Prepare for 8.0-RELEASE builds.

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-11-20T17:54:07Z

FreeBSD 8.0 is coming soon. Todays SVN Update from Ken Smit: Predict when 8.0-RELEASE will be announced => 2009-11-25 8.0-RELEASE.

GPG with Snow Leopards Mail.app

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-11-02T11:41:25Z

Lukas Pitschl released a bugfix version for GPGMail. It works with Snow Leopards Mail.app (32bit only). Grab the file http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/20215/GPGMail-1.2.1.mailbundle.zip and drop it in your /username/Library/Mail/Bundles folder. Make sure mail.app is not running. Relaunch after the file is dropped in.

you can also try the official http://sourceforge.net/projects/gpgmail/ project. Not sure if this one works yet.

How to install Macports on Snow Leopard 10.6

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-08-16T09:18:10Z

Apple will release Snow Leopard retail soon. At the time I'm writing this, macports 1.7 (known as darwinports) are not working well with previous builds of Snow Leopard. I'm sure that everything will work out of the box with macports > 1.7.1 a few weeks after the retail release of OSX 10.6 in September 2009. Make sure to install Xcode from the 10.6 DVD! It will update gcc to version 4.2. My description wont work with old gcc 4.0 from 10.5.

To improve our chance for a working ports tree, we have to use the latest subversion source code (August 2009).

1. Open up the Terminal
2. svn co http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk/base/ (Wait for it to finish checking out files)
3. cd base
4. ./configure
5. make
6. sudo make install
7. sudo /opt/local/bin/port -v selfupdate

I had to add /Developer/usr/bin and /Developer/usr/sbin to my .bash_profile
export PATH=/Developer/usr/bin:/Developer/usr/sbin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH

There are mailing list entries about problems with compiling python on Snow Leopard. This might change soon but be aware of such problems.

Update:Use sudo port upgrade --enforce-variants and then sudo port upgrade outdated to update all your old installed ports after selfupdate.
If you see errors like: ld: warning: in /opt/local/lib/libz.dylib, file is not of required architecture then you've to remove zlib and libiconv as installed ports and re-install it again.

sudo port uninstall -f libiconv zlib
sudo port install libiconv zlib

This may break some old dependencies. If so then you have to rebuild all related ports as well.

Add notes to PDF Files with Skim

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-08-04T11:06:00Z

A friend of mine recommended an interesting PDF tool to me. Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file. Best things are free

Reset password in serendipity

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-08-03T09:41:20Z

In case i forget my Serendipity (Version <=1.4.1) password again:

mysql -u root -p $DBNAME
mysql> UPDATE serendipity_authors SET password = md5('newpassword') where username = "$USER";

In s9y >= 1.5.x md5 was replaced with sha1.

mysql -u root -p $DBNAME
mysql> UPDATE serendipity_authors SET password = sha1('newpassword') where username = "$USER";

MFC ZFS Version 13 to FreeBSD stable (RELENG_7)

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-05-17T21:47:33Z

Kip Macy has prepared ZFS v13 patches for RELENG_7. It's just a few days away from an official MFC (merge from current). You can download the latest patches from: http://svn.freebsd.org/base/user/kmacy/ZFS_MFC/

Please be careful. This has only been lightly tested. Please do not use it with data you care about at this time.

Continue reading "MFC ZFS Version 13 to FreeBSD stable (RELENG_7) "

ClickToFlash allows you to opt-in flash by clicking

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-05-12T09:35:00Z

ClickToFlash is a WebKit plug-in that prevents automatic loading of Adobe Flash content. If you want to see the content, you can opt-in by clicking on it or adding an entire site to the whitelist.

Try control-clicking (or right-clicking) on an unloaded Flash box to access ClickToFlash's contextual menu which allows you to do advanced things like edit its whitelist, specify settings, and load all Flash on the page.

Download ClickToFlash.

Create a RamDisk with a GUI

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-05-11T09:30:00Z

Ram disk is the use of a part of read-write memory (RAM) as a hard disk. Creating a ram disk on OS X is easy with shell commands. But as we know, most Mac users prefer a GUI. Esperance DV is a module for System Preferences making a ram disk (memory disk). You can place temporary files for speed saving video, speed recording a lot of pictures, building your application with xCode,...

Brightness controls for your iMac with Shades

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-05-10T16:08:41Z

Have you ever tried to dim your iMac display? Apples iMac default brightness controll is not very satisfying.

Charcoal Design Shades is a little application that gives you fine control over how bright or dim your iMac's display is. It runs in the background providing always-available fine-grained control over the brightness of your display via a Mac-like interface. It performs this without actually changing the real brightness of your display. It applies an opacity filter to your Desktop similar to Splasms Software Brightness Control

Both tools have no power saving effect! Shades is available as ppc, intel and universal binary.

How problems should be handled

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2009-04-15T10:31:30Z

You may wonder yourself what your ISP is doing or what his carrier is doing after a major outage. Let's use a real life example from Tuesday, April 14 2009. There was a fiber cut near Frankfurt, Germany.

