HandsomePlanet

installing the development version of the sphinx documentation tool

Get the latest version from bitbucket:

$ hg clone http://bitbucket.org/birkenfeld/sphinx

The remainder of the instructions are based on the README, but details will vary according to what package dependencies need to be met. That is, some additional packages beyond what is described here may need to be installed.
Change to the new directory, build, and install.

cd sphinx
python setup.py build
sudo python setup.py install

Build sphinx’s documentation with sphinx:

cd doc
sphinx-build . _build/html

And, that should do it.

Also see the bitbucket sphinx wiki .

installing ntop on Ubuntu : problem with rrd directories

The ubuntu install for ntop is broken without some additional steps.

‘Ubuntu Bloke’ had the easy fix :

"Create the directories that for some reason are not created by the installer
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/graphics
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/flows
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/interfaces
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/interfaces/eth0
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/interfaces/ppp0
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/lib/ntop"

Cisco 3560, 3750 archive command to install or upgrade IOS via tar file

Some newer L3 Cisco switches are now happier if you use the ‘archive’ facility to manage images.
If you only want the IOS, and not the web interface and so on, use the /imageonly flag.
From the Cisco release notes :
For example:
Switch# archive download-sw /overwrite tftp://198.30.20.19/c3750-ipservices-tar.122-50.SE.tar

Check the release notes or command reference (or in-exec help) for further options.

This apparently does away with ‘boot system statements’ as well, as you can see if you run ’show boot’ on the switches. The image set by your ‘archive’ command becomes the active image on reboot.  I’m not sure what happens if you have both explicit ’system boot <blah>’ statements and the automatic IOS precedence setting configured via the fancy archive method.

anynode#sh boot
BOOT path-list : flash:c3750-ipservicesk9-mz.122-53.SE1/c3750-ipservicesk9-mz.122-53.SE1.bin
Config file : flash:/config.text
Private Config file : flash:/private-config.text
Enable Break : no
Manual Boot : no
HELPER path-list :
Auto upgrade : yes
Auto upgrade path :
Timeout for Config
Download: 0 seconds
Config Download
via DHCP: disabled (next boot: disabled)
-------------------


DreamPie Python editor

I’ve been trying out the DreamPie python editor, and it looks promising.  It’s free, GPLv3.

I just added an entry for it at http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEditors :

• DreamPie (sourceforge)
• Works on Windows, Linux and Mac. (Mac support requires MacPorts .)
• Interactive shell with history box and code box, auto-completion of attributes and file names, auto-display of function arguments and documentation. Keeps your recent results, provides session history saving (optionally in HTML), interactive plotting with matplotlib. Extremely fast and responsive. GPL3 .

interesting: launchpad recipes for merging branch updates into PPA’s

OK, this sounds very cool ; still in development:

http://how-bazaar.blogspot.com/

What does this really mean?

Lets say you want to have a daily build of a project, like gwibber. You would then create a recipe that uses trunk as a base branch, merge in the packaging info, and say “Please build this every day into my PPA”. And Launchpad will.

the music sounds better from ubuntuone?

Bought a few tracks from the new Ubuntu One digital music service. I have at least temporarily switched back to Rhythmbox from Banshee to take advantage of the rhythmbox-ubuntuone-music-store plugin, and all is well. It looks pretty spiffy, tracks are inexpensive and DMCA-free. Because I’ve been gradually moving my music to digital formats inside shared folders, this approach makes sense, and it works really well. For whatever reason (the new toy phenomenon?), I’m having more fun listening to the music than I should be.

Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, Released

Lucid Lynx has arrived. The release day was yesterday, though I’ve been running several systems on 10.04 since the alpha stage. It’s well done. I don’t yet have a use for the social networking tools/toys (the gwibber app and indicator-me gnome package), but I’m not unhappy with them either. The server image has been robust so far, but I haven’t thrown too much at it. I’m thinking of putting the netbook edubuntu version (à la the system 76 starling edubook ) on my older laptop to see how that flies.  Looks like fun.

Stanford folding@home and origami on Ubuntu

If you’d like an easy way to run folding to help the Folding@Home Stanford research project, even on a multicore system, ‘origami‘ may be a good soultion. I like it a lot.
It starts on boot-up automatically, can set folding to commence according to a schedule, allows project and stat checks from the command line, and even allows centrally administered group deployments (for example, to a lab full of machines). It does make laptops run pretty hot (as the CPU is engaged doing protein folding simulations), so I limit it to short bursts on laptops, but it can be a great tool to help in contributing to the folding project. You can also set origami to contribute to the TeamUbuntu folding project if you’re interested.

converting a pdf into html (one file to many method)

Here’s an Ubuntu (and other linux/Unix?) tip taken from ehow .

To convert a pdf into navigable html (with images intact), you can use pdftohtml:

E.g.,

 pdftohtml -c originalfile.pdf  newname_template.html

Converting a book-length pdf using this method gave me a directory full of files, with consecutively numbered html files representing the pages.   Names were based on the ‘newname_template’ supplied, as were the png image files.  Not the prettiest, but functional, and viewable on devices lacking native pdf-rendering capabilities.

an Ubuntu sources.list with more whistles and bells

I’ve been fiddling around with my sources list, trying to make everything perfect before I sit down to get to work. But I found out that a fellow named Ketil, from Oslo, has limited my procrastination by doing a better job with a consolidated list. His /etc/apt/sources.list is here: http://anotherugly.wordpress.com/my-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala-sources-list/