2008-05-09
Hi! Kid Recap here. Funky numbering aside, this issue is more
or less the middle of the road for the series. So, the New
Misfits and Cannon Fodder asked me to set aside a few minutes
and bring you up to date on the story so far. If you're picking
up the series now, this is the best issue to start with. If
you're pondering whether to pick it up but intimidated by the
number, this one is for you. If you just want to recap and
refresh your memory -- and who doesn't love a recap? -- then by
all means enjoy it. If you did read everything up to now, maybe
more than once, and still have no clue what's going on, well
then, I guess this issue won't help too much, as it's exactly as
badly written as the rest. Sorry!
58.5 is a series of fiction stories in a shared universe called
"LNH", which stands for Legion of Net.Heroes, the premier
...
3 stripes, just like Adidas. And he didn't cry when he fell. Or even notice.
I gave my 6th speech at Toastmaster’s last night, the project was about Vocal Variety. I gave the speech as if the audience was actually members of another group I belong to, The Beijing Linux User Group, and that this meeting was one of our monthly meetings.
Fellow Linux Group Members. Now, those of you who’s meeting tonight is your first, you may not know that our group has another passion in addition to Linux. No, it’s not airplanes. It’s not coin collecting. And it’s certainly not Microsoft!
It’s Yang Rou Chuanr!
In fact, you could suggest the club be renamed to the Beijing Linux >> and Chuanr User Group!
One of the popular social activities our group partakes in outside of these monthly meetings is having dinner at an area Chuanr restaurant. As leader of the Group’s Chuanr Committee, I want to tell you about a real exciting event that we’re working hard to plan.
The title of the event is: “The 3rd Ring Road Chuanr Challenge”. I’ll repeat……
A Challenge? You may be thinking “How on earth can you combine Chuanr, 3rd Ring Road, and a Challenge?”
Simple. We want to make a complete circle along 3rd Ring road, stopping at each bus stop of bus route 300 Kuai (that’s 21 bus stops), and we want to sample the nearest Chuanr Restaurant to that bus station.
The Challenge is – can we make a complete circle, sample the Chuanr and other interesting dishes at each stop, all in one day? And in the process, we’ll be rating the quality of the restaurants – from taste, to ambiance, to price.
There are 3 reasons why we are doing this event
First point: As Linux people, the love of meat on a stick is just inherently part of us. We’re a social bunch and as we love Chuanr so much, we’ve built Chuanr nights into our social calendar. On average, we get together for dinner twice a month to talk about Linux (among other things), drink beers, and feast on these great meat sticks from heaven!
So one day, I thought, “why don’t we take this one step further?” It seemed the logical thing to do!
Second point: One of the goals of the Chuanr committee is to document as many Chuanr restaurants in the city as possible and provide that list of tried and tested restaurants to our membership as a service.
Normally, we have our Chuanr events on the North-Eastern part of the city – now, unfortunately not everyone in the group lives in the North-East. So, we hope to get solid options for those who live in the South and the West of Beijing so that they can satisfy their urges of cumin and chilly coated lamb sticks wherever they are in the city and they can be sure it will be a quality restaurant.
Third point: It’s never been done before. Really, why would it have been? Who would be crazy enough to spend a day in between buses and small dirty Chuanr restaurants for the fun of it? Well, nobody but us!
Does this kind of even seem interesting for you all? I hope it does and I am sure we’ll have a good time eating the food we love, exploring other parts of the city we love, and spending quality time with the people we love.
Yes, we’re actually doing this event. I gave this speech (well, something remotely similar) during our March meeting (I say remotely because I didn’t prepare and had a few beers before) and the event is actually scheduled for tomorrow, May 10. !!
I’ll be sure to write about what goes on during the event, along with photos, etc.
Another similar in the pipeline: “Lao Beijing Hutong Bicycle Chuanr Tour” (Lao = Old, Hutong= alleys)
2008-05-08
Yesterday I saw this little red car driving the wrong direction on a one-way exit ramp. Not only was she going against traffic but she was on the left side of the road, which made an already bad situation even more ridiculous. How in the world did she get herself into this pickle? And what is her plan when she makes it down the exit ramp and finds herself going against traffic on the highway?
A) Download 10201_database_linux32.zip from Oracle website.
B) Download 10gR2_openSUSE102_introduction.pdf and ora.rpm from ftp ftp.novelŀcom
C) Install Oracle, following quick steps:
1. Install openSUSE 10.2 with “C/C++ Development” selection.
2. Download and Install orarun package.
3. Enable and set password for newly created user oracle by orarun.
4. Set updated kernel parameters by executing /etc/init.d/oracle start.
5. Download and unzip Oracle 10gR2 Database SW.
Edit file database/install/oraparam.ini to add “SuSE-10″ to line #39.
6. login as user oracle and run Oracle Universal Installer “database/runInstaller”.
Troubleshooting:
1) installer error:
———————————————————————————————
oracle@Martin:~/database> ./runInstaller
Starting Oracle Universal Installer…
Checking installer requirements…
Checking operating system version: must be redhat-3, SuSE-9, redhat-4, UnitedLinux-1.0, asianux-1, asianux-2 or SuSE-10
Passed
All installer requirements met.
Preparing to launch Oracle Universal Installer from /tmp/OraInstall2008-05-08_09-11-56AM. Please wait …oracle@Martin:~/database> java: xcb_xlib.c:52: xcb_xlib_unlock: Assertion `c->xlib.lock’ failed.
———————————————————————————————
Solution :
- export LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK=1
- run runInstaller again
2) 在安装完成末期,需要root用户运行两个脚本，完了之后，我遇到一个错误对话框，点击过去之后好像没有发现安装失败，安装目前正常
More SQL scripts:
http://cs-netlab-01.lynchburg.edu/courses/Oracle/SQLPlus.htm
SQL> CREATE TABLESPACE AMP
2 DATAFILE ‘/opt/oracle/oradata/orcl/AMP.dbf’ SIZE 200M;
Tablespace created.
SQL> CREATE USER AMP IDENTIFIED BY ca1234
2 DEFAULT TABLESPACE AMP
3 QUOTA UNLIMITED ON AMP;
User created.
SQL> GRANT CONNECT, RESOURCE TO AMP;
Grant succeeded.
SQL> GRANT CREATE SESSION, CREATE TABLE TO AMP;
Grant succeeded.
How to start oracle em manully?
可能出现的错误如下，没有ORACLE_SID的 环境变量, 可能网络地址和环境发生变化,比如主机名修改等.
oracle@Martin:~/product/10.2/db_1/bin> ./emctl start dbconsole
TZ set to PRC
EM Configuration issue. /opt/oracle/product/10.2/db_1/localhost_orcl not found.
oracle@Martin:~/product/10.2/db_1/bin> ./emctl start dbconsole
TZ set to PRC
OC4J Configuration issue. /opt/oracle/product/10.2/db_1/oc4j/j2ee/OC4J_DBConsole_localhost_orcl not found.
