I'm trying to get libvirt working, just to play with it. Here's the error:
libvir: Network Config error : cannot create bridge 'virbr0': Package not installed
Package not installed? But the bridge utilities are installed. After much googling, I discovered it's a bridge-utils error message, and here's my translated version:
Ethernet bridging support isn't enabled in the kernel
lrn2writeerrormessages. kthx.
I have a PHP script I wrote for my research that takes stupidly long time to run. Why? I don't know. So on an off chance of finding something useful, I put "PHP profiling" into google.
So it turns out that PHP profiling is a huge topic, there are many websites ready to provide HOWTOs and tutorials for a zillion different techniques. And, like everything in the computer world it seems, the solution is easy and sifting through all useless advice and "type-this-random-thing-into-your-console" is what takes the time.
Here's what gentoo users need to know:
Done.
One of the advantages of having my own domain name is that I can give out a different email address to every company that wants my email. I use a pattern to generate these addresses, they're not one-word somethings that a spambot would guess.
Yesterday, I recieved an email from netmarketingcanada.com with links that point me back to netmarketingcanada.com to unsubscribe and view things. They're advertising.. 30% off.. something... my email client doesn't load the remote images (also from netmarketingcanada.com) so I can't see the majority of their email, but that's not the point.
The email was TO the email address that Rogers Canada (and only Rogers Canada) has for me. So, a big thanks Rogers for selling my email address to spammers. I don't remember seeing "will sell your email address to spammers" in their privacy policy, but perhaps it has been updated and someone could point me to that clause?
I have a confession: I am a bit of a neat freak when it comes to my files. Clutter annoys me almost as much as compressed files that extract themselves into the current working directory.
I set out on a quest today, to upgrade Drupal AND to make it happily exist in a subdirectory on my server, BUT, to make it appear that it exists in the root directory.
Actually just that turned out to be easy, Drupal even provides a guide that conveniently assumes you don't have any other content in your directory. I mean, you've got Drupal, why would you want a /photos directory that's not "inside" Drupal? Or a /files directory that Drupal doesn't manage? Stop being silly.
It turns out, though, that what I wanted was also quite easy, but piecing together the bits and cutting the cruft took excessively long. But that's a typcial computery solution: A simple solution and a long and winding road to find it.
So, let's begin.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ drupal-5.7/index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ drupal-5.7/$1 [L]
Cake. It all works as far as I can tell.
I found myself some free time between research and other work stuff. I played with JACK audio on my AMD64 system (http://www.jackaudio.org). In my opinion there are 3 things that GNU/Linux sux0rs at.. Audio, Printing, and Installing. Each one is a black art. JACK audio is yet another audio server, but it has a twist, it was designed and written to have zero-to-low latency. The server eats up 0.25% of my processor when it's running and I can't detect any latency (unlike some other sound daemons with several K buffers).
Jack shows some promise, it's installing it on an AMD64 system is probably my first mistake, since nothing works on AMD64 right away.. My second mistake is that I have 2 soundcards, and I'd like to use both of them. Problem, the JACK daemon supports one soundcard.. you have to run one daemon for each soundcard. Problem, JACK daemons don't talk to each other.
One of the reasons I took a liking to JACK was what it lets you do with connections. A GUI app like qjackctl (http://qjackctl.sourceforge.net/) can connect and disconnect apps to various sound interfaces while running. I can start playing an MP3, then disconnect the left, right, or both channels from my "sound card". My sound card is just an object that accepts a sound stream. Other objects that accept sound streams are, for example, Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) so I can redirect the MP3 into Audacity. The music player is just a sound source, so is the MIC input.. you get the idea. Using this sort of system you can chain applications together, duplicate input or output, and generally be in total control of your sound. /me likes.
But I'm a special user, I have 2 sound cards (a 5.1 dolby system connected to an SB Audigy, and an el-cheapo AC'97 onboard jobbie connected to my headset earphone and mic). It would sure be nice to be able to redirect the output of any app to _either_ sound card, from a single interfece.. or redirect my headset MIC input to my 5.1 speakers (well, that's not very common, but I succeeded!, read on.)
I run Gentoo, JACK installed out of the box (emerge jack-audio-connection-kit). qjackctl also installed out of the box (emerge qjackctl). Fire up the GUI, set the driver to ALSA (JACK uses ALSA to actually talk to the sound hardware, it doesn't re-implement all the individual sound card drivers, that would be silly). Set my device to hw:1,0 (second sound card, the 5.1 system). And start the daemon. Recompile the various apps to use JACK.. and presto, sound works. Now, I actually followed the realtime guide too, so I could have the server running in realtime mode. I like my sound to be skip free, even when under load.
So what, when does the fun start? Well, I have spent many hours searching for a solution to use multiple sound cards. Everything I have read says the "best" solution is to combine multiple sound cards into one virtual card with 4 channels, instead of 2, and just use one JACK daemon. That's great, except first of all I couldn't get it to work, second, I don't want one big virtual sound cards, I have a 5.1 system and a headset, I want 2 separate cards.
I know I can run 2 JACK daemons, one for each card.. so, all I really need is a bridge. Something that registers itself as a client in both daemons, and just shunts sound back and forth. So I can do all the sound redirection in a single qjackctl window... and so I don't have to tell individual apps which JACK daemon to connect to, they all connect to the same one.
And here is my first crack at it: jack_bridge.c
There is a "master" daemon, and the "slave" daemon. The bridge connects to the slave JACK daemon, and just steals all MIC input, and forwards anything it gets to the speaker output. The bridge also connects to the master daemon, but doesn't do any stealing of signals, it just gives itself a name (I use "Headset" as the client name). In the qjackctl that is talking to the "master" daemon, I can create a connection between any app and "Headset", and the bridge accepts data from the master JACK daemon, and writes it to the slave JACK daemon.. which forwards it to the speakers which is actually the headset. Same for the MIC, only backwards.
It's not perfect, there is an audible ticking sound.. I don't think i'm transporting the data "real-time" enough.. sounds like it's playing just slightly too fast, creating a momentary break in the audio where there is no data.. no idea how to fix that yet :( .. but it works. :)
Alrighty, I just read the latest SCO+ELF on groklaw.. Great site, thanks PJ. Here is the article:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060731122623203
For fun, I made a video of me downloading binutils and checking out the license. It's about 20megs, completely unprocessed.
http://www.slicer.ca/files/sco-binutils.mpeg
xvidcap is a neat little tool. Just remember to set your output file to "something.mpeg", instead of "file-%d.xwd". xvidcap can write directly to an mpeg stream, no need to write separate images.
