For the sake of argument... let's say you happen to have access to one of the Pioneer DRM-7000 cdrom/dvd jukeboxes and you are interested in using it to archive data, scientific data with reliably parsable header information describing the contents of each file. For the sake of argument.. lets just say that those files look a lot like ogg vorbis files. They aren't but I think everyone can imagine a 720 dvd scsi auto-changer full of music.

How would you go about indexing the contents of all the files on all the cds/dvds in the jukebox so that you could efficiently locate which disks had the files you wanted and then could direct the auto-changer apperatus to load those disks so the files could be retrieved.

I understand stand how to do the mechanism of the actually auto-changer operation. mtx supports this beastie, from an operations point of view. But... operating it is only part of the problem. I need to be able to build an index that maps file header information to physical cd in the library. is there any framework out there that exists for this sort of thing? Or am I basically going to end up writing some python glue around a sqlite db that I can then query via a homebuilt interface? I'm looking to leverage as much pre-existing code as I can.

And yes... i realize that in the final analysis just setting up a 2 terabyte raid of sata disks is probably more cost effective... but where's the fun in that. This thing makes some kickass noises when its moving its robotic arm around changing media...and if I can change out some of the paneling with see-through plexiglass and pimp it out with internal lighting...it will be super hot.

-jef

I'm almost ashamed to admit that last year, I think I only read (as in completely, cover to cover) 3 or 4 books. This year doesn't seem to be going much better either. I'm still slowly making my way through my first of the year. The problem isn't that I'm a slow reader. My problem is one of choice. I buy a book, start reading it, and when I'm halfway through, for whatever reason, I'll end up with another new book, and start reading that one, and the cycle repeats. I'm great at starting books, awful at finishing them. I think I must have started reading about 20-30 books last year alone. I seem to only really get through books when I'm traveling. The fact that I don't have a bookcase full of options with me confines me to one or two choices. This is the reason that devices like the kindle, (or any other e-book reader for that matter) are a really bad idea for me. When overwhelmed with choice, my indecision consumes me. (Seriously, you should see me fail at choosing a lunch option when in a new city surrounded by restaurants. Even the infamous google cafeteria was total overload for me. I think if I worked there, my indecision would actually lead to me starving to death before I made a lunch choice).

Last November, whilst in Portland,OR I picked up a copy of The soul of a new machine. It's a book I've been meaning to read for years, after countless recommendations from friends. Same old story though, I'm dragging my heels getting through it. It's not that it isn't an interesting book. It's really interesting to me how many parallels there are in the story to things that are happening/have happened at Red Hat.

I think I'm about halfway through it. 7 Months. Perhaps I need to travel more.

Saw this in Planet MyOSS today. Hey!! Its my life too!!!.

Saludos,

Solo quería compartir con Uds. un tipo que es bastante práctico y que seguro mas de uno de Uds. no conocía.

Para crear un archivo .iso a partir de un CD o DVD que está colocado en la lectora es suficiente correr este comando:

sudo dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/ruta/a/tu/archivo.iso

El comando "dd" es el "disk dumper" pero para que entiendan mejor que hace es el "copiador de datos byte por byte" y justamente hace eso, puede copiar particiones, discos, medios removibles desde y hacia dispositivos y/o archivos.

Asi que ya saben, no necesitan instalar K3B, Brasero o alguna utilidad gráfica adicional, un comandito super antiguo de UNIX hace lo que necesitan.

Y si tienen duda de que han hecho el iso bien, basta con montarlo:

sudo mkdir /mnt/iso
sudo mount -o loop /ruta/a/tu/archivo.iso /mnt/iso
ls /mnt/iso
sudo umount /ruta/a/tu/archivo.iso

Ah! Eso si, para trabajar con dd los dispositivos, discos, unidades no deben estar montados y en uso. Osea, si el CDROM o DVD se monta automáticamente, tienen que desmontarlo con algo como sudo umount
/dev/cdrom.

También podrían generar una suma de verificación sobre el CD o DVD que se encuentra en la lectora con MD5 o SHA1:

sudo md5sum -b /dev/cdrom
sudo sha1sum -b /dev/cdrom

Y luego:

md5sum -b /ruta/a/tu/archivo.iso
sha1sum -b /ruta/a/tu/archivo.iso

Si coinciden, la copia se ha hecho bien.

Algunos dicen que es mejor que referirse al dispositivo real y no a /dev/cdrom que como deben saber es un link.

En una máquina que tengo con CentOS me sale esto:

ls -lh /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 may 8 15:32 /dev/cdrom -> hdb

Asi que podrian sustituir /dev/cdrom por /dev/hdb pero en mi experiencia es lo mismo.

Si han generado un archivo .sha1 o .md5 la opción -c les ayudará a comprar si las suman coinciden.

Espero que les sirva,

Suerte,

Antonio

As I've mentioned before, in my spare time I've been working on a fun project to replace the Unix terminal and shell with native graphics and a high-level language runtime. One thing that I quickly found out though was that certain applications require a real VT100 terminal emulator; for example, less is a highly optimized program, and while replacing it with a proper X11 app would be possible, it would not be trivial and would largely be a distraction from my goals anyways. Another situation where you need a terminal emulator is connecting to remote Unix hosts; while I have complete control over the software on my laptop, it's hard to change all the existing servers out there.

SSH in particular is something that really cries out for a nice application around it, rather than launching it primitively from an existing terminal emulator. Earlier I mentioned the result of a few hours of PyGTK hacking. Over the last week or two I've been working on improving it. Today David Ascher of Thunderbird fame asked for it, so I should probably kick it out the door (though HotSSH is primarily for X11/Unix and not the Mac).

New connection with history

As you can see, the new version of HotSSH now remembers what you do, automatically. For example:

• If you connect to a host and use a custom username, the next time you open HotSSH and type the host again, it defaults to that custom username, without you having to do anything


• It has pretty good completion on the Host entry, based both on ~/.ssh/known_hosts as well as its own history


• Open windows and tabs are saved automatically, Firefox style

The only dependencies are CPython, GTK+, DBus, and OpenSSH. I've broken it out of where it previously lived in the Hotwire tarball into a separate source tarball. You can currently get it from the Hotwire downloads page, though my long term plan is to import it into GNOME SVN and ideally have it come with GNOME out of the box. The code is currently here, and bug reports here. It works well enough for me now; about all it might make sense to add is some sort of color scheme (we currently just pull from the gnome-terminal defaults). To run, you can just unpack the tar and python ui/hotwire-ssh. If you install it, it should create a default bash alias for ssh, but this is something that package distributors will need to make sure integrates well.

