Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Usul moves a notch up


Maxxed the RAM to 8 GB, just now.
Testing it right now while posting this.
Gnome 3 feels mighty snappy.

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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Usul's xorg.conf, another go...

What you know...
It's been a year or so, and the NVIDIA card (on the Thinkpad T410) has the same problem than while running Lucid Lynx.
The keyboard shortcut to lower or brighten the LCD doesn't work, it does launch the OSD icons for both up & down, but it doesn't actually do dink.
On the same laptop, with Lucid, it was necessary to do something similar.
Not a big deal.
Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Default Device"
        Driver          "nvidia"
        Option          "NoLogo"                "True"
        Option          "RegistryDwords"        "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
EndSection

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Monday, August 27, 2012

We're a happy family


My current setup... Usul and Stilgar sharing the table.

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And yet another one...


The third one (so far???) of those Fuzzy Panels on GNOME 3.
It seems like this has to be a software problem that goes beyond Unity; or maybe a hardware problem with the NVIDIA driver?


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Sunday, August 26, 2012

Falling down


Since last Friday, thankfully, temperature has been going down and down.
We had a brief, but really annoying, peak towards last Wednesday, with something close to 30 degrees.
May this winter never end.

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Saturday, August 25, 2012

From Precise to Gnome Remix


Last night did a wipe and clean install on Usul.
 It had the Precise Pangolin, the first "production" install I did, back on May.

A plain vanilla 64 bits Precise, with a PPA added with an installation of GNOME 3, it performed A Ok, but I wanted a truly clean install, without all that Unity stuff that I'm positive I'll never ever going to use.

 So, after an hour of base and updates installation, I've been restoring files all day long.

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Friday, August 24, 2012

Tinker Taylor Thursday


Finally got to watch it last night.
Loved it, have to see it a couple of more times.
Got a bunch of new movies and series will be catching up a bit with some newer movies & classic TV series in the coming weeks.

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

The current Scientific Linux desktop

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Chromium: reverse the controls

On Gnome 3, using Chromium with the option Hide system title bar and use compact borders and the option Use Classic Theme the window controls get reversed and set to the left of the window.
gconftool /apps/metacity/general/button_layout -t string -s "menu:minimize,maximize,close"
This puts things in order, and of course the change is instantaneous and doesn't need a logout or reboot.

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Fuzzy Panel on GNOME 3 (2)


Another one of these...
This one after coming back from a Suspend, had to do a X Window re-init to get it back to normal.

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Saturday, August 18, 2012

CentOS 5: Install Rsnapshot via RPM

Another one, this time, Rsnapshot, my favorite backup utility...
Not as complex as the getting Nagios up & running on the CentOS box.

Get the RPM first:
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rsnapshot/rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
And test how the thing would go...
# rpm --test -ivh rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm 
warning: rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
error: Failed dependencies:
       perl(XML::Simple) is needed by rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch
       perl(XML::Validator::Schema) is needed by rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch
First one its an easy one...
# yum install perl-XML-Simple

Installed:
  perl-XML-Simple.noarch 0:2.14-4.fc6                                                                                                                                                     

Dependency Installed:
  perl-XML-Parser.x86_64 0:2.34-6.1.2.2.1                                                                                                                                                 

Complete!
Another test...
# rpm --test -ivh rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm 
warning: rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
error: Failed dependencies:
       perl(XML::Validator::Schema) is needed by rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch
More downloading...
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/perl-XML-Validator-Schema/perl-XML-Validator-Schema-1.10-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
And testing...
# rpm --test -ivh rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm perl-XML-Validator-Schema-1.10-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm 
warning: rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
error: Failed dependencies:
       perl(XML::Filter::BufferText) is needed by perl-XML-Validator-Schema-1.10-1.el5.rf.noarch
       perl(XML::SAX::Exception) is needed by perl-XML-Validator-Schema-1.10-1.el5.rf.noarch
       perl(XML::SAX::ParserFactory) is needed by perl-XML-Validator-Schema-1.10-1.el5.rf.noarch
Some of those are on the official repo:
# yum install perl-XML-SAX

Installed:
  perl-XML-SAX.noarch 0:0.14-11                                                                                                              

Dependency Installed:
  perl-XML-NamespaceSupport.noarch 0:1.09-1.2.1                                                                                              

Complete!
More testing...
# rpm --test -ivh rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm perl-XML-Validator-Schema-1.10-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm 
warning: rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
error: Failed dependencies:
       perl(XML::Filter::BufferText) is needed by perl-XML-Validator-Schema-1.10-1.el5.rf.noarch
More downloading...
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/perl-XML-Filter-BufferText/perl-XML-Filter-BufferText-1.01-1.2.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
Last test...
# rpm --test -ivh rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm perl-XML-Validator-Schema-1.10-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm perl-XML-Filter-BufferText-1.01-1.2.el5.rf.noarch.rpm 
warning: rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
Go with the install!
# rpm -ivh rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm perl-XML-Validator-Schema-1.10-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm perl-XML-Filter-BufferText-1.01-1.2.el5.rf.noarch.rpm 
warning: rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:perl-XML-Filter-BufferT########################################### [ 33%]
   2:perl-XML-Validator-Sche########################################### [ 67%]
   3:rsnapshot              ########################################### [100%]

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The current Scientific Linux desktop


Green goes a long way... Or so it seems :D
This one its a little simpler than the last green one.

