Gutshot Straight Book Review

Gutshot Straight: A Novel by Lou Berney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Got this as a free eBook from B&N and during some travelling got a chance to read it. The first couple of chapters seemed rather predictable. Much like getting a present that is wrapped in such a way that you already know what is inside, but the author does throw some curve balls along the way. Much like the present analogy, as the reader begins unwrapping the present, they discover something much different than what they had anticipated.

The story starts out with a con who has decided that he is going to keep to the straight and narrow. Unfortunately for him, he encounters people who seem to be actively pushing him off the path. Starting with an old flame, and continuing with the woman. The one that can throw him curve balls all day and he just keeps swinging at them, regardless of the consequences. Fortunately for him, she appears to feel the same way about him, at least for the time being.

Overall, I found this to be an excellent read, and I would recommend it to most anyone, from teen to adult.

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Applications Not in Chakra

Every so often I run across an application that I want to install, but it isn't part of the Chakra repositories (the official or community). Sometimes this can be dealt with by using the Chakra supplied converter.

aur2ccr application_name

The converter doesn't come as part of the standard installation, so you'll have to install it yourself.

ccr -S aur2ccr

Be warned though, the Chakra team supplies this only in recognition that there might be the occasional application in the AUR system that someone just can't live without. Always make certain that the application that you are looking for doesn't already exist in the CCR. There, I've done my bit of warning, so let's carry on.

Sometimes the AUR just doesn't have the application that you're looking for, or it isn't the latest version, or perhaps you're just trying to update the version that you have already converted over. What ever the reason, let's go through the steps of building up an application from the source code. There is no code writing here for this.

The first step is fairly obvious. Download the source code from the developer's site, verify that you have everything, and decompress it to your packaging location. You'll also need to verify that you have satisfied all of the dependencies necessary for the application build.

Assuming that you've made it this far, make sure you type the following commands in the main directory of the source. This location for me looks something like this: ~/packages/application_name/.

./configure --prefix=/usr 

make

Assuming success by this point, the next step would be to check the build.

make check

For Chakra, you'll need next to make a package so you can install it.

makepkg -s

The -s will use sudo to auto install any remaining dependencies that you may have missed. This command will fail if you don't have a PKGBUILD file set up. If this is coming from the AUR, then it will already have one. Otherwise, you can copy the default one.

cp /usr/share/pacman/PKGBUILD.proto PKGBUILD

If you're not sure what to change in the PKGBUILD file, then I can only suggest that you take a look at one that works.

Now we can install the application and see if it works.

sudo pacman -U application_package_filename

Once you've verified that it works, you might want to share it with others. Just in case someone else might be interested in the application that you've spent all this time on. Before you can share it, you need to make the necessary file.

makepkg --source

If you need checksums for the packages, you can use the following to get what you need.

makepkg -g

Once you have this file, you can upload it to the CCR. You've now become one of the Chakra community contributors. Have fun.

MD5Sum

Ever wonder about md5sum on the packages?

The long and the short of what it is can be found on wiki, but once upon a time it was used for security. Nowadays it gets used verification that a download is complete. If you're looking for security, the wiki page rightly redirects you to use sha256sum (or some variant) instead. On most linux systems both are available, typically with the same options when run from the command line. In a nutshell, the difference between them is md5sum is a 126-bit checksum. Whereas, sha256sum does just like the name implies, it uses a 256-bit checksum. Alternatively, one could use shasum and then define the algorithm size, but I digress.

Even an md5sum can be used to make sure that you've downloaded the entire file. Once your target file has been downloaded, you can run the command on the file and compare the checksums.

md5sum filename.ext

Nothing complicated, just a single line and you have your answer.

Simplify Chakra Updates

In Chakra, the best way to do updates to the system at this time is to use the command line. In Arch-linux you would use the following command.

sudo pacman -Syu

This command would synchronize the local package database information with the repositories and determine if there were any updates. If there are updates, it would then ask permission to proceed with the updates.

Chakra follows a similar pattern, but with one exception. Their community repository has a separate command to perform this function. Fortunately, the Chakra team rolled the pacman functionality into their command for the community repository. So only one command needs to be issued, instead of two separate ones.

ccr -Syu

To simplify things even further, one could use the alias command. The alias command allows one to associate one command for another, or even a command with a list of options for another, simpler one.

alias update='ccr -Syu'

Just an example.

alias -p

Provides a listing of existing aliases.

unalias update

Remove the update alias.

Then to find out when there is an update, you can install spun or apper.

ccr -S spun

or

ccr -S apper

Unfortunately, both only check against the distribution's repositories, not against the community repository. Though, with the alias all setup, you'll check the community repository every time you do an update.

Variable Star Book Review

Variable Star by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I happened across this at the local library while waiting. My first thought when I saw it was, "When did RAH do a collaboration?" The answer, "Apparently after he passed away."

Reading this was like reading a "new" book from the master, Heinlein himself. Spider Robinson did an excellent job of capturing the voice of RAH. If I had to place this in the RAH timeline of writings, I would set in the era of Friday.

