minor uniformity patch for smplayer

One of the things that good Linux applications should have is uniformity. Just like Mac OS X does. All applications should use the same keybindings to perform the same tasks. For example, on _every_ OS X application, in order to quit it you have to press “CMD+Q”, it’s that simple and everybody follows it. Everybody. On Linux though there are some applications that simply don’t care about uniformity. One of these applications is smplayer.

While it is almost standard for Linux applications to quit using Ctrl+Q, smplayer simply doesn’t have this option. It has the option of closing the current video with Ctrl+X but it doesn’t have the simple option of quitting using a keyboard shortcut.

So, the next (oneliner actually) patch does simply what I described above. It makes smplayer quit using “Ctrl+Q”.

The screenshot that shows what the patch does:
smplayer

smplayer-0.6.8-quit.patch:
--- smplayer-0.6.8/src/baseguiplus.cpp 2009-08-13 16:07:04.000000000 +0300
+++ smplayer-0.6.8/src/baseguiplus.cpp 2009-08-13 16:08:22.000000000 +0300
@@ -67,8 +67,7 @@
tray->setToolTip( "SMPlayer" );
connect( tray, SIGNAL(activated(QSystemTrayIcon::ActivationReason)),
this, SLOT(trayIconActivated(QSystemTrayIcon::ActivationReason)));
-
- quitAct = new MyAction(this, "quit");
+ quitAct = new MyAction(QKeySequence("Ctrl+Q"), this, "quit");
connect( quitAct, SIGNAL(triggered()), this, SLOT(quit()) );
openMenu->addAction(quitAct);

And a patched ebuild for smplayer-0.6.8 to use this minor patch (only one line is added to the ebuild):
smplayer-0.6.8-r1.ebuild

P.S. Keybindings in smplayer can be set through Preferences, and someone could actually put Ctrl+Q as the quit shortcut but I think that this should be the default setting like most other applications have it. Uniformity matters.

Trying to achieve a more stable hybrid (broadcom-wl) kernel module for broadcom 4328

On my Macbook (4,1) I am currently using Debian with kernel 2.6.30-1-686-bigmem. This Macbook has Broadcom 4328 wireless chipset installed (02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 03)) and unfortunately the necessary kernel module provided by Broadcom is pretty unstable. Or very unstable. Oh well…it’s totally unstable.

I had random freezes, usually when I first booted and tried to modprobe the module. After some searching around the net and a lot of experiments I’ve managed to create a kernel module that looks quite stable. At least I stopped getting any more lockups and freezes…To reproduce the module with the patches I’ve used follow the directions bellow step by step.

Find your kernel version:
mybox:~# uname -r
2.6.30-1-686-bigmem

Install kernel header files related to the kernel version you found (on the above example it is: 2.6.30-1-686-bigmem):
mybox:~# aptitude install linux-headers-2.6.30-1-686-bigmem

Remember to replace the version (2.6.30-1-6-bigmem) with the output of your mybox:~# uname -r

Create necessary dirs:
mybox:~# mkdir hybrid_wl
mybox:~# cd hybrid_wl

Download Linux drivers package from Broadcom:
802.11 Linux STA 32-bit Driver
(Driver info site: 802.11 Linux STA driver)
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# wget http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_91_9.tar.gz

Download a few more patches from Archlinux and Gentoo:
hidden-essid patch
2.6.30 patch 1
2.6.30 patch 2
hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_91_9-convert_to_net_device_ops.diff
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/broadcom-wl/broadcom-wl/hidden-essid.patch
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/broadcom-wl/broadcom-wl/broadcom-sta-5.10.91.9-linux-2.6.30.patch
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/broadcom-wl/broadcom-wl/broadcom-sta-5.10.91.9-linux-2.6.30-2.patch
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# wget -O hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_91_9-convert_to_net_device_ops.diff http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=195182

Extract package:
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# tar -xzf /path/to/hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_91_9.tar.gz

Start Patching:
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# sed -i hidden-essid.patch -e 's|5.10.79.10|src/wl/sys|g'
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# patch -p0 < hidden-essid.patch
patching file src/wl/sys/wl_iw.c
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# sed -i broadcom-sta-5.10.91.9-linux-2.6.30.patch -e 's|hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_91_9.orig/||g'
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# sed -i broadcom-sta-5.10.91.9-linux-2.6.30.patch -e 's|hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_91_9/||g'
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# patch -p0 <broadcom-sta-5.10.91.9-linux-2.6.30.patch
patching file src/wl/sys/wl_iw.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 611 (offset 1 line).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 640 (offset 1 line).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 1119 (offset 1 line).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 1147 (offset 1 line).
Hunk #5 succeeded at 1807 (offset 1 line).
Hunk #6 succeeded at 1942 (offset 1 line).
patching file src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c
patching file src/wl/sys/wl_linux.h
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# patch -p0 < broadcom-sta-5.10.91.9-linux-2.6.30-2.patch
patching file src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# sed -i hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_91_9-convert_to_net_device_ops.diff -e 's|a/src/|src/|g'
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# sed -i hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_91_9-convert_to_net_device_ops.diff -e 's|b/src/|src/|g'
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# patch -p0 < hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_91_9-convert_to_net_device_ops.diff
patching file src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 225 (offset 6 lines).
patching file src/wl/sys/wl_iw.c

Compile the kernel module:
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# make -C /lib/modules/2.6.30-1-686-bigmem/build M=`pwd` clean
make: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.30-1-686-bigmem'
make: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.30-1-686-bigmem'
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# make -C /lib/modules/2.6.30-1-686-bigmem/build M=`pwd`
make: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.30-1-686-bigmem'
LD /root/hybrid_wl/built-in.o
CC [M] /root/hybrid_wl/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.o
CC [M] /root/hybrid_wl/src/wl/sys/wl_iw.o
CC [M] /root/hybrid_wl/src/shared/linux_osl.o
LD [M] /root/hybrid_wl/wl.o
Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST 1 modules
WARNING: modpost: missing MODULE_LICENSE() in /root/hybrid_wl/wl.o
see include/linux/module.h for more information
CC /root/hybrid_wl/wl.mod.o
LD [M] /root/hybrid_wl/wl.ko
make: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.30-1-686-bigmem'

Install the new module:
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# cp wl.ko /lib/modules/2.6.30-1-686-bigmem/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# depmod
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# modprobe wl

Check if everything loads correctly:
mybox:~/hybrid_wl# dmesg |tail
[ 66.229797] lib80211: common routines for IEEE802.11 drivers
[ 66.229805] lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
[ 66.301793] wl: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
[ 66.301802] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
[ 66.305919] wl 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[ 66.305933] wl 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[ 66.406146] lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'TKIP'
[ 66.408646] eth1: Broadcom BCM4328 802.11 Wireless Controller 5.10.91.9
[ 76.524135] eth1: no IPv6 routers present

You can also chek the iwconfig output. Hopefully everything will be fine…
I hope this saves a few hours of searching and experimenting for some people…

References:
1) 802.11 Linux STA driver
2) AUR broadcom-wl 5.10.91.9-2
3) Gentoo Bug: 284450 (New ebuild: net/wireless/broadcom-sta)