修正方式:
oracle@Martin:~/product/10.2/db_1/oc4j/j2ee> cp -R OC4J_DBConsole_Martin.bmc.com_orcl OC4J_DBConsole_localhost_orcl
oracle@Martin:~/product/10.2/db_1> cp -R Martin.bmc.com_orcl/ localhost_orcl
oracle@Martin:~/product/10.2/db_1> bin/emctl start dbconsole
TZ set to PRC
Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Database Control Release 10.2.0.1.0
Copyright (c) 1996, 2005 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.
http://Martin.bmc.com:1158/em/console/aboutApplication
Starting Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Database Control ………………………. started.
——————————————————————
Logs are generated in directory /opt/oracle/product/10.2/db_1/localhost_orcl/sysman/log
启动了后访问: http://localhost:1158/em/
2008-05-07
[gods, I suck, or something. Two months without posting and I
forget how to do it?]
In another plane of existence, a red-haired girl was intently
studying complex diagrams and practicing hand gestures. A
beast, larger and more terrible than most minds can cope with,
approached and looked at her with the pride of a master.
%YOU HAVEN'T LOOKED AT YOUR HOME WORLD IN A LONG TIME.%
"What's the point? I have much to do. And since we have
accelerated time here, every time I look it's more or less the
same thing." She didn't even look at him.
%IT'S NOT THE SAME THING NOW. YOU SHOULD LOOK.%
...
This artwork is on a bulletin board outside my son's preschool classroom. Their teacher told them to draw a picture of a slide. From a distance, everything looks okay.
But hold on! Grant pointed out this picture that one of his friends drew. "It's a kid being cooked," he told me.
Now there's something you don't see every day. :)
2008-05-06
See how long it takes you figure this one out. It took me about 30 seconds. But maybe I was tired...
2008-05-05
If you live in Beijing or Shanghai, you probably already sat in a taxi during a smoggy day, watching people through the window riding their bicycle in the heavy pollution. Feeling safer in your cab, you pitied them since the air outside was so polluted.
Actually... you were more exposed to pollution than them!
A study shows that the mean concentration of fine particles inside a car could reach
levels up to 25 times the WHO air quality guidelines. The main source of in-car air pollution is the vehicle in front of you since air intakes and exhaust pipes are located at the same level.
Even if driving with the windows closed and recirculating air
settings could modestly reduce particle pollution exposure, it does not
reduce most gaseous pollutants at all.
In terms of solutions, bicycle is definitely a better transportation mean in cities, since when you sit in a car:
|
- you are in the middle of the car traffic and so the air you breathe is extremely polluted,
- you stay longer in the traffic during rush hours,
- even if it might not have a direct impact on your health, pollution is generated by the car.
|
While riding a bike, you are higher than the traffic, you are not
riding directly inside it, you are not stuck during rush hours (so you
reduce your time of exposure), and you don't generate pollution. Even
though efforts can be harmful for your lungs, you are still less
exposed to pollution than in a car.
According to ICTA's "In-car pollution" report: concentrations of benzene reach levels inside automobiles nearly two-and-a half times higher than in the air breathed by bicyclists.
A car doesn't protect you from pollution, it exposes you even more!
Sources: Le Journal du Dimanche (French), Xinhua, ICTA In-car pollution report
That's what this sign says -
Sydney Circular Quay + “The Coat Hanger” - 75 Years Young! #1
Originally uploaded by sinoperture
This shot I took recently while back in Sydney seems very popular on Flickr. I am quite ambivalent towards it. Doesn’t do much for me… no character.
Anyway, enjoy if it is your cup of tea.
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2008-05-04
For those of you regularly reading the Beijing LUG site (or even participating in our events) you might remember our Old PCs Refurbishing Party lead by Ben from BISS and held early March of this year. After struggling with various flavors of Ubuntu because of bad Chinese support and heavy resource usage, we settled on 256MB of ram as a minimum requirement and had to manually customize every single install we did.
Not satisfied we decided to study other options such as mastering our own light-weight derivative distribution with the right packages and good Chinese support. We did get a lot of positive supporting offers from ThizLinux, Mandriva and Novell and it’s nice to feel you’re part of a group of great people.
After a few weeks, Ben pointed out a few Puppylinux variants and I am now playing with it: IMPRESSIVE! I am testing it on an old Thinkpad X30 with 256MB of ram with a Pentium III: so fast, so flexible. All the necessary applications are available, it’s very easy to make your own build (actually 2 ways of doing it) and you can even install deb packages (experimental feature).
We still have a long way to go, but it really seems we’ve solved our first issue: small footprint and easy setup. Puppylinux has also a very active IRC channel on freenode (#puppylinux) and a fairly good documentation. I’m almost considering using it as my full time distribution!
So whatever distribution we use at the end, I’m quite pleased to have had to dive into Puppylinux. It’ll give us a base to chose the right applications and do our own customization in order to get the project rolling!
Previously on 58.5:
Since the beginning of April, one LNHer (sometimes more) was
picked as leader, every day, and disappeared at midnight. That
wouldn't be such a big deal, if it wasn't for the fact that
April has already lasted for 290 days.
A few weeks ago, the Looniearth was invaded by an alternate LNH
from the "Evilverse". They defeated most of the remaining
members of the "real" LNH, and took over Net.ropolis. President
Luthor then decided to seal the city in a force field. The New
Misfits got stuck inside it, where they joined the Resistance,
which strangely enough, is led by the Crime Empire, which in
turn is led by Paraddox (formerly Weirdness Magnet) and Vector
Prime (a.k.a. the Melissa Virus).
...
On April 30 Beijing celebrated the fact that there were 100 days left until the 2008 Olympic Games. To celebrate I took a picture of the Olympic stadium (aka the Bird's Nest) for you on my way home from work.
2008-05-02
The Beijingology Subway Guide is now officially online.
Since Subway Line 5 opened up last October (2007), we at Beijingology knew that the underground dragon was here — and expansion here, too — and that both were here to stay.
With much of the traffic above ground getting worse by the minute, it’s a good thing that The Powers That Be are looking underground. And while it’s true that the odd hole or two on the roads may have made our Subway too visible, the Subway expansion is here to get our roads more fluid.
The Subway’s the future. The ridership is sure to go up. With that in mind, we’ve taken a look around — and seen more than one expat head underground. This, though, is also a point for concern — what if the laowai understands zero Chinese?
That’s officially history, with the new Beijingology Subway Guide.
Start your tour here, at Dongdan station, on Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue of fame.
Wikipedia, be very afraid. This is a Subway guide with content on steroids. After a successful trial run, redoing one of our subway articles based on a new content template, Beijingology’s Subway Guide is pretty much “there”. The refitting of all Subway Line 5 stations on the new standard, as well as the removal of the last “basic / stub” article on the Subway system, has meant that the new Subway Guide is now officially with us.
