bash's blog

Buoni propositi per il 2012

2011-12-31T13:43:00.001+01:00

Prendo spunto dal post di ugaciaka per scrivere i miei buoni propositi per il 2012:

Tanto per iniziare conto di laurearmi entro la fine dell'anno; mi farò chiamare Dottore e riattaccherò il telefono a chi mi chiede perché non si vedono i video su facebook.

Scriverò almeno un'applicazione per Android; opensource, e magari riesco pure a pagarmi le spese minori.

Continuerò a tenermi stretta la mia ragazza; e chi ti molla.

Varie ed eventuali :)

Felice anno nuovo a tutti!

srcpac on Transifex!

2011-10-12T02:01:00.002+02:00

Yes, you read that right. Even with only 35 translatable lines, the srcpac project has a page on the transifex website so we can translate it in a very simple and easy way.

Start translating at https://www.transifex.net/projects/p/srcpac

srcpac 0.10.8

2011-10-10T23:25:00.001+02:00

Another 6 months have passed since the last srcpac release, and I'm again here to announce you the new srcpac 0.10.8!

This release improves the performances (the latter was very slow due to the many checks) and add the support to build dependencies and makedependencies of your targets. Also, two new options for the query and remove operations have been added and I rewrote the logic behind the splitted packages.

This release also add gettext support so translations are welcome! (There are very few lines to translate though).

Much more must be done; I hope you can help testing this release and proposing new features using our bug tracker.

0.10.8 ChangeLog:

+ Support to build targets' {make,}dependencies (FS#22253)
+ The build of a splitted package use the makepkg --pkg option
+ Removed duplicated code
+ Rewritten build_package method
+ Removed double candidates check
+ Removed installed version check
+ Add support to ignore packages when updating
+ Minor bugs and cosmetic changes
+ Use 'find' to improve performances
+ Proper way to get the pacman CacheDir
+ When PKGDEST is set makepkg force option is needed (FS#23859)
+ Add options -Rb and -Ro to remove package patchfile and configuration file (F#23860)
+ Show patchfile information in -Qi (FS#23860)
+ Does not display the warning message when a package is not installed
+ Create the srcpac patchfile only after the package installation
+ Add -Qb option to display all packages built
+ Add Italian translation
+ Add translations support with gettext

Stay tuned!

Installing a package through a Dolphin action

2011-06-19T17:44:00.004+02:00

Hi all, I guess I'm becoming lazy.

I've just written a right-click service menu for Dolphin to install a package in Arch Linux (you could edit it to work with every package manager).
Here it's:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
Encoding=UTF-8
ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
MimeType=application/x-xz-compressed-tar;application/x-compressed-tar;
Icon=control-center2
Actions=InstallWithPacman;

[Desktop Action InstallWithPacman]
Name=Install package
Icon=control-center2
Exec=kdesu konsole -e /bin/sh -c "pacman -U %U; read -p 'Press Enter to
exit'"

Save that in `kde4-config --localprefix`/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/ as something.desktop.
Now, open Dolphin and right-click on a tar.xz archive, you will get something like this:

and then:

As you see multiple files selection works too. The Konsole terminal will not close after the installation so you can read the pacman output, to fetch errors and post_install messages. ~~I added the message "done, you can close konsole" to know when pacman quit.~~

PS. I found useful to have a "Install package as dependence" too ;)

join diaspora!

2011-06-02T13:12:00.002+02:00

Hi all,
yesterday I read ise's post about Diaspora and I joined Diaspora again. Yes, again. I was already using Diaspora, but I have quit all social networks (Google Buzz, MSN Live, Facebook, Diaspora and identi.ca) some month ago.
I like diaspora, its minimal style, its aspects, etc. Unfortunately it's a bit empty, but I hope to see soon more geeks, so we can have a semi-official social network for geeks :) (I guess Ohloh failed).

What Diaspora is missing is a client for my phone (I own a N900). I should write one myself!

My diaspora page.

Hey, you've N outofdated packages! (Part II)

2011-05-25T13:59:00.000+02:00

I got a lot of criticts about my previous post "Hey, you've N outofdated packages!".
People say it's unsafe, but I think that if you know how the script works and you understand that you've to update the system before install everything the script isn't dangerous.

Anyway, thanks to keenerd and falconindy today I'm writing a safe way to get notifications about outofdated packages on your system.