This is a quick installation Guide for OCS Inventory NG and GLPI. A english translation will probably be posted (sooner or later).

Cet article est un guide d'installation rapide pour OCS Inventory NG and GLPI.

Pré-requis Ce guide est destiné aux distributions Fedora, RHEL et CentOS qui propose OCS et GLPI au format RPM dans leurs dépôts officiels (ou ici, donc en activant mon dépôt). On considère que la machine est vierge, en particulier que le serveur MySQL n'est ni installé, ni configuré. Pour plus d'information sur l'installation et la... Lire Guide d'installation rapide d'OCS et GLPI

Yesterday, I broke down and ordered a Thinkpad R61. I had originally planned to go with the T61, but I did some research, and found that really the only difference between the two (I got the 14.1" R61) is that the T61 is slightly thinner and lighter (but not by a huge margin). Both have the LCD roll cage (NOTE: the 15.4" R61 does NOT have the LCD roll cage, whereas the 14.1" model does), they're both built like tanks to withstand my abuse, and it's about $150-$200 cheaper than the T61. The total price of the machine after all the discounts was $958.15, not a bad machine for the price. Yes, I know that Centrino 2 is coming out next month. Having the absolute latest and greatest is not really important to me (except in the operating system realm :) ), and I think I''ll really enjoy it and it will last awhile I'm sure. Of course, the included Vista goes bye-bye quickly and gets replaced with F9 :)

So here's what I got (note the 5/22/08 over there, that's the estimated ship date :( ):

1	7732CT	CONFIGURED SYSTEM	05/22/08	$958.15	$958.15
	42X5952	SBB INTEL CORE2DUO PROC. T9300
	42V8012	VBB MS WIN VISTA HOME BASIC
	42W7293	SBB MSWINVISTA H-BAS32 US ENG
	42V9324	SBB 14.1WXGA +TFT,W/OCAM
	42X5956	SBB INTLGMA X3100 GM965W/1394
	41W2068	VBB 4GB PC2-5300 667MHZ 2DIMM
	42V8195	SBB KEYBOARD US ENGLISH
	42W7033	SBB ULTRANAV(TRCKP+TOUCHP) +FINGR
	42V8712	SBB 100GB HDD,7200RPM
	42V8718	SBB DVDREC.8XMAXDUAL L.ULT.ENH
	42V8177	SBB INT.WIRE.WIFI/LINK4965AGN
	42V9338	SBB 6 CELL LI-ION BATERRY
	41W1787	SBB CPK NORTH AMERICA
	42W7087	SBB LP,US ENGLISH

The Battle for Wesnoth é um jogo de estratégia baseado em turnos. Ele oferece opções de single-player, multi-player, e modos em rede com a idéia de fornecer um jeito fácil de integrar usuários. É bem divertido de se jogar mas vicia o jogador facilmente.

O que é mais impressionante no jogo é o tamanho e a atividade da comunidade no seu desenvolvimento. Existe uma extensa documentação, um tutorial bem desenhado, um bom trabalho gráfico e um grande número de mapas. Outros pontos legais são as soundtracks, um fórum do jogo bem ativo, e servidores para jogar online. Código livre é o melhor!!!

Nota: O pacote principal, wesnoth, aparece em modo de visualização via Browse no Fedora 8 Package Manager (Pirut), mas não perca as opções do jogo que são os pacotes wesnoth-server e wesnoth-tools que não aparecem em modo de visualização Browser, esses pacotes são o servidor em rede e um editor do jogo.

Instalando no Fedora por linha de comando: yum install wesnoth
Instalando usando o instalador gráfico: Aplicações > Games e Entretenimento > wesnoth
Localização no Menu após a instalação: Aplicações > Jogos > Battle for Wesnoth
Linha de comando: /usr/bin/wesnoth
Site principal do Projeto: http://www.wesnoth.org/

Parece que a data de lançamento do Fedora 9 agora é para valer. Como sempre, antes de uma nova versão, eu gostaria de dar uma geral no que foi feito nas traduções das interfaces.

Na minha opinião a coisa mais interessante a respeito das traduções no Fedora 9 é a localização do Yum. Ele foi completamente traduzido e suas traduções já se encontram pelos repositórios desde os updates do F9 Beta. Além disso, teremos a inclusão das traduções do RPM, realizadas no ano passado. Ainda falando nos gerenciadores dos pacotes, temos as traduções do packagekit e do gnome-packagekit, que já foram realizadas mas ainda não foram incluídas na distribuição devido ao fato de serem pacotes recentes dentro do Fedora. No caso do gnome-packagekit as traduções estão sendo feitas via Projeto GNOME, reforçando a cooperação com outros projetos. Talvez sejamos a primeira distribuição a incluir traduções em todos os níveis de gerenciamento de pacotes, o que é excelente do ponto de vista do usuário.

Além disso, todos os módulos que acompanham o calendário do Fedora foram completamente traduzidos, desde as ferramentas de configuração até o instalador.

Outra coisa que eu gostaria de comentar é o aumento no número de colaboradores na tradução. Desde o lançamento da revista algo muito especial deve ter acontecido porque nós não paramos de receber mais membros e todos eles estão muito motivados e contribuindo ativamente conosco.

No momento, com as traduções do F9 já fechadas, estamos trabalhando fortemente na finalização da tradução do sumário dos pacotes. Vale lembrar que traduzimos cerca de 6.000 strings só desse pacote. Nesses próximos meses vamos focar a tradução dos módulos extras e de projetos de terceiros que estão sendo adicionados na nossa infra-estrutura.

Na data de lançamento publicarei uma notícia no site do Projeto dando mais uma geral nessa questão e agradecendo à galera que contribuiu. De qualquer forma gostaria de agradecer de antemão a todos que ajudaram de uma forma ou de outra com o Projeto de Localização.

