Makin' Wands

My son has really gotten into Harry Potter lately and has been begging for a wand. He was so motivated that he tried to make one out of paper. Which I tossed, of course. And then decided we needed to make a "real" wand.

Fortunately, it's real easy! Get two dowels. One is 3/4" in diameter and the other is 3/8". Cut to appropriate lengths -- 2" or so for length, 14-16" for wand body. Drill a hole in the 3/4" dowel. Use wood glue to glue together. Sand. Stain. Varnish. Done!

Result: Happy kids. :-)

If you have a lathe or turner (or can jig one together), I imagine you can shape the wand handle a bit to make it look nice.

Subversion 1.4.2

For some reason, Subversion 1.4.2 does not appear to be available for Fedora Core 5. I'm guessing that it's because Fedora Core 6 is out, but really don't know. The base install has 1.3.2.

I have an interest in 1.4.2 because of some of the updates and because it will be what we use at work. Since I am the builder (literally) of that environment, it is good for me to have pre-existing experience.

At any rate, when I built 1.4.2, I thought all was well until I realized that Python couldn't find Subversion. Finally realized that the Python bindings need to be built separately. Then, I found out that the client couldn't hit external repositories with WebDAV. So I monkeyed around, got it to work from command line by using the "-dep" package. However, then Apache would segfault.

Finally found out tonight that I need to use the Apache 2.2 APR and APR Utils but keep the dependent Neon package (that is, ignore the one already installed in the system).

Whew! It's been a good week since things broke.

New camera!

Christmas came a bit early this year! When my mom asked me what I wanted for a gift I suggested a new camera. Today was the day we went and did a little shopping...

I've had a trusty Olympus C-3000 Zoom since we moved into this house, basically - that's about 5 or more years old. It is still a good camera - but I wanted more zoom (like 10x instead of 3x), better movie mode (> 30 seconds), and more responsive. It has basically become dated and that's not surprising since this is tech we're talking about.

After doing a bit of review and reading on Digital Photography Review, I settled on a few cameras that appeared to be in the class I was looking at. After playing around with the Canon PowerShot S3 IS, along with the equivalent Sony and others, I settled on the Canon.

So far so good. We shot my mom's Christmas picture, printed it out on my photo printer and she's ready to go. (Old fashioned - she still cuts and pastes the photo... and then brings it to a copier business to duplicate!!)

The camera is snappy, movies (as far as I've been able to test them) are quite good, images appear good, and there's lots of features to explore. I think the only downside is that when shooting a movie and taking still pictures (yes, you can do that), the movie blanks out and you get the click sound. Other than than, it's been a pleasure playing with it.

Backing up Windows XP ...

My wife's computer went a bit flaky on Friday night, and we suddenly realized she never got it backed up (a-hem!). After a bit of thinking, I decided the most reliable thing to do would be to schedule a script that archives her data and ships it to the Linux server.

Not wanting to hard-code passwords, I needed to do a little research in key exchanges for ssh/scp. What I came up with is this...

Initial setup:
1. Install Cygwin. Make sure to select the additional ssh, bzip2, and vim.
2. Generate ssh keys:

ssh-keygen -t rsa1
ssh-keygen -t rsa
ssh-keygen -t dsa

(I will admit that I'm not sure which of these keys are actually required, so I simply generate all three.) Note that if you provide no passphrase, it will not be required in the script -- hint, hint.

3. Copy ssh keys to the Linux server:

cat *.pub | ssh user@server "cat > ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Now you need to script the backup of files. Here's a copy of my backup script:

#!/bin/bash

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin

echo "Starting backup @ $(date)"

cd /cygdrive/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/Rob/My\ Documents

tar cjf - --exclude Emulators --exclude "Virtual CD*" * 2>/tmp/backup-errors.log |
 ssh user@server "cat >rob/backup-new.tbz"

ssh user@server "cd ~/rob/ 
  rm -f backup-old-2.tbz 
  mv -f backup-old-1.tbz backup-old-2.tbz 
  mv -f backup-current.tbz backup-old-1.tbz 
  mv backup-new.tbz backup-current.tbz
  ls -lh"

echo "Completed backup @ $(date)"

echo -n "Press [ENTER]: "
read X

You'll note that I see the PATH - that's because launching from the XP scheduler gives a different environment than from the typical Cygwin environment. Also, the tar pipes the backup file directly into SSH and it gets written to a file on the Linux server. Finally, I move the files around to keep 3 weeks of backup.

