Open Source Software

Mobile Internet in Ethiopia with CDMA on Ubuntu

Alex December 13th, 2009

Ethiopian Telecoms Company (ETC) started to provide a pre-paid mobile internet service several months ago, though as I (usually) have a good connection at work, I’ve never really considered purchasing a dongle and setting up an account for myself. However, my housemate Martin, with not having a computer, let alone internet connection through work, recently set himself up with CDMA.

The dongle comes with a driver/installation CD for Windows, so this morning I thought I’d have a go getting it set up on my laptop running Ubuntu 9.04. Getting it all set up proved to be much more straightforward than I had anticipated. Here’s what I needed to do:

1. Install wvdial (I have Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix, so if you have the normal desktop version this step may not be necessary): sudo apt-get install wvdial

2. Plug the CDMA dongle into a USB port

3. At the terminal enter: sudo wvdialconf

4. Then enter: sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf

5. In the text editor change the block that reads:

; Phone =
; Password =
; Username =

to be:

Phone = #777
Password = ETC
Username = ETC

Then save and close the editor.

6. At the terminal enter: sudo wvdial

7. Without closing the terminal open the browser and you should be connected.

Now that it’s working I have the opportunity to spend huge amounts of money using the internet whilst at home. I’m not sure of the exact tariff, but given our usage so far it seems to be around 0.5 birr per minute (approx 2p).

Infamy

Alex October 13th, 2009

When I got into work today many of my colleagues have been commenting about the fact that I was on Ethiopian TV yesterday – it’s from when we were interviewed at the Meskel celebrations in Adigrat a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, not having a TV at home, I missed it completely and it’s unlikely there’ll be a repeat – so will just have to wait for the DVD to be issued ;-)

Slightly less high profile, I was asked a few weeks ago to write an article for the Digital Planet blog site about my experiences of living and working in Ethiopia, at the end of last week my article was posted up on their site, you can have a read at: The hidden issues of IT development in Ethiopia.

Other significant developments this week include:

  • Approval of the Mekelle University Elearning Strategy. This was actually much easier than I thought it would be – the strategy is based on a JISC template, geared towards UK universities and other HEIs, but was relatively straightforward for us to adapt for use here.
  • Upgrading of university internet connection – to 10Mb. A proposal is underway to double the speed of the connection – but I’m unsure yet when this is likely to happen. With all the new computer labs being built it will be important to ensure that the internet speed is also increased. The cost of this will be huge, an extra 5Mb will cost 10,000 US dollars per month.
  • Work has now started on the network installation in the new Computer Science building – the same week that students return to lectures for the coming academic year. Unfortunately though, only 12 computers are currently working for the 100 third year students to use. I’ve suggested that one of the labs currently reserved for training is opened up for students to use. A proposal has been made to get nearly 200 new computers for the department, but is will take some time for the purchase of these to be processed and approved – likely to be several months.
  • I’ve been asked to help run a workshop for the University management to persuade then that the university should adopt and open source policy – and that . There’s already been some success in this area, more IT staff are using Ubuntu and also in the Computer Science department.

Keeping Organised

Alex September 25th, 2009

When was back in the UK I made a lot of use of RememberTheMilk (RTM), after a bit of a play around with a number of ‘to do’ applications. Now, without good internet access I’m unable to make much use of RTM. I know it’s meant to have an offline mode (using Google Gears), but I’ve never managed to have that working reliably.

Since being in Ethiopia, I was back to using a notebook and pen for keeping track of things I needed to do – which, obviously worked anywhere, anytime, but isn’t great at reminding you which things need to be done in the future.

I started having a look at the programs available in Ubuntu and found Tomboy notes (http://www.gnome.org/projects/tomboy/). There are other to do applications but none appeared to allow synchronisation (the most useful feature in my opinion) between different computers. Although Tomboy is not really a to do list application I have been able to use it as such. I have a number of notebooks, one of which is called ‘todo’ (unsurprisingly), then I add notes (tasks), the title preceded with the date the task needs to be done, in the format YYYY-MM-DD (so they keep in proper date order). This has proved to work well over the last couple of months and I’ve had no problems at all.

Switching Operating Systems

Alex September 18th, 2009

After having moved the our elearning server over from the Business Campus over to the main data centre at Arid Campus, I was then ready to change the operating system. Originally the server was running Windows Server 2003, but all the rest of the main University server are running either Debian or Ubuntu – so it made sense to switch over to one of these for consistency if nothing else ;-)

So yesterday morning I backed up the Moodle database, files etc and set about installing Ubuntu – it was actually far quicker than I’d first thought it would be. Within an hour I had the basic system back up and running, with just a few small tweaks left to do. So I was very pleased there weren’t any major disasters getting this set up. The only slight issue I found was that I also upgraded Moodle from 1.9.3 to 1.9.5 and it complained about the database not being unicode which was slightly puzzling, all I needed to do was run:

ALTER DATABASE `moodle` CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

and then the Moodle upgrade continued normally without any complaints.