Abraços a todos,

Igor Pires Soares

Se você é impaciente e não quer esperar 4 dias para baixar o Fedora 9… fica roendo as unhas de ansiedade, relaxe, aqui você pega o Fedora 9 antes de todo mundo (ou até que fechem o link).

Is not hard to imagine cool stuff we can do with photos of people, see gregdek's idea about hackergotchi stickers, the old call for photos by Mo to promote spins, or a couple of ideas from me (Anaconda slides or fp.o front page banners), you know, things which could "emphasize the human nature of Fedora and the people behind the project" (he, he).

But we have a big blocker: lack of such photos... photos of Fedora contributors and enthusiasts which we allow us to use their photos (the approval part is very important).

So here is an idea: next week Fedora 9 release parties will gather all around the world a lot of right people in the right mood, so get your cameras, get approval from the subjects and let the photos flood. I am sure we can find crafty way to put them to good use.

---

Even if you are feed-up with my countdown, I still continue:

I find amusing how people think I may be going to marry, shave my beard or get a better job... not gonna happen, keep trying :p

I always remember reading an interview with Ken Thompson about regrets in the creation of Unix, and what would he do differently?  He said would add an "e" to the creat() system call.   Well looking back on SELinux I think the one of the biggest mistakes I made was calling the strict policy "strict".   When Red Hat Enterprise Linux  4 came out we had targeted policy which supported 15 confined domains and the unconfined domain.  While strict policy confined over 100 hundred domains including the user, and did not have the concept of the "unconfined" domain.  As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 strict policy is really no more strict then targeted.  If you are running a server with out normal users logging in, targeted gives you the same security as strict policy.

I was on the phone with a customer the other day who was setting up a web site and he was using strict policy on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.  He was having problems getting sudo to run from a cgi script.  When I asked him which policy he was running he told me strict.   I informed him that in order to get support for strict policy you are supposed to have a special support contract with Red Hat.   He told me that he was worried that targeted policy was not as secure a "strict".  Arrrrrrrggggggg.    They are the same, from an Apache point of view.  Both Strict and Targeted policy in RHEL5 support around 200 confined domains.  Pretty much all of system space is confined.  Targeted policy is used by hundreds of thousands or machines, stict on maybe hundreds, so guess which one runs better? 

The two major differences in RHEL5 is strict policy confined logged in users,  NOT ADMINS.  If you have an server machine that only an admin is going to login to you do not want/need to use strict policy.

Most admins are not confined, and will probably need to be able to execute setenforce 0 or install rpm packages, so attempting to confine them is somewhat fruitless

As far as unconfined domains,  The three most common on a targeted machine are

•  unconfined_t, default user login.
• java_t, mono_t, unconfined_execmem_t, are additional versions of the unconfined_t login
• initrc_t - default policy for services started by /etc/init.d/ scripts
  
• This allows any third party software that does not have a policy to run
• inetd_t - default policy for services run in /etc/xinetd/
• inetd_child_t is another form of this domain

If you want to make sure your machine is not running an unconfined domain you can check for these processes.

Luckily Strict policy disappears with the advent of Fedora 9.   In Fedora 9 you can run confined users and unconfined users at the same time.  You you remove the unconfined.pp policy module, you will remove the ability to run unconfined domains.  So I will not need to worry about policy "naming" in the Future.

Well, it’s taken a month and a half — and over 2000 lines of code — but I finally got a method out of Shark.

I made a chart showing which bytecodes are implemented, which I’ll keep updated as I progress. The estimated total coverage of 18% is slightly fanciful as it treats all bytecodes as equally complex, with nop having the same weight as new for example. Some codes are marked as complete but untested too. The way the compiler is structured means that in simple cases I can copy and paste whole blocks of bytecodes from the server compiler, so where I was doing one bytecode in a block I’ve copied the lot across. Most of them ought to be fine, but a couple are dubious. I’m still shuffling things around to try and make things less so.

Onwards…

Today I read an article on heise about the Greendex. It's a measure to rate how environment-friendly your living style is. Germany is only in the middle with 50.2 points, Brasil and India rank best with 60 and the USA are last with 44.9 points.

There is a Greendex Calculator that you can use to calculate your own score. Mine is 56, what's your's?

Αποφασίσαμε να ρίξουμε ένα γλέντι για να γιορτάσουμε την κυκλοφορία του Fedora 9. Στην πραγματικότητα θα μαζευτούμε οι συνήθεις ύποπτοι στην πίσω αυλίτσα του Cinema café στον πεζόδρομο της Γεροκωστοπούλου στην Πάτρα να τα πούμε. Σας περιμένουμε με μπυροκαφέδες, μπλουζάκια Fedora, Fedora 9 Live CDs/USBs και όρεξη για flames.

Short fact sheet:

• Σάββατο, 17 Μαΐου, στις 6μμ
• Cinema café, Πεζόδρομος Γεροκωστοπούλου, στο κέντρο της Πάτρας (χάρτης)
• 15-20 geeks
• Fedora talks, swag, …
• URL: http://fedoraproject.gr/fedora-9/release-party

Μπορείτε να υπολογίζετε ότι θα είναι παρόντες οι κλασικοί εν Πάτραις Linux-άδες. Μετά το παρτάκι πιθανό να υπάρξει έξοδος για ωραίο φαγητό σε μεζεδοπωλείο κάπου στην Πάτρα (οδό Τριών Ναυάρχων, κλπ). Οι φίλτατοι επισκέπτες από Αθήνα και λοιπά περίχωρα, έχουν την επιλογή να διαμείνουν σε κάποιο fellow Λινουξά ή μπορούν να την κάνουν κατά τις 8 για να επιστρέψουν στα σπιτάκια τους.

Θυμίζω ότι την αμέσως προηγούμενη ημέρα διοργανώνουμε επίσης το πρώτο OpenCoffee (more info) στην Πάτρα, στο οποίο θα μαζευτούμε να μιλήσουμε για ενδιαφέρουσες νέες τεχνολογίες (Web 2.0 κι άλλα bubbles) αλλά και για επιχειρίν και επενδύσεις. Ελάτε να τα πούμε και στα δύο events.