With every new article on the new standard, you’ll be able to find:
• photos of the station, both outside and inside
• on many new articles, photos of a great many Subway exits
• details on the history and geography of the Subway station
• details on the architecture of the station (what it looks like, both outside and inside)
• detailled exit information, including if or not the station uses split halls (where you must pick your exit immediately after getting off the train)
• station services, including toilets, police services, and more
• details of the first and last train services at every station
• details of neighboring subway stations
• exit access and disabled access
Stage II of the Subway Guide (yup, under planning already) expands the new content template to all subway stations (including those on Lines 8, 10 and the Airport Express), and adds a handy map of the immediate vicinity of the station. Stage II will be done by June 2008, to coincide with the opening of those three new subway lines.
Enjoy the ride. And yes, please get ready for your arrival.
2008-05-01
(13:10:12) Lalo: Why do I read comics?
(13:10:42) 美: because you're a dork. Any inteligent person would had quit by now.
(13:10:59) 美: *beats DC and Marvel*
(13:11:56) Lalo: Kord is alive, Bucky is alive, Uncle Ben was alive for a while there, Barry Allen is alive, Supergirl is alive (if a little brain-dead), Peter Parker never married... what's next, the Waynes?
(13:12:38) 美: You're late. I made this joke more than 12 hours ago.
(13:14:44) 美: that's why I only read Tek Jansen.
(13:15:28) 美: I'm seriously tired of comics.
(13:15:38) 美: I don't enjoy reading it anymore.
(13:16:13) Lalo: I suppose I still enjoy looking for the diamonds in the middle of the shit
(13:16:36) Lalo: Morrison still writes some pretty fucked up stuff now and then, but you have to read everything he writes to catch it
(13:16:38) 美: I stopped giving a fuck long ago.
(13:17:11) 美: it demands energy I prefer devoting to books at this point in my life :/
(13:17:17) Lalo: Fables is awesome, Booster Gold is hilarious (except that the last storyline just isn't working), Blue Beetle is BSG-cool
(13:18:04) 美: :P
(13:19:55) 美: As I said, one shit too many.
(13:20:23) 美: or should I say one ton of shit too many?
(13:20:36) Lalo: Well, if they keep trying this hard, I suppose I'll get to that point too
(13:21:02) 美: no, you won't.
(13:21:08) 美: You'll be the last reader.
(13:21:12) 美: srsly man.
(13:21:50) 美: You'll only quit this shit in your grave.
(13:21:54) 美: XD
(13:23:00) Lalo: well, I'm going to blog this entire conversation.
(13:23:29) 美: hahahahah then let it be said that comics is your crack.
(13:24:26) 美: It will eventually kill you, but you won't be able to quit it. XD
(13:25:01) Lalo: Thanks, you just gave the post a title too :-P
(13:25:24) 美: I'm that nice to you, you know.
(13:26:33) 美: Wanna talk more with an ex-addicted? XD
(13:26:44) Lalo: bout what?
(13:28:47) 美: About comics, duh. Holy shit, did it kill all your brain cells already? Would explain why the fuck you keep reading.
(13:32:01) Lalo: I mean, hmm
(13:35:31) 美: You can always tell me about the worst titles you've read. I know I'm a masochist.
(13:35:38) Lalo: lol
(13:35:57) Lalo: Well, hmm... Jim Starlin is clearly a skrull
(13:36:29) Lalo: the man who wrote all those awesome comics in the 70s and 80s must be imprisoned in some skrull dungeon with the real Chris Claremont
(13:37:04) 美: (that actually reminds me of the blog idea you had. :P)
(13:38:17) Lalo: Death of the New Gods was impossibly dumb, and Countdown was mindfuckingly bad; but their individual stupidity was compounded by the fact that the two endings, already ridiculous enough, were incompatible with each other.
(13:38:59) Lalo: In DONG (that's the best acronym for a bad book ever), Darkseid collects the souls of all New Gods and takes on the Source; then leaves for Earth for unknown reasons, and the mini is over.
(13:39:31) 美: Hahahahahhahah, Dong XD
(13:39:51) Lalo: In C2FC, he gets to Earth to recover the souls which were stored in Jimmy Olsen, but Ray Palmer destroys the "soul battery" (?!?!?) before he can recover them; then Orion shows up and kicks his ass.
(13:39:58) Lalo: hmmmmmmmmmmmm... yeah, ok.
(13:40:22) Lalo: Hyperflies, you know.
(13:40:25) 美: Wait a sec. Orion?
(13:41:04) Lalo: Yeah, Darkseid's son who was according to prophecies supposed to kill him one day
(13:41:10) Lalo: And he did
(13:41:20) 美: C2FC? Sounds like a Star Wars droid.
(13:41:31) Lalo: "Countdown 2 Final Crisis"
(13:42:06) 美: Ah, ok. *point to the DONG* He walked with the New Gods, right?
(13:42:36) Lalo: Yeah, he was raised in New Genesis by the Highfather. Dude in red spandex and silver helmet with a sun in the forehead.
(13:42:56) 美: and by walk I mean 'holy shit, I'm sleepy I can't speak english anymore.'
(13:42:59) Lalo: To add insult to injury, after those two stupid and incompatible endings, we'll be having Final Crisis, which starts from the premise that Darkseid "won" (won what?) and is now all-powerful. eeeeeeeeeeeer... WTF?
(13:43:06) 美: I remember. Very gay.
(13:43:18) ***Lalo headdesks
(13:43:29) 美: hhahaahhaahhahaah, we should start discussing comics in LOLspeak, man! \o/
(13:44:46) Lalo: Oh, and minor annoying detail, the end of this "story" in C2FC #2 was out two weeks before its buildup in DONG #8. I think someone took the backwards numbering of C2FC a bit too far...
(13:45:24) 美: Ok, now my brain hurts.
(13:45:30) Lalo: yeah.
2008-04-30
I should have posted about this 2 weeks ago, but… As you see from the photo, Fred, Pockey, and I are sporting the brand new face masks brought to China by the BLUG’s very own Pollution Expert, Julien.
If you’re interested in getting one, check out his Website at http://www.pollution-china.com! (specifically here)
For the 3 or so weeks I’ve been using it, I have already noticed a great improvement in my breathing and less irritation in my lungs.
The Chinese letters on this China Post truck are written from right to left, in the traditional Chinese style. This is the first time I've seen anyone do the same for the English letters though.
2008-04-29
A month or so back, there was a spat online about how Facebook labeled people’s geographic location. At issue were some Israeli settlers who took aim at Facebook when the social networking site listed them as being in “Palestine” and not “Israel”.
It reminded me of a similar situation that happened in our company, when one sales consultant got really angry when he noticed that under “Country” in the drop down box for entering in client data to our CRM, it showed Taiwan.
