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Any hopes for a "Native American" summer here are slowly evaporating. The rain's stopped, but it remains cool and there's plenty of moisture still hanging in the air.
My "stupid" box (a box I can do stupid things on without serious consequence) is functioning well. I never did manage to get KDE 3.1 to compile cleanly yesterday, but I did end up doing about 42-13 (a very large number; just ask Danielle) Null installs. A very enlightening experience. I never did really understand what all the fuss was about regarding the recent feud between Red Hat and KDE. The KDE folks claim Red Hat "Gnome-ified" KDE; Red Hat countered by saying they were well within the bounds of the GPL in doing what they were doing. Personally, I didn't see what all the ruckus was about -- KDE still looked like KDE to me. Ahhh, but once again, it all depends on how you hold your mouth, or in this instance, how you install Null. Until yesterday, I had always just installed KDE by deselecting Gnome and "other" X Desktops during the setup routine. So I got just what I asked for: KDE only. IF, however, you install both KDE and Gnome, KDE most definately gets wrapped around some very Gnome-ish trappings. I now see both sides of the equation. No, I don't like what RH have done to their, what I'll term "Gnome-like" KDE Desktop. On the other hand, I so agree with KDE: They're users of KDE just like everyone else (albeit very large volume users), and according to the GPL, they can alter the source any way they like as long as they release the changes back to the community (which they've done). Tip for the day: If you want a "pure" KDE Desktop, deselect Gnome during setup. Not too intuitive, I know, but there you have it. In the end, it's just window decoration, and again, it's a beta release. Chances are RH 8 (nee Null) is not going to look or act like it does now when it's finally released
I'm going sans computers for the balance of the day so I can return to work tomorrow feeling at least partially refreshed and ready to take on the challenges of a new week. Cheers.
There's nothing wishy-washy kinda-misty about the weather today -- it's raining. Hard. Oh well. I've got lot's of inside chores to distract me from the outside elements. I should note that most of my neighbor's lawns are moving toward winter hibernation. Not mine. Nooooo, not mine. It's still growing, thick, strong, and relentlessly. Damn Green Thumb neighbors ;-).
I installed Red Hat "Null" on the-new-and-improved Janus last night without incident or provacation. That'd be the third "works as advertised" Null installation I've done now. I don't know what everyone else is doing wrong <sly grin>; maybe you're holding your mouth the wrong way? Or perhaps you need to have a priest come in and do a Murphy-exorcism on your machine [he said, knowing full well that the mere mention of Mr. Murphy is going to doom him for the rest of the day, possibly the whole weekend...]. I do note that some of the "ornaments" of KDE are broken or mildly borked (eg, my Kicker Panel is a mess), but for the most part all the big pieces work as they should. Buy hey, it is a beta after all. I'm currently in the throes of building KDE 3.1 beta 1 from source. Why from source? Because the only pre-built binaries available are Mandrake- and SuSE-specific, and because it satisfies an itch to hack.
As promised, here's a snipped of the dialog Gary Berg and I had regarding using Gentoo's emerge tool to update an existing system:
> Tom, > > I'm just curious how you keep up with new packages and such on Gentoo? > RedHat has their automatic updater tool, is there anything like that > in Gentoo? Or does the rsync stuff have some way to tell you? > > I'm playing with Gentoo on a box at work (P-II/350, so it's slow) and > I'm curious as to how I take a machine I have now and bring it up to > date a month from now. It'd be really cool if there was a tool that > did some of the work that Windows Update did... > Gary, Gentoo has something waayyy more better than RH updater and Windoz Update put together. It's called Portage. In a Nutshell, Portage uses rsync to download all available "ebuilds" (instructions for building a program from source) for Gentoo. You then type "emerge packagename" and Gentoo gathers the source, builds the source according to your spec. For more info see the Gentoo site (left side, documenation links -- read about the USE variables and the Portage manual). On a Gentoo system, type "man emerge".