There are days when one takes a step back and thanks whosoever is watching above us for being generous, kind and making magic happen. Magic has been happening for a decade now

Da Fedora 9 bald erscheinen wird, wird es sicher wieder einen Ansturm auf die Mirror-Servers geben ;-) . Die grafische Darstellung der Positionen der Server zeigt, dass Europe ziemlich dicht besetzt ist und so werden wohl alle rechtzeitig bedient werden können.


Wenn Bandbreite gespart werden sollt, kann auch Jigdo benutzt werden.

Life is never easy for an open source evangelist. The OOXML drama came to a close on 2nd April 2008 and we were on to our next issue -- software patents. The Draft Patent Manual might end up bringing software patents through the back door. this would be surprising because the Indian parliament explicitly rejected software patents in the Patent Amendment Act 2005. In this blog, I am including extracts from a letter that I sent to the Patent Office on 11th April 2008. The deadline for comments was 15th April 2008.

Software patents in India as per Clause 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act

We find that the Draft Patent Manual seeks to introduce software patents and we believe that this is not in consonance with the current legal situation India where Clause 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act clearly says,

“A mathematical or business method or a computer programme per se or algorithms are not patentable”.

You may recall that the Patent Amendment Act 2005 sought to introduce software patents. The amendment proposed in the Patent Amendment Act 2005 for Clause 3(k) was,

“a computer programme per se other than its technical application to industry or a combination with hardware; a mathematical method or a business method or algorithms.”

However, this amendment was rejected by the Indian Parliament, which chose to retain Clause 3(k) as it is. On reviewing the Draft Patent Manual, we find that it seeks to make technical applications of software patentable. As you can see from the above, this approach was explicitly rejected by the Indian Parliament. The relevant section of the Draft says:

Draft Manual 4.11.7
4.A mathematical method is one which is carried out on numbers and provides a result in numerical form (the mathematical method or algorithm therefore being merely an
abstract concept prescribing how to operate on the numbers) and not patentable. However, its application may well be patentable, for example, in Vicom/Computer-related invention [1987] 1 OJEPO 14 (T208/84) the invention concerned a mathematical method for manipulating data representing an image, leading to an enhanced digital image. Claims to a method of digitally filtering data performed on a conventional general purpose computer were rejected, since those claims were held to define an abstract concept not distinguished from a mathematical method. However, claims to a method of image processing which used the mathematical method to operate on numbers representing an image can be allowed. The reasoning was that the image processing performed was a technical (i.e. non- excluded) process which related to technical quality of the image and that a claim directed to a technical process in which the method used does not seek protection for the mathematical method as such. Therefore the allowable claims as such went beyond a mathematical method.

Open Source Software and software patents from a national perspective

We would also like to add that the Government of India has identified open source software as a strategic tool for e-governance and for bridging the digital divide in India. The Department of IT's 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2012) says,

“If computer adoption has to reach from current 1% of population to say 5% in next five years, we have to seriously pursue some other route, viz., that of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS).”

The National Knowledge Commission, in a report submitted to the Prime Minister of India, says,

“Because of the enormous size and scope of the E-governance effort in India and because of the availability of globally recognized software talent of Indians, we must actively encourage open source software implementations and open standards wherever possible.”

Open Source Software is built in a collaborative manner by developers spread across the world who share source code and build upon each other's works. In his book, “The Success of Open Source,” the noted political scientist, Prof. Steven Weber, Director of the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, says,

“The conventional notion of property is the right to exclude. Property in open source is configured fundamentally around the right to distribute, not to exclude.”

The GNU General Public License, which is used by almost 60 percent of open source software explicitly states that if you modify and redistribute source code licensed under the GPL, you have to share the resultant changes with others. This legal framework has lead to enormous innovation and technology collaboration on a scale that's never been witnessed before. For example, the Linux operating system, which began life in September 1991 has now grown into more than 100 million lines of code.

The freedom to modify the source code and share the changes has benefited India immensely. Many linguistic groups have localized the Graphical User Interface of Linux into more than 11 Indian languages so that non-English speakers can also benefit from the power of digital technology. Open Source Software like Orca help the visually handicapped use computers with ease and skill. Many national mission-mode projects in e-governance make extensive use of open source software. In almost all fields of IT, open source software has emerged as a powerful alternative to expensive, proprietary software, which have restrictive licensing schemes. Developing countries, across the world have therefore embraced open source software with open arms in light of its strategic long-term benefits.

It is for these reasons that the respected technologist and past president of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, said,

“In India, open source code software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people."

Open source software is one of the most dynamic, innovative sectors of the global economy, but the patent system is a costly hindrance to open source innovation. We believe that although the patent system was created to foster innovation, it’s simply not an engine for innovation for open source. Software patents were barely recognized when open source began, and so the hope of obtaining a patent did not motivate the first developers. Those pioneers were generally opposed to software patents. The open, collaborative activity at the heart of open source is at odds with the patent system, which excludes the public from making, using or selling a patented invention. Open source developers seek to contribute code to the community – not to exclude others from using the code.

Today the patent system is, if anything, a hindrance to open source. Developers face the risk that the original code they have written in good faith could be deemed to infringe an existing software patent. Software patents are difficult to interpret, even for experts in computer science and software engineering. Experts often disagree as to whether a particular patent claim covers a particular program. Thus, a risk of litigation exist for every open source project, and the potential cost of patent litigation can be ruinous, especially for startup companies.

Given the litigation risk, some open source companies, including Red Hat, acquire patents for the sole purpose of asserting them defensively in the event they are faced with a future lawsuit. Despite the hindrances of the global patent system, open source continues to expand at an exponential rate. One can only imagine how that expansion would accelerate if the braking effect of the patent system were lifted.

Given the fact that (a) that Indian legislators have clearly chosen to exclude software from the list of patentable inventions (b) that open source software is important to India's long-term strategic interests, and (c) there is a growing global outcry against software patents, we hereby request you to ensure that the Draft Patent Manual reflects the will and intent of the Indian Parliament.

LETTER ENDS

We will keep track of the developments around the Draft Patent Manual. This might prove to be a challenging task because I hear that there is a powerful pro software patents lobby at work. Keep watching this blog.