No end of discussions from us about how this was for “Geographic” purposes and mailing purposes - with examples given of air travel and the like would calm him down. In the end we asked the developer to remove the name Taiwan from the Country list. Even though such “Countries” like Christmas Island, Norfolk Island and Hawaii survive.
While we may have been quite content to keep the country list as given and as issued by the UN as a list purely for logistics purposes without any comment or affirmation of status or not as a country, it seemed in our situation, just like the one on Facebook that the simplist thing to do was rectify the perceived result.
For Facebook it makes no difference, it is just a label. For us it makes no difference either because we are not a global company anyhow. The lesson is in that the digital borders are starting to mimic the real ones. Conflicts and debates and all.
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The character 气 means steam, vapour, air; it also means "qi" or "chi", as in the martial arts concept; it also means, when used as a verb, to anger, to make angry. Discovering this made a lot of Anime scenes that previously made zero sense suddenly understandable!
2008-04-28
I've been enjoying Battlestar Galactica season 4, yes, but for some reason, not as much as I expected. It was disappointing, it was missing something, and I was having trouble putting my finger on what. Today I figured it out.
I'm having a hard time caring about it, because those aren't the characters I so painstakingly learned to love.
Now, I do believe that characters that change, evolve, grow, and yes, even devolve sometimes, are essential to good storytelling. My problem with comics these days is that most things that change, eventually get rolled back to "status quo" by a different writer (or editor) that didn't like them. So I'm glad those guys are changing. However, changing too many of them at the same time is a mistake, because your audience will feel lost, abandoned. I don't recognise these people, and as such, I don't give a frak about them.
The only ones that didn't get completely turned upside down (or airlocked) were, let me see, the Admiral, Helo, and Athena. But I never really cared too much for the Admiral, and I positively dislike Helo, which leaves me only the Toaster Babe... who made, if memory serves, one appearance in this season.
I suppose if I count recurring characters, I still have Cottle and Zarek to smile about. Oh, Gaeta didn't change much, but he changed a lot in season 3, and I can't stand him anymore. Ah yeah, and Racetrack... the most boring character in the series, worse than Simon even. I was surprised to notice I actually felt disappointed last episode when she failed to die. Sigh.
Now to be honest, I do like the new Lee more than the old one; and Sam is finally getting developed into an actual character. So it isn't all bad. Heck, it's not bad at all in absolute terms, because stuff is happening; it's just, I feel like I have to get to know the characters all over again, I feel... well, lost and abandoned.
Maybe I'll feel better when D'anna returns. Er... she will, won't she?
.....
Ok, just to put some more volume into the post, I'll share my pet BSG mad theories :-P Those aren't new, but stuff I've been musing for some time. Spoiler warnings: if you haven't finished season 3 yet, stop reading!
Since season 1 I decided Ellen was a cylon. What's crazy about that, you ask? Well, I didn't think she was a previously unseen model, but rather, an (artificially) aged 6. I thought I just had to share this, in light of the last episode. Very funny.
And, I don't think Starbuck is a cylon; I think, instead, she's the real first hybrid! That could explain her crazy powers... her mystery daddy may be Cavil (model 1), Tigh, or the final one. There's something about the idea of Kara as Tigh's daughter that just makes me cackle.
Finally, not a theory but a wish, I'd really like to see the cylons resurrect some human, just to freak us out. I mean, if they're as similar to humans as they keep saying, there should be nothing preventing their resurrection system to work for a human, right? I guess Baltar would be the perfect candidate (they had plenty of chance to get whatever information they need to do it), but Cally would be fun to see too.
Today I was fighting my way through the morning rush hour and I noticed this truck next to me transporting a beautiful tree. Somehow the truck and I managed to stay next to each other for several kilometers. There I was snaking my way through the urban jungle and yet I got to sit in the shade of this gorgeous tree for a few minutes. I snapped a photo of it just before I had to exit the highway.
BTW I know my friend Shubho will leave me a comment saying that I should have been on the subway, putting less stress on the environment, so that poor little tree wouldn't have to work so hard to clean the air back up for me. But Shubho I was driving the car that we won in that contest. What am I supposed to do, let it sit in the parking lot...? :)
This is my second virtual appliance, it suppose to work for production. This is a 100% open source solution for inventory/asset management, it including OCS Inventory NG and GLPI. I encourage you to deploy it in your school or company.
About virtual appliance / 关于此虚拟应用
- OpenSuSE 10.2 (root password is martinliu)
- LAMP+Perl
- OCS Inventory v1.02 RC1
- GLPI v0.70.2
- bridged network
You can download it from below.
Download it 下载
Thanks BigYue.com for donated upload space. 感谢BigYue.com的空间。
Run Server / 运行管理服务器（>=2GB RAM）
- un-zip the image on a computer which will be network with for any managed nodes to upload inventory information. This host machine should have at least 2GB RAM.
- Download a wm player and install it.
- Open virtual machine and power on.
- At top of boot screen, you will find the ip address of this vm I assume you have a DHCP server on network. Otherwise you have to configure network manually for this vm.
- Access to the home page (http://IP_address_Of_vm/) which I made it for you. On this page, there are login information and entry points.
Now you have a full function asset management solution up an running. You will configure security for the whole system before you do more work with it. You should change the password for root and mysql. Mysql have a blank password. After you done this, you must re-configure database connection for both OCS Inventory NG and GLPI accordingly. Please refer to administration guide.
Deploy Agent / 安装部署代理
- For any Unix-like system : you will manually install on each of target computer. Following the installation guide from OCS inventory NG.
- For MS windows system: You can do manually installation too. Also you could distribute agent via AD domain policy automatically, all target machines must logon the AD domain at least once in order to get agent package installed. Agent is running as a windows service if it is installed properly; inventory information will update timely to the server. The Agent package can be copied to a USB key. You can use it for collecting inventory information for off-line computers, or a computer which you wont have any piece of OSS installed on it. I’m kidding, I guess you love to run OSS on any of your computers, PS: the more the better.
Management Asset / 管理IT资产
- Synchronize inventory data from OCS Inventory NG to GLPI. GLPI can do it at interval that you set hourly or daily.
- Those two OSS are just easy to use. You will still read some necessary documents on their web. 请阅读尽可能多的使用手册
- As long as you use this virtual appliance, I can see your smile face. Don’t forget give me comment below and let me know how many nodes do you manage.
- Enjoy and have a lot of fun.
Support / 支持 This virtual appliance comes with ABSOLUTELY NO SUPPORT. I will try my best to support you, but questions are not guaranteed for a quick answer. I strongly recommend you will go to open source community when you run into any error. I believe you can get support and might help others too. If you improved this virtual appliance, I am looking forward to see your share. I’d like to hear any good idea from you.
Notes:
2008-04-25
You might have seen many Chinese wearing surgical masks in the streets
to protect themselves against pollution and you probably already asked yourself: are these masks really effective against air pollution?
These masks are not suited against pollution and the main reason is simple:
these masks are designed to protect others from droplets you might spread.
