/dev/random

It looks like Tropical Storm Ernesto is going to hit us tomorrow afternoon or evening. Everyone has been getting ready for it, securing their homes, stocking up on groceries, and buying gas. There are already long lines at gas stations and they’ve raised gas prices about 15 cents since a few days ago.

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ZFS looks very cool and it’s open source. It hasn’t been ported to Mac OS X yet, though. A lot of people are hoping that it’s included in Leopard. ZFS supports built-in compression, RAID-like mirroring, dynamic sizing, and everything else you could possibly want in a filesystem.

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My server is back up, running Ubuntu 6.0.6.

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When the power went out yesterday I was in the middle of upgrading my Linux box from Debian Sarge to Ubuntu 6.06. Unfortunately it was left in an inconsistent state, only able to boot to the console with no network access.
I’ve spent most of the morning backing up /home, /etc, and /usr/local to an external [...]

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Text editors are like religions, inspiring bitter rivalries. The most intense rivalry is between vi & emacs. Although vi was the first Unix text editor I used, I soon discovered emacs and became an emacs fan. I feel at home in emacs and I instinctively use emacs keystrokes everywhere, which most Mac applications support.
However, I [...]

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The one thing missing from my LinkStation was the ability to access it by name, so I needed to add Bonjour support. I couldn’t find anything already available, so I built Howl, an open source implementation of mDNSResponder.
For anyone interested, I uploaded the MIPS version here. Since I have a MIPS-based LinkStation, that’s the only [...]

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My LinkStation is running beautifully with the new firmware and NFS is especially nice, since it’s a lot faster than SMB, doesn’t have the long filename problems of AFP, and will remount after my powerbook wakes up from sleep.
The one problem I had with it is their built-in backup is very slow and unreliable. I [...]

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While looking for the documentation for MT-DAAPD, which I just installed on my Linux server for iTunes sharing, I discovered that it can also be installed on a LinkStation from this LinkStation Wiki and I also discovered that alternate firmware is available for the Linkstation.
I didn’t install MT-DAAPD on my LinkStation, but I did install [...]

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GP2X Firmware 1.4.0 is available and gp2x.com finally has a nice new English web site (actually it’s still more or less “engrish”). I installed the firmware update with no ill effects. The update only took a few seconds and I didn’t brick my GP2X.
The new firmware is a very big improvement. E-book reader has lots [...]

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The GP2X has a pretty extensive set of Unix utilities, including find and even vi. Using STerm I was even able to create & edit a shell script in vi. If the shell script doesn’t end with cd /usr/gp2x; exec /usr/gp2x/gp2xmenu, the GP2X will simply hang with a black screen, as I discovered the hard [...]

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I now have a working GP2X with firmware 1.2.1. It actually came with 1.2.0, which didn’t recognize my 1GB SD card. I was able to safely flash it to 1.2.1 without any ill effects. I also have the GP2X development environment set up on my Mac and I’ve built my first ‘hello world’ application for [...]

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I still haven’t been able to get my bricked gp2x working again. The firmware was damaged badly enough by the attempted firmware upgrade that it can’t be restored by normal means. Neither Gamepark Holdings ore their US distributor has been able to resolve the problem. Gamepark & gp32z haven’t replied to any of my emails, [...]

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I managed to brick my Gp2x beyond repair when I tried to install the firmware upgrade. I got the ‘upgrading firmware’ screen for 15 minutes, followed by a black screen with nothing happening for 10 minutes. At that point, I reset it & got a white screen. It looks like the boot loader was damaged, [...]

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I posted a few more pictures at Flickr.
It still has quite a few glitches, but it’s full of potential. It doesn’t seem to like USB 2.0 ports. It works perfectly with my G4 minitower, which has USB 1.1 only. I was able to get it working with my PowerBook by using a USB 1.1 hub, [...]

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Engadget reports that Gamepark’sGP2X Linux-based portable media device is finally shipping.

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Knoppix on Mac X86

Originally uploaded by mike3k.

As an experiment I tried to boot a Linux live CD on my Intel transition kit Mac. It works! I had to use the frame buffer mode to get X11 working & it won’t recognize the built-in Ethernet, but this isn’t the latest version of Knoppix.

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I want a GP2X. Unfortunately it isn’t available in the US. It runs Linux, includes a SDK, and can play music, games, videos, and photos.
(Via Boing Boing)

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[mike@blackbox: ~]$ uptime
21:57:30 up 100 days, 1:21, 7 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

My Linux box has been up for 100 days without rebooting so far.

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Via Planet Debian:
The details of a lawsuit mentioned by Steve earlier today are so remarkable, I cannot resist quoting some selected excerpts:

42. Much of the activities of Linux and OSS have served to create a funneling system allowing sensitive and advanced technology created by computer technology companies in the United States to be illegally exported [...]

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I got my Tiger upgrade today. My upgrade experience is detailed here, but that was the least of my trouble.
My LCD display, which I’m using with my Linux box, died. This is the first time I’ve had one die, but it is my oldest LCD display. Luckily I still have my old CRT, which flickers [...]

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