DistroStuff

img src=http://moixs.fedorapeople.org/tete-planet.png alt= style=float: right;pA cool feature in iTunes is the ability to share your entire music library over the network, but few people know that the exact same thing is built into Fedora, and you can activate it in 1 minute. iTunes is using a protocol called a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Access_Protocol target=_blankDAAP (Digital Audio Access Protocol)/a for that, which is also available as a standard plugin for Rhythmbox./ppTo activate music sharing:/pulliOpen the right ports on your firewall: 3689 TCP and 5353 UDP/liliActivate the avahi-daemon service/liliActivate and configure the DAAP plugin in Rhythmbox/li/ulpDone, now your music is shared across your network, and you can even see it in iTunes./p

Mon, 1 Dec 2008

img src=http://planet.fedoraproject.org/images/heads/default.png alt= style=float: right;Whilst I was caught up with the day job (long, long commutes ...) Puppet seems to have got itself a CI setup:br /br /a href=http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet/wiki/PuppetContinuousIntegrationhttp://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet/wiki/PuppetContinuousIntegration/abr /br /If you have a weird and wonderful os you want hosted in it for functional/integration testing follow the instructions.

Mon, 1 Dec 2008

img src=http://saini.co.in/images/head.png alt= style=float: right;pThe other day I was debugging my drupal installation and had a look at the Apache error logs. And this is what I found :D/pp/pdiv class=geshifilterpre style=font-family: monospace; class=bash geshifilter-bashspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanrootspan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;@/spangofedora htmlspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/spanspan style=color: #666666; font-style: italic;# tail -f /var/log/httpd/error_log /spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23229/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23230/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23231/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23232/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23233/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23234/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23235/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23236/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23237/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanFri Nov span style=color: #000000;28/span span style=color: #000000;21/span:00:span style=color: #000000;16/span span style=color: #000000;2008/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;[/spanwarnspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;]/span long lost child came homespan style=color: #000000; font-weight: bold;!/span span style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;(/spanpid span style=color: #000000;23238/spanspan style=color: #7a0874; font-weight: bold;)/span/pre/divp/ppReminded me of famous Indian saying, strongKumbh ke mele mein khoya wapis aa gaya/strong./ppAnd Apache logs it as a warning. You long lost child has come home. You gotta run :P/pplt;!--break--gt;/p

Mon, 1 Dec 2008

img src=http://thl.fedorapeople.org/hackergotchi-thl.jpg alt= style=float: right;I really wanted to read the a href=http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/Fedora 10 Release Notes/a, but when I did I quickly got distracted. Later I asked myself why and gave it a second try with the goal: watch closely why you got distracted.br /br /I first noticed that I had missed the a href=http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/index.html#sn-Fedora_10_overviewbrief overview/a at the bottom of the first page. I simply had hit Next on the top of the first page, as I expected it to be just the index, like it's iirc is in so many multiple-page howtos -- a href=http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/abs/a is just a random example here.br /br /I further noticed that the text it a bit hard to read, as all the links are written in plain text within the text -- so you have to skip them with the eyes when you try to read continuously. To stress this a bit more compare yourself, which to you think is quicker and easier to read:br /ulliFeatures for Fedora 10 are tracked on the feature list page: a href=http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureListhttp://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList/a/li/ululliFeatures for Fedora 10 are tracked on the a href=http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureListfeature list page/a./li/ulI then got to a href=http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/What_is_New_for_Installation_and_Live_Images.html#sn-Installation_notessection 2.1/a and read: bAnaconda/b is the name of the Fedora installer. This section outlines issues related to bAnaconda/b and installing Fedora 10. I don't like the bold writing -- I find is distracting. But I know, some people like that. The real problem is something else and gets even more obvious in the whole a href=http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/What_is_New_for_Installation_and_Live_Images.html#sn-Installation_mediasection 2.1.1/a: Most if not all existing Fedora users know all of that already.br /br /And that IMHO is the big problem of the whole release notes. Sure, these information are important for new Fedora users and hence they need to be written somewhere. But these information are just boring for all the existing Fedora users out there. The new information between all the old and well know stuff on the other hand is very important to existing Fedora users -- we want them to read it (which most do not afaics). Thus I'm really wondering if we should provide a second version of the release notes that only provides information that are really new -- then users that come from the previous release only have to read that document, which like is a lot shorter.br /br /I'm not even sure how hard it would be to create that section release note set -- maybe running a diff over the old and new version, cut'n'past the relevant paragraphs where something important changed and put them into one document. br /br /P.S.: Another thing that I dislike in the Fedora 10 Release Notes: Why isn't there a single-page version online that would make searching something a whole lot easier. Example: I knew there was a paragraph in the release notes regarding the flash-plugin. Hence i browsed to the a href=http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/Fedora 10 Release Notes Index/a, typed /flash in Firefox to find it, but failed. I tried some other keywords like plugin and failed as well. After a while I gave up and asked Google with the search term flash-plugin site:http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/ -- then I quickly found what I was looking for. Works, but only is you know how to use Google properly :-/

