Dell & Linux - Links to Remember

BIOS updates for Dell computers under linux:

The Dell Linux Wiki Page

Extracting the BIOS image from the Windows .EXE file

Dell's info on RAID & Storage (aka. PERC thingthings...)

Android Market on SDK/Emulator

wanted to use an android emulator to grab a screenshots of google goggles but had to realize - as many before - that the Android SDK comes without 'the Market.' a possible solution is described here: Android Tips for Developers: Android Market on Emulator; at least, for the 1.6 system it worked for me (however, i had to grab the ADP1 image as mentioned in this comment.)

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 ...)]

personal reminder: Convert Nikon NEF to JPG with ufraw

$ ufraw-batch --out-type=jpeg --out-path=/home/itsme/Pictures/export --compression=85 --size=1280 /media/Data/home/itsme/Pictures/MyPics/*.nef

for more details cf. http://otype.net/2008/08/convert-nikon-nef-to-jpg-with-ufraw/

howto copy CalendarServer (content) - use rdiff-backup

rsynced a complete and functional copy of CalendarServer to another drive (and to another file system). afterwards, the server started and didn't complain but iCal.app didn't show any calendar (but still logged in and didn't complain about anything - just no calendar!).

tryied rsync -aA, rsync -rlpAtgoD (long version - one never knows...), and cp -a - but all to no avail.

finally, i tried rdiff-backup -b - and this worked... why? not quite sure! ideas welcome....

personal reminder: building debian packages from source

...for future reference:

1. apt-get source (-t testing) PACKAGENAME
2. apt-get build-dep (-t testing) PACKAGENAME
   
3. cd PACKAGANAME-version
4. OPT: vi debian/rules (e.g. to activate some experimental features)
   
5. OPT: vi debian/patches/00list (to enlist a patch that should be applied)
6. OPT: vi debian/patches/... (the patch enlisted previosly)
7. dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b
8. dpkg -i ../PACKAGENAME-version-etc (only the necessary packages)
   

apt-listchanges chokes on its DB (bsddb.db.DBRunRecoveryError)

in case of:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/apt-listchanges", line 229, in ?
main()
File "/usr/bin/apt-listchanges", line 150, in main
seen.close()
File "bsddb/__init__.py", line 237, in close
bsddb.db.DBRunRecoveryError: (-30974, 'DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery -- PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery')

(similarly to the post below) something along the lines of:

cd /var/lib/apt
db4.6_dump listchanges.db | db4.3_load temp.db
mv temp.db listchanges.db

helps.