Technoblog
Sunday, December 28, 2003
MySQLGUI downloads The mysteries of computing again! MySQL 5 preview "ships" without the sample my.cnf files, and I wasn't able to connect any way I tried to it (but I didn't try the following!). MySQL 4 on my Windows 2000 box could only connect remotely (and without passwords as supposed to be), until I figured that localhost/127.0.0.1 doesn't work as a host, instead mysql -h IP does the trick. Then it was time for a GUI, MySQLFront and MySQLGUI seem to complement each other, the former created "the easy way" users, grants and databases, while the latter allows me to set up a password for root@localhost - this "user" doesn't appear in Front. Anyways, we're in business.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
Vlc needed a final http://libmpeg2.sourceforge.net/downloads.html (CVS Version only), and would compile with ffmpeg disabled, but no xvid awareness (despite xvid being on the system).
Let's make a quick refrence to my friend peter@smtl.co.uk, sysadmin, perl and zope monster, ergoshrink and eternal friend.
SuSE 9 is proving to be a beauty on my P10-804, with everything working out-of-the-box (exception being Nvidia drivers which need to be downloaded, built and activated "acceleration" in sax2, although the 2D drivers are included and don't mess up the screen too much - something does go wrong however with switching back-and-forth between text and X with the 2D driver). installing the kernel patches with yast reset the kernel modules and left me needing to reinstall the NV drivers. There is infact a multitude of maintenance scripts that run quite slowly the first time round, and are bound to have side-effects. Then it was time for apt-rpm and the naughty packages people distribute, however the MPlayer-suite needed a manual installation of lzo, and then mplayer was nowhere to be found, although I did get the codecs that allow me to play all of the files I've tried so far. Xine is also nowhere to be found, this kaffeine media player is being forced on us, but subtitle support was nowhere to be found. Then it was time for vlc, and compiling it from source dominoed libdvdcss, libmad and ffmpeg, which however is not being recognised by vlc's configure script, although I've compiled several versions and installed on both /usr and /usr/local locations.
The two areas of difficulties with SuSE so dar have been samba browsing (I just can't, although mounting was fine), and hotplugging my USB and firewire devices, shortcuts etc not entirely smooth. At leas yast allows me to configure mount points for these drives (under /media), although I seem to have lost thpse alterations first time I tried them. The other silly little thing is that my thumbdrive is unpartitioned (works properly if mountig /dev./sdb), and Kwikdisk has no awareness of the concept. I should fix this anyway.
My Belkin 54g ADSL modem/router for £115 from simply arrived today within the 3 day target from my completion of the web order, and it's a beauty too, metal box, not heavy. thin on documentation with free freephone tech support and slighty clueless staff. It's a feel good product, only facility missing is the "captive portal". It does suggest it has a "long range" mode, my range was already long enough for my neighbours, who knows whom I may be reaching now.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
It is becoming official: my Toshiba P10-804 has a problem, it powers itself down randomly (when using its "native" XP Home, under Linux I have problems of a different nature, absolutely no problems with NVidia's drivers though). It only ever shuts down when I'm actively using it, even after 10 minutes of use, while it has overnighted for three days in a row with no probs. Something I will be taking to Toshiba, if there is any customer support.
The virtual hosting templates in Apache 2, at least as it is distributed with XAMPP, are not ready-to-run. The templates are commented out at the end of the huge configuration file, but some "ports" must have been defined above, making it necessary to adopt the expression *:80 instead of simply * - the correct form is shown at http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/vhosts/name-based.html .
Thursday, December 11, 2003
FTP Intel compilers . Meanwhile, ExtraDNS was blocking some file(s) for installing the Visual Studio 6 Service Pack 5. Even so, Intel's compiler 7 refused to install cleanly, complaining some configuration files couldn't be modified. Otherwise it looks like it will be operational, after all it is only a wrapper on top of VC++.
I've been playing with the CE.NET emulator a bit, it wasn't entirely c;ear that to get the net working you needed both to set the emulated device's IP to your "own" (instead of the default DHCP which gives it some silly unreachable address), and IE (or Internet properties) had to be set to "LAN connection, do dial up. The default of 16MB of memory for the emulator is silly, and it is quite unwilling to use the "shared folder" as a download destination. In addition, it looks like the ARM isn't being emulated, in which case only one's own developments can be run - so, no Acrobat reader or other goodies. Oh well, it seemed a good idea at the time...
And finally, my Amazon.co.uk order surprised me greatly when I went to change my phone number and found the delivery estimate reset (another two weeks of wait - not to mention that there is no indication the Belkin multi-device would be in stock anytime soon. So, I cancelled, and to my mild surprise I found it in stock and waiting at Savastore, for a mere £2 extra. Simply sent me their brochure today quoting it at £113 (£2 cheaper than Amazon), but there was no word on price or availability on their website. Given these devices' appalling performance when using security features, I think I 'll wait now and see what people think - unless I need my connection over Christmas, then I'll rush and buy.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
It's been one of those dependency weeks again. I wanted to investigate why and how the "burst" bittorrent client breaks on machines with hyperthreading. With a bit of searching I discovered the Intel Thread Checker 2 beta, not too large a download, only to discover it requires a download, much larger and much more restrictive with it's 30 day license, of the Vtune performance library. That wouldn't install properly as VC6+ was a prerequisite, oh great, I thought, maybe I can get away with the Intel C++ eval (I 've downloaded 7.1, version 8 is just out). Trying to install that one it repeated the VC++ requirement and the Microsoft Platform SDK - what on earth is that? Well, I was able to find out, but only with Internet Explorer (thanks Microsoft) http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/ . The PSDK comes in many flavours, I obviously have a couple of components and I hope I can get away with installing only the "core", but it is unclear which set of components is enough to fully "make sure my libraries, tools and files are up-to-date for development", as MS claims. In any case, the core component is a 180MB download that will take up another half gig on my disk. And, surprisingly, I need to click "install" one last time to start the download, poor me I just sat there waiting thinking previously clicking "download" and accepting whatever disclaimers would have done the trick. Finally, my Windows XP system seems to have picked up the Server 2003 SDK, in a file called something like psdk-x86.cab
The Intel download experience is fraught with a few problems and inconsistencies, although I must admit their offering is enormous and quite generous. It seems that you have to type in some details every time you visit, even if you're logged in, and navigating to the downloads is not always easy (especially if you have to do it a second time) - this is all unnecessary hassle as the files seem to be in well-ordered pubic mirror sites, no Akamai and stuff like that.
My other ambition, mirroring MIT's OCW courseware is not likely to come to fruition any time soon, they told me they do Akamai and that's enough for them. As they're using a (customised) Microsoft Content Management Server they would have to establish quite unusual mirroring practices, perhaps a world first, again!
Finallym, I'm remendously curious to find out what happened at the adhoc wireless mesh that was briefly up with Linux and Windows clients, with the software nowhere to be found http://moment.cs.ucsb.edu/aodv-ietf/
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
I was trying to use Mailtraq Free Edition (ver. 2.1.0.1323, Oct 2002) as my SMTP server, and I must have come across a bug or something, cause I had to explicitly allow my "sender address" to be relayed (under "properties" of the service), even though the defaults suggested that anything generated on localhost was all-powerful and uncensored. The only other setup necessary was setting the Options/Server to resolve MX records for sending, and to sign with a valid domain (instead of the default reverse DNS). It seems to be working smoother than the remaing free windows prog: Advanced SMTP Server.