Mon, 1 Dec 2008

img src=http://soumya.fedorapeople.org/head.png alt= style=float: right;pAfter listening to a href=http://kushaldas.in/ target=_blankkushal/a as FOSS.IN 2005 always thought of moving there but unfortunate every time as my exams collided with the schedule. Finally I got a chance this time at a href=http://foss.in/ target=_blankFOSS.IN/a 2008./pp1st Day at FOSS.IN started with kushal and me going to IISC campus at Bangalore (which is the venue for FOSS.IN). Got myself registered and just after that met familiar faces. There was a excitement lying within as this being my first FOSS.IN and I was yet to feel what actually happens at such kind of event. Me, a href=http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings/ target=_blankSayamindu/a and Kushal were roaming after the keynote got over. At last we found a place to sit/work/chat/relax, and that was the a href=http://www.kde.org/ target=_blankKDE/a booth. I met with a href=http://pradeepto.livejournal.com/ target=_blankPradeepto/a for the 1st time there./ppRain started spoiling the show from the 2nd day@FOSS.IN. It affected badly on the no. of people attending FOSS.IN. Within 2nd day we already had deepen our roots at the KDE stall. Half of it was already Fedora booth img src=http://soumya.dgplug.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / . We literally glued a href=http://fedoraproject.org/ target=_blankFedora/a posters all over our part of the stall , and started distributing Fedora stickers and F9 live cd’s. I attended talks on a href=http://laptop.org/en/ target=_blankOLPC/a by Sayamindu and after lunch on Activity development in a href=http://sugarlabs.org/go/Main_Page target=_blankSugar/a by Kushal. I video shooted the whole of Sayamindu’s talk which led my hands being senseless for the next 10 minutes. Got a KDE Tee shirt from Pradeepto img src=http://soumya.dgplug.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / /ppDay 3 we were all in Black KDE Tee’s. It was KDE Project of the day. I was there to attend the sessions on KDE started by Pradeepto, followed up by Sharan, Shashank and a href=http://behindkde.org/people/ade/ target=_blankAdriaan/a. I and Kushal made a plan to prepare maps for Kgeography and so started the work after lunch in the KDE booth. The three OLPC’s at Fedora stall was really stealing the show. It was really a crowd puller. I too loved the XO’s. I really would like to have one for me. We continued our work on a href=http://kgeography.berlios.de/ target=_blankKgeography/a and in between distributed stickers and Fedora goodies to the crowd./pp4th Day we were the Men in Blue. All of us - me , kushal , a href=http://rahulsundaram.livejournal.com/ target=_blankmether/a , Sayamindu , a href=http://ramkrsna.livejournal.com/ target=_blankRamki/a , Pradeepto , Susmit and few others were dressed in the Blue Fedora tee shirt. We had a nice Fedora team picture which I will upload soon in Flickr. Kushal was preparing the “Meet the Contributors” videos and the “I am Fedora” videos. I was assisting him with the handycam. Day 4 ended with Adriaan giving us a treat at RR’s in Bangalore. Nice dinner , nice people , I was in love with FOSS.IN/ppLast day was mainly fun. We all had gossips/chat at the KDE/Fedora stall. We were moving in all places with the handycam and mike. Mainly Ramki and Pradeepto were with the mike and Kushal with the Camera. Random Questions , Random people and fun were all at the last day at FOSS.IN. The end keynote by a href=http://kalyanvarma.net/ target=_blankKalyan Varma/a left me spellbound and speechless which therefore added FOSS.IN to the core of my heart. I have been attending speeches and lectures from college life but this one left a mark on the mind. Hats off to Kalyan Varma for the end session keynote that day. I really thought it was mindblowing./ppFOSS.IN 2008 for me was a really great experience. Meeting new people , attending sessions you like , BOF’s , Workouts are really the key nodes for FOSS.IN. Contributing something to the FOSS community on the spot and getting associated with projects you feel are something worth notable./ppThrough the blog I should also thank the organiser and the volunteers for the event. They really worked day and night to make this event onto where it is now./ppFOSS.IN 2008 for me was a learning. This event gets into my yearly schedule of attendance. img src=http://soumya.dgplug.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley //p

