Search Results: "spa"

13 July 2006

Enrico Zini: First pratical lesson

Notes after today's training session. Small index of most used shell commands:
  • ls - list directory contents
  • cp - copy files and directories
  • mv - move (rename) files
  • rm - remove files or directories
  • find - search for files in a directory hierarchy
  • cat - concatenate files and print on the standard output
  • more - file perusal filter for crt viewing
  • less - opposite of more (quit with 'q')
  • cd - Change the current directory to DIR. (use "help cd" instead of "man cd")
  • mkdir - make directories
  • rmdir - remove empty directories
Small index of commands useful for combining in pipelines:
  • grep, egrep, fgrep, rgrep - print lines matching a pattern
  • tail - output the last part of files
  • head - output the first part of files
  • sort - sort lines of text files
  • uniq - report or omit repeated lines
  • sed - stream editor
  • wc - print the number of newlines, words, and bytes in files
Problems found during the lesson:

  • You set the system default locale to Amharic, and the gdm login will be in Amharic input mode. We didn't find out how to switch it back to input roman characters. Right click on the input field to set the input method doesn't work. Since usernames are not in Amharic, you're locked out.

  • So you CTRL+ALT+F1, login and try dpkg-reconfigure locales. On Ubuntu Dapper, it does not work anymore.

  • So you dig and dig and dig and finally find that you can force a locale in /etc/default/gdm (but not in /etc/gdm/locale.conf, nor in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf).

  • Then the internet works for a bit and you look up how to reconfigure locales in Ubuntu. Turns out you have to use localeconf, which is not installed by default, is not in universe and thus not on the CDs, and needs to be downloaded from the Internet.

  • The Ubuntu wiki is all on https, which defeats any attempt of proxy caching.

  • An Internet proxy needs to be configured 3 times: in Gnome, in Firefox and in Synaptic (well, apt). This is especially tricky when you forgot to setup the proxy in Synaptic and seemingly unrelated applications fail, like the Ubuntu language selector, which internally invokes the package manager to download missing langpacks.

  • Some short descriptions in the NAME section of manpages are hard to understand, or wrong. Noted on apt-get, apt-cache and less. Top prize goes to apt-cache: 

    NAME
       apt-cache - APT package handling utility -- cache manipulator
DESCRIPTION
       [...] apt-cache does not manipulate the state of the system but
       does provide operations to search and generate interesting output
       from the package metadata. [...]
    So apt-cache is a manipulator that doesn't manipulate. A possible improvement can be "query the APT package cache".

  • The language selector in Ubuntu Breezy doesn't really exit and keeps the package database locked. This seems to be fixed in Dapper, and probably had been fixed in some Breezy update. System updates here are a problem: my Dapper (with some Universe things in it) wanted to download more than 120Mb of data, and the Uni network was giving me 14Kbps. It's been a nice opportunity to teach about fuser -uva and kill.

  • dict, squid and many other packages from 'main' are not on the normal Ubuntu CDs: is there an easy way to build a CD with them? Or do Ubuntu CDs with extra packages already exist? I'll have to find out.

  • cupsys has documentation outside of /usr/share/doc, in /usr/share/cups/doc-root.

  • man works on all commands, except cd, which is an internal shell command and thus needs help instead of man. I should remember to ponder about autogenerating manpages from help output.

  • Is there an index-like manpage with a list of the core Unix commands and their short descriptions? It there's not, it's easy to generate: 

    #!/bin/sh
DIR=$ 1:-"/bin" 
(
find $DIR   while read FILE
do
   if [ -x $FILE ] && ! [ -d $FILE ]
   then
           LANG=C COLUMNS=2000 man  basename $FILE    \
                 grep ^SYNOPSIS -B 100   grep ^NAME -A 100   \
                 tail -n +2   head -n +2   \
                 grep -v '^[ \t]*$'
   fi
done
)   sort   uniq   sed 's/^ \+//'
    Try running it on /bin and /sbin: it's great!. Also, since it doesn't redirect stderr, it nicely exposes a number of manpage problems.
Lots of bugs to report when I come home: from here it'll take ages, and lots of money on the hotel internet connection, and some are Ubuntu-specific so I'd need to do everything online with Malone. As usual, teaching is one of the best ways to find bugs. I propose an Etch training session a month before release. Other things to do:
  • Find more info about that Wikipedia live CD with Wikipedia browsable without the Internet.
  • Make a collection of Free technical E-books: even those Indian low-cost book editions are too expensive here, so E-books mean a lot.

12 July 2006

Randall Donald: I have a large fridge at home and I've been eating a lot of pork chops

MX1000: I've been trying to get horizontal scrolling working on my logitech mx1000 mouse with the tilt wheel. So far no luck. I've used the various howtos to get all the other buttons going but the tilt wheel is still alluding me. If anybody has this working I'd like to know how. Xorg7 of course.


