WTF is dbusmenu-qt ?

Since two days ago, kdelibs started requiring something called DBusMenuQt and the nightly builds were failing with

...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- The following REQUIRED packages could NOT be located on your system.
-- You must install these packages before continuing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   * DBusMenuQt  <git clone="" dbusmenu-qt.git="" dbusmenu="" git:="" gitorious.org="">
     API to import export QMenu instance using DBusMenu protocol
     dbusmenu-qt is a standalone library providing a way to import and export QMenu instances using the DBusMenu protocol.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I googled a bit, but did not find anything apart from some mentions in the sources of various projects. In the end asked at the kde-buildsystem mailing list and got a pointer to libdbusmenu-qt homepage (sort-of). So, if you're not really into checking out random revisions from repositories, the regular releases of libdbusmenu-qt are available at http://people.canonical.com/~agateau/dbusmenu/

 I added it to the kde-solaris project repository as well. It builds relatively smoothly, only requiring one patch for avoiding the __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ gcc extension.

The statue of the pioneer gets more contemporary

The statue of the pioneer/builder of communism, a remnant of the distant age, overlooking the gigantic shopping mall Centrum Chodov, already provides a slightly bizarre view, but yesterday it moved to the area of contemporary art:

(the shopping cart's gone now, so it was perhaps a 'temporary art' experience)

DBD::mysql - Do you need to predeclare BAIL_OUT?

I was installing DBD::mysql from CPAN on a Solaris 10 8/07 Sparc today.
The install command failed with the infamous

Running make test                                                                                                                            
PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/perl5/5.8.4/bin/perl "-MExtUtils::Command::MM" "-e" "test_harness(0, 'blib/lib', 'blib/arch')" t/*.t                  
t/00base....................String found where operator expected at t/00base.t line 20, near "BAIL_OUT "Unable to load DBI""                 
        (Do you need to predeclare BAIL_OUT?)                                                                                                
String found where operator expected at t/00base.t line 21, near "BAIL_OUT "Unable to load DBD::mysql""                                      
        (Do you need to predeclare BAIL_OUT?)                                                                                                
syntax error at t/00base.t line 20, near "BAIL_OUT "Unable to load DBI""                                                                     
syntax error at t/00base.t line 21, near "BAIL_OUT "Unable to load DBD::mysql""                                                              
BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at t/00base.t line 22.                                                                      
# Looks like your test died before it could output anything.                                                                                 
t/00base....................dubious                                                                                                          
        Test returned status 2 (wstat 512, 0x200)                                                                                            
DIED. FAILED tests 1-6                                                                                                                       
        Failed 6/6 tests, 0.00% okay

Googling for help revealed tons of people with the same problem and the lucky ones who resolved it did so by giving up CPAN and installing from rpm/whatever else.

I finaly found answer here, or rather here.

The Test module was outdated ... so to solve it:

cpan> install Test::Simple 

isn't it simple?

But that was not the end. The next issue was:

#   Failed test 'use DBD::mysql;'
#   at t/00base.t line 21.
t/00base....................NOK 2#     Tried to use 'DBD::mysql'.
#     Error:  Can't load '/.cpan/build/DBD-mysql-4.014/blib/arch/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.so' for module DBD::mysql: ld.so.1: perl: fatal: relocation error: file /.cpan/build/DBD-mysql-4.014/blib/arch/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.so: symbol mysql_real_escape_string: referenced symbol not found at /usr/perl5/5.8.4/lib/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm line 230.

I guess this is due to the fact mysql is 64 bit while perl is 32 bit. Let me investigate later.

ICVERIFY 4.0 - user manager - admin password issues

I am posting this because I couldn't find a solution to the problem online while I was working with ICVERIFY 4.0.  It is a relatively dated program used to process credit cards.  Basically it is just a GUI on top of a few SQL databases.

