Friday 18 January 2008

NSLU2 on flash - script +not+ broken :-D

Update: Why don't I learn my lesson and stop working too late? Making a fool of myself in public isn't something to be proud of.

Ignore this post if you're seeing it for the first time.




Martin, David, this script is broken. When trying to set kernel parameters, there should be a new line, it shouldn't be explicitly removed. I know it looks weird, but this seems to be proven by this output:


kinder:/etc/init.d# ./params4flash start
kinder:/etc/init.d# cat params4flash
#! /bin/sh

exit 0

PATH=/sbin:/bin

# Max time to wait for writeout
MAX_AGE=120
CENT_AGE=$((100 * $MAX_AGE))
# Max percent of mem to use for dirty pages
DRATIO=10
# Once we write, do so until this many percent of mem is still in use
DBRATIO=1

case "$1" in
start)
echo -n 0 >> /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
echo -n $MAX_AGE >> /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode
echo -n $CENT_AGE >> /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
echo -n $CENT_AGE >> /proc/sys/vm/dirty_expire_centisecs
echo -n $DRATIO >> /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio
echo -n $DBRATIO >> /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio
;;
restart|reload|force-reload)
echo "Error: argument '$1' not supported" >&2
exit 3
;;
stop)
# No-op
;;
*)
echo "Usage: $0 start|stop" >&2
exit 3
;;
esac
exit 0
kinder:/etc/init.d# cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
60

Thursday 17 January 2008

networking in wine on amd64

Anyone managed to do that?

I tried the sid amd64 packages, the i386 packages, the lenny amd64 packages, backported etch packages (they worked for me on a i386 system at work). None of these lets me use networking.

Is wine networking working for other people using the amd64 arch?




Update: apparently I am one of the few for which wine networking on amd64 doesn't work. Th ebad thing is that I don't know why or how to fix it.

Monday 14 January 2008

blowing things out of proportion

First I want to say shame on you for plain out laying. I had the laptop in service once, not twice. That was for the battery. The HDD is fine and I never had hardware issues with it. Now I am writing from that laptop, is that proof good enough for you?

Now I understand how rumors start.

What I don't understand what would motivate anyone to do this?

Oh, and you're welcome for the free advertising.

Wednesday 9 January 2008

my laptop is back

Yesterday I got my laptop back. It was in service since the 6th of December.

They replaced the battery, and although it looked like the built-in charge indicator was defect, actually the button on this battery is buried deeper than it was on the previous one and I have to press really hard on it to trigger it.

According to the tests made yesterday night, this battery holds for about 2.5-3 hours when playing music. Also it has 96% of its designed capacity. I guess is OK enough since I don't want to be spared from my laptop anymore.

Next on the agenda:
  • restore data sanity (I did clean up most of the data from the HDD before handing down the laptop for the case when I was forced to hand it over; lucky for me, I managed to keep the HDD)
  • install armel Debian on my new[1] NSLU2, Kinder (more news on that later ;-) )
  • fix my local network chaos triggered by the problems that hit Ritter (my older NSLU2)
  • finish the wiki theme
  • work a little more on svn-buildpackage and kill more of its bugs
  • walk through my (game) packages' bugs and try to fix them, answer, etc.
  • try to make bluetooth transfers to work from and to my laptop
BTW, I still hold to my opinion that Dell and Emag suck, although I might buy desktops from Dell, laptops are a no-no until they fix their broken batteries and their broken "1-year warranty for batteries" policy.

[1] I bought a new NSLU2 after I left my laptop in service and it has been waiting since then to run the Debian Arm EABI (armel) port

Wednesday 2 January 2008

back(b)loging until 2008

I haven't blogged since last year :-D so a "Happy New Year!" is required.

So what happened meanwhile? Quite a few things, both good and bad.

  • 15th-16th of December: severe teeth pain, and since it was weekend, I couldn't see a dentist
  • 17th of December: I got a dentist appointment and got rid of the pain; more sessions planned
  • 18th of December
    • around 17 o'clock: I start feeling back pains;
    • around 19 o'clock: takes me 20 minutes to walk from the office to the subway station, 15 minutes more than it usually takes; I postpone the second dentist appointment because of the back pains;
    • later that evening: I end up calling the emergency service because the back pain became unbearable; they arrived about 2 hours later; after some basic treatment I was able to sleep
  • 19th of December:
    • I had the rescheduled dentist appointment scheduled at 9 o'clock; the back pain became so bad that I couldn't sit on the dentist chair; I had to postpone again the appointment
    • later that day: I had to call in sick, the back pain was back; I spent all day indoors and just tried to rest
  • 20th of December:
    • my father and my fiancee came and took me home;
    • while on the road the people from emag called me to tell me the laptop is fixed - sadly, about two hours too late
    • I went to the doctors' and got the papers for the sick leave; until the end of that week I was to feel better, but not great.
  • Christmas' Eve and Christmas:
    • although planned to be spent at my sister's, we had to stay home since I wasn't feeling well enough for a 50km drive
    • nice gifts were exchanged; even the hardest ones to please were pleased
    • my sister, my brother in law, my nephew and my niece came to Caracal; it was nice to see Andu (my nephew) literally jump in my arms out of sheer joy (in spite of the back pain, I was glad); Denisa was so cute telling "Tica, Tica"[1] to Santa, especially since, at her stage of verbal development, using verbs seems to be optional :-)
  • New Year's Eve and 1st of January:
    • spent (finally, as planned) in Craiova, with my sister, my brother in law and some of their friends
    • was nice to see again my nephew and my niece
    • on the 1st: drove back to Caracal on a really bad road due to the heavy snow fall during the morning of that day;
  • 2nd of January:
    • heavy snow falls; a layer of snow of approximately 50cm covers everything
    • the area where a neighbour shoveled the snow the previous evening seems to be leveled with the rest
Maybe at a future point in time I'll post a picture or two with my nephews.

To all the people, thanks for the support and, once again, Happy New Year!

[1] a simple poem for kids