Multiple Monitors: So I've been running with multiple montors for 5 years now at work and at home and I've settled in on standard way of using them. Initially I used xinerama on a Matrox card at work on two 17" screens. I make heavy use of virtual desktops/workspaces (whatever you want to call them) so I didn't like switching both monitors at once too much. At home and my current job I use dual head on NVIDIA cards (not Twinview). I tend to leave the second monitor as things I monitor while switching between email, terminals, browsers and anything else on the first head. At work I also make use of x2x to send input to some server monitors wrapping around my desk. Little X tricks impress the designers.


RIP Syd Barrett.

Bdale Garbee: Flag Burning

It's rare that I find a letter to the editor of a newspaper profound enough to be worth tearing out and saving. Today was one of those days. I am pleased to discover that the full text is visible online, so I can share Ashley Frohwein's letter Insight on Fourth of July flag burning here. Sadly, I'm not always proud of my country... but some of the principles on which it was founded remain as noble and inspiring as ever!

Simon Law: GCC Summit 2006


Forklift
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
I look forward to going to Ottawa every June for the GCC Summit. I've gone every year since it started in 2003 and have no intention of stopping. That's because it feels so much like a family reunion. Let me explain. The core people who have worked on GCC have been doing it for years. They're people who used to work for Cygnus Solutions, back before they were bought out by Red Hat. They're people who work for CodeSourcery. And they're people working for Intel, HP, and IBM who are compiler writers first and employees second. And they all know each other like dysfunctional family. When I first showed up at the first Summit, Jim and I were the new kids. We had just finished typesetting the Using GCC manual that was published by GNU Press. So I went around absorbing compiler technology by osmosis, and trying to get as many developers to sign by pre-press draft. The nice thing about the GCC Summit is that there is only one track of talks. So you never have to choose between two talks that you're interested in. It's a little bad though, since you're always tempted to check your e-mail when there's a lull in the interestingness of the presentations. This year, the focus seemed to be on profiler-driven optimizations. I'm not really sure those are very profitable, as they actually require developers to run their applications as part of the build system. And we all know that humans are lazy. But perhaps I underestimate the heroics that build-systems people will go through to squeeze out that extra ounce of performance. Danny Berlin and Kenneth Zadeck talked about dataflow analysis and getting rid of the terrible implementation inside GCC. I had heard horror stories about flow.c before, but have yet to actually look inside it. Their talk has disuaded me even more. The last thing that sticks in my mind is the GDB talk, which seemed to be the only toolchain talk this year. But these things wax and wane. I skipped out on the afterparty this year, which meant that I couldn't help with the monumental challenge that awaits us after each summit. But I shall return.

11 July 2006

Enrico Zini: First day in Addis

First day in Addis Ababa, after the introductory session for this 10 days Linux training. Interesting new quotes I picked up from the excellent presentation of Dr. Dawit: 
Much that I bound I could not free
Much that I freed returned to me
(I didn't manage to transcribe the attribution)
And this one for Bubulle, about translation: 
When you speak to me in my language
you speak to my heart
when you speak to me in English
you speak to my head
(sb.)
Incomplete list of questions I've been asked, in bogosort -n order:
  • How do I get support?
  • Are the configuration files always the same accross different distributions?
  • What is the level of interoperatibility between the various Linux distributions? And between different Unix-like systems?
  • Does plug and play work well when I change hardware?
  • Can I access NTFS partitions?
  • How do I play multimedia files in restricted formats?
  • I heard that NFS has security problems: can it be secured, or are there other file sharing alternatives?
  • Can I access a desktop remotely?
  • Can I install Linux on a computer where there's Windows already? Do I need to partition?
  • Can I be sure to find drivers for my hardware?
I'm happy to find that we've been successful in building more and more good answers for these questions.

Martin F. Krafft: I thought those days were over

Julien has reason to be proud. But his sysrqd webpage delivered a clear stab to my eye:
[...] Authentication is made by clear password.
I really thought those days were over! Having a clear-text protocol with single-password authentication may make sysrqd responsive under high load, it'll also ensure that I'd never touch it. I think it should be possible to implement at least digest authentication or even PAM without being too heavy on the system.

Matthew Palmer: User Interfaces as Slideshows

Backstory: I recently found a new game. It's called Oolite, and is (probably unsurprisingly) a clone of that great old spacefaring game, Elite (for BBC Micro and C64, amongst others). This game (unlike the original!) uses OpenGL and hardware rendering, so it was a good motivation to get accelerated rendering going on my laptop (never bothered before; it's unlikely that DRI is going to make an Xterm run any faster, after all). The problem with DRI under Ubuntu Breezy on my laptop is that it makes the machine unstable. Every couple of hours, my screen would freeze, and I'd get a lovely collection of randomly-coloured 80x25 text-mode characters on my screen, flashing madly at me. That's the signal for "game over", apparently, and I'd have to reboot. Incidentally, this used to happen, but very rarely, before I turned DRI on, so it's not really DRI-specific, but it went from occasional irritation to regular irritation. End backstory.
So it was time to upgrade. "Dapper's Out", thought I. "May as well see what all of the fuss is about". I think the phrase "oops" correctly describes the result. For reasons which I have not fully determined yet, my system is now Dog Slow. (That's the technical term, anyway; I've got a few more colourful phrases for it that I'm using privately). What was, previously, a nice quick Xterm launch is now a slowly progressing set of concentric rectangles culminating in the eventual, lacklustre, appearance of a terminal window. Oolite, my new obsession, is like playing Quake3 (the last OpenGL game I really got into, many years ago) on a P-II 300 with no 3d graphics card -- here a frame, there a frame, oh, by the way, you died a couple of minutes ago. (And yes, before you ask, glxinfo says "direct rendering: Yes".) This isn't an old machine -- it's a Thinkpad T43, with gobs of RAM and a 1.7GHz processor. It ran Breezy like a charm. Now, my machine looks like a powerpoint presentation. I've got to put something onto my wife's "new" (P-III 700) laptop -- lord only knows what it'll think of Dapper. Other strangenesses I've noticed so far include: Ultimately, I think that the cause of my problem may be closely related to that last point. I need to find out what's chewing my machine's CPU and kill it dead. Oh won't that be fun. Well, enough moaning. Time to find the cause(s) of these problems and nail it/them to the floor.