When these masks are
tested, the filtration is measured from the air you exhale and not the one you
breathe in. Even if they can slightly reduce the risk of infections through
droplets, they are definitely not a suitable solution against air pollution.
Quoting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), part of the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services:
 ”Facemasks are loose-fitting, disposable masks that cover the nose
and mouth. These include products labeled as surgical, dental, medical
procedure, isolation, and laser masks.
Facemasks help stop
droplets from being spread by the person wearing them. They also keep
splashes or sprays from reaching the mouth and nose of the person
wearing the facemask. They are not designed to protect you against
breathing in very small particles. Facemasks should be used once and
then thrown away in the trash.“
If you are sick during a flu pandemic you should definitely wear a
facemask to prevent the
spreading of the virus. But otherwise, if you are seeking effective protection against a
polluted environment or a flu pandemy, you will definitely need a respiratory mask.
2008-04-24
这周我在繁密的出差当中，偶尔能用Blackberry看一眼邮件，不过完全没有可能回答读者任何问题。最近这两周有愈来愈多的博客读者给我发了邮件，问我了一堆问题，我很希望能给他们一个好的答案，不过这种可能性太小了，尤其是在这样的时间里。通过他们焦急的情绪，我忽然想到这个问题：如何获得开源软件的相关支持？其实这也是我的一个问题。于是乎我想到下面的一些东西。
搜索 是最主要的一个途径，你会发现很多一般问题都能获得答案，仔细选择和尝试不通的关键词
邮件组/论坛 每种开源软件都有这两种或者至少一种用户支持方式，其实这是用户互助的方式，用户之间的帮助往往更快。这些就是社区的载体，有些邮件组比较活跃，有些论坛比较活跃；例如：OpenNMS的邮件组就非常活跃，我订阅了其中的几个子项，问出问题往往能得到很快回复，其实OpenNMS的人每周有不人负责回答问题；Cacti的论坛就相当好，那里也是用户直接互相同享模板的主要地点，解决问题的功能也相当好。很多国内中文论坛也非常好，推荐一个http://www.itnms.net/ 更多的还需要你自己去发现。
线下用户团体 我参加国BLUG的线下活动，感受非常深刻，当你面对很多来自不同背景不同技术特长的OSS认识的时候，找到合适的高手并不是困难的事。不要躲在网络后面捣鼓开源软件，走到现实世界来享用它吧。
商业支持 有些开源软件有两个网址 oss.org 、oss.com；往往.com网址上有商业支持的说明，商业和开源并不矛盾，更具你的需求购买商业支持也是一个非常现实的方式。
聪明问问题 如果你遇到问题，首先要学会正确描述问题，问题的描述信息包括：软件版本、运行环境、出错情景，以及其它任何关键或者有用的信息。很多软件都运行在某种技术堆栈的最高层，下层的环节包括OS、DB、Web、Php语言等；你应该清楚如果是这些环节出错，那么你该去响应的社区求助，要问对人，不要问错人，也不要问傻问题。
友好的交流 每当我遇到一些开源高手的时候，幸运的是他们非常的nice，我可以轻松的问任何问题，无论简单、还是复杂。技术思想的沟通应该是一种愉快和友好的体验，保持一种谦虚正常的心态，这是自身素质和修养的表现。
语言 对所有非英语人士，英文是必须要会的，英语不灵的话需要好好补习补习。
支持我的读者 推荐通过留下comment的方式问你的问题，发给我邮件我很容易忽略，而comment是我必须处理的。如果我有答案的话，我会在3内给出回应；超过3天的话表明，很可能我目前还没有一个合适的答案。在留下问题的同时，一定多面出击寻找答案，别在这守株待兔。
关于此博客 定义如下：技术型、记录型、日志型、开放型和共享型。对我自己来说，它是我记录研究开源软件的一个载体，是我向需要这方面信息的人分享的一个窗口。它不具有任何商业性，不承诺提供任何程度的支持。通过这个博客有相投兴趣的人也能相互交流。
After some trivial changes to the source code, Songbird 0.5 has been built on Solaris SPARC b76 with Sun Studio 11 successfully by using the Songbird SFE spec. I've tried the tarball and pkgadd binaries on my SPARC b80 box. It works fine:) Thanks a lot to the Songbird guys(especially stevel and preed) on hosting the x86 builds and SPARC builds(tarball/pkgadd) for Songbird 0.5. Is Songbird ready to be delivered into Solaris Nevada? - The license issue has been sorted out. We won't link XULRunner with flash plugin by default. FYI, this is just a walk around for Songbird+XULRunner+flash plugin. We'd still hope that Songbird could re-license for this combination.
- Rhythmbox has just been re-licensed. That's to say, Solaris can ship it with mp3 decoder now. But we're still waiting for the status of sound-juicer and gnome-sound-recorder who also use gstreamer+mp3 decoder. Only when all of these are resolved, we can put mp3 decoder back into Solaris Nevada.
- Does it matter to put two media player applications to Solaris? How will users choose from them? Steve has given an introduction of Songbird. It's also mentioned that Songbird has plan to provide CD playback/ripping feature in the near future. That's great news! But I'm not sure there is interests to add sound recorder funtionality to it. The video part for Songbird works just fine after I built some extra codecses and installed into the system. Well, still need to have some improvement to it to compare with mplayer. Indiana might be a good vehicle to host Songbird somewhere.
2008-04-23
I am happy to announce that Satya Komaragiri is now my mentee for the Google Summer of Code, and will be working on extending Bootchart to support SystemTap. Satya is an undergraduate from Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, New Delhi, and she looks forward to making her first contribution to an opensource project.
Thanks Google for making this happen. Please welcome her to the Fedora family.
Technorati tags: gsoc, gsoc2008, linux, fedora, bootchart, systemtap
2008-04-22
Nine Inch Nails have for a long time been one of my favourite bands. The music may not appeal to everyone (not my parents anyway!), however the ideas and leadership of Trent Reznor are quite incredible. Even though this happened a little while ago, I know many people who would be interested in this who aren’t NIN fans and read my blog 
Last time NIN toured Australia, Reznor made the news by basically giving permission to “steal” his music, saying that the music companies have been ripping music lovers and artists off for years in a despicable manner. At the time he was still bound to a music label so you can imagine they weren’t too happy about this statement.
When he finished that contract, he decided to try something new. Something that has proven new models can work to the benefit of artists, and that openness and financial gain need not be mutually exclusive. I think his example will simultaneously inspire artists to explore new models and inject a great deal of concern into the large music labels and fear-mongers like Copyright Agency Limited (CAL).
