- WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

How to manipulate audio (ALSA) a lot with a HD audio card?
by Tatsh April 2, 2010

April 2, 2010

Stupid Intel decided to build-in DRM into the spec of these things. I have a Conexant which has Nvidia codec to provide audio for the HDMI output (this works fine except that in alsa settings I have to force a default output device, 3). What I'd like to do is be able to record from the stereo mixer, which I have none in alsamixer. So how do I go about creating one? I've tried a few different configs I found on-line but nothing seemed to work for me. WIth this capability of course I could record audio from my computer in say, Audacity, or I could even broadcast audio through Skype. And the best part would be if I could broadcast audio through Skype AND use my headset at the same time (mixing the 2 into one channel input). I have 3 mic inputs apparently (one of them is webcam, another is the jack, and I don't know what the 3rd one is). Image of KMix: http://bitpic.net/image/kmix-nvidia-hd-audio-codec So far I know it's something I can do with ALSA settings where I can tell ALSA to redirect audio and 'copy' whatever is going on on any input channel (overriding the jack of course). No luck there yet. Any help appreciated Thanks -- Tatsh www.bitpic.net www.tatsh.net ddrtist(a)gmail.com

3 2

Two Senior IT positions open at TripAdvisor in Newton (IT and Operations)
by Ryan Pugatch April 2, 2010

April 2, 2010

Hi all, We have a couple of tech positions open at TripAdvisor. The first is for a "Principal Technical Operations Engineer" which is on our operations team, handling our livesite environment. The second, "IT Lead", is on our internal IT team. Below are the job postings. We're definitely looking for people with several years experience. If you are interested, please email me your resume. I am also glad to answer any questions. - Ryan (Systems Administrator @ TripAdvisor) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Principal Technical Operations Engineer Hundreds of servers. Thousands of requests per second. Millions of users. Two admins (you could be number 3)! We are looking for a senior hands-on network (mostly Cisco) and systems (mostly Linux) administrator. You will have several years of prior experience in the operation of one or more of the following: High traffic web application OR Software as a service OR Internet/Network Service Provider TripAdvisor is the top site for travel advice and reviews on the Internet. It is very profitable. It's also a fun place to work where "speed wins" is the operating principle. We move fast. We are flexible and we take risks. An open mind and ideas are always welcome. Dogmatism and inflexibility not so much. You will play a lead role in the design and operation of the network, server, and datacenter infrastructure beneath TripAdvisor's applications. The environment currently spans 3 datacenters, and that is likely to increase. You will work closely with the software engineering team to support product changes and enhance their performance, scalability, reliability, and security. We are small team. You will be expected to work on a project or task from end to end with a comfort level running projects and implementing the details. One day you might be working with our ISPs to transition from static routing to BGP, and the next day you are racking and cabling switches. This morning you are kicking off a load balancer replacement project, and in the afternoon you are upgrading firewall firmware after you determine that we are exposed to a potential security vulnerability. This week you are putting together a comprehensive network monitoring system, and next week you are running tcpdump with a DBA to try and diagnose why database replication is "slow". You will have a thorough knowledge of enterprise networking including Cisco switching, routing, and security as well as TCP/IP internals. You will also preferably have a strong Linux or Unix background. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- IT Lead TripAdvisor is looking for an IT generalist who will provide leadership and mentoring to a team of 4 supporting the IT needs of roughly 350 employees worldwide. This role is part hands-on sysadmin and part team lead with the potential to grow into a team management role. TripAdvisor is the top site for travel advice and reviews on the Internet. It is very profitable. It's also a fun place to work where "speed wins" is the operating principle. We move fast. We are flexible and we take risks. An open mind and ideas are always welcome. Dogmatism and inflexibility not so much. We are not your typical Windows / Active Directory / Exchange shop. Desktops: 60% Windows 40% OSX. Our email/collaboration system is Zimbra running on Linux. Our phone system is Asterisk running on Linux. Instead of Active Directory, we use OpenLDAP. Our file/print servers run Samba. We tend to prefer open solutions that we can take off the shelf and adapt to our needs, but we are not wedded to a particular OS or vendor. To be successful in this role you will: Possess excellent interpersonal skills, patience, and a genuine desire to help people with their technology challenges Have strong troubleshooting skills and a diagnostic intuition Enjoy and excel at mentoring other talented team members to reach their full potential Be a self-starter. If you don't know how to do something you consider it a challenge to try to figure it out for yourself You will have demonstrated experience with: Linux systems administration Windows systems administration Samba OpenLDAP Postfix Server virtualization Scripting (perl, python, bash...) Duties and Responsibilities include: Operation of corporate networked applications and infrastructure (Zimbra, OpenLDAP, Samba, Asterisk) Overseeing backups of roughly 20+TB of data weekly Ensuring the security of TripAdvisor's corporate systems Procuring and deploying server hardware Tier 2/3 Helpdesk support Working with the Director of IT to develop IT strategy