Roland Mas: File set split utility, or the backpack problem

Joey Hess is looking for a tool that allows him to split sets of files across subsets with a known maximal size, for archival on DVD. That sounds a bit like what my ~/bin/prepare-gallery-backups.pl script does. Actually, my script doesn’t operate on a per-file granularity, but per-directory (think photo gallery albums), but I suppose it would be rather simple to adapt. Also, there’s no guarantee of optimality, and it may well be that you’ll end up with a few subsets more than what is strictly needed. I’m not trying to solve the notoriously hard “backpack problem", just looking for a “good enough for me” solution. Now if Joey wants to recode that properly and add it to moreutils, I’ll be a happy man. I was about to paste just the relevant excerpt of my script, but since only a few lines would have been omitted, I figured what the hell. Here’s the whole script, licensed under a “send me a lot of money if you like, otherwise do what you want” license.
#! /usr/bin/perl use File::Find ; $maxsize = 700000 ;
$remote_dir = "/srv/www/gallery.placard.fr.eu.org" ;
$rsync_dir = "/space/backups/gallery-backup/rsync/" ;
$albumsdir = "/space/backups/gallery-backup/rsync/gallery.placard.fr.eu.org/albums" ;
$backupdir = "/space/backups/gallery-backup/backups" ; # system "rsync -avL --rsh=ssh --delete clodomir:$remote_dir $rsync_dir" ;
system "rsync -avL –rsh=ssh –delete mirobole:$remote_dir $rsync_dir" ; if ( (defined $ARGV[0])
     && ($ARGV[0] eq "–make-isos") )     File::Find::find( wanted => \&wanted, follow => 1 , $albumsdir);
      for $i (@alist)
          $fname = $i ;
          $fname =~ s,.*/,, ;
          $du = qx/du -hk $i/ ;
          $size = $du ;
          $size =~ s,\s.*,, ;
          $albums $fname size = $size ;
          $albums $fname path = $i ;
             foreach $album (sort $albums $b size <=> $albums $a size keys %albums)
          $size = $albums $album size ;
          $name = $album ;
          $name =~ s,.*/,,;
          if($cur + $size > $maxsize)
              my @bplist = @curlist ;
              my %entry = ('list' => \@bplist,
                           'size' => $cur) ;
              push @backpacks, \%entry ;
              $cur = 0 ;
              @curlist = () ;
          
          $cur += $size ;
          push @curlist, $name ;
      
      my @bplist = @curlist ;
      my %entry = ('list' => \@bplist,
                   'size' => $cur) ;
      push @backpacks, \%entry ;       $i = 1 ;
      foreach $bp (@backpacks)
          print "Backpack $i (size $bp-> size ) :\n" ;
          $bpdir = $backupdir . "/backup-$i" ;
          system "mkdir -p $bpdir" ;
          foreach $n (@ $bp-> list )
              print "\t$n\n" ;
              system "cp -a $albumsdir/$n $bpdir/" ;
          
          system "mkisofs -quiet -r -o $backupdir/backup-$i.iso $bpdir" ;
          system "rm -rf $bpdir" ;
          $i++ ;
      
   sub wanted
    my ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid);     (($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid) = lstat($_)) ;
# print "$File::Find::name ; $File::Find::dir\n" ;     if ((-f $File::Find::name) && ($File::Find::dir eq $albumsdir))
# print "Keeping file $File::Find::name\n" ;
        push @alist, "$File::Find::name" ;
    
    if ((-d $File::Find::name) && ($File::Find::dir eq $albumsdir)
        && ($File::Find::name ne $albumsdir))
# print "Keeping dir $File::Find::name\n" ;
        push @alist, "$File::Find::name" ;
    

