mikas blog

A problem everyone stumbles across (at least) once: % tar zcf stats_2005.tar.gz stats_2005* zsh: argument list too long: tar The reason? Too many files for the ARG_MAX limit. ARG_MAX defines the maximum length of arguments to the exec function (more precise: bytes of args plus environment for exec), defined in /usr/include/linux/limits.h on your Linux system: […]

Ever wanted to insert a character in your terminal but don’t have a keybinding for that character? zsh provides a nifty feature called insert-unicode-char: autoload insert-unicode-char zle -N insert-unicode-char bindkey ‘^Xi’ insert-unicode-char Figure out the character’s code (take a look at unicode.org/charts/ for example) and press ‘ctrl-x i’, followed by the character’s code and press […]

I’ve the Asus WL-500G Premium access point since more than 2 month at home. I bought it for being able to play with OpenWrt without touching my productive setup. Now I finally found the time to install OpenWrt on it. There’s documentation available in the openwrt-wiki, but again JFTR (for myself) I document the relevant […]

I recently bought a NSLU2 featuring 1x ethernet port and 2x USB 2.0 ports – available for about 80 euro. My plan is to integrate the device in my network as backup system. The original firmware might be nice for John Doe User but I’d like to use Debian featuring stuff like rsync, dirvish,… on […]

As my ppc-based efika system is quite slow at building kernel packages I decided to cross compile the kernel on my x86 box. JFTR the necessary steps on a Debian system: Adjust $KERNELSOURCE/Makefile to: ARCH = powerpc CROSS_COMPILE = powerpc-linux-gnu- Thanks to the Embedded Debian project you can easily get the necessary gcc as Debian […]

I received an efika board at the end of 2006. Now I had some time to investigate on that. I want to use Debian on the board of course to be able to work on grml-ppc. My setup involves the following hardware: the efika board ;) a 2.5" western digital harddisk an ATX power supply […]

At last meeting of Security Treff Graz I brought up the question whether rsync is capable of handling extended ACLs (the Access Control Lists you handle with setfacl and getfacl on your Linux system). That’s very important for me when backing up running systems because I’m using ACLs on some systems but only a few […]

Get Google Suggest on the commandline: cd /tmp dh-make-perl –cpan WebService::Google::Suggest –build sudo dpkg -i libwebservice-google-suggest-perl_0.01-1_all.deb wget http://hg.grml.org/grml-scripts/raw-file/tip/usr_bin/gsuggest.pl chmod +x ./gsuggest.pl % ./gsuggest grml grml: 175000 results grmlins: 286 results grmlin: 816 results grml linux: 76200 results grmls: 566 results grmln: 192 results grml.ca: 57 results grmlive: 7 results

Thanks to maxx and oliver for reporting a problem with the feed of my blog. rss2email displayed the following warning: % e2run W: looks like HTML http://michael-prokop.at/blog/feed/ and whereas bloglines.com, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Awasu and even dog and wget worked without any noticeable problems there also was a problem with rss-reader akregator. Finally I could […]

Thanks to schula for writing down the necessary steps how to set up a router with grml in less than 1 minute. JFTR the steps in english (will become part of grml-tips as well): Execute ‘grml-router’ Install dnsmasq if not already present: apt-get update ; apt-get install dnsmasq Adjust /etc/dnsmasq.conf according to your needs: domain-needed […]

As I usually forgot how to do it ;-) JFTR a cmdline to reset the password of a user in dokuwiki: # usr=’myuser’; passwd=’secret_password’ # sed -i “s#$usr:[[:alnum:]$]*:#$usr:`printf ${passwd} | md5`:#” /var/lib/dokuwiki/acl/users.auth.php

You might know of moreutils‘s existence already, but in case you do not use them so far please give it a try as it’s definitely worth a look: Description: additional unix utilities This is a growing collection of the unix tools that nobody thought to write thirty years ago. . So far, it includes the […]

My notes/slides from the zsh-workshop I held yesterday at Medienkunstlabor Graz are available online: zsh-workshop notes

Thanks to ‘T’ for pointing to histring on the grml user mailinglist. histring simply highlights strings using ANSI terminal escape codes. It is very useful e.g. for parsing output of grep and diff. I really like the tool because it simplifies recognition of important patterns to me. I use it for example in highlighting important […]

aamath is a program that reads mathematical expressions in infix notation and renders them as ASCII art. It may be useful to send mathematics through text-only media, such as e-mail or newsgroups: mika@grml ~ % aamath aamath version 0.3 aamath> grml = sqrt(42*23)/11^pi _____ \/42 23 grml = ——- __ || 11 aamath> I created […]

ruby-prof just hit Debian unstable: % apt-cache show ruby-prof | sed -ne “/^Description/,/^$/p” Description: A fast code profiler for Ruby ruby-prof is runs a ruby program and keeps track of the amount of time spent in each method. At the end of execution it displays collected information. Its features include: * Speed – it is […]

% apt-cache show xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse | sed -ne “/^Description/,/^$/p” Description: X.Org X server — VMMouse input driver to use with VMWare This package provides the driver for the X11 vmmouse input device. . The VMMouse driver enables support for the special VMMouse protocol that is provided by VMware virtual machines to give absolute pointer positioning. . […]

% apt-cache show mathomatic: Mathomatic implements most of the rules of algebra for the mathematical operators +, -, *, /, and power (including roots). . Mathomatic can symbolically: – Solve equations; – Completely simplify equations; – Differentiate; – Do sensitivity and finite series analysis; – Combine and solve simultaneous algebraic equations; – Do complex number […]

Just feeding google in case someone has same problems… Today I once more installed Debian (etch, kernel 2.6.17-2-686) via debootstrap using grml. The system has a ‘MegaRAID Model: LD 0 RAID1 19G Rev: 6.61’ inside and whereas grml booted without any problems, Debian failed with some timeout and FW messages during bootup, like: megaraid mailbox: […]

Unable to change virtual machine power state: The process exited with an error: End of error message. Thanks, VMware!