Schedule the script: This is in the Windows XP control panel, Scheduled Tasks. Create a new task, start it in c:\cygwin\bin (where-ever Cygwin is installed). Then, I found it easiest to browse to the shell script and select it and then prepend bash to that value. My Run entry looks like this:

bash "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\My Documents\bin\backup-rob.sh"

That's it! Test it a few times. Make sure you can untar it. Wait to make sure the scheduler kicks it off.

Installing Linux on antique hardware - Part 3

Finally found a distribution in which I was able to hack together a graphical version for the ThinkPad 760XL. This is a Pentium MMX 166 MHz machine with 48MB RAM, a Trident TGUI 9660 with 1MB of video RAM (that's 800x600 at 16bits best), and a 12.1 TFT panel. I got everything except sound working, but I've never actually worried about sound - Linux has been a server workhorse and Windows has been for games.

Anyway, I tried Fedora Core 6, Fedora Core 3, Ubuntu 6.10, Open SUSE 10.1, Damn Small Linux 3.0, and finally, Debian 3.1. It feels like I tried more, but each install took - potentially - 2-3 hours - I suppose that a week or so isn't too bad. (You know, I sort of have a job, a child, my wife, and other stuff to do!!)

The good the bad and the ugly of the failures:

• FC6 needs 128MB RAM minimum to install. It told me. And that was very nice.
• FC3 ran through the whole stinkin' install (that's a bit over 2 hours) and then booted into an X configuration that didn't work. I couldn't find a text console to log on to and I don't think I was able to telnet or SSH into the machine, so that was basically an installation that became a brick with an embedded fan.
• The Ubuntu installer just plugged along... until it apparently wasn't doing anything anymore. I gave up after a good 30 minutes since the last activity (ie, no HDD lights or anything).
• Open SUSE had an installer that looked great. But, it couldn't find the CD-ROM after booting from said CD-ROM!
• DSL booted and installed just fine. This would probably be the best bet for a non-X (or limited X) configuration. But, we wanted a GUI to work from. I just couldn't figure out how to tweak XFree86. And then I realized it used some tiny XFree86 server and didn't have the config file. Poking around, it looks like I could install the full XFree86 - if I wanted to invest more time.
• Debian (which I haven't used before) actually allowed a floppy-based network install. It booted, recognized the network card (as did the other Linux variants), and started chugging with the base install. After rebooting from the HDD, I realized I didn't have X. A couple of install sessions later, X was limping along (hint: Just install KDE or Gnome and I bet you have a better time than I had!!). It didn't really configure the optimum settings, and that took quite a bit of tinkering. I had multiple active XF86Config (??) files floating around. Once I figured that out and made it one, progress was made. I finally just commented out all the resolutions I didn't want and was able to get to 800x600 with 8 bits of color. (Not sure where that 16 bits of color went...)

I've installed a few games, verified network connectivity, left a few browsers available, and have the external mouse working, so I'm going to pass it back and call it good enough!

Anyone else gotten a modern install on the ThinkPad 760XL? I'd like to know how to get the full 800x600 with 16 bits of color (64K colors). I'm sure there is some mojo I don't know about - I'm most definitely just a hack when it comes to X configurations. Modern hardware is a lot easier! I think that XFree86 4.3 is distributed with Debian 3.1.

Yum unhosed!

Well, I finally figured it out. Let me restate that. I resolved the problem. Whether I actually figured it out is probably open to debate. :-)

Here's my final post at the FedoraForum - and just in case it gets lost at some point:

rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
rpm -vv --rebuilddb
yum clean all
yum update

By line:
1. Delete existing RPM databases.
2. Rebuild RPM databases (-vv = more logging than you can ever use)
3. Clean the YUM databases (not sure if this was actually required)
4. yum update now functions.

Yaay!