Today I saw that a new version of Nanoblogger was released, so I decided to update.
I thought this would be a breeze, but it turned out that Kevin (the maintainer of Nanoblogger) changed a lot between the last two versions. Nanoblogger calls (in my setup) Markdown to format the webpages and that’s where it stopped. A little debugging got things going again and I mailed Kevin the patch.
I guess it will be resolved in the next release.
This morning a git (1.6.6.1) arrived with a copule of nice bug fixes.
I created complete CentOS5 RPM’s for this again.
These new RPM’s can be found in the files section.
They have started again, those EU nitwits. When does the EU just stop with this madness?
Stop them now and (re)sign the petition against software patents.
Today I upgraded my NanoBlogger software from version 3.3 to version 3.4.1.
This whole process was completely painless. Just installed Nanoblogger 3.4.1 and regenerated everything and that was it.
A quick `side by side' compare of the old and the new one revealed nothing special.
If you see any errors, please let me know.
When I was installing a new server I thought that it would be nice to
have the server display a nice banner when I contact it. With OpenSSH
this is rather easy to achieve. Just setting the Banner option in
/etc/ssh/sshd_config should do the trick. I also thought it would be
nice to have the servername displayed, created with
Figlet. So when I login the screen should look
something like this:
A new git (1.6.6) arrived and I thought I should create RPM’s for this
again.
These new RPM’s can be found in the files section.
A new git (1.6.5.3) arrived and I thought I should create RPM’s for
this again.
This turned out to be rather tedious and frustrating.
Running ~ rpmbuild -ba git.spec ~
as usual gave me this error
I/O error : Attempt to load network entity http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd /home/tonk/rpmbuild/BUILD/git-1.6.5.2/Documentation/git-add.xml:2: warning: \ failed to load external entity "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd"
Hmm, never seen that one before. Digging around in the Makefile and
adding a lot of `echo`s to display some debugging info, I found it.
Within a mixed Linux and Microsoft Windows network I ran into the following problem:
A host with the hostname linux1.firm.local could be ping`ed and found
with `nslookup and dig, but it was impossible to start a ssh
session. The result kept being: Unknown host.
Playing Cherlock Holmes revealed that this had to do with Avahi and
mdns, so with the .local part of the hostname.
In my /etc/nsswitch.conf the hosts: line read: (Using Ubuntu 8.04)
A co-worker at our company found a VMware image for an ancient UNIX version, called UNIX V7. This version dates back to the good old days of 1979, and therefore it is now already 30 years old. He found this at Nordier.
It’s is incredible that a UNIX version of so long ago already supports multi-processing and multi-user.
I tried to run this version of UNIX on my VMware server version 2.0, but it got stuck at the command prompt. I could have spent a great deal of time getting it to work, but playing with KVM recently, I decided to convert the image to KVM.
Again, there is a new version of the Git Version Control System available, named version 1.6.5.1. This version contains some bug-fixes, no feature enhancements.
This new version (1.6.5.1) is now packaged and online in the files
section.
Enjoy!
This morning I found out that there is a new version for the Git Version
Control System. This new version (1.6.5) in now packaged and online in
the files section.
Enjoy!
At our local radio station (Omroep Groesbeek) we use OpenFiler version 2.3 for our storage solution.
Yesterday, however, we didn’t have a storage solution but a storage problem. None of the exported disks could be accessed, neither through Samba nor NFS. Further investigation showed that the operating disk was completely kaputt. I tried to make a clone of the disk with CloneZilla but the clone failed and the new file systems where unusable as well.
Using git on a daily basis now, it bugged me that there are no RPM’s for git on CentOS 5.3. At the git download site it’s possible to download versions for Fedora 9, but that’s not what I want or need.
So I decided to make my own. Downloading the source, unpacking and
running make git.spec gave me a basic spec file to start with.
After minor tweaks I tried to cook the RPM, but I was in for a surprise.
Some time ago I told you about the vigit program, to combine editing
and submitting to git. This had some disadvantages, that made me search
for a better solution.
I found this in the git filtering capabilities.
The major problem was that the file was modified by vigit after it
was checked in to git. This means that the command
git diff
always showed differences. That was something I didn’t like at all. But I do like some version info in the file. And the git-hash as well.
OK, it took some time, but the holidays where in my way.
I finally switched completely to git, the best version control system out there, at this moment.
I found a bug in the vigit program, that I corrected and my header
program is now default for git and I have removed CVS. Nobody should use
that anymore, because it’s rather old and served it’s purpose.
I’m now experimenting with git filters to make the checkin and checkout better and that there’s no difference between the file on disk and the one in the repository.
