I’m now officially the maintainer of Licq’s Debian packages. Since I’m not a real Debian maintainer, I’m very grateful to Joel Rosdahl who is my sponsor.

Version 1.3.8-1 is coming to a mirror near you as I write this.

The package source is kept in my git repository. To build the package from the git repository, install git-buildpackage and pristine-tar then follow the instructions below.

Initial setup:

% gbp-clone --pristine-tar git://git.ejohansson.se/debian/licq.git

% git clone git://git.ejohansson.se/debian/licq.git
licq % cd licq
licq % git checkout -b pristine-tar origin/pristine-tar
licq % git co master

To build the latest version:

licq % git-buildpackage --git-export-dir=../build-area

To build a specific version:

licq % git-buildpackage --git-export-dir=../build-area --git-export=debian/1.3.8-1

The final packages will be available in ../build-area.

Later on when you wish to update:

licq % git pull
licq % git-buildpackage ...

The next version will have qt4-gui.

In the BIOS, enable “Power on by PCIE device”.

In Linux, first install ethtool and then check that Wake on LAN is supported by running the following command:

root@host$ ethtool eth0
...
        Supports Wake-on: g
        Wake-on: g
...

The output should contain a ‘g’ to indicate that the device can be woken by sending it a “magic packet”.

Enable Wake-on by running:

root@host$ ethtool -s eth0 wol g

Since this command must be run on every boot, add it to /etc/rc.local.

root@host$ cat /etc/rc.local
...
ethtool -s eth0 wol g
exit 0

As the last step we must make sure that halt doesn’t disable the network device. This is done by adding this line to /etc/default/halt:

NETDOWN=no

We also need the MAC address to send the magic packet to.

root@host$ ifconfig eth0
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1e:8c:cf:d0:bb  
...

Then shutdown the computer. On an other computer, install e.g. wakeonlan and run:

user@other$ wakeonlan 00:1e:8c:cf:d0:bb

The computer should now start.

Licq 1.3.7 contains many bugfixes, and several new features in the Qt4-Gui such as spell checking and configurable keyboard shortcuts.

Download it from the usual place.

I don’t normally write about Windows here, but this program was so good I figured I’d let you know about it. I have it set up to synchronize all files on the desktop and in My Pictures. Both computers share their desktop and My Pictures directory, allowing others to write to them. SyncToy is then set up with two folder pairs, one for the desktop and one for My Pictures. Both computers have the same configuration so that the synchronization can be initiated from any one of them.

To make it easy to synchronize, I created a shortcut on the desktop that runs SyncToyCmd.exe -R (to do the actual synchronization, for all folder pairs). SyncToyCmd should normally be run as a scheduled task, but since both computers must be turned on for the synchronization to work, I opted for a shortcut instead.

Combined with Picasa, they can now offload pictures from their digital camera to any one of the computers and then simply synchronize them. Sweet!

We tried many things to get the Wii to connect, without any success. In a last attempt we tried changing the pass phrase to a 64 characters long hexadecimal pass phrase. That did the trick. Both the Wii and both laptops now connect without any problem. So if you are having problems connecting your Wii to the wireless network, try changing the pass phrase to consist of hexadecimal characters (0-9, A-F) only. For WPA/WPA2 it must be exactly 64 characters long.