Month: June 2010

Debian Lenny make-kpkg broken with new kernel

~ flihp ~ 1 Comment

If you use make-kpkg to build your kernels and you’re running Lenny you may have had problems building 2.6.34 when it came out. With kernel-package version 11.015 I’m getting the following error:

The UTS Release version in include/linux/version.h
""
does not match current version:
"2.6.34"
Please correct this

I’m sure more recent packages have this bug squashed but on Lenny it’s still a problem. What’s happening is make-kpkg is looking for a version string in $(KERN_ROOT)/include/linux/version.h and it’s not there. Every once in a while the kernel maintainers move stuff around and that’s exactly what happened. The UTS_RELEASE definition was moved from $(KERN_ROOT)/include/linux/utsrelease.h to $(KERN_ROOT)/include/generated/utsrelease.h

I found it confusing that the error message lists the version.h file. Turns out this definition has been moved before and when make-kpkg can’t find it in $(KERN_ROOT)/include/linux/utsrelease.h it falls back to version.h in the same directory. So we fix it with a quick patch.

--- ./version_vars.mk	2008-11-24 12:01:32.000000000 -0500
+++ ./version_vars.mk.new	2010-06-29 21:51:50.000000000 -0400
@@ -138,10 +138,10 @@
 EXTRAV_ARG :=
 endif
 
-UTS_RELEASE_HEADER=$(call doit,if [ -f include/linux/utsrelease.h ]; then  
-	                       echo include/linux/utsrelease.h;            
+UTS_RELEASE_HEADER=$(call doit,if [ -f include/generated/utsrelease.h ]; then  
+	                       echo include/generated/utsrelease.h;            
 	                   else                                            
-                               echo include/linux/version.h ;              
+                               echo include/linux/utsrelease.h ;              
 	                   fi)
 UTS_RELEASE_VERSION=$(call doit,if [ -f $(UTS_RELEASE_HEADER) ]; then                    
                  grep 'define UTS_RELEASE' $(UTS_RELEASE_HEADER) |

Down load version_vars.mk.patch. Copy this patch to /usr/share/kernel-package/ruleset/misc/ and apply it:

zcat version_vars.mk.patch.gz | sudo patch -p1

If you’ve already tried to build your kernel and had it fail because of this bug you should copy the version_vars.mk we just patched to $(KERN_ROOT)/debian/ruleset/misc/ and run make-kpkg again. This should keep you from having to rebuild the whole kernel … which takes an age on my laptop.

Can’t wait for Squeeze to go stable but that always comes with a whole set of new problems 🙂

QNAP 419P Torrent Client

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About 6 months ago I purchased a QNAP 419P NAS. I did a bunch of shopping around and settled on this one largely because it’s Linux based, runs on a low powered ARM cpu, and it’s got a pretty active community. After 6 months of operation I can’t say I’m thrilled, but it hasn’t been a complete disaster either.

I bought it to replace an older P4 system I had Frankensteined into a file server. It had an old ATA133 3ware raid card with ~900GB in raid 5. I had it running rtorrent on the console and serving up files using NFS. Pretty basic and it served my purposes just fine. I started running out of disk space so I picked up the QNAP 419P.

The 419P is a departure from my normal setup since everything is done through a web UI. I also mount my files using CIFS so my room mate can mount a drive too. The 419P will allow you to mount CIFS and NFS but the permissions get all borked up and since Linux support for CIFS is pretty good these days (and Windows support for NFS sucks) I made the switch.

Now on to the reason I’m writing all of this down: the torrent client that QNAP packages for the 419P is terrible. It’s custom so in their defense it’s a lot of software to maintain. That said I’ve got no idea why they’re trying to roll their own. There are so many web front ends to rtorrent++ that there’s no excuse to be building your own half-baked web front end.

Now bad UI I can handle but recently the trackers I used have started white listing clients. Naturally the identification string offered up by the QNAP torrent client isn’t on the list. So what to do? Well this is where the QNAP community comes in: package rtorrent++ and a few web front-ends. This is all described in their forums [1] and the person who did the heavy lifiting here is definitely getting a few paypal bucks from me as a thank you.

So I’ve got rtorrent and the front ends running on my 419P but why am I still annoyed? Well for one thing there’s no authentication for it. QNAP spent some time building their auth system and it’s not half bad but from the looks of it there isn’t a way for application developers / packagers to tie into it. So as it is now the web UI for rtorrent is wide open. Even on my home network I like to have at least a login / password.

There may be a way to tie into the QNAP auth infrastructure, or even a way to require some auth for the rtorrent front end (I’m thinking some sort of apache mod_auth foo to get at the URI). In the mountains of spare time I’ve got I’ll take a quick look (thick with sarcasm). For now I’m just happy to be downloading again thanks to the QNAP community.

