handyfloss

Lo dicho, gracias NoScript por darme la oportunidad de hacer cosas como la siguiente:

It seems that the [[Fnac]] (at least the Spanish section) has been remodelling its web recently, which caused some downtime last week, and a really slow experience right now (their webmaster must lack the experience to realize that great changes should be made first in test computers, then moved to production ones. Or maybe they lack the resources to buy a spare server…).

Anyway, I’m visiting the place to check the prices of [[netbook|netbooks]], more precisely an [[ASUS_Eee_PC#Eee_901|ASUS Eee 901]], and, to my surprise, the [[Linux]] models are gone! I have previously seen both [[cruft|Windows XP]] and Linux-based netbooks in Fnac, but now only the former seem to survive. I suspect that the XP netbooks are always over-represented in stores, that is, they have many more XP units than Linux ones, even though they are sold on par. Or even more Linux units are sold.

However, this plain and simple oblivion of any Linux offer is outrageous, and can only point to nasty activity by Microsoft, who moves the necessary strings (money when possible, threats when necessary) to secure a niche (that of netbooks), that is one of the biggest market entry points for Linux, and thus the greatest menace to MS’s monopoly.

Right nowk, the Fnac Spain “Ultra Mobile” page (can not make a direct link because URLs inside the Fnac site are a thing to fear and hate), shows only one Acer Aspire One with Linux. All other netbooks, including all other Acer Aspire One models, and all Eee PCs, are exclusively Windows machines.

Update: The Linux Eee PCs seem to be back. Maybe it was just an error? Probably I’m just too paranoid :^)

I will start making this section bimonthly, otherwise the only content of my blog will consist on it. Besides, the new information generation rate is not enough to require more often updates.

You can read an intro for my Linux World Domination project in this May 2008 post.

As usual D2D means “days to domination” (the expected time for Windows/Linux shares to cross, counting from the present date), and DD2D means difference (increase/decrease) in D2D, with respect to last report. CLP means “current Linux Percent”, as given by last logged data, and DD means domination day (in YYYY-MM-DD format).

As promised, today I’m showing the plots for MalariaControl. In next issue: POEM@home.

Number of hosts percent evolution for MalariaControl (click to enlarge)

Accumulated credit percent evolution for MalariaControl (click to enlarge)

The default [[MediaWiki]] installation will leave you with [[URL]]s of the type:

This is ugly! Following instructions at the MediaWiki.org site, you can make it simpler and nicer:

To achieve that, add the following to /etc/apache2/httpd.conf:

Then add/modify the following at /var/lib/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php (again, Debian default path):

Recall that you must have two “directories”, which in the example above are /w and /wiki. The former is “real” and the latter is “virtual”.

The real dir (the one used as value for $wgScriptPath) must contain the MediaWiki files, thus it must point to the /usr/share/mediawiki dir. To this end, it must either exist in the [[Apache HTTP Server|Apache]] root (usually /var/www/), or be an alias. If you follow the first route, you can make a link, like in the following example:

The second route would imply adding this line to /etc/apache2/httpd.conf:

The latter requires restarting the Apache daemon, but I personally prefer it.

The virtual dir (the one used as value for $wgArticlePath) will be our path to get rid of the URL ugliness, and point directly to an article’s title. As such, it must be aliased in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf adding the following line to it, as mentioned above:

Finally, you shold enable the rewrite PHP module, if it’s not enable already, and reload Apache:

After that, pointing to website/wiki/somearticle should lead you to the wiki page for somearticle. For more information, refer to the MediaWiki.org site.

As they do periodically, these greedy bastards benefactors of humanity at [[Wikimedia Foundation]] are rising money to pay for the infrastructure that that a service like Wikipedia offers.

Since I shelled out some euros to them, I see no reason not to encourage the (many) readers of this blog to do the same:

No matter what they say, [[Hibernate (OS feature)|hibernating]] Linux laptops has always been a problem. I managed to get my MacBook to [[sleep mode|suspend]] to RAM quite reliably without much of a hassle. It suspends when I close the lid, and it resumes when I open the lid back. I even configured it to suspend when battery is critically low. This way, and due to the really low power consumption while suspended, I can safely forget my laptop on and unplugged for extended periods of time, and the worst that can happen is that I will have to resume it. A huge difference from the nasty surprise of finding it off and losing all the information not saved to disk.

