Thursday, November 29, 2007

Debian meeting in Merida, Spain

Right now, some Debian Developers (and also not yet Developers, like me:), are on
the work sessions in Extremadura, I am on the QA and release teams meeting.

We started in the morning with presentations (see also the schedule). Any comments and suggestions welcomed, please add comments below the post.

Lucas Nussbaum presenting:


Most of us:



And in details, names from left to right. Cyril Brulebois, Gonéri Le Bouder:


Luk Claes, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt, Jörg Jaspert, Lars Wirzenius:


Fabio Tranchitella, Bernd Zeimetz, Mario Iseli, Luk Claes:


Filippo Giunchedi, Stefano Zacchiroli, Tzafrir Cohen, Simon Richter, Faidon Liambotis:


And again, so that Faidon is visible:

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

How to connect to the internet using T-Mobile and bluetooth

I have a laptop with Debian, cell phone (Nokia N70) with bluetooth and this howto describes how to connect to the internet.

Connect USB bluetooth dongle to the laptop and check it:

$ hciconfig
hci0: Type: USB
BD Address: 00:02:72:D2:23:12 ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8
UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN
RX bytes:686 acl:0 sco:0 events:22 errors:0
TX bytes:337 acl:0 sco:0 commands:21 errors:0

Scan for the phone:

$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
00:19:79:86:EB:BC Nokia N70

Create a serial device for communicating with the modem in the phone:

$ rfcomm connect /dev/rfcomm0 00:19:79:86:EB:BC 3
Connected /dev/rfcomm0 to 00:19:79:86:EB:BC on channel 3
Press CTRL-C for hangup

(A dialog will popup on the phone asking me to allow the laptop to connect.)

Connect using wvdial:

$ wvdial
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.56
--> Cannot get information for serial port.
--> Initializing modem.
--> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
--> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
OK
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT*99***1#
--> Waiting for carrier.
ATDT*99***1#
CONNECT
~[7f]}#@!}!} } }2}#}$@#}!}$}%\}"}&} }*} } g}%~
--> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Wed Nov 28 12:58:55 2007
--> Pid of pppd: 4378
--> Using interface ppp0
--> pppd: �[08][06][08]�[10][06][08]
--> pppd: �[08][06][08]�[10][06][08]
--> pppd: �[08][06][08]�[10][06][08]
--> pppd: �[08][06][08]�[10][06][08]
--> local IP address 172.24.171.97
--> pppd: �[08][06][08]�[10][06][08]
--> remote IP address 10.6.6.6
--> pppd: �[08][06][08]�[10][06][08]
--> primary DNS address 62.141.0.2
--> pppd: �[08][06][08]�[10][06][08]
--> secondary DNS address 213.162.65.1
--> pppd: �[08][06][08]�[10][06][08]

And that's it, I am connected.

Prerequisities

$ wajig install wvdial bluez-utils

And setup the /etc/wvdial.conf file:

$ cat /etc/wvdial.conf
[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 460800
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/rfcomm0
ISDN = 0
Phone = *99***1#
Password = doesnt_matter
Username = doesnt_matter
Stupid Mode = 1

Saturday, November 17, 2007

snapshot.debian.net rocks

Today during upgrade I got the gnome packages broken:

$ wajig install nautilus
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
nautilus: Depends: libexempi2 but it is not installable
E: Broken packages
$

I tried to download the source package of libexempi2, no luck (doesn't exist). Then I remembered I've heard about snapshot.debian.net, so I tried that and added:

deb http://snapshot.debian.net/archive pool exempi

to my /etc/apt/sources.list and voilà - it works!

$ wajig install nautilus
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libstdc++5 libpixman-1-0 libglut3 libsqlite0 lib64gfortran2 libqt4-sql
libntfs-3g4 libkdcraw1
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
fam libexempi2 libtrackerclient0 nautilus-cd-burner
Suggested packages:
tracker
The following NEW packages will be installed:
fam libexempi2 libtrackerclient0 nautilus nautilus-cd-burner
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 46 not upgraded.
Need to get 1583kB of archives.
After unpacking 5632kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
libexempi2
Install these packages without verification [y/N]? y
Get:1 http://ftp.cz.debian.org sid/main fam 2.7.0-13 [69.0kB]
Get:2 http://ftp.cz.debian.org sid/main libtrackerclient0 0.6.3-3 [41.3kB]
Get:3 http://ftp.cz.debian.org sid/main nautilus 2.20.0-1 [639kB]
Get:4 http://snapshot.debian.net pool/exempi libexempi2 1.99.4-1 [290kB]
Get:5 http://ftp.cz.debian.org sid/main nautilus-cd-burner 2.20.0-1 [544kB]
Fetched 1583kB in 7s (199kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package fam.
(Reading database ... 210515 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking fam (from .../archives/fam_2.7.0-13_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package libexempi2.
Unpacking libexempi2 (from .../libexempi2_1.99.4-1_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package libtrackerclient0.
Unpacking libtrackerclient0 (from .../libtrackerclient0_0.6.3-3_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package nautilus.
Unpacking nautilus (from .../nautilus_2.20.0-1_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: warning - unable to delete old directory `/usr/share/mime/application': Directory not empty
Selecting previously deselected package nautilus-cd-burner.
Unpacking nautilus-cd-burner (from .../nautilus-cd-burner_2.20.0-1_i386.deb) ...
Setting up fam (2.7.0-13) ...
Starting file alteration monitor: FAM.
Setting up libexempi2 (1.99.4-1) ...
Setting up libtrackerclient0 (0.6.3-3) ...
Setting up nautilus (2.20.0-1) ...
Setting up nautilus-cd-burner (2.20.0-1) ...