I've written about Gentoo's package management system before, but I guess I wasn't specific enough or missed some importants bits, cuz I get a lot of queries about 'emerge', how it works, and what the various option flags do. Let's do this again...
(I'm assuming you have an existing Gentoo installation you're working from; if not, read the Gentoo installation guide for details on getting to this point). Gentoo uses what are termed ebuilds to build a system. An ebuild is basically a build script that provides URLs to the source, details dependencies, and outlines build instructions. When a package is "emerged", Portage (the package manager code) follows the insructions contained in the ebuild script, downloads and builds any dependencies (everything on a Gentoo system is built from source), downloads and builds the desired package, and applies any configuration updates necessary.
The command emerge rsync updates/syncs the Portage tree (a directory of all currently available packages or ebuilds) on your system with a Gentoo mirror. Several points to note regarding 'emerge rsync'. One, packages "in development" are masked; emerge ignores any masked packages during an rsync. If you want to play with a package under development (for example, a 2.5.x kernel or KDE 3.1 beta), edit /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask and comment out the desired package(s). Two (pay attention now), executing emerge rsync overwrites any changes you've made to package.mask and returns it to "original specs". So if you're playing with dev releases, either keep a copy of your package.mask file somewhere outside the Portage tree, or be prepared to re-unmask after an rsync (the latter is the preferred approach, as package.mask does change on a routine basis). Finally, mirrors are just that -- mirrors -- and are not always perfectly in sync with one another. If you know there are package updates "out there", and they're not showing up, emerge rsync again. Chances are, running it again will hook you up with a different mirror, which could conceivably contain a more recent Portage tree.
OK, your tree is 'sync'd. What packages have been updated since your last rsync? emerge -up world. 'world' scans your installed packages and compares this list to the current Portage tree. 'u' is "update". 'p' is "pretend" (execute the command but do not actually install any packages). Personally, I never blindly update a system. So my fingers are automagically programmed to always add the 'p' option to any emerge command, and then view the results; only when I'm satisfied do I 'up-arrow' and remove the 'p'.
Here's an example of why I do what I do. I run emerge rsync followed by emerge -up world (current as of today about 13:30 hrs; Note: emerge must be run as root), here's what I get:.
root@phaedrus portage # emerge -up world These are the packages that I would merge, in order. Calculating world dependencies ...done! [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdelibs-3.0.3-r1 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kde-env-3-r2 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdebase-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdeartwork-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdepim-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdemultimedia-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdenetwork-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdeaddons-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdeadmin-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdegames-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdetoys-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdegraphics-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdeedu-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdeutils-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] kde-base/kde-3.0.3 to / [ebuild U ] net-www/mozilla-1.0-r3 to / root@phaedrus portage #
I'm currently running KDE 3.1 beta 1 and Mozilla 1.1, so none of the suggested (remember, system updates are, on any operating system, always at your discretion) updates apply to me. Why are the above updates even showing up given I already have KDE 3.1 and Mozilla installed? Because both packages were masked. I unmasked them, installed, and my package.mask file has since been overwritten.
Let's say, for sake of argument, I decide I want to update (er, downdate) Mozilla only. Type emerge -up mozilla (see, there's that habit again), check the results, and if you're satisfied, drop the 'p' -- emerge -u mozilla. Emerge will go to work and update mozilla. Of course, rules (even self-imposed ones) have exceptions. If I had chosen to accept all proposed updates, rather than apply each one individually, I can just type emerge -u world.
To remove a package, type emerge unmerge packagename. The command emerge -s packagename search the Portage tree and displays package information: Current installed version (if installed), current version available (may or may not differ from the installed version), Homepage of the package, and a brief description.
Again, type man emerge for all the nitty gritty.
And so endth the lesson. Have a great day. I'm off to tackle some housework.
Cool, overcast, and misty today. No rain yet, but it's only a matter of time -- you can see the moisture in the air, but install of falling down, it's sorta swirling about in the air.
