My new phone – Samsung Google nexus S

My new phone just arrived. Google Nexus S is a piece of “art”, full of features. For me is the perfect phone. I can read my email, rss feeds instantly and I can browse all my websites. Also the browser is a full featured browser (93 points from 100 in acid3 test, and in my firefox 3.6.13 under Ubuntu 10.10 I get 94 points ) with Adobe Flash on a Super AMOLED 4 inch screen. Also the Android market is full of applications and games. Everything on this phone is amazing.

Some of the features of the Nexus S are:

• Near Field Communication
• 1GHZ Processor ARM Cortex-A8 processor, Hummingbird chipset
• PowerVR SGX540 GPU
• Android Gingerbread 2.3
• 4 “ Super AMOLED
• 16GB of onboard storage
• 512MB of RAM

Another nice features:

• It can be used as WiFI hotspot.
• Support for internet calling (VOIP)
• Video recording in H.264, H.263 MPEG4
• DLNA support
• And not last Voice Actions
• anti-fingerprint coating
• capacitive touch functionality
• multi-touch support
• haptic feedback vibration

Connectivity

• 3.5mm audio jack
• micro USB
• BlueTooth
• WiFI

Sensors:

• three-axis gyroscope
• accelerometer
• proximity sensor
• light sensor

Also the battery is not bad at all, 6.7 hours on 3G or 14 hours on 2G and 17.8 days on 3G standby. I should charge it every 2 or 3 days, but this is not a problem at all.

The only bad thing was the price. I want to get it now and I should pay some extra to get it, because the phone is not launched in Eastern Europe and I get it from England, it was more expensive than the original price. Anyway, if you have patience, probably you can get it at a decent price.

If you are an Android developer this phone is a must, you should get it right away, because it came with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and you will have all Google updates on time.

Anyway a full review and more impressions you can found here: Samsung Google Nexus S – The new Android phone from Google.

Debian Installer 6.0 Release Candidate 1 release

I’m curios how this Debian installer will look. The features are amazing:

Live Installer
Grub 2
Kernel 2.6.32
Xen support
UserMode Linux Support
Ext4

This are just several features. For more just check:

1. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
2. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
3. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer

New local kernel exploit

This is a little bit old, but is worth to mention it because on a lot of system is still working. The proof of concept code and a lot of details you will find here: http://bit.ly/fYpOtx . This exploit is based on 3 vulnerabilities found by Nelson Elhage (probably because of that exploit is named full-nelson). As I said the exploit is based on 3 vulnerabilities CVE-2010-4258, CVE-2010-3849 and CVE-2010-3850. The last 2 vulnerabilities are based on Econet protocol driver. If you don’t have this driver loaded exploit will not work. The first vulnerability was founded on 2.6.36.2 and is based on do_exit function which doesn’t handle properly a KERNEL_DS get_fs value.

Anyway the last 2 vulnerabilities were fixed on Debian Security Advisory 2126-1 and without them exploit is not working, so upgrade your computers.

Vino-server (VNC) doesn’t work

I experienced another nasty bug with vino server and Ubuntu 10.10 (some reports the same thing on other Distros, even on older versions of Ubuntu): After authenticating on VNC, the client windows is not updated.

All the events are sent by mouse correctly on the desktop (you can see the mouse moving and reacting at left/right click), but the VNC client window is not updated, in other words I see only the first image what I get it when I connected first time.

I found a workaround for this problem: uninstall compiz and everything will be all right. I believe this is a bug in vino-server and should be fixed on the next updates, but until then, removing the compiz is the best workaround. The bug is already reported here.

Good Luck!

vino-server doesn’t start (crash)

Long time, no see

I installed the alpha version of Ubuntu 10.10 and I had a small problem: VNC Server (vino-server) doesn’t start. If you take a look on your home folder, in file .xsession-errors probably you will find:

13/10/2010 07:47:39 PM Autoprobing TCP port in (all) network interface
13/10/2010 07:47:39 PM Listening IPv6://[::]:5900
13/10/2010 07:47:39 PM Listening IPv4://0.0.0.0:5900
13/10/2010 07:47:39 PM Autoprobing selected port 5900
13/10/2010 07:47:39 PM Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18)
13/10/2010 07:47:39 PM Advertising authentication type: 'VNC Authentication' (2)
13/10/2010 07:47:39 PM Advertising security type: 'VNC Authentication' (2)
** Message: Received signal 11, exiting...


