Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Greenstone on OSX

With more and more of our students using macs we decide to take another look at the osx version of Greenstone, now at 2.83 to see if it is usable. In the past, we recommended students stay away from the mac version and those who really, really want to use their macbook or iMac ended up installing boot camp, fusion or parallels and running greenstone in XP!

So we download the .dmg and click to install. It defaults to Users/yourusername/Greenstone. No way to change drives so it want to go on the sys drive. We decide that is ok and it gets ready to install. Note that to make greenstone actually work it has a number of dependencies. The problem in the past was users had to install and configure those dependent programs and it was not very straightforward. Now the gs installer adds apache automatically as well as installing imagemagick and ghostscript. Sweet.

We do not use the admin pages in the lab with the windows version but decide here to check it out so we tick the enable Admin pages checkbox and give it a password of admin. Click Install and away we go.

When finished we check out the greenstone folder - lots of files but which one launches the application? We click o nthe readmeEn.txt file for enlightenment...looks like the gli folder has the interface..ok but which file in there - client-gli.sh might be the bash script that runs the thing but how do you know? There is a gli.ico icon file...rather than click things at random hoping it will work, let's read the release notes. Ah....it says

On Mac and Linux, use a terminal (in Macs this is found under Applications > Utilities > Terminal) to go into the Greenstone installation directory and run
./gs2-server.sh
The small Greenstone Server will display. Run
./gli/gli.sh
To get to the Greenstone Librarian Interface

So we open a terminal window to the shell which puts us into our user directory (pwd will confirm where you are) so cd Greenstone/gli and then do ./gli.sh and joy - the usual gli interface launches. Since the gli is written in Java it is quite similar in windows, osx and linux.

One difference right at the start. You do file,new to define a collection and then have to do file,open to open the collection you just defined. We decide to test by creating a collection of midi files of Frank Zappa tunes. So we open the test collection and watch the spinner go round and round...this should not be. Ok it's crashed so we need to kill it.

Not impressed - let's try tomorrow to load the demo collection

XAMPP on the Mac

Last time we did 9713 it was not possible for students to access the web server so they could not copy their project there (for some security reason). We ended up uploading them to the class sharepoint. This time around we are thinking maybe we bypass this by using XAMPP 1.7.3 for the mac. There may be some issues:

The windows version which works on any drive as long as the xampp folder is in the root, so c:\xampp, e:\xampp, f:\xampp all work - in fact you can have multiple different copies of xampp on the same machine, a cheap version of the dev,qat,prd server model for development. The same process also works for xampplite and xampp and xampplite can be on the same drive as they have different folders. This is actually very useful as you can really play around without worrying about losing work.

Anyway, unfortunately the mac xampp version only works when installed to Applications. So we have to test this on lab machines and see what happens. Once installed you click the XAMPP control panel and start the apache,mySQL and even the ftp server. Of course, since you have access to the console you don't really need to ftp.

The students would then copy their content to the /Applications/XAMPP/htdocs folder and access them with Safari at http://localhost or depending on the lab setup they might be able to put their web content in their Home folder and goto http://localhost~username but i doubt if that has been set up.

We shall see...

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

FLAC's in iTunes

I've been using iTunes less and less because of it's limited support for the audio file formats i use. But I've been listening to the Connect360 media server from the mac pro and like it, but since i am only adding new stuff in the FLAC lossless format this posed a constraint with iTunes.

Open source innovation to the rescue via Fluke (play flacs in iTunes). I downloaded 0.25b (for beta) and installed. The FLAC extension is now associated by default with Fluke. We go to //Gamera and select You Really Got Me by the 13th Floor Elevators. You could ctrl click and select open with, fluke as well (or right click if you have a 2 button mouse, a useful thing Steve!)

Once you select the file it open iTunes and imports the file. No problem but that was just a little 3 min song. Let's leave iTunes open and try importing the entire Psychedelic Sounds album. Not so good. You can shift click all the tunes but when you ctrl click and choose open there is no Fluke option. So we select Open With, Other and browse to the Applications folder and click on Fluke. Now we tick the Always Open With checkbox and click Open. A dialog box called Adding Files is shown and each file being processing. Doing 21 files on a dual 2.66 xeon mac pro took about 30 second but Fluke terminated with an error. We check iTunes and the files we all added. It is beta after all!

