Adam Stokes

zee bambo

2011-01-20T18:01:00.000-05:00

Thanks to f14 bamboo how-to I managed to get my tablet up and playing nicely. I've never really drew anything digitally so I decided to give this tablet a try. The wacom is a little weird to get used to with hovering of the stylus for mouse movements. Other than the awkwardness I was able to put some form of a person together through the gimp.

It's not much and not really crisp and professional like some of these other talented artists. Hopefully with some more practice I can save trees and still keep drawing :)

matahari -- no sir i am not a spy

2010-10-30T16:45:00.000-04:00

story time...

Names John Ramboe not to be confused with the real Rambo (he doesn't carry a flash drive). I am a sysadmin at this company that likes pretty fluffy clouds(mrg). In this company I was given the wonderful task of managing several servers (maybe 5? depends on the trust I guess.). The responsibilities with this task involved some day to day items such as checking available memory, restarting services, installing packages, etc. The cool thing about these servers is that they are very flavorful where 2 of them run Windows Server, next 2 run RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), and lastly one little guy running Windows XP (He's stubborn I even offered him a cookie in exchange for upgrade).

This company has this piece of software that does a lot of ..stuff.. and at the end of the week a scheduled job to process this ..stuff. The silly thing is this software is spread across the world to about 1500 different locations. So every week these 1500 locations run a scheduled job and upload the data to a central processing hub where I managed to capture a cloud and harvest it for storing this data. Seems inefficient I know but it works and who am I to make changes when I still punch type the keyboard. But, I still make a suggestion because it makes me feel special and reassures the boss man I love it here.

This suggestion in all its glory would simplify and streamline the whole process of this "end of week gotta upload this data so it can be processed over the weekend". To do that we'd need some sort of worker bee in these locations to continuously wire data in a supar fast and secure manner.

In addition to my daily tasks and my continuous journey to turn a mass of water droplets (thanks wikipedia!) into a messaging like beast. I implemented some software that will allow all locations to play nicely through this mediator type mechanism. This mediator is commonly referred to as a broker (read AMQP).

At this point I've decided on the middleware basis to use for making sure these locations will successfully get data across the wire safely and most importantly, continuously. Since this middleware is clueless of why I summoned it to do my dirty deeds I'll need to write some agents that will handle this company's software needs (read QMF).

And what is the company's software do that requires it report in so frequently? Yep, I need to write an agent that will print load average and memory statistics. To try and get to a closure in this little story an agent was written to provide this functionality. That agent is apart of a much bigger revolution called matahari.

With matahari I was given all the tools needed to write and execute my agents. Provided was a matahari-broker which handled the messaging needs. The agent in question was a host-like set of routines that allow me to pull those load averages and memory statistics whenever needed. Since matahari itself is not very capable of reading my mind on what exactly it should execute we are provided with a tool that initiates a console like interface into my world of running agents (qpid-tool).

If this story interests you or is something that you can relate to then head on over to http://fedorahosted.org/matahari/ and get involved with the mailing list and development.

As a bonus Windows advocates need not fret because this puppy is cross platform leaving you to a single interface for performing the tasks required.

gnome tiling

2010-09-01T09:31:00.002-04:00

I've been looking for an application to tile my windows without actually having to use a tiling manager (xmonad, ion, etc)

So far I've found that Fedora provides x-tile. This programs does the tiling as necessary, however, there are a couple of things I don't like. For instance, x-tile will attempt to tile Gnome desktop along with the toolbar. Because of this you can't just do a "tile all" option and you'll have to open up it's window list and select the windows to be tiled each time. Also the selected windows are not remembered so that is another set of mouse clicks that is required each time you wish to tile.

Are there any similar applications that would give the same features that is a little more mature?

update: looks like there is a filter option to hide any unwanted windows to be tiled in x-tile :)

cas 1.0 released

2010-06-04T10:04:00.000-04:00

New release of CAS is out and should be in stable repo's for f11/12/13. Please see the updated documentation for prerequisites, installation, and setup.

Some highlights:

Faster debug processing
Processes kernel debugs of all kinds not just whats provided in debuginfo
Updated (simplified) web interface (cherrypy + mako)
Uses sqlachemy for database
Fork jobs to other servers via paramiko (ssh)

Comments/Ideas are welcomed

c++, cxxtest, cmake

2010-03-20T14:57:00.003-04:00

Been messing around lately with CMake and how to intregrate additional testing frameworks such as CxxTest. So far everything has been very simple to configure and get setup so I thought I'd post my findings here.