1 0

the website is in need of some love
by Jeff Moyer April 2, 2010

April 2, 2010

I'm not sure who maintains it, but it's in a very sad state at the moment. Cheers, Jeff

4 3

Re: [Wlug] Use Drupal On The Web Site - Wlug Digest, Vol 78, Issue 1
by Steven Greenberg April 1, 2010

April 1, 2010

I am all in favor of Jeff's suggestion. I first tested Drupal on my personal web site (http://www.ssgreenberg.name/Drupal/Drupal/) I then convinced my Square Dance Club to let me work with the Webmaster to convert that site to Drupal. We have had nothing but raves from the readers since we converted. http://www.hayloftsteppers.org/ When judging the site, remember, we are (or were) engineers, not artists. /Steve > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Subject: > Re: [Wlug] the website is in need of some love > From: > Tatsh <ddrtist(a)gmail.com> > Date: > Thu, 1 Apr 2010 10:05:30 -0400 > To: > wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > > To: > wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > > > Would be cool to do it over in Drupal. > > NOT JOOMLA (should be called 'piece of crap please give up already!')! > > All you need is a blog post system (built-in) to write about events, and add > custom fields like time if you want, etc etc. From a design stand point, there > is no reason to use images for the textual links, especially obviously > compressed JPEGs. > > Late > > Jeff Moyer wrote: >> I'm not sure who maintains it, but it's in a very sad state at the >> moment. >> >> Cheers, >> Jeff -- Steven Greenberg Email: steve(a)ssgreenberg.name 251 Holland Rd. Phone: (774)241-0095 Fiskdale, Massachusetts 01518-1231 Web: http://www.ssgreenberg.name Other Email: s.greenberg(a)ieee.org ssg(a)alum.mit.edu

1 0

interesting article on RAID
by Chuck Anderson March 12, 2010

March 12, 2010

Triple-Parity RAID and Beyond by Adam Leventhal | December 17, 2009 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1670144 As hard-drive capacities continue to outpace their throughput, the time has come for a new level of RAID. -- - Chuck (372 Days until IPv4 depletion: http://ipv4depletion.com/)

3 2

Meeting: BtrFS: Now (Thurs March 11 7pm)
by Chuck Anderson March 12, 2010

March 12, 2010

Frank is giving a talk on BtrFS right now. It seems the website wasn't updated (but is now). -- - Chuck (372 Days until IPv4 depletion: http://ipv4depletion.com/) On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 06:18:44AM -0500, Frank Sweetser wrote: > I've noticed that not too many people have putting in meeting topic requests, > so I thought that if anyone's interested I'd volunteer to throw together some > slides on BtrFS. > > For those of you who haven't heard of it, BtrFS is the next generation linux > filesystem. Though still in heavy development, it was included in the > mainstream kernel last year. It promises to scale to filesystems well beyond > what any of the current offerings can handle (including ext4), as well as > offering far greater flexibility and better data security for data admins. > > If you have anything else that you'd like to hear about, either instead of or > in addition to BtrFS, chime in, and hopefully someone else on the list will be > able to make it happen! > > -- > Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu | For every problem, there is a solution that > WPI Senior Network Engineer | is simple, elegant, and wrong. - HL Mencken > GPG fingerprint = 6174 1257 129E 0D21 D8D4 E8A3 8E39 29E3 E2E8 8CEC