So what did he do? The latest Nine Inch Nails album - “Ghosts” - has been released online with five options:
- A quarter of the album is available freely (”high-quality, DRM-free MP3s”) under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike Licence along with some beautiful artwork. People are strongly encouraged to remix these tracks
- The full album is available for sale from the website for USD$5 under normal copyright
- A 2xCD set - 2 audio CDs with 16 page booklet is available for USD$10
- A $75 deluxe edition - hardcover fabric slipcase with 2xCDs, 1 data DVD with all tracks in multi-track format and a Blu-ray disc
- Finally there is a special package available for USD$300 for hard core NIN fans. There were 2500 of these and they sold out in three days before the album even was released. That’s USD$750,000 alone!
All up it is clear NIN have made many millions from this album, and without the limitations and impediments of a record company.
It is completely possible now for many artists to create and publish their works online, make money, and maintain ownership of their work (as opposed to having to sign it over to a company, which authors typically do for a set period and musicians do for good). Massive global connectivity also gives artists the ability to take their talents globally in an instant!
Overbearing lock-down of artistic works (such as DRM or DMCA-like measures) benefit neither the artist nor their fans, and it takes just a little imagination and thought to balance the value of openness and the internet with the necessity of financial success for artists. Trent Reznor has done an incredible job at showing this in practical terms.
I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate.
Wired article
I changed my Google Reader and news clippings from Slashdot to Alterslash. Yes, it's some time behind Slashdot, but then again Slashdot is some time behind my other sources anyway... and Alterslash gives proper HTML, so you don't have to click Slashdot only to get the link to the actual useful article...
I'm not going to go back and retroactively change all old clippings, but I did that for the clippings of the last few days. Enjoy!
If you are using vsftpd with virtual users, as described in official example, and are suffering problems like this:
226 Transfer done (but failed to open directory).
(you may see above text in client or server log), you may consider using "virtual_use_local_privs". Per study of cpdohert, if you want vsftpd's virtual user follow local privileges, you have to use:
virtual_use_local_privs=YES
2008-04-21
Write a ~/.kde/share/config/kio_ftprc, with
[hostname]
textmode=true
Or use [] instead of [hostname] to make it used everywhere. Warning: this will likely mess up any transfers of binary files. In courtesy of David Faure.
I've been using the MoinMoin Wiki from Debian Testing for some time and this morning I found it was upgraded from 1.5.8 to 1.6.2, and unsurprisingly, my Wiki installation stopped working, very obviously some data migration may be necessary. After wasted some time, I found a good article: Thomas Waldmann's AnotherWayToMigrateFrom1.5To1.6. I couldn't find a good official migration guide like this, which told you that you must run cache cleaning and data migration. Hope this is useful to other MoinMoin users.
I made a OTRS 2.2.6 virtual machine for anyone who wants to test both OTRS and OTRS::ITSM. It was built on OpenSUSE 10.2, including OTRS 2.2.6 and OTRS::ITSM 1.0.94. OTRS::ITSM implements ITIL (R) focused IT service management. OTRS::ITSM 1.0.94 is still on Beta, you might have some bugs when using this virtual machine. Please download from my box.net, if you have an comment please just let me know. I’d like to invite you to improve this virtual machine if you have any good ideal.
Download it from here 点此下载。
Thanks BigYue.com for donated upload space. 感谢BigYue.com的空间捐助。
Credentials 登录密码如下
- OpenSuSE 10.2 : username / password is “root/ca1234″
- MySQL : username / password is “root/ “
- OTRS : admin username and password is root@localhost/root
Run 运行压缩文件中的虚拟机
- Download and install VM Player, the machine should have 1GB RAM at least.
- Un-zip OSS.rar in a partition, freespace must be 2.5+ GB.
- Double MartinLiu.cn.vmx and power on this machine.
- Click “keep” and OK button when you get a popup box。
- The network connection of virtual machine is ‘bridged’. You will see the ip address of this virtual machine at 5th line one the top of boot screen. NOTE: you should have DHCP server on your network.
Access 访问虚拟机
Tips of OTRS installation 安装经验
- Apache should have perl mod, configure perl for apache before you install OTRS. 这是一个Perl写的程序，所以在安装之前最好吧apache上的perl配置好，确认apache能运行perl的东西
- Make sure your database accepts packages over 5 MB in size. Increase max_allowed_packet in my.cnf to 20MB. 修改my.cnf中的max_allowed_packet 参数到20MB，否则ITSM的包安装有问题。
- OTRS需要一写附件的perl包的支持，手头最好有操作系统的安装dvd或者直接从网上安装。
Usage 用途
- You can use it for any purpose, if you need any support you will contact OTRS。你可以用于任何用途，本博客不提供技术支持，请联系OTRS的邮件列表。
- ITIL training, OTRS::ITSM implements ITIL (R) focused IT service management. 可以用于ITIL的培训，它能演示：incident management, problem management, configuration management 等。
- This virtual machine comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. DO NOT USE it for production. 仅供测试使用，切勿用于生产环境。
If you like OTRS, you may try Request Tracer
今天一个网友告诉我另外一个开源的类似系统Request Tracer ，有空的话回头也试试。
2008-04-18
最近两周最吸引我的TAG是这个词“cloud computing”。在我前一个文章中稍微展望了一下云计算的前景“云计算吧电能转化成计算能力，然后向用电一样的来使用，我们甚至不需要使用PC这样的个人信息话设备来管理我们的信息，所有的信息和信息的处理都在云上发生”。在了解了更多的信息之后，这些可能实现，但是这种巨变需要时间，而且可能是很长时间；清醒之后不得不佩服Google在这方面的宣传。
理性认识云计算的简单方式，扫扫盲：
很多厂商都在参与这个热点，open source也要加油，期待开源在这个领域的发展。
2008-04-17
Today China Telecom started to make all the large changes to IP ranges and routing to satisfy their IOC obligations (IE: censor-ectomy). Needless to say, today has been, very, very trying with worse than spotty reliability at times, especially for international connections - worse than the usual outhouse standards that they (China Telecom) manage to excel at normally.
This somewhat minor and small technical change (wholesale IP pool reassignment, routing changes and backbone back channel re-routes - please note sarcasm) that was only announced to us, via our provider (and about a billion conspicuously missing TCP packets….) when they were informed by way of them having to contact China Telecom once it became apparent that China Telecom had made a dogs breakfast out of it all around 4PM today - until well past 4:45.
My inference is that there was no official statement or warning before hand - as is par the course for large carriers around the world when they do major infrastructure upgrades/changes.
Maybe China Telecom and Pakistan Telecom should start a joint venture? Their sales pitch could be something along the lines of: “We’re crap at our jobs, suffer from technical and managerial incompetence and don’t mind how many innocent businesses that we screw over!”
There is light at the end of the tunnel though, there are some excellent telco’s in China, like China Net Com, China Comm and some HK based outfits. Too bad they don’t get the luxury of govt protection as well (I am thinking of Telstra/Telecom in Australia right about now) - seems market forces don’t mean crap for China Telecom - but they mean everything for the China Steal industry when dealing with BHP and Rio Tinto.
I digress - but the hypocrisy is glaring.
Advice to China Telecom.
