The trick is to use rpmdev-setuptree. This will create a empty build tree in ~/rpmbuild as well as sort out you .rpmmacro file so rpmbuild knows to use it.

It’s really simple actually, so here goes.

1. As root, install rpm-build, rpmdevtools and yum-utils.
   yum -y install rpm-build rpmdevtools yum-utils
2. Now as a user, create a rpmbuild tree:
   rpmdev-setuptree
3. Now as a user, download your RPM source:
   yumdownloader -source sox
4. Again as a normal user, install the source rpm
   rpm -ivh <rpm>.src.rpm
5. Go in to ~/rpmbuild and make whatever changes you need to. The Spec file will be in ~/rpmbuild/SPECS and the source will be gzipped in ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES
6. Now build it!
   rpmbuild -ba ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/<spec file>
7. Assuming everything went OK, the RPMs will be in ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/, but you’ll need to install them as root.
8. If you find your rpmbuild is getting full of crap, you can either delete it and rebuild it, or a slightly more elegant way would be to use
   rpmdev-wipetree

The bug is simple, according to the gnome clock applet our week starts on a Tuesday. Opps, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem to change. Digging around the net, I found some references to locale files in /usr/share/i18n/locales. Although they looked correct, I tried changing them anyway. To absolutly no effect. The answer? To recompile glibc-common! Oh for fucks sake, the bug for this has been opened since Novemeber, should I really have to recompile what is a massive RPM, just for this? Why aren’t these files read at login, or better still, why can’t I used system-config-date to change my preferences.

Anyway for those of you who are interested, you can track the bug on bugzilla or Sourceware.

I’m also rebuilding the glibc-common RPM now, if it works, then I’ll post an updated version when it’s finished

Testing POP3

POP3 testing is really really simple, here’s an example (The command I entered are in bold):

[adam@desktop ~]$ telnet zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk 110
Trying 10.0.0.1...
Connected to zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK Dovecot ready.
user <username>
+OK
pass <password>
+OK Logged in.
list
+OK 185 messages:
1 34718
<snip>
185 20419
.
top 1 0
+OK
Return-path: <someone@example.com>
Envelope-to: <someonelse@example.com>
Delivery-date: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:02:43 +0100
Received: from outbound.mse17.exchange.ms ([64.71.238.253])
    by zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk with esmtps (TLSv1:RC4-MD5:128)
    (Exim 4.69)
    (envelope-from <someone@example.com>;)
    id 1KrvLE-0001Fq-PT
    for <someonelse@example.com>; Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:02:43 +0100
<snip>
.
quit
+OK Logging out.
Connection closed by foreign host.

• user [username] - Sends the username for the connection
• pass [password] – Sends the password for the connection
• list – Displays a list of email ID and their sizes.
• top [id] [length] – Gets the “top” of an e-mail. The ID is from the list command (the first e-mail is always 1). top always gets the headers and then [length] lines e.g. top 1 0 will get just the headers of the first e-mail or top 2 10 will get the headers and the first 10 lines of e-mail 2.
• retr [id] – Gets the whole of e-mail.
• dele [id] – Deletes an e-mail
• quit – closes the connection

Testing IMAP

IMAP is a little more complicated because of folders and because it’s asynchronous. After telnetting to port 143, here’s an example:

[adam@desktop ~]$ telnet zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk 143
Trying 10.0.0.1...
Connected to zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK Dovecot ready.
1 login <username> <password>
1 OK Logged in.
2 select "INBOX"
* FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft unknown-1 unknown-0 Junk receipt-handled NonJunk $MDNSent)
* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft unknown-1 unknown-0 Junk receipt-handled NonJunk $MDNSent \*)] Flags permitted.
* 185 EXISTS
* 0 RECENT
* OK [UNSEEN 183] First unseen.
* OK [UIDVALIDITY 1220688986] UIDs valid
* OK [UIDNEXT 3859] Predicted next UID
2 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed.
3 FETCH * ALL
* 185 FETCH (FLAGS () INTERNALDATE "07-Nov-2008 09:51:29 +0000"...
3 OK Fetch completed.
4 logout
* BYE Logging out
4 OK Logout completed.
Connection closed by foreign host.