I read a lot of solutions from internet about how to fix that and I will try to describe them here:

First, was the reinstall:

$ sudo aptitude reinstall vino-server

But doesn’t work for me.

Second, was to replace vino-server binary from /usr/lib/vino with the binary from Ubuntu 10.4, that worked, but I wasn’t totally satisfied (what it will happen at next upgrade ?)

After I study a little bit, the bug from Ubuntu launchpad, I found the best solution for me:

I disabled uPNP from my router. Yes, it is so simple. On my Linksys router I found uPNP under Administration -> Management.

So, no changes on my workstation and VNC works great.

Good Luck!

Pictures that make sense

Star Wars - Darth Vader

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Error Code: 81115 on PayPal Express Checkout code

I just tried to use the Express Checkout Wizard from Paypal, but, after 1 hour, I didn’t had any success. All the time I get the same error:

GetExpressCheckoutDetails API call failed.
Detailed Error Message: PaymentAction : Required parameter missing
Short Error Message: Missing Parameter
Error Code: 81115
Error Severity Code: Error

Looking where the Payment action is “hidding” I found the following mistake on paypalfunctions.php code


$token = urlencode($_SESSION['token']);
$paymentType = urlencode($_SESSION['paymentType']);


should be:


$token = urlencode($_SESSION['TOKEN']);
$paymentType = urlencode($_SESSION['PaymentType']);


And this solved my problem.

I hope this will help you.

Regards

Adding an IP alias on DD-WRT lan interfaces

I didn’t find any straight documentation about that, so I decide to write myself one.

Adding an IP alias under dd-wrt console (linux) is simple:

ifconfig br0:1 <ip_address> <netmask>


and is done. Now we should save this command for running on startup. You have 2 choices:

1. web interface
2. shell (ssh or telenet)

1. Web interface

Go to Administration Tab -> Command.
Type the following commands on Command edit box:


#!/bin/ash
PATH="/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:${PATH}"
ifconfig br0:1 <ip_address> <netmask>


Now press Save Startup
Now you can reboot you router.

2. Shell interface

Log on your router.
and runt the following command:

$ nvram set rc_startup="
#!/bin/ash
PATH="/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:${PATH}"
ifconfig br0:1 <ip_address> <netmask>
"
$ nvram commit


Success !

Ubuntu 9.10 is here

After 6 months of waiting ( the normal time for Ubuntu releases) Ubuntu 9.10 is here. Today (29 Octomber) I upgraded my laptop at Ubuntu 9.10. What is Ubuntu promising with this new release:

Faster, simplified, better-looking boot experience for most users in other words was redesigned from many points of view
Audio revamp – Pulse audio
Firefox 3.5 – no more comments

Other cool things:

Ubuntu One – a new technology which offer you 2Gb of free storage over internet (I should check that myself)
Better integration with: Flickr, Facebook, Picassa, Youtube, last.fm and other social sites.
Office – Openoffice 3.0
Games:

Over 400 completely free and completely cool games. Solitaire is not the only game in town.

Fully translated into 23 languages

But you should try install/upgrade yourself to see all this differences.
Download http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
Features http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/910features/

Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop

Windows 7 and Japan Linux Symposium

Japan Linux Symposium is between October 21 – 23 2009 in Tokyo, Japan. In the same day (21) Microsoft Japan Launched Windows 7 and one of the Microsoft point of sales was across the street from this Linux Symposium. The guys decided to do something fun and get one of their best guests, on this symposium, and take a picture on the Windows 7 stand.

Linux Torvalds and Windows 7

Yeah, the guest was Linus Torvalds

All the credits of this pictures goes to Chirs.