Luke Sheldrick’s Blog

For a long time now, I’ve had a number of different applications I use to connect to various different IM (instant messaging) mediums, such as Irssi for IRC, Pidgin for Jabber/MSN/etc on my desktops/laptops and usually BeeJive on my iPhone when I’m out and about.

This has all ‘kinda’ worked, it hasn’t been the most elegant of solutions, but it did do what I need it to. Until you add something like the iPad to the mix.

The problem I had, was I’d be signed on to say MSN on my MacBook, and then decide I’ve worked enough for the day, so sign off. Then whilst watching TV in the evening, want to send a message to someone, who only uses MSN, so grab my iPad and sign on via BeeJive. Well that kind of works, except, if I forget to sign off BeeJive, it keeps me online on their ‘cloud’, so I can connect back at any time via the iPad, only the iPad though.

If someone was to send me a message when the client is closed on the iPad, sure it sends a push message to it, but no other device. If I go out, and I know someone has sent me a message, I can’t connect to it via BeeJive on the iPhone, as it doesn’t keep them in sync. Same as if I wanted to log in with the MacBook, I can’t see what that message was.

So I decided this doesn’t work how I want and need it to. So I set about designing my own solution. The aim was to set something up running on my infrastructure, at little or no cost (not always easy when you add any iOS devices in the mix), and reliable.

What I came up with, works really well for me, so thought I’d document what I put together.

The server components run on a machine that is always on, the is the core of the solution. The underlying OS I used is a Fedora 14 box (so Fedora rawhide – the development branch). The packages I’ve used are widely available on pretty much every Linux distribution, ports (OS X, *BSD), so the OS here, really doesn’t make much of a difference.

Server side:
Irssi – a cross platform IRC client.
ZNC – a cross platform IRC bouncer.
BitlBee – a cross platform IM gateway for IRC.

Client side:
Colloquy Mobile – iOS IRC client – use this on the iPad and iPhone.
Adium (Beta) – OS X IM client – use the beta version as it supports IRC.
Pidgin – a cross platform IM client – use this on any Windows or Linux machines i happen to be on.

Again the client side really doesn’t matter, just as long as you have something you can connect to an IRC server with, it should be all good.

The setup uses BitlBee to connect to MSN, G-Talk, Jabber, Facebook chat, and pretty much any other IM network you’d want to connect into. BitlBee presents it’s self as a IRC server, and you contact list is all shown as a room. When you chat to someone you do so as you would traditionally. That part worked a treat.

At first I just had Irssi running with the proxy module enabled, this allows you to reconnect into your Irssi session, with a local client, and ‘pose’ as remote session. This worked well, so I just left Irssi running in a remote screen session, then when I wanted to connect in and chat, I would just open say Pidgin locally, and it would connect to all the rooms the Irssi session had.

This was fine, however, Irssi on it’s own doesn’t support playback. What I mean here is, if someone had sent me a DM, Irssi would have it, but when I logged in with Pidgin, Irssi wouldn’t send me a copy of that message, it only forwards new messages. For these kind of features, I’d need to employ a bouncer, not the thuggish type that stand outside nightclubs, but an IRC bouncer.

I tried a few, but settled with ZNC. I should point out here, that when using ZNC, there isn’t really any need to use Irssi in the equation any more, I just kept it as have a few custom scripts, and all my historic logs are there, so decided to keep it.

ZNC will connect to all your favourite IRC networks, keep you online, and when you connect to it with your client, it will replay all the conversations and DMs you missed since you last connected in. this was exactly the functionality I was looking for.

There are also a host of other cool things you can do with ZNC, so I have mine configured to set me away everywhere 5 minutes after my client disconnects. Also if you team colloquy mobile up with ZNC, you can have it push message your iPhone or iPad if you’re mentioned in a chat, or if someone sends you a DM, I have mine set to only do this if there are no other clients connected, else when I’m at computer having a conversation, both my iPhone and iPad have a bit of a push message spasm. This push message function was exactly what I was looking for to replace BeeJive, except this pushes it to all my devices, not just the one that has my account singed in.. neat I thought.