For an unfair killer test let's try a 450mb high resolution FLAC of Count Basie and Sinatra Live at the Sands. We start at 6:15. We get the same error but do not terminate as iTunes shows it copying the file. Wow, it took 1 minute to convert 1:16:03 of high rez audio! Let's test it out, we fire up the Spherex system and press play. Excellent! Great job by the Fluke project team. Highly recommended.

Fluke - http://blowintopieces.com/fluke/

Library Science Portable DJ

Library Science DJ


Ok - to get a break from marking we created the Library Science DJ kit (LSD) for impromptu dance parties in the library or lab - all done from stuff lying around the house...

The kit consists of:
  • 1 portable mixer board (runs on a 9v battery) with 2 source inputs, mic input, and headphone jack
  • 1 set of speakers (6" woofer) for large areas
  • 1 set of speakers (4" woofer) for small spaces like cubicles
  • 1 set of headphones
  • 1 microphone
  • 1 mirror ball
  • 1 equipment bag
And of course all the wires and connectors. You just need to supply your own iPods or music device, preferably two if you want to do some mixing, fading etc. You could even use a pre-amp ed turntable if you like gouging petroleum disks with a needle.

The small speakers are Synthedata B-55's which are active computer audio monitors but not bad. I use them with my iPod to provide patio music. Made of metal and quite heavy but there is only one amp which powers both speakers so they cannot play too loud. However, they are small enough so i can put them in my back pack and bike them anywhere.
The larger speakers are KRK Rockit 6's which are really nice active studio monitors. They weight over 20lbs each and can really, really, really play loud without distortion. Each speaker has two amplifiers, one for the woofer and one for the tweeter. They have more base than my sub/sat spherex system i'm currently using on the mac. They also have nice controls and inputs but they are too large for the backpack. However, they do fit in the Wike (pronounced wiki) bike trailer so i can still bike them anywhere.

So how does the system sound? - with the small speakers it's ok but only useful in a near-field setup like a cubicle or small office. With the Rockit 6's, you could fill a small club or large lab. The sound field is much wider thanks to the waveform guide around the tweeter and the usable bass seems to get down to about 40-45hz which is very good. Playing high resolution FLAC's from SACD, DTS or HDCD disc's is incredible.

Anyway here are the pictures .....and back to work.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Koha on USB Stick II

The goal here was to create a persistent bootable USB version of Ubuntu with Koha, dspace etc to use for class. Students would work on their stick each week in the lab, adding software and configuring services. There are some missing bits - like PHP so we have to do some work later to get a full lamp stack running so we can install Wordpress and Scriblio etc.

Format the USB device

  1. Boot with the CD (ubuntu 9.10)
  2. Insert your USB stick
  3. Select the stick and right-click
  4. Select Format from the menu
  5. Select Compatible with All Systems (FAT) from the Type: pulldown menu
  6. Type in your username, ie (mchau99) in the Name: text box
  7. Click FORMAT

This process erases everything on the USB stick and creates a FAT32 partition. The process can be done on a Windows computer in advance but we might as well do it here. We re-format the stick to ensure it is FAT32 and not FAT and to get rid of any proprietary software included by the manufacturer. Your name should be limited to 8 characters or less with no spaces or punctuation.

Install Ubuntu

  1. Select System, Administration, USB Startup Disk Creator
  2. Under Disk to Use select your USB stick
  3. Select the Stored in Reserved Extra Space option
  4. Adjust the How Much slider to 2 gig for a 4 gig stick and 4 gig for a larger stick
  5. Click MAKE STARTUP DISK
  6. Click QUIT when the Installation is Complete message is displayed

Be careful to select your stick and not the internal hard disk! Your USB Stick will be called something like /dev/sdb1/mchau99. This process is used to create a caspar-rw file which will be the 'persistence' file that stores changes between boots. The 4 gig limitation is not from Ubuntu but a constraint of the Windows FAT32 file system. If you were using a large portable hard disk and wanted a larger persistence file it can be done but it requires a manual installation.