1 0

Re: [Wlug] Meeting topics
by Jeff Moyer March 2, 2010

March 2, 2010

Frank Sweetser <fs(a)WPI.EDU> writes: > I've noticed that not too many people have putting in meeting topic requests, > so I thought that if anyone's interested I'd volunteer to throw together some > slides on BtrFS. > > For those of you who haven't heard of it, BtrFS is the next generation linux > filesystem. Though still in heavy development, it was included in the > mainstream kernel last year. It promises to scale to filesystems well beyond > what any of the current offerings can handle (including ext4), as well as > offering far greater flexibility and better data security for data admins. > > If you have anything else that you'd like to hear about, either instead of or > in addition to BtrFS, chime in, and hopefully someone else on the list will be > able to make it happen! If anyone is interested in a talk on SSDs, chime in. I can present my experiences with these devices. I've evaluated the performance of several vendors' products, ranging from the poor to the exemplary. I can talk about the modifications made in the block layer to accommodate for these devices, and the current implementation of the block discard support (which maps to ATA TRIM, which is important for device lognevity and performance) and how that is wired up to file systems such as ext4. Cheers, Jeff

6 10

vmbuilder - Ubuntu Lucid?
by John Stoffel March 1, 2010

March 1, 2010

Hi, Anyone else using vmbuilder with Ubuntu's 10.x Lucid Lynx (Alpha3, I know) and cursing the change in options that just happened recently? I've been playing around building VMs (based on Karmic) and tossing them away since it was so quick. Now that I've upgrade to a newer version of Lucid, it's all busted. Sigh... This would be a good talk too, about building and using VMs. Here's the script I whipped up to help automate things, which is now busted. Sigh... I realize I need to just look in the docs, but they a) suck and b) aren't easily found. Nor is any list of changes in the options listed nicely either. Grrr!!!! THanks, John #!/bin/sh # My own script for building and starting VMs more easily, based on # the instructions given at: # # http://www.howtoforge.com/virtualization-with-kvm-on-ubuntu-9.10 # # Version 0.1 - 12/29/2009 # if [ $# -ne 3 ]; then echo "Usage: $0 hostname ip username" echo " IP is last octet of the 192.168.1/24 subnet" echo exit fi euid=`id -u` if [ $euid -ne 0 ]; then echo "Error! Script must run with root privs. Try sudo $0 ...." echo exit fi hostname=$1 ip=$2 username=$3 vmbase="/var/vm" subnet="192.168.1" suite="karmic" bridge="br0" mem=256 mirror="http://192.168.1.3:9999/ubuntu" # LVM stuff volgroup="virtmachs" #--------------------------------------------------------------------- # Make the directory where we store the VM config #--------------------------------------------------------------------- if [ -d ${vmbase}/${hostname} ]; then /bin/rm -rf ${vmbase}/${hostname} fi mkdir -p ${vmbase}/${hostname} cd ${vmbase}/${hostname} #--------------------------------------------------------------------- # Copy over the template, but use the fixed one instead in vm0 #--------------------------------------------------------------------- mkdir -p ${vmbase}/${hostname}/mytemplates/libvirt cp ${vmbase}/vm0/mytemplates/libvirt/* ${vmbase}/${hostname}/mytemplates/libvirt/ #--------------------------------------------------------------------- # Setup partitions file #--------------------------------------------------------------------- cat >vmbuilder.partition <<EOF root 8000 swap 2000 /var 10000 EOF #--------------------------------------------------------------------- # Setup the boot.sh file #--------------------------------------------------------------------- cat >boot.sh <<EOF # This script will run the first time the virtual machine boots # It is run as