Found it! The source of my magically transmorphing devfsd.conf file is (er, was) xcdroast. Baaddd xcdroast. I confirmed this by removing the program, and re-emerging clean. Reboot and hocus-pocus, my cdrom was again unrecognized. A quick check of devfsd.conf showed the offending line had reappeared. Mmm. Oh well, the problem is solved. xcdroast went bye-bye. I should note that unbeknownst to me, emerging xcdroast actually installs an alpha version (had I been paying attention and caught this during the install, I would have pulled it out by the roots immediately). Yes, I filed a bug report with the developers...
It's Danielle's birthday today. So I cooked her her favorite dinner: salmon. Baked some nice salmon filets, and served them up with a mix of green/red/yellow peppers and mushroom. The starch du jour: riced potatoes. Desert: ice cream with fresh baked (by Safeway, not me ;-) cinnamon sticks.
Tonight I'm busy putting together a "new" box. I had two dead (one dead, one horribly unreliable) boxes sitting in the corner so I decided to steal from Peter (Phoenix) to pay Paul (Janus). I'm busy loading Red Hat Null on it right now. Why Red Hat Null? It's a curiousity thing. I've run Null on two different machines now (my notebook and the IBM loaner I had), and both installations went slicker than shit. But a lot of people I know have experienced a lot of grief and weirdness from Null. So I'm going to try again, on yet another very different box and see what happens. More on my adventures tomorrow.
And I had some back-and-forth with Gary Berg yesterday regarding Gentoo's Portage/Emerge tools. I was going to post the exchange here tonight, but I'll do that tomorrow as well. It's been a long week, and I'm going to shut this silly thing off and go read for awhile.
But first I'm going to hock Null's choiniks for a half-hour or so...
Shalom.
Overall, I'm very pleased with my Gentoo installation on Phaedrus. Quite workable, as the Brits are fond of saying. So late last night I decide to put together a conf CD containing all the key (yes, you guessed it ;-) configuration files in their current form, plus any pertinent source packages I'd installed. Then, should things go bump in the night for any reason, I'd have all the the important bits I'd need to recreate the installation. Sans two days of compile-time, of course.
So I pop a new CDR into my drive, open up xcdroast, and... "No CDRW device found.". Drop into a console, 'su', and type cdrecord -scanbus:
root@phaedrus tom # cdrecord -scanbus Cdrecord 1.11a30 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 J?rg Schilling cdrecord: No such file or directory. Cannot open '/dev/pg*'. Cannot open SCSI driver. cdrecord: For possible targets try 'cdrecord -scanbus'. Make sure you are root.
An acroynym I've used in the past to describe a similar state of mind surfaced from the depths: PIC'd. Yep, I was PID'd all right. Pissed, Irritated, and Confused. I checked Grub's 'menu.lst' file. All was as it should be. I recompiled my kernel twice in 12 hours, but both times I used the /usr/src/linux/.config file from a prior working kernel. The first recompile, I didn't change a thing; the second, I changed processor type only. I double-checked said kernel config anyway. Again, things were as they should be. To make a long story short, a little detective work turned up a "new" line in /etc/devfsd.conf pertaining to the CDRW: REGISTER SG0$ somethingoranother. I commented that out, rebooted, and my CDRW returned to functionality.
The question now is, -who/what- messed with my /etc/devfsd.conf? I have absolutelyzippo tolerance for any process that messes with one of my configuration files without asking/announcing said intent first. So my mission today is to find the offending critter and kill it deader than a nit.
15:00 hrs: Well, well... look what appeared in my Inbox this afternoon:
"The Microsoft Office Product Team would like to invite you to participate in their upcoming beta program for Office 11. The beta program will get underway this Fall...". As near as I can tell at this point, the first Office 11 beta is slated for relatively limited distribution; I suspect, however, a more general "consumer product preview" will be making the rounds sometime in the Spring of 2003. As I learn more, so will you... My primary interest in Office 11 -- from a geek's standpoint -- is in how/if M$ follows through with their stated intent to convert all of Office's data structures to XML. In particular, will it be a standards-based implementation of XML (ie, readable/accessible by other XML-aware apps), or MS-XML (a propriety implementation, subject to the same kind of WTF's inherent in MS-HTML). My secondary interest, of course, is in seeing what the folks at Redmond do with Outlook 11 and whether the changes make for a compelling or desireable user-land upgrade. If so, a revision to OIAN might be in order.
