But I had an issue with the eeePC, the battery life during standby is atrocious: compared to the laptops I used before, putting the eeePC in standby will drain the battery in less than 24h. It’s not a software issue but an hardware one (that may be corrected in the future with a bios update). As I have a very on and off utilization of the eeePC, it wasn’t very practical to either shut it down if I didn’t plan on using it in the next few hours or letting the battery drain in my bag. There is a simple way to correct that: using suspend to disk (also called hibernate).

Under hibernation, the content of the RAM will be written to disk and restored upon wake up. The issue is that the default system for hibernation for the 2.6 linux kernel needs to have a swap partition that is bigger than the total RAM installed.On a system with a 4GB SSD, with the default install of eeeXubuntu already taking more than 2GB, I had some reticences repartitioning the SSD just for hibernation purposes.

As the swap space would not be used for swap anyways as it seems that using swap on a SSD is apparently not a good idea (there is an ongoing debate on whether modern SSD like the one used in the eee can take the abuse).Anyway that’s enough introduction, here is a simple way to use hibernation on the eee without having to create a swap partition. The only thing you need is to create a swap file that’s half the size of the installed RAM in the eeePC. It actually works better for me compared to suspend to ram as I had some issues with the graphic controller not waking up sometimes. Click below for the howto.

UPDATE: a similar but more clever way of achieving the same goal: Hibernate fix on the eee-ubuntu wiki.

How-to

First, create a swap file:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap bs=1024k count=256mkswap /swap

256MB for the 512MB eeePC.Add this to /etc/fstab:

/swap	swap	swap	defaults	0	0

Then, tell the kernel to not use the swap file for swapping:

sysctl -w vm.swappiness=1

Modify the last line of /etc/sysctl.conf so it sticks:

vm.swappiness=1

You can now activate the swap file:

swapon /swap

And now the magic ingredient: µswsusp, an alternative suspend method for the linux kernel that can use swap file instead of swap partition and also support other neat features like compression and encryption.Install it:

aptitude install uswsusp

(don’t forget to enable memory compression).To test it:

s2disk

It will write the content of the RAM to the swap file and shutdown the eee.Press the power button on the eee to wake it up.To enable this method as the default system for hibernation, edit the following file: /usr/lib/hal/linux/scripts/hal-system-power-hibernateThere is a bug in this script, it will look for s2disk in the wrong place, you’ll have to edit it so it looks like this:

/sbin/s2disk

As this script is part of the HAL package, it means that it WILL break if this package is updated, you’ll have to reedit the above file if hibernate doesn’t work after an update.

Caveats

The console is apparently completely fubared, not a big loss for me.

References

Fixing software suspend / hibernate with uswsusp in Ubuntu Feisty (and Edgy)

On my right I had a Playstation 3, on my left I had Symfony, the missing link would prove to be Ubuntu Linux.

Note: Running linux on a playstation 3 is not a hack, it doesn’t require any hardware modification, won’t disable any feature on your Playstation 3 and is not difficult to do.

Sony officially support running linux on your ps3 with dedicated tools present in the XMB ( Cross-mediabar, the UI of the Playstation 3).

Caveat: for installing Linux, you will need to format your hard-drive thus losing all the data on it. Fortunately, Sony made a backup utility so you can backup your game’s save data, game demos and other files very simply.

What’s needed ?

• A CD-R ( or DVD-R, I used a DVR-RW ).
• USB Keyboard and mouse.
• USB drive or memory card if you want to backup your data beforehand.
• Component or HDMI cable if you plan on using the linux GUI ( ie, not use your Playstation 3 as a headless server ).

As you can see, the Playstation 3 doesn’t require any special hardware to use linux as the Playstation 2 did.

Ubuntu Install

First, you have to download an iso image of Ubuntu for your PS3.

You can get it there :
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/custom/20070608-feisty-ps3/ubuntu-7.04-desktop-powerpc+ps3.iso

While it’s downloading, it’s now a good time to backup your data if you’d like to.
Plug in a usb-hardrive or a memory card and:

In the XMB, go to Settings -> System Settings -> Backup Utility, follow the on-screen instructions.

Once the backup is done and the image has been burned on a CD/DVD, go back to the XMB, and then:

Settings > System Settings > Format Utility > Format Hard Disk.

Choose Yes.
Select “Custom partition setting”
and then “Allot 10GB to the Other OS”
followed by “Perform a Quick Format.”
Reboot the PS3 by pressing X on your controller.

You can now insert the Ubuntu CD on your Playstation 3

Settings > System Settings > Install Other OS

Hit X when prompted to start the installer.

This step actually install a bootloader on your system from the CD, it doesn’t install the other operating system.