Since the change of operating system I’ve already found a number of advantages:

  1. I can now set this server up as a cache form Ubuntu/Debian desktop updates – using apt-cacher (thanks to Liam for the info and guide on getting this set up). There are already a number of people using Ubuntu here on their desktop, and the more bandwidth is saved by using apt-cacher. Now just to let people know how to configure it on their machines.
  2. ClamAV works much better with Moodle/Unix than it does with Windows. It was possible to get working with Windows, but needed a bit of tweaking (see: http://alexlittle.net/blog/2008/10/07/ive-finally-made-some-progress/).
  3. It seems much faster in generating pages (ok, I don’t have any benchmarks to verify this – but the site generally feels much more responsive than it previously did.)

So I’m pleased to have finally made the change, plus there are more staff (usually from IT dept) beginning to use Ubuntu.

Attempts at video editing on the Asus Eee

Alex June 22nd, 2009

RecordMyDesktopI’ve used Camtasia Studio (Windows) a few times before for creating some training/how-to screencasts, but now I wanted to have a go doing something similar using open source software (on Ubuntu Jaunty) instead. To make it more interesting I also wanted to run it all on my Asus Eee PC (4G) – not exactly a machine designed for heavy video processing.

First issue was how to record the screen, for this I used RecordMyDesktop. A very simple program to install and run, which does exactly what it says on the tin. Selecting the area to record (I wasn’t selecting whole window) was a bit fiddly and sometimes took me several attempts to capture the right area, without chopping off a side or two.

If you’re recording a for a long time and your screensaver kicks in (or screen goes blank for power saving), you’ll need to disable the screensaver and power saving – unless you particularly need a recording of it.

What I had most trouble with – and only came up with a workarounds solution to – was capturing the audio. RecordMyDesktop wil capture the audio fine but had problems getting the recording volume level right without creating a lot of hissing. The hardware on the Asus for sound isn’t exactly fantastic. In the end I found that I had best results when using a jack lead to plug the headphone output into the microphone input! If anyone has a better solution to this or some advice about on the recording levels to capture the audio more reliably, then please let me know.

So, now I’ve created a .ogv (OGG video) file but want to edit it a little. I wanted a really simple video editor for 2 reasons, firstly I don’t wand to spend the time learning a bit video editing package and, more practically, secondly, I don’t have a huge amount of disk space left on my 4Gb drive!

I opted for Aviremux, though unfortunately this doesn’t accept OGG video files, so I used mencoder to convert to AVI (basic instructions).

For the actual editing I used Aviremux. I found it very easy to get started with and use – unlike some other video editing software.

In the end I found that my original screen recording had sound out of synch with the video – not in the initial few mins of the capture, but further in. I’m not sure why this should be the case – if anyone has any idea why, I’d be pleased to hear them.

Overall, it was a little frustrating getting this to work. I’ve not managed to achieve what I set out to do, but think this was more to do with the hardware than anything else.

Chisimba framework

Alex June 8th, 2009

chisimbaRecently I was sent link to Chisimba, a ‘Web 2.0 enabled, Free Software development framework for creating web and distributed applications’, developed by African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR). From the info on the site it looked an interesting project, although my first impression was that its trying to be all things to everyone, with modules for blogs, wikis, CMS, LMS and more. It appears to have taken elements from Moodle, Joomla, Drupal and Elgg and packaged them all into one application, which may or may not be a good thing.

On downloading and installing on my laptop, I soon found that this was still very much a work in progress, as there appeared to be lots of little bugs/annoyances that would probably have been resolved if it was a little more developed. A very minor example of this was the fact that the next/previous buttons on the installation were the wrong way round (for me anyway), with next being on the left hand side and prevous on the right, rather than the more usual arrangement. The installation itself was a little fiddly, however that was mainly because I had to upgrade my version of PHP, install some PHP libraries and some PEAR libraries too, before it would install.

A lot of effort seems to have gone into creating modules, 100’s of them by the looks of it, so thought I’d take a look at installing the blog module. Unfortunately the automatic ‘download and install’ kept giving me an error, so then tried an offline installation of the module – a 35Mb download of all(?) the modules is available – but I couldn’t find any info on how to install a module in this way. I’ve posted a query on their discussion forums, so hopefully I’ll get a reply to have this resolved soon.

Overall I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t have a proper play with the modules, but will come back to it once I get a resolution as to how to install them. Having said that I can’t see this framework taking off, there are many other established frameworks out there and I don’t think Chisimba offers anything different enough from these.