At work we now have a very nice SAN with two machines running VMware vSphere. I did try to add fibre storage to the VMware machines and that didn’t work. I did get a lot of errors and unknown problems. Even Google never heard of them. One of those was ~ Error during the configuration of the host: Failed to get disk partition information ~
Googling for this and more generic terms pointed me to a hint to partition the disk on the VMware server itself and then create a VMFS filesystem onto it. Well, that should be easy enough.
Oke, that’s it. Ubuntu Jaunty up and running. After hardly two hours of installing and configuring it’s done. I have Ubuntu up and running. With zsh, Firefox 3.5, OpenOffice 3.1 (although I never use it), all the VPN connections I need, TeX Live, Mutt, ext4, XFCE 4.6, Wifi, webcam and all the things I forgot.
I didn’t need Google, hack it or whatever. Just configure it the way I want. Out of the box, no problems.
It was a long time ago that I created a Geek Code Block for myself. As I aged this block aged with we, so it was about time I updated it.
Take a look at the about page to see the new code. I also added a decoded version for those who do not like to decode stuff.
After a week of Prince2 and coming back to my old self again I started my laptop in OpenSolaris. There where some minor things that needed to be resolved. Trying to resolve these was not at all easy, because I needed some extra software not available in the OpenSolaris repository.
Searching the web (Google is certainly your friend) I found some extra repositories I could use. These can be easily installed using the package manager, so I’ll give the URL’s only.
Being a blood donor since 1982 I have been donating blood on a regular basis. Today I reached the milestone, that I’m very happy about. I donated blood 100 times. This equals 50 litres of blood in total.
I would like to urge you all: Please give. It doesn’t cost you anything but a little time and you help a lot of people. So: Give
If you live in the Netherlands goto Sanquin
The last 3 days were very hectic. I attended the course Prince2 Foundation which prepared me for the Prince2 exam. Three days of good old, hardcore studying. I really felt like an old man, not a student. I can hardly believe I did this for years non-stop and partied all the time. I even get exhausted thinking about it. Those were really good times, with very fond memories.
But all the hard work payed off. I did pass the exam (unofficially for now) and I do now have a Prince2 Foundation qualification.
My private laptop came delivered with Windows (of course), but I wanted a UNIX/Linux like OS as well. Running a lot of computers with Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS, Slackware, Debian and others) I decided I wanted something else.
I came up with the idea that it should be Solaris, to experiment with the fantastic ZFS. But the real Sun Solaris lacks support for my laptop, so I thought I could run OpenSolaris, which has better hardware support.
When using the stream editor (sed) with the -i option, it does
break links. Like this:
~$ mkdir test ~$ cd test ~/test$ echo Hello > f1 ~/test$ ln -s f1 f2 ~/test$ ls -l total 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 tonk tonk 6 May 4 09:28 f1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 tonk tonk 2 May 4 09:28 f2 -> f1 ~/test$ sed -i.bck 's/Hello/Bello/' f2 ~/test$ ls -l total 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 tonk tonk 6 May 4 09:28 f1 -rw-r--r-- 1 tonk tonk 6 May 4 09:29 f2 lrwxrwxrwx 1 tonk tonk 2 May 4 09:28 f2.bck -> f1 ~/test$ rm f2 f2.bck ~/test$ ln f1 f2 ~/test$ ls -l total 8 -rw-r--r-- 2 tonk tonk 6 May 4 09:28 f1 -rw-r--r-- 2 tonk tonk 6 May 4 09:28 f2 ~/test$ sed -i.bck 's/Hello/Bello/' f2 ~/test$ ls -l total 12 -rw-r--r-- 2 tonk tonk 6 May 4 09:28 f1 -rw-r--r-- 1 tonk tonk 6 May 4 09:29 f2 -rw-r--r-- 2 tonk tonk 6 May 4 09:28 f2.bck
On my laptop I’m running Ubuntu Linux 8.04 with
XFCE 4.6 and it works great. But (Isn’t there
always a but'?) every once in a while I killed my Xsession with some
type of key combination. The standard combination for this is
`Ctrl-Alt-Backspace so I switched that off in the file
/etc/X11/xorg.conf'. I added the`ServerFlags`section, like this. ~ Section "ServerFlags" Option "DontZap" "on" EndSection ~ After restarting I tried the dreadful`Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
and I thought that `Bob’s your uncle'.
Last week I saw a documentary about the German mathematician David Hilbert. This very interesting documentary had some nice mathematical problems that seem impossible to solve, but when thought through there always was a little loophole.
A very nice one is The paradox of the Grand Hotel
If you are a bit into maths, this really is stuff to read.
The prove of The Last Theorem of Fermat is my next goal… :-)