1) Fedora provides both cmake and cxxtest so install these first.
2) CMake provides a convenience macro called FindCxxTest.cmake
3) In your CMakeLists.txt append the following:

# cxxtest
find_package(CxxTest)
if(CXXTEST_FOUND)
set(CXXTEST_USE_PYTHON TRUE)
include_directories(${CXXTEST_INCLUDE_DIR})
enable_testing()
CXXTEST_ADD_TEST(unittest_sos check_sos.cpp ${SOS_TEST_PATH}/check_sos.h)
target_link_libraries(unittest_sos sos)
endif()

The only custom variable here is SOS_TEST_PATH which basically points to $HOME/sos/tests/check_sos.h. See the 'set' function in the cmake documentation.

This is really all you need to do here. One note is to set the CXXTEST_USE_PYTHON to TRUE b/c cmake provided in Fedora doesn't contain the perl version of the test generator.

I'm not going to post how I setup the testcases b/c right now they are very simple, however, if you would like to use my project as an example for implementing cmake into your code have a look at: libsos

If anyone has any good information on using cmake with python build scripts I'd love to see those.

For RPM Builders the spec file was very simple. I used the syntax within the kde builds:

%build
mkdir -p %{_target_platform}
pushd %{_target_platform}
cmake ..
popd

make %{?_smp_mflags} -C %{_target_platform}

%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
make -C %{_target_platform} install DESTDIR=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT
%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT

%post -p /sbin/ldconfig

%postun -p /sbin/ldconfig

%files
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
%doc
%{_libdir}/%{name}.so.*

%files devel
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
%doc
%{_includedir}/%{name}
%{_libdir}/%{name}.so*
%{_libdir}/pkgconfig/%{name}.pc

Hope this little bit will help others who are interested in cmake.

project updates and python

2010-02-03T10:09:00.005-05:00

I've been seeing bad things related to iPython while idleing in #python. Bugs being created that are basically a result of iPython's 'brain damage'. Asking around I was pointed to a comparable replacement bPython. So far the transition has been easy and was curious if there are any others like this out there?

Also for those who use sosreport what are your thoughts on me removing the so called threading that was introduced long ago? The upstream version was replaced with multiprocessing module but even that doesn't provide any benefit.

Also cas 0.15 is out and has been for awhile. Paramiko replaced func for distributed system testing and uses sqlite as the storage backend. A web frontend is still being developed and so far its going pretty smooth. I decided on web.py due to its simplicity as far as requirements go, however, it isn't Django but I'll live :)

cas 0.14 release

2009-05-06T10:27:00.008-04:00

CAS released to Fedora/EPEL testing today should show up in repo's soon.

Some enhancements made in this release:

SQLite backend
Snippet support for more advanced automation of crash.
Better maintenance support within cas-admin to deal with stale/unused files.
Preliminary support for running as non-root (requires func to be configured as non-root for remote analysis as well)
Python 2.3 or greater (mainly for EPEL-4)

Documentation updates are also available, thanks to Sphinx I actually enjoy writing them. Those may be viewed in /usr/share/doc/cas-0.14/ or https://fedorahosted.org/cas/wiki/HowToUseCas.

I've started writing a loosely coupled web interface using perl Mason since it's provided in EPEL, if anyone has any experience with this I could use the help. Code for the web interface is: https://fedorahosted.org/cas/browser/web

bai

sos, cas package updates, and some vim stuff

2009-01-12T20:12:00.005-05:00

sos (sosreport) - pushed new enhancements to F-9/10 testing.
http://fedorahosted.org/sos

cas (core analysis system) - just waiting on cvs setup and this will be available in Fedora/EPEL.
http://fedorahosted.org/cas

In addition to the above there are several interesting things coming down the pipe to help the customer be more proactive within cases and to simplify the gathering and analyzing of data from their side. I will keep you posted as things progress.

With vim I recently found NERDTree, it's pretty cool when wanting to have a simple file browser for working with your documents.

so.. whats up

2008-09-06T00:18:00.002-04:00

Recently got my new glasses in, aside from a little getting used to they are 50 bucks well spent!

Been doing lots of python programming lately and have come across a third party module (pyprocessing) that makes managing pools of piped processes easier. Google it if interested.

Doing a lot of work with a recent project of mine called CAS hope to have it community ready soon. Would like to have more involvement to really get things going with core analysis.