Mon, 1 Dec 2008

img src=http://mspevack.fedorapeople.org/planet.png alt= style=float: right;College football in the United States is a perfect example of a small group of people who have huge power, and who practice monopolistic and proprietary software business practices in order to keep their power, because the power equals insane amounts of money that they would rather not share with others, even if others are deserving.br /br /Every December, sports fans like me get all fired up over the fact that college football doesn't have a playoff system. Failing a playoff system, we are stuck with a href=http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tvlistings/abcStory?page=bcsexplanationa bunch of human voters and computer algorithms/a that come together in order to determine the rankings that are used in setting up the championship game.br /br /Every year, the system fails in some horrific way that leaves at least one (and sometimes more) schools justifiably angry and slighted.br /br /There are three specific areas that need full transparency:br /br /(1) How the pool of people (including the maintainers of the computer programs that get to vote) who are allowed to vote is selected, and what the criteria is for both getting a vote, and keeping your vote.br /br /(2) The manner in which each person votes, every single week, as opposed to only the last week, which is the way it is set up now.br /br /(3) The source code to each of the 6 computer algorithms that are also used to generate a ranking.br /br /Jim Rome and ESPN can debate college football forever, but until these three requirements are met, the whole thing is a complete sham. Lucky for me, I went to a college that has never, and will never, be good at football. As such, my anger can be purely philosophical, and I'll never have to actually watch my team get cheated by the system. I know there are plenty of injustices in the world that are far worse than this one, but it just really annoys me.br /br /I should start the OpenBCS project that tries to reverse engineer the current computer algorithms, and then uses the community to improve them from there.br /br /But really, we just need a playoff like every other sport in the country has.

Mon, 1 Dec 2008

img src=http://gdk.fedorapeople.org/gdk-hackergotchi.jpg alt= style=float: right;Hello, Sugar lovers. We're a few days into the Fedora 10 era, and we have some issues with Sugar. Let me point out two of the big ones -- one that has an easy fix, and one that doesn't.br /br /I assume that you have installed everything Sugar-related by running the following command:br /br /emyum groupinstall SUGAR Desktop Environment/embr /br /You have? Very good, then. Onward to the headaches.br /br /Issue #1: a href=https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=472472Sugar crashes right away with ImportError/a. This simple bug shows up for everyone in F10 by default; anyone who tries to launch Sugar gets the blank X screen. Oops. Nobody's perfect, eh? Fortunately, it's already been fixed and the fix has enough karma in the updates testing repository so that it should find its way into the stable repository very soon. But for the impatient, you can fix this straightaway with a simple command, as root:br /br /emyum --enablerepo=updates-testing update sugar-base/embr /br /Run that command, and you should be all set. (You're looking for sugar-base-0.82.2-4 or later, to be clear.) You can then either launch sugar by running emsugar-emulator/em on the command line, or selecting Sugar as your environment when you log in. Both should work well.br /br /Issue #2: a href=http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6248Presence doesn't work/a. Something about the switch to Network Manager 0.7 has broken the bits that allow users to connect to a presence server -- the presence server being the bit that allows you to see other Sugar users in your neighborhood view. This code all has a long way to go generally, but being able to see other users reliably will be a good first step. I know that a href=http://www.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Erikoserikos/a, a href=http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Morgsmorgs/a and others are working actively on this problem, and I'll provide more info as I learn more about it.

Mon, 1 Dec 2008

img src=http://mspevack.fedorapeople.org/planet.png alt= style=float: right;On my freshly installed Fedora 10 box (after adding/removing packages to suit my taste), if I run:br /br /rpm -qa --qf %{name}\n | sortbr /br /then I get something that looks like:br /br /aclbr /alacartebr /alsa-libbr /alsa-plugins-pulseaudiobr /alsa-utilsbr /(with hundreds of lines snipped)br /br /What I would like to do next is run a command that does the following:br /br /(1) Connects to a Fedora mirror, goes to the /releases/$RELEASE/Everything/$ARCH/os/Packages directory (where I specify $RELEASE and $ARCH), and downloads each RPM that is installed on my system that is also in that directory to a local directory.br /br /(2) Does the same thing for the /updates/$RELEASE/$ARCH directory.br /br /In essense, I'm building just enough of a local Fedora mirror so that I can do a respin of my personal package set on any version of Fedora that I choose.br /br /The only part of this which is tricky is the right way to download the packages. I need to be careful just using something like lftp with mget and wildcards, because perl* will get me the main perl package (which I want, and whose complete file name I don't have), but it will also get me every other package that begins with perl, which I don't want. However, I still want the list of packages that represent my input to be free of the versioning metadata, because I want to be able to get all the packages for Fedora 9 just as easily as for Fedora 10.br /br /What's the easiest way to do this?

Mon, 1 Dec 2008

img src=http://planet.fedoraproject.org/images/heads/default.png alt= style=float: right;pimg src=http://wagiaalla.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/f10launch.png alt=f10launch.png //ppFedora 10 is simply awesome! I upgrated my MacBook Pro from Fedora 7 to Fedora 10. After installing a new Fedora I usually spend a few hours getting things to work correctly. This time the only thing I had to restore was my sudoers file. Here are thing things that strongjust worked for me/strong:/pulliThe entire installation was at the native resolution 1440×900/liliWhen I created my user account it asked my if I want to use the already existing home directory from my /home partition/liliTrack pad, one finger tap click, two finger middle click, three finger right click, and scroll bar on the right./liliTotem figured out the codecs I needed to finish watching The Bank Job, which I had started before the installation/liliFull screen worked properly in mplayer, did not need code-vo sdl/code/liliDesktop Effects has never worked before, works now/liliWifi worked out of the box, and network manager took 30 seconds instead of 3 minutes for very fist connect/li/ulpThank you everyone for all the hard work. This was truly a quality release./p

Mon, 1 Dec 2008