And wouldn't you know it. I stayed up late last night and got the latest Gentoo-sources-2.4.19-r8 installed, only to discover a new 2.4.19-r9 release (IIRC, it's not masked) awaiting me this morning. I'm running r9 now -- so far, so good. It's got some interesting new CPU Types available: P3 with GCC 3.x and P4 with GCC 3.x. I selected the first, and while it's subtle, KDE appears to be slightly more responsive than the stock P3 selection.
September is always a busy month here at Syroid Manor. Danielle turns 8 on the 6th. Leah celebrates her birthday on the 17th. And it's our 10-year anniversary on the 19th. This year, things promise to be just a tad bit crazier than usual. Leah starts a new job on the 9th (she got a early morning stocking position at London Drugs), and Danielle requested we delay her "official" birthday party by a week for a friend -- who's already got a prior committment -- can attend. And the 1st anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks is fast approaching, which will no doubt prove to be a solemn and memorable day around the world... Shit. I just might have to hire a secretary for the month just to coordinate my schedule...
Today is a "research" day pour moi. The idea is to read and gather information on projects that interest me / fit with my knowledge base, gaze deep into technology's crystal ball, and try to come up with a handful of topic ideas I can spin into interesting articles/tutorials over the course of the next two or three months. Sounds like fun, I know, but actually it's a whole bunch of hard work. Ah well. Onward, I suppose. If anyone out there has a particular Open Source / Linux topic you'd like me to investigate (and potentially write about), drop me a line.
23:30 hrs: EEEEK! I found 5 or 6 fallen yellow leaves on the front lawn this morning. Must have blown in from Alberta or Manitoba :-) as all the trees here still have green leaves on them...
A word to the wise (which in this particular instance, precludes me). First, an admission: I'm by no means a natural "green thumb". As a matter of fact, this is the first house we've lived in that's had a [potentially] nice yard. So when we moved in, we dug and planted and weeded, and generally speaking, learned by doing. The grass, when we first arrived, was abysmal -- no one had taken care of it in years. There were Dandelions everywhere, it was in desperate need of routine watering, etc. So we worked away at it a bit at a time, and asked our neighbors when we didn't know exactly which direction to head in. Allan, who's our "back fence" neighbor, has a beautiful home, carefully tailored grass, and all shapes and forms of flora growing in his back yard. This would be a good man to ask about lawn fertilizer, I reasoned. I did, and he told me which brand to buy, where to find it (it's not well known; used mostly by knowledgeable farmers, not "city folk"), and how to apply it. And therein lay the trick (and the rub to come). Allan told me the best way to apply lawn fertilizer was to put it on when it was raining. Doing so allowed the fertilizer to go right to work, and eliminated the possibility of burning the grass if your spreader clumped up for any reason. Cool. Problem is, we didn't have much rain all summer, and when it did come, it was usually in the wee hours of the morning.
About three weeks ago, I decided to give the lawn a fresh dose of food as it was looking a little bleak in spots. So I waited until in started to rain, and like a good little student, did my due diligence with ye old spreader. It worked all right. I have the greenest, lushest yard around. The grass is thick and hearty. It also GROWS LIKE A BASTARD. I cut the lawn Saturday afternoon. I had to cut it again tonight. Sheesh. At this rate, I'm gonna wear my new lawn mower (er, Leah's new lawn mower) out in one season.
The moral of the story -- if you have a neighbor with a beautiful looking lawn, you might just wanna be wary of taking any advice from that person regarding lawn care.
I'm off to finish up the new kernel I'm building (Gentoo-sources-2.4.19-r8; added to Portage today, masked for testing), then it's pillow time for me. Thanks to the good Mr. Bilbrey, I have my CDRW working. We cleaned out the /usr/modules tree, rebuilt the kernel with all the same settings, and off things went. Cosmic.