SOSreport is still going strong, bug fixes and enhancements are made almost weekly!! I've been doing a lot of internal bug fixing that hasn't quite made its way to the public scm server but I'll try to get those up there soon. I've branched off to other sections, mainly RHEL5 and RHEL4, but theoritically they should be the same code. The reason you see differences is mainly because of time constraint and customer push. :)

Anyway, thats it for now please check out sosreport if you haven't already. Robert Jackson was kind enough to add support for non-interactive mode which I know a lot of people wanted so its worth checking out. I should have that pushed to trunk soon. http://fedorahosted.org/sos/

bye

time to update the glasses

2008-08-16T21:06:00.003-04:00

Got around to going to the eye doctor today and when it was done and time to look for some new frames I was amazed at how expensive everything was. My insurance covers like 105 bucks for glasses and that doesn't even cover scratch protection and what not. GEE THANKS! *rant* You'd figure working at a company where you are on the computer 100% of the time eye care would be a bit better */rant*

Anyway, luckily before I went some coworkers introduced me to http://glassyeyes.blogspot.com. So with prescription and PD in hand I went on the search for some glasses that would suit me. Of course I started off small only because it would've been pointless to go over the amount I would've paid at the eye doctor with insurance. So off I went and when the search was over I settled on :

http://www.eyebuydirect.com/palmer-p-1376.html

Simple pair of frames with scratch protection, uv protection, and all that other jazz. What was the total you ask? 50 bucks. Thats right, 50 friggin bucks and the eye doctors want to charge and arm and a leg for glasses that you don't exactly want and with only basic options on it. GG. So coming out on top with the eye doctors I was pleased with myself and gave the dog a bath.

sosreport updates

2008-08-15T09:05:00.002-04:00

Hi, several updates have come through for both RHEL4 and 5. If you've haven't had a chance to check out what sosreport does please head over to http://fedorahosted.org/sos for more information.

We've added another addition to the family -- she's a german shepard mix (w/ chow) and is about 2.5 years old. She's great with the daughter and best of all is house broken already :)

Anyway, enough for now as I don't feel like typing. :D

RHEL4 sosreport update

2008-05-09T19:18:00.003-04:00

Just finished updating sosreport for RHEL4 :

An updated sos package that fixes a serious bug and adds two enhancements
is now available.

Sos is a set of tools that gathers information about system hardware and
configuration. The information can then be used for diagnostic purposes and
debugging. Sos is commonly used to help support technicians and developers.

Please see the errata release for more information.

There was also one released a few weeks back that addressed the serious bug where tricking sosreport into running a `rm -rf /` on the filesystem. OOPSIE!

Fedora 8, Thinkpad T61, fingerprint authentication

2008-02-20T15:15:00.007-05:00

Using a T61 or any IBM laptop that has the fingerprint scanner install the package thinkfinger :

# yum install thinkfinger

Add your user:

# su -
# tf-tool --add-user adam

Swipe your finger 3 times.

Alter /etc/pam.d/system-auth to include the think_finger pam module. Mine looks like :

#%PAM-1.0
# This file is auto-generated.
# User changes will be destroyed the next time authconfig is run.
auth required pam_env.so
auth sufficient pam_thinkfinger.so
auth sufficient pam_unix.so nullok try_first_pass
auth requisite pam_succeed_if.so uid >= 500 quiet
auth required pam_deny.so

account required pam_unix.so
account sufficient pam_localuser.so
account sufficient pam_succeed_if.so uid <>
account required pam_permit.so

password requisite pam_cracklib.so try_first_pass retry=3
password sufficient pam_unix.so md5 shadow nullok try_first_pass use_authtok
password required pam_deny.so

session optional pam_keyinit.so revoke
session required pam_limits.so
session [success=1 default=ignore] pam_succeed_if.so service in crond quiet use_uid
session required pam_unix.so

Once complete logout of Gnome, and attempt to login by clicking or typing your associated user name and then swipe your finger :)

what you know 'bout KiMBo?

2008-02-17T09:37:00.001-05:00

rambo's mohawk

2008-02-02T19:12:00.000-05:00

Went and saw Rambo thursday night and it was probably the most violent film evar! I really enjoyed the blood, gibs, and the 50 cal. taking peoples heads clean off. I honestly did go into that movie knowing there was going to be no plot and just a lot of killing -- and knowing is half the battle.

Not much happening on the home front, I've been digging into the arts of w0od and so far not doing a too bad of job. I've built a couple of things for my daughter like a baby stool and a toybox ( ill try to have pictures up later ). Also had the time to do a couple of weekend projects like a old time toolbox, step stool, and my latest project is going to be an antique style kitchen table.