The first script must be changed with this, put it under /etc/cron.hourly/:

#!/bin/bash

fakedb=/dev/shm/fakepacdb
realdb=/var/lib/pacman

[[ ! -d $fakedb ]] && { mkdir -p "$fakedb/sync" || exit 1; }
[[ ! -L $fakedb/local ]] && { ln -s "$realdb/local" "$fakedb" || exit 2; }

exec fakeroot pacman --dbpath "$fakedb" -Sy

This script creates a temporary copy of your local pacman database and download the fresh package databases in it. It doesn't touch your local pacman database then.

The second script to get the notifications remain the same as before, but this time we have to pass the $fakedb path as database path for pacman, here the script:

#!/bin/bash

fakedb=/dev/shm/fakepacdb

pkgs=$(pacman --dbpath "$fakedb" -Qqu | wc -l)
aurpkgs=$(cower -udf 2> /dev/null | wc -l)

unset msg1
unset msg2
unset packages

if [[ ${pkgs} -gt 0 ]]; then
    msg1="${pkgs} in pacman"
fi    

if [[ ${aurpkgs} -gt 0 ]]; then
    msg2=" ${aurpkgs} in AUR"
fi    

let packages=${pkgs}+${aurpkgs}

if [[ ${packages} -gt 0 ]]; then
    kdialog --title "Out-Of-Date packages" --passivepopup "There are ${packages} outofdated packages (${msg1}${msg2})" 10
fi

Enjoy the safe way :)

...and then I moved again

2011-04-22T19:34:00.000+02:00

At the end of this month, my old domain andreascarpino.it will be removed after one year only.

I'm honest: the first reason was the renew cost, which isn't much expensive, but it made me think about the necessity of this domain. Do I really need my personal domain? Since I'm writing this post on a blogger platform, it wasn't necessary.

Sure, your personal domain sounds quite professional, but I don't need to publicize anything ATM, I don't represent a society (not yet ;), I only need a place to share some information about my life, Arch Linux or any project in general; a platform like workpress.com or blogger.com is enough. (I choice the latter to test something new, I used WP for 4 years or so).

Sometime I need to share files too. Where I can put my files now? Dropbox or ownCloud? I don't like to use closed stuff and ownCloud works well on my old desktop pc :)

srcpac 0.10(.1)

2011-03-31T05:51:00.000+02:00

I'm pleased to announce srcpac 0.10(.1)!

This new release add the support for splitted packages, that was really needed, and it does in a nice way (I got the inspiration from pacman 3.5 groups). Here some screenshot:

Installation of a splitted package:

...and after the build you'll get:

I've to say that in this version srcpac loose 2-5 sec to get the PKGBUILD of a package passed as parameter. This because it sources every PKGBUILD in /var/abs/ to get the pkgbase. I don't know other ways to implement this (suggestions are welcome).

Please report any bug or feature request to bugs.archlinux.org.

Cheers!

Hey, you've N outofdated packages!

2011-02-06T18:15:00.001+01:00

I know...I should study instead of writing these stuff.

Anyway, I lost only 15 minutes to set up this:

I googled a bit around looking for a system tray notification applet for Arch Linux and I found many (alunn, pacman-notifier, yapan, zenman...), but some project is dead, someone uses (Py)GTK, someone requires to edit the sudoers file or to grant permissions to your package manager. Not what I was looking for.

Then, I used 2 cron jobs to display a notify every hour using kdialog only if there are outofdated packages in the system.

The first one script updates the pacman database and goes in /etc/cron.hourly/:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/pacman --sync --refresh

Simple. Then create this script somewhere and add it to your user crontab:

#!/bin/bash
pkgs=$(pacman -Qqu | wc -l)
aurpkgs=$(cower -ud | wc -l)

unset msg1
unset msg2
unset packages

if [[ ${pkgs} -gt 0 ]]; then
msg1="${pkgs} in pacman"
fi

if [[ ${aurpkgs} -gt 0 ]]; then
msg2=" ${aurpkgs} in AUR"
fi
let packages=${pkgs}+${aurpkgs}

if [[ ${packages} -gt 0 ]]; then
kdialog --title "Out-of-Date packages" --passivepopup "There are ${packages} outofdated packages (${msg1}${msg2})" 10
fi

exit 0

Cower is my favorite AUR agent; edit the script to use your.
It's rude, but it works and does its job.
Bye!

Note: if you add the cron rule to syncronize the pacman database, you have to fully update your system before install anything!