- Plan
- Plan some more
- Review
- Review the plan
- Practice plan
- Practice Exit Strategy
- Review Results of all practices
- Solicit feedback from large customers and Tier 2 ISP’s
- Augment and refine plan based on feedback
- Inform all customers and allow tier 2 ISP’s to inform their customers…. maybe with a few weeks of notice?
- Execute
Not hard really. Not hard at all. So are we just incompetent or stupid? I see no other alternatives apart from “both”. No wonder their share price is tanking and 3G is not operational in 2008 either!
Time for bed - but I am just receing emails that other servers have been trying to deliver since 4PM today……
Share This
A good tool, pdftk, can be used to manipulate PDF files, changing meta-data, page-juggling, etc., you name it! And it's GPLed. Easy, peasy, japanesey.
Beijing announced last monday some measures that will be taken against pollution to bring "green games" to the athletes this summer. The measures will officially be in effect for two months (from July 20 to Sept. 20) and will include:
- two-months halt of construction (even spray painting outdoors will be banned)
- traffic restriction to ban half of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles during the Olympics (Aug. 8-24)
- 19 heavy polluting factories will be forced to either reduce pollution emissions by 30 percent or stop activity
Since most of Beijing's pollution is due to emissions from surrounding provinces, Du Shaozhong also mentionned that some of these measures will also take effect in five provinces and municipalities around Beijing (Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong and Inner Mongolia).
During the press conference, Du Shaozhong also said:
"Just tell everybody they don't have to worry."
Well, I guess athletes and tourists don't have to worry for the games period, but what about Beijingers like me who are still exposed to heavy pollution everyday?
Sources: International Herald Tribune, Aujourd'hui la Chine (article in French)
"One more such victory will utterly undo me!" said Pyrrhus of Epirus after defeating the Romans at Asculum in 279 BC.
Although won, this battle and a previous one cost him such devastating losses that he was unable to eventually win the war. Today, this.....  | Compare your salary | Use the IT salary benchmark wizard and know the average
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2008-04-16
 Ganglia是一个用来监控群集和网格计算环境的软件。它是可以扩展的分布式监控系统，它基于多播协议，数据存储和传输的格式都是基于开源的标准：XML/XDR/RRDTool/APR/Apache/php等。
应用Ganglia的几个理由：
- 在一个点上监控包含很多服务器的群集，单个cluster内服务器的数量比较多，需要从整体看某个cluster的可用性和性能，也要能看到单独某个机器的运行情况。
- 监控分布式的cluster环境，例如跨网段和地域的灾备的环境。
- 需要监控系统能分N级的查看方式，以银行为例：北数据中心–>网络银行业务–>个人网银系统–>web server 群集–> WebSvr001；可以按业务逻辑和系统架构逻辑。
- 需要7*24*365的监控整个系统，能得到可用性、性能和容量等方面的报表。
应用Ganglia的几个好处：
- 监控能力的无限扩展，被管理服务器数量达数千个甚至根多。
- 纯web前端，apache和php的应用页面方便定制
- 强壮的系统结构，并且具备可以任意扩展采集数据KPI的特点
- 适合高性能计算或者网格计算环境。
Ganglia应用需要注意的方面：
- 在每一个节点上需要部署一个代理程序，考虑到对代理配置的变更的工作量，在部署代理之前，需要彻底的分析需求，尽量减少部署过程中配置变更带来的多于调试的工作量。
- 部署后期的变更工作，如果比较频繁的话将导致后台维护工作量增大，可以考虑使用一些开源的软件分发和自动化配置管理的工具。这些配置的初始化工作可以与OS的安装部署工作一起考虑。
它被很多大学和专业机构研究并使用，所以有非常多的专业文档可以参考，哪行文档多分析了Ganglia的系统架构和特点，多系统的原理介绍的非常细致。下面是我收集的几个关于这个软件的文档请参考。并且在它们的网站上也可以看到很多相关的资源连接，都是非常好的实施方面的详细文档。
If you need more detail please take look those documents below.
I’m hitting myself for not taking a picture, but, oh well.
In my office building, there’s a sort-of cafeteria where there are many different kinds of food stalls, and you put money on a charge card.
Well, apparently, the landlord is kicking these guys out (the whole operation) because they claim they haven’t paid rent since moving in. After getting off the elevator, the landlord posted a big A2-sized notice stating what’s going on and how today is the last day! They are also making announcements every 5 minutes or so informing the patrons to hurry up and get their money back. I can tell the landlord is damn pissed!
Of course, the cafeteria management is claiming otherwise, but nonetheless, there was a mad dash to reclaim the stored money - big mash up of people at the counter, tempers flaring, kind of an interesting situation.
I got my RMB 103 back, so I’m happy.
So, now, 100+ people don’t have a job to go to tomorrow, and my colleagues and I will have to find alternative ways of getting lunch (along with the rest of the building occupants). All around ma fan, no?