This my no means is the simplest way to set up your MSN, but for if you want all the prerequisites I did, it really works.

The server topology may be a bit complex so have (for my sins) put together a diagram of how it’s set out, along with a few screenshots.

Any questions, please feel free to ask.

Last year I bought a Three MiFi aka the Huawei E5830. The small box of magic has a 3G sim and a battery. It’s basically a wireless router. What this allows you to do is to ‘share’ the 3G connection to 5 wireless devices, as well as an additional one via usb.

So when I’m out, it’s great. If I need to use my netbook, laptop, iPod Touch, or my iPhone or Blackberry if their connection is poor, I can just switch on my MiFi, and as long as there is a decent Three data signal, I’m good to go. It’s a lot more flexible than just having a 3G dongle or using the inbuilt 3G modem on my laptop and netbooks, as I can share it with a number of devices at once, effortlessly.

The problem with it, is it comes with some poorly written software which is windows only app to configure the device, which can only be used when the MiFi is connected via USB. Not ideal? Well no not really. Quite often I’ll let someone I’m with leach off it, and want to set the password to something easy to share, and turn mac filtering off. This is often when I’m out and about, and I only have one windows machine, which is my work laptop, which I’m not in the habit of keeping with me. Also the interface gives no stats as to how much data I’ve used, or any logging.

So I was looking around the interwebs the other night, as I thought there must be a way around this. The previous wireless router (albeit not battery powered but still made by huawei) I had,  did have a web interface at least. Turns out there are a number of different firmwares available if you’re a bit brave, which unlock the good stuff.

First of all have a read of the flashing guide here. The process is pretty straight forward if you follow the instructions. There are two versions of the firmware available out there, one by another network, which brands with their branding, which I wasn’t a fan of. There is also the official firmware (not from three though) which is what I used, and so far am quite happy with. You can get that from here.

Make sure you follow the flashing guide, and if like mine if you flash b0rks half way through and your device then doesn’t turn on, not all is lost. Follow the guide again, and keep trying. For best results use XP. However if you’re going to use Vista/7, then ensure you run the exe as administrator, else it will get half way through the flash, then b0rk, leaving you with a MiFi that wont boot.

Once you’ve updated the firmware it should reboot, and the come back as normal. I noticed that it seemed to turn on a lot faster Also turning on 3G/Data and Wireless seems a lot quicker too. The standard Three utility will still work as before, just connect via USB. However now you’ll have web access to the Mifi, with all the goodies unlocked. So go to 192.168.x.1 where x is the subnet you set, default is 1 (so 192.168.1.1). You’ll get a login screen, the username is admin, as is the password.Then you can go in to all the advanced features. You also get a bandwidth usage which is really nice to have if you’re always running out.

You can also change the config quite a bit, which is awesome. Two things that used to annoy me, that I had to turn it on, then turn wifi on, and then 3G, it should just do it all when I turn it on. Now I can set this… WIN.

Also noticed that it has a mobile (well looks iPod/iPhone friendly) gui too. Point safari to the same IP and you get

So a lot more usable, and I can say goodbye to being stuck to Windows for it. Good luck, let me know how you got on.

Last week when I was at a festival, my macbook unfortunately ran totally out of space, and there wasn’t much I could delete. With almost 20 gigs of SD cards, the only thing that could really take the chop was my XP boot camp partition.

Cut a long story short, I’ve now got a much bigger drive (500 GB) for my macbook. Along with the release of Windows 7 RC1 being released I thought I’d give it a try with boot camp.

Installing is pretty easy, burn the Microsoft ISO to a DVD, and follow the normal guide. I detest the fact that I need to burn another CD, or use my OS X Install DVD (which I can never find) to get the boot camp drivers. If like me you’d like to download them, I’ve given a link below to where you may find them. I just put them on a usb stick.

