Life at the CLI

Slackbuild.org recently add gpg signatures to all the slackbuild tarballs. I tried to use SINP today and the new changes broke SINP. The problem stems from the pattern matching SINP uses to locate the SlackBuild tarball. Now SINP will always find two matches for every SlackBuild (the tarball and the asc file) and refuse to do anything. You get an error message like “can’t [blah] more than 1 match found”

The problem is fixed in SVN and I highly suggest anyone who uses SINP (all 6 of you ) download SINP from there.

I finally got a hint as to why a lot of Linux apps (mainly Firefox) are over printing the page. I’d set the paper size to letter (8.5″ X 11″)  but still some of the pages of text would get cut off from the top and bottom. (not fun if you’re trying to debug code) I looked at Firefox’s print settings today and the margins were set to .4″ all the way around! Still, I wonder why the page isn’t being printed within those margins instead of being cut off. KDE apps (Not sure about GNOME) don’t seem to have this problem. Guess I got some cups settings to tweak.

As nice as it was, it was just too much work too keep up a working template for my SlackBuilds. Every package really does need to be looked at individually. Using a template also promoted sloppiness on my part, and I always felt like the SlackBuild was cluttered if I did more than just replace a few values.

I may still use a template for the first part of the SlackBuilds. Usually everything up to the compile stage stays the same.

I finally figured out why the Ubuntu logo is a weird circle thing today. It all comes down to the image that scared me away from Ubuntu to begin with. (and is to this day why I never plan to install regular Ubuntu)

Interesting … :/

fdupes seems to have done the job of getting rid of the horrible duplicate mess I’ve managed to get myself into, but glancing through the duplicates list I may have rendered some configuration settings (like the ones in ~/.mozilla) unusable. That’s not a real big problem though since I planned to start those over mostly from scratch anyway.

The only real problems I have with fdupes is that it doesn’t detect whole directory trees (which might have made the job of removing the files a little quicker) so there are a couple of empty directories floating around. I also wished it had an option to be more verbose and print the MD5SUM along with the results. (just to releive a little bit of paranoia)

To use start the removal process run fdupes with the -r option. (fdupes -r $somedir) This will write the list of duplicate files to the console which is probably not what you want. I like using a pipe to tee so I can see the progress and have a list of files made. (fdupes -r $somedir | tee $filelist)

The results will have all duplicates separated in groups of the same file, with groups separated by a blank line.

Now to make a list of files to remove run fdupes -rf $somedir | tee $filelist-omit-first. The added -f flag will tell fdupes to omit the first match from the output. (this should leave one copy of a file in a group of duplicates so at least 1 copy will be preserved)

Use your favorite diff program (I recommend vimdiff) to compare the first file list you made to the second as a precaution against deleting something you don’t want. Once that’s all done it should be safe to remove all the files in the second file list (the one made from fdupes -rf)

Do some last bit cleanup on the file list by sorting, eliminating matching lines, and blank lines. (sort $filelist-from-rf | uniq | grep -v '^$' > $removelist)

finally you are ready to remove the duplicates. (while read file; do rm -v "$file"; done )

Good-bye duplicates!

A while back I wrote about having to sort through several backup DVD’s to find a ton of duplicate files. I decided to give fdupes a try. fdupes uses a combination of file size, md5 hash, and bit by bit comparison, so it should be fairly safe to trust that the results are exact duplicates. (I will double check the first couple just to make sure)

I moved the data over from 9 DVD’s (but there’s more :rolleyes: ) to an external hard drive and sent fdupes off to do its work. It seems to be fairly fast. It compared about 141,000 files with sizes between 0 bits to over a GB in about an hour and a half. Now I need to find out how to pass the results to rm leaving only 1 copy. (I think fdupes has an option for this)

I’ll try to post a tutorial if I get everything working ok. I’ll try running it with a couple of different options and run diff on the outputs to see if running with omit first (-f) will preserve only 1 file.

Overall I’ve not been very impressed with Vista from some of the betas I’ve tried and the reports on the “new” (as much as I dislike Apple, I have to give them credit for improving Windows over the years) features in Vista. The two questions that need to be answered before I even think about buying a copy of it is how will Vista make my life easier, and is it worth the cost.

I was quite happy to open up my copy of the Exploring Windows newsletter to find the answer straight from the horses mouth.

The first item that they say will make my life easier is Windows Easy Transfer. It looks like an improved version of the file and settings transfer wizard. The improvements look great, but how often am I going to transfer my settings to a new computer?

The next life changing feature is the Aero interface and Window Flip 3D. It looks pretty, but the only windows that I typically have trouble switching between are web pages, (which tabs make virtually obsolete) folders, and Word docs. It’s a nice feature but I could live without it.

Next is Windows Photo Gallery. I don’t collect photos usually.

IE7, lets just say I haven’ t bothered to reinstall it after a clean install.

The final reason I should switch, Windows Sidebar. Sorry, it doesn’t make my life easier.

So do I think these features are so life changing I need to switch? No, I think I’ll stick with XP for the moment.

If you ask any Slackware user what they like about Slackware chances are the package manager will wind up in there top 10. I am no exception. I love pkgtools, but the one itch that it can’t really scratch is when I want to try out a new program. A lot of times the app I want to try doesn’t have a Slackware package availiable. This stems from the fact that the number of active Slackware users isn’t as large compared to other distros (my own perception, not a statistic) so there aren’t as many people to use different programs and to make packages for them. Another reason is that the Slackware community is very fragmented. Unlike debian, Suse, Fedora, and other distros there is no real central place to store packages. People tend to either open up their own personal repositories to the world or submit packages to their favorite site. (Usually linuxpackages.net or slacky.it) So to try out a new package you have to compile it yourself. (and any dependancies) You also have to do any configuring that needs to be done to get the program usable. This is a very time consuming and tedious process.

It might be worth it for me to have some debian derivative (probably Xubuntu) sitting on a separate partition for just this purpose.

* on a separate note: making Slackware packages is way easier than some of the other package formats I’ve looked at. (deb, rpm, ebuild)

I’m not too fond of the way Xfce is moving, so I decided to create my own Desktop Enviorment with pre-existing components. (screenshot coming soon!) So what exactly makes a desktop enviorment? 

• window manager - oroborus (ancestor of Xfwm4 )
• panel/launcher - fbpanel (until I find something better)
• workspace manager/virtual desktops
• task switcher - skippy, maybe whaw (I want something for alt+tab too)
• root menu - deskmenu
• keybindings - keylaunch
• desktop - xfdesktop (if I have to)
• theme (gtk/wm) - gtk-chtheme
• taskbar (might be handled by panel)
• system tray
• run dialog - xfrun4 (if I have to)
• extra apps: conky

If I’m missing something I really like to know.

Found this interesting post on Linuxquestions.org. It made me once again realize my dream of compiling Slackware for i686.  It should be a little easier than Linux from Scratch since the build scripts are already made. (which means nice little packages as a bonus )

I’ve tried Linux from Scratch before, but I always get bored or have other things get in the way somewhere between setting up the toolchain and starting building for the chroot enviorment. I’ll complete it one of these days

See also: DIY Linux.