Virtualbox and KVM

At the moment I'm using virtualbox on my Ubuntu 8.10 laptop for running windows (very occasionally) and some SLC test machines for work. Oh and a few other Linux Distros too. Anyway, much as I like the point n clickiness of virtualbox I thought I'd see what the 'built in' KVM could do, esp as libvirt looks like a nice abstraction layer.

However on starting virtualbox machines I get the error:

VirtualBox can't operate in VMX root mode. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE).

well, thats not strictly necessary - a simple sudo rmmod kvm_intel kvm and relaunching the virtualbox guest.

Easy in Eze

Went down to the coast last weekend for the Nice Carnival. Stayed in Eze - nice medievel town on the hill. Stitched a pile of images together to try and get the scale of the hills, but managed to leave a gap sadly.

koha!

Spent a bit of time tinkering with koha in my spare time recently. Threw in a few trivial patches (once I'd got my head round git). However Some notes here for those installing on Debian Lenny (current 'testing'

1) Nearly all the required perl modules are available directly from the repos, the exception being SMS::Send (which needs Class::Adapter) -- Thise can be installed with the ever so handy dh-make-perl which converts your CPAN into .debs (sadly it still doesn't help with other conversion issues).

# dh-make-perl --build --cpan Class::Adapter ; dpkg -i libclass-adapter-perl_1.05-1_all.deb
# dh-make-perl --build --cpan SMS::Send ; dpkg -i libsms-send-perl_0.05-1_all.deb

2) I'll write up the rest as a HOWTO soon....

up up and away!

Spent weekend up at Leysin and Chateau D'oex for the baloon festival. Sat was grey and snowy / windy so not much flying. Sunday was superb tho - pics on flickr

KITT updated?

OK Wishlist time.

I'd like some sort of navigation system for the car. Yes I could buy a tomtom or suchlike, but whats the geek factor in that. Nope, what I'd really like is some sorta carpc. Now that Atom based motherboards are cheap, and SSD flash (certainly in the small storage capacity I'd need) are cheap(ish) this is becoming a sort of sketch plan. I'd still need to get a nice touchscreen and interface knocked up, and have a connection to the car amp (manufacturer fitted nice system)

So in no particular order:
* Touchscreen fitted 'neatly' in car
-- it needs to have big 'bloke sized' buttons on the screen for doing tasks, so I don't have to look away - do you look down at the car radio?
-- some sort of scriptable interface: eg 'upload all tracks since the last upload'
* GPS receiver
-- Datalogging for openstreetmap
-- Navigation (doh!)
-- Geofencing to allow comms when parked at home
* Wifi and or GPRS/HSDPA connectivity
-- limited storage in the car, download $music from home store - treat it as a small player rather than a full rsync copy.
-- kismet anyone?
-- remote upload of tracks
-- download of traffic reports
* OBD connection for datalogging.
-- correlate engine conditions to position - if you're revving the engine is that because you're going up a twisty hill or because you're a numpty.
* Accelerometer (wiimote velcro'd to dashboard?)
-- Get relative acceleration of car, not just position

Oh, and it should be cheap :-)

TODO: 2009

Following mrbens posting, I thought I'd knock up a quickie list of my own for comparison next year

• Learn French. This has to be a priority seeing as I wish to stay out here.


• Get a more permanent job - EGEE funding only lasts till next May...


• Get the mini-itx working in some media-server form


• Do stuff with Asterisk


• Improve Skiing


• Do more mapping with OpenStreetMap around the area.

That should keep me occupied for a while :-)

money, money, money...

Well, I can't live in Switzerland and not make some comment on financial matters. Anyway, emptying out my pockets this evening I looked at the pile of francs which included ones from 1965 to 2008. As much as I like the new british designs we just don't have this sense of continuum in the UK - decimalisation (hey, I've never faffed with these old systems), then the shrinking of the 10p etc. I just about remember pound notes (non scottish) but thats it. Is change always a good thing?