I got a little crazy this weekend and decided to start growing a mohawk -- though it's not going to be one of those off the wall spikey shits with color and whatnot.. No it's more like a minihawk -- just enough to show that its there and not to much to piss me off. I actually kinda like it and think I'll keep it around for a little bit.

Finally, on the coding front I've got a project I'm working on that I can hopefully make independent enough to release to the public in order to provide more capabilities when gathering the necessary data to debug a core dump -- more on that later on.

bye.

santa's fat and i'm hungry

2007-12-23T21:48:00.002-05:00

Got a chance to check out 'I am Legend' last night and I wasn't as impressed as I had hoped for. In any case still a good movie just feels like it was missing something -- perhaps going deeper into the sci-fi part and not so much zombies?

Pass few months I've been recently promoted to Support Engineer ( kind of like a level 3 tech and just beneath engineering ) at Red Hat and so far its been fun and the challenges have kept me busy! My primary tasks are handling mainly userspace applications but some things tend to spill over into kernel land *cough*ppc64*cough*.

I decided to stop using a hosting provider and just keep all documents, blog postings, etc on Google. I'm still keeping up a server at home for my domain but its mainly for small projects that more than likely will not go public.

Other than that, not much on the configuration front other than cleaning up my vimrc and hopefully making it suitable for C and Python.

Updated vimrc for VIM 7+ -- Works nicely with Python and C.

urxvt, fvwm

2007-10-16T20:00:00.001-04:00

Some lost configuration items I've missed for awhile and finally brought back -- one being tabbed windows in urxvt. You can install urxvt (rxvt-unicode) with the following :

# yum install rxvt-unicode

Take a look at my Xfdefaults and note the !perl modules section for how to load the tabbed perl extension or you may load it manually with :

# urxvt -pe /usr/lib/urxvt/perl/tabbed

If any of you are wondering about the bottom thats my .screenrc config.

I've also spent some time altering fvwm, a lot of the theming so far has come from taviso's work which has helped me quite a bit in learning all that fvwm has to offer.

I've done some updating and alterations to Chris Snook's original hangwatch application which basically does some small code cleanup and provides the options to daemonize the application by default and of course run in the foreground. You can pick up the updated application on my people page. I will be packaging it shortly along with creating necessary initscripts for easy initialization.

There is another big project im working on as well which basically strips a fingerprint from a vmcore off a kernel panic and matches up debug symbols and correct architecture based on a fingerprint database that was generated on over 6000 kernels : ) Once I've packaged it and cleaned up the configuration aspect a bit I do plan on releasing it to the public. The application is split into client/server model (somewhat) where the backend is custom and the fronted is a pylons application (all written in python). The purpose of this was to provide a simple and easy way to create a environment for analyzing and debugging core dumps with the vmcore tool crash.

I've made a few contributions to sosreport I highly suggest using this application for any type of system wide data gathering.

Finally, my fvwm screenshot : )

Oh, on the xbox front I've been playing Bioshock heavily -- I haven't quite gotten into the Halo 3 scene yet and honestly don't know if I will : (, but Bioshock is awesome and if you haven't played it yet I suggest renting it or do like me and buy the damn thing its worth it : )

Picasa 2.7, Fedora 7, and wine.

2007-07-29T19:50:00.000-04:00

This is for all you Ubuntu fanboys -- see how easy it is in Fedora too :\

# yum install wine*

Download Picasa from http://picasa.google.com (The windows executable)

# wine picasaweb-current-setup.exe

Clicky clicky, and watch Picasa start in all its glory.

Oh we even have a screenshot too :

So enough about that .. I've also been messing around with Eclipse 3.3 again along with some various plugins that make this IDE more feature complete. If you are interested take a look at these plugins that will help make your development experience more enjoyable :)

pydev
c/c++
php
perl
subversion
mylyn (bugzilla, trac integration)

They all come with code assist/completions, tasks templating, scm annotations (at least in svn plugin), gdb integration, and tons more.

fond of emacs, GoW releases new maps

2007-05-01T20:00:00.000-04:00

Damn I hate titles, hardest thing to think of when writing a blog post.

So, picked up a few more titles for the 360 -- Guitar Hero II and G.R.A.W 2 and they both own your F4CE. However, some people seem to feel that its "momo" but who cares I enjoy feeling like a goober. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to play the multiplayer mode on GRAW2 but I did glance at the server stats and there seems to be quite a bit of people online. Its just too bad Microsoft doesn't understand the concept of hosting dedicated servers for these games so we go on getting shotgun'd by the host who apparently think they are _that_ awesome, but that is another rant at another time.