However hibernating to disk is a whole different business. I never managed it to work, and that was an itch I wanted to scratch. Finally I managed, with the following recipe.

HowTo

First, make sure that you have enough [[paging|swap space]] available in disk. In Linux you generally create a swap [[disk partitioning|partition]] when installing the OS. The old adage states that one should make the swap partition twice as big as the RAM memory of the computer. With modern computers this is both unnecessary (because the big RAM makes sure you’ll never run out of it, and if you do, you are screwed anyway) and wasteful (if you have a 4GB RAM, it means that you dump 8GB of disk space). However, if you intend to hibernate your computer, all the information in the RAM memory has to be copied to the hard disk, so you sure need at least as much swap as RAM (but not twice).

Second, you need to use the correct tool. I use [[Xfce]] as desktop environment under Ubuntu, and the Exit menu presents me with six options: “Switch user”, “Log out”, “Restart”, “Shut down”, “Suspend” and “Hibernate”. I think that the latter two make use of the tools in the acpi-support package. The suspend action seems to work OK, but the hibernate one doesn’t (for me). It runs the command /etc/acpi/hibernate.sh, and it gives me problems. Thankfully I found some utilities that work reliably, namely pm-utils.

The pm-suspend command seems to work as correctly as the “Suspend” button in the Exit menu of Xfce. The pm-hibernate, on the other hand, works perfectly, unlike the “Hibernate” button. The drawback is that only root can run it. My solution is to put a launcher button in the Xfce task bar, that will run “gksudo pm-hibernate”. This way I am asked for my password and, if sudo is correctly set up, pm-hibernate will run.

More info

Sometimes it is very interesting to run some commands at suspension/hibernation moment, or at resuming/thawing. One such command is [[hdparm]], with which you can fix the long known load/unload cycle problem (you can google about it). Another one is one to fix a problem that apparently appears on MacBooks: the [[touchpad]] is lost when the computer wakes up back. The keyboard works, and USB mice work, but the touchpad doesn’t. This problem can be fixed by reloading the appletouch [[Loadable kernel module|kernel module]]:

You can fix both issues above by creating a file named, e.g., 99-macbook_fix, in /etc/pm/sleep.d/, and making it executable. Then write in it the following:

Hardy a new of interest for the wide audience, but since my audience is not “wide” I will post it anyway: this monday has been my first day of work at the Instituto de Física de Cantabria (Institute of Physics of Cantabria, IFCA).

I will work in the e-Science group there, mainly in the the EGEE III project.

I am eager to find out about my tasks here… I have just landed.

As you can see on the right side tab of this page, Ubuntu 8.10 has just been released!

Pick a mirror and download. Or better yet, do it through BitTorrent.

Hey, October almost passed and I didn’t write the montly report on LWD. I might make it bimontly, to produce less spam in the blog. You can read an intro for my Linux World Domination project in this May 2008 post.

As usual D2D means “days to domination” (the expected time for Windows/Linux shares to cross, counting from Feb 3, 2008), and DD2D means difference (increase/decrease) in D2D, with respect to last report. CLP means “current Linux Percent”, as given by last logged data. The new datum DD means domination day (in YYYY-MM-DD format).

As a new feature, I am now fitting the curves (to predict Windows/Linux crossing) to first degree polynomials, but taking only the last N points so that the [[Coefficient_of_determination#Definitions|coefficient of regression]] is close to 1 (yes, I am being purposely unclear and arbitrary on this subject).

OK, the data seems discouraging. The crossing day (DD) seems to be further away every month, instead of closer. Recall however that the only (half) reliable data are the current (and past) percents. All the rest is speculation, and the fits change wildly depending on the function used to make them, and the number of points fit.

Starting with this month’s issue, I might post pictures of the evolution plots. Today I’m showing the plots for Einstein@home. Next month: Malaria@home.

Number of hosts percent evolution for Einstein@home (click to enlarge)

Accumulated credit percent evolution for Einstein@home (click to enlarge)

Leído vía Menéame, un vídeo hecho por alumnos de una escuela de Ordizia, mi pueblo natal: