mikas blog

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!

Today I wanted to test the raid5 reshape feature of Linux kernel >=2.6.17. My testing environment was VMware with 3 virtual disks each containing a partition of 200MB which should be resized to 500MB, using grml (featuring kernel 2.6.17-grml) of course. For real-live setup adjust the steps for stuff like switching harddisks of course. ;-) […]

vim-outliner let’s you use vim as an outline editor: # apt-get install vim-vimoutliner % $PAGER /usr/share/doc/vim-vimoutliner/README.Debian % vim ~/foo.otl :he vo If you want to export the otl file into HTML take a look at otl2html.py. Oh, did I already mention that vim-outliner is shipped with grml? ;-)

iwatch is a realtime filesystem monitoring program. It’s a simple perl script to monitor changes in specific directories/files and send email notification immediately. It reads the dir/file list from a xml config file or via commandline and needs inotify support in kernel (Linux Kernel >= 2.6.13). If you are using Debian/grml you can install a […]

Now I’m back again. Sorry for the downtime of grml.org and michael-prokop.at, the server was running out of mem (thanks to Robert for bringing it up again). A server upgrade will follow in the near future anyway. Now 3746 unread blogpostings, 716 mails in my inbox, lots of unread mailinglists and newsgroups are waiting for […]

JFYI: I’ll be offline for holidays in the next few days. I won’t be reachable via phone nor via instant messaging nor via irc nor via mail. EOF

Given: server with SCSI disk for the system plus a SCSI storage in the back. The SCSI disk uses another driver than the SCSI storage. Installing Debian etch via grml is no problem, the system disk is /dev/sda, the SCSI storage is bound to /dev/sdb. But: who guarantees that /dev/sda is always the systemdisk? Using […]

Want to install Debian etch? But the Debian etch-ISO does not detect all the necessary hardware? Or it even does not boot at all? Or you just can’t find your Debian etch CD-ROM? Or having $ANOTHER_PROBLEM? Use grml. :-) Take a look at my Debian etch via grml Howto. You can get this tip via […]

A RedHat 9 server had problems with its rpm database. Running strace showed that it’s hanging when accessing /var/lib/rpm/Packages (a Berkeley DB, wondering?). No rpm actions were possible anymore. Solution: # cd /var/lib # cp -a rpm rpm.backup # rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db* # rpm -vv –rebuilddb

Yes, online resizing isn’t possible just with xfs but starting with Linux kernel 2.6.10 you can do it with ext3 as well. With e2fsprogs >=1.39-1 new filesystems are created with directory indexing and on-line resizing enabled by default (see /etc/mke2fs.conf). A short demo how online-resizing running on top of LVM works: cfdisk /dev/hda # create […]

Just feeding google and interested readers. DRI worked with X.org 6.9 but with version 7.0 it’s failing? % LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxgears libGL: XF86DRIGetClientDriverName: 1.5.1 i915 (screen 0) libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/i915_dri.so libGL error: dlopen /usr/lib/dri/i915_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/dri/i915_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory) libGL error: unable to find driver: i915_dri.so Ok, missing […]

Don’t forget – today (on 28th of july) we have the System Administrator Appreciation Day! Thanks for reminder, koki :)

Because it’s definitely worth a read: the proceedings of the Linux Symposium 2006 are now available for download (direct links: Volume 1, Volume 2 – PDF). Have a nice week reading them. :-)

We already have one Sun Sparc running at Robocup @ TUG: mika@robosparc ~ % cat /proc/cpuinfo cpu : TI UltraSparc I (SpitFire) fpu : UltraSparc I integrated FPU promlib : Version 3 Revision 1 prom : 3.1.3 type : sun4u ncpus probed : 1 ncpus active : 1 Cpu0Bogo : 397.31 Cpu0ClkTck : 000000000bebc200 MMU […]