linux
Ubuntu 9.04 one month on
Well, nearly one month.
As I said in a previous post, my laptop was crashing multiple times per day before I re-installed to Jaunty. Here's the situation since then:
Multithreading in bash???
Running this script:
#!/bin/sh
function echo {
/bin/echo `date` $*
}
function foo {
echo START foo
sleep 5
echo END foo
}
echo "start script"
foo &
echo "called foo"
sleep 10
echo "ended script"
gave this output:
Timestamps and logging with echo in bash
I'm often writing scripts to automate stuff, and having good logs of activity is really important. But, writing a logging API and using it in a bash script seems overkill and a real pain, especially as your script will then be full of calls to your custom functions. Why not rather extend bash echo, and use that?
So, stick this at the beginning of any script, and you can use 'echo' for simple but effective logging:
Ubuntu 9.04RC
I hope I'm not going to regret saying this...
I have had ongoing problems recently with my install of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). 90% of that was related to the proprietary ATI video drivers, and I suspect the remaining 10% to the wifi drivers.
Subvertive
Had loads of fun at ApacheCon EU 2005. What started as a fun chat over beers one evening, was received with much enthusiasm during a Lightening Talk, and even made it as far as an Incubator proposal, with quite a few supporters (yes, they did all sign up for it!). Fortunately, no-one has volunteered to implement this. http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/200507.mbox/%3C42E11D57.1030306@odoko.co.uk%3E
Installing Ubuntu
I'm almost ready to make my move to Ubuntu. Solved the problem of what to do with my data: buy a spanking new HDD, 100Gb of space, and replace the drive. At least this means I'll have a backup, although a rather expensive approach!
So, I'll be able to stick the new drive in, install Ubuntu from scratch, then copy my data back from the old drive.
I'm now shutting down all of my applications. Hopefully I'll see you soon in a bright new Ubuntu install!
Going Ubuntu
So, as I said, I'm gonna convert to Ubuntu. But to do this, I want to wipe my HDD, and start again (my swap partition is to small to use software suspend, and there's a stray 10Gb missing somewhere - df and du don't agree). So, I need some tools to work out what's going on. So, I can make an ext3 filesystem on my firewire drive by doing: mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sda3 So, next I need to backup my data. This should be relatively straight-forward, if whacky. I plan to boot into another Linux. Hey, why not go into the Ubuntu live CD (assuming it can handle firewire)?
Go Hedgehog
I've just tried the Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog 5.04 preview live CD. And it rocks. With Debian Sarge, I had to struggle to get X working, wireless working, still haven't got standby working. Ubuntu did all of these out of the box. I'm gonna be converting soon.
discovering IPTABLES
A couple of days ago I discovered how easy iptables is to use.
What a relief.
I can now have an internet facing machine with full control over the services it shows publically.
All that is required is a command like:
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 8080 -i eth0 -j DROP
and all requests to port 8080 from the outside will be dropped.
All requests from localhost will use the lo adapter, and will thus still be accepted. This is something I should have known long ago!
Debian on Dell Precision M60
Stage one of Odoko's existence is to get Debian installed on my new Dell Precision M60. It is working now, but is lacking a few relatively important features: wifi, sleep, correct DPI setting, DVD access, sound. I expected that.
But, it has already come up trumps a few times, for example - I had a Colinux installation, hosting a virtual Debian system on my previous WinXP notebook. I wanted to access files from its filesystem.
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