• LOGIN “[username]” “[password]“ – sends the username/password
• SELECT “[folder]“ – Selects the folder to use. I always use INBOX as this should always exist
• FETCH * ALL – Gets all the heads for the first message
• LOGOUT – Closes the connection

Testing SMTP

Just for completness here’s a test for SMTP. After telnetting to port 25, try the following:

[adam@desktop ~]$ telnet zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk 25
Trying 10.0.0.1...
Connected to zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk ESMTP Exim 4.69 Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:18:45 +0000
ehlo adam
250-zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk Hello adam [10.0.0.28]
250-SIZE 52428800
250-PIPELINING
250-AUTH LOGIN
250-STARTTLS
250 HELP
mail from: adam@deaconsworld.org.uk
250 OK
rcpt to: adam@deaconsworld.org.uk
250 Accepted
data
354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself
Subject: test

test
.
250 OK id=1KyPMm-00078C-9u
quit
221 zippy.deaconsworld.org.uk closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

• bios-vendor
• bios-version
• bios-release-date
• system-manufacturer
• system-product-name
• system-version
• system-serial-number
• system-uuid
• baseboard-manufacturer
• baseboard-product-name
• baseboard-version
• baseboard-serial-number
• baseboard-asset-tag
• chassis-manufacturer
• chassis-type
• chassis-version
• chassis-serial-number
• chassis-asset-tag
• processor-family
• processor-manufacturer
• processor-version
• processor-frequency

Here’s the output of it:

[root@ajd-laptop ~]# dmidecode -s bios-vendor
Dell Inc.
[root@ajd-laptop ~]# dmidecode -s processor-manufacturer
Intel
[root@ajd-laptop ~]# dmidecode -s processor-frequency
1600 MHz
[root@ajd-laptop ~]# dmidecode -s chassis-type
Portable

We’ve just got a shiny new Brother MFC-7820N printer/copier/fax/coffee maker in the office. Great, I thought, the printing will be fine as it’s postscript but I probably won’t be able to use the scanner or the fax part over the network. I’m OK with that and I don’t want to make a fuss else the M$ boys might get wind of our dirty little secret.

So when it arrived, it was with some trepidation I poking around the Brother website and found a Linux section. CUPS drivers, SANE drivers, LPR fax drivers. Wahoo! Even better when I went to install the printer in cups avahi had already spotted it and installed it. The SANE drivers are supplied as a couple of RPMs and a single line to activate then it works just like any other SANE driver. The fax part isn’t quite as polished, but still works. Absolutely amazing. I really am impressed with Brother. The whole ‘install’ took around 30 seconds.

The best thing about all of this was that when we tried to install everything on Windows, it too about 30 minutes to install and then uses a nasty GUI and tray service.

As it’s a web lookup rather than a proper whois server, you will need either elinks or lynx installed. Also you’ll get some extra shit back (like headers and links), but hey you can’t have everything!

The reason I’ve been thinking up new names is I’ve been testing my latest, greatest app and needed to fill it with test data. I hate thinking of test names. Normally I end up with bob, bob1, bob2 or my favourite piece of test data “rich is gay”. That’s fine if you just want a few test name, but what if you want say 1000 or 2000 or 10,000. That were Benjamin Keen‘s Data Generator comes in. It’s a little script that create random data perfect for shoehorning in to any app you want. It will even output CSV, MySQL, XML, Excel or HTML and best of all it’s GNU

I’ve put a copy at http://www.deaconsworld.org.uk/datagenerator/ to try and save him some bandwidth.