[1] : http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=25165

Chrome Valve Cover

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A few weeks ago the seal on my valve cover started leaking a bit of oil. It was very minor at first so I ignored it. Eventually it started leaking out on to my exhaust (headers) so I’d pull up to a light and notice a bit of smoke rising off my front end. That’s about the point when you can’t ignore the problem any more.

Replacing a seal is pretty easy especially a dry seal like the valve cover seal. I’ve been planning some upgrades though so I took the opportunity to blow some money. There’s some back story here though: this was my first bike and I learned to ride on it, the hard way. In my first summer I laid it down once on each side. The bike survived with minimal damage but the engine cover on the clutch side looks like someone went at it with a file. The alternator and valve covers got off easy but still got chipped up. Over time the hard coat on them started cracking noticeably.

Since I had to remove the valve cover I might as well replace it, right? Might as well get a chrome one too 🙂 I even managed to track down the chrome replacement on ebay for pretty cheep so that’s always nice. Now I really screwed this one up though: I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have. With that in mind here’s the before shots with the tank removed.

When the valve cover is off the cam shafts are exposed. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing my laptop and ordering some more aggressive replacement cams. One step at a time. First replace the seal which actually wasn’t in bad shape. It was a bit frayed at the edges but there wasn’t any serious wear that I could see.

This is the point where I got excited, threw the camera to the side, replaced the seal and threw the new cover on without taking any pictures. I’ll learn eventually. I did it by the book (well by the Haynes Manual). I put a bit of grease on the seal, fitted it into the cover and replaced the bolts at the specified torque. Here’s what it looked like after it’s all back together.

Sadly it’s still bleeding a bit of oil. Nothing as bad as it was so I’m thinking the gasket may just need to get seated. Also the grease I applied may be running out a bit. For now I’m just carrying a shop rag with me and hoping for the best.

I ordered the rest of the replacement covers in chrome from British Customs along with a bunch of other stuff. My next post largely depends on what arrives in the mail first.

Thruxton Backstory

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I purchased my 2004 Triumph Thruxton back in 2006 (I think). Since then I’ve made minor modifications but all of those predated this blog. Needless to say as a wannabe DIY mechanic a motorcycle modeled after the classic Triumphs is a pretty tempting toy. This post is just some quick back story on what I’ve done before launching into some of the upgrades I’ve been working on.

Up till now I’ve done little more than make the bike ridable. The Thruxton comes in sad shape stock. It sounds like a sewing machine and has a very tame ride. It doesn’t take much to make it much more fun though with the help of a few aftermarket parts.

The first thing I did was pick up a rear fender removal kit. I got it from newthruxton.com just based on a Google search. For the most part the kit worked out great but the quality of the replacement lights that I purchased with it were pretty bad. The tail light burned out because the bulb they had in it was too big and was making contact with the plastic cover. The blinkers were just super low quality (though they were super cheep).

Second I picked up an airbox removal kit and a Predator exhaust from British Customs. Making such a drastic change to the air intake and the exhaust required jetting the carbs which I had a local shop take on for me. With the new exhaust and no air box the Thruxton is a completely different beast.

That’s pretty much all I’ve done up till now but a buddy of mine just picked up a 1972 Honda Scrambler and I helped him to fix up a few small electrical problems last week. After working on his bike I’ve caught myself ordering a bunch of new parts for my Thruxton, it’s contagious. I’ve been telling myself I’d make these upgrades forever so I’m long overdue. This should be fun so stay tuned.

Here’s a quick picture I took with an old phone of my Thruxton and a buddies Street Triple back in 2009. Pretty much hasn’t changed since then but it will soon.

change jar rolled

~ flihp ~ 1 Comment

Took me about 4 hour to roll all of this change up. Probably not worth the time but it was strangely comforting performing a repetitive manual task for a while. Anyways it’s about $470 if I include a few dollar and 50 cent coins that were mixed in. Not bad for an old pickle jar full of change.

Normally I’d be scheming about the cool stuff I’d buy with my new found riches but they’re already destined to help pay off some new motorcycle parts. Oh yeah, motorcycle parts. I’ll up some photos and the like when they come in and I get the time to break out the wrenches.

change jar

~ flihp ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been a slacker this past month and haven’t posted much technical stuff. Once class ended and work picked up for the summer I pretty much fell off the map. I’m working on a post now to describe the work I did over this past semester and hopefully where it will go over these next few months.

But for now I’m falling back on some filler. That’s right, completely useless information follows: my change jar is full!

Now it’s time to roll it up. Any guesses on how much $$ is in there? There’s lots of quarters so I’m guessing it’s gonna be around $400.