lesson ten: slackbuilds and baking

see.. i getz slackbuilds now.

source code = ingredients.

slackbuild = recipe.

building the file = making the cake.

installing the file = baking it in the oven.

oh and i lovezzzzzzzzzzzz the new sbopkg.. lovelovelove!!! Thanks and lots of kudos to chess, the developer…

lesson nine: turning Pat into a chav with the inits

If you’re signed up to the Slackware Security Mailing list (and if you’re running Slackware, you really should be, like a good little Slack Bunny) then you’ll notice that rather a lot of security updates dropped into your mail box this morning. Ten of them, in fact. I waited for Michiel to sync the mirrors, then i updated (see lesson eight). At this point Michiel decided to totally distract me from the mound of sewing repairs i was supposed to be doing.. and give me lesson nine instead… on daemons, inits (no, not innits – despite the title, we’re not a bunch of Chavs), and pretty colours in Konsole.

Occasionally Pat will change the config files – the files that are involved somehow when Slackware starts up. these are kept in the /etc/rc.d/ directory, they’re called init files (from Initialisation, not the chav thing) and you can tell they’re init files cos they all start with rc. Its important as a good Slackadmin to keep track of these changes – when they’re made, the extension is always .new so that they don’t automagically install, and gives the admin the chance to check the changes and see if they’re changes they’re happy with (for all that Pat is called The Benelovent Dictator for life, he doesn’t do a whole lot of Dictatorship stuff. I guess that’s the benelovent part. 🙂 ). If the Slackadmin is happy, then the changes can be made, but with backups of the old config files kept so that if there are any problems, the changes can be undone without too much of a problem.

You can tell that there are changes to the configuration files because when slackpkg is run (see lesson eight) it asks the slackadmin if they want to keep, overwrite, remove, or prompt. In my case Michiel’s already had a good look at the changes way before i get to updating, so this isn’t something i have to worry about just yet (thankfully).

One of the changes that was made this time around was to the ssh daemon. ssh is short for secure shell – its basically a secure, encrypted connection between one computer and another. the daemon is the process that controls this – you can think of it as being like a little red demon, pitchfork n all, that holds the door open, but only allows approved traffic through. Kind of like a bouncer, if you like. if you stop the daemon, by going to the /etc/rc.d/ directory and typing ./rc.sshd stop then it kind of freezes the demon, and he can’t hold the door open any more, and all traffic controled by that process stops. to “open the door” again, you go to the same directory (if you’re not already there) and type ./rc.sshd start – However, if you are working remotely on a box, and you stop the daemon, then you effectively lose your connection, so its not a good idea to do this unless you have someone physically on the other end to type the start command.

Something i noticed while in konsole, looking at all the init files, was the different colours, and at this point i asked Michiel about them. Seems they’re standard colours, they act as a visual representation of the different file types. dark blue is directories. green have the executable bits set (in other words, they do stuff). cyan ones are symbolic links to other files. Grey files are normal colours. Purple files (someone call for Londo! [sorry. bad Babylon 5 joke]) are images, and red files are compressed archives. Yellow ones are device files. The different colours can be checked in Konsole by typing view /etc/DIR_COLORS.

and there endeth lesson nine!

~ definetly ~

Definetly. Moar teechings needed. (does this mean i can have cute cats to teech meeee?)

photo courtesy of that cheeseburger site..

lesson eight: security upgrades

photo courtesy of that cheeseburger site..

Slackware occasionally has security upgrades, and the smart geek will have signed up to an email service that tells you when there’s a security upgrade available (and you can do this here, if you haven’t already). Today was the turn of something called Ruby, and although i’ve done these upgrades before, i haven’t written notes on it. so. notes:

[normally you need to grab a copy of the security update before you can install it. in my case, Michiel has already downloaded it, and my machine is set to look to his for a mirror, so this is not something i have to worry about.]

open a terminal.

switch to root with sudo -i, and type in your password (note to self: user password!)

type slackpkg update and let it run.

type slackpkg upgrade-all and let that run.