Joey Hess: file set split utility

I'm looking for a simple tool that, given a set of files, can split it into subsets that are smaller than a given size. It doesn't need to split individual files, just pack them into the subsets in an efficient way. It could actually move files into subdirs to create the subsets, or could just output a list of what goes where. Think archiving files -- lots of files -- to DVD. Doing this manually gets old, fast. I can't seem to find this tool. Am I not searching for the right terms to find it, or does it need to be written (or dug out of someone's ~/bin/) and added to moreutils?
Update: Lots of feedback on this one. This problem is called the knapsack problem (which I should have known). Specifically, the 0-1 varient. It's NP-hard. The best alogorithm I've seen suggested is to go through the files, largest first, and put them into the first volume that will hold them. This is implemented in packcd. Debian's mkisofs package has a dirsplit that uses a much worse approach, randomising the list, putting each file into the first volume that will hold them, and iterating 500 times to find the least wasteful packing. Yugh. On the other hand, it does know various things about how much space filenames will take on the CD. sync2cd can do basic splitting, although not smart ordering, as well as lots of other stuff. I still think it would be nice to have a generic unix tool that could take du input and output the list of files and which set to put them in. There are, after all, applications for this beyond packing CDs..

10 July 2006

Amaya Rodrigo: Debian Swirl


Debian Swirl
Originally uploaded by inkedmn.
And I thought mine was cool...

Christine Spang: zomg new laptop

My ThinkPad X40 ThinkPad X40s are hot.

9 July 2006

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: Moved

I’ve been pretty much unable to pursue any of my hobby projects for a couple of months now. One of the reasons was my move (1, 2), which thankfully is now done! I lived in student housing for almost nine years, from September 1997 until June 2006. The first three years I lived in a three-person shared apartment, and in May 2000 I moved to a two-person apartment. All this time my flatmates were assigned by the housing foundation without consulting me. Most of them were pretty decent, and none of them was really bad, but at the end I just couldn’t take it any more. When I got my last flatmate last September, I got so stressed about it that I started getting home-phobia. It was time to start thinking about moving out. In May, I found a rather nice place. It is a studio apartment with 31 square meters of living space, and includes a full bath, a small kitchen and an alcove, with a very nice view of forest and cutting. It is located less than 200 meters from my old place, and a little higher up the hill, with a much nicer view. The rent is very nice, and in general there is little to complain about the place. Did I mention the view yet? On June 1, I got my keys and brought in my spring mattress. The old place was not packed up yet, so I spent a lot of time there, but also shopped around for stuff for the new place, including a beautiful lamp. You’ve seen this picture already, but just to remind people, this is where I slept the first three weeks: [A picture of the alcove with a mattresss and a lamp.] My father visited me for a few days in the middle of June, and between the two of us we managed to pack up most of the old place. Father also disassembled my furniture, and we moved most of the pieces over. My mother then visited me on the Juhannus weekend. Neither of us have a car, so we moved a lot of stuff by sheer muscle power. She also installed the curtains that she had brought for me from her storage, and reassembled most of the furniture. The last week of June I spent moving stuff by muscle power, but it wasn’t enough, so Mother came back on June 30, helping cleaning up the old place, and Father visited again with a car and helped move the rest of my stuff. Mother also installed more curtains: in the following picture, she is sowing the curtains to make them be of the correct length: [Image] So, thanks to my parents’ immense help, I now have a hugely nice studio apartment: [A picture of the alcove as it is now]

Steve Kemp: And now she is a dancefloor tragedy

This weekend I’ve started getting militant about fighting spam. Every single spam mail I’ve recieved today and yesterday I have reported to the originators ISP. Most likely this won’t achieve much, but it made me feel slightly better. It also gave me a new appreciation for exactly how much spam I receive, and where from. My top three sources of spam are: To combat this I’ve done two things: My mailserver will now refuse to accept mails from hosts without reverse DNS. I think that is a legal thing to do, but I’ve never done it before. That combined with greylisting has cut my spam counts by about 200 messages a day. The only other thing I’ve done this weekend which was at all computery was to start writing a test suite for the Apache module I’ve been working on - which is now included in Debian sid.

8 July 2006

Uwe Hermann: ASCII art spam

Whoa, those spammers are getting really desperate now, aren't they? Today in my inbox: 
apy8       0lyk   b8xvdtfa        glb13            0uurqjl     5xju3p0jb            1uk9z
 yhak     o3vl    tytjx4ui        m6frp           64zx9238iq   128lkxk2wh           fzqpv
 mkqj     g1tn    wgd293sv       s3mnhaq        y1vvng731dsy   f39iqddc65f         5fgnwcx
 t9ba4   wg8j1      ucq8         uviyoz6        4k2g4     fo   wz0i   q7pn         hqblemz
  pu9t   1dwr       mocp         nlihfws       mm3w0           j4zb   0fzh         o6nljyq
  0luy   to8a       ljd0        5bi8 zpfh      93ab            tbpr   hztc        foza p7sf
  5vw7t a4nce       2fjr        oxto 2t0r      37v3   mxvfq0   x6qtw1j6me         ye51 b7pt
   pwtx gg5l        mtfr       h7390 0voxg     btc8   t7vj3n   twn72qv80         92sj8 8qhuc
   4xoq 9m3u        r3i0       4dgf   2k8l     o6u8   eegabt   70vrl5ukj         6bpp   u336
    9p5tqyo         ixkj       7mkcss82ko2     6dgtj    tdei   eayi tnjgi        ujh0x073p63
    jbxotva         alrs      ubvdw9kele9rs     ed7bi   vbjz   0tlb b1svn       15xh90ojyj56u
    zzfla7m       3o1jnrrc    kvlxt74rl46l1     yy5mng2kl7dj   8bmq  793jb      qzqkjf00glzsf
     e6doi        hfcqgi2t    w8bd     vydk      elqfyxtdk7g   upqf   ippbf     ca5l     cgrm
     npnrd        dzsgo4jz   q9zo       co4g       6kabvxc     sqpy    5ds54   qhpb       krpw

