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Gentoo: [more]

When updating my gentoo box, I kept running into:

[blocks B     ] net-dns/avahi (is blocking net-misc/mDNSResponder-107.6-r5)
[blocks B     ] net-misc/mDNSResponder (is blocking net-dns/avahi-0.6.22-r1)

Suggested solution

After I posted this, an Anonymous visitor has kindly suggested that emerging kdelibs with the avahi use flag is sufficient, and this was seconded by another Anonyjuicer. Great stuff!.

echo "kde-base/kdelibs avahi" >> /etc/portage/package.use
emerge -pv kdelibs
emerge kdelibs

Original workaround

If the above doesn't work for you, you might like to retrace my original steps:

net-misc/mDNSResponder

Gentoo: [more]I became curious about an ASCII Dungeon Keeper - like game called Dwarf Fortress, on the weekend. From forum discussions, and the games website, it looks quite complex and quirky. I had to try it out. I'm running it under wine, on my Gentoo box. Turns out we need OpenGL support in wine for this to work...

My first roadblock was that there's no source (that I could see), and just Windows and Mac binaries. Of course, I expect Wine to come to the rescue.

I was quite surprised, then, when I found that it needed opengl, despite (from the screenshots) being text-graphic based.

Gentoo: [more]
By enabling the HostInfo plugin in awstats, you get an extra column in the 'Hosts' table, which pops up a whois query when clicked.

awstats whois column

The whois record contains information like the organisation's name and address that owns the IP, the country, and contact details of the admin(s).

To get this working in awstats (to add this 'Info' column):

• Uncomment (or add) the

  LoadPlugin="hostinfo"

  line in the awstats config file for the domain of interest.

• Make sure the Net/XWhois Perl Module is available. On gentoo:

  emerge Net-XWhois

Misc: [more]

You might be familiar with the linux mount-time option to supress writing access times back to the filesystem. A similar, but lesser-known switch is avaible on your Windows installs. Urban legends passed around the shadowy enclaves of clandestine BOFH meetings claim between 3% and 8% throughput improvement. YMMV! Your mileage may vary.

The disabling option readily available on linux is a flag noatime and can be specified in the -o part of the mount command line or in fstab.

Command-line usage:

mount -o noatime /dev/hda4 /media/video

As an entry in /etc/fstab

/dev/hda4 /media/video ext2 noatime,defaults 0 1

You can acheive similar supression of access time recording in NTFS, in Windows NT up to XP, by setting the registry key:

Gentoo: [more]Transcode and dvdrip have lots of USE flags. Go through them, see what's good for you. After you've set them in /etc/portage/package.use :

$ sudo emerge transcode

$ sudo emerge dvdrip

Problems:

1 - lsdvd can't run at default permissions.

2 - Image magick can't play with pngs to jpgs

Solution to 1

When I ran dvd rip for the first time, lsdvd complained at me:

Can't open disc /dev/dvd!

So I did a bad thing:

$ sudo chmod 777 /dev/dvd

and it worked.

I used this previously, for something else, and I think these permissions are rebuilt. This is a Bad Solution (TM). But it looks like it worked.

Solution to 2

Re-emerge imagemagick with more use flags.

House Finch: by Noël Lee

Gentoo: [more]

I used to use gaim for instant messaging. It supports lots of networks (both mainstream and weirdo), and was available for all the distros I used, lots I didn't, and worked on my work win32 system.

Apparently there were legal issues, and gaim was eviscerated and frankensteined into pidgin/libpurple/finch. I think this colourful trinity works as per:

Drupal: [more]

This afternoon I ran into a bizarre little quirk. Probably becaue I was recompiling my php/apache to use the threaded worker-mpm, and nuked some sessions by mistake.

Problem: Couldn't log in to my drupal page (my juicydata account).

Symptoms: Thrown back to the current page, as if the 'User login' button has no effect.

Solution: Delete cookies, login works.

It'd be nice if there was some kinda indication to the user that something's wrong here.. I was using firefox when I ran across this.

gbrainy is a fun little iq tester / set of brainteasers.