23:00 hrs: I'm done. Me, not the TODO list ;-) Lot's accomplished: We got the back yard in shape -- kinda, sorta --, some of my favorite herbs re-potted and ready to move inside (hopefully before the frost cometh), the floors washed, the pots scrubbed, the carpet vacuum... Mmmm... did I miss anything? Ah well, we'll just save it for tomorrow, yes?
On the menu tonight: Prime rib steaks, scallops and asparagus, and Syroid Manor potatoe salad. The prime rib I stumbled upon while researching the sale bin at our local supermarket. Beautiful. About two fists each, a good 2" think, and nicely marbled. I marinated them in a lemon/rosemary/garlic (er, about 40 cloves ;-) mix for about two hours, then seared them on the BarB. Seared. I consider it a sin to overcook good meat; it should be allowed to speak for itself. The scallops I pan fried with some butter and garlic (er, about 40 cloves ;-), squeezed in some fresh lemon after they were fully cooked, then added the asparagus at the very end. When I cook vegetables, I bring them to color/temp, then serve plate 'em. My mother (and grandmother) had a bad habit of overcooking vegetables -- I really HATE over cooked vegetables. The potatoe salad... well, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Actually, Leah's the potatoe salad king around here. And I don't think she'd willingly give anyone her recipe as she claims it's one of the few remaining things she can hold over my head after 10 years (Sept 19th) of marriage. Women. Bah. Always looking for a new angle... ;-)
Nope. Never did resolve my CDRW problem. I've officially moved it to tomorrow's TODO list.
Nite all... hope everyone's holiday weekend was a good one.
10:15 hrs: The sunshine has returned to our fair land. I was up before dawn today, sipping a cup of dark, thick 'joe' on the front porch. The sky was phenomenal -- clear as a bell; the stars appeared unusually dazzling against their dark backdrop. A fine way to start the day.
Fall is in the air today. There's a "crisp" smell to everything... more of a notion or intuitive sense as opposed to anything concrete, but it's there, and you'd recognize it yourself if you were here and standing on the back porch with me...
I finally got sound working on Phaedrus this morning. The solution was deceptively simple, and very very unintuitive. I had my sound driver (maestro3) compiled directly into the kernel; all I had to do was compile it as a module, and everything started working as advertised. Odd. But somewhere way back in the dark regions of my brain I recall encountering this once before on a similar system equipped with a Maestro 2-based card.
One last hurdle to overcome: My CDRW is not being recognized correctly by devfs. If I open a console and, as root, type cdrecord -scanbus I get the following error:
root@phaedrus tom # cdrecord -scanbus Cdrecord 1.11a30 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 J?rg Schilling cdrecord: No such file or directory. Cannot open '/dev/pg*'. Cannot open SCSI driver. cdrecord: For possible targets try 'cdrecord -scanbus'. Make sure you are root.
So far, I'm stumped. I have all the right stuff configured into my kernel (scsi-emulation, scsi generic, scsi cdrom, all direct not as modules), I've tripled-checked all pertinent entries in /etc/devfsd.conf, and even re-emerged cdrecord. No joy. I have no 'pg*' entries in /dev, nor do I have any 'sr*' entries which seems strange. Here's the pertient stanza from my /etc/devfsd.conf file:
# Create /dev/cdrw for the first cdrom on the scsi bus # (change 'sr0' to suite your setup) REGISTER ^sr0$ PERMISSIONS root.cdrw 660 LOOKUP ^cdrw$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL mksymlink sr0 cdrw REGISTER ^sr0$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL mksymlink $devname cdrw UNREGISTER ^sr0$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL unlink cdrw
Again, if I'm overlooking the obvious here, please enlighten me.
Time to hit the back yard and finish up what I didn't get done yesterday. I feel a pressing urgency to get the yard in order while the weather's good -- winter's barrelling down the tracks at us, and days like today are numbered. I'll return later when my TODO list is complete.
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