Xana/ xana2/ quanks
Today on Libre.fm

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Posted Sat Aug 28 17:12:11 2010 Tags: community librefm loved quanks radio
Layers and layers

I am betting that Luakit will be more usable than Uzbl within a week. I am also betting that I will hear chirping about Luakit not integrating with the Monkeysphere, and though I agree that this is a problem, it seems to be difficult to solve.

To do it correctly, one would need hooks or callbacks in WebKitGTK+, which, in turn, would need support in LibSoup, which would probably then need support in GnuTLS.

Since apparently this will take years of bickering to accomplish, perhaps some sort of hack is called for. I suppose one could, for each HTTPS URL visited, make an OOB connection, download the certificate, and then run it through Monkeysphere validation, before then letting WebKitGTK+ make another connection and download (hopefully the same) certificate a second time.

This strikes me as ugly and problematic. Ideas?

Posted Fri Aug 13 14:54:16 2010 Tags: libsoup luakit monkeysphere quanks webkit
Efika MX
Processor       : ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)
BogoMIPS        : 799.53
Features        : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3 
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x2
CPU part        : 0xc08
CPU revision    : 5

Hardware        : Genesi Efika MX
Revision        : 51030
Serial          : 0000000000000000`


             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        482740      44836     437904          0       4672      21104
-/+ buffers/cache:      19060     463680
Swap:            0          0          0


Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0b95:772a ASIX Electronics Corp. 
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 13d3:3273 IMC Networks 802.11 n/g/b Wireless LAN USB Mini-Card
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1a40:0101 TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Posted Wed Jul 28 16:10:32 2010 Tags: armel armhf efika mx quanks
Lazy backup

% sudo fw_printenv | sed 's/^/sudo fw_setenv /;s/=/ "/;s/$/"/;'

sudo fw_setenv bootcmd "setenv ethact egiga0; ${x_bootcmd_ethernet}; setenv ethact egiga1; ${x_bootcmd_ethernet}; ${x_bootcmd_usb}; ${x_bootcmd_kernel}; setenv bootargs ${x_bootargs} ${x_bootargs_root}; bootm 0x6400000;"
sudo fw_setenv bootdelay "3"
sudo fw_setenv baudrate "115200"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootcmd_ethernet "ping 192.168.2.1"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootcmd_usb "usb start"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootcmd_kernel "nand read.e 0x6400000 0x100000 0x400000"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootargs "console=ttyS0,115200"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootargs_root "ubi.mtd=2 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs"
sudo fw_setenv stdin "serial"
sudo fw_setenv stdout "serial"
sudo fw_setenv stderr "serial"
sudo fw_setenv ethact "egiga0"
sudo fw_setenv ethaddr "00:99:99:99:99:99"
sudo fw_setenv eth1addr "00:99:99:99:99:98"
Posted Mon Jul 5 10:59:45 2010 Tags: printenv setenv u-boot
ARMfested

I am staring at three different “plug” computers and wondering how many more will appear.

They are in varying states of Debianness: all are running squeeze, but the GuruPlug is the only one that's “pure”. The SheevaPlug is running a wacky version of U-Boot, because the u-boot package in Debian can't cope with the SD card device. Hopefully this can be fixed some year.

Worse yet is the FreeAgent DockStar, which is running a foreign kernel and two (TWO) foreign U-Boots (the first one chains to the second one which then boots off a USB stick). Unfortunately I'm afraid to correct these things because, unlike the other two, it is not a developer board, and messing it up would mean trying to deal with 3.3V RS-232 or something equally unpleasant. As it is, bricking one of the plugs where I actually have serial/JTAG causes enough emotional turmoil.

Posted Sat Jul 3 22:37:15 2010 Tags: armel dockstar freeagent guruplug plugcomputer pogoplug quanks sheevaplug
Here she comes, big as life

What seems like eons ago, I ordered one of those SheevaPlug Development Kits. After about six weeks, they got around to shipping it, and then, yesterday, after I assume a tortoise had piloted it across the country on broken tricycle, it was finally delivered to me.

I booted it up, observed that there was some kind of Ubuntu thing on it, and set myself to correct that problem. Within an hour I had managed to lock myself out.

Here is something I should have read beforehand.

Thanks to Martin Michlmayr, it is now running Debian and allowing me to log in.

Here are some steps to follow if you would like to boot Debian off of a USB stick plugged into your Sheevaplug:

That should be all there is to it.

Next I'm wondering if SDIO wireless cards work.

Posted Wed Apr 29 18:20:19 2009 Tags: armel debian kirkwood marvell quanks sheevaplug tbm
ZOMG vs. libre.fm

This is about two things that are not robust.

zomg, as of version 0.5.7, can play libre.fm radio streams without modification. It does not do this particularly well.