In the *nix world I've decided to start learning Emacs. The learning curve is actually less than it was when I decided to work solely with Vi. They were right when stating emacs is like an operating system in itself and it goes nicely along with my screen session (do more with less terminals :-)

There are a few newly developed projects that have caught my eye, mainly those revolving around virtualization and systems management as well as easier and more advanced clustering administration. It is interesting to see the power behind python and ruby *unfortunately* when it comes to *hopefully* production quality applications. If you've not had a chance to take a look at these new technologies I _highly_ suggest you do so because in my eyes this is should be a big involvement from the community.

Oh, one last thing Gears of War released 4 new maps today :D get your g4me f4c3 on!

GG xbox 360

2007-03-04T17:17:00.000-05:00

I decided to go out and get me a xbox 360 this weekend and after 2 exchanges and a tank of gas I am finally enjoying it.

Why 2 exchanges? Well thanks to either a bad shipment, certain models, or just Microsoft being gay(second meaning) the HDD was bad. The HDD continued to suck ass until I finally went to another Best Buy and exchanged it for a 3rd and hopefully final time.

Anyway, once the xbox started and got going it is pretty h4wt. I purchased Gears of War because of all the good things I heard about it and to me they were all true. GoW is a definate purchase for any FPS fan.

I haven't had a chance to look into Arcade or any of the other marketplace items available to me so I'm not sure if I download a HD movie if I have it for life or if its a one time download and once it is removed from your HDD thats it?

I plan on picking up Fight Night 3, Madden 07, and possibly Rainbow Six : Vegas or Lost Planet :)

40" lcd and new wall mount

2007-01-14T15:34:00.000-05:00

Finally got my wall mount in for the lcd I bought a few months back. Cost was decent, around 55 bucks and it holds up to 40" or 80lbs. The TV is a Samsung S4051D and the wall mount is a Sanus Systems visionmount (black).

Heres some pictures of the setup. I am still working on pulling the cables through the wall, however, I'm waiting until I can pick out a decent surround sound before I go digging through the joys of wiring :D

New KVM arrived today

2006-12-28T20:00:00.000-05:00

Purchased TRENDnet TK-400K KVM Switch Kit and got it all hooked up tonight. Running both Fedora Core 6 and Windows XP it works flawlessly :) As you can see on newegg.com the price is great and the reviews are excellent.

Haven't actually played counterstrike through the kvm yet so not sure how well the responsiveness is, but I would imagine I won't see any differences. In any case, this makes it a helluva lot easier to switch between my pc's than moving cables around all midieval style :|

In the web development world I've been messing around with django to see if this framework will suite my needs. I like the idea that they don't want to include all this junk in it, i.e. AJAX helpers and what not. There is no need to include these so called helpers because frameworks like Mochikit make including AJAX capability in your web applications a breeze. Furthermore, I think web applications should contain all functionality necessary to make a useuable and functional application, then worry about adding the AJAX 'l33tness' later on.

Rocky Balboa

2006-12-27T23:10:00.000-05:00

Had the opportunity to watch Rocky Balboa tonight and I was impressed. I've always enjoyed the Rocky series though it seemed to be going downhill towards the end.. I mean, really, how many boxing movies can you make before things start getting redundant?

In any case, very enjoyable and possibly a little inspirational *tear* and I recommend taking a night out to see it in theaters.

Switching over to blogger

2006-12-27T14:02:00.000-05:00

I think I'll be switching over all blog content, documentation to Blogger and Google docs/spreadsheets.

My current site http://astokes.org will continue to be active, however, it will carry different type of information which I haven't decided on just yet.

There is also no need to create a wiki on my current site because each project created with http://code.google.com contains a wiki within itself :)

2006-12-09T11:52:00.000-05:00

Hmm interesting :D, in case you are wondering they are fake :)

VMWare Server installed as host on FC6

2006-11-09T11:47:00.000-05:00

If you run into errors related to this :

make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686'
 CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/driver.o
 CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/hub.o
 CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/userif.o
 CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/netif.o
 CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/bridge.o
 CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/procfs.o
/tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/procfs.c:33:26: error: linux/config.h: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/procfs.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686'
make: *** [vmnet.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only'
Unable to build the vmnet module.

That is because config.h does not exist and is being deprecated in 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 and beyond.

To solve this :

# touch /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686/include/linux/config.h

Once complete your VMware server should successfully complete vmware-config.pl and you can continue using this product.