I always love stuff like this. You can see how much work as gone even though it’s a complete waste of time. It’s a similar idea to NetQoS‘ Network management display which again is great but completely useless. Check that out here http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/10/watch-your-network-play-space-invaders/

[adam@dyn89 ~]$ whois -n microsoft.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[whois.verisign-grs.com]

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

Domain Name: MICROSOFT.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.tucows.com
Name Server: NS1.MSFT.NET
Name Server: NS2.MSFT.NET
Name Server: NS3.MSFT.NET
Name Server: NS4.MSFT.NET
Name Server: NS5.MSFT.NET
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 10-oct-2006
Creation Date: 02-may-1991
Expiration Date: 03-may-2014


Well I finally updated my jwhois.conf to include the following lines in the server-options section

"whois\\.verisign-grs\\.com" {
whois-redirect = ".*Whois Server: \\(.*\\)";
}
Wahoo! now I get useful whois data:

[adam@dyn89 ~]$ whois microsoft.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[Redirected to whois.opensrs.net]
[Querying whois.opensrs.net]
[whois.opensrs.net]

Registrant:
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
US

Domain name: MICROSOFT.COM

Administrative Contact:
Administrator, Domain domains@microsoft.com
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
US
+1.4258828080


1. Finding the name of the stream can sometime be a bit tricky. If you can get it to play in the stand alone RealPlayer then you can just click on File->Clip properties->Clip source. This will then bizzarely open a webpage. You looking for an address like rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio5/anita_mon.ra. If you can’t open it then it’s a case of looking though the source of the page.
2. Now you’ve got the address, run the following command:mplayer -noframedrop -dumpfile file.rm -dumpstream rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio5/anita_mon.ra
   This will save the clip as file.rm. Watch out though, this is recorded in real time. So a 3 hour radio show will take… 3 Hours!
3. Next you need to covert the realmedia file to wav, again mplayer is your friend mplayer file.rm -ao pcm:file=file.wav -vc dummy -vo null
4. Last stage is to convert from wav to mp3 using lame. I like to hedge my bets and encode it as VBRlame -V file.mp3 file.wav --tt "Title" --ta "author"

You should have have a shiny MP3 file for your troubles.

It’s a little more complicated than the usual fixes, at the patched files are within a tarball, but you should be able to cut and paste from below.

As root:

cd /tmp
wget http://usefulthings.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/vmnet-only-2.6.19.patch
cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/
cp vmnet.tar vmnet.tar.orig
tar xf vmnet.tar
patch -p0 < /tmp/vmnet-only-2.6.19.patch
tar cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only
vmware-config.pl -d


There’s even a nice RPM version. So ignore my previous instructions and go install now!

modprobe -r pcspkr ; echo "install pcspkr :" >>/etc/modprobe.conf

Anaconda installing the wrong architecture kernel in some systems. cpuspeed is not working for the same reason. This does not affect out of box functionality much but if you are compiling third party kernel drivers you might run into this on x86 architecture. x86_64 and PPC systems are not affected. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=211941. You can bypass this bug in a new installation by specifying “linux i686″ in the installation boot prompt.

An updates.img is available for this issue http://people.redhat.com/pnasrat/211941-updates.img. Please follow the instructions here: Anaconda/Updates.

To check which kernel package architectures are currently installed:

rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n"|grep kernel|sortIf the installed kernel architecture is i586, but your machine is i686 capable (Pentium II or K6II or higher), use the following simple workaround:

1. Install yumdownloader. yumdownloader is part of yum-utils in Fedora Extras. You can also manually download the kernel.su -c "yum install yum-utils"
2. Get the current i686 kernel:yumdownloader kernel.i686
3. If the version of the kernel downloaded is larger than currently installed:su -c "rpm -ivh kernel-2*.i686.rpm"
• Alternatively, if the version of the kernel downloaded is the same as that currently installed:su -c "rpm -ivh --replacefiles --replacepkgs kernel-2*.i686.rpm"
4. Restart the machine.reboot

convert
\( +clone -background black -shadow 80x3+5+5 \) +swap -background white -mosaic

I needed to convert a whole directory, so it’s just a simple case of wrapping it around a loop

for a in *.jpg
do
echo $a
convert "$a" \( +clone -background black -shadow 80x3+5+5 \) +swap -background white -mosaic "shadows/$a"
done


If you’re still struggling on with Flash player 7 for Linux, you might like to know that Adobe have released Player 9 for Linux. It’s still in beta, but I’ve been using it for a while and haven’t had any problem. The installer’s isn’t as clean as an rpm, but give it a try!

