Category: Site News

This website is very old. It’s been with me for many years. There are plenty of articles which are useful both for myself and the rest of the world. Bit by bit, word by word, link by link, image by image, this site was filled and filled over the years. Technologies changed. Some new techniques and concepts came up. Some old ones faded away. Spending as much time as I possible can (after everything else) on this site, sometimes I manage to introduce big changes – like a new bit of functionality or a totally different look. Not to confuse and scare everyone, I try to be open about the changes that were made. When something big is changed I post a description of what it was and why I felt the change was needed. These updates are published in this category.

Posting catch-up

It’ve been a long time since last update. Here is what I am up to:

  • I am working on a new site, which will merge this site and my home portal. Among other things, there will be interface for submitting news like this one, instead of editing html files.
  • I am working on a project for school/college management. It is too early to talk about it yet, but I am aiming at creating a free solution for educational institituion management, which will include things like: schedule generation, students/classes/courses management, students’ grades and quality control, and much more. Stay tuned…
  • I have been also occupyied a lot by my primary work. Videowalls, migration to Linux, and some other things got me blown away. Now, with the enterprise subscription to the Red Hat Network, I hope I’ll get some more time freed.

Back to Red Hat Linux 7.2

I have decided to downgrade my DVD box to Red Hat 7.2. I am tired of fighting with the laggy picture and sound. 7.2 had it all nice. 7.3 broke it and I cannot find whether it’s the kernel, XFree, something else, or the combination. I’ve got to find those antique CDs. :)

Good news

There are two much of good news today. First, this site has been moved to new hosting facilities, where it will hopefully be a bit faster and updated more often.

Another exciting point is that my distribution based on Red Hat Linux 7.3 is almost ready. I have successfully fit it on one CD (~ 570 MB), replaced sendmail with exim (version 4.04), replaced wu_ftpd with proftpd, added bash complition and mc into minimal installation, and did few other nice things. I’ve even got couple of people to be beta testers and it works fine till now. In couple of days I will release the patch to anaconda, file listings, and the tool I’ve wrote for speeding up dependecy checking. Stay tuned. :)

Hacking Red Hat CDs

Still playing with Red Hat Linux 7.3. By now I have managed to fit it on the single CD (650 MB). Anaconda (installation program) got me pulling hair out of my head though. First, I have no prior experience with Python. Second, after I checked it out, I think I am the luckiest man alive (that I didn’t). Thirdly, code is pretty weird; for example, it is very easy to specify default language for installation, but things like changing grub to lilo, or specifying different default timezone, or allowing ssh connections in default firewall settings made spend lots of time :) If one day you will have to do something in Python, you will definetely thank Python website for providing good documentation. Concerning RPMs, I can easily put updates on distribution CD now, change Package groups (like Printing support, etc), and even substitute some software by another, like I did with proftpd obsoleting wu_ftpd and anonftp. What I need now is some way of verifying that directory with RPM packages is self-contained without actually producing a real distribution and installing it. :) Tomorrow it will work hopefully.

Another nice surprise got me when I upgraded my DVD machine to Red Hat Linux 7.3. After all, low latency does not appear to be that good for DVD playing (tested with xine, mplayer, and ogle). Without low latency support DVDs are playing much better, but still by far not that good as it was with 2.4.9. Tomorrow I will downgrade the kernel and check it out.

Last one for today – I have put the new picture of myself. This time I am with my girlfriend. And, yes, that “Li” on my t-shirt is a part of word “Linux” :)

More stuff and Quake III

Today (or actually yesterday) I was still playing with Red Hat 7.3 installation CDs. Not much to go – now it fits into single 720 MB image which happen to boot and install nicely.

Part of the last weekend was spent on upgrading my home network to Red Hat 7.3, thanks to power failure which brought my home server down again (and yes, UPS is on my wish list :) ). Apparently, everything went nice except for strange mouse disappearence from my workstation and some problems with DVD playing. Changing mice with my girlfriend happened to fix my problem, without creating one for her. DVDs are more complicated though and I am still working on the issue.

Saturday ended up with one of my friends at our place and a first Quake III lan with me using DVD box, laying on the floor and aiming via TV set. :) Almost broke my neck, but had lots of fun… till 6am. :)