Author Archive
KDM/KDE on Slackware64 13.1
by BenV on Aug.29, 2010, under Software
Actually, it’s slackware64-current, but it’s pretty much the same for today’s issue.
Don’t ask me why, but for some reason my girlfriend wanted to start KDM/KDE.
(probably because enlightenment now completely abandoned their piece of garbage login manager ‘entranced’).
So she ran a ton of updates – “slackpkg update ; slackpkg upgrade-all” and rebooted.
KDM came up fine. Then she tried to login and was greeted by:
After clicking this away KDE started to load but stopped shortly after that and KDM was greeting her again. (continue reading…)
Blast! It’s Boost! (Slackware64 and Deluge / libtorrent-rasterbar)
by BenV on Aug.29, 2010, under Software
Obviously I didn’t mention this issue enough yet since google didn’t return my blog for this issue as well as I’d like.
Today’s task with a problem: upgrading to Deluge 1.3.0-rc2 from rc1. Just for reference, I ran into this problem before. Since we’re upgrading Deluge, I’m upgrading the torrent library first. The latest version seems to be libtorrent-rasterbar version 0.15.2.
The problem:
# Some configure junk and then:
Checking for boost libraries:
checking for boostlib >= 1.36... yes
checking whether the Boost::System library is available... yes
configure: error: Boost.System library not found. Try using --with-boost-system=lib
… don’t you just hate it when your computer hints you to try something trivial? (continue reading…)
Opera + Squid -> slow?!
by BenV on Jul.28, 2010, under Software
This tiny issue showed up a while ago, and I’m not quite sure when exactly it started. It sure was very annoying.
The problem:
Start opera, then load a ton of stuff at the same time. (your 25 tabs that have to be restored for instance). What happened was that after loading a few pages
partially, the rest would completely stall.
After some cursing I found out that it only happened when I used my squid proxy. (you know, to filter out ads because they slow the stuff down).
First I figured it must be squid. Then I realized that it would be weird, since nothing really changed. Maybe the blocklist? Nope, all looked fine.
Apparently Opera only uses a limited amount of connections to the proxy, so when a few of those requests are slow (you know, because google analytics takes 6 years to get through) the requests stack up and completely halt the process. Brilliant.
Finally I found the solution in some obscure configuration panel. Look for Enable HTTP 1.1 for proxy and make sure it’s enabled. Thanks for messing that up for me opera!
Oh well, now it’s fast again. phew.
CMSMadeSimple
by BenV on Jul.14, 2010, under Software
One of our customers has a website with some custom-made CMS made in php.
The customer asked us to fix some things, but since I hate touching pleuris-hoeren-product code, especially when the original coder is prutser and has never heard of templates (which is really weird, considering this is a CMS… maybe it’s just lazyness… then again, the echo "<html>blabla\"escaping\"quotes\"is\"so\"much\"fun\n\n\n50 more lines here"; style really doesn’t show much intelligence…)
Anyway, I figured I might as well move the entire thing to an open CMS project that I’ve heard some good things about and already implements everything and more that the customer could ever want. That’s CmsMadeSimple.
Converting the old website to the new one was trivially easy. Copy/paste the stylesheet (first mistake), edit the basic template with a menu section, create the pages (copy/paste, copy/paste).
After fixing the html errors that were in the source the page looked like a pixel-perfect copy of the original.
Except for the places where the HTML errors were fixed that is. (the center class now actually worked for instance)
However, when adding the print links I ran into an interesting issue.
Adding print links is also a trivial thing, simply put {print} somewhere in the template, and possibly add some options to show an image instead of a text link etc.
However, the links were kinda broken, they gave empty pages. So I figured “duh, the print template still needs to be fixed”. However, as soon as I added the {content} tag to the template, I got a nice internal server error. WTF.
Checking the logs I could only find nice reports of this:
php-cgi[2564]: segfault at bf639750 ip 08348d32 sp bf639754 error 6 in php-cgi[8048000+6e9000]
php-cgi[2804]: segfault at bf200230 ip 08348d32 sp bf200234 error 6 in php-cgi[8048000+6e9000]
php-cgi[2896]: segfault at bf00cbb0 ip 08348d32 sp bf00cbb4 error 6 in php-cgi[8048000+6e9000]
Well… .I expect nothing less from php. Pleuris-hoere-product. But how the heck… just because I added content to the print page? What’s so special about that?
After digging around (enabling logs etc) and enabling fopen for php (which I had disabled for security), I noticed this:
[Wed Jul 14 12:22:29 2010] [error] [client 123.611.204.37] in /www/vhosts/some-site/cmsmadesimple/modules/Printing/Printing.module.php on line 96, referer: http://some-site/oncmsmadesimple/
AHA!. Apparently the printing module fetches the content (or at least, tries to) from the webserver, fails, and then segfaults php. Excellent code guys!
