Zoetrope

I got fed up with the poor reception and eventual analog non-quality on my LCD flatpanel, so when I learned Prime packs are available for INDI since August 08 I rented their HD-recorder package for 10 Euro a month.

The base package is free with 53 channels of digital goodness like Turner Classic Movies. Here you can find their schedule for Belgium. I also subscribed to the extra package which for me is worth it because of BBC 3 (Doctor Who and The Real Hustle) and BBC 4 (the Avengers → Diana Rigg ;-) and the extra Discovery Channels. Prime sport is currently a waste of time for me because of their soccer fetish, but I suspect I'll be an addict when the NBA season starts in October. Prime sport is the only way to watch the NBA in Belgium. The Prime sports package also includes NASN which features College Basketball, the NFL and Baseball.

The difference between analog and digital reception on my LCD is unbelievable. It's a joy to watch BBC again without strange moiré patterns running across the screen, and the recorder functionality is awesome since I'm not a real-time TV consumer. I hate having to schedule your evening just to keep up with a series, since these days they're all spanning 1500 episodes a year and milking the plots across 15 years or something (read: Prison Break). I'm hoping we're going to catch up in the HD department (free HD channels) because for the moment only one channel broadcasts in permanent HD and for free.

The INDI recorder apparently runs on the Osmosys platform (Java) and is not bad at all. The interface (especially the Electronic Programming Guide) can slow down sometimes, but it's never completely unusable. It's nothing like Front Row or the Apple TV but you're spending most of the time watching stuff so that's not that big of a deal.

And whoever is responsible for the firmware uploader is clearly a Star Trek fan, hence the LCARS interface:

Did one of your application windows get stuck on the second display you recently disconnected in Mac OS X? No gather windows button in Preferences > Display? Check out the AppleScript that fixes it all. Works as advertised on 10.5.2.

Query all:

[root@server ~]# rpm -qa --qf '%{name}.%{arch}\n'
hdparm.x86_64
rootfiles.noarch
basesystem.noarch
libsepol.x86_64
gmp.x86_64
...

Query specific packages:

[root@server ~]# rpm -q --queryformat='%{n}-%{v}-%{r}.%{arch}\n' glibc
glibc-2.3.4-2.39.x86_64
glibc-2.3.4-2.39.i686

If any of your SSH sessions seems te be in limbo and you want to regain control of your terminal just use the ~. shortcut (that's SHIFT-TILDE-DOT).

And no, this ain't no stinking April fools joke ;-)

Updated: just when I thought comments on this little tip would be pointless Xach from Planet Lisp mailed me that this escape sequence only works when you do it after a nice fresh enter. So if you were wondering why this sometimes doesn't work, consider yourself educated now.

Supported escape sequences:
~.  - terminate connection
~B  - send a BREAK to the remote system
~C  - open a command line
~R  - Request rekey (SSH protocol 2 only)
~^Z - suspend ssh
~#  - list forwarded connections
~&  - background ssh (when waiting for connections to terminate)
~?  - this message
~~  - send the escape character by typing it twice
(Note that escapes are only recognized immediately after newline.)

Here's how to get rid of the 403 Forbidden: You don't have permission to access /~username/ on this server if you've upgraded your Mac OS X 10.4 installation to Leopard:

>$ sudo cp /etc/httpd/users/your_username.conf /etc/apache2/users/

Just restart Web Sharing in your preferences panel and you're back on track. Apple is finally using Apache 2 in Leopard and forgot to copy the userdir configs.

A little known fact: Aperture imports your JPG along with the RAW file if you're shooting RAW+JPG, even though the import pane will only show the RAW files on a card/camera.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304868

Update: newer kernel & initrd 2.6.18-53.1.13.el5xen doesn't have this problem.

If you're running Centos5 and recently upgraded a Xen domU kernel to 2.6.18-53.1.6.el5xen you maybe got burned by the following problem:

Loading xenblk.ko module
XENBUS: Timeout connecting to device: device/vbd/51712 (state 3)
Scanning and configuring dmraid supported devices
Creating root device.
Mounting root filesystem.
mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
Setting up other filesystems.
Setting up new root fs
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults
setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory
Switching to new root and running init.
unmounting old /dev
unmounting old /proc
unmounting old /sys
switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

Apparently the initrd is missing the xenblk module and any domU that's using tap:io in its Xen config can't connect to it's virtual disk image.

Here's the fix:

Change tap:io into file: in your xen configs and boot the domU.

disk = [ 'tap:aio:/var/lib/xen/images/domU.img,xvda,w', ]

into

disk = [ 'file:/var/lib/xen/images/basestar.img,xvda,w', ]

In your booted domU:

cd /boot
rm /boot/initrd-2.6.18-53.1.6.el5xen.img
mkinitrd -v --with=xenblk --omit-scsi-modules --omit-raid-modules /boot/initrd-2.6.18-53.1.6.el5xen.img 2.6.18-53.1.6.el5xen

Now you can change back to tap:io in your domU config and reboot the domU. You'll need to do this for every domU that has been upgraded to the 2.6.18-53.1.6.el5xen kernel.

See http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=2083 and http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=2543 for more info

Dag Wieers' Dstat is the ultimate live monitoring tool to catch your servers in the act.

My favourite Dstat command:

dstat -l -c -p -y -m -p -d -n

Which will paint this pretty picture on a wide-enough terminal:

Note the periodical repeating header at the bottom! Dstat is even smart enough to truncate the columns if your terminal can't handle the heat because it's to narrow - marvelous...

Quick productivity tips for your terminal adventures:

Top 10 interactive shell anti-patterns

Booting RHEL 5 or Centos 5 for the first time in Parallels Desktop (build 3188) wil get you an instant kernel panic. Just include agp=off as a kernel parameter and the system boots and works like a charm (use 'a' at the Grub screen to edit the kernel parameters).

Afterwards you can edit the /etc/grub.conf to include agp=off by default:

 
title CentOS (2.6.18-8.el5)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-8.el5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet agp=off
        initrd /initrd-2.6.18-8.el5.img

A little tip for us anal-retentive PostgreSQL users who rely on macports to install PostgreSQL into their Mac OS X systems.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add postgres

So you don't see that nasty little database user popping up in your LoginWindow to confuse you. More in this Macworld article.

I didn't know there were tags to denote deleted text (I do now, use the <del></del> tag) or to denote recently inserted text using <ins></ins> tag.

Also, check out the presentation on The Elements of Meaningful XHTML if you never heard of other tags such as

• <thead></thead>
• <tbody></tbody> (denote heading and body of tables)
• <cite></cite> (citations)
• <label></label> (denote labels of form entries)
• <address></address> (contact info for a page)

Nice how-to from Redhat Magazine if you want to dual-boot into Redhat Enterprise Linux on your MacBookPro.

If only I had a shiny Intel-Mac to play around with ;-)