FOSS.IN

I've been to FOSS.IN this year. 'Twas held at Bangalore, India, from December 1 to 5, 2009.

Nothing much to write home about, except that it was very very memorable. And yeah, this was my first time to Bangalore.

Here's a picture from a slide I loved in a presentation given by Dimitris Glezos.



I did not have a laptop, and it was difficult to get work done. So, I'm getting myself a netbook! :D Hoping to buy a Lenovo S10-2, but then, a friend tells me they have the Atom N270, instead of the N280 as the website says. That's a matter of concern.

I'll probably be buying it in a couple of weeks. Yes, pictures coming up!

Yahoo, you do have something Google needs to catch up to!

Today, I was surprised. By Yahoo. After a long time. And it's delightful. Maybe I'm late at this, but Yahoo, I've got to say, "Cool! Very cool!"

What is this noise all about? Well, it's about the Yahoo! Developer Network. More lovable is the Developer Resources page.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you find "Libraries & Best Practices" and "Language Centers". I've obviously not gone through the entire content, but a browse-through was very eye-catching. And I think every Web Developer or anyone just interested in learning about performance on the Web should read the Exceptional Performance page.

And oh, the language centers. All of them have some tutorials on the language in general, but mostly focus on using the various Yahoo! APIs.

Only, oh poor Yahoo, its been so long since I've stopped your services, and I'm now very dependent on Google.

But to note, Google has to catch up quite a bit, in terms of API. (Okay all you Google fan boys, I am not saying Yahoo has a superior API, just certain things that Google lags behind in.)

Some thoughts:

- Yahoo! Media Player. At first sight, it might seem to be just a plain embedded music player, but the wiki along with the Yahoo! Music API makes it very cool.

- Google had a 'bookmark' feature, but later revamped it to a bookmark section in Google Notebook. Still, I find Delicious a better choice (Delicious was acquired by Yahoo, in 2005).

- Yahoo! Finance is much better than Google Finance, any day.

- Yahoo! Pipes is plain awesome. Really, I haven't found a parallel.

Frankly, after all this, I don't have a hope that Yahoo will rise from the ashes, nor anything as fairytale-ish, but the lost respect for Yahoo is back. It still has some awesome engineers.

I still respect you Yahoo! I still do.

install-info: No dir file specified; try --help for more information.

First, the problem.

I was trying to do sudo apt-get upgrade when it stopped on me giving this error

Setting up findutils (4.4.0-3) ...
install-info: No dir file specified; try --help for more information.
dpkg: error processing findutils (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
findutils
W: No priority (or zero) specified for pin
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Well, I tried googling it up, without considerable success. Finally, I found this on Debian Bug report logs.

Apparently, there are packages named install-info. One, a GNU version, another, a Debian provided package.

The-Matrix% whereis install-info
install-info: /usr/sbin/install-info /usr/local/bin/install-info /usr/share/man/man8/install-info.8.gz
The-Matrix% /usr/sbin/install-info --version
Debian install-info version 1.14.25.

Copyright (C) 1994,1995 Ian Jackson.
This is free software; see the GNU General Public Licence version 2 or
later for copying conditions. There is NO warranty.
The-Matrix% /usr/local/bin/install-info --version
install-info (GNU texinfo) 4.13

Copyright (C) 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

And they have problems. The idea of replacing the Debian's version with the GNU's has been forwarded, but I'm not sure of the progress. For all I care, the problem hasn't been solved.

As the link provided says, "It is not Debian's fault if someone has GNU's install-info in
$PATH before /usr/sbin/install-info - don't mess with the packaging system,
you'll just get in trouble."

Now, the solution.

Get the /usr/sbin into the $PATH variable before /usr/local/bin, or essentially, do something that would get dpkg to find the Debian's version of install-info. I did the latter, leaving $PATH as it was. Just renamed the GNU's version of install-info

The-Matrix% sudo mv /usr/local/bin/install-info /usr/local/bin/install-info-gnu

And it works. ;)

The 2.6.28 kernel and the missing NVIDIA module

Haha, a few days back, I tried installing the 2.6.28 kernel. It went well, except that the XServer wouldn't start up.

It crashed with the following report:


(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module!
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration


But then, I noticed that the nvidia-kernel I installed was 2.6.26-1 and so, needed to update that. Well, a kernel installed _not_ from the repository would obviously need a nvidia-kernel install _not_ from the repo. ;)

A google search a couple of clicks later and some information from here, I landed at the-> NVIDIA's UNIX Drivers Portal

Grabbed the 180.22 version, the latest version for Linux AMD64/EM64. Follow instructions (essentially, chmod +x and run as root). It said my kernel was not new enough and tries to download the latest by ftp. In my case, I refused and it continued fine. Btw, you can't install the driver while you're running X.

Note: You should have the nvidia-xconfig program for the installation to go on smoothly, otherwise you'll end up with another problem

Installation and a reboot later, this is how it looks. :)

NVIDIA on Linux, an update

Another in the sequence of "update" posts.

I must say I was wrong when I said "bloody Nvidia drivers for Linux" here

Well, after three more Debian installations, I found out that the problem was not with the Nvidia drivers but with what they do when they are installed.

Err, let me clarify. On your first boot, Debian has a particular xorg.conf that it follows till you install, let's say nvidia-kernel-173.14.09. When you install this, the xorg.conf is replaced by an effectively blank xorg.conf

A way out, you ask? Well, install nvidia-xconfig and run it as superuser (as root, or use su) it will rewrite your xorg.conf. Reboot.

To further fine tune your control over your Nvidia graphics card/chipset, install nvidia-settings. Incase of Ubuntu, it will show up in Applications>System Tools, but somehow doesn't do so on Debian. Well, sudo nvidia-settings in the terminal does the job. So, no more complaints.

Sorry, Nvidia.

Pidgin for dummies, an update

I once wrote how to setup your Google Talk account on Pidgin, but that was on Windows.There are a few differences how to go about the same in Linux, and this post covers it.

If you have any doubts, please refer to the previous discussion here or leave a query in the comments section.

The only change is in the Advanced tab. You do not need to check the "Require SSL/TLS" but you need to check the "Allow plaintext auth over unencrypted streams"

Leave the connect port and connect server as they are.

Set the "Proxy Options" if you connect to the net through a proxy and want to specify a particular proxy, or leave it to "Use Gnome Proxy Settings" or "Use Environmental Settings".

Here is a screenshot.



Don't forget to click on Save!

[24/01/2009] Edit: You still have to check the "Require SSL/TLS" in case you are running Windows