Installation:

cd ~
wget http://www.adobe.com/go/fp9_update_b2_installer_linuxplugin
tar xvfz FP9_plugin_beta*.tar.gz
cd flash-player-plugin*
su - (or sudo -s)
cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

Good luck!

If you want to run IE on linux, take a look at IEs4Linux. It’s very easy to install, just type the following as a normal user:

wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-*
./ies4linux


Detailed stats are at: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ZodStats and you can read the whole release on fedora-announce-list.

[root@dyn89 yum]# pwd
/var/cache/yum
[root@dyn89 yum]# du -sh *
1.8M atrpms
6.1M core
5.3M development
11M extras
36K flash
84K jpackage-fedora
2.2M jpackage-generic
192K jpackage-generic-nonfree
848K livna
2.8M updates
176K updates-sourceThat’s 30Mb of crappy yum cache

Now take a look at this:

[root@dyn89 cache]# yum clean all
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Cleaning up Everything
[root@dyn89 cache]# du -sh * 1.8M atrpms
12K core
5.3M development
12K extras
12K flash
84K jpackage-fedora
2.2M jpackage-generic
192K jpackage-generic-nonfree
12K livna
12K updates
176K updates-source9.6M much healthier

When this happens, you rpm process (e.g. the rpm command or yum) would just hang. So why am I talking about this if the problem was fixed ages ago? Well it seem with the new funky yum-updatesd that’s included with FC6 is causing some problems.
You can see if your effected but running this command:

rpm -qa

If you get no output then you’ve screwed your databases. Here’s how to fix it.

1. Firstly su or sudo in to root
   su -
2. Clear your rpm caches
   rm -v /var/lib/rpm/__*
3. Now run the rebuild command
   rpm -vv --rebuilddb

You now gets some lovely healthy output showing you everything ok. It should look something like this:

D: adding 11 entries to Filemd5s index.
D: read h# 770 Header V3 DSA signature: OK, key ID 4f2a6fd2
D: +++ h# 1084 Header V3 DSA signature: OK, key ID 4f2a6fd2
D: adding "gimp-print-utils" to Name index.
D: adding 2 entries to Basenames index.
D: adding "Applications/Publishing" to Group index.
D: adding 12 entries to Requirename index.
D: adding "gimp-print-utils" to Providename index.
D: adding 2 entries to Dirnames index.
D: adding 12 entries to Requireversion index.
D: adding "4.2.7-22" to Provideversion index.
D: adding 1 entries to Installtid index.
D: adding 1 entries to Sigmd5 index.
D: adding "0beb1e4759ef5a92206941d9f0c9a52e0d546a2c" to Sha1header index.

You should now be able to install or upgrade using yum.

touch /usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`-`uname -m`/include/linux/config.h

You should now be able to re-run vmware-config.pl without a problem.

Remember that you’ll need to do this each time you update the kernel.

Update I had a nightmare of a time getting this to work on a dual core Intel. It seems the Duos use i586 rather than i686. To fix you need to install the correct kernel devel version wget ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/fedora.redhat.com/updates/6/i386/kernel-devel-`uname -r`.i586.rpm
rpm -Uvh kernel-devel*.rpm then link to the correct linux.htouch /usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`-i586/include/linux/config.h

Update 2 I think I’ve found the cause of the above weirdness. Read More

yum --enablerepo=development install firefox

Have fun!