Note #2: when I was googling I found some user that had the "fantastic" idea to use cron to update its system. Please don't do it! Really, you MUST read the output of your package manager. Ever.

KDE 4.5.5, KDE 4.6RC2 and KDEPIM 4.6beta4

2011-01-07T20:51:00.000+01:00

Hi arKers,
maybe the KDE team wants to wish us happy new year with a lot of releases? :)

The first week of 2011 ended with a lot of KDE updates; in order:

A very beautiful 2011 start, isn't?

Packages are in [extra] and [kde-unstable]. Happy update!

Note: Kalarm 4.5.94 is not available because build fails ATM. (upstream devs will fix it soon)

KDE 4.6 RC1

2010-12-23T16:35:00.000+01:00

Hi ArKers,
KDE 4.5.90 has been released a minute ago and binaries packages are available in [kde-unstable].

The new KDE series provides a new backend for power management (Upower) and for disk management (Udisks); before, we only had the HAL backend. Now kdelibs 4.5.90 depends on both those packages thus you can remove hal from your system and from the daemons to run at start (you have to replace it with dbus).

Note: Some system could lose the sounds removing HAL; changing the phonon backend or use pulseaudio could help in that case.

Upstream decided to skip the 4.6.0 release for kdepim, but they released a beta3 which is available in [kde-unstable] too. We have to wait kdepim 4.6.1 for a stable KMail2.
Anyway, KDE 4.6 is compatible with kdepim 4.4.9 which is already in [extra].

Arch Linux packages changes:

filelight is replaced by kdeutils-filelight
kdeutils-okteta is replaced by kdesdk-okteta
kdegames-ksame is replaced by kdegames-klickety
kdesdk-kbugbuster has been removed (upstream)
a new runner for krunner is available in kdeplasma-addons-runners-events
a new kdeplasma-addons-containments package introduces the GroupingDesktop

Be careful updating: do a backup of your ~/.kde4 dir.
See the list of the packages which do not work with KDE 4.6 and read the known issues too.

Happy Christmas!

srcpac 0.9 released

2010-12-17T17:24:00.000+01:00

For those people which think that I was joking in my previous post, a new version of srcpac is out.

srcpac 0.9 changes:

- Fix a bug in vercmp usage
- Add support to install packages as dependence or as explicit
- Add support to custom CacheDir
- Better way to source PKGEXT and CacheDir
- Make YES the default choice for 'upgrade anyway' question
- Minor fixes and removed duplicated code

srcpac is alive :)

2010-12-17T13:57:00.000+01:00

After one year from the last release and 7 years from the first release, srcpac 0.8 is out.

I taken the unmaintained project one year ago. I fixed some bug, removed the query operation and added a not useful --edit option; well, seems that at that time I didn't get the goal of srcpac. Until yesterday.

Yesterday I read on Arch Linux Italia Forum a post by a guy which made a script to build the packages from ABS. I thought that it's a pity that people have to create your own scripts when we have an official tool that does the job.

I know, we have a lot of tools that allow you to build packages from ABS, but they allow to build packages from AUR too and such kind of tools will never join into official repositories.

Therefore I worked on srcpac yesterday to release a working version; here the changes:

- Some package could set a different PKGEXT (FS#21292)
- Implement 'package is up to date, update anyway'
- Remove --edit option
- Minor fixes to Makefile
- Re-added --query operation
- Operation -Q now prints source flag too
- Fix sudo usage

The full ChangeLog is available here.

Please report bugs or your wishes to bugs.archlinux.org under the project Pacman.

Thanks.

The Calligra Suite

2010-12-07T02:17:00.000+01:00

Yesterday the KDE community has announced the Calligra Suite, a fork of KOffice starting from version 2.3.

Starting from KOffice's PKGBUILD, I made a PKGBUILD for this project. Unfortunately AUR yet do not support splitted PKGBUILDs (and I'm too lazy to split every package function in a new PKGBUILD), so I uploaded my PKGBUILD here. The source tarball is here.

Give it a try, it's a git version anyway.

