Month: September 2009

Categories
How-To's

Adding PBXes.org to Nokia N95

So you want to use your Nokia N95 with the popular PBXes.org service to start using VOIP calls? You have come to the right place. Note that these instructions will most likely apply to all Symbian S60 phones, like the Nokia E65. Also note that in case of the N95, this even works for phones without a SIM card, making it possible to call with those phones as well!

In this article I assume that you already have a PBXes.org account and have set up an extension for your Nokia N95, if not please look at this guide.

Let create the SIP profile to connect to PBXes.org:

  1. Create the profile:

    1. Open the menu
    2. Open Tools
    3. Open Settings
    4. Select Connection
    5. Scroll down and select SIP Settings
    6. Click Options
    7. Select New SIP profile

  2. Set up the new profile:

    1. Select Use default profile
    2. Change the profile name to something familiar: PBXes.org
    3. Leave Service Profile set to IETF
    4. Set Default access point to your current Wifi network
    5. Set Public user name to myuser-800@pbxes.org where you substitute myuser for your account name and 800 for the extension number you created for this phone
    6. Leave Use compression set to No
    7. Set Registration to Always on to force the phone to connect to the SIP service when starting up (or leave it if you are not planning on using it all the time)
    8. Leave Use security on No
    9. Leave Proxy server empty

  3. Set up the registrar:

    1. Enter Registrar server
    2. Set Registrar server address to sip.pbxes.org
    3. Set Realm to pbxes.org
    4. Set User name to myuser-800 and substitute like before
    5. Set Password to the password you set on pbxes.org for this extension number
    6. Set Transport type to UDP
    7. Leave Port on 5060

  4. Set up internet calling:

    1. Click Back to return
    2. Click Back to return to SIP Settings
    3. Click Back to return to Connection
    4. Select Internet tel
    5. Click Options
    6. Select New profile
    7. Change the name if desired.
    8. Select the SIP profiles to use, if you only added PBXes.org it will be selected by default.
    9. Click Back to “Internet telephone”
    10. Click Back until you reach the “Tools” menu.
    11. Select Internet tel.
    12. Click Options.

    13. Select Connect to service

The phone will now connect to the Wi-Fi network you specified earlier and a globe with phone icon will appear showing that the registration was successful. When you want to call using the SIP account, use Options and Internet call to activate the SIP mode.

To switch to SIP calling by default do the following:

  1. Open the menu.
  2. Open Tools.
  3. Open Settings.
  4. Select Phone.
  5. Select Call.

  6. Scroll down and set Default call type to Internet call

Next time you will call a number it will use your SIP account automatically! (Note: if the SIP account fails – no Wi-Fi etc – the phone will switch back to normal calling modes).

Common pitfall: ‘Address not in use’ when you try to call a number (meanwhile you can receive calls fine). This happened to me because I did not specify a Default route for the newly added extension, after making the standard route truly global all was well.

Categories
General blog entries

Upgrading Windows 7 RC1 Ultimate to Windows 7 Professional RTM

Of course you can upgrade RC1 to RTM for Windows 7, except when you are running different versions of Windows…. but of course…

After browsing a bit I figured out that the switching between Windows 7 versions can only go in one direction: up. So when I installed Windows 7 RC 1 to replace my broken Windows Vista installation, I didn’t know which version I would get when the RTM was released so I did what everyone did: install Ultimate.

Fast forward 6 months and I am starting to miss the fixed features from the final version which us poor testers will not receive unless we go for the full monty and get the paid version.

So here I am, downloading all my programs and drivers again, hoping I am not forgetting a key component and just finishing my system backup in case things don’t work out as planned…

On a side note: I am doing this on a Dell XPS M1530 which came with a 32-bit version of Home Premium and which does not officially support Windows 7 (32 or 64-bit). Unofficially, everything works like a charm on Windows 7 RC 1 (build 7100) including the webcam, fingerprint scanner and the Intel 4950AGN card. I will report if the reinstallation to the final version went as flawless as the original installation.

Categories
Linux / Gentoo Linux

Debugging nVidia EDID resolutions

After installing an nVidia card into my HTPC I ran into a problem I never had before: the driver will not allow me to use the full 1280×720 resolution of my TV. After running xrandr on the console, I can confirm that Xorg reports the following supported resolutions:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 240, current 720 x 480, maximum 1920 x 1080
default connected 720x480+0+0 0mm x 0mm
720x480        50.0*    51.0
680x384        52.0     53.0
640x480        54.0     55.0
512x384        56.0
400x300        57.0     58.0
320x240        59.0
480i/60        30.0
480p/60        60.0
720p/60        60.0
1080i/60       30.0
1080p/60       60.0

Now if you read the above closely, you can see that the display should have modes up to 1920×1080 (interlaced in my case but still). This proves that in fact the EDID information (which should allow your graphics card to auto-detect monitor properties) is coming through but that it is not working properly. Read on to solve this problem.

Continue reading “Debugging nVidia EDID resolutions”
Categories
Linux / Gentoo Linux

Solving VMware HD trashing

VMware Server 1.x and 2.x are great for some quick and easy visualization. Granted, they lack some options their big brothers have (live migration for example) but overall they are fine. It is quite annoying to find one of your virtual servers trashing the IO on your host in such a way that all systems (virtual and physical) come crawling to a halt.

Note that I am not talking about actual throughput caused by a heavy loaded system. I am talking about a few hundred kilobytes to a few megabytes of disk throughput that manage to clog up the host system while the virtual system is not doing anything (no network activity, no CPU activity, no disk IO on the virtual side and still the host gets trashed).

It seems like the trashing can come from clashes between the memory manager of VMware and your virtual OS and/or the virtual drive controller and the guest disk driver. The result seems a looping ‘optimization’ which never ends and instead of speeding up the system, it completely grinds down to a halt.

The solution? Well there isn’t a clear cut solution to all the problems out there but so far this one seems to work for me. It tells VMware to allocate all the memory it could be needing (instead of allocating it when its needed) and disables the paging of memory completely (as everything fits in one go).

File /etc/vmware/config:

prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"
prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"

Guest “.vmx” file:

sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"
MemTrimRate = "0"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
Categories
Programming

Tethering on Google Android without root access

So you want to tether your brand spanking new Android phone (Google G1 or HTC Hero or alike) but you don’t want to bother with rooting your phone. Bad news: you can’t (wireless), sort of – read on.

Well technically you can but it requires a USB cable connection to make the phone act like a modem device which Windows (or Linux) can then use to ‘dial’ to the world wide web. The HTC Hero comes with this functionality built in (it just requires some HTC drivers which even works on Windows 7, albeit with separate installation of the drivers as the setup fails), for the G1 and others you can install PdaNet on your Android phone to do the same.

So in fact you can tether your 3G connection to your computer using an Android phone, but you can’t do it wireless. Bluetooth is incomplete and as such wont give you a DUN device so no dice there. And for the wifi tethering tool, you really really need root access. Why? Because it switches your WiFi card in your phone from normal to router mode. This allows other devices to connect to it and use the 3G device as a gateway.

So why shouldn’t you root your phone (besides risking to brick your phone)? You can’t buy paid applications from the Android Market anymore. For some no reason to hack their phone, I prefer to have the option to keep using paid applications. Perhaps in the future I’ll try to root my HTC Hero and I will post my findings.

Update: I rooted my phone after owning it for a year or so and I was able to by and install paid applications just fine. I forgot where I read this tidbit of information but it seems to be rubbish – rooting does not prevent you from buying apps.