Google Voice + Talkatone + iPhone/Android = Google VOIP phone

I had an older iPhone 3gs sitting around after upgrading to an (much better) Android handset a while back. The contract was over for the iPhone and was ultimately claimed by my son. He has been watching Youtube videos and playing games on the thing ever since. For some strange reason, I decided to check for SMS and VOIP options for it's WIFI connection. The generic search of "iphone 3gs VOIP" lead to many options. Most were not free or just not what I was thinking. At some point I stumbled onto the free Talkatone app with the promise of "Unlimited FREE calls, texts and picture sharing to Facebook and GTalk friends, or any phone number in US/Canada." Wow, what a statement. I am happy to say that from my point of view, they are correct.

The Getting Started section spells out the general procedure. It was actually easy. I had already setup a Google account for my son and just added the Google Voice upgrade. No big deal. With prerequisites done, the Talkatone install was easy. The combination just worked. My only marginal issue is the voice lag starts to get on the slightly noticeable side. Not a deal breaker noticeable mind you. And yes, I was able to call the iPhone from other phones just like they say.

I did try to setup a SIP account at an early stage of just playing with a couple of apps. Not very easy and did not work for me. So, having this combo made my geeky day. Besides, almost any time you can integrate with Google, you are going to be better off. It has so much of my digital life anyway.

Just so it's clear, Talkatone will work on both the iPhone from the App Store and Android handset from Google play.

This is not actually a thorough review or install howto. I just have some general praise for a geeky and fun product combination that works. The Talkatone peeps have done a great job!

Enjoy

CentOS 6.2 BCM4312 working wifi howto

Linux on laptops has come a LONG way over the years. I am happy to say that most Linux installs for laptops go with very little or no issues. Recently decided to install CentOS 6 (but I'm sure this applies to RHEL 6 or SL6) on an otherwise decent Dell D630 laptop. My only issue was wifi not working out of the box. The "issue" seems to be mostly about the BCM4312 802.11 card in the laptop. Here is the easy fix:

1. Get the "updated" el6 b43-firmware rpm from the Russian Fedora guys. (make sure it's the *el6* version)
 

wget "http://koji.russianfedora.ru/koji/buildinfo?buildID=1041"

2. Install it (current version depreciates the b43-openfwwf package nicely)

yum install b43-firmware-5.10.56.27.3-2.el6.noarch.rpm

3. Wait several seconds and the wifi light comes on and wifi works!

I originally tried with the documented b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.o but failed to extract the firmware needed.

I also looked into the kmod-compat-wireless but current information suggest, "RHEL6 packages are broken at present". Enjoy.

Here is all of the info from the BCM4312 card in question:

lspci | grep BCM
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

lspci -n | grep 14e4

0c:00.0 0280: 14e4:4315 (rev 01)

Original /var/log/messages indicated:

b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode15.fw" not found
b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43-open/ucode15.fw" not found
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/...devicefirmware and download the correct firmware for this driver version. Please carefully read all instructions on this website.

Google Music Manger issue with .ogg file?

Had a very head scratching issue with the (at least the) Linux version of Goggle Music Manger. GMM claims to have uploaded all of the songs and produced some errors on some individual song titles. I didn't think much of the errors since the upload showed successful. I then went to the Google Play page to take the next step of creating some play lists. To my surprise, I only had the original group of files I uploaded a while back and the recently purchased songs from Google (practically a) give-way of albums from last week. I went back to look at the errors noted by Google Music Manager and deleted from disk the files that were named in the errors. I was left with a single error from the "Run Troubleshooter" option; and the error listed that had no filename and a error with just "Failed to upload". Kinda odd to find no filename... Finally noticed that after hitting "Apply" and "Ok" I saw a "0%" on a Al DiMeola song and went searching for it. Immediately after moving the file from the original disk location on my system, Google Music Manger had a little green icon turn on and Google Play began to see the songs. That Al DiMeola song was an otherwise legit and playable .ogg file. I can only suspect that GMM does not like OGG files at this point, but doesn't want to ignore them. Hope my pain is your gain with Google Music Manager.

