From the mind of Emil Soleyman-Zomalan - Programming

Zimbra Connector for Novell Evolution

Emil — Sun, 13 May 2007 14:59:00 -0400

Seeing that Zimbra released a beta version of their Novell Evolution connector two weeks back, I went ahead and downloaded the code from their SVN server. Today, I have created a package for Ubuntu 7.04 (aka Ubuntu Feisty) that integrates nicely with Evolution 2.10. My unscientific testing shows that it indeed works as expected but some small improvements are needed to polish it up further.

You can download the source and binary packages below:

Evolution Zimbra Connector (deb) - download this!

Evolution Zimbra Connector (changes)

Evolution Zimbra Connector (dsc)

Evolution Zimbra Connector (diff)

Evolution Zimbra Connector (original source)

UPDATE: I have researched the problems that I and some other folks were having with syncing contacts and calendars locally to the server. I have found that curl expects the CA certificate bundle to be available on the local machine before it verifies the authenticity of the remote SSL certificate coming from Zimbra. Since we don't have the Zimbra CA certificate installed, we will never authenticate with the server. I have created new packages that have disabled curl's ability to verify authenticity until a better solution can be found.

Logitech UVC Webcams: Firmware Error

Emil — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:08:00 -0400

It has been known that many of Logitech's UVC webcams do not work well under Linux due to a specific firmware bug. Several developers of the linux-uvc project have been trying to hammer out a software workaround with limited success. I hope to have some time in the coming days to run a software-only USB analyzer on a Windows laptop to give us more insight into this problem. Please go to this link to find the latest USB retry patch:

http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-uvc-devel@lists.berlios.de/msg00386.html

UPDATE: I have used SnoopyPro 0.22 to capture the USB traffic from the camera when it was started and stopped. I have uploaded two separate files, one binary and one text, but the binary file is much more complete.

Logitech Quick Cam Ultra Vision (text)
Logitech Quick Cam Ultra Vision (binary)

UPDATE 2: It seems that the Logitech Firmware bug is there for good and cannot be worked around in the UVC driver. The long term fix is to hack up the Linux USB subsystem to provide a work-around but that might (will) not happen at any time in the future. Logitech has dropped the ball on this product!

Nagios Alert Templates

Emil — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 08:56:00 -0400

Some of you may have first or second-hand knowledge of Nagios and the types of alerts it sends out to your Network Operations Center (NOC) or similarly functioning department. You will also notice that the alerts are difficult to read and understand at first glance -- a usability issue. I have come up with two similar looking but different templates: one is text-based and the other is HTML-based.

The HTML-based template allows the alert header to be color coded for ok, warning, unknown, and critical status. For example, the below alert message contains a green header and up arrow for the ok status. The compressed archive contains the different types of status alerts and accompanying icons.

HTML version

text version

License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Download: Alerts - HTML and Text (11Kb)

Gnome-terminal Bug: Duplicate Profile Name

Emil — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 13:30:00 -0400

I'm beginning my work on Bug 363609 for gnome-terminal. Read the bug report for more information.

I'll post my findings to this entry ...

UPDATE: I'm back working on this issue. I am tracking down the last few code paths that will lead to crashes. I hope to have some time to fix those.