The Battle for Wesnoth is a well-developed turn-based strategy battle game. It offers single-player, multi-player, and network modes and has a easy-to-use and engaging hextile user interface. It's a lot of fun to play -- but easily addictive.

What I find most impressive about this game is the size and activity of its community, which has developed extensive documentation, a built-in tutorial, nice artwork, a large number of maps, and a great soundtrack, and maintains very active forums and game servers. Open source at its best!

Note: The main package, wesnoth, appears in the Browse view of the Fedora 8 Pacakge Manager (Pirut), but don't miss the optional wesnoth-server and wesnoth-tools packages which do not appear in the Browse view -- these packages provide a network server and a game editor.

Thanks to Gayathri Swaminathan for suggesting this package!

Installing from the command line: yum install wesnoth
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games and Entertainment > wesnoth
Menu location after installation: Applications > Games > Battle for Wesnoth
Command: /usr/bin/wesnoth
Upstream website: http://www.wesnoth.org/

What is Similarity-Enhanced Transfer?

After a brief skim, it seems that SET is a concept similar to BitTorrent but without arbitrary chunking of data. By using handprinting both similar and exact match chunks can be identified and utilized in the download process. The concept looks very interesting and I'm hoping to set aside some time to work on proof of concept code in the near future. I would also like to extend an invitation to the community to help develop and prove the viability of such a solution for mass-hosting of Live-Spins and Live-Spin collections, such as localized spins based on the same package set. We could easily setup an upstream git repo (likely on fedorahosted) or we could just add a branch to the existing pyJigdo repo and get right to work.

Why should this Concept Even be Considered?

Well, I'll quote the abstract and hope it's enough to encourage reading the entire paper:

"Many contemporary approaches for speeding up large file transfers attempt to download chunks of a data object from multiple sources. Systems such as BitTorrent quickly locate sources that have an exact copy of the desired object, but they are unable to use sources that serve similar but non-identical objects. Other systems automatically exploit cross-file similarity by identifying sources for each chunk of the object. These systems, however, require a number of lookups proportional to the number of chunks in the object and a mapping for each unique chunk in every identical and similar object to its corresponding sources. Thus, the lookups and mappings in such a system can be quite large, limiting its scalability.

This paper presents a hybrid system that provides the best of both approaches, locating identical and similar sources for data objects using a constant number of lookups and inserting a constant number of mappings per object. We first demonstrate through extensive data analysis that similarity does exist among objects of popular file types, and that making use of it can sometimes substantially improve download times. Next, we describe handprinting, a technique that allows clients to locate similar sources using a constant number of lookups and mappings. Finally, we describe the design, implementation and evaluation of Similarity-Enhanced Transfer (SET), a system that uses this technique to download objects. Our experimental evaluation shows that by using sources of similar objects, SET is able to significantly out-perform an equivalently configured BitTorrent."

-- 

Himabindu Pucha, David G. Andersen, Michael Kaminsky
Purdue University, Carnegie Mellon University, Intel Research Pittsburgh 

Read the whole thing.

 

What you ask? How am I writing on the blog if I'm liquidating all my assets in order to pay off debts? Not that kind of bankrupt, silly! I'm going to declare laundry bankruptcy this weekend.

I have nothing but a small stackable washer and dryer in my apartment, so doing all of the laundry that has accumulated that doesn't absolutely have to be done is going to take weeks if I were to undertake the entire endeavor.

What, exactly, is a laundry bankruptcy and how does one declare such a thing? Fortunately, there are no costly lawyers involved, nor is your credit tarnished for 7 years. Rather, one feels better immediately after declaring laundry bankruptcy. You know that you're a candidate for laundry bankruptcy when the mountain of laundry in your apartment is taller than you are (no, not really my case, but you get the point). So how does one declare laundry bankruptcy?

The procedures may vary slightly, depending on where you live. The gist of it, though, is a trip to the local laundromat. You can either do the laundry yourself there, or, for a fee, they will generally do the laundry for you and you can pick it up later. After all, is doing umpteen loads of laundry really worth my time and effort? I don't really think so.

After all this is done, I'll probably have enough clean clothes for a year! :)

Pra quê ficar perdendo horas descobrindo como fazer as coisas no Fedora? Se você quer aprender, isso é ótimo, mas se você quer apenas formatar o micro, instalar o Fedora e sair usando, então o easyLife foi feito para você!

Não importa se você é experiente ou novato! O easyLife encurta caminhos, configura muitas coisas e baixa outras!

Em breve, o easyLife estará pronto para o Fedora 9.

Não deixe de visitar a página do easyLife aqui no Projeto: easyLife

• BBC NEWS | Technology | TorrentSpy ordered to pay $110m
  This is bullshit. What year is this?
  (tags: copyright, 2008, bittorrent, pirates, sharing)

SVG Source

I was amazed by FunPidgin. Whilst some of the features aren't actually crack, making things like these options is:
An option?!

Anyway, Totem's playlist parser is now ported to GIO. I'll make a release soon, but I'd like to ask people to please test the hell out of it. If opening or saving a particular playlist produces warnings, errors, or crashes, please file a bug.

You can test easily by recompiling and using as normal: Rhythmbox (Podcast and playlist parsing, playlist saving), and Totem and its web browser plugin.

lazyweb, poll time!

When you sleep, how do you use your pillow ?

1. the middle part of the back of your head rests on the lower end of your pillow, your neck floats freely, your shoulder blades rest on the bed
2. the middle part of the back of your head rests on the pillow, your neck rests lightly on the lower end of your pillow, your shoulder blades rest on the bed
3. the middle part of the back and your shoulder blades rest on the pillow
4. something else (please specify)

Today I tried Funpidgin. It's much more fun than plain Pidgin. What I really missed in the latest releases was the ability to resize the text entry. I like it to have more space. It's easier with long entries, you just size it reasonable once and it won't change during input. I also like that the "other side is typing" icon in the upper right corner is back, I don't like the inline text. Why don't the Pidgin developers just add a "Pimp my Pidgin" Tab to preferences with this "special" settings!?

I hope the Pidgin developers get rid of their "we dictate how an IM messenger should work for anybody" attitude and reintegrate the Funpidgin people. Judging from this ticket there are more who would like this... Up to then you can find the package on my fedora webspace. Attention, it conflicts with the Pidgin package, has to since no file is renamed, but just some functionality added.