The reason for the failing is obvious from the logs here, I require authentication for the website since this is a test location that shouldn’t be public. Quick fix, allow the server to skip the login (vhost config):
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Testsite CmsMadeSimple"
AuthUserFile /lala/passwordfile
Require valid-user
Allow from 127.0.0.1
Allow from 192.168.1.1
Satisfy Any
</Location>
Problem solved. (Hint Printing Module: render your own shit, don’t cheat with fopen/curl)
Oh yeah: CmsMadeSimple rocks for these simple websites where your customer wants to “change some texts and add a picture”. If they can handle word, you can make them handle this (but show them how!).
Give them permissions to add pages and nothing else, write a decent template for them, done.
Missing /dev/sd* in slackware 13
by BenV on Jul.11, 2010, under Software
I’ve bashed my head into this problem at least three times now, so after finally running to google …. it made me search more than I liked.
The problem descriptions:
* Your system boots fine (maybe because it’s running on software raid), but your /dev/sd* files are gone.
* Your system doesn’t boot anymore, complaining about not finding your boot device when booting your custom kernel, but the stock kernel does work.
* Mounting partitions doesn’t work anymore, saying stuff like mount: special device /dev/sda does not exist
Reason:
* Your custom kernel has CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED enabled. To find out:
CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED=y
Since udev version 151 (or something close to that) this will sparsely populate /dev. Yay.
If you don’t believe it, check out /usr/share/doc/udev-*/README:
Another problem solved.
WordPress 3.0 update!
by BenV on Jun.18, 2010, under Software
Since I was in another update mood I decided to take a quick look at my notes.
The admin page mentioned something about the new 3.0 version.
Obviously I immediately became very excited and ran to the bathroom.
After screaming for half an hour I made a backup of the wordpress dir and sql and wondered if the auto-upgrade button would work.
Always a surprise…. but it worked! It actually worked! (continue reading…)
Flashblock for opera
by BenV on May.23, 2010, under Software
Another note in case I forget.
Since allowing flash by default slows browsing (and my PC) to a crawl, this nifty little script converts all flash content on a page to a flash icon.
Download it, stash it in your opera UserJS dir. (See Preferences -> Advanced -> Content -> Javascript Options -> User JavaScript Folder). (continue reading…)
The Humble Indie Bundle
by BenV on May.05, 2010, under Software
Hej folks.
The guys over at Wolfire Games have a sweet deal this week if you’re into fun cross platform indy games.
It’s simple: you go over to the Humble Bundle, determine how much you would like to pay for a bundle of DRM free, cross platform (Linux, Mac OSX and Windows) games and on top of that you also get to say who gets how much of the money (the developers, EFF or Child’s Play).
Isn’t that sweet?
The games are good too, we’re talking about World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra.
So go over to the Humble Bundle and get yourself a copy while paying them what you think it’s worth!
I did 
Necta.pl lives again!
by BenV on Apr.10, 2010, under Software
When nectarine died a few years ago (or at least, that’s how I view it) with their broken harddisks, lost backups and whatnot, I gave up on the necta.pl tool me and a friend of mine had written.
However, a few months ago I got back into listening to the new scenemusic.eu who got everything back up and running based on recovered data from the old Nectarine.
It seems like they did a proper job of setting up a new site, and they even provide a nice xml backend for tools like this.
So after a while I decided to revive our tool. This time I took the time to curse even more at Irssi and their script support, so I implemented the nonblocking fetcher and nectarine parser
in separate libraries. Well, isn’t that fun. Reloading those things was a problem (/script load necta wouldn’t reload those underlying libraries), but fortunately Garion helped me out here after a mail to the Irssi mailing list. Thanks Garion!
Anyway, I’ve put the first release up for download on this page:
http://notes.benv.junerules.com/necta/
Or a direct link to the download:
Irssi Necta script v0.01 - Version 0.01 - SHA: 62f7c4994750dac154807f2be43c85a8d2020182
Let the bug report begin 
Vim tricks with multiple cut/paste buffers
by BenV on Mar.27, 2010, under Software
Ever find yourself in vi(m) with a piece of code that needs some editing, but to preserve your paste buffer you keep limping around first deleting the first part and pasting it through the file, and later doing it again but now for the second block of code?
Let’s use an example. Imagine this very simple piece of html:
Now imagine we want to make it a bit more fancy, and want to add a hyperlink to a dictionary or something for all occurrences of the word ‘text’. Since we’re lazy, we only want to type the code for the link once.
Step by step:
- Add the link code on the first occurrence of the link, you’ll have to type it once anyway
- We are going to use register ‘a’ for the first part of the link, the a href=”blabla” part. The end we put in buffer ‘e’. To yank the first bit into buffer a, yank as you always would, but start off by typing “a. So the total command could look like “ay/< to yank right from where your cursor is to the start of the next tag.
