in my previous post on how to get this phone working with Leopard, upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 aka Snow Leopard broke things again.

Easy fix though: follow the steps in my previous post, and attached to this post you can find the ‘fixed’ MetaClasses.plist file.

All I actually did was copy this block in the existing MetaClasses.plist:

<key>com.nokia.3109</key>
<dict>
<key>Identification</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.cgmi+cgmm</key>
<string>Nokia+Nokia 3109</string>
<key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
<string>Nokia+Nokia 3109</string>
<key>com.apple.usb.vendorid-modelid</key>
<string>0x0421/0x045A</string>
</dict>
<key>InheritsFrom</key>
<array>
<string>family.com.nokia.series40.3rdEd.bus.usb-bt</string>
</array>
<key>Services</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.model</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>ModelIcon</key>
<string>NOK3109.tiff</string>
<key>ModelName</key>
<string>3109</string>
</dict>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.synchro</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>MaxCityLength</key>
<integer>50</integer>
<key>MaxEMailLength</key>
<integer>60</integer>
<key>MaxEventLocationLength</key>
<integer>150</integer>
<key>MaxPhoneNumberLength</key>
<integer>48</integer>
<key>MaxPostalCodeLength</key>
<integer>50</integer>
<key>MaxStateLength</key>
<integer>50</integer>
<key>MaxStreetLength</key>
<integer>50</integer>
<key>MaxURLLength</key>
<integer>60</integer>
</dict>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>

Since WP keeps on braking my indentation, just download it here: MetaClasses.plist

Shameless advertisement for the upcoming 12th Celtic Weekend organised by the Flemish Caledonian Pipes & Drums – Clan MacKenzie, the pipeband where I play.

Friday november 6 2009
19:00 Official Opening
20:00 Flemish Caledonian Pipes and Drums
20:45 Kenny Nairn @ your request – Scottish folk

Saturday november 7 2009
11:00 Flemish Caledonian Pipes and Drums with Kenny Nairn
12:30 Haggis Amuses
12:45 Kenny Nairn @ your request – Scottish folk
14:00 Flemish Caledonian Pipes and Drums
15:15 Dance demonstration Folk and Country
16:30 Flemish Caledonian Pipes and Drums
17:45 Performance Country & Western with Irish influences
19:00 Flemish Caledonian Pipes and Drums
20:00 Ballathum XL – Irish folk
21:00 Flemish Caledonian Pipes and Drums
22:00 Ballathum XL – Irish folk

Sunday november 8 november 2009
11:00 Flemish Caledonian Pipes and Drums with Kenny Nairn
11.30 Royal Harmony “De Toekomst Sint Niklaas” – first part
12:15 Haggis Amuses
12:30 Royal Harmony “De Toekomst Sint Niklaas” – second part
13.15 Kenny Nairn @ your request – Scottish folk
14:00 Flemish Caledonian Pipes and Drums
15:00 Irish dance by Dancestudio Kim
16:00 Flemish Caledonian Pipes and Drums
17:00 Irish dance by Dancestudio Kim
18:00 Finale

The place to be? Kloosterstraat 20 in Merelbeke (Belgium, ofcourse)

View Larger Map