In the past, if some one changed or lost the admin password to the user manager and forgot it, deleting the UserDB files from the SQL directory and reinstalling the app cured the problem.

However, yesterday, I was doing a new install on a XP machine. I choose a custom user name and password for ICVERIFY, as is an option, then completed the install.  When I went to open ICVERIFY, it thew back an error saying invalid user name password. After making sure I wasn't making a typo, I tried the default password and it didn't work.  Neither password would let me into User Manager either.

So I did as above, deleted the database files, uninstalled user manager, rebooted, then reinstalled. I tried to let it use the default login info this time.  I kept getting errors saying invalid login basically.

There was a great deal of trial and error after that.  I won't go into it.  However, my fix is the following: Uninstall ICVerify, User Manager, and the MSDE.  Go into Windows Explorer and delete the ICverify data, and the SQL data.  Use Regedit, to remove any instance of ICVERIFY, UserDB, and the SQL path.

Now, I was using a user account that was set as a local admin.  But after removing all that info, I went into my actual local admin account and reinstalled everything.  Worked fine for all users on the machine after that.

Last note, don't bother with calling their tech support line anymore.  I called today and once about 3 years ago.  Prior to today, I got a English speaking person who was well acquainted with the software and solved my problem quite quick. Today, the tech support number got me to what was obviously a 3rd party, English as a second language shop. Dude actually made it worse poking around turning off services and crap.  When he couldn't solve the problem, he gave me the "Oh you don't have a 2nd tier support contract, please buy one to continue" speech.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone out there.

KDE dashboard now documented

A number of KDE developers, including the KDE-Solaris team are running a nightly build of the SVN KDE4 to detect breakages early.

There's a nice dashboard collecting the results at http://my.cdash.org/, where you can also subscribe to modules of interest and be notified when they break. It's also a useful source of links when filing bugs :-)

So far the dashboard wasn't really advertised, but today Alexander Neundorf unveiled a very descriptive Dashboard builds HowTo, that will make you up and running pretty fast, should you decide to help KDE4.

Stealing from the ZOO with opencard

Today we visited the Prague ZOO (BTW 7th best ZOO in the world, according to the Forbes magazine) and while buying the tickets I noticed a sign saying something in the lines of "It's really worth having an Opencard". I asked what that means and was told a holder of Opencard has a 5% discount.

Opencard is really something special. It's a chip card with RFID that serves as public transport pass, metropolitan library pass and something with parking.
Not mentioning the obvious privacy issues, the problem is the project was extremely overpriced and Opencard is a synonym for corruption in the czech media now.
Not only this, the project is not really successful and the only reason it's not a complete failure is because they raised the public transport prices for people not using the card, so people like me just got it to save some cash.

The municipality, facing both public and political (elections are near) backlash, is pressed to do something to save their asses. They've recovered a minor part of the wasted money and are now trying to convince the public that the project is useful after all. Since they cannot directly pump more money into it, their nasty fingers are into other people's purses - municipality sponsored theatres, the ZOO and others are now forced to give discounts to Opencard holders. I'm wondering whether their lowered incomes will be refunded by the municipality (bad) or not (just as bad).

I'm not really happy I saved 8 crowns on the ticket today.

baby prams forbidden at the Prague's main railway station

I noticed that all the conveyor belts at the Prague's main railway station  forbid baby prams. The belts are the only means of getting to the trains from the ground level, so this looks like a full ban.

Transition a smf service to maintenance

I was trying to trace a bug that appeared when a Solaris service was being cleared from maintenance. To reproduce it I needed to move the service to maintenance.

Here's how to do it, so you don't have to break the service first:

svcadm mark maintenance name-of-the-service

Machinarium & Samorost 2 on Linux

I got both Samorost 2 and Machinarium for a bargain price, the only disadvantage being that the media do not contain version for Linux.
With Samorost 2 this was not a problem, it installed and run fine in Wine (wine-1.1.32, Mandriva 2010, 32 bit), however Machinarium was a bit tougher. It installed ok, but when I tried to run it, it just produced a black window, eating 100% CPU, doing nothing else.