- Next, to make things fancy, we do the same with the end tag, except we yank to register b by using something like “b/< to yank.
- To make sure you yanked the correct stuff, type :reg to see the contents of your registers.
- Now paste the appropiate register at the right spots by using “ap and “bp. Isn’t that great?
So summarized:
Show your what’s in vims buffers / registers:
:regDelete a line into buffer ‘a’:
"addPaste buffer q:
"qpSome more advanced tricks:
Add something to a buffer by using the capitalized register name. :
"AddEditing register a manually:
:let @a = "this text is now the new buffer content. Hihi."Search and destroy using a regexp to replace stuff with the contents of your register:
:%s/je moeder/\=@a/gHave fun
Windows Default Tools installation – Ninite
by BenV on Mar.10, 2010, under Software
Windows and Ninite
So after the Adobe Cancer experience yesterday I still had to install a bunch of other things for the helpless windows user.
After I was done with most of that (of course, the good stuff always comes too late) I ran into this tool: Ninite.
They call it “The easiest way to get apps”. Well, from the screenshots it certainly looks that way. No cruft like toolbars and updaters and junk installed, just the application. (continue reading…)
The Adobe Cancer
by BenV on Mar.09, 2010, under Morons, Software
They’ve managed to piss me off once more.
I had to do a windows reinstall (XP of course) for some idiots that fubar-ed their machine, so after the usual install, 5 million windows updates, service packs, reboots and firefox install I figured I should probably install flash for them.
How hard can it be to install Adobe Flash? (continue reading…)
Bye bye Ubisoft
by BenV on Feb.18, 2010, under Morons, Software
How incredibly stupid can they possibly get… like a dumb user that keeps running virus infected “naked hot girls!!!” screensavers, they keep adding DRM.
And now we’ve reached the point where they expect you to stay connected constantly to play a single player game.
Aahahahaha. Bye bye Ubisoft, may the pirates laugh at you and dance on your grave.
Alas for Settlers 7.. could have been an interesting game.
However, I expect them to revert their plans when enough badmouthing hits the news and make them “only” half as bad as they currently are.
We’ll see.
Awesome
by BenV on Feb.13, 2010, under Software
So every once in a while you have to mess around a bit with new stuff. Window managers for example.
I’m quite happy with Fluxbox (been using it since I started with linux), but it’s nice to see something new once in a while. Especially since development on Fluxbox is kind of …. dead. Well, not completely, but there’s just not much to be added without totally changing the thing.
My brother mentioned Awesome a few weeks ago, and during HAR last year it was also mentioned as something that I might like.
Which means it’s time to check it out! (continue reading…)
CMake issues
by BenV on Feb.13, 2010, under Morons, Software
I can’t for the life of me begin to imagine why anyone would use cmake as an autoconf alternative. (continue reading…)
Google Gears 64 bits for Firefox 3.6 (64 bits) on Slackware 64
by BenV on Jan.28, 2010, under Software
Yesterday Slackware64-current gave me Firefox 3.6. So far I’m happy to note that this broke more than half my addons, but that’s to be expected with that addon-hell.
Wonder when they clean up that act and start including required stuff like firebug. Anyway, a while ago I built google gears for firefox 3.5. Since Google is too incompetent to provide a 64 bit linux version, you have to do it yourself, which I did. However, with the Firefox 3.6 upgrade this addon also broke. (continue reading…)
Teamspeak 3 / epoll issue fixed
by BenV on Jan.25, 2010, under Software
After a few days of waiting on a reply on the forums I got tired of waiting. So my possible solutions: Either switch to a newer glibc (which probably comes down to upgrading to slackware 13, not in the mood for that) or move the teamspeak server to a new domU. Since it couldn’t possible *cough* be kernel related, I figured the problem had to be in glibc somewhere. (continue reading…)
Teamspeak 3
by BenV on Jan.22, 2010, under Software
A week or two ago I installed the latest teamspeak 3 beta on our server to check out how well it works these days.
I was impressed by how far they have come. Back when I still played WoW we always used Ventrilo version 2. We never ugpraded to the new 3 version (even though thats illegal according to them….) because version 3 had a 10 slot limitation on the free server version. Of course they don’t tell you how much a license for version 3 costs, unless you want to host more than 1000 slots. Paying for Ventrilo would be fine, but paying for 1000 slots? Ha. And yeah, there are hosts that specialize in that (and make you pay through the nose for it), but we wanted to host it ourselves.
Anyway, Teamspeak 3 has a much better view of the world. They offer a -free- personal (that means non commercial!) non-profit license. This means if you’re a guild you can obtain a license
from them for free over here which allows you to host your own Teamspeak 3 server with 10 virtual servers and 512 slots. That’s more like it!