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

SAGE Days 6

From November 9 till November 15 I attended SAGE Days 6 in Bristol, UK. It was a conference and a coding sprint for the SAGE project, which wants to build something comparable to Mathematica, Maple, Matlab and Magma built only from open source components without reinventing the wheel. Sage also provides excellent novel implementations for many mathematical algorithms (not found in Mathematica/Maple etc.).

I was invited to give a talk about SymPy, which is a Python library for symbolic mathematics, that we are doing.

Here are my notes from each day:

Saturday: one, two
Sunday: one, two
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday: one

Impressions

Very positive. I started SymPy two years ago, because I wanted to play with symbolic mathematics in Python, see for example my presentation I gave at this conference for details. SAGE at that time was just able to do some mathematics things, but it was very weak in calculus, which is the SymPy's main domain. This has changed last half a year, when SAGE people managed to wrap Maxima in Python (which I thought to be completely impossible), so I started to follow SAGE development more closely. After the SD6, I must say I became very excited about the project.

One problem with mailinglists, IRC and other online interaction is that it's very difficult for me to get an impression about the people and the project. Being able to meet the developers and discuss with them face to face gives me the impression very quickly and very accurately.

By far the biggest guarantee, why it is worthy for me to contribute to SAGE, is the project leader, William Stein. He is very rational and pragmatic (I like these two properties) and after many discussions with him, I came to realize that he has basically identical views on the important things as I do and were I on his place, I would do the same decisions as he did and does. That's very nice, because I can concentrate my energy on things that I like to improve and don't have to worry about other things, because I know he will do it right.

The other SAGE developers are experts and with similar attitude as William has. It's enthusiastic to be among people who make things happen. For example one of the authors of Cython, Robert, implemented during SD6 a very nice HTML output, that shows Cython code, with colors according to how many Python API calls are called on that particular line, and by clicking that line it shows the corresponding C code.

SAGE project has a high aim and it stricly goes for it, without looking too much to the right or left, and that's how it should be. And it does produce a lot of very useful and high quality stuff along the way, for example Cython (probably the best wrapper for C/C++ things now, only pypy could possibly beat it, but that's still more a research project) or the SAGE notebook, which looks like a Mathematica notebook, but better and in a browser (together with a revision history, sharing, SSL encryption, etc.).

The only little problem is that currently SAGE developers are all mathematicians and as is well-known, mathematicians looks at mathematic from a very different prospective than physicists. :) And so I need calculus, advanced calculus and only when this is working, and working well, I can build on it some more advanced features. SAGE currently goes a little the other way - it has a lot of advanced features, from number theory, modular forms, elliptic curves, etc., but the basic calculus still needs a lot of improvements. SAGE wraps Maxima, because Maxima is quite fast, very well tested, so it works well. It's difficult to extend and written in LISP and that's very bad. That's where SymPy could help - it's in Python, very easy to extend, but currently slower than Maxima (rewriting parts of SymPy using Cython, or even C directly, will make it faster, hopefully as fast as Maxima or faster).

It's not yet in Debian, but SAGE people are working on it. It's not an easy task unfortunately.

Conclusion

SAGE is a very promising young project and I think it will succeed to provide an open source alternative to Maple, Matlab, Mathematica and Magma.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

Monday

On Monday we, as usual, had a breakfast in the Marriott Hotel:



and went to the Heilbronn Institute:



that is right across the highest point in Bristol:



We had a presentation by Gregory Bard:



Then we had a discussion what things should be done in the following coding sprints. Then we coded and in the afternoon I had a presentation "SymPy: A Python library for symbolic mathematics".