Boot From the Stick

  1. Click the Ubuntu menu item in the top right corner
  2. Select Restart from the menu
  3. Remove the CD-ROM disc from the tray when it opens
  4. Press ENTER

The system is now booted from the USB Stick. You can test the persistence by installing something - i first installed the Google toolbar in Firefox and used the synaptic package manager to install Brasero, sbackup, filezilla, and the MySQL Query browser. The query browser was able to connect to the mySQL server running on localhost with a username of root and a password of library. I rebooted the system and the changes were there, so the persistence works!

Backup

So how will students back up their weekly or daily work? With the portable USB Sticks a backup program is included - you back up daily or weekly and if your stick is lost, damaged or just screwed up - you reinstall the portable app environment and restore from the backup. This also makes it possible to have multiple sticks in use.

With the Ubuntu stick it is not so easy - there is no backup option on a menu. You need to be able to create a backup than can be fully restored. I can think of several possibilities:

Option 1 - use sbackup to create a backup of files. Sbackup can backup to local drives or to remote hosts using ssh or sftp. The local host option worked well but then you need a second stick to backup to and until we test the restore we cannot guarantee everything (such as the koha changes) are backed up. The other problem is that although i was able to browse the windows shares and connect to some, i could not connect to //files3 or //files when the user's local files (U: drive) are stored, so you cannot backup to your space. I was able to connect to the personal web space on panther but since that is only 10mb it is quite useless. Backing up to a file storage site via ssh or sftp would be preferable.

So option 1 can work but has some questions.

Option 2

An easier option for the student would be the ability to make a complete image of the USB stick that could be re-created. For example an ISO file. While there are lots of utilities to burn disk images like ISO or dmg to a CD/USB/HD, it is hard to find any information on creating an ISO from a USB stick. In fact, programs like NERO that can create ISO's won't even list a USB stick in their source menu.

Next Steps:

Run the Koha Install and import some MARC records.
Copy the large MARC record files to the S:\local\mlis\courses\9762 for students to use
Test Restore from sbackup with koha changes

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Alurateck Libre e-Book Reader

Decided to see if i would like using one. There were two goals - it had to be inexpensive and non-proprietary, which certainly ruled out the Kindle and the iPad. I purchased the Aluratek Libre pro (in white), a small and cheap e-book reader. It has an SD card slot and a usb connector - important for easy copying and it supports PDF, TXT, FB2, ePub, MOBI, PRC, and RTF files.

First step was to upgrade the firmware. We downloaded and unzipped the folder, connected the usb cable and started copying the folder to the SD card. It ran for a while and then we got an error message about '..too deep' or something and then Windows explorer froze up. We unplugged the SD card and killed explorer. This fixed that problem. We were now able to reconnect to the device's 128mb internal memory which has 4 folders:

  • Pictures
  • Books
  • Audiobooks
  • adobe-digital-editions

Since the display is black and white i'm not sure why you would put pictures on it! The audiobooks folder would be useful - it can store mp3 songs or real audio books. I'll transfer some of my audio books and check it out. Copying files to and from the device is very slow, very slow indeed. Be prepared to wait.

Connected the device to an Ubuntu 9.10 desktop and copying is fast, copied over some .mobi, .rb, .ltf, .epub and .pdf files for testing. The copying was without a problem - until the device disappeared from the desktop. It still thinks it is connected and does not want to turn off. We had to use the reset button in the back of the unit. Maybe take another try at updating the firmware?

Connected back to windows to transfer the firmware update folder with the .bin file. This now worked but i had to take out and insert the SD card a couple of times before it got recognized and assigned a drive letter. Arrgh the copy fails again with 'the path is too deep' - it's a single folder, jim! Windows then says 'delayed write failed', The data has been lost'. It looks like the unit turns itself off. Maybe look at the settings or try another machine. The copy process hangs repeatedly when there are 10 seconds remaining. But when i compared the files they are the same size so let's try the update process.


The update process is:

  • Disconnect AEBK01F from your computer after the file transfer
  • Reset AEBK01F by pressing the “RESET” button in the back of the unit
  • Push and hold both ‘>’ and ‘Power’ buttons for more than 5 seconds to boot up until you see the “Aluratek” logo
  • Wait for 10 to 20 seconds until the upgrade screen
  • Follow the on screen instruction to upgrade the unit
  • AEBK01F will now update the firmware.
  • Please wait until you see the message “Firmware Upgrade completed!
Finaslly, after a couple of resets we get the upgrade process screen so we press OK. The upgrade process takes about 2 minutes but erases the internal memory so i'll have to re-copy the audio books. Oh great - we get 'Firmware upgrade failed - hardware failure occurs'. So we reset the device. Screw the upgrade...Wonder if the problem is the SD card? Perhaps we should reformat it or try a different card. Right now let's try and read some books - the included .txt ones load no problem. The first .pdf does not load. We try Dawkins in epub format but it 'fails to open the file'. Try another epub and it works! Let's try a mobi file which it skips over so we try another epub and it works fine. The text is not bad - pretty readable but requiring good light. Let's try and copy some more books on this card.

