We Saw a Chicken …

Category: computers suck

  • how to fix the annoying Ubuntu/Debian XML::SAX install problems

    Debian and its derived distributions have a policy about packages not being able to modify the configuration of other packages. While this might generally seem like a good idea, for the TIMTOWTDI world of Perl, this causes problems.

    The problem arises if you have installed Perl XML modules from both CPAN and the Debian (or Ubuntu, or whatever) repositories. Debian’s modifications subtly break the XML::SAX module, on which most Perl XML modules (including the brilliant XML::Simple) depend. If you’ve been naughty and used a module from CPAN, Debian gets its knickers in a knot, and won’t configure or run anything remotely related to libxml-sax-perl.

    If you get the error Can’t locate object method “save_parsers_debian” via package “XML::SAX” at /usr/bin/update-perl-sax-parsers line 90, your system is affected. You might get the clue that any of your Perl XML handlers freak out and fail in weird ways.

    Here’s a method (there’s always more than one, of course)  to fix it. This was combined from a couple of sources, each of which was on the right track but didn’t entirely work. Actually, the first might’ve been right on the money, but my hiragana’s a bit ropey …

    1. make sure you’ve got your system up to date with apt-get or aptitude.
    2. sudo cpan CPANPLUS (this will ask you lots of questions, to which you should almost always answer with the default)
    3. sudo cpanp -u XML::SAX (this takes quite a while, and produces no output for most of it)
    4. LC_ALL=C sudo apt-get install --reinstall libxml-sax-perl (the LC_ALL=C might not be strictly necessary, but it worked for me)

    You must remember never to pretend to be smarter than the Debian maintainers, and suitably chastened, may now return to your normal OpenSSH patching activities …

  • mind you

    I did just upgrade my server from the previous version of Ubuntu LTS to 8.04 LTS, and it went without a glitch. I had to edit one config file, and it’s all running smoothly.

  • my only gripe with the heron

    I’m quite happy with Ubuntu. If a user didn’t have to be tied into specific, Windows-only applications, I’d recommend it. It’s stable, fast, intuitive and pretty.

    My one annoyance is what the latest release has done to CD/DVD drive naming. In the past, my machine’s first DVD drive was hda. For no reason whatsoever, Ubuntu decide to call it sr0. Similarly, the drive’s name for command-line tools now has a different specification.So all my applications need to be told where the drives are; a pain.

    Maybe I’ve been at this too long – I still like to use applications that I can see what’s running in the background, so I use grip over gstreamer (mainly because, unless you’re using lame, I’m not listening to your mp3s),  cdrdao over (whatever the young kids are using today to burn gapless audio). At the very least, I would have liked to get a summary of changes when I upgraded Ubuntu. Better still, I’d have liked a list of reasons for the changes. Unless my CD/DVD drive is now faster and more secure, why change?

  • need for speed

    If you are finding your Ubuntu upgrade slow, I found it worth changing my default download server. Under System -> Administration -> Software Sources you can choose a new server. It has a Choose Best Server test, which pings all 185 Ubuntu download servers and picks the best one for you.

    The default Canadian server is swamped at the moment, but the good people at Rochester Institute of Technology are the fastest for me.

  • smalle fowles maken melodye

    Get Songbird

    I like Songbird, even if its mascot has gas:

    Get Songbird

  • SQLite Manager

    SQLite Manager for Firefox

    I like SQLite Manager for Firefox.

  • new and improved

  • coast plaza = dodgy dns

    Coast Plaza hotel has a broken(ish) DNS — most web sites won’t resolve unless you hit reload about 8 million times (or use a shell loop to ping many many times). Aargh!

    But it does completely block my office’s Citrix connections, so no work e-mail for me!

  • on stravaig

    My company’s network is down today. All of it. All my files are there. All my work is there. I’m enjoying freedom while I can.

    Have you heard of a large company not having redundant servers?

  • pretty neat, i guess

    Google Mobile Maps’ “My Location” from cell signal triangulation is fairly neat. It’s a few hundred meters off my true location downtown, but good enough if you were completely lost.

  • most annoying thing ever

    I have an HP Photosmart C5180 scanner/printer thingy. It works fairly well, except when the drivers are being stupid under Windows. But it has one flaw so appalling that the first time it happened, I almost trashed the printer in a blind rage (yeah, I have some anger issues).

    The power supply brick has a three-prong connector; pretty much the same as the “kettle lead” you get on PCs. But this thing, whether through vibration, heating and cooling, or just plain evil, slowly works itself loose. So you go to turn the printer on one day, and … nothing. You check the cables; all are plugged in. Check the wall socket; it’s (zap! ow!) live. After tearing some hair out, you troubleshoot every cable – all looks well until you notice that the plug is just a little farther out of the power supply than it might go. Snug it in a couple of millimetres, and a working printer is you.

    This happens every few months. Even when I know it’s likely to happen, it still jars me. Wouldn’t have happened in Bill & Dave’s day.

  • glitch out

    ipod glitch

    I really don’t think that my ipod was supposed to do that. But then, it was playing Columbus Fruge’s Saut Crapaud at the time, which is enough to make anyone shift a few pixels to the side:

    Saut crapaud
    ta queue va brûler
    Prends courage
    a’va repousser

  • words to live by

    A weird imagination is most useful to gain full advantage of all the features.

     — screen(1) manual.

  • like a virtual workspace manager for the shell

    How did I manage to go for so long without knowing about screen? screen allows you to create several connection sessions to a terminal, switch between them, detach from them, then reconnect from anywhere. I’d previously had to to set up long-running remote jobs as background jobs, relying on nohup and various methods to prevent terminal output. But no more!

    This page taught me all I know about screen: screen: Keep Your Processes Running Despite A Dropped Connection

  • barcodes of miscellaneous things found on my desk

    021205009544
043100455349
051122172625
073999738360
093074013021
5099680001525
9780176224509

    You can tell I found my cuecat, can’t you?

  • guess my music competition

    So I could listen to semi-disposable CDRs in the car (and with that phrase, my green cred has vanished) I wrote a program that converts directories of mp3s to WAV files and TOC files for cdrdao. It works rather well.

    In order to get sensible file names, the program truncates album names down to eight letters. I will send $5 canadian by paypal to the first person to guess correctly the album and artist of the following four names:

    dancetun
darlingc
hepooscl
maggotbr

    Answers in the comments only, please. They’re all official releases, before you accuse me of getting you to guess my mix CDs.

  • happiness

    is an empty inbox

  • not my favicon

    I’m trying to make Firefox on Windows XP like Firefox with the GrApple theme on OS X. I don’t have to have it look the same, just compress all the bookmarks in the toolbar into the width of the screen.

    This is how I want the bookmarks toolbar to look:

    os x

    And this is how it looks right now on Windows:

    bar on windows

    I can find any number of links about only showing the favicon, but none about turning it off to save space. Aargh!

  • stupid hp, part deux

    HP’s Photosmart driver proved its genius once again:

    hp software update

    The download figures would have made more sense if it was working in kilobytes. As is, that’s quite a buffer overrun.

  • once mighty edifices crumble and fall

    Friends:

After discussion with the other list managers, we've decided to end
our policy of asking that list members not "top post" their replies.
That's the default behavior of most email clients, and just reminding
people of our recommendation to "bottom post" or interleave your
replies has become more trouble than its worth. From this point
forward, top posting is no longer an issue.

Dan Knight, list owner
publisher, LowEndMac.com