First step:
You have to admit that a problem exists

Second step:
Inform your customer and identify the location of the problem. In our example it looks like:

The fiber break has been identified near motorway crossing BAB 5/67, 26.6 km from Lorsch in direction towards Frankfurt. The break is in a motorway crossing. Engineers are at the site for resolution.

Third step:
Give your customer more information.

The damage to the fibers has been caused due to drilling works at the site.Digging works will be started in 30 minutes. No ETR as yet.

Add some abbreviations in common use like ETR which means "Estimated Time of Repair". Looks more geeky

All other steps are simliar to the third step. Start fixing it and update your customer as much as possible.

Update 4

The digging works are still in progress to find the duct route. As this is a laborious task it takes some time. We will keep you updated and give an ETR as soon as possible.

Update 5

The digging works are still in progress. The duct route for the north side of the cable cut has been found.

Update 6

Our providers are still working on the issue. The splicing works will commence in another 2 hours. The approximate ETR to fix all live services is around 10:00 GMT. We will update you once the splicing works are started.

Important: Add GMT or Timezone information. Not every customer lives in the same timezone as you.

Update 7

Splicing works are still in progress. One of our sections from Frankfurt to Strasbourg is up restoring a lot of traffic. A lot of traffic yet remains impacted and we are working towards a speedy resolution .As of now due to the huge task ahead the ETR remains unchanged – 10 GMT

Update 8

A majority of the services have been restored as works are in progress. We are still waiting for the complete resolution and ETR remains unchanged.
We will keep you updated on the issue.

Update 9

Majority of services have now been restored. Splicing repairs still ongoing. Full restoration of services expected in an hour.

Update 10

Full restoration of services completed

Thats how it should be done and thats who interoute.com has handled it last night. Well done. It may look obvious but it's not the common way most ISP/Carrier keep their customer informed.

I'm twittering!

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2008-12-27T11:50:11Z

I use Twitter instead of Facebook because Twitter is more like Unix. It's just one simple application. It's slim and easy where facebook is more like windows. It tries to be everything.

Check out my twitter site twitter.com/tomvogt. You can also read my last 5 twitter entries on the right site of my blog.

Sign up for an account and add my as your friend or send me a message and i will add you

FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE is on the way

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2008-11-25T06:30:39Z

After a long beta and release candidate cycle FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE is near. Ken Smith, FreeBSD Release manager predicts 2008-11-28 as an official release date. It looks like there might be one more loose end. And what about FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE? Well, at least it has now it's RELENG_7_1 directory. I guess 7.1 is coming soon

The Blueshirts came, they saw, and the conquered.

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2008-10-01T22:53:00Z

The Victoria Cup is a single game playoff between the European Champions Cup winner and an NHL Team. The winner of the Cup will receive 1 million Swiss francs (approx. 900k $). I had the pleasure to visit both matches of this years Victoria Cup in the Postfinance Arena in Bern (Switzerland).

Day 1:
It had been 49 years since the Rangers last visit to Switzerland and it was the first exibition game between an NHL Team and a Swiss National A League Team. Over 16'000 people witnessed the Rangers victory. The New York Rangers outshot SC Bern 12-3 in the first period but until the third period the Rangers had only a close 2-1 lead. At the end the Rangers overpower SC Bern. A third period scoring spree gave Blueshirts a comfortable 8-1 win.

Day 2:
The New York Rangers won the inaugural Victoria Cup against the European Champions Cup winner Metallurg Magnitogorsk (KHL) from Russia. It was the first game between NHL and Russian teams in 17 years.

Metallurg Magnitogorsk had a strong three to nothing lead for nearly 40 minutes. They played very well and had a few chances to increase their lead.

Chris Drury cut it to 3-1 with a two-man advantage late in the second period and Dan Fritsche made it a one-goal game at 5:45 of the third. Drury again tied it with a little under 10 minutes left.

The last ten minutes of the game were intense. With 20 second remaining, Ryan Callahan intercepted a Metallurg pass from Malenkikh and found himself on a breakaway which he didn't miss. A great 4:3 comeback victory for the Rangers.

I took a few pictures.

FreeBSD Ports tree has been unfrozen

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2008-09-25T11:26:49Z

Today the Port management team released the FreeBSD Ports Tree. It's now in the "slush" state. This means no sweeping commits until FreeBSD 6.4 and 7.1 releases are announced. Currently the cluster is building the required packages for the upcoming -RELEASES.

crashinfo(8)

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — 2008-09-24T12:17:35Z

crashinfo(8) analyze a core dump of the operating system and it's included in all upcoming FreeBSD releases (6.4 and 7.1).

The crashinfo utility automatic analyzes a core dump saved by savecore(8) in /var/crash/. Once crashinfo has located a core dump and kernel, it uses several utilities to analyze the core including dmesg(8), fstat(1), iostat(8), ipcs(1), kgdb(1), netstat(1), nfsstat(1), ps(1), pstat(8), and vmstat(8). For a given core dump file named vmcore.XX the generated text file will be named core.txt.XX.

A handy tool. I hope this improves kernel panic reports from unexperienced user in the future.