Off to the store tomorrow

Alurateck Libre e-Book Reader


Decided to see if i would like using one. There were two goals - it had to be inexpensive and non-proprietary, which certainly ruled out the Kindle and the iPad. I purchased the Aluratek Libre pro (in white), a small and cheap e-book reader. It has an SD card slot and a usb connector - important for easy copying and it supports PDF, TXT, FB2, ePub, MOBI, PRC, and RTF files. Unfortunately it's screen is not e-ink but lcd but for less than $100 what do you expect? The device did get a favorable review in the Globe & Mail.

First step was to upgrade the firmware. We downloaded and unzipped the folder, connected the usb cable and started copying the folder to the SD card. It ran for a while and then we got an error message about '..too deep' or something and then Windows explorer froze up. We unplugged the SD card and killed explorer. This fixed that problem. We were now able to reconnect to the device's 128mb internal memory which has 4 folders:

  • Pictures
  • Books
  • Audiobooks
  • adobe-digital-editions

Since the display is black and white i'm not sure why you would put pictures on it! The audiobooks folder would be useful - it can store mp3 songs or real audio books. I'll transfer some of my audio books and check it out. Copying files to and from the device is very slow, very slow indeed. Be prepared to wait. It took 5 minutes to copy the first chapter of A Scandal in Bohemia. I decided to set up some copy operations and go for lunch...Copying Richard Dawkins caused windows explorer to freeze again (divine retribution perhaps?). I decide to restart windows and move the device to an osx and a ubuntu machine for testing the copying.





Monday, April 19, 2010

Using LAMP for Course Assignments

We used USB sticks again this year for student projects. The advantage is they allow the student to work anywhere, anytime and to get experience in systems work - installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting. The disadvantages are:

  • some sticks are sloooooooow
  • some sticks are not very durable
  • some people do not make backups

You get what you pay for, so saving $4 on something that contains your term's work is not a good idea! Buy the best, biggest and fastest stick you can afford or even better yet - buy a USB external hard disk. Not necessarily too much faster but definitely more durable. Also, there are 2 kinds of people, those who make backups and those who wish they had...I believe they now call these things 'learning experiences'.

Actually, the whole thing worked ok - some difficulties with old, slow or unreliable sticks but overall not bad and we required nothing from the IT people. Students went away with a complete library system with MARC records and a custom dynamic web site - not a bad portfolio to show a prospective employer.

The dynamic web site project had been a stumbling block - how do you get them to turn in a database, some php files, a css file and some images so that you can run it and take a look? You could run a server but central IT takes a dim view of that. You could use a hosting service but then you are paying out of your pocket. The solution was simple:

Students installed xampp or xampplite or wamp on their computer or USB stick and then installed Joomla. They then developed their dynamic web site. When finished they burned the xampp, xampplite or wamp folder to a cd-rom or dvd-rom and handed it in. The student could even test if the burn was done correctly by copying the xampp or xampplite folder to their hard drive, starting the apache and mysql servers, and running a web browser (same procedure as i follow below).

All i had to do was to copy the xampp, xampplite or wamp folder to my c:\ drive and then run the xampp control panel to start the servers and goto http://localhost/joomla to view their creation. (the wamp control panel works as well). The only downside is that it takes a couple of minutes to copy the folder from optical disc to hard drive. But it works and you have a permanent record.

With USB 3.0 now becoming available, i am thinking we can make a requirement that students purchase an 8 gig stick for the course and install Ubuntu on it and then lamp and add Koha, Wordpress, Scriblio, mediawiki, joomla or drupal, phpBB etc and use this as their server throughout the term. The case could be they have been hired to replace the old static web site and ILS with with a new integrated library portal including porting of MARC records.