I’m currently working on rebuilding a server on a project, and went to hit the tab key to auto-complete, when I was presented a delightful error…

$ vim RE-sh: <( compgen -d — ‘RE’ ): No such file or directory
-sh: <( eval compgen -f -X ‘*.@(o|so|so.!(conf)|a|rpm|gif|GIF|jp?(e)g|JP?(E)G|mp3|MP3|mp?(e)g|MPG|avi|AVI|asf|ASF|ogg|OGG|class|CLASS)’ — $(quote_readline $cur) ): No such file or directory

This is actually a reported bug in Debian [#502804] and is caused by using /bin/sh as a shell, rather than /bin/bash due to some POSIX compliant code.  A simple change to the shell until they release the fix..

usermod –s /bin/bash jangliss

And we’re all set again.

Technorati Tags: Bash, Debain

One of my more popular posts, oddly, is about CapitalOne and Fraud, which is going on nearly 2 years old now.  There are a number of comments on the thread, but I noticed something that just started bugging me.  When replying, I had no way of creating a nicely formatted reply (threading).

So I went in search of plugins, and discovered that Wordpress 2.7.1 actually supports it natively, you just have to update your themes.  I found a great reference here which detailed how to do it, but it seemed to not work, so I went in search of more details.  I found that the old comment handling used to be performed using an array, and you’d have to setup the formatting yourself.  They now provide a nifty function wplistcomments that outputs the entire array of comments for you, including all the settings for the reply information.

You can see the new modifications at work here on this post, see the second comment down is indented to reflect a comment to Bill.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress

I’ve been on the SquirrelMail project for quite some time now, and an administrator on the project for several years.  One of the things that has always been an issue has donations.  As there are multiple people that contribute to the project at varying levels at different times, we’ve never figured out a good way to handle donations.  Other projects, such as MySQL, setup a foundation, and generate enough donations that they’re capable of supporting full time working developers.  Whilst it’d definitely be cool to do that, we’re not there project wise.  So recently Paul sent out a rather interesting option, and it hit the lists.

He gave the users the ability to donate to individual people on the project, as well as sign up for bounties.  The copy of the announcement can be found here.  The other option was bounties.  This has been used on several open source projects before, and the idea is that people “sponsor” a project, bug, or target.  There are already several listed, but we’re always looking for more ideas. So if you have some, submit an idea.

Technorati Tags: Bounty, Donate, SquirrelMail

One of the things I’ve been working on is migrating our equipment over to the corporate domain off of our domain.  For the most part, this has been relatively easy, and given me some changes to fix some things I’ve wanted to get to, but not had time to. One of the stumbling blocks was cutting the file server over to the new server.

I’ll admit I really didn’t plan that server migration too well, but I’ve played it on the side of fixing things as they come up.  One of the issues I’ve come across is trying to remember who had access to what originally.  As the file server can no longer talk to the old domain controller, it’s not able to resolve the security accounts.  This results in the permissions being filled with a bunch of security IDs, rather than names.

I’d originally come up with the idea of using Softerra’s LDAP Browser to search the old AD server for the security IDs.  This is where I had an issue.  The security IDs in the AD server are stored as binary objects, and LDAP Browser cannot search on it (at least not that I could find).

I did a little Googling around, and stumbled across a nifty utility called ADFind. It allows you to do LDAP queries against the domain controller, and has the added bonus of supporting binary encoding.  For example:

adfind –binenc –f “(objectsid={{SID:S-1-…}})”

This encodes the SID, and returns the record for the user or group.  This allowed us to go through the file server and fix permissions, and make sure those that should have access, did have access.

Technorati Tags: Active Directory, adfind, Permissions

For example, right now I’m wanting to tinker with an Arduino. Why? No idea, just think it’d be pretty cool to knock some cool stuff together, like this. Okay, so I probably won’t monitor that cat’s water bowl with it, but it is a pretty cool idea. And it’s not just limited to doing that either, the list is pretty much endless. That, and I want to tinker with electronics again.

