Category Archives: Software

Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1300 with Linux kernel 2.6.38

After the upgrade to Linux kernel 2.6.38, the boot process for my machine hang quite long while Populating /dev with existing devices through uevents. After investigations it turns out that the cx88 driver used for my Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1300 tv card was not correctly converted to the new mutex system while removing the BKL. This is being tracked in the kernel bugzilla as bug #31962.

Fortunately, there is a patch attached to the mentioned bug report which resolves the problem:

cd /usr/src/linux
wget -O cx88-2.6.38-fix-driver-deadlocks.patch 'https://bugzilla.kernel.org/attachment.cgi?id=53722'
patch -p1 < cx88-2.6.38-fix-driver-deadlocks.patch

[Edited on 2011-04-23: replaced patch 52902 with 53722]

After applying the patch, build and install your kernel as usual. But there are still some more problems with 2.6.38 related to tvtime. See also my next post.

I do not follow kernel development close enough to know in which git tree this has to show up to confirm if it has been merged yet. Hopefully this patch will make it into the next kernel release.

bash: reuse last argument from previous command

2 Replies

Reuse the last argument of the previous command with !$:

$ echo abc def
abc def
$ echo !$
def

A common use case would be mkdir and cd:

$ mkdir foo
$ cd !$

You can also insert the last argument of the previous command and continue typing with <ESC>.:

$ echo abc def
abc def
$ echo <ESC>. ghi
def ghi

Oh, the little things… 🙂

Checking expiry dates of SSL certificates

3 Replies

Once again I missed the expiry date of one of the SSL certificates on my server. Therefore I am now using a cronjob to warn me early enough that a certificate is about to expire.

This is the script /usr/local/bin/ssl-cert-check which checks the expiry date of the certificate files passed as arguments:

#!/bin/bash
 
DAYS=30
 
for file in "$@"; do
    openssl x509 -checkend $(( 86400 * $DAYS )) -in "$file" > /dev/null
    if [ $? != 0 ]; then
        echo "==> Certificate $file is about to expire soon:"
        openssl x509 -enddate -in "$file" -noout
    fi
done

And the corresponding cronjob entry checking SSL certificates once a day:

MAILTO=root
6       6    * * *  nobody  /usr/local/bin/ssl-cert-check /etc/apache2/ssl/*.crt /etc/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem

bitlbee over SSL using stunnel

2 Replies

What is this?

I prefer IRC as communication protocol for multi-user chat and instant messaging. To keep in contact with users of other protocols/clients I use BitlBee which is a gateway connecting other chat networks like Jabber/XMPP and ICQ to your own IRC server.

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