checkcrc
Friday, 4. September 2009 11:32 - daniel - Other - 0 Comments
checkcrc is a programm to compare crc32 checksum. Files coming from irc
bots will often be named like "somename_[DEADBEEF].avi", where DEADBEEF
is the crc32 checksum. checkcrc will try to find checksum strings in
filenames and will compare them to the files checksum.
checkcrc can also be used to create checksums of files by using the -c
swtich.
I coded it because I wanted to use some C again and because I really needed a tool to check all those file I leeched from IRC ;). I tried a few things that were new to me, like using options and regex in C and using the GNU configure and build system.
It's fun to use but the GNU documentation sucks for someone who trys these tools for the first times. It's well documentated, but there are very few examples about how to use and there are not really examples about good practise in there. I mostly looked at other projects code and some tutorials to find out what I had to do.
Usage: checkcrc [-cvh] [file ...]
-c Only calculate checksums, don't try to find a checksum string to compare
-v Display version number
-g Display this help
file can by any number of files you want to check.
For instructions how to compile and install checkcrc see INSTALL.
Download checkcrc-0.1.0.tar.gz
eee PCs Boot Booster
Thursday, 3. September 2009 10:12 - daniel - Other - 6 Comments
All eee PCs have a feature called Boot Booster. This caches the Bios and Video Bios onto the HDD and speeds up booting by a few seconds.
To enable it you have to set up a primary partition on the first HDD with at least 8 MB and the type code 0xEF.
After the next reboot the Bios will cache itself into this partition and a new option is available in the Boot options called Boot Booster. Enable it and the eee PC will skill Bios loading and Bios configuration and will directly load the Boot Loader.
Debian for eee PC
Wednesday, 2. September 2009 12:53 - daniel - Other - 2 Comments
I used fluxflux for quite some time on my eee Pc, but I didn't really like the PCLinuxOS it was based on. It worked quite well for some time, but the last release is kinda aged and after upgrading the OS I had some serious problems. Since I prefer Debian based systems anyway I took a quick look at Debian Lenny and Ubuntu.
Ubuntu has a special version for netbooks called Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It's not as heavy as a full Ubuntu install, but it's still quite big. Also I has a few problems with the eee 701.
Debian on the other hand can be installed with only a minimum system that uses very little space (I know, ubuntu can do that too with it's alternate installer CDs) and supports pretty much everything on the eee 701 thanks to the work of the DebianEeePC Project.
Installing it is very simple. Just follow the steps of the HowTo. I installed just the standard system and later added the x.org, gnome-core, gdm, network-manager and iceweasel by hand. After that the OS install is just about 1 GB and some stuff even is optional. For example you can skip gdm and network-manager tofree a few MB if you don't need a fancy graphical login and manage your connections manually.
The only thing that doesn't work at the moment is changing the volume with the function keys, but I don't really need that anyway.
To sum it up, Debian on the eee PC is very nice. Boot time is lightning fast and the hardware works "out of the box". If you think about installing another OS on your eee PC, Debian would be a good choise.
irssi and character encoding
Monday, 31. August 2009 22:30 - daniel - Other - 0 Comments
I just spend way to much time trying to get irssi to join a channel with an umlaut in it's name. After trying about every combination of /recode ans /set recode* settings I could think about, checking if the encoding of every system and terminal emulator is correct and set to utf-8 and trying to start screen w/ and w/o -U I finally find something working
Setting the charset of gnome-terminal to iso-8859-1 produces horrible, unreadable Mojibake, but I can finally join the channel. After adding the channel to the autoconnect list I can join this channel w/o needing to switch the charset of gnome-terminal.
The channel name still looks messed up, but sending and receving special characters works, so I guess I can call it a success.
Charset problems just suck.
New domain pew.cc
Monday, 29. June 2009 16:11 - daniel - Other - 0 Comments
I've got a new domain: pew.cc. The old tac-ops.net was nice, but kinda long and some people told me that they couldn't remember it. The now one is only 5 chars even with the ending, so everyone should be able to remember it. Also, its the sound my laser gun makes when I shoot you ;).
All the stuff that was on tac-ops.net will remain that. For now I only moved the blog from dani.tac-ops.net to blog.pew.cc and redirected all the old links to the new domain. files.tac-ops.net and all the other stuff will stay the same for the time being.
I had quite a hard time setting up the name servers for pew.cc. My secondary NS woudn't fetch the zone file after an update. It turned out that the master NS wasn't sending notices to the slave NS. Well' he was sending updates, but not for the pew.cc domain. Everything seemed alright, until i discovered that the domain I use for the NS server aliases was also configured in the master NS, but the A records for the ns1 and ns2 subdomains were missing. When the master NS tried to look up adresses for nameserver to send the notices to he coudn't find the IP. Removing the old zone entry solved the problem.