If it stills fails please see this thread for other ideas : http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=501043&#501043

FC 6 (Zod) + AIGLX + Nvidia beta drivers - simple steps

2006-10-30T18:00:00.000-05:00

Open up a terminal type the following as root :


# rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm
# yum install --enablerepo=livna-testing kmod-nvidia

Next switch to runlevel 3


# telinit 3
# nvidia-config-display enable
# telinit 5

Next edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following in the "Device" section:


Option      "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"

Add this to the "Module" section:

Load     "extmod"

Save and exit, now back to the DE.

Finally, select "System" -> "Preferences" -> "Desktop Effects" -> "Enable effects" and enjoy the eye candy.

ATI users can just use the 'radeon' driver provided with FC6 and put this in the "Module" section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf:


Load   "dri"

Not sure how this is hard compared to Ubuntu :\ Must be something in the air.

SASL Digest-md5, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Directory Server

2006-10-27T12:03:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, been working in Google Docs lately and I'm quite impressed so far.

Have a look at my latest published howto regarding $SUBJECT. This will give you the base setup for doing other authentication types (e.g. Dovecot, Postfix, etc)

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=ddnv9r3v_15d2qr25

Please post your comments here.

NOTE Most documents related to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be found at Red Hat Knowledgebase as well.

Curious about this whole Oracle deal and how it affects Red Hat?

2006-10-26T12:04:00.000-04:00

Read on my friends, read on ..

http://www.redhat.com/promo/unfakeable/

And for those of you who haven't read our magazine yet, then now's the time to check that out RH Magazine. Tons of great information for Fedora and RHEL users (I always enjoy the Tips and Tricks written by my fellow co-workers)

Hmm what else ... oh yes, have an issue on RHEL that you can't figure out? Perhaps you are curious about "Setting up device-mapper multipathing in RHEL4" or maybe you want to "configure kerberos against a Active Directory server"? Then you need to head on over to our excellent Knowledgebase that contains thousands of articles written by Red Hat engineers to aid you in just about anything you need to know.

Ok enough advertising :)

P.S. - Fedora Core 6 kicks ass K?

Ubuntu Netinstall

2006-09-14T12:13:00.000-04:00

Hmm I just had a very good experience with one of my machines with no floppy, cdrom, usb drives and only a PXE capable ethernet card using this quick Ubuntu netinstall guide. This took about 15 minutes to setup and didn't have to fuss with configuring an entire dhcp server for the job.

Update: FC5 has dnsmasq in its extras repo.


# yum install dnsmasq

The above article should apply other than running tftpd through xinetd rather than a standalone daemon.

The protector

2006-09-09T12:09:00.000-04:00

Ok so remember when I posted about Tony jaa's next movie to hit the US in december ? (Story h ere) Well it came earlier than expected with a subtitle re-write and I think an excellent job of voice overs.

There hasn't been many movies I can safely say I enjoyed primarly due to poor voice overs, I definately prefer subtitles over anything else.

But back to the movie.. If you go in there with the mindset that, yes, this is a movie that will have a close to nothing plot but more action than you can care about then you will definately enjoy this. I'm not going into reviews or anything of this movie because I hate typing that much and my grammar skills are barely average :) so you will have to go see the movie for yourself!

Besides other people do reviews for a living :

Hollywood.com
Filmthreat.com

and many more ...

Web development on Fedora Core 5 with Eclipse, CVS, and PHPEclipse

2006-09-06T19:03:00.000-04:00

Purpose of this article:

To provide a platform that will allow any upcoming web developer (or any developer for that matter) collaborate/create web applications without going through the hassle of using the CLI to get a project started and maintained by several users.

Requirements:

Fedora Core 5 (x86 and x86_64 have been tested)
Ecliipse IDE
PHPEclipse
CVS

Installing the software:

(Fedora Core 5) -- Just put the cd/dvd in and follow the on screen instructions :). Only note here is to give yourself enough room to store your projects.

(Eclipse IDE) -- No special repositories required, type the following as root in a terminal :

# yum install eclipse

Please keep the terminal opened under user root once this software is installed as you will need it for the next steps.

(PHPEclipse) -- Type the following as root to start eclipse as root :

# eclipse &

Once eclipse is opened navigate to Help >> Software Updates >> Find and Install. This will bring you to an "Install/Update " dialog and you will want to select "Search for new features to install" as shown below:

In the next figure you'll want to add a "New remote site" and fill in the proper values for the PHPEclipse update site.