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Sunday, August 12, 2012

CentOS 5: Install Nagios via RPM

Last week took over an already running and in production box, with CentOS 5.8 (64 bits) installed and no extra repositories in use...
Since I don't want to add any extra repositorie to this production box, I've proceed to install the necessary packages by hand... First things first, so get it:
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/nagios/nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm
This one is a piece of cake:
# rpm --test -ivh nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm 
warning: nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
Lets see the how things go with the Nagios plugins:
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/nagios-plugins/nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
And now the real fun begins:
# rpm --test -ivh nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm 
warning: nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
error: Failed dependencies:
       perl(Net::SNMP) is needed by nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64
       fping is needed by nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64
Fping, no problems there:
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/fping/fping-3.1-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
# rpm --test -ivh fping-3.1-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm 
warning: fping-3.1-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
Full dressing test:
# ls -1
fping-3.1-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm
nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
# rpm --test -ivh nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm \
fping-3.1-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm 
warning: nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
error: Failed dependencies:
       perl(Net::SNMP) is needed by nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64
So get it, and run another test:
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/perl-Crypt-DES/perl-Crypt-DES-2.05-3.2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
rpm --test -ivh nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm \
fping-3.1-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm perl-Net-SNMP-5.2.0-1.2.el5.rf.noarch.rpm perl-Crypt-DES-2.05-3.2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm 
warning: nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
Bingo! So, just do the install and that's it:
# rpm -ivh nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm nagios-plugins-1.4.9-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm \
fping-3.1-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm perl-Net-SNMP-5.2.0-1.2.el5.rf.noarch.rpm perl-Crypt-DES-2.05-3.2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm 
warning: nagios-3.2.3-4.el5.test.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:perl-Crypt-DES         ########################################### [ 20%]
   2:fping                  ########################################### [ 40%]
   3:nagios                 ########################################### [ 60%]
   4:perl-Net-SNMP          ########################################### [ 80%]
   5:nagios-plugins         ########################################### [100%]

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Sturm und David

 Last night it rained like hell around here... Perfect weather to finish the Fifth season of Curve Your Enthusiasm.
Started to re-watch it late last week, IMHO, at least the with the Fifth,  it goes downhill untill the great season's finale.
Will see how the Sixth and Seventh perform.

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Saturday, August 11, 2012

The current Scientific Linux desktop

Thursday, August 09, 2012

Scientific Linux: Installing Virtual Box via RPM

Another one of these... Installation without repository declaration, except for the VirtualBox repo... Compared to the ones I did lately -specially VLC- this one is a real piece of cake...

First things first... So, install dkms...
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/dkms/dkms-2.1.1.2-1.el6.rf.noarch.rpm
> sudo rpm --test -ivh dkms-2.1.1.2-1.el6.rf.noarch.rpm 
[sudo] password for XXXXXXX: 
warning: dkms-2.1.1.2-1.el6.rf.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 6b8d79e6: NOKEY
error: Failed dependencies:
        gcc is needed by dkms-2.1.1.2-1.el6.rf.noarch
        kernel-devel is needed by dkms-2.1.1.2-1.el6.rf.noarch
        make is needed by dkms-2.1.1.2-1.el6.rf.noarch
A bit of the old yum to install these ones:
> sudo yum install gcc kernel-devel make
So here comes the install...
> sudo rpm -ivh dkms-2.1.1.2-1.el6.rf.noarch.rpm 
warning: dkms-2.1.1.2-1.el6.rf.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 6b8d79e6: NOKEY
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:dkms                   ########################################### [100%]


VirtualBox-4.1-4.1.18_78361_rhel6-1.i686.rpm                                                                                             |  63 MB     05:53     
warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: Header V4 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 98ab5139: NOKEY
Retrieving key from http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc
Importing GPG key 0x98AB5139:
 Userid: "Oracle Corporation (VirtualBox archive signing key) "
 From  : http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum.
  Installing : VirtualBox-4.1-4.1.18_78361_rhel6-1.i686                                                                                                     1/1 

Creating group 'vboxusers'. VM users must be member of that group!

No precompiled module for this kernel found -- trying to build one. Messages
emitted during module compilation will be logged to /var/log/vbox-install.log.

Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules [  OK  ]
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules [  OK  ]
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS [  OK  ]
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules [  OK  ]

Installed:
  VirtualBox-4.1.i686 0:4.1.18_78361_rhel6-1                                                                                                                    

Complete!
And finally, add your regular user to the vboxusers group and you are done for the day:
sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers XXXXXX
More info, and howto get the VirtualBox repo on your box: Installing and using VirtualBox on CentOS

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Monday, August 06, 2012

Foggy Aires

The fog goes on and on... How I wish every single day of the year might be like this.

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Scientific Linux: Installing WINE via RPM


And here is another one... Installing WINE without using a third party repository, just like I did with VLC, mostly to -hopefully- avoid conflicts with dependencies on the long run...
This is on a Scientific Linux 32 bits with all the updates installed as of today.

First get the RPM package:
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/wine/wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
And then test the RPM install to see how the thing goes:
> sudo rpm --test -ivh wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm 
[sudo] password for XXXXXXX: 
warning: wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm: Header V3 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 6b8d79e6: NOKEY
error: Failed dependencies:
 wine-capi = 1.2.3-1.el6.rf is needed by wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 wine-cms = 1.2.3-1.el6.rf is needed by wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 wine-core = 1.2.3-1.el6.rf is needed by wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 wine-esd = 1.2.3-1.el6.rf is needed by wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 wine-gecko = 1.0.0 is needed by wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 wine-jack = 1.2.3-1.el6.rf is needed by wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 wine-ldap = 1.2.3-1.el6.rf is needed by wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 wine-nas = 1.2.3-1.el6.rf is needed by wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 wine-twain = 1.2.3-1.el6.rf is needed by wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
Things don't look so bleak as they did on the VLC install... So let's just start downloading some stuff... Get all of the packages onto the same directory on your box.
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/wine/wine-capi-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/wine/wine-cms-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/wine/wine-core-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/wine/wine-esd-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
wget ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/dag/redhat/el6/en/i386/dag/RPMS/wine-gecko-1.0.0-1.nodist.rf.i386.rpm
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/wine/wine-ldap-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/wine/wine-jack-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/wine/wine-nas-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/wine/wine-twain-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
And then, once you are on the directory, give it another go...
> sudo rpm --test -ivh *rpm
[sudo] password for XXXXXXX: 
warning: wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm: Header V3 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 6b8d79e6: NOKEY
error: Failed dependencies:
 /usr/bin/xmessage is needed by wine-core-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 libmpg123.so.0 is needed by wine-core-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
 libesd.so.0 is needed by wine-esd-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
This time, some of the packages are available on the repositories, pretty easy to install:
> sudo yum install xmessage
> sudo yum install esound-libs
You know how it goes... Another test:
> sudo rpm --test -ivh *.rpm
warning: wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm: Header V3 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 6b8d79e6: NOKEY
error: Failed dependencies:
 libmpg123.so.0 is needed by wine-core-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686
Get the last package using the hard wget way:
wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/mpg123/mpg123-1.14.2-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
Install it, and then, finally, test the WINE install:
> sudo rpm -ivh mpg123-1.14.2-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm
> sudo rpm --test -ivh wine-*.rpm
warning: wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm: Header V3 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 6b8d79e6: NOKEY
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
Goes Ok, so here it goes the final bit:
> sudo rpm -ivh wine-*.rpm
warning: wine-1.2.3-1.el6.rf.i686.rpm: Header V3 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 6b8d79e6: NOKEY
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:wine-core              ########################################### [ 10%]
   2:wine-gecko             ########################################### [ 20%]
   3:wine-capi              ########################################### [ 30%]
   4:wine-cms               ########################################### [ 40%]
   5:wine-esd               ########################################### [ 50%]
   6:wine-jack              ########################################### [ 60%]
   7:wine-ldap              ########################################### [ 70%]
   8:wine-nas               ########################################### [ 80%]
   9:wine-twain             ########################################### [ 90%]
  10:wine                   ########################################### [100%]

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Sunday, August 05, 2012

A foggy winter indeed.


Gotta love it, or leave it... Cold, humid & foggy...
At least its cold.
More pictures: Buenos Aires, cubierta de niebla

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Saturday, August 04, 2012

Ciso: IP Phone Home

Yesterday got me a "new" Cisco phone from work.
The old and pretty crappy Budge Tone 201 that I have at home was nearly completely broken and totally beat up.

So the powers that be gave me a Cisco IP Phone 7940.

Setting it up on my LAN was pretty much a piece of cake, had to disable DHCP, gave it the IP address that the Budge Tone was using, etc... Only thing I had to do was to add a TFPT server IP address pointing to nowhere inside my LAN in order to accept the fixed IP address & settings.

It works perfectly well behind the D-Link DIR-601 router, no need to set anything special in terms of port forwarding or stuff like that.
The difference in craftsmanship between the two phones is amazing.

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The current setup


My beloved T60p, sitting alone at home, this cold, cloudy and perfect August Satuday.

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Friday, August 03, 2012

Thursday 02-08-2012

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Wednesday 01-08-2012