kontrawize

Where did all my disk space go?

In spite of the double and triple digit gigabyte capacities modern hard disks, I still find myself running out of disk space. The big question is "where did the space go", and the hard part is finding which directories are big enough to be worth investigating.

For Windows, I use SpaceMonger. It produces a 2-D visual representation of which directories are using which space. You can see immediately which directories are the biggest, and you can drill into those to see what is in their subdirectories, etc. It's brilliant because it focusses your attention on the genuinely big directories.

For Linux, I've just discovered duv Visual Disk Usage. It's not quite as slick as SpaceMonger, but it basically gives the same information in more-or-less the same visual way. I just used it to liberate almost 3G of space on my hard disk.

SUSE Linux 10.1 comes with the Beagle search utility, and Beagle had created a ".beagle" folder that was over 1G in size! I nuked it. I also had a ".wapi" folder that was over 1G in size (I still don't know exactly what it was for, although it seems to be related to Mono or Novell's iFolder). Then there was a 155M ".thumbnails" directory that I really didn't need, and a number of other directories that were just old or unnecessary. Of course, don't delete anything unless you are confident you can live with the consequences.

It's amazing what you find out when you can actually see how your disk is being filled up.

Gizmo versus Skype with SUSE Linux and VMware Server, part 2

I criticised the Gizmo beta because I couldn't get it to work for more than 30 minutes of a teleconference. That made me think I would probably be using Skype instead. Wishful thinking. I tried to dial into a teleconference today, and Skype (for Linux) kept dropping out every 5-10 minutes (less sometimes). It was dreadful, and very sensitive to load changes on my PC. In the end, I gave up on Skype and dialled in with Gizmo.

At the moment, the most reliable way for me to do VOIP from Linux is to use either Skype or Yahoo! Messenger in a Windows XP virtual machine (running on VMware Server on Linux). However, I would rather avoid the overhead of running Windows just as enabler for a VOIP client. It must be possible to do better than this for Linux users.

Gizmo versus Skype with SUSE Linux and VMware Server

I've written before about my experiments in using Skype and other IM clients with SUSE Linux and VMware Server (#1, #2, #3, #4).

To date, my summary was:

• Skype - runs OK for voice on SUSE Linux, but not for video. Skype works with audio and video running in a Windows session on VMware Server, but doesn't even work for audio in a SUSE Linux session on VMware Server;
• Yahoo! Messenger 8 - works for audio and video running in a Windows session on VMware Server. No Linux version available yet (but hopefully in future!);
• OpenWengo - available for RedHat, but not for SUSE Linux (and RedHat RPM doesn't work under SUSE Linux).

Now, it happens that my Nokia E61 phone supports VOIP and SIP, so I was to see how well it works. I found instructions for setting it up the Nokia E61 to use the Gizmo service for VOIP, and they worked! That said, the quality of the sound, when I tested ringing my home (UK) phone number, was diabolical, so it really isn't viable as way to use my phone for VOIP calls (I tend to do quite a few of these for overseas teleconference numbers).

In spite of the failure, it made me aware of the Gizmo IM and VOIP client, and I was very interested that it has clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux. That's the kind of cross-platform support I'm particularly interested in.

First I tried Gizmo running in a SUSE Linux 10.1 session under VMware Server. With Skype, when I tried this and phoned it's "echo" service, the sound of the answering voice was stretched out enormously, like a bad special effect. At that point I just gave up. With Gizmo, the sound of the answering voice was fine, I was very impressed. However, I couldn't hear my own voice coming back from the Gizmo "echo" service.

Well, while I haven't confirmed this, it seems that the audio support in Linux guest sessions on VMware Server is one-way. You can listen to audio out, but you can't get audio in. So even if Skype has worked in the SUSE Linux session, it wouldn't have helped me.

Now that I know that I have to do voice IM on my host OS directly (or otherwise in a Windows session), I decided to re-evaluate Skype under SUSE Linux and compare it to Gizmo (which is currently still in beta, though). Short answer is that Skype wins, at least for my setup. I have seen some people report that Gizmo gives them better quality than Skype, and perhaps it depends where in the world you are. For me, the quality of Gizmo calls is OK, but audibly less clear than Skype. Worse, I haven't managed to get a Gizmo call to last more than 30 minutes, which means I can't get it to last for a full 1 or 2 hour teleconference. So, for the moment, I'm back to Skype (at least for teleconferences where I'm able to type in the pass code from Skype. This is a problem with some versions of Skype; I'm still testing a suggestion that muting your sound before dialling the code is the quick fix). However, Gizmo still looks interesting, I'll be watching how it progresses in future releases.

Nokia E61, SUSE Linux 10.x, & USB

I recently changed my mobile phone for a Nokia E61. Like many phones, it can connect to a PC via USB. Well, it can connect via Bluetooth and infrared too, but Bluetooth support under Linux is still lacking (well, it has been whenever I've tried), so the USB connection is usually the best solution for Linux users.

The E61 is interesting because it has multiple USB modes. It can do a classic Nokia phone USB connection, but it can also appear as a USB storage disk, or it can provide IP pass-through, so you PC can use the phone's WLAN or 3G connection. I believe a number of Nokia's recent phones do this too (E-series and N-series).