root. # Expire the user account /usr/bin/passwd -e ${username} # Set the root password /usr/sbin/usermod -p '$1$MbDcN3NU$ndC6TvQ1.a1VG0jbeW3hD.' root # Install openssh-server apt-get update apt-get install -qqy --force-yes openssh-server nfs-client nfs-common mkdir /local /staging /home echo "jfsnew:/home /home nfs soft,sec=sys,vers=3,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,nolock 0 0" >> /etc/fstab echo "jfsnew:/local /local nfs soft,sec=sys,vers=3,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,nolock 0 0" >> /etc/fstab echo "jfsnew:/staging /staging nfs soft,sec=sys,vers=3,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,nolock 0 0" >> /etc/fstab mount /home mount /local mount /staging echo "America/New_York" > /etc/timezone cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime EOF #--------------------------------------------------------------------- # Create LVM volume for VM #--------------------------------------------------------------------- if [ ! -e /dev/${volgroup}/${hostname} ] then lvcreate -L20G -n ${hostname} ${volgroup} else echo echo "Skipping lvcreate, Logical Volume ${hostname} already exists." echo fi #--------------------------------------------------------------------- # Run vmbuilder #--------------------------------------------------------------------- echo vmbuilder kvm ubuntu --suite=${suite} --flavour=virtual --arch=amd64 --mirror=${mirror} -o --libvirt=qemu:///system --tmpfs=- --ip="${subnet}.${ip}" --part=vmbuilder.partition --templates=mytemplates --user=${username} --name=${username} --pass=${username} --addpkg=vim-nox --addpkg=unattended-upgrades --addpkg=acpid --raw=/dev/virtmachs/${hostname} --firstboot=boot.sh --mem=${mem} --hostname=${hostname} --bridge=${bridge} vmbuilder kvm ubuntu --suite=${suite} --flavour=virtual --arch=amd64 --mirror=${mirror} -o --libvirt=qemu:///system --tmpfs=- --ip="${subnet}.${ip}" --gateway="${subnet}.254" --part=vmbuilder.partition --templates=mytemplates --user=${username} --name=${username} --pass=${username} --addpkg=vim-nox --addpkg=unattended-upgrades --addpkg=acpid --raw=/dev/virtmachs/${hostname} --firstboot=boot.sh --mem=${mem} --hostname=${hostname} --bridge=${bridge} #--------------------------------------------------------------------- # Startup the VM #--------------------------------------------------------------------- if [ -e /etc/libvirt/qemu/${hostname}.xml ] then virsh define /etc/libvirt/qemu/${hostname}.xml virsh start ${hostname} else echo "Error! VM ${hostname} not created properly." echo exit fi

1 0

How do I change the UUID on an NTFS partition?
by Randy Cole Feb. 24, 2010

Feb. 24, 2010

I've done this before but I can't remember how. Gparted (actually ntfsclone) duplicates the UUID, so I cannot mount them both!

2 4

Job openings: web developer, application support specialist
by Brian Conway Feb. 23, 2010

Feb. 23, 2010

Hi folks. My company is looking for a couple people for openings. Background: We're a two year-old startup located in Worcester that produces a high-performance, bidirectional messaging infrastructure that encompasses voice, SMS, email, IM, social networking, and more. Current customers include a number of restaurant chains, sports venues, and state agencies. The positions are full-time with health benefits. Pay has some flexibility, but geared towards entry level and recent grads. Web developer: PHP, Ajax, SQL (Oracle), XML, Linux (of course). Additional responsibility/salary is available for partial system operations support. Customer support/application specialist: Customer-facing, non-programmer, will become an expert in our applications. Responsible for initial setup and configuration of new customers in our applications and troubleshooting. Additional roles as they appear. Let me know if anyone's interested and I'll pass it along, thanks. Brian Conway

2 1