Once installed, pretty much everything works under boot camp, the only thing I found that didn’t play was the ‘Reboot into OS X’ I get an error. This isn’t a huge problem, as you can just hold the alt key on boot up to select OS X or Windows.

Once I got all that working, I then wanted to get the same build / partition under VMware fusion. Reading a few guides, the best way is to follow the normal guide for XP, but change it so the guest is set to Windows 2008 Server. Again, all working pretty well once you install VMware Tools.

The only problem that I did have, is there was no networking for the guest. The NIC just showed as Ethernet Controller. Nothing seemed to get this NIC working, tried manually installing the drivers from the VMWare tools cd, copying from another Windows 7 guest.

The only thing that seemed to fix it, was to shutdown the guest, and add a second NIC, and boot back up. Windows 7 RC1, installs this NIC with no problems at all, and all is working. Intererstingly, it still wont play with the original one. None the less, it’s all working through it’s second, new NIC, so I am happy with that.

Useful links

• Windows 7 RC1
• Guide to installing in boot camp
• Guide to installing in VMWare Fusion
• Downloadable boot camp drivers

A friend told me of a magical cross platform application, which I’ve been using for a while, thought I’d share. Synergy;

“Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). ”

The picture above shows my very small desk, sporting 2x 22 Samsungs, and my Dell D420. Under the desk is an old HP desktop powering the two monitors (and soon to be 9′ touch screen above them, when I get the drivers setup). I rarely use the D420 these days, as I use my MacBook or Advent 4213 notebook when out and about, so didn’t mind giving it up to the desk.

I can use the keyboard and mouse on the laptop, to control both it, and the bigger screens. The neat thing is, with the config setup correctly, I can just move the mouse upwards and the pointer magically moves to the other screen, and the keyboard then controls that computer too. A few other neat options are to have a shared clipboard, and to activate the screensaver/lock screen across all computers with each other.

So on my tiny desk, I can fit in quite a lot of screen real estate. As for using the laptop as a primary keyboard, I started to do this at work when the hotdesk keyboards started to freak me out, and using the laptop keyboard is actually quite nice to use.

Have tested Synergy with os x, and all worked pretty flawlessly there too. Not had a chance to test under windows just yet, as rarely use it these days, but from what I’ve read it all works fine.

So I am meeting a friend for coffee and lunch today, unfortunately she’s running a bit late, so decided to grab a frappacino and be one of those geeks in Starbucks with their laptop/netbooks out.

I’m in the process of swapping out the wireless card in my netbook (for osx86) so don’t have any drivers or modules setup in the OS’s at the moment.

Luckily though, I do have a vodafone data sim, and the 4213 has an inbuilt 3G modem.

Here comes the fun part, the data tariff is on Vodafone business, so you would think they’d be slightly reliable… erm nope.

Every month, without fail, they mess up the billing. Apparently my Direct Debit fails, it doesn’t. A few ways I know, is it’s gone through a couple of times, so we know that it’s got the correct details. The other being when a DD does bounce, my Bank arse rape me on charges. Third being, there is always funds to cover all my DD’s.

Now vodafail, are funny people, because you know how I said it’s a data card, well how do they try to contact you… by txt message. That’s a big clever idea.

I can sort of see the idea, in that their app for windows, does have a sms function, but I would at least have thought an email may be a better option? or even both. However, I don’t use windows, instead my netbook is running Fedora 10, and NetworkManager doesn’t support sms… FAIL

The best one is when I do look at the missed call txt’s, from their sales drones. WTF? do they talk binary? no, well don’t call a datacard then!

Bah, alas, I phone them up, and go through the usual crap of, could we take your mobile number (No, I don’t know it, I never have, and have no intention of, it’s a datacard.) Can I have the account number, it’s on your bill (No, it’s a datacard, I use it when I am out and about, I don’t carry a copy of all my bills with me)… so we eventually get there, and they say to switch my PHONE off and on… FAIL.

Alas I am mobile again, thanks to the friendly folk at vodafail.

Hmm, the contract runs out next month, who should I move to?