Cheers

Installing Maemo 5 SDK on Arch Linux

2010-12-02T19:20:00.000+01:00

First of all, download the Maemo scratchbox installer:
$ wget http://repository.maemo.org/stable/5.0/maemo-scratchbox-install_5.0.sh $ chmod a+x maemo-scratchbox-install_5.0.sh
Then run:
# linux32 ./maemo-scratchbox-install_5.0.sh -s /opt/scratchbox -u <your_username>
Write this lines to /usr/local/bin/maemo:
#!/bin/bash sudo sysctl abi.vsyscall32=0 linux32 sudo /opt/scratchbox/sbin/sbox_ctl start Xephyr :2 -host-cursor -screen 800x480x16 -dpi 96 -ac & /opt/scratchbox/login killall -q Xephyr sleep 1 sudo /opt/scratchbox/sbin/sbox_ctl stop sudo sysctl abi.vsyscall32=1
Install dialog (was missing in my system):
# pacman -S dialog
Download and install the Maemo SDK script:
$ wget http://repository.maemo.org/stable/5.0/maemo-sdk-install_5.0.sh $ chmod +x maemo-sdk-install_5.0.sh $ sudo sysctl abi.vsyscall32=0 $ linux32 sudo /opt/scratchbox/sbin/sbox_ctl start $ ./maemo-sdk-install_5.0.sh -s /opt/scratchbox/
Note: the maemo-sdk-install script looks for /usr/bin/python instead of /usr/bin/python2, but I didn't find the line of code which needs python. So, as workaround I created a symlink in this way:
# ln -s /usr/bin/python2 /usr/bin/python
Install the xorg-server-xephyr package:
# pacman -S xorg-server-xephyr
Go to tablets-dev.nokia.com and get your personal token, then run the maemo script and add the repository to sources.list into your scratchbox:
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > sb-conf select FREMANTLE_x86 [sbox-FREMANTLE_X86: ~] > nano /etc/apt/sources.list # add deb line [sbox-FREMANTLE_X86: ~] > apt-get update [sbox-FREMANTLE_X86: ~] > fakeroot apt-get install nokia-binaries nokia-apps
Run the maemo script, then exec:
[sbox-FREMANTLE_X86: ~] af-sb-init.sh start
...and this to stop it with:
[sbox-FREMANTLE_X86: ~] af-sb-init.sh stop

Enjoy!

Install corkscrew on the N900

2010-12-02T12:51:00.000+01:00

If you are trying to setup an SSH connection through an HTTP proxy, then you need corkscrew.

I know, almost every distribution provides it, but you have to build it yourself on the N900. Here the steps:

Add the SDK Maemo repository adding:
deb http://repository.maemo.org fremantle/sdk free
to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hildon-application-manager.list
Then update the list and install the build-essential meta package:
# apt-get update # apt-get install build-essential
Download and extract corkscrew:
$ wget http://www.agroman.net/corkscrew/corkscrew/corkscrew-2.0.tar.gz $ tar -xf corkscrew-2.0.tar.gz
Build it:
$ cd corkscrew-2.0 $ sh ./configure --host=armv7l-unknown-linux-gnu $ make

 Install it (into /usr/local/bin):
# make install
Make it executable:
# chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/corkscrew
Add /usr/local/bin to your $PATH:
$ echo 'PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin' >> /home/user/.profile

Easy :)

KDE 4.6 beta1... HALess!

2010-11-25T16:13:00.000+01:00

Here we are! KDE 4.6 beta1 is out now! (here the announce)

As archer, you can install it from [kde-unstable] (please read the wiki page before use it).

Arch Linux changes:

kdelibs now depends on upower and udisks, this means that HAL is no more required: you can remove hal from your DAEMONS(), but remember to replace it with dbus.

filelight is replaced by kdeutils-filelight

kdeutils-okteta is replaced by kdesdk-okteta

kdegames-ksame is replaced by kdegames-klickety

kdesdk-kbugbuster has been removed

new runner for krunner: kdeplasma-addons-runners-events

a new kdeplasma-addons-containments introduces GroupingDesktop

kdenetwork-kget is not available because does not build at the moment

phonon in [testing] adds PulseAudio support

keditbookmarks now is in a separate package

I have to say that this is the most stable beta1 in my experience, the update worked fabulously, but be careful updating to this version: backup your ~/.kde4 dir.

See the list of the package which do not work with KDE 4.6.

See the known issues.

New KDE SC 4.5 minor release (4.5.3)

2010-11-03T17:25:00.000+01:00

Just a new minor KDE SC 4.5 update to fix some known bug.