The solution was rather simple, using the exe2swf utility:

./exe2swf ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Machinarium/machinarium.exe
firefox ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Machinarium/machinarium.exe.swf

Haircut

Spring's here, so after several years I had my hair cut :-)

I feel safer in Česká spořitelna now

... knowing that the safety of my money is of the utmost importance to them ...

... but I am slightly worried that they chose the world's least safe web browser and operating system to present me this information ...

get Machinarium & Samorost 2 extremely cheap

Hmm, 99 Czech crowns (~6 USD) for the first one and 49 crowns (~3 USD) for the latter, including soundtrack in MP3.
Unfortunately the CD's don't contain the Linux version, but I'm going to take the risk running them inside Wine.

http://machinarium.net/blog/2010/04/08/machinarium-a-samorost2-na-dvd-v-ceskych-a-slovenskych-trafikach/

Unbelievable became reality

In Mandriva, the packages in the official stable repositories only receive updates  for bug fixes. In addition to that, there is an extra repository called backports which contains latest versions of some packages. However these packages are completely unsupported.

As a completely retar^Wbizarre design decision, rpmdrake (the Mandriva package management tool) used to treat the backports repository as a source of updates, even when the user specifically disabled it. So you can imagine the mess it had beed causing.

Unfortunately the rpmdrake developer stood quite firm in his position and only a few days ago another Mandriva guy João Victor Duarte Martins submitted a patch that was just accepted.

After almost two years, one hundred comments, twenty-three votes and eight duplicates, the infamous Mandriva Linux bug #40556 (rpmdrake lists packages from disabled media source) has been fixed today.

There is still some hope in the world.

Thanks João!

hajma se stěhuje

na http://blog.hajma.cz/ . Bylo to tu fajn, ale je na čase zvednout kotvu. Na jednu stranu přijdu o víceméně garantovaných 1000+ přečtení každého výpotku,

na druhou stranu se už nebudu při publikování zápisku v angličtině cítit provinile. A poslední dobou o linuxu taky moc nepíšu, beru ho víceméně jako pracovní nástroj, který (dokud člověk nevybočí z prošlapaných cestiček) většinou funguje, a tak přestává být zajímavým, takže většina věcí, o kterých jsem chtěl poslední dobou psát by tu byla off topic. blogspot.com (na kterém to běží) mi taky nabízí daleko přítulnější prostředí, třeba přidání obrázku je otázka dvou kliků. Sice chápu, že je to určitá forma obrany proti puberťačkám s poníkama, ale editovat html mě prostě ve 3. tisíciletí už nebaví (a ten editor to opravdu nezachraňuje).

výhody abclinuxu.cz:

1. Vysoká čtenost

2. Odborné publikum

3. Dobrá zpětná vazba



nevýhody abclinuxu.cz:

1. Uzavření se do "ghetta"

2. Averze vůči cizojazyčným zápiskům

3. Obtížná navigace pro anglicky mluvící čtenáře

4. Mizerná podpora čehokoliv mimo prostého textu

5. Unifikovaný strohý vzhled

KDE 4.4.2 - first screenies

It took some time to really start working on it, but now it's moving forward. So far it looks like only small adjustments are needed to the spec files, so if I knocked the wood I could say the packages will be ready for Easter.

This year's first bike commute

Living slightly less than 20 km from the offices makes it still relatively convenient to use bike when the weather permits. Fortunately the offices are near the edge of Prague and there are only two really busy roads I have to cross. Most of the path has got zero or just negligible traffic.

The sun was shining, but due to the wind chill factor and the poor clothing factor I couldn't go as fast as I intended to, so the trip took me about 30 minutes longer compared to bus or train. But it was definitely more entertaining.

This is the beginning of Prague.