The novel has the general feel of RAH's juvenile works, but with a heavy helping of subject matters that he didn't introduce until much later in career.

Unfortunately, I have never had a chance to read any of Spider's works, but I think at this point I'm going to have to track some down and give them a good read through.

If you are a Heinlein fan, then I strongly recommend this for you.

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Moving With KDE

KDE has been my desktop of choice for quite sometime, though for the longest time the method of implementation had been Kubuntu. A few months ago I decided I finally had enough of Kubuntu breaking my installation every time there was an upgrade, so I began looking around for a distribution that made KDE its default desktop. Much to my surprise, almost all of the distros used something else, but then I found Chakra. The Chakra development team weren't quite ready for prime-time, but I decided to jump on the boat anyway. I have to say, that there is a lot to like about the Chakra distro. If you're a KDE fan, then I strongly recommend it. On the same hardware I was running Kubuntu, Chakra seems to run faster and more stably than Kubuntu. Now don't think that that I'm bashing the Kubuntu team. I have absolutely no doubt that they work hard to make sure Kubuntu runs, but they are handicapped by the inclusion of the Gnome libraries that Chakra limits.
I digress though. The purpose of this post is to cover what I did to keep my personal information in KDE when I moved from one installation to another.
In actuality, it boils down to just making sure to copy certain folders over, assuming that in the move you did perform a significant jump in KDE revisions. So, if like me, you make use of mostly KDE apps, then the folders and files are as follows (don't forget to show hidden files, or you won't be able to find these folders).

• .config
  • akonadi (you'll also find other folders here that might interest you, such as chromium)
• .local
  • share
    • akonadi
    • contacts
    • local-mail
• .kde4
  • share
    • apps
      • akonadi
      • akonadi-davgroupware
      • blogilo
      • choqok
      • emailidentities
      • kabc
      • kontact
      • kopete
      • kopete_chatstyles
      • korganizer
      • kwallet

Assuming you grab all of the ones that I list here, you should be able to successfully manage a move from KDE installation to another. Make sure you mind the little things, like ownership and privileges. Also don't forget to install any programs or plugins before attempting to run any specific apps. For instance, if you have Kontact sync with your Google data, then make sure you've installed the Akonadi Google data plugin resource before launching Akonadi.

Chakra and the Missing Multilib

I've transitioned to the Chakra distribution and love their dedication to KDE. The one thing that I kept encountering was I wanted to get Adobe Reader installed.  You may ask "Why?" Well the answer is simple, because when it comes to dealing with PDFs that have embedded javascript forms in them Okular either barfs on itself, or it just plain ignores them. Neither is a very good option when fields that you can't edit are calculated values based upon entries in fields you can edit.

Fortunately, Chakra has the Chakra Community Repository (CCR) where people can add different programs for others to make use of without them having to added to the official Chakra release.  If the CCR doesn't have what you're looking for, then there is also a small command line script you can download to pull apps from the root Arch Linux User Repository (AUR). In this case, someone else had already added acroread (the linux version of Adobe Reader) to the CCR, but everytime I tried to install it, it failed right out of the gate due to a failed dependency to lib32-gtk2. After some searching I found that this was part of the multilib, but for some reason I wasn't pulling it down. Some more searching and I found that my repository list was missing the multilib repository. Pacman (the command line package manager) needed to be told about this repository. To tell pacman about the repository, type the following line in a terminal session.

sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf

Once in, page-down until you come to #[unstable].  At the beginning of the line, tap enter a couple of times to make some room and then add the following lines.

[lib32]

Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Then a ctrl-x, y for yes, an enter to save and you're all done.  Now pacman will know where to go for the lib32 dependencies. Once this was done, then installation of acroread from the CCR worked without issue.

I know of no reason for the lib32 omission, I have no idea if anyone else had the issue, but here is the fix that came up with. Good luck.

Change the Default Editor

In some linux distros, the default editor is automatically called when a script you're running decides you need to modify some script it is about to call. The default editor tends to be vi or vim. Which is an exceptionally powerful text editor, but if you don't use frequently it is very easy to completely forget how to do some very basic things, like actually edit the script in question or just plain exit the editor. A different command line editor by the name nano is much easier to use for the infrequent user. To correct this problem, you can easily make a minor modification to one file to use nano instead.

At the command line, enter

nano .bashrc

Make sure you're in your in home directory when you do this by typing:

cd ~

Once the editor is up, look for instances of vim and replace them with nano. The locations will say things like:

export EDITOR=vim

When you're done, do a ctrl-x to exit, say yes to save the updated file, and enter to confirm the save. Then log out of your terminal session and back in. To check that it is working you can type the following to see what comes back.

echo $EDITOR

If it is vim, then you didn't do something right, so you'll need to try again.

If you can't log out of the terminal session for some reason, you can apply the changes immediately. You can either dynamically set the $EDITOR or you can apply your bash resource file. To apply your bash resource file without closing your terminal session, type the following line.

source ~/.bashrc

Now, you're all done. Enjoy your new default editor.