2008-04-15
On Feb 20th, 2008, Tina and I attended the Eating the Linux Kernel party: "Thanks to the Linux Foundation and China OSS Promotion Union we're organizing a diner with all the great speakers of the Linux Developer Symposium. This is going to be the one opportunity to share food and thoughts with people like Andrew Morton, Jonathan Corbet, Dave Neary, Jeff Waugh and many many others. In total probably 20 specialists from the kernel development, Linux embedded or Gnome development exclusively for Beijing LUG members..." Fortunately I had a chance to have a talk to Andrew Morton who seated besides me: (This is not a verbal transcript of the talk, nor has Andrew Morton endorsed it and he has no responsibility for whatever listed here. This is just a fast record of a gossip and please don't take it seriously.) YL: Hi Andrew, you look tired, are you working busy on 2.6.25? AM: Yes, it takes me lot of time. YL: When will you leave Beijing? AM: Friday. Take a tour tomorrow (Thursday) in Beijing. YL: Can I ask you some questions about the kernel? Why Linux doesn't maintain a stable ABI. Currently each time the kernel updates, all 3rd party modules will have to be recompiled. And this is really annoying for many users. AM: What 3rd party modules? YL: For example, the one of Madwifi, and fglrx, the proprietary driver for ATI cards. AM: Are they GPL? YL: Oh, no, part of it is a non-GPL blob. So I see the reason why the kernel doesn't support them well is that they are not free software. So can I say that the rumor is true that you intentionally break the ABI to make using 3rd party modules difficult? AM: No, we don't break them _intentionally_. We just don't care about it. If we were to support a stable ABI, it will make the development and maintenance of the kernel much more difficult. We won't support non-GPL code by compromising free software. YL: But if you made the installation of some proprietary drivers easier, more users would come to use Linux. And if you had more users, you have more developers. And this will promote the development of the kernel. AM: Yeah, it's true. But we just can't support proprietary software by ways of compromising free software. YL: Do you have a plan, or a long-term goal of the kernel development? AM: No, we have no plan. And this is just the point of kernel development (and maybe other free software project). The users decide where the kernel goes. If you need a function, just as he (a man sit besides AM) just said, if you need to support Chinese display in Linux, just implement it and send me the patch, and if it's good enough, we'll include it in the kernel. YL: If the kernel itself has no concrete plan for what functions should be supported and what not, and accepts everything good enough from the users, won't the kernel became bloated quickly? AM: No it won't. Everything is configurable. If you don't need it, disable it. YL: But the kernel is already very large, the binary is 20Mb, and the source codes are somewhat more than 300Mb. AM: I think it's not a problem. The core part of the kernel takes only 1Mb memory at run-time. And I see 300Mb is not a problem for today's hard drive. YL: The kernel is so large, and has too many things in it. I see another problem with this approach. Say if you found a bug in a driver for an ancient piece of hardware and you updated the kernel. Then all users have to update just to pull in something they'll never used. AM: Oh, I've to say sorry for that. You can say it's a problem. YL: Can we just split this large kernel into several loosely coupled projects? Say, one project for a kernel core, one project for file systems, one project for the network layer and some other projects for drivers. AM: That maybe to difficult for maintenance. YL: So do you thing micro-kernel would solve this problem, or are you a fan of monolithic kernel? AM: Monolithic kernel is much more efficient and easy to develop. YL: Another question, does the kernel team have a plan to add automatic test to cover some key functions? AM: No, auto test doesn't work as we tried before. I've been following the LTP project for more than 2 years, and only 2 bugs were found by those automatic tests. Most of the kernel bugs are only reproducible on some special pieces of hardware and you just have no way to use automatic test to cover them. For the core part, things like scheduler, file system, etc., is used by everyone so they are thorough tested by everyone, and for the other parts, like various drivers for special hardware, only those have that hardware can test it. So auto test has few use for this. YL: Do you think the kernel can be better maintained or developed by a team? AM: No. It won't get better if you put a lot people in a building. The communication would take too much time. I see it's efficient enough to communication by using mailing list. I get bored soon during a long meeting so I just leave and ask them to send mails and code snips to me and we can have better understanding on technical problems. YL: Do you think attending symposiums, lectures and parties like this is a waste of time? Do you think you can better use the time for hacking? AM: Oh, I don't like this before I go, it's not good to travel for long time on plane. But when the event was finished I thought "oh, it's not bad." These are things for promotion. For example, before I went to Japan some years ago, there's few patch from Japanese developers. And after some lectures there, the patches from Japan now skyrocketed to be around 20% among all patches. So it has a snowball effect and that's why I attended these events. I hope I can get more patch from Chinese developers. YL: Do you have a laptop? AM: Yes, it's a ThinkPad. YL: Oh, I'm using a ThinkPad too. But I have to use proprietary blobs to support the wireless as well as ATI video card. Though I don't use 3D acceleration much, I do need the 2D acceleration for daily work. The open source driver is slow on 2D performance. AM: Yeah, ThinkPad has poor 2D performance but it's bearable. I just use the default open source driver. For wireless my laptop is running ipw3945 driver and that's the only binary blob on my laptop. YL: So does your suspend and hibernation work well? AM: No, they don't. (shrug) YL: What's your main work time and for how long you sleep a day? AM: Huh! I work most of the time, and sleep from around 3am to, say, 11am. YL: I remember you wrote an article said that the 2.6 kernel is slowly getting buggier. AM: Yes. People should spend more time on fixing bugs. YL: What's your personal plan for the following years? AM: I may quit in about 1 or 2 years and then I won't spend much time on maintenance. I'll continue to work on the kernel, perhaps focusing on bug fixing. YL: So how about the mm tree? AM: No need to worry, some other people will set their own branches to take the position of it. YL: Have Google asked you to do something special for them? AM: No, they just pay me to do whatever I want to do.
Have lived with Subversion for many years and finally I found this (link to outside my blog) simple little trick. :)
When writing spec of RPM, often you need to write some special instructions that are needed only on some distros or versions, but not all. You can use this:
# Do something for FC4 and beyond.
%if 0%{?fedora} >= 4
# ...
%endif
I installed VMware Server 1.0.5 on Debian 4.0 Etch (i686) today and couldn't start vmware-console due to this error:
(vmware:20921): libgnomevfs-WARNING **: Cannot load module `/usr/lib/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules/libfile.so' (/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6))
To fix this problem, start VMware by running:
VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes vmware
For more information on this please click the title, which leads to a post on VMware community website.
 We’ve been having some renovation going on in our hutong (the alley where we live) the past few weeks. They were cleaning, redoing the walls, repainting some doors, a needed cleanup if you ask me. And I was wondering whether that was a few of our neighbors who got together and hired a construction company to do it (and save cost) or whether it was the government being kind enough to care about how we feel when going back home.
Well I got my answer last night when I got back home and had a free paint job on my front door and my window frames. Unfortunately they didn’t tell us at all, so the windows who used to be a nice green are now brown in color and the door having been painted while closed has of course the old paint all around the frame inside. Oh, and yes, they also painted the door handle! Hard to complain though, don’t you think?
2008-04-14
This post isn't about me but I will start by saying how astute I am to have recognized Linda Skrocki's greatness many months before a major industry magazine did the same. You might remember I recommended her blog last May as a good tool for staying digitally literate.
Well last Friday Skrocki was recognized by ReadWriteWeb as one of the "New Robert Scobles", meaning she's one of the leading corporate social media evangelists of our time. Kudos Skrocki! Twitter on! :)
Now I prefer to build amarok by using SRPM from latest Fedora on CentOS/RHEL. Though I think the following method should still work, it's not the best solution. The first problem is that Fedora 6 is no longer supported and you get no security patches, the second is that some packages from Fedora 6 Extra repo conflicts with similar packages from RPMForge, which is a must for nearly all CentOS/RHEL systems.
- Install livna and rpmforge repo.
- Add fedora-extras.repo:
[fedora-extras]
name=Fedora Extras 6 - i386
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/extras/6/i386/
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=extras-6&arch=i386
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
includepkgs=libnjb* libtunepimp* libifp* libmtp* libgpod* libofa* amarok* xine-lib wavpack
You see, we should include necessary packages only.
- Edit CentOS-Base.repo, add following lines:
# exclude libgpod 0.4.0 to install libgpod 0.4.2 from FC6 repo for Amarok
exclude=libgpod
- Add fedora-updates.repo:
[fedora-updates]
name=Fedora Core 6 - $basearch - Updates
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-fc6&arch=$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
protect=0
includepkgs=libnjb* libtunepimp* libifp* libmtp* libgpod* libofa* amarok*
- Edit rpmforge.repo, add:
exclude=xine-lib
2008-04-11
Come again Google summer of code is here, I'm a little bit late to join being a mentor. Work has been driving me a little crazy here. But I did try to provide myself as mentor for openSUSE project. I will try to ge |