Next, Settings > System Settings > Default System ,select “Other OS” and reboot.
Don’t forget to plug in your keyboard and mouse.

You will then see a command prompt kboot: on the screen, just press enter to boot from the CD.

From now on, it’s a normal Ubuntu install, just click on the installer on the desktop, select the 10GB drive and wait, and then wait some more. The installation is quite slow, much slower than on a comparable computer ( I blame the blu-ray drive ).

Caveat: if you are not using the HDMI output on a HDCP compatible screen, the live CD is going to default to NTSC/PAL resolution. Basically, the screen resolution will be too low for the installer application to display all of its window. Just press the “ALT” key on your keyboard and drag the window with the mouse to access the buttons on the lower side of the window.

After the installation finished and I rebooted into my ubuntu system, I had to make some configuration modification to display a decent resolution over Component cables. See the Notes at the end for the solution to this issue.

Installing Symfony

First, launch a terminal and get Super-User privileges and install the essential packages

reefab@reefab-desktop:~$ sudo -s
root@reefab-desktop:~# apt-get install php5 php5-cli php5-mysql php-pear

Next, install Symfony using Pear, ( the PHP package manager, the cleanest way in my opinion ).


root@reefab-desktop:~# pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com
root@reefab-desktop:~# pear install symfony/symfony


Now create a directory inside /var/www/ that will house your applications.


root@reefab-desktop:/var/www# mkdir symfony-test


And create your project and one application.


root@reefab-desktop:/var/www/symfony-test# symfony init-project test
root@reefab-desktop:/var/www/symfony-test# symfony init-app frontend


We now need to make some configuration in Apache to enable this application.

Create a new file in the site-available/ directory of the apache configuration


root@reefab-desktop:/var/www/symfony-test# vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/symfony-test



<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName symfony-test
DocumentRoot "/var/www/symfony-test/web"
DirectoryIndex index.php
Alias /sf /usr/share/php/data/symfony/web/sf
<Directory "/usr/share/php/data/symfony/web/sf/">
AllowOverride All
Allow from All
</Directory>
<Directory "/var/www/symfony-test/web">
AllowOverride All
Allow from All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>


And enable this site:


root@reefab-desktop:/var/www/symfony-test# a2ensite
Which site would you like to enable?
Your choices are: default symfony-test
Site name? symfony-test
Site symfony-test installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 reload to enable.
root@reefab-desktop:/var/www/symfony-test# /etc/init.d/apache2 reload


the “symfony-test” hostname doesn’t exists so you may have to edit your /etc/hosts file and add it at the end of the line 127.0.0.1 or the one that start with the ip address of your system.

Example:


127.0.0.1 localhost symfony-test


Now point your browser to http://symfony-test/ and there you are, a fully functional symfony installation on your Playstation 3 !

Notes

If you have a hdmi hdcp compatible display, you can just skip this part.

First, go to a system Console ( press CTRL-ALT-F1 for example ).
You may have an issue with debug message scrolling on the screen and preventing you to actually see what you are typing.

So, you will have to login in and typing “dmesg -n 1″ to stop the kernel message being displayed on the consoles.

Now, use sudo to gain super-user privileges:

sudo -s

I then used the “ps3videomode” utility, just run it once to get a list of all video mode supported.

Then, you’ll have to try some to get on that will works on your display, if the screen become garbled, just press the up arrow and change the number to the default mode. This can get tricky.

I used vidmode number 4: YUV60Hz – 1080i

Now you have to edit /etc/kboot.conf and edit the default entry so it reads:

linux='/boot/vmlinux-2.6.16 initrd=/boot/initrd.img video=ps3fb:mode:##'

with ## being the vidmode you found. Then edit your xorg to add the resolution.

Your system will now have the correct resolution.

On a side note, I recommend using Colloquy instead of MacIrssi as it is a more mature client. Don’t be fooled by the graphic intensive themes, I can be coerced in looking and feeling like a text client.

I’ve been looking for a long time for a native intel version of Macirssi 0.8.0, as the author didn’t update the software in now more than a year, I only managed to find the PPC version of 0.8.0 and an unofficial 0.7.0 intel build.

So after wrestling in the dark with Xcode, I managed to build an intel-only version of 0.8.0.

You can download it here: Unofficial MacIrssi 0.8.0 Intel only

Disclaimer: this is not an official build of MacIrssi, there is no warranty whatsoever and I’m not the author of MacIrssi.

On that note, I’m currently trying to make it works better with light backgrounds. Some of the text color preferences works strangely, the foreground color of the nick and channel list seems to be reset to white at each startup despite the color preferences being set differently. I’m trying to figure out where some of the colors are set between the irssi themes, the preferences and the source code, I already found out that the url color is hardcoded.