Computers

die portmaster die

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Well, after 23 hours uptime, submitting several problem reports over gettext, and a heck of a lot of compiling, it seems that my laptops updating is finally complete… except for a few stubborn packages that I rarely use anyway lol.

The thing that *really* pissed me off, is portmaster. Three times (gettext, gtk20, gstreamer-plugins) I had to manually do make reinstalls in order to get the freaking packages to install correctly. However portmaster saw fit to work it’s magic, it forgot to install essential things, like msgfmt, libgstpbutils-.*, and and the actual gtk-x11 library o/. Which obviously caused other ports depending on them to pop corks during portmasters updating them.

I think I’m going to again ditch the third party updating tools, flip the bird, and go back to using my own custom updater script. All that’s really needed, is implementing the topological sort over dependencies anyway… then it would be automated in essence. And it’s never doubled my work load the way portmaster and portupgrade do!!!

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Currently my laptop is more or less in dispose, courtesy of irksome updates. In updating devel/gettext, it seems several ports were missed on the massive stream of PORTVERSION bumps, or portmaster failed horribly to notice >_>. So far I have 6 problem reports filed: on devel/libelf; lang/gawk; graphics/evince; security/gnutls; ftp/wget; and graphics/librsvg2. Most of them were only defined as using GNU Gettext when built with Native Language Support.

Some how, I can’t help but think this is almost payback against the English speaking world :-o.

+1 for updating my stable system

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Wowsa, looks like the new bwn driver actually supports my laptops integrated broadcom wireless, ’tis good. At least I know if my faithful Atheros card dies, I won’t have to buy a replacement lol.

Of course, assuming it actually works if I try to connect it to my WAP, hehe.

Thermal terror

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Shortly after startup this afternoon, my desktop suddenly shutdown! After booting her, the panel sounded with a beep code that I’m unfamiliar with, and displayed a message about having overheated.

I’ve never monitored the system for more than GPU temps over the years, so I’m not familiar with the normal operating temp in this case. However, I’ve noticed the system has been more prone to unusually heavy impacts from loads it’s used to. After doing a bit of web searching to see what the wintacular options are, since I’m more familiar with BSDs stuff, I installed a program called SpeedFan. The operating temperature being displayed was an average 48/49C CPU and 61 Core, with the system sitting otherwise ‘at rest’.

After shutting down for a “Deep cleaning”, the systems running at my equivalent of idle, has been running about 54C CPU/58C Core. According to Intel, my processor shouldn’t be exceeding ~62.5C. The fans were impeccably clean, even though my last time at it was quite a while ago. Really the only bad thing, was the amount of grime near the frontal intake; but I’ve seen this system run with much worse build up there (plus a fan in need major clean up), so I know there’s little impact possible. Running any games, brings the systems up to low to mid 60s in the CPU and Core readings, respectively.

So either make closer inspections of the fans, or be ready to deal with something rotten in sink land. I’ve sent my brother a message asking if he’s any thermal grease laying around, just in case. I’m going to try putting the machine through its’ paces a bit for now. My next experiment will likely be to  adjust the hookups and run her under an open case….

and I forgot just how nasty this machines case was to operate on o/.

Dropbox… interesting

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The other day, whilst parsing webpages in my usual manor, I stumbled across a nifty service called dropbox. So far, it seems to offer all the perks of rolling ones own solution but with better OS integration, and a network server. I’m planning on putting it to the test for replacing my existing rsync based system.

What dropbox is capable of, is not far off from what one can do using rdiff-backup and your own server. Main difference I reckon is tone meshes well with SSH and the other relies upon SSL. The way dropbox claims to integrate with the OS however, would more than make up in time lost to configuration.

My main gripe of course, is that dropbox does not yet offer their desktop application for FreeBSD :-(. Which effectively limits how much I can use it until suitable builds become available for testing.

rdiff-backup can solve the problem just as well for me, since my home server is about as reliable as the rock of Gibraltar; the only problem being the software involved. The lowest common denominator among versions of rdiff-backup available for my platforms, are not compatible enough, 8=). Which is why my computers rely on a custom set of scripts built around rsync: rs-mgr rs-pull, rs-push, rs-touch, and rs-vars.

If dropbox became suitably available under FreeBSD, my life would be a heck of a lot easier, and vectra’s roll could be reduced to backups rather than storage central.

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In my web travels, I’ve just come across an interesting web-focused application and service, called Teambox. So far it seems to offer, a rather interesting stack of tools. Assuming it could be suitably extended into the neccessary work flow, by adding things such as SCM integration, code reviews, and issue tracking, it would be darn freaking useful.

Little old me, is used to projects where the best things in life are e-mail, XMPP, and Git, hahahaa!

gfire+freebsd

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A week or so ago, after updating my machines to a newer GFire plugin, I had the problem with it breaking xfire support on my laptop. Making me have to roll back to 0.8.3 :-(. Today I’ve just sent a message to the `gfire team`, in the hopes they might have a clue to to solving the issues.

Really, since my laptop isn’t for gaming, I don’t care as long as I can sign in / chat. Being able to do file transfers (finally!) and have the right status message displayed however, are worth the upgrade. I just recently noticed that status messages weren’t being updated from my laptop lol.

I guess, on my laptop I’ll just have to change my nickname on xfire to match status, e.g. ‘Spidey01 = AFK’ or something like that. No wonder people keep messaging me when I’m marked AFK, or ignoring the big I’m not here signs. No matter how bad a mood I am, generally I won’t take it out on someone unless they’re at the root cause of it; but when I’m marked away or busy, it means don’t expect a reply within the next 5-15 minutes: unless I happen to notice the message and have time to answer it. Assuming I’m even seated in front of the computer!

RvS+Linux !

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Installed and patched it easily, I’ve got 1.0-1.60 uber patches saved for every language I could find. Only hitch was the DX setup flunked, but it wouldn’t matter much anyway (there is no real DirectX on Linux).

As far as I can tell, the client works properly, but I can’t actually use it. My desktop panels overlap the window, and being as RvS forcefully sets the resolution down to 640×480 whenever it hits the menus, thus creating about 1″ blocks where the mouse leaves the games focus. Luckly fixing that after a ‘quit’ in the console, is a simple xrandr invocation. Odds are, I could just setup a quick bare bones fvwm session. GR has similar issues but is actually playable, not surprising as it was a much more professional quality bit of handy work than Raven Shield.

The second test however, was using the Dedicated Server setup — which worked perfectly! How much the performance is impacted by WINE and how much by the heavy network utilisation I’ve got going, is beyond my calculation though, lol.