Martin Michlmayr: Madrid: hasta luego

My stay in Madrid has come to an end and I'm currently sitting at Ralf Treinen's place in Paris. I had a pretty good time in Madrid. Basically, I just did the usual stuff (i.e., too much Debian, too little work for my research) but there are a number of nice guys in the group I was working in and we had lots of fun. Earlier this week, we went to Teo's place who has this massive swimming pool. He recently organized a BBQ, which was good as well, with lots of Sangria... A few weeks ago, Diego (at whose place I stayed), Alvaro and his cute girlfried Yaiza went bowling. It was really good fun and it turned out that Diego is a real master, scoring several strikes after each other! Now that summer is coming, a number of people are leaving for other places. Israel went to Canada for three months a few weeks ago, Gregorio left for the UK a few days ago and my stay is over too. Overall I had a pretty good time, even though I'm not particularly happen that I didn't manage to go to the beach once even though I was in Spain for three months... The last time I was here at Ralf's place in Paris was just before DebConf1 in Bordeaux in 2001, which feels like eons ago. Anyway, I'm heading out to take a look at Notre Dame.

7 July 2006

Jordi Mallach: Jo no t'espere

Not at all! The Pope is visiting Val ncia next weekend. According to Rita Barber Noya, the mayor of the city during the last 16 years (I mildly remember her predecessor), All Valencians will welcome him warmly . Well, not exactly all. The Pope's visit was decided by the previous one a few years ago, and Ratzinger, shortly after being elected his successor, announced he would still visit Val ncia for the World Meeting of the Family. In principle, I would have no problems with him come visit the city, even if I have no sympathy at all towards his figure or the role of the Catholic church either in Spain or other places of the world. For example, I think the last two popes are direct responsables for the AIDS drama in many countries of the African continent. It is unacceptable and quite unethical that still today, after decades of fight against this deadly plage, the Vatican keep saying no to the usage of condoms. As I said, I would have no problems with his visit, if it was a normal visit. But no, this is the Val ncia, and the government likes to show that they can do things in a grand way. Not so long ago, Ratzinger visited Poland, and from what I've read, the authorities there didn't organise anything grotesque like what's going on here, in the sense that people living in the areas affected could more or less keep on with their lives, and the visit didn't cost much of their tax money. Val ncia won't work like this. Anyone who has visited us will probably know what I mean: the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ci ncies, Terra M tica, the America's Cup harbour... are examples of pharaonic projects, all funded with public money that are real black holes of budgets that never end up growing. The Pope will stay in Val ncia around 24 hours, and will give a series of sermons and speeches. For the ocassion, the Valencian local government has gone all the way to make his visit the most spectacular event of the decade. Although the government won't disclose it officially, the press talks about a cost of 30 or 40 million Euros, paid by all of us, including atheists, agnostics or muslims. Spain is not a catholic state, officially. Sadly, it is in practice. According to Vatican sources, 94% of Spaniards are catholic. The number goes down to 76.1% according to CIS, but the reality is that just a small fraction of these people are practising catholics. The Spanish church uses these figures to get funds from the state. I am included in that 76% just because I was baptised soon after I was born. There are people trying to apostatise, but it seems in most cases their efforts are futile, as the documentation sent to the eclesiastic authorities is either ignored or sent back with a hilarious excuse such as your baptism is a historic event and cannot be changed . Parts of Val ncia have been closed to transit for two months. This is because the authorities found that the optimal place to build his giant altar with a special microclimate was on top of the bridge of Mont Olivet, one of the arteries of south Val ncia if you want to leave the city. The neighbours of the area now popularly called "ground zero" have been subject to all kind of annoyances: the access to their houses is restricted, they've had to give lists of people living in each place, and they are now not allowed to use the upper terraces of their buildings (they are taken by snippers). The local police has designed a plan to restrict any kind of transit that affects basically half of the city, even my area which is like 6 kilometres away from the event. For months, our authorities have used this great opportunity to make religion and the greatness of our pope something normal and quotidian. I haven't seen such a big interference of my life by the church before, not even with the Aznar government, or when I was a small child and the dictatorship had just ended. They are also using the event to promote the achivements of the right-wing local government (via speeches and the propaganda that is distributed in the backpacks given to volunteers) and to bash the socialist central government (which recently approved gay marriage, a new education law that weakens the weight of religion study in public schools, etc.). I could go on and on, but this rant would get even more boring. I, like many others, think that all of this is not acceptable. As we tend to not shut up when things like these happen, a civic movement appeared two months ago, with a main goal of letting people know that we are not waiting for him, contrary to what the mayor says. The Jo no t'espere campaign has managed to make opposition to this pompous week by placing banners on balconies. Of course, I have my own, and I've also distributed a few more among my friends, one of them being placed a mere 70 metres away from the pope's altar.