Then I have another itch at the moment… Monitoring stuff. Not sure why, but I’m curious about power consumption, and what uses the most in my apartment. So yesterday I picked up a Kill-A-Watt meter. Plug stuff in, and it’ll tell you how much juice is being used. But it’s not just limited to watching it… I want to record it, and as such, stumbled across a little modification to the device using a couple of Xbee devices, and some interesting hacks to send the measurements onto your computer. It’s interesting to find the cable box, whilst asleep, still draws 40watts, not terrible, but for a device that’s supposed to be asleep?

I still have my previous idea for the kitchen device, which I’ve currently got suspended in my head, especially as there are already a device floating around that covers some of the functionality… That, and I’m watching the CrunchPad, which looks like it’ll drop it nicely for the project, just need to write a UI for the software.

I’m also working on a project for work at the moment, completely unrelated to what I usually do, but it slips in with my general attitude of “I can do it”. I’m building a call stats board for the helpdesk. Yes, I know you can buy them, but currently sitting at $4k for one of the cheapest we found, and company has decided to tighten its belt on spending, it’s not one of the things they’ll approve. So with a little wireshark help, I sniffed out the traffic from the phone system, and I know how to talk to it to get call stats… Now to just build a small C# application to listen, and output to an LED display.

Oh well… maybe I’ll actually do some of this stuff… one day

Today I’ve decided to finally shut down a trusty server.  It’s been the office firewall for 4+ years, happily chugging away on an old HP desktop, running Gentoo linux.

$ uptime
08:44:48 up 267 days, 17:51,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

It’s currently been running for nearly a year.  It’d be double that if we’d not had an issue with a snake, and the office transformed.  Before that, it’d been running without issues for nearly 2 years, where the failure before that was caused by a PSU fan failure.

It was recently phased out with some network reconfigurations, and is no longer needed…

Good night lestats.

 Bill and Theresa will probably get a kick out of this, especially as they seemed amused by stories of my son’s (mis)adventures when we took them out for dinner so long ago.

Anybody that has a child will probably be fairly familiar with the blank and vacant expression being modeled by my son to the right here.  Those that have children will also know that this vacant expression usually means they aren’t listening, and are far too engrossed in what they are currently doing.  In this case, it was playing some Transformers game on the Cartoon Network’s website.  He’s become incredibly good at playing all kinds of games on their website. 

The other day, in an attempt to get into his brain as he was fearlessly battling the Decepticons, I was trying to pry out of him what he wanted for dinner.  Many attempts to extract vital information from the child resulted in me getting a little frustrated as I couldn’t figure out what he wanted. I ended up giving up, and making him something, mac and cheese or something like that.

In what I thought to be a cunning plan, that only a parent can come up with, I asked him if he wanted “hippos on a bus”, to which the response was a grunt, and a quick change of subject onto how he was shooting the decepticons.  I gave up, my cunning plan to see if he was paying attention obviously failed… so I thought.

Cut to today, when I asked him what he wants for dinner, he looks at me with a big grin, and says…

Daddy, I want hippos on a bus

Much to my horror, my plan had backfired on me.  He then added, with more of a cheeky grin…

I also want giraffes on a bus daddy

Not only had my plan backfired… But he had twisted it.

So for those parents that think they can outsmart their children, or think their child is not listening… Think again!!

Technorati Tags: Copy, Microsoft, Software

Courtesy of the::unwired, news of YouTube’s new mobile client for Windows Mobile, and Symbian clients.  I must say, I’m rather impressed.  Blazing fast searches, nifty scrolling, and pretty damn good video quality too.  Have it deployed on my Motorola Q9h, works nicely. Only issue I’ve uncovered is the search box, but I believe this is an issue with my phone, as the backspace key acts as the “back” button for general navigation too.

You can get it too at http://m.youtube.com.

Technorati Tags: Google, Mobile, Windows, YouTube

Technorati Tags: McNally, Photography