Now the next screens should be self explanatory, just keep clicking next and make sure PHPEclipse is highlighted and you've completed with "Install All" button.

(CVS) -- Now that you've installed your IDE (Eclipse) and the proper plugin to actually work effectively on the type of content you've chosen (in this case PHP) we need to setup a repository for you and your developers to work in harmony.

Now I know I said "web developing without the use of CLI" but what I really meant was "developing without the use of CLI after configuring the tools to do so". So if you're still with me lets continue through the most difficult part of this whole setup.

In cvs you have a couple of things to look at :

One directory from which each developer will retrieve and contribute to code
A versioning system that keeps tracks of changes/creations and allows you to back out of any problematic code that may introduce itself over the course of the development
The ability to group your developers into one group that will allow for easy administration of those who can/cannot access your development environment.

Creating the CVS environment for your users to work from :

These steps are to be performed as root in a terminal window. They are also what I usually do when starting off a cvs repository, you may modify any parts of these as you see fit.

Create the cvsuser account and home directory where all the official code will be kept.

# useradd cvsuser

Create a user that will be accessing the cvs repository and also adding them to the proper cvsuser group.

# useradd adam; passwd adam
# usermod -G cvsuser adam

Add a global CVS variable for use by any user on the system, or you may provide the variable to only a group of users by placing it in ~/.bash_profile

# echo "export CVSROOT=/home/cvsuser" >> /etc/profile

You may test this by logging in as a particular user and echoing the CVS variable.

# su - adam
[adam@localhost]$ source /etc/profile
[adam@localhost ~]$ echo $CVS
home/cvsuser
[adam@localhost ~]$ exit

Initialize the cvsroot

# su - cvsuser
# cvs init

I am going to assume you have some code already that you would like to import, in my case I've been working on a theme for drupal called "theef" (pronounced "the - f?") and it is located under my home directory in /home/adam/theef. Now we import our code into the CVS repository.

[adam@localhost ~/theef]$ cvs import theef adam R1

The above basically says import my project theef with the tag adam with a release of R1. This will put your project under /home/cvsuser/theef and if you are going to be accessing the CVS repository locally then you'll need to remove the existing /home/adam/theef and checkout the project from CVS. But we won't worry about that for now as we are working remotely with Eclipse and it does it all for you

Ok, so we've got the CVS repository setup giving access to user 'adam' and a project imported (hopefully) now it's time to go back into Eclipse and setup a project.

(Importing CVS project with Eclipse) -- You should have Eclipsed opened up and ready to import a project via CVS. To do so you'll need to navigate to File >> New >> Project >> Checkout project from CVS as shown below:

At the next dialog screen make sure "Create a new repository location" is selected.

The next dialog window will bring you to the CVS Repository location information. In our case we won't be using 'pserver' so setup is pretty straight forward as long as you have OpenSSH enabled on your CVS server.

On your next screen you are given the option to define the module you wish to checkout or see a list, now my figure will show a few more than what yours should list because I'm writing this against a production CVS box. In any case you may wish to just type the module in yourself 'theef'.

In the next dialog you'll want to checkout the as the project within the workspace :

You'll be presented with a couple more dialog boxes just accept the defaults and when you come up to "Select Tag" hilight "HEAD" and click finish button.

(Conclusion) -- Finally your setup is complete and you have the ability to work within an IDE that provides you all the needed abilities for code syntax hilighting, code completion, snippets, and of course cvs capability.

Once you've gone through done some updates etc, right click on the directory and/or file that you've been editing and goto Team >> Commit and this will walk you through committing your work back to CVS.

(From the author) So I wrote this while watching the Carolina Hurricanes win the Stanley cup so I've had a few distractions. I'll keep updating this page as I find errors, but please feel free to post your comments/suggestions that you would like to see here. I hope this article is in its simplest form for users wanting to develop with Eclipse.

Some other great plugins I've come across to use with Eclipse are :

Pydev (python developtment) http://pydev.sf.net
EPIC (ecplise perl integration) http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/

HL2 and ubuntu 6.06

2006-08-01T12:14:00.000-04:00

Once Ubuntu was installed I visited here :

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=190025

Installed Automatix and with that I was able to install the latest Wine (0.9.18 at the time of this writing). This comes with better support for HL2 and WoW.

Next following this article :

linux gamers wine+linux howto

I now have Steam,HL2, DoD, and CS:S running smoothly on my Ubuntu 6.06 box.