My first edits to OpenStreetMap

Alex May 14th, 2009

josmSince I’ve been back in the UK, although I’ve been pretty much tied to the house, with Amazon now back available to me, I’m able to spend money again. One of the items I bought was a GPS. Originally I was going to be borrowing one from someone in Addis to be able to do some mapping of Mekelle, but since I’m in the UK it seemed to make sense to get hold of my own whilst I was here. I eventually opted for the very basic Garmin eTrex H, thinking that it does everything I would want and I’m unlikely to spend money buying maps to download onto it – the main reason for buying it was to contribute to the OpenStreetMap project.

Once it had arrived my first challenge was getting it hooked up to my Asus EeePC (running Ubuntu) and installing the right bits of software.

For up & downloading to the GPS I installed QLandkarte, which only started recognising my device once I’d also installed the gpsbabel package.

Next I needed a desktop program for editing OpenStreetMap – using the online Potlatch application wouldn’t be a great option for me once back in Ethiopia with no decent internet connection.

I started off by installing Merkaartor but quickly ran into problems. When I tried connecting to the OpenStreetMap (OSM) server to download a map to edit, I kept getting “403: Forbidden” messages. The problem was that the particular version of Merkaartor the Ubuntu package manager installs doesn’t work with OSM Protocol v0.6. I think there may be a version of Merkaartor which works with v0.6, but I’m not generally very keen on installing software outside the Ubuntu Add/Remove Applications

I then tried Java OpenStreetMap (JOSM), again installing from the Add/Remove Apps and I was getting similar problems in being unable to connect to the OSM server. Again the problem was the protocol version.

Merkaartor and JOSM appeared to be the only programs available for editing OSM on Ubuntu (please let me know if there are others), so I had to resign myself to manually installing one of them. I opted for JOSM as it was quite easy to run manually and once installed all seems to be working relatively well.

I do however had a few gripes about the user interface, especially on the small screen of the Asus EeePC. For example some of the dialog boxes are fiddly to expand to get the OK/Cancel buttons to appear. Also, the drop down list of “presets” (the different map features, places of interest, amenities etc which can be added) is too long to appear on the screen, but there’s no way of navigating down to the bottom of the list to see which options are available.

Apart from that, I feel like I’ve got the hang of OSM editing (a little at least) and I’ve managed to add a few new roads. Hopefully once I get back to Mekelle, I’ll be much more productive, especially since I’ll be starting on a blank canvas.

Open, closed or ajar?

Alex November 18th, 2008

Reading the recent discussions (here, here and here) regarding how much the OU ought to be promoting open source software (OSS), reminded me of discussions I’ve had here in Ethiopia about how much we (as IT volunteers) ought to be promoting OSS.

The arguments for and against the use of Windows and other proprietary software in each of these discussions are very similar. On the one hand, there’s the ‘Windows is standard’ argument (in one sense of the word standard) and that’s what everyone else uses, so that’s what I want to use. On the other, there’s the ‘free’ argument, and just because Windows is on so-many percent of PCs, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use OSS. I realise I’m probably using the terms ‘Windows’ and ‘proprietary software’ interchangeably.

I feel quite stuck in the middle regarding all this (sat on the fence would be an alternative description!). In an ideal world, yes, everyone would use OSS, but I don’t think it’s practical to be so black and white. Here in Ethiopia, people generally want to learn about MS Windows and MS Office (including Publisher & FrontPage) as that’s what ‘everybody’ else uses and, more importantly, is what employers will be looking for. From the discussions I’ve had the only practical pro-OSS argument, that isn’t an academic/theoretical one in their eyes, is the fact they’re far less likely to suffer from viruses. Licensing costs aren’t really a factor taken into consideration where software piracy isn’t exactly unheard of. Even with this very strong argument (only last week the ex-dean from our faculty lost most of his documents to a virus), the people I’ve spoken to, although enthusiastic, don’t yet feel comfortable or confident enough to jump to using non-MS software.

I’ve heard similar sentiments from UK friends who work in MS-only environments, perhaps not believing that OSS would be as stable, secure, robust and reliable (!) as something you pay good money for.

In the computer science dept here, a few staff use Ubuntu and other OSS operating systems, but they’re the exception. I’m attempting to do my ‘promote OSS’ bit by lending people the Ubuntu CD after I’ve reinstalled Windows XP on their laptops (inevitably broken by some Windows virus). There are also signs that things are changing, for example, I know of non-techies who have heard of Ubuntu and are willing to give it a go and the Internet and Web Development course here in the computer science dept this year has shifted in focus from ASP to PHP (although still teaches FrontPage). I’m also hoping that we can change some of our computer lab PCs to be XP/Ubuntu dual boot, so students have the opportunity to get experience in using something other than Windows. At the end of the day I’m not going to force anyone to use any one particular system, I’ll give them the pros and cons of each side and let them make up their own mind, hoping that the no-virus argument will be the one that swings it ;-)

Anonymous CVS access to MSG

Alex February 27th, 2008

We’ve just enabled anonymous access to the MSG source code – previously we asked people to contact us via email to get an account. More info