#395252 Paczkerzy! Nieliczni deweloperzy paczkują... I bynajmniej nie robią tego używając własnego CPU i łącza, bo to się zwyczajnie nie opłaca, jeżeli zdalna maszyna może zbudować paczkę za człowieka, wygenerować plik do 1click install i jeszcze udostępnić to wszystko.

Turns out… at about 18:20 UTC the power went out at my house for a short period of time. The router came back up, but my computers didn’t. I’m at the library and now I can’t do anything.

Remind me to set up the BIOS on both my computers to reboot after power outages.

Alex, to build numptyphysics with gcc 4.3 I have to apply a patch like this:

--- Box2D/Source/Dynamics/b2Body.h      (revision 45)
+++ Box2D/Source/Dynamics/b2Body.h      (working copy)
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@
 #include "../Collision/b2Shape.h"
 
 #include <memory>
+#include <cstring>
 
 class b2Joint;
 class b2Contact;
--- Box2D/Source/Dynamics/Contacts/b2PolyContact.cpp    (revision 45)
+++ Box2D/Source/Dynamics/Contacts/b2PolyContact.cpp    (working copy)
@@ -22,6 +22,8 @@
 #include <memory>
 #include <new>
 
+#include <cstring>
+
 b2Contact* b2PolyContact::Create(b2Shape* shape1, b2Shape* shape2, b2BlockAllocator* allocator)
 {
	void* mem = allocator->Allocate(sizeof(b2PolyContact));
--- Box2D/Source/Common/b2BlockAllocator.cpp    (revision 45)
+++ Box2D/Source/Common/b2BlockAllocator.cpp    (working copy)
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@
 #include <cstdlib>
 #include <memory>
 #include <climits>
+#include <cstring>
 
 int32 b2BlockAllocator::s_blockSizes[b2_blockSizes] = 
 {
--- Box2D/Source/Collision/b2BroadPhase.cpp     (revision 45)
+++ Box2D/Source/Collision/b2BroadPhase.cpp     (working copy)
@@ -19,6 +19,8 @@
 #include "b2BroadPhase.h"
 #include <algorithm>
 
+#include <cstring>
+
 // Notes:
 // - we use bound arrays instead of linked lists for cache coherence.
 // - we use quantized integral values for fast compares.

Просмотрел старые документы и наткнулся на интересный файл с названием WinSock2 options. Нахынуни воспоминания о прошлых интересах и пробежал холодный ужас по спине давая понять всему телу, что мы не управляем тем потенциалом, который заложен в наши машины под управлением Windows. Закрытый потенциал этой операционной системы иногда преподносит нам сюрпризы совершенно с неожиданной стороны и бороться с ними мы должны увы нашим машинным временем и деньгами нашего кошелька. Я уверен, что каждый пользователь имеет свое представление о безопасности и имеет безумно крутой арсенал программ под Windows защищающих его от внешних атак и внутренних угроз, которыми наполнена всемирная паутина. Каждый пользователь не прерываясь ни на секунду старается защитить себя от троянских коней, вредоносного кода и червей устанавливая все новые и новые программы защищающие компьютер от губительного воздействия: сканирования портов, передаваемой почты с вирусами, хранимых куки, интернет активности приложений и многого другого. Такой пользователь думает, что контролирует систему!

В свое время, я так же боялся всего, что меня окружает в компьютере и старался защитится от этой не существующей угрозы. Я устанавливал безумное множество защит и программ действие которых до конца не понимал. Ведь и сейчас не каждый пользователь знает как происходит обработка сетевого вывода приложений и как интернет эксплорер использует дополнительный набор компонент для обработки данных отправляемых и получаемых из интернета. Но не смотря на это пытается сделать свою машину безопаснее этим путем. Так вот в один такой момент я установил замечательное средство F-secure которое гарантировало мне безопасность от всех известных и неизвестных угроз. Но к сожалению ко мне попала тогда триальноая версия той программы, которая перестала должным образом функционировать через определенный промежуток времени. Как добропорядочный пользователь я воспользовался программой установки\удаления программ но в какой-то момент что-то пошло не так и моя машина перезагрузилась. Я остался наедине с приветствием BIOS компьютера и с полными грусти глазами ждал появления рабочего стола Windows XP.

Ничего не предвещало беды ход загрузки шел привычным образом и вскоре я увидел рабочий свой стол с моим набором иконок. Не долго думая я решил проверить, что случилось с моей системой и пробежался по файлам в Program Files и записям в реестре в надежде увидеть остатки не удачно удаленного F-Secure. Все было чисто. После этого я вышел в интернет загрузить новую версию и сделать переустановку с недавно найденным ключем для этой программы. Открытый браузер меня остановил пустой страницей и надписью что-то вроде "F-Secure Controlled", с маленьким зияющим картинкой-логотипчиком. В адресной строке высвечивалось "http://google.com". Я был в недоумении.

Любой адрес в интернете давал схожий результат и я не желая мириться с произволом вызванным хамским поведением программы F-secure я стал жадно уничтожать все что хоть как-то могло напомнить мне о F-secure на моем компьютере. Я пробежался по реестру и удалил все записи в которых значилось F-secure, я пробежался по каталогу Program Files и удалил все папки, зашел в папку Program Files/Common и проверил там. Через некоторое время моя машина была безупречно чиста и должна была не помнить, что вообще может означать это загадочное сочетание символов f-secure. Перезагрузка...

Победив врага, в полной уверенности что на моей машине не осталось ни одного файла от корпорации f-secure, я открыл браузера на уже известной странице: google.com и какого было мое удивление - я опять увидел логотип и текстовой надписью F-Secure controlled.

Загадка заставила меня остановится на пару секунд и понять, что происходит. Как машина может общаться со мной не выходя в интернет при этом получать на экране сочетание слов которое было надежно изничтожено из всех уголков файловой системы и системных файлов? Это хороший пример того, как операционная система управляет пользователями давая ложные представления и уводя пользователя от реальных проблем. Мысли бесперерыва будоражили мою голову и идея подкралась ко мне с того боку откуда я ее не ожидал - Unicode :)

Небольшой файлик не имеющий сходства с чем бы то ни было напоминающим наследие корпорации f-secure хранился в системных файлах. Файл был защищен от записи и как заноза, которую пытаются выковорить был защищен от удаления каким-то скрытым системным процессом. Для уничтожения врага привычным движением я перегрузился в безопасный режим и перетащил засланца в корзину...

