Ever closed and opened a shell because you needed to refresh the history to pull up a command you used before? Nevermore! Read this excellent post on briancarper.net to make your terminal life much easier.
Firefox Saved Password Security (Beyond the Master Password) October 12, 2009
I don’t know whether or not Firefox even allows JavaScript access to the passwords automatically filled out when you visit a page, but I sure am not going to wait until some cracker finds a hole in whatever security Firefox provides and gets at my automatically-entered password.
So, this time around I’ve decided to require Firefox to wait until I’ve entered the username before the password is filled out. If I forget the username, I simply hit the down arrow in the username box and it gives me a selection.
The setting is located at about:config (for those who don’t know: type that into the address bar) and is called “signon.autofillForms”. I set it to false. Long may security prosper!
Tip: Don’t use HTTPS + Gears + Google Docs September 2, 2009
https://docs.google.com, when used with Google Gears turned on and allowed, will result in some kind of unreported error in the Gears backend, leaving its users with a blank page. I have a feeling that Gears cannot handle HTTPS connections, but I’m not sure. It could be just a Safari and/or OSX issue.
Others have reported endless authentication redirection, which makes sense if you study the URL that the HTTPS version always gets stuck on. (There’s a “redirect” parameter which points to https://docs.google.com/?pli=1, which, if followed manually, simply circles back around through the authentication again and sticks back at the same old blank page.) Hopefully Google takes notice and fixes this soon.
The Secret to Pidgin on OSX with Gentoo Prefix July 12, 2009
OK, there’s no secrets really. It’s just a matter of avoiding potholes and fixing bugs enough so you can work around them.
So, first off, 2.5.7 is the version I use, even though 2.5.8 is out. 2.5.8 has its own set of problems, and if I recall correctly they’re not as easy to work around. Second, I use the following USE flags:
net-im/pidgin prediction perl gtk -ncurses gnutls debug aqua spell
x11-libs/cairo svg
app-text/enchant -hunspell aspell
Pidgin requires cairo with svg, so that’s a no-brainer. Currently ncurses wide-character support is broken, either in Pidgin or ncurses itself, so I avoid that altogether with the “-ncurses” USE flag. Also, if you want a spell-checker, aspell is much more stable than hunspell on Gentoo Prefix right now, and does the same thing. (Besides, other things use aspell more than hunspell, so it’s one less library to install.) That explains the “-hunspell aspell” USE flags.
There’s one USE flag there you may not recognize for Pidgin. It’s “aqua”. This USE flag was put there by me. This is the show-stopper that had be running in circles for quite a while. In order to get proper GTK+ aqua support, you’ll have to patch Pidgin and Pidgin’s ebuild. You can find all the resources you need at the Gentoo bug I made, or in a handily compressed file here, update: or, better yet, in my Gentoo Prefix overlay. With these in your Gentoo overlay, and the proper USE flags above, pidgin will install correctly. Huzzah! (more…)
The Secret to Unmasking in Gentoo (and Prefix too) July 4, 2009
If you ever dip your toes into Gentoo Prefix, the first thing you’ll probably notice is that a lot of your software is either missing or masked. If you’re sharp, or have lots of experience already with Gentoo, you’ll also notice that your profile comes with the ~ unstable keyword by default. You see, Gentoo Prefix is a pretty small project in comparison to Gentoo itself, as far as I can tell, so not as much testing goes into every package, and not every package can be and/or is currently handled by Gentoo Prefix.
Let’s assume, however, that you really don’t care, like me. Let’s assume you want to try things and out and, like every other good citizen of Linux, you plan on tracking down and reporting every bug you find to the Gentoo/Alt bug tracker. You will most certainly try to emerge something that hasn’t been reasonably stabilized yet, like Pidgin. (I will go into more length on Pidgin later. For now, a summary would be “not for the faint of heart”.) If you’re running an x64 Prefix, just about anything you try to emerge will be keyworded or masked. Not discouraged, you’ll start adding the appropriate entries to your package.keywords and package.unmask directories. After your fifteenth entry, or third round of emerge’s, it gets pretty tedious. (more…)
x11-libs/libxklavier and GNOME 2.24 March 30, 2009
I know I’m a bit late in posting this, but better late than never. If anyone has had issues upgrading to GNOME v2.24, and their session manager is acting weird or not acting at all (because it doesn’t work), it’s a good idea to add this mask to your /etc/portage/package.mask file or folder and then re-update your system:
=x11-libs/libxklavier-3.8
The relevant bug report is here.
UnionFS in Gentoo: It Aint Easy March 10, 2009
The following text contains description that may be disturbing for newbies. Reader’s discretion is advised.
Folks, I can’t believe it. UnionFS is perhaps one of the most widely used undistributed file-systems I’ve ever seen. To prove my point: I’m sure all of you have heard of it, but when was the last time you installed and used it on your production machine? (more…)
Signed up for Facebook February 18, 2009
Well, no, not really. Actually, I’m trying to avoid that at all costs. My opinion of Facebook is low: it’s a time wasting website, where naught but browser games and teenager-style chit-chat goes on. Not my cup of tea.
However, some of my family have signed up for it, and are on it all the time. I know they’d never sign up for an IM account, but their Facebook profile automatically includes a built-in IM program. If I could hook into that, I’d easily be able to keep up with family without extra Facebook baggage.
The catch, as always with business, is closed protocols. The solution, a Jabber conduit, is actually under official development, but it’s slow going, and will probably not make it until later this year, if that.
The account I’ve really signed up for is the Facebook Bugzilla account, which is an entirely separate system. I’m currently using it to track this bug report, which details the status of the conduit I’ve mentioned.
As a side note, I know a lot of people who read this blog will be on Facebook (since it seems the majority of the world’s Internet population seem to be enamored with it), so I want you to try and convince me why I should forgo the wait for a Facebook-Jabber conduit and just sign up. This isn’t a taunt; it’s an honest question. How does Facebook enhance your life? Why do you use it?
Update (2009/03/30): Well, I got sucked in, as that’s the only way to be able to chat with family on Facebook. It is nice to stay up-to-date with everyone, but baesides that I hardly use it.
OpenOffice Auto-Recover Works in v3.0.1 February 10, 2009
At last, the annoying auto-recover bug is fixed. Prior to v3.0.1 (since August 2008, at least) there’s been a bug where the Auto-Recover feature wouldn’t actually recover anything, but would just pull open the last truly saved version.
Now that bug has been fixed after many tears and outcries, thank goodness. Your $10k document is now safe.
OSS VoIP software (Skype, TeamSpeak) via PulseAudio February 9, 2009
ESD/GNOME via PulseAudio was easy to figure out: just make sure your login/logout/etc. sounds are no bigger than 1 MiB, not 1MB as some claim. You could use “pactl upload-sample ” to test and make sure PulseAudio’d like the sound.
That was easy enough to figure out. Then Skype came along and showed me the weaknesses of PulseAudio and its padsp script.
The issue was that Skype’s sounds would be very choppy, and my voice would be difficult to understand. I knew that PulseAudio had a way of building up a cache of audio before playing it, and that it would auto-adjust, but I figured that that was messing it up somehow. How I would fix an automatically-adjusted system I knew not. (more…)