Dell Server Update Utility (SUU) v6.5.3 64-bit CentOS/RHEL 6 problems

Just going to vent here for a minute, so stay with me...Why? Why would you have so many 32bit dependencies when running SUU on a 64bit OS. I mean Dell has already shown that OMSA for 32bit is not going to happen going forward. At least fix your own documentation for requirements... please.

So, to get SUU 6.5.3 functional on a 64bit CentOS 6.2 or RHEL 6.x server (and SL I bet), you *will* need to:

yum install pam.i686 libXtst.i686 libXext.i686 compat-libstdc++-33.i686 pam.i686

As noted in the comments by Carlos Capriotti, if you want to run the GUI stuff, you will need a couple more packages:

yum install ncurses-libs.i686 libXp.i686

Verizon pc770 wireless card setup on CentOS 6.x

It's a very good time in a Linux lovers life when you can just say, "it works"... Because of all of the hard work of countless volunteers (and/or paid professionals). I am pleased to announce that the crappy unount of the virtual CD ROM is no longer needed in CentOS 6.x (or SL 6, RedHat 6)!

Thank You!

1. Plug in the card
2. Select the provider
3. Follow the prompts
4. Activate the card

NICE. It just WORKS!

P.S. Sorry about the situation for CentOS 5.x, but it's, "doable".

CentOS 6.x VMware Workstation 7.1 installation issue solved.

As this writing, VMware-Workstation 7.1 has issues building vmmon on CentOS 6.2 and therefore SL 6 and RHEL 6 also. After some head scratching, google'n and lots of reading, here is the easy way to get up and running.

This install example is for VMware-Workstation-7.1.5-491717.i386.bundle at the very least. Download that from VMware as you would normally.

First, make sure you have booted to the most recent kernel before installing. Otherwise you will not be able to build the VMware modules against the kernel you are running.

First, make sure to have some basic prerequisites before you start:

yum install gcc gcc-c++ kernel-headers kernel-devel

Next install (or update) the VMware-Workstation bundle as root and valid $DISPLAY set:

bash VMware-Workstation-7.1.5-491717.i386.bundle

Follow the promps as usual.

Bummer, vmmon won't load and produces errors in /var/log/messages like:
kernel: vmmon: disagrees about version of symbol smp_ops
kernel: vmmon: Unknown symbol smp_ops

First attempt at a work around yields the ever helpful Akemi Yag (aka "toracat")  blog and the perfect *helpful* comment by NomadAU. Why is that Redhat Bugzilla entry closed anyway??


Here is the portion that is key to fixing the issue; as root:

mv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary/bld-2.6.32-*-rhel6 ~/

Finally run:

vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

How to get system-config-netboot working on CentOS 6, RHEL 6 or SL 6

Sadly, Redhat has decided to drop system-config-netboot from it's offerings for RHEL 6. I was very much accustomed to the simplicity of using system-config-netboot for PXE boot client installs. Redhat may have not included the packages to install system-config-netboot, but it is certainly easy to get running on your RHEL 6 or clone. Here is the CentOS 6 i386example (please run commands as root or sudo you guts out):

1. Make sure some pre-requisites are in place:

yum install tftp-server xinetd pygtk2-libglade gnome-python2-canvas

2. Adjust for your arch type: Download the latest CentOS 5.x system-config-netboot* and alchemist* versions:

wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/system-config-netboot-0.1.45.1-3.el5.noarch.rpm
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/system-config-netboot-cmd-0.1.45.1-3.el5.noarch.rpm
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/alchemist-1.0.36-2.el5.i386.rpm

3. Force the install of the above packages:

rpm -ihv --force --nodeps system-config-netboot-* alchemist-1.0.36-2.el5.i386.rpm

4. Move part of the installed alchemist package to the correct place... bad administrator! ;)

mv /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/* /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/

Running "system-config-netboot" through some warning message at me, but it did what I wanted it to do

Yeah, it's a bit hackish. I'm OK with it if you are. You *could* rebuild the source rpm for each of them correcting the the alchemist path etc. I will for my systems, but this is the "easy" version of the "How to get system-config-netboot working on CentOS 6, RHEL 6 or SL 6" after all...