Wait for the blue screen with the list of files that need upgrading to pop up. make sure they’re selected and press “OK”. then let the upgrade run.

Et Voila! upgrades are done. 🙂

now type exit twice, once to log out of root, once to close the Terminal.

linux is baddddd ju-ju.

its official. According to UserFriendly, Linux is Bad Ju-Ju. Don’t use it.

not saying a word…

photo courtesy of that cheeseburger site

lesson seven: slackbuilds

i made a fatal mistake last night. I was bored with the games that exist on KDE, so instead of asking Michiel for some more i went looking to see if i could find some. I found this article, which recommends the top 10 free linux games, and not being interested in FPS, and having all the rest, the only one remaining was “Pingus“. That was the really really bad mistake: idly commenting “mmm, wouldn’t mind playing that”.

two minutes later i found myself working with slackbuilds!!! whaaa? where did slackbuilds come into it?! i only fancied playing a little game, not downloading/extracting/installing stuff, and WAHHHH working with root!!! (DO NOT WANNNNNT!) However, it turns out, to my total and utter surprise ($clue: sarcasm) that the Slackbuild team (specifically ppr:kut thanks ppr:kut!) maintains a Slackbuild of Pingus and that that’s the best place to download it from (well Michiel *would* say that wouldn’t he?). so i do. rather nervously. I find the relevant page for Pingus, then ask “now what?”. he points me to the HowTo page, and i nervously download the slackbuild (the .tgz file, in case anyone was wondering). Michiel directs it to the right directory (and i’m still very confused about this process but maybe writing it all out will help), then extract it, using the tar command (tar xvzy filename. i think. something like that anyway. Hey, i’m going off memory and it was 2am at the time…) and then i download the source. The first time i do this from the webpage, later we do it another way which confoozes me still further (and i’ll say this before Michiel does: it doesn’t take much.. to confooze me that is).

once all that’s done we execute the script by using the chmod command (as described on the HowTo page), and then, of course, we run into a problem. Turns out pingus has 3 dependencies (someone didn’t read the top of the pingus page properly.. both of us) – boost, scons and physfs. apparently i already have boost on my system (as Straterra said: thank god, compiling boost on a little PIII would be a nightmare, apparently) so i had to download the source file & slackbuild instructions, and extract, execute and install both of these before we could execute (compile) the pingus slackbuild properly.

And this was the part that *really* confused me for a while as Michiel was telling me to download the source file using wget, which i hadn’t done before, and telling me to move the package after it had been compiled from /tmp/ to packages (I think i got that right) and Michiel was patiently sitting there saying to me “where’s the package” and i honestly felt like screaming back at him “WHAT EFFIN PACKAGE?!!!!”. *ahem*. I’m not the most patient and calm of learners at the best of times (yes, i know, Michiel.. thats the understatement of the century but i’m trying to be nice to myself, ya hear?). another time i’d just hit return on an installpkg command and he gasped like he’d just seen me make some terrible horrible computer killing mistake and … then said “nothing”. he got called a choice collection of names at that point i can tell you.

All joking aside.. we were finally compiling pingus, side by side, him compiling it for 12.1, me for 12.0, and of course, his being a rather better model of computer (dual core, just for starters) than mine (a slow, but patient little PIII) he finished first. And then he started to explain to me – within hearing of my PIII – just why my PIII is so slow!!! Poor thing. I had to cover its ears and whisper reassurances to it. Speaking disparagingly of my baby. how dare he.

and for all that.. I’m actually quite proud. I installed something off Slackbuilds. okay, i did it with a lot of handholding and i’d have to do it with handholding next time but.. i did it. without flaking out too much (I don’t think i will *ever* like working in root).

so.. go me!!! 😀

couldn’t resist

a photgraph snapped of a co-worker of a certain ##woodchuck resident..

photo courtesy of that cheeseburger site

upgrades!

Slackware 12.1 has been released. That will be absolutely NO surprise to anyone who reads this, i suppose, as they probably knew before Michiel leaned over the back of the sofa and informed me it was now released (in the middle of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, no less. humph). However, this brings a new point in my education: i’m almost certainly going to be installing my own upgrades this time around. Ulp. [at least i’ll have Michiel to hold my hand though. if only because if i did it on my own i would almost certainly a) screw something up b) have him screaming blue bloomin murder at me cos the mistake would be horrendous to fix.]