No, jo tampoc t'espere Of course, the amount of Vatican flags outnumbers us greatly, in a ratio of at least 1:100, but anyway. There are so many Vatican flags that this looks more like St. Peter's Square. Others have taken the opportunity to exhibit Spanish flags all over the place, something that probably had not happened in Val ncia since the most obscure years of Franquism. Oh well, this is Val ncia. One piece of good news: due the chaos starting in just two hours, we're allowed to leave offices early today, so we can actually get back home. As soon as I get home and have lunch, I'll flee away to the mountains, like a maqui until the madness is over. The 1.5 million pilgrims can have my holy city. Have a nice time, Ratzinger!

6 July 2006

Enrico Zini: Passing data through vims using the X clipboard

So you have this nicely formatted piece of code in one vim and you'd like to paste it into another vim, but that usually messes up things. What I used to do was this:
  1. Select the code using V
  2. :w!/tmp/foobar
  3. Switch to the other vim
  4. :r/tmp/foobar
Then with vim7 I could just load files in different tabs and do everything inside vim. But sometimes I have more than one vim running anyway. Today I figured out a better way:
  1. Select the code using any of v, V, ^V
  2. Copy into the X clipboard: "*y
  3. Switch to the other vim
  4. "*p
It SO works. It'll even allow you to copy and paste block selections accross different vim instances. Of course this can also be used to copy and paste pieces of text to/from any other program that can access the X clipbpard, like X applications or the nice xclip commandline tool:
  1. (any command) xclip
  2. Switch to vim
  3. "*p
Of course that is just an example: a better way to do it directly in vim is:
  1. :r!(any command)
But I'm happy, for two reasons:
  1. I can copy an paste arbitrary vim things between aribtrary vims using the X selection
  2. Within 10 minutes I'll receive 5 e-mails telling me of even better ways of doing this.
Update: some kind people suggested to use the :set paste and :set nopaste trick and then do normal copy&pasting using the X terminal.
That is what most people do, and what I used to do sometimes, but:
  • it takes too much typing;
  • it makes it awkward to select big quantities of text that don't fit in one screen;
  • it can't copy and paste arbitrary vim objects (try pasting a ^V block selection with :paste);
  • it doesn't always exactly paste what was copied (you copy tabs and you're likely to paste spaces).

Martin F. Krafft: Ubuntu and Debian

Ubuntu caused a lot of friction with and for Debian. In discussions with its founder, Mark Shuttleworth, and other Ubuntu developers during (and before) Debconf6, I was able to spell out the main criticisms from the Debian perspectives of the way Canonical/Ubuntu is handling things (without a claim to completeness). These criticisms mainly stem from discussions with fellow developers over the past 18 months, and I largely support all of them. I am publicising them here to help make the status quo more transparent. Before I go on, I want you to know that my neutral and somewhat even supportive stance towards Ubuntu has led many Debian folks to conclude that I must be a Canonical employee; I never was nor will be. Let's go:

  • A major point of friction I've gathered from many (Debian) sides stems from the fact that many developers are largely unsatisfied with how Canonical/Ubuntu cooperates and "gives back" to the Debian community: essentially, at the moment all we get are monolithic patches describing the differences between Debian packages and their Ubuntu counterparts. Even though Mark has claimed that the patches should be modular if the underlying package uses a modular package management system (such as dpatch), this does not seem to be the case at first glance (c.f. e.g. squid). You have to look inside the monolithic patch to note that its changes are compartementalised into dpatch files. Yet, Canonical/Ubuntu continuously claims to be "good" and to "give back" to the Debian community, but that's just not happening in that way. Canonical/Ubuntu either has to start giving back according to their own claims, or stop pretending that it does, and it's good that I have heard this voiced by one of the Canonical employees as well.

  • The perception that Canonical/Ubuntu is taking advantage of Debian seems to prevail. Taking advantage in this definition entails using but not giving back, as well as dragging integrative work out of Debian, something Joey Hess described as the supermarket thing, which has the potential to ruin the Debian project. Whether this is true or false, intentional or unintentional, it is important to recognize that these sentiments do exist among a number of members of the Debian community. There's a related point, namely jealousy about Ubuntu's success, and the fear that it steals Debian's users. In response, it is often said that while Ubuntu depends on Debian, the reverse is not the case: Debian does not need Ubuntu. This is false and true at the same time. Debian surely need derivatives like Ubuntu, for derivatives bring users, and users bring improvements and weight. However, Debian does not need any one derivative more than any other, and in fact it has been considered harmful if any derivative stands out.

