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.

View all my reviews

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.