Category Archives: Linux

New Fedora git repositories

A little bit frustrated with Fedora’s new git repositories this morning (for packages). Ding-Yi Chen has a really nice write-up on how to get started with it. Got me a few of the essentials that I had missed earlier. I like the new certificate that can be used with Koji. That’s pretty slick. Ding-Yi Chen also points to a few of the official git-related pages you may need to visit; I’ll recap them here but he’s got a point-by-point getting-things-running on his blog that was really helpful (thanks!)

Unfortunately, there still seems to be some issues:

Cloning into bare repository /cvs-scratch/fedora/opensc/fedpkg.git...
open log failed: Permission denied
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
Could not clone: Command '['git', 'clone', '--bare', 'ssh://me@pkgs.fedoraproject.org/opensc', '/cvs-scratch/fedora/opensc/fedpkg.git']' returned non-zero exit status 128

I’m not sure what this means. But the old CVS repository doesn’t seem to be usable either, which kinda stinks. I’m sure it’s just a minor buglet or two and will get worked out eventually. Very very happy that we’re no longer using CVS for this… I’d prefer SVN myself, but git is ok too.

Clear some desk space with cross-platform keyboard and mouse sharing app

This week’s techmail is Clear some desk space with cross-platform keyboard and mouse sharing app. The tip is about Synergy+ which is awesome cool. With it, I can share the same keyboard and mouse across as many computers as I want (it’s cross-platform, so I use it with my OS X workstation and my Fedora workstation) — all without requiring a KVM switch. Works absolutely fantastic. One of my new “essential” applications.

Head off problems by monitoring servers with munin

Last week’s techmail was Head off problems by monitoring servers with munin which takes a look at the Munin program. Munin is pretty slick in that you can use it to monitor resource usage on the local machine and networked clients as well. Goes nicely with Nagios when you have to babysit and keep an eye on multiple machines.

Why don’t I have this much spare time?

Seems like I fill quite a few of these roles… so how come I don’t have all the spare time these guys do? Maybe I need to have a single role, so that instead of switching roles while one is “busy” I can have one role with blockers. Hmmmm….

Only one I’m missing from below is the 3D artist. But that’s ok. Cute comic though. =)

GUI scripting in bash

This week’s techmail is GUI scripting in bash which takes a look at a few options for GUIfying your bash scripts: Zenity (for GNOME) and kdialog for KDE. My favourite is Zenity since I use GNOME, and it doesn’t require all this whacky DBUS stuff (although I suppose maybe using DBUS makes kdialog more powerful, but I’ve never noticed a real lack in Zenity). It’s a nice way to turn a shell script that needs to run in an organization into something a little more user-friendly and with a bit more polish.

My favorite Firefox extensions for Linux

Last week’s techmail was My favorite Firefox extensions for Linux which talks about a few of my favourite extensions for Firefox. Read the comments on the tip… I’ve already found another couple that I didn’t know about before that I’m going to have to try out. The one thing that keeps me using Firefox are the extensions for it. I might feel a little slow and clunky sometimes, but some of those extensions sure make up for it.