  • Many of those with whom I've spoken perceive that Canonical/Ubuntu do not acknowledge Debian enough, nor give credit where credit is due. And this lack of credit and acknowledgement further amplifies the fear. Two examples seem to stand out:

    • The "universe" community that gathered around Ubuntu's core surprisingly often does not know about Debian, or do not know how Ubuntu and Debian relate. I do not have any data on this, unfortunately (see below). This is something to take up with the Ubuntu Community Council.

    • On the ubuntu.com front page, Debian is not mentioned at all; if you actually follow the About Ubuntu link, you can find Debian mentioned once in the first paragraph (albeit without a link), and if you did notice the right hand menu expanding, you may even decide to click on Ubuntu and Debian, where the relationship is finally illustrated from the Ubuntu point of view. To many, this is just not enough. Update (+6h): the About Ubuntu page now links to the Debian homepage. Thanks!

  • Canonical people, and Mark especially, draw an important line between Ubuntu (which is mostly free/open-source), and Canonical with its other products (Launchpad, Rosetta; which are non-free). However, from the outside, this line does not exist, or at least it appears as if there's a much stronger relationship between the Canonical and the Ubuntu project. This impression casts a corporate shadow over Ubuntu which deters many developers, even if it's undeniable that Ubuntu is a project of its own (to a large degree).

  • There's no question about Mark being on an agenda, for which he has assembled an impressively powerful team (which indirectly includes many Debian developers) at an (even more impressively) cheap cost. It's not my business to speculate about other people's finances, but those that do conclude that Mark is very likely not running too much of a risk with what he does at the moment and could basically pull out at any point in time. To some, who have dedicated large parts of their lives to Debian, this seems like an unwelcome way to play a game.

  • When Canonical entered the market and hired some developers to work on a Debian-related project, a lot of jealousy boiled up among those who didn't get a job, because back then it seemed that Canonical was out to pay people to work on Debian -- which is a common dream among us developers; at least people hoped that's what it would be. Many fundamental contributors felt left out and confronted with the question why they should continue their work for free when others are now getting paid for it. The twist is that nobody wanted to ask themselves that question, because money was never the reason why they started to work on Debian. The situation has leveled by now (I think). More and more people realise that Canonical is taking Ubuntu into a direction where many Debian developers do not want to go. Nevertheless, it seems that some of the frictions we are currently facing between Debian and Ubuntu still have their roots in the bad feelings from those times (which may well still exist in the individual case). Canonical/Ubuntu (and some Debian developers) need to realise (and get over) this, and somehow I think they've got a long way to go.

On Friday night of the Debconf6 conference, Mark assembled a bunch of people discuss the inter-project relationship. The (large) number of people who eventually joined, as well as the choice of venue (with live music) made the discussion somewhat awkward, but we did manage to get some good talking done, and I raised all of the above points. See the minutes of the meeting if interested. With their latest release out the door and a little more time on their hands (at least for a while), I hope that Canonical will follow up on the resolutions of the evening, as they have promised. The same goes for Debian, of course. There's very little Ubuntu can do about the jealousy other than acknowledge it, but it would be an important start. In addition, I hope to see all of the following take place rather sooner than later:
  • quality improvements to the patches they "give back" to Debian, and the adoption of a more appropriate medium of exchange. Instead of patches, active reaching out to the Debian developers by the Ubuntu developers would be even better in certain cases. The claim by Mark and one of his employees that this is simply impossible because of the commonly misconceived size of the paid body of developers (which is just too small) is really their challenge, and if they cannot meet it, maybe they have to go around it. It should be noted that efforts along these lines exist, so Canonical does not have to start from scratch. Note to Debian developers: if you're so inclined, please add your name to the bottom of that page.
  • a clear statement about how Canonical/Ubuntu plans to coexist or cooperate with Debian, and then the execution of those plans without leaving any doubt.
  • a survey of the Ubuntu community to gather (and publish) information about common perceptions of Debians position and role with respect to Ubuntu and vice versa. Again, this is something for the Ubuntu Community Council.
  • steps to ensure better familiarity with the Debian-Ubuntu situation among the Ubuntu community members.
  • a dedicated space for Debian people to go and be heard. Maybe the #debian-ubuntu channel on irc.debian.org will suffice, if some of the Canonical/Ubuntu higher-ups make an effort to keep an eye on it.
  • further steps by Canonical towards improving the relationship between the two projects, which could include regular meetings (or even irregular ones), uniting prominent representatives from both sides.
If I may add a thought that has come up lately (it's not only mine): a derivative like Ubuntu, namely one pushing Debian to the desktop, is an important asset for Debian. However, the only way this is going to work from the Debian perspective is as a mutual effort. If Canonical/Ubuntu do not realise this, maybe another derivative has to step in to fill the void? I hope this blog entry accomplishes what it tries, namely to shed some (more) light onto the relationship between Debian and Ubuntu, and to help the Canonical/Ubuntu side better understand the Debian perspective. Sorry for the length, I've worked on this entry ever since Debconf6 and despite a lot of editing (also by others; thank you!), it just wouldn't get shorter. Thanks for reading it all (assuming that's what you did if you arrived here). Update: this post has spread significantly, it seems. Thanks to all who've passed it on. I know of the following threads that ensued: If you find any others, please let me know.