Arch Linux changes:

closed FS#21427: [kdegraphics-okular] won't open xps files

fixed FS#21457: [kdegames-kajongg] is still pointing to python instead of python2

closed FS#21495: [kdebase-runtime] kde-open fails to handle mailto: URIs

fixed kde_generate_export_header in kdesdk-scripts to use python2

Added kdebindings-ruby again!

The upstream ChangeLog is available here.

KDE SC 4.5.2 packaged

2010-10-05T17:10:00.000+02:00

Built using Qt 4.7, the new KDE 4.5.x minor release is out and available in our repos.

Upstream ChangeLog here. Our changes:

fixed FS#20394: [kdebase-workspace] kdm user's home directory is missing

fixed FS#20627: [kdebase-workspace] kdm doesn't remember last username

fixed FS#20854: [kdegames-kajongg] dependencies should include kdebindings-python

fixed FS#21048: [kdebase-workspace] fix information bar using Oxygen style

fixed kdeartwork-kscreensaver dependencies

Added molecular support in kdeedu-kalzium

Have a nice update!

KDEPIM 4.5 beta 3 released

2010-09-02T23:08:00.000+02:00

A new beta of kdepim 4.5 has been released and packaged.

To try it you have to enable the [kde-unstable] repository on Arch Linux (both arches available).

Is the most usable beta (obviously); With the beta 2 only POP was working, but I can use a disconnected IMAP account with this release. I've just upgraded, migration worked (WOW!) and I've successful sent a mail.

No more to say at the moment.

PS. backup your data before the upgrade!

KDE SC 4.5.1 is already here!

2010-08-31T16:52:00.000+02:00

KDE SC 4.5.0 moved to the [extra] repository a week ago, and today I released the new (minor?) release of the 4.5.x series for Arch Linux.

This release fixes many bugs (ChangeLog is available here), but the most important is the regression which caused desktop effects not working with some drivers (mainly with Intel cards). Also, there is a security fix for Okular, but our kdeutils-okular-4.5.0-2 was already safe.

For us archers the changes are:

fixed FS#20597: [kdenetwork-kget] libktorrent dependency missing

fixed FS#20627: [kdebase-workspace] kdm doesn't remember last username

fixed FS#20639: [kdesdk-poxml] no po2xml and swappo binaries

fixed FS#20648: [kdebase-workspace] kdm dirty root /

implemented FS#20601: [kdeedu-marble] add gpsd support

added Interlingua and Thai translations

added WebKitPart support to KGet

updated kdeplasma-applets-networkmanagement to a new snapshot

added cagibi package to allow dolphin to browse UPnP devices

Have a nice update :)

The new KDE bluetooth stack

2010-07-28T13:18:00.000+02:00

Hi arKers,

how are you? About 4 months from my last post...University, work and summer give you no more time to relax and write something on your personal blog. Ok, come to the point.

Yesterday I read a bad bad news on the net: KBluetooth is dead - Oh s**t!

But reading that post I also read a word: BlueDevil. Uhm...WTF BlueDevil is? I waited 8/10 hours as Afiestas said there and in fact he wrote something about BlueDevil.

It's a set of components to manage your bluetooth adapter in KDE. There is a KCM module that allows you to enable/disable it, set trusted devices, the adapter name and more. Also is integrated with KIO so you can explore your device from dolphin. Again, a wizard allows you to pair your devices, send files to them and use the audio stuff.

I installed it and I am really impressed. Say "Goodbye" (and thanks) to kbluetooth and install BlueDevil from AUR.

PS. Hello Planet KDE! :)

Hello Word!

2010-04-30T03:27:00.000+02:00

Hi everyone,

this is my first post from my new domain! Yes, I bought a domain and I moved my blog from deelab to this one.

I must say thank you to Dario (dax); he gave me unlimited space on his domain for 3 years and he did that before meet me personally. I think this is a great thing, so thank you again Dario ;)

Xorg 1.8 - Synaptics Touchpad configuration

2010-04-06T01:23:00.000+02:00

I just upgraded to Xorg 1.8 using Jan's repository ([xorg18]); he did a good job, thanks Jan!

This release works with udev for input hotplugging and supports /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/*.conf as replacement for the hal .fdi files. After upgrading to this release, configuration for input devices in hal is ignored and should be done by udev rules or xorg.conf.d files.

