Category Archives: Free Software/Open Source

About all things Free Software and Open Source. Mostly good news :)

upgrading from dapper to hardy: ‘Hash Sum mismatch’

Posted on July 31, 2008 by ward

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source | 3 Comments

misleading mongrel errors

Posted on June 18, 2008 by ward

So you’re happily developing a rails app, and for whatever reason need to restart your devel server. And then you get this (paths removed to improve readability): $ script/server => Booting Mongrel (use ‘script/server webrick’ to force WEBrick) => Rails … Continue reading →

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ftp.us.debian.org

Posted on June 4, 2008 by ward

$ host ftp.us.debian.org. ftp.us.debian.org has address 128.30.2.36 ftp.us.debian.org has address 64.50.238.52 ftp.us.debian.org has address 64.50.236.52 ftp.us.debian.org has address 35.9.37.225 $ telnet ftp.us.debian.org 80 Trying 35.9.37.225… Connected to ftp.us.debian.org. Escape character is ‘^]’. HEAD / HTTP/1.0 HTTP/1.0 200 OK Connection: close … Continue reading →

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why aren’t my svn repository hooks working?

Posted on March 29, 2008 by ward

The SVN FAQ has an entry with the title why aren’t my repository hooks working?. It describes some debugging tips for svn hooks. Unfortunately it does not mention a few very important SVN ‘features’: 1. stdout of all repository hooks … Continue reading →

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Xen 3.2.0

Posted on January 26, 2008 by ward

So Xen 3.2.0 was released last week. Oddly enough there are no precompiled 64-bit binaries anymore. That does not make much sense to me – running Xen on 32 bit is just… painful. Problems with accessing ram beyond 4GB, issues … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source, Xen | 1 Comment

djb to release all his software into the public domain

Posted on November 30, 2007 by ward

Dan Bernstein aka djb writes brilliant software. He has a reputation for being a little difficult but his software is really, really well written and some of the most secure code out there. I used qmail for a long time, … Continue reading →

Posted in Copyright, patents, and trademarks, Free Software/Open Source | Leave a comment

bluetooth on the 1420N

Posted on September 28, 2007 by ward

When I purchased my Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu pre-installed, bluetooth was not offered as an option. It seems it still is not as of today. The machine does have a nice built-in slot and connector for a bluetooth module. … Continue reading →

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scanning a multipage document into PDF on GNU/Linux

Posted on September 17, 2007 by ward

Xsane works quite well, even if you want to scan a multipage document into a PDF. Just select ‘multipage’ as the target: and then this window will pop up, where you can select an output format; the default is PDF. … Continue reading →

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happy software freedom day!

Posted on September 15, 2007 by ward

Today is Software Freedom Day! Events are being held in 90 countries, organized by 330 local teams. I’m looking forward to the Boston event this afternoon.

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a promise of full specs for R500+ from AMD/ATI

Posted on September 6, 2007 by ward

LWN and Christopher Blizzard broke the news that AMD is planning to release full documentation for their graphics chips, R500 and newer. This is awesome. With specs, I imagine it will take the community 6 months or so to write … Continue reading →

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