Off you go… into the purple yonder!

In order to install Rockbox on an iPod, it needs to be formatted in FAT32, not HFS+. The relevant wiki page over at the Rockbox site suggest either connecting the iPod to an iTunes install on Windows, or using one of the bootsectors they have available for download from that page.
Those boot sectors assume your [...]

Dell’s DRAC5 is based on free software. The source has been rumored to be available but hard to find – until today, when this helpful e-mail popped up on the linux-poweredge list.
Here’s the link to an ISO with the DRAC5 source:
http://linux.dell.com/files/drac5/source/

A quick update on some of the bugs reported in my previous post bugs, bugs, bugs: upgrading to jaunty jackalope.
The two most serious problems were atrocious Intel video performance, and ongoing sound issues. Thankfully, the Intel issues have been addressed. Specifically, a really nice Troubleshooting Intel Performance document by Bryce Harrington has appeared. It lays [...]

I upgraded my laptop to Jaunty Jackalope. Here’s the list of issues (and solutions) I’ve run into:
1. Tor is not packaged anymore, apparently there is no Ubuntu maintainer. Upstream provides Ubuntu packages, but they have no jaunty package yet. So, we need to build from the intrepid source package. Add

deb-src http://mirror.noreply.org/pub/tor intrepid main

to [...]

I have a legacy php application that had to be integrated into a Drupal site, so I wrapped it in a simple drupal module. The code needs to run for anonymous users.
The wrapping worked fine, but the Drupal cache really gets in the way sometimes. For instance, my legacy code does not use the drupal_set_message [...]

We’ve been getting telephone spam from Affiliated Mortgage Protection

Affiliated Mortgage Protection
292 Terminal Ave W,
Clark, NJ- 7066.
(732)-499-0700

We answered five of their calls the past three weeks, and each time asked them to stop calling. Apparently, they happily ignore these requests.
They called again this evening and the lady on the phone had the nerve to say [...]

So I have a poweredge 2800 with some hardware issues (voltage sensors on the riser card seeing things they should not…). The Dell support folks wanted me to run a DSET report with this tool

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R155882&formatcnt=2&libid=0&fileid=208066

Man – what a pile of crap. This thing is a self-extracting archive for rpm-based systems (redhat/suse). Fine – except that [...]

The FSF has put out a 5 minute anniversary video celebrating 25 years of GNU.

It’s a pleasant, concise explanation of what free software is all about, why it’s important, and how the GNU project fits in to all this. Happy birthday GNU!
And if that’s not enough FSF-related news for you, you can read more about [...]

Dell announced that a few more models are now available pre-installed with Ubuntu: the XPS 1530n and the Studio 15n.
I configured an XPS 1530n with the following specs, which are available both with Ubuntu and Windows:

SYSTEM COLOR
Tuxedo Black

PROCESSOR
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5850 (2.16GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)

LCD AND CAMERA
Full Hi Definition, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch LCD (1920×1200) [...]

So you’ve done quite a few dapper to hardy upgrades, and you’re ready for the next one.
You

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install update-manager-core

and then

do-release-upgrade -d

You go get a cup of tea, and come back to

# do-release-upgrade -d
Checking for a new ubuntu release
Done Upgrade tool signature
Done Upgrade tool
Done downloading
extracting ‘hardy.tar.gz’
authenticate [...]