Bluetooth headset keeps stopping

I decided to try and fix my bluetooth headset. Thought that maybe I should get the latest code and rebuild it. so I created a bluetoothHeadset-projects directory, and checked out sbc and plugz and built them just like they said on the bluetooth-alsa site. The page does not say when it was updated last but I am assuming it is rather current. sbc builds fine but plugz fails and it looks like it is a problem with the interface to sbc.

Turns out I need a new version of bluez-libs to get it to work but I can't install it since the repository won't work as an installation src. Will have to try later.

DVD Authoring

Well, my wife wanted me to get some dvd authoring done. So I tried a bunch of tools and here is what I learned. Most of the Vidoe editors won't let you read an avi file. I finally used kmenc15 to concatenate several files into larger ones. Wish that was easier in the tools. Then Tried multiple Authoring tools. Most of which want dv or the like but KMediaFactory and QDVDAuthor seem to be the front runners for me. kmediafactory failed the first time I tried to use it because I was missing a utility that one of my packages said it had installed. Fixed that and it worked nicely. Problem: No animated menus. Too bad aside from that it was fantastic. I think I will see if I can help add them. I also learned about DVDAuthor, a command line utility that authors a dvd based on the contents of an xml file.

More on linux webcams

I found a great page on linux webcam support http://www.linux.com/howtos/Webcam-HOWTO
I found another web cam and thought I would try to get it working too.
I jumped right to section 2.3 And got lead to the OmniVision project site unfortunately they said that it has an unknown chip and so I went to the icm532 site. I could not figure out what the driver module was named then someone said it was spca5xx. I remebered it as the driver I used to get my intel camera to work at work. So I will try it in the morning.

Xirlink IBM Netcamera Working

Wow, two in one night! I just got my Xirlink IBM Netcamera working.
The trick was using the yast hardware info to determine what device I had so I could do the right google search. After that, it was as easy as typing the following as root.

modprobe ibmcam

That adds it as a v4l device and after restarting gnomemeeting I was able to select it as my video device. Sweet. Here is the link to the site that explained it to me. It is old but it did the trick. Now I need to get my kids intel play camera working and I will be all set for web cams.

guest USB in VMware on Suse10.1 and SLED

My latest challenge was to get my wifes new garmin forerunner working on linux since I no longer have any windows machines to use. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any existing apps for the forerunner on linux. I did however find two things of interest. There is an app called gpsman. Another is the library for the forerunner called frX01Toolkit. I would love to find an application that is using it. Anyway I had to put that aside and get something running.

So, I tried installing it with wine. The install just blew up somewhere near the beginning. So, I thought I would just use a windows 98 vmware vm. I already have one and so I tried it but it would not recognize any usb devices. Then I found this site talking about problems with SuSE 10.2 and guest OS USB access. It basically said that for 10.1 which is what SLED 10 is based on I just needed to do one of the following as root:

mount -t usbfs /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Or add the following to your /etc/fstab and reboot:
/dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0

Well that did the trick. So, I will have to do the rest when I switch to 10.2 or SLED 10 SP1