And if you ARE commercial, their licenses are well defined and very affordable. For instance a 1 year license for 25 slots is only $25. Compare that to Ventrilo 2 providers that ask you E10,- per month. Ha.
Oh, did I mention that they DO have a linux client? And windows and mac of course…. including the 64 bit versions. Lovely
However, as it’s still in beta I run into some problems every now and then. Today I was asked to upgade the b12 server to the latest. So I tried.
Result:
[ blabla ]
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'boost::exception_detail::clone_impl<boost::exception_detail::error_info_injector<boost::system::system_error> >'
what(): epoll: Function not implemented
Aborted
…. welcome back my friend…. BOOST …. always the fucking same with that piece of rubbish.
However, to be fair this could very well be a “learn to code” problem by teamspeak, but still… it’s always boost the brings the curses.
So what is it complaining now? I don’t have epoll? Seriously? Let’s see about that.
Linux blue 2.6.32.2-xenU #1 SMP Thu Dec 24 15:55:52 CET 2009 i686 athlon-4 i386 GNU/Linux
# zcat /proc/config.gz | grep -i epol
CONFIG_EPOLL=y
So that’s not it.
The forum has this thread suggesting it might be glibc that’s too old.
However, this particular slackware 11 server has glibc version 2.3.6, which should be old enough (according to that forum thread at least). Just in case it’s not I’ll try upgrading that later.
In the meanwhile I created a thread on this problem on the forums, let’s see what they suggest. I’ll put updates here.
MySQL fun
by BenV on Jan.15, 2010, under Software
Today I was scripting up some commandline tools and found myself in need of doing some MySQL commands on the commandline.
Or to be more specific: I wanted to create a database and grant some permissions. So I figured “Admin stuff… let’s try mysqladmin“. (continue reading…)
FastCGI results
by BenV on Jan.12, 2010, under Software
A few weeks ago I implemented a FastCGI setup for a magento website. (details Here). That site also runs google analytics.
Here’s what analytics had to show about the speed of the site:
FastCGI speedup graph
Can you guess when FastCGI was enabled?
For those of you who are graphically challenged, the above graph shows a loading time of 2.1-2.5 seconds on the left and then crashes down to only 1.0-1.3 seconds at the date that I enabled FastCGI. Neat huh?
Google analytics also notes that “this site is faster than 83% of the sites”, whatever that means. Oh well, we’re happy.
Deluge issue
by BenV on Jan.02, 2010, under Software
This morning I noticed my torrent daemon (aka Deluge) was down. (continue reading…)
Favicon.ico generation
by BenV on Dec.30, 2009, under Boring
Since I keep forgetting how the heck I create these favicon.ico files, it’s time to put it here. (continue reading…)
Apache 2.2 and PHP configuration fun on Slackware 13
by BenV on Dec.28, 2009, under Software
As I love to tinker around with apache/php installations to get them to work as fast as possible while still keeping some security in tact, I found myself messing around with FastCGI today. But why?! Here’s why:
On this machine I previously installed suPhP to get php scripts to run as a normal unix user instead of user apache (so users have the ability to completely lock out their database settings etc for other users on that machine). However, to speed stuff up on a magento webshop I wanted to have a PHP opcode cache running (I tried out APC). (continue reading…)
WordPress hits 2.9 with another failed auto-upgrade.
by BenV on Dec.21, 2009, under Software
Here we go again, wordpress has an update to version 2.9 this time.
New features include “automatic database optimization support”, which you can enable by putting define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true); in your wp-config.php file.
The rest you’ll run into yourself, it’s a ton of new stuff and fixes but some cool stuff like a built-in image editor and easier embedding of your favorite youtube junk.
Needless to say the automatic upgrade failed AGAIN for me:
Download failed.: Operation timed out after 60 seconds with 1560944 bytes received
Installation Failed
Fortunately, my previous patch still works. Get it here if you want.
After patching that single line the automagic upgrade ended with: WordPress upgraded successfully. Jeeeej.
However, they still left the timeout at 60 seconds in the newer version 
$response = wp_remote_get($url, array('timeout' => 60));
Failers. They deserve a 56k6 modem for their servers so they can find out about these issues themselves
Google Gears on Slackware 64 and firefox
by BenV on Dec.14, 2009, under Software
Don’t ask me why, but for some greasemonkey script that I wanted to run in Firefox I needed Google Gears.
So I went to the gears site with Firefox, and it told me that it needed to install some plugin. Yeah, whatever.
I hit the big Install Gears button, completely ignoring the tiny and almost invisible for my eyes 32-bit OS (64-bit not supported) notice below it.
Needless to say it went on to download a 3.5Mb package, started some popups and other junk after which it notified me of my grave mistake.
Aha. So for some reason Google is too incompetent to work with 64 bits software…. even microsoft can deal with that these days guys, geesh. (continue reading…)