Now, of all these modes, the one which I would expect to work with Linux is the USB storage mode. Unfortunately, I've tried it with SUSE 10.0 and 10.1, and have had no success. The Nokia is recognised as a USB device (it is shown when you do a 'lsusb'), and it is even recognised as a USB storage device because the 'usb_storage' module is loaded (it is shown when you do a 'lsmod').

However, in spite of the phone being recognised as a USB storage device, it just doesn't get mounted to a directory in the file system as USB storage devices normally are. I don't know what the issue is (or if my 2G memory card is part of the issue), and posting to a Nokia forum hasn't produced any answers either.

If anyone has had any success connecting a Nokia E- or N-series phone to Linux as a storage device, I would be really interested to hear what you had to do (or whether you didn't have to do anything, and it just worked). At the moment, I'm having to e-mail documents from my phone to myself to get them off the phone. Why don't I just put the phone's memory card (miniSD) into an USB adapter and plug it in directly? Well, I've tried that too, and it also fails to be mounted by SUSE Linux. I'm really wondering just what can be the issue here. Any ideas, anyone?

Sudoku Toilet Paper

Yes, believe it or not, Sudoku toilet paper.

A bit pointless, but what a way to mark the 200th post to my bog, er, blog.

Blue Dragonflies in Bulgaria, part 2

Following my post with my photos of blue dragonflies in Bulgaria, I was looking for other dragonfly photos on Google Images, and found one that looked very much like the photos I took. Turns out it was on a page for a dragonfly tour to Bulgaria in 2007. I hadn't realised they ran such tours, but there you go. Keep it in mind if you are at a loose end for something to fill your time in July 2007 ...

Screen Protector for Nokia E61

I just found some good screen protectors for my new Nokia E61 phone. They are by Martin Fields, and seem better than the screen protectors I've had in the past for PDAs and phones. What I like is that the plastic is rather thicker and firmer than the usual plastic; it's like a thin overhead transparency sheet. This not only makes them tough, but much easier to apply (they aren't as prone to bubbles under the surface). Very nice.

Playing CDs and MP3s in SUSE Linux 10.1

Finding the best way to play my CDs and MP3s in SUSE Linux 10.x hasn't been so simple. That includes ripping my CDs to MP3 format.

Some people run the Windows version of Apple's iTunes using Wine or Crossover Office, but that never seemed ideal to me. A good Linux equivalent is AmaroK, but it didn't work correctly for me when running on an AMD64x2 system, so I had to rule it out.

I use the GNOME desktop, and the GNOME player/ripper is banshee. It's OK, if simpler than AmaroK, and it works on all of my SUSE systems, both 32-bit and 64-bit. However, there was an issue. I like to play the MP3s with other players as well, but banshee doesn't store the track information in MP3 files when it creates them. I'm sure it maintains the information in its own database somewhere, but that doesn't help if I want to use another MP3 player (e.g. on my mobile phone). I don't want to have to manually set up the artist/album/track information everywhere.

SUSE 10.1 comes with the grip CD ripper, which (unlike banshee) sets the MP3 metadata (ID3 tags) appropriately. The problem when I tried this with SUSE 10.0 was that banshee wasn't reading the metadata in the MP3 files, so if you imported MP3 files created with grip, you just ended up with a jumble of tracks without artist/album/track information.

However, I'm very happy to say that the version of banshee (0.10.9) that now ships with SUSE 10.1 correctly reads the MP3 metadata, so it is now possible to use grip for ripping and banshee for playback. That's a very usable combination. Note that the use grip to create MP3s, you will need an MP3 encoder like notlame.

One issue that affects banshee (and some other GNOME apps, from what I've noticed) is that it doesn't seem to handle non-English characters very well. It corrupted the name of the track "El Mañana" from the Gorillaz album "Demon Days" when it imported it. Luckily that only required me to quickly edit the name in banshee, not much of a problem at all.

So, that's what works for me, anyway.

Blue Dragonflies in Bulgaria

I've recently returned from 2 weeks holiday with my family on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. While I was there, we went camping by a creek near a village not far from the coast. I didn't get the best sleep in the tent (not being used to the sound of jackals strolling past in the night; we found their paw prints on the banks of the creek where we pitched our tent), but I did get some photos.

The indigenous dragonflies are a beautiful iridescent blue/green, so I chased them around waiting for them to land. There was no shortage of them, as the creek is very near a place that is breeding them now to counteract a decline in their natural numbers. Here are my photos:

For good measure, a few more photos taken in the same area:

More Comments on Comments

rw asked if I needed any special setting to get Skype video working in Windows XP running on VMware Server running on SUSE Linux 10.0. The answer is "no", I really didn't do anything special, other than to make sure that the USB connection wasn't captured by the host operating system. Sometimes this happens, so you have to do

lsmod | fgrep usb

to see which USB modules have been activated in your host OS, and then use "rmmod" to remove them so you can attach them to your guest OS.

Also, sound won't work if you are using a remote VMware Server host, and I wouldn't be confident that it would keep up with the video either.

Lynoure liked my electronic composition "Black Panther". I won't ever have enough fans to fill a big stadium (like Wembley), but I'm glad that someone enjoyed it. I've been working on another song for about a year now (spare time is always an issue), so I may yet have a follow-up. At this rate, though, I'll die before I ever have enough music for an album ...

Hokgiarto asked about downloading a VMware RPM (Linux installation file), but I couldn't understand which RPM (s)he is after. If I get more details, I'll try and help, but in general they are all available on the VMware site.