Переустановка винды.

Почему же такой маленький вредный файл позволил испортить весь сетевой стек заблокировав все сетевые функции, хотя он не был открыт никаким запущенным процессом в user-space?

Интерес воспалялся с каждой секундой просмотра рекламных лозунгов установщика Windows. Первым делом после того как установка Windows была завершена, я нашел старую копию F-secure и запустил установку. Для чистоты эксперимента я повторил все шаги. Удалил все файлы из Program Files содержащие слова f-secure. Удалил все записи из реестра и перезагрузился. Результат не заставил себя ждать: опять пустая страница браузера с маленьким логотипчиком и знакомая до боли надпись.

Исследование продолжалось... Простыми редакторами и выжимками из содержимого файла и его имени удалось уличить системный реестр в том, что он содержит ссылки на данный файл. Причем как оказалось windows поддерживает настраиваемый, не документированный функционал для управления сетевым стеком. И позволяет приложениям, не будучи запущенными, контролировать весь сетевой трафик на уровне пользователя. То есть вы задаете специальные настройки в реестр об интересующей вас сетевой информации (скажем 80 порт) и система Windows будет запускать указанную библиотеку на все пакеты проходящие от вашей машины в интернет и обратно. Этакий маленький ручной фаевол.

Было это давно и после провидения анализа, поиск в интернете особо результатов не дал я потерял интерес к данной проблеме. Этот урок наглядно мне показал, что понятие безопасности весьма относительно и использование кучи софта не даст результата, пока нет точного понимания процессов проходящих внутри самой системы и о безопасности можно вообще забыть.

Для справки: ключ в реестре:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinSock2\Parameters\Protocol_Catalog9\Catalog_Entries]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinSock2\Parameters\Protocol_Catalog9\Catalog_Entries\000000000001]
"PackedCatalogItem"=hex:77,69,... ,00,00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinSock2\Parameters\Protocol_Catalog9\Catalog_Entries\000000000002]
"PackedCatalogItem"=hex:77,69,6e,73,...,00

...

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinSock2\Parameters\Protocol_Catalog9\Catalog_Entries\000000000034]
"PackedCatalogItem"=hex:25,53,79,73...,00

Links:
WinSock2 options

O Projeto Fedora Brasil, através da sua participação no ENSOL 2.0 em João Pessoa -PB, conseguiu demonstrar mais uma vez a força e organização da comunidade Fedora brasileira.

leia mais

Digg us, digg us, digg us, digg us...please

Deutscher Artikel : http://digg.com/linux_unix/Fedora_Project_macht_am_LinuxTag_2008_blau
English article : http://digg.com/linux_unix/The_Fedora_Project_LinuxTag_2008_turns_blue

It’s time to start looking into a new search method for Thunderbird. One of the major changes planned for Thunderbird is a new and improve search, but what does that mean?

What do we have?

First lets look at what we have for a search system.  At a very simple level most search systems break down into two pieces, a search interface for filtering and a results interface for listing.  Thunderbird does this in a couple places.

Quick Search

The quick search entry is always at the top right of the Thunderbird window and allows people to search over the current view.  The results of a quick search fill into the current view, replacing whatever listing was previously shown.

The Quick Search defaults to searching only the Subject or Sender and will only search mail that Thunderbird has downloaded already.  Messages that are not listed in the current view (like in another folder) will not be searched unless that folder is selected, otherwise a person needs to use the Advanced Search.

Advanced Search

Hidden under the Edit Menu and Find Sub-Menu is an advanced search dialog that can make use of the remote mail or news protocol to perform a full search instead of just a local search.   The Search Messages dialog provides it’s own search interface as well as it’s own results view directly below the search.  While the Search Messages dialog provides some more advanced search methods over the quick search it’s hard to find and difficult to use effectively.

The Search Messages dialog allows for complex search queries to be built with multiple search terms composed of a number of different field type selectors.  The queries require a lot of input from the user because of the tight structure used to create them.  The same search and results interface code is used for creating mail filters.

Edit -> Find -> Search Messages…

Advanced Search Dialog

What do we want?

I was lucky enough to chat with Andrew Gilmartin yesterday and he framed a future goal very well.  “We’re not looking to make search an added feature box on the side of Thunderbird“, we’re looking to make search the definitive method for viewing mail.

What does “Search as the definitive viewing method for your mail” mean?  That’s a good question and I’m not sure exactly what a good answer is yet. A search would help you find the message you’re looking for, and perhaps a search view never lets you lose that message in the first place.  There’s a lot to explore.

Here are two important pieces of a search system and view that need to be examined and somehow exposed in the interface.

Search and Filter

An impediment of the current search system is requiring people to choose a search type (Subject or Sender) before they even enter any text.  To help people hunt for the correct item you want to allow for starting their search very broad and then allow them to narrow down that broad search with filters like subject or sender.

The current search system has some speed issues that likely prevented a broad to filter system of searching to be implemented.  The mail client Mail.app provides a decent filter bar when searching mail that allows people to see what the current filters are (folder, account) and change them.

Browse and Filter

The SEEK extension is an excellent example of how offering a system of browsing mail by grouped attributes from the start can help people find the item or group of items they were looking for.  Instead of starting with a search term you give the person a list of attributes they might use to filter the list of messages.

An inspiring system for a similar searching, browsing, and filtering methods is things, you should try it if you haven’t already.

Getting What we Want

Moving towards a new search based paradigm will take some adventurous steps and it’s important not to disturb current usage while making those steps.  Here are a number of changes to look at making.

Merging Search Interfaces

Each of the two current search interfaces provide some needed features and capabilities, however having two separate interfaces for searching is confusing and difficult to understand.  We need to combine the ability to do a quick search with the ability to perform a full search into a single interface with an improved results view.

With a single search interface Thunderbird will be searching the local and remote mail (like IMAP) at the same time.  However local results will be listing quickly and remote results will likely take a little more time.  Both sets of results, local and remote, can be merged into the same search results view by showing local results instantly and filling in remote results as they arrive.

