instead of 'head | tail' to delete the first lines of file

from the tail man page:

-n, --lines=N
output the last N lines, instead of the last 10; or use +N to output lines starting with the Nth

...note the +N option!

blind text generation for LaTeX testing

...nice!

How to access Time Machine files from Linux

here a crude helper to restore a 'Time Machine.app' backup on a linux system (well, a non-OSX system...)

starting from How to access Time Machine files from Linux the steps are somewhat automated.

ARG1: directory from where to descend and restore files
ARG2: destination directory
ARG3: directory whith the dir_* files

eg.:

sudo restoretmbackup.py /media/osxbackup/Backups.backupdb/nikki/Latest/nikki foo/ /media/osxbackup/.HFS+\ Private\ Directory\ Data^M

(you might not need to sudo...)

personal reminder: links to SATA hotswapping issues

• http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1041574.html
• http://www.dufault.info/blog/hotswap-a-scsi-sas-or-sata-drive-in-linux/
• http://serverfault.com/questions/5336/how-do-i-make-linux-recognize-a-new-sata-dev-sda-drive-i-hot-swapped-in-without
  

in short:

rescan:
echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host/scan
remove:
echo > /sys/bus/scsi/devices/:0:0:0/delete

threading prefs for TB

...just a reminder about threading prefs in TB (might only apply to >=V3.0):

https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Message_Threading
http://www.thunderbird-mail.de/wiki/FAQ:Aw_statt_Re

git via http proxy

it is supposed to work-like-a-charm - git via a http-proxy - but then again, sometimes it just doesn't.
in case, changing git clone git://... into git clone http://... does not help this might:

socat TCP4-LISTEN:9418,reuseaddr,fork \
PROXY:proxy.hostname.dom:gitrepo.host.dom:9418,proxyport=3128 &
git clone git://localhost/GITREPOPATH

references:

• http://limlian.blogspot.com/2008/08/use-http-proxy-for-git-client.html?showComment=1221973140000#c6839850601346705219
  

by no means a Telecommunications Provider - but still...

so far, my system still works - and supposedly less buggy:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/08/04/24/1334234/Patch-the-Linux-Kernel-Without-Reboots
let's see how this continues...

cf. http://www.ksplice.com/

cpan does not work - Undefined subroutine &Compress::Zlib::gzopen

while running cpan on a more-or-less out-of-the-box CentOS 5.2 with Perl updated to version 5.8.8 the following error occurred:

Fetching with LWP: ftp://bo.mirror.garr.it/mirrors/CPAN/modules/03modlist.data.gz Going to read /home/egon.stemle/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.gz Undefined subroutine &Compress::Zlib::gzopen called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN.pm line 5721.
suggestions from here helped finding a solution. however, i did not want to and could not delete things from system paths... so, problem solved without deleting things in /usr/lib/...

the following modules are needed:
IO-Compress (2.017), which itself depends on two packages

Compress-Raw-Bzip2 (2.017)

Compress-Raw-Zlib (2.017)

Scalar-List-Utils (1.19)

...and then installed manually.

you need to have working local, aka. user-modules, configured, i.e. perl should look for and install modules into a directory you have r/w permissions; e.g. ~/usr (cf. this link for some hints on how to get started)

start with the Scalar-List-Utils: untar, cd into and
PERL5LIB=~/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8:~/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=~/usr -xs make make test make install (you can also give the PERL5LIB path as option -I to perl - or not at all if you are really sure your local set-up is wokring...)

continue with the dependencies for IO-Compress and then IO-Compress itself.

if you want to be on very safe side you may recompile all dynamically loaded modules with
cpan -r (this will take a while - and will install many modules as a local version... watch your quota!)

anyways, afterwards i could happily use cpan to install my two(!) missing modules...

Blogged with the Flock Browser

personal reminder: less secure but quicker rsync

rsync -e 'ssh -ax -c blowfish' [-a --partial ... (--relative ...)]