Tuesday

In the morning Michael Abshoff gave a presentation about valgrinding a Python/Cython/C/C++ library application like Sage (which adds complexity and its own set of problems because of python). We spent the whole day coding, in the afternoon we did a quick session of lightning talks and in the evening we went to a pub, then we again coded till 1am, some even later.

Wednesday

In the morning we did a little coding and then had a wrap-up session:



Then William had a presentation "SAGE for number theorists" at the Heilbronn Seminar, after which most of the people went to pub, but I with Jaap Spies went to the Old City, as tourists. Then I visited a bookstore, read some books and then we had a last coding evening:


Sunday, November 11, 2007

Sunday afternoon

After a lunch we had a presentation by Clement Pernet about Fast Exact Linear Algebra, then David Loeffler talked about Computing Automorphic Forms for Unitary Groups using Sage:



and then Bill Hart gave a presentation about Algebraic Number Theory with Flint:



In the evening we went to an Indian restaurant and then we had a panel discussion
"The Future of Open Source Mathematical Software", moderated by John Cremona with panelists William Stein, Bill Allombert, Michael Abshoff, Dan Bernstein and me. Recording should be available after the conference.

In the evening, we went to the usual code sprint.

Sunday morning

After fighting with the famous British separated hot and cold water taps in the morning, I had the traditional bacon and eggs:



And it was delicious. Then we had the first presentation by Michael Brickenstein (see also the schedule):



After a break, we witnessed a marvelous presentation by Paul Zimmerman about MPFR, used by default by gcc and gfortran:



And we went to lunch.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

The rest of Saturday

We went to a common lunch at the institute, after which another 3 presentations followed. Robert Bradshaw on Cython, James Davenport on simplification in CAS and Dan Bernstein about elliptic curves. (Most people here are mathematicians, for example working on modular forms, cryptography etc.)

Then we had a conference dinner together, on which we discussed a lot of stuff - GPL2 vs GPL3 vs BSD pros and cons and problems and how to license SAGE and SymPy and whether "translating" something from C++ to Python is a derived work or not, I also asked William, the main author of SAGE sitting on my left hand side, how SAGE has started and about his future plans with it. Basically, we exchanged our experiences with working on an opensource project and how to motivate people to work on it, and how to do and especially not to do things. On my right hand side was Bill Allombert, one of the two authors of PARI/GP and also a Debian Developer, so we signed each other's gpg keys (that we use in Debian) earlier this afternoon. It's awesome, I am wearing my Debian t-shirt today, but I didn't expect to meet any Debian people here.

After a dinner we went to the math institute to have a coding sprint, some pictures using my cell phone from the sprint:











During the dinner and especially during the sprint I borrowed William's camera and recorded short interviews with conference participants. I am going to do more interviews tomorrow. I'll put the link to them later, when William puts them on the internet after the conference.

Downloading images from Nokia N70 over bluetooth in GNOME

is actually very easy. I connect the bluetooth dongle to the USB port on my laptop and:


$ wajig install gnome-bluetooth
$ gnome-obex-server
conn_request: bdaddr 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
conn_complete: status 0x00
** Message: Incoming connection from 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
** Message: Device 00:19:79:86:EB:BC is about to send an object.
** Message: File arrived from 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
** Message: Filename '09112007196.jpg' Length 297132
** Message: Saving to '/home/ondra/Desktop/Downloads/09112007196.jpg'
** Message: Incoming connection from 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
conn_request: bdaddr 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
conn_complete: status 0x00
** Message: Incoming connection from 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
** Message: Device 00:19:79:86:EB:BC is about to send an object.
** Message: File arrived from 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
** Message: Filename '10112007197.jpg' Length 289214
** Message: Saving to '/home/ondra/Desktop/Downloads/10112007197.jpg'
** Message: Incoming connection from 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
conn_request: bdaddr 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
conn_complete: status 0x00
** Message: Incoming connection from 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
** Message: Device 00:19:79:86:EB:BC is about to send an object.
** Message: File arrived from 00:19:79:86:EB:BC
** Message: Filename '10112007198.jpg' Length 287449
** Message: Saving to '/home/ondra/Desktop/Downloads/10112007198.jpg'
** Message: Incoming connection from 00:19:79:86:EB:BC


And then I just click on the image on my phone and say "send over bluetooth", it finds my computer, I say yes, and that's it. It ends up in my Downloads folder on the desktop.

Then I just upload the images to my blog, see an example how it looks like.

SAGE Days 6 - Friday and Saturday morning

Right now I am at the SAGE Days 6 conference.

On Friday, I took the plane



from Prague to Bristol, where we accomodated in the Marriott Hotel:



And went to have a dinner together in a Thai restaurant. On Staturday morning we went to our first session




to the math department:



where William:



and Martin:



gave an introductory talk about SAGE.