Offline Cached and Indexed Mail

In order to have a fast search system even while offline Thunderbird needs to do a much better job of caching and indexing mail as it encounters it.  With new messages instantly cached and indexed they can be made available to search queries, filters, and views immediately.

This is an excellent time to start thinking about the data mining mail in a way that helps searching messages later.  It’s also time to think about making the defaults tuned towards offline usage while still allowing people to control online / offline caching.

Auto Complete

With mail data indexed locally and quickly available Thunderbird should be able to provide a slick and fun auto-complete on search terms it knows about.   Auto complete when searching for items you’re already aware exists helps with miss-spelling errors and more complete matching.  The awesomebar shows how with just a little broken memory of a title or url you can easily find the page you saw once before.

Fetching Results

Our current drive is to investigate some indexing on messages (at least subjects), pull the new auto-complete into Thunderbird, and get a search bar using that fancy auto-complete on mail subjects and hopefully the addition of a couple more fun things.  Leave some comments or jump on the newsgroup to participate.

A wire frame of a possible mail search auto-complete

A l'occasion de la sortie prochaine de fedora 9 et pour commémorer la journée mondiale des TIC, (Technologie de l'information et de la communication) FEDORA TUNISIA, DFSA et ESPRIT vous invitent à une conférence portant sur les systèmes d'exploitation libres et open source.

Cet évènement aura lieu Ce Samedi 10 Mai à l'école ESPRIT (Charguia II)

Programme :

10h00
fedora 9 SULPHUR
présenté par Nihed Med M'BAREK - ambassadeur de fedora project -

10h45
Le noyau et la mémoire virtuelle de Linux
présenté par Imed CHIHI - Red Hat eaurope -

Lieu : ESPRIT - Charguia II -
Plan : http://www.esprit.ens.tn/fr/presentation/acces.htm

08.05.2008
- добавлена информация о настройке клиентских мест
- добавлено пункт про пеимущества данного метода построения сетей.

10.04.2008
- дополнительные комментарии для команд создания сертификатов

07.04.2008
- добавлены скрипты поднятия\удаления интерфейсов

06.04.2008
- обновлен скрипт tap0.sh.
- исправлены опечатки.
- переименован tap0.conf

Создание виртуальной локальной сети задача не требующая никаких специальных знаний и программ, если вы используете дистрибутив Fedora 8 в стандартной поставке. Нашей задачей является добавление возможности подключать любого пользователя интернет к локальной сети, делая его компьютер полноценным членом сети. В случае удачной настройки нашего сервера работающего на Fedora 8, любой человек желающий работать, играть в игры, или обмениваться файлами будет это делать так же просто как если бы его компьютер находился рядом с нашим без каких либо ограничений. На каждого такого пользователя мы создадим виртуальный его аналог, который будет воспроизводить все функции его машины и она представиться для любого другого компьютера этой сети как реальная машина.

Все это означает что вы получите виртуальный физический канал к удаленному компьютеру. Этот канал будет соединен с сетевой картой на удаленной машине и все сетевые команды будут транслированы на удаленную машину без каких либо изменений. Что позволяет воспользоваться всеми службами вашей сети так же прозрачно как и для вас самих. В этот набор включается службы динамической адресации получения сетевого адреса, файлообменные службы, сетевые локальные службы обмена сообщениями и так далее. Список можно продолжать до бесконечности, скажу просто удаленные пользователь становится простым рабочим местом и имеет все те же возможности как и любой другой член сети.

В интернете не трудно найти различные методики и инструкции позволяющие добиваться такого-же результата рассмотренного в данном руководстве. Однако, следуя в точности шагам указанных в данной заметке вы получаете не просто получаете виртуальную сеть, а так же сохраняете целостность системы от инородных скриптов, которые могут производить посторонний эффект. Следуя ниже описанному руководству вы сохраняете мехнизмы задуманные сообществом Fedora и администрирование такой системы значительно упращается, так как вы сводите изменение системы к минимуму.

Перейдем к техническим деталям и опишем необходимые требования которые необходимо достичь для поставленной цели:

1. настроить специальным образом сетевые интерфейсы образовав сетевой мост
2. создать сертификаты.
3. установить openvpn сервер.
4. настройка клиентских мест

Network bridge

Первым делом необходимо обеспечить прозрачный транспорт сетевого трафика между вашими виртуальными пользователями и реальной сетью. Для этого необходимо зайти в папку /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ и произвести изменения. Наша задача сводиться к созданию конфигурации моста и удалению текущего интерфейса отвечающего за обмен данных с локальной сетью. Его функции будут переложены на сетевой мост:

Для этого удаляем все настройки связанные с получением сетевого адреса или его статические значения. Их нужно будет перенести в настройки моста. Приблизительно сетевой интерфейс должен выглядеть следующим образом:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
BRIDGE=br0

Далее создадим конфигурацию сетевого интерфейса. Получение адреса в моем случае динамическое:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0

DEVICE=br0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Bridge

Сделующим важным моментом будет подключение к сетевому мосту (бриджу) интерфейса отвечающего за виртуальных пользователей:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-tap0

DEVICE=tap0
DEVICETYPE=ovpn
ONBOOT=yes
BRIDGE=br0

Создать такой интерфейс нам поможет простой скрипт размещенный в папке /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts.

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-ovpn

#!/bin/bash

. /etc/init.d/functions

cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
. ./network-functions

[ -f ../network ] && . ../network

CONFIG=${1}

need_config ${CONFIG}

source_config

/usr/sbin/openvpn --mktun --dev ${DEVICE}

if [ -n "${BRIDGE}" -a -x /usr/sbin/brctl ]; then
     if ! LC_ALL=C /usr/sbin/brctl show | LC_ALL=C grep -q "^${BRIDGE} "; then
         /usr/sbin/brctl addbr ${BRIDGE} 2>/dev/null
     fi
     /sbin/ip addr flush dev ${DEVICE} 2>/dev/null
     /sbin/ip link set dev ${DEVICE} up
     if [ -n "$ETHTOOL_OPTS" ] ; then
       /sbin/ethtool -s ${REAL