Akom's Tech Ruminations

Lawmowers, snowblowers, chainsaws, generators, trimmers (even motorcycles) ... I have all of these, but, obviously, they are used seasonally. That means that they spend a fair amount of time sitting around. While most preventative maintenance advice tends to focus on the maintenance of frequently used engines, I find that it is the stored machines that get overlooked. Therefore:

Preventing In-Storage Problems in just 2 steps

1. Stabilize Your Fuel

   While people will tell you that gasoline doesn't usually break down, that's not true in my experience. After sitting around in your carburetor for a few months, the fuel does and will separate. The issue here is that one part of it will literally varnish the surfaces, either sticking moving parts together, or restricting flow. The result? Popping, backfiring, or an engine that will only run with the choke on (if it runs at all). The only solution is to take the carb apart and clean everything - perhaps even changing the seals and needle seat. In the ideal world you'd have no fuel in the carburetor at all during storage, but since you're unlikely to get it all out, this is the next best thing.
   
   

   In other words:

   • Simply add fuel stabilizer of your choice (eg Stabil) to gasoline the day you buy gasoline, and use only treated gas in seasonally used engines.
   • When you shut off the engine before storage (or any time), let it run out of fuel - either shut off the valve, or use up what's in the tank if you have no valve.
   
   
   

2. End-of-season Oil Change

   Oil absorbs byproducts of combustion, which are acidic. The more the engine runs, the more acidic the oil becomes. This acidic medium, coupled with 6 months in storage means corrosion risk to all the lubricated engine surfaces.
   
   

   In other words:

   • Simply change the oil when the season is over - spring for snowblowers, fall for lawnmowers, etc.
     Warm up the engine, let it run out of fuel (see above), then change the oil. Don't start it again before storage.

That's it - you'll have years of reliable service from your engines. It's amazing how many people overlook these two steps that can and do prevent so many issues. I used a trashed lawnmower for 8 more seasons after I found it by following these steps. I've had my snowblower 12 years and it always starts on the first pull. Speaking of snowblowers, see also how to change oil without making a mess.

But wait, what about spark plugs? Air filters?

In my experience, on occasionally used engines, spark plugs never actually wear out. They can get fouled from improper carburetor adjustment or over-priming, but when the system is functioning properly - a good quality plug might outlast the engine. Go ahead and change it if it makes you feel better, but I've run my lawnmower weekly on the same plug for 8 seasons and it still looks and works just fine. As for air filters - that's another story, but their maintenance has nothing to do with seasonal use. Every once in a while it's good to check that the filter is clean enough to let some air through and that it's not torn so it's not letting dirt into the carb. Otherwise, I tend to leave them alone.

1. There is a choice of 3 video drivers (see Update Manager->Hardware Drivers). The open source driver is great for an environment like XFCE or LXDE, but E17 simply cannot run on that driver. I've given up trying to guess why.
2. Using the proprietary driver ( fglrx-updates and fglrx-amdcccle-updates ), E17 now works, but you cannot use xrandr to enable the second monitor (you get the "required virtual size does not fit available size"). This driver is old school and requires a static configuration in xorg.conf ... Of course there is no xorg.conf anymore, thus you add your pieces to a xorg.conf.d directory. What you need to do is configure a virtual size according to the above error message (or calculate it as the sum-total of the resolutions of your monitors). For example:

   /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf
   Section "Screen"
       Identifier "default Screen Section"
       SubSection "Display"
           Virtual   3840 1200
       EndSubSection
   EndSection

3. Now when you log in, you might even see both monitors work. If not, you can fix it with xrandr, or you can add it to your config as well, something like this:

   Section "Monitor"
       Identifier   "VGA-0"
           Modeline "1280x1024_60.00"  109.00  1280 1368 1496 1712  1024 1027 1034 1063 -hsync +vsync
           Option  "RightOf" "DVI-0"
   EndSection

1. Download and install the same version as what you're running on the larger card
2. Restore your config.xml backup onto the new instance of pfSense. You can do this through webconfigurator, or if you are (like me) running on a temporary rig without multiple NIC's, you can scp it over manually
3. Confirm that the system boots, but don't make any changes (to the interfaces, for instance). Put the card into your real system
4. Now you can use the auto-updater as normal, and your old config.xml will be upconverted

Continue reading "amixer toggle mutes but does not unmute"

1. Private to application
2. Public but on the main storage
3. Public but on the removable storage (actual SD card)

Continue reading "Switchable Storage Locations in an Android App"

on_movie_end bash -c "echo insert into security(camera, filename, frame, file_type, time_stamp, event_time_stamp, event_id) values('%t', '%f', '%q', '%n', '%Y-%m-%d %T', '%C', '%v') | mysql -uUSER -pPASS"

#!/bin/bash

logger -t test "$0 executing with $*"
sql="insert into security(camera, filename, frame, file_type, time_stamp, event_time_stamp, event_id) values('$1', '$2', '$3', '$4', '$5', '$6', '$7')"
echo $sql | mysql -u$U -p$P motion
 

on_movie_end U=USER P=PASS bash /usr/local/sbin/motion-insert-event.sh '%t' '%f' '%q' '%n' '%Y-%m-%d %T' '%C' '%v

Continue reading "motion drops MySQL support, but you can get around it with a shell script"

From .NET: "Hello, {0} Today is the {1} day"  
To JAVA: "Hello, {%1$s} Today is the {%2$s} day"

Continue reading "Converting .NET String.format pattern to Java with a regular expression"

[3073222.768708] Clock: inserting leap second 23:59:60 UTC

1. You want to use USB 2.0 with Virtual Box on Ubuntu 12.04 (or recent version
2. You're told to install the extension pack from this page
3. The download is not the same version as your version of virtual box itself
4. It doesn't work

1. Shorten the extension pack download URL to http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/
2. Find a directory matching your version ( dpkg -i virtualbox )
3. Download the extension pack

Maya does not appear to have a Linux version, so where I have a single machine, I want to run it in VirtualBox - in either Windows XP or Windows 7. I've successfully installed it in both, 32 and 64 bit, and it installs and starts up just fine. The fun comes later. There are two serious problems:

1. Alt+Mouse doesn't work. Well, this has to do with my window manager more than anything - Alt+Mouse is usually used in Linux. I'm not willing to change that - but fortunately, Alt-Shift+Mouse does something fairly similar in Maya
2. 3D repainting is completely messed up. In fact, there are two things that don't work immediately - selection on the 3d pane (pointer appears to be below the screen) and the Spacebar popup menu (also below the screen). Fortunately, this can be fixed with a bit of sacrifice: turn off 3d (I turned off 3d and 2d) acceleration in Virtualbox settings.



 
3. And it works! (not horribly slow either)

Continue reading "Using dual widescreen monitors on old hardware with Ubuntu"

WARNING[10695]: app_meetme.c:1097 build_conf: Unable to open pseudo device

$ apt-get install dahdi dahdi-dkms dahdi-linux  #I think dahdi may be enough
$ echo dahdi_dummy >> /etc/modules
$ modprobe dadhi_dummy
$ ls -l /dev/dahdi/pseudo
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 196, 255 2011-11-15 11:26 /dev/dahdi/pseudo
$ id asterisk
(Should include 'dialout' group)

Continue reading "Asterisk CDR records 's' for DST when Dialing from Macros"