Puzzles are classified as calculation, memory, puzzle or logic, and range from simple to challenging.

Which figure completes the sequence? What is the missing number?

Good practice for IQ tests too :)

I spent way too much time this afternoon solving these micro-nerd-puzzles.

Post your scores in the comments (no cheating please :) ).

gbrainy on Gentoo

Getting gbrainy working on gentoo was a chore, but wasn't difficult.

FFMPEG has always been a little touchy for me. Looks like when I upgraded this, it broke ability to emerge blender. (late 2007->early 2008)

Error message:

undefined reference to `img_convert'

Workarond:

add -ffmpeg to the use flags in /etc/portage/package.use, and emerge again.

What is blender?

Blender is a open-source modelling, animation, rendering suite. Join the community and help to make it a viable alternative to the heavyweights.

Setting up K3b:

I realised I didn't have a burning package installed today when I wanted to archive some stuff.. Time to install!

Summary:

#emerge k3b

#chmod 666 /dev/hdd

Long version:

I was hoping (and it probably is for you), that I'd get away with:

# emerge k3b

K3b is a CD and DVD burning application, copyright Sebastian Trug.

The emerge went well, but I ran into subsequent permission denied problems, when running k3b as a normal user for the first time:

k3b /dev/cdrom resolved to /dev/hdd
(K3bDevice::Device) could not open device /dev/hdd for reading
(Permission denied)
could not open device /dev/hdd (Permission denied)

I messed around with my fstab a bit, then took out the good ol' hammer of chmod. This probably makes my system a zillion times more unsecure (or insecure? or both?), but it worked:

/dev/ # chmod 666 hdd

Update: My system hasn't caught on fire yet. But it sure can burn.

Gentoo: [more]

Preconditions: cups installed , no net-print/bjfilter lines in /etc/portage/package.keywords or package.use

Postconditions: installed Canon Pixma iP1000 printer

The bugs location below may change. You may be able to get the ebuild from a better location.

# cd /usr/local/portage/net-print/bjfilter

# wget http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=103001 -Objfilter-2.50-r6.ebuild

# echo "net-print/bjfilter ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

# echo "net-print/bjfilter ip1000 servicetools" >> /etc/portage/package.use

# emerge --digest -av bjfilter

# /etc/init.d/cupsd restart

Gentoo: [more]

This afternoon I realised I don't have a printer installed, and it would sometimes be handy. Years ago I bought a Canon Pixma iP1000, and used it 5 times. It's a little cheap bubble jet, I thought it was broken.

But, necessity called, and I got it working in gentoo in ard 15 minutes. Here's how (instructions for x86 only):

Driver install

Download

http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=103001 as bjfilter-2.50-r6.ebuild at location /usr/local/portage/net-print/bjfilter/

Unmask it:

# echo "net-print/bjfilter ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

add some use flags

Gentoo: [more]

These are found in

net-dns/bind-tools

$ sudo emerge bind-tools

You probably also want whois:

$ sudo emerge whois

Do a:

$ emerge --search whois

There are a few alternatives. Enjoy!

http://gentoo-portage.com/net-dns/bind-tools

VOIP + Data switches: (AaronK)

Reverse deps (required by these packages):

Drupal: [more]
I'm pretty new to Gentoo (maybe 1 week or so), but getting drupal up and running was completely straightforward.
I was searching for a CMS, have never tried drupal, and it sounds about what I need.
I visited drupal.org, noticed that v 5.5 is the preferred, ran:
$echo "web-apps/drupal ~x86" >> /etc/portage/packages.keywords
$emerge -pv drupal
and portage reported v 5.3 only. So, I had to learn emerge --sync :)
$emerge --sync
$emerge -pv drupal
$sudo emerge -av drupal
I had www-config installed previously, and immediately after the drupal emerging above finished, I could visit:
http://127.0.0.1/drupal/
Setup a mysql db and account for drupal
$mysqladmin create drupal_db -uroot -p*#*#
$mysql -uroot -p*#*#
mysql> grant all on drupal.* TO 'drupal_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '*#*#*#*#*#';