Christine Spang: Very Much Settled (and loving it)

So I went from this: Suburban Upstate New York To this: Urban Cambridge Massachusetts It’s not called the Halfway House for nothing. The Halfway House It’s been just a couple days over two weeks, and I’m doing awesome. Loving every minute, or close to it. I love the freedom of being out on my own, love having my own schedule, love dealing with getting my own food, even don’t mind doing my own laundry. Not to say I don’t love my friends and family too. But still. Unpacking was fun. Apparently the person I’m subletting from played a tap-dancing stormtrooper in a student-written Star Wars musical. And there were… fun things left in the closet. And I couldn’t resist, if just a little. Stormtrooper It was beautiful for the first couple days of being down here, but lately it’s been not as good - muggy, hazy, too hot, etc. Though today was better than the last couple. Here’s Boston from Cambridge, two weeks ago: A Beautiful Day in Cambridge My house isn’t air-conditioned, but the Media Lab is — so it works out okay since I spend the middle part of my day there anyhow. I’ve been thinking about getting a window AC unit, but the trouble with relying solely on bike, public transport, and foot to get around is that it’s a pain in the ass to move around large objects. I love the Debian scene down here too. There are some great people, and since the rest of my college class doesn’t arrive until August, I’ve mostly been hanging out with them. There’s this bizarre feeling of connection with other Debian people. Not to mention I’d already met some of them when I was down in April. Last Friday I went out and biked around Boston with Boston’s Critical Mass. It was pretty exhilarating and fun. (This is before; I didn’t really feel like biking and taking pictures at the same time.) Before Critical Mass Boston And afterward there was an Acetarium sushi party which involved meeting Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, who writes for Newsforge/Linux.com/etc. Yesterday I went out to visit the Boston Harbor Islands with Mako and Mika (nobody else showed up — too early or something). Mika, Mako, and Me in Boston Harbor They were pretty damn nice, if I don’t say so myself. The weather held up as decent, and although the ferry out from Boston costs money, the inter-island shuttle is free for moochers who want to cruise from island to island around the harbor. The islands weren’t even that crowded, which was surprising considering their proximity to Boston and abundance of pretty nice beaches. Of course, come August it will probably become impossible for me to hang out with Debian people 5/7 days a week. So, gotta stock up… y’know, before they kick me out and stop feeding me awesome vegetarian food…

5 July 2006

Martin F. Krafft: A Japanese book

My book is now available in Japanese (ISBN 4-8399-1897-X), thanks to the great work by our (Debian's) very own Kenshi Muto and Junichi Uekawa! It even comes with its very own Obi -- a ribbon wound around the book with commercial messages designed to draw the attention of the (potential) reader. The word derives from the sash worn with a kimono. It's weird to hold a text in your hands that has your own name on it, but which you cannot read, especially when you're such a pedantic perfectionist as I am. This dilemma I picked up in the Japanese translation's preface, which I include in full for your reading pleasure. And I'll do so both in Japanese as well as English, just because I don't know when I'll ever get the chance again to post some authentic Japanese on my blog!
Debian Debian Kenshi Muto Junichi Uekawa Debian Kenshi pbuilder Junichi Debian Kenshi Junichi honsho ga minasama no ochikara ni narereba saiwai desu.
And here for all those who cannot understand the signs from the land of the rising sun:
I have only had the chance to visit Japan once to date, but the trip left some unforgettable memories, which make it all the more an honour for me to see a Japanese translation of my book on the market. The Debian operating system is gaining popularity fast in Japan, and it is my hope that the book you are holding in your hands will help to accelerate this growth. Please allow me at this point to express my gratitude towards Kenshi Muto, a Debian book author himself, and Junichi Uekawa, author of pbuilder, a vital component in the making of my book! Kenshi and Junichi are both renowned Debian developers and have been instrumental in the coordination of this Japanese translation. As you will notice while reading my book, I invested a lot of energy into making it a quality reference. It was thus very difficult for me to accept a text with my name on it that I could not read, as is the case with the Japanese version you are holding in your hands. However, knowing the translation in the capable hands of Kenshi and Junichi quickly put my mind to rest and I am now incredibly proud to see my work translated into the language of the fast-moving and innovative culture of Japan. honsho ga minasama no ochikara ni narereba saiwai desu.
That last sentence means "I hope the book will be helpful to you," and was translated by Shuhei, a friend who's working on his Ph.D. at Zurich's AILab. Apparently Kenshi and Junichi thought it was so cute that they simply left it as is and did not translate it. In other news, my book's also available in German (and has been since late February), the French edition is on the verge of being released by Eyrolles (no link yet), and the Chinese translation is still work in progress (also, no link yet). The book's website needs a rework to integrate the other languages, and to fix up all the shortcomings I've encountered during one year of uptime with an average of around 200 unique visits per day. It's also still using Plone 2.0.5, but I just have not had the time yet to fix it all up in a migration to Plone 2.5, mainly because I've lost synchronisation with the Plone development team over the past year. Oh well. That ToDo list just keeps getting longer...

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