A new release of slackware seems to bring out the worst of the idiots in ##slackware. By this i mean those who seem to feel that a) installing slackware – or any open source software, i’m sure – entitles them to free support (rob0 has written a brilliant theory on it called S.W.E.E.T.) and who aren’t prepared to put any work (i.e. google!) in themselves on answering any of their myriad questions, b) that they can upgrade slackware without first reading the UPGRADE.TXT file (those on the last upgrade were caught out badly by this when they were specifically told not to use certain files to make their upgrades, that if they did, it would fubar their systems, and since they didn’t read the UPGRADE.TXT file, didn’t know about it. oh dear). There are other idiots as well, but that tends to be the two types that come in around the time of a new release of slackware, and i know it drives many of the long standing users/members of that channel insane. None of them mind helping those that are truly stuck, but when you are asked how to fix something simple for the umpteenth time that the person would have found themselves if they’d just bothered to google something.. well.. you can see the patience wearing thin.

Anyway. once my upgrades are through, with a certain amount of handholding, and i bet an awful lot of frustration from Michiel (and requests from me to use google – and no, I won’t be going into ##slackware to ask for advice!), i’ll come back and blog my experiences.. but it won’t be for a few days i think. maybe over the weekend, if its rainy. 😀

lesson six: irssi

it won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that this blog went a bit quiet for a while. I’ve not been well, partly (teeth troubles), but also because i’ve been doing some of my other love: the garden.

An incident today (which i won’t go into here) led Michiel to set up irssi as a chat client for me. I said i would give it a go, rather than using Konversation. I’ve been feeling more confident about using irssi, since i started hanging out in ‘chucks and other geek chatrooms because i’ve been able to look over at his computer, see what he’s doing with his screen and observe that its not such a mysterious thing after all.

(if i have one criticism of Michiel as a teacher, its that he’s so good, its almost daunting to try to learn from him… kinda like.. “OMG i’m NEVER gonna be able to do that!!”. he’s fast on the keyboard which makes it hard to follow, but at the same time good in a way that makes it look very easy, while looking hard. if that makes any sense.)

However, he sent me off to choose a theme for irssi and it was in chatting to my best friend, sez, who isn’t a geek (although she has used linux, to her credit) about what was happening that i realised she’d never seen irssi as a chat client, so i promised to take a screenshot of it for her. Then i remembered this blog and.. well. an entry is well overdue (plus something else… more on that later).

So without any further ado.. i’d like to present.. my irssi:

Do i like it? so far. I’ve only got one complaint. Konversation, when your name is said in a channel, or someone pm’s you, briefly flashes the content of the message on the screen over whatever you’re looking at (i.e. firefox), and then flashes the lil konversation icon between blue and red in the bottom right hand corner. Irssi doesn’t do that. (Michiel would say that’s because Irssi is meant as a proper chat client, because its IRC and not meant to be insta-response… i’m sure he can tell you better than i can but.. you know.. i like to know when people are talking about me!!!) I don’t like using it on Michiel’s keyboard. With Irssi you move between the various channels by holding down the ALT key and each channel has a number. That’s great, when you know where the number keys are.. although i’m a speed typist i don’t know where the number keys are, necessarily, and moving around Irssi on Das Keyboard is .. a pain in the backside.

Apart from that, i like it. it feels like a proper geek’s IRC. i feel like a proper grown up geek using it. I could get used to it, i guess.. if i do i guess part of my transition has begun. I remember when Michiel first yanked us away from Windozs to Linux, bewailing the loss of my beloved mIRC… i tried out a few chat clients. Michiel suggested irssi. Wasn’t about to have that, i wanted Point n Click!. i wanted ease and simplicity! ahem. yes, i know better now.. i finally settled on konversation and now.. 3-4 years later.. i’m using the irssi i was so afraid of.

better late than never, i guess..