Oh and bottom left corner is gaim 2.0 beta 3, pretty sweet too :D

Building The Mana World on AMD64 in Ubuntu (6.06)

2006-07-29T12:20:00.000-04:00

In my experience building tmw for amd64 was pretty straightforward, here are the steps for those curious.

First setup your repositories :


deb http://bertram.ifrance.com ./
deb-src http://bertram.ifrance.com ./

Next build the .deb based packages and install


$ sudo apt-get install devscripts fakeroot
$ apt-get source tmw
$ cd tmw-VERSION
$ sudo apt-get build-dep tmw
$ debuild -us -uc
$ sudo dpkg -i ../tmw_VERSION_ARCHITECTURE.deb ../tmw-data_VERSION_ARCHITECTURE.deb ../tmw-music_VERSION_ARCHITECTURE.deb

Heres another in-game shot:

Fedora Core users: I haven't forgot about you either, this game sits in Fedora Extras


# yum install manaworld

banshee, fedora core 5 and my ipod :)

2006-03-26T14:10:00.000-05:00

Thought I'd post my screenshot of banshee syncing with my ipod without going through any crazy modifications. I plug it in load up my music library and sync away :)

Though there are issues with banshee and SMP kernels, however, that should be fixed in banshee 10.9 which I've successfully built on FC5 without any hassle.

So if you were hesitant to switching to linux because of itunes (yes there are some of you out there that is being held back because of this) then fc5 and banshee is your answer :)

VIM TIps

2005-08-23T11:50:00.000-04:00

Just thought I would post some things I find helpful when working with VIM. Remember if you are running Fedora Core you can install VIM with the following command:

Also for those curious, here is my vimrc file.


# yum install vim-enhanced

That should pick up the dependencies as necessary.

Setting line numbers and word wrap

Ok to get started I like to have line numbers and no word wrapping in my code. Lets first create our rc file for vim:


# vim ~/.vimrc

Now we are going to add the following 2 lines for the above:


set nu!
set wrap!

Mapping key binds

I like to use buffer windows for editing several files and so I need a quick way of switching from windows to windows.


map  :bprevious
map  :bnext
imap  :bprevious
imap  :bnext

imap is for switching buffers in insert mode.

General commands and usage within VIM

Basically from here on all commands can be typed while in VIM by starting the command with ':', for example,


:color elflord

This will force VIM to set a general color and for syntax highlighting purposes.

Simple search and replace

Search and replace is fairly straight forward. Normally I will just start at the beginning of a document and search the whole thing replacing as necessary. To do so type the following:


:%s/word-to-search/replace-with/g

Now if you wish to just search a line and replace whats in the line:


:s/word-to-search/replace-with/g

Please note that it is important to end the search string with /g.

Commenting a section of text anywhere in the file

First mark the top of the section you wish to comment out by moving your cursor to that section and type ma

Next move to the end of the section you wish to comment and type mb

Finally get into command mode by hitting : and comment that block of text by typing :


:'a,'b s/^/#/g

You may also do this in visual mode by hitting v and hilighting the lines you wish to comment out and typing


:'a,'b s/^/#/g

Turning tabs into spaces


:set expandtab

To convert all existing tabs to spaces


:retab

Note: I will continue to add on to this forum post as I come across items and eventually push this into static content.

Below is a great reference site for all things VIM. Check it out and be sure to rate his tips!
http://www.rayninfo.co.uk/vimtips.html

VIM survival guide
http://www.nuxified.org/vi_survival_guide

Configuring imap with mutt

2005-07-25T12:02:00.000-04:00

Place this in your ~/.muttrc


# This configures mutt to use IMAP(S) server, however, you'll need to setup 
# sendmail/postfix/alternative smtp server to enable sending mail out :)

my_hdr From: user@example.com (Joe Blow)
# sets the location for your spool mailbox - the INBOX setting should work on most imap servers
set spoolfile=imaps://mail.server.com/INBOX

# Specifies  the  default  location  of your mailboxes.
set folder=imaps://mail.server.com/

#  Your login name on the IMAP server. 
# Put in a value here to avoid typing in your username each time you start mutt
set imap_user=username

# Specifies the password for your IMAP account.  
# Warning: you should only use this option when you are on a fairly secure machine
#set imap_pass=xyz

# Set this to no to avoid mutt asking you whether you want to move your mail to the local mbox 
set move=no

# If you have more than one mailbox then. 
# This is how long mutt will wait between scanning for incoming mail
set mail_check=60

# Mutt will only scan curently open mailbox for new mail every 10 minutes by default. Set to 15 seconds 
set timeout=15