As of today a second type of libre.fm radio stream is available, so I will give two illustrative examples:

These stations lack the intelligence to avoid annoying duplication or much of anything but randomization. However, both zomg and libre.fm are free software, and anyone can chip in and improve this if desired.

In other news, the state of client support has moved a bit, though not as much as one might have hoped. You can get a picture of that here.

Posted Sun Apr 26 21:59:52 2009 Tags: free libre libre.fm music radio xspf zomg
Too bad that part is single-threaded

As far as I am aware (and I am unanimous in this), ZOMG is the only released software that can scrobble tracks to both libre.fm and last.fm near-simultaneously.

Posted Tue Apr 7 11:12:18 2009 Tags: audioscrobbler lastfm librefm quanks scrobbling zomg
Let us see what markdown mangles
certtool --generate-privkey > cakey.pem
echo 'cn = exampleCA' > ca.tmpl
echo 'ca' >> ca.tmpl
echo 'cert_signing_key' >> ca.tmpl
echo 'expiration_days = 732' >> ca.tmpl
certtool --generate-self-signed --load-privkey cakey.pem \
  --template ca.tmpl --outfile cacert.pem

for i in host1.example.org host2.example.org host3.example.org
do
certtool --generate-privkey > $i-key.pem
echo 'organization = Example' > server.tmpl
echo 'unit = Messaging' >>server.tmpl
echo "cn = $i" >> server.tmpl
echo 'email = postmaster@example.org' >> server.tmpl
echo 'expiration_days = 366' >> server.tmpl
#    echo 'tls_www_server' >> server.tmpl
echo 'encryption_key' >> server.tmpl
echo 'signing_key' >> server.tmpl
echo "dns_name = $i" >> server.tmpl
certtool --generate-certificate --load-privkey $i-key.pem \
  --load-ca-certificate cacert.pem --load-ca-privkey cakey.pem \
  --template server.tmpl --outfile $i.pem
done
Posted Mon Mar 23 15:29:18 2009 Tags: authority ca certificate certtool gnutls quanks script
Bowling for madducks

A long time ago, I had the idea of improving the interface between shell completion and the programs being completed. The result of this was the bzr shell-complete command (or bzr s-c for short), which was never fully fleshed out, and has since fallen into disrepair.

The principles behind this are + the program is the best place to store up-to-date and accurate information + the program already knows all these things (albeit usually in unparseable forms) + duplicating information and effort is annoying

Here is an excerpt from bzr s-c, which was intended to give a comprehensive list of subcommands, paired with short descriptions:

diff:show differences in the working tree, between revisions or branches
export:export current or past revision to a destination directory or archive
get:create a new copy of a branch
help:show help on a command or other topic
ignore:ignore specified files or patterns
ignored:list ignored files and the patterns that matched them
info:show information about a working tree, branch or repository
init:make a directory into a versioned branch

There is one subcommand per line, separated from its description by a colon. Next you can invoke something like bzr s-c diff to get the possible options and arguments for the diff subcommand, although the output you would see today is broken and nearly useless.

Since I've lost faith in bzr, I'll illustrate what the output might be corresponding to topgit's tg remote if topgit supported this kind of thing:

--populate
REMOTE

This would mean that tg remote can understand the option --populate, which takes no argument, and that the first non-option argument should be a REMOTE.

REMOTE would then be defined, for example, in zsh's _topgit function as some kind of git remote which is completed in the same way you might complete a git remote for git.

The exciting part then, is that if tg remote starts taking a --decimate option, the topgit completion helper subsystem will start outputting it and _topgit will do the right thing without having to be altered.

For tg export, things are a bit more complicated, so let's have it be described in the style of the zsh completion system:

'(--collapse)--quilt:directory:_directories'
'(--collapse -b --branch)'{-b,--branch=}':branches:BRANCHES'
'(--quilt)--collapse:branch:BRANCH'

This means that --collapse and --quilt are exclusive, that -b and --branch cannot be used with --collapse, that -b and --branch are equivalent, that -b and --branch take an argument in the form of BRANCHES, that --collapse takes an argument in the form of BRANCH, and that --quilt takes an argument that's a real directory in the filesystem.

Then _topgit would have logic to interpret BRANCH as a branch, and BRANCHES as a comma-separated list of branches.

A similar idea is the one used by axp. If you invoke axp self completion zsh, it will output zsh completion functions for you. To me this seems more onerous on both the developers and the end users, but I suppose it gives you immediate flexibility that a more generic interface would lack.

Posted Tue Nov 11 09:43:59 2008 Tags: battlefield bzr casino completion madduck quanks royale topgit zsh