So, as Jan said, I set up a new configuration file for my touchpad:

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf
Section "InputClass"
      Identifier "touchpad"
      Driver "synaptics"
      MatchIsTouchpad "on"
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
      Option "SHMConfig" "on"
      Option "TapButton1" "1"
      Option "TapButton2" "2"
      Option "TapButton3" "3"
      Option "VertEdgeScroll" "off"
      Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "on"
      Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "off"
      Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "off"
      Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
      Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2"
EndSection

...and everything is working again better than before ;)

Arch Linux on Toshiba Satellite T130

2010-03-20T04:49:00.000+01:00

I bought a new laptop: the ultrathin Satellite T130! I'm not writing a post about this (awesome) laptop, but on how to make it working with your (Arch) Linux OS.

Graphics. The Intel GMA 450 works fine with the official Intel driver without any patch; install xf86-video-intel and start X.

Wireless. Here there are issues. This laptop uses a wireless card with the Realtek 8192SE chipset. There's a driver, but ATM isn't included into the last kernel, so you need to build and install the RTL8192SE driver. Take it from AUR.

Bluetooth. Works! Install bluez package and nothing else.

Touchpad. Everything works here too. I setup vertical/horizontal and circular scrolling with two fingers (I never tried it before, it's really nice). Just install xf86-input-synaptics and set your config. Here mine.

Webcam. I did only a test using mplayer and...works!

Audio. To mute speakers after headphones connection I had to add a line to modprobe.conf: options snd-hda-intel model=dell-vostro. EDIT: No more needed since kernel 2.6.34.

In conclusion everything works fine, but I still am trying to made backlight control working; I added the known acpi_backlight=vendor kernel line to GRUB with no lucky. EDIT: A man sent me a script to fix the backlight issue. The trick is easy: using setpci you can hack the brightness. Then I set up KDE Power Management to run sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=40 when I am using Powersafe profile, and sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=FF when I am using Performance profile. (You need to add the rule to your sudoers file). This is enough for me, you could use a script to increase/decrease the brightness editing the F4.B argument. Thank you Petri! Cheers

Dead, but on the third day, resurrected!

2010-03-14T23:34:00.000+01:00

It's true...It's live!

Yes men, Repoman is reasen from the dead.

Due to my engagements Repoman development stopped one year ago. Also [deelab] repository was dead and I didn't need a tool to manage any repository.

But some days ago I joined into [unarch] team, [unarch] is a new repository maintained by few Italian people. So, I need a tool to build and upload packages without fool around.

I completely rewrote Repoman. I made it more simple to use, syntax is similar to pacman/makepkg. For example, to add a package you must type $ repoman -S foo meantime if you want to add a package without extract source files (using existing src/ dir) you must type $ repoman -Se foo. Another news is -l, 'L' for log: makepkg will log everything. Latest thing, finally all packages are uploaded together using the same lftp session and old packages are removed after the upload of newer packages.

This Repoman looks better too, useful messages and less colors.

Give it a second chance, and let me know what do you think of it ;)

package on AUR

MySQL 5.1.44 is out, but...

2010-02-20T01:52:00.000+01:00

...still I cannot update it.

The problem is with Akonadi: it does not start with MySQL 5.1.43 and does not start with the new MySQL release too.

I reported this on bugs.kde.org three weeks ago (#225333); others people confirmed this issue (#226960) and I think that Akonadi developers are working on it, logs do not help too much.

So, seems that we will skip this minor release too. Stay tuned.

KDE SC 4.4RC3 in [testing]

2010-02-04T02:46:00.000+01:00

Probably you already know, but I had not enough free time to write this first. Anyway the point is that the last KDE release candidate is waiting for you in [testing] ([kde-unstable] is dropped).

There are no big changes, only fixes; KDE devs want to be sure everything build and work.

If you already are using KDE with virtuoso backend, you should read this thread on arch-dev-pulic mailing list.

Have a good update!

[kde-unstable] KDE SC 4.4RC2

2010-01-21T17:24:00.000+01:00

They released it, we packaged it!

Yesterday KDE developers tagged the 2nd Release Candidate and today we released the Arch Linux packages into [kde-unstable]...nearly there, 4.4.0 will be out soon!

The x86_64 packages are already on [kde-unstable] whereas I am still uploading i686 packages, they will be in the mirrors tonight. ;)

The packages are built with libpng 1.4.0 and libjpeg 8, so you can update easy without any problems.

As ever, please report any bugs. Thanks!

GMail as default KDE mail client

2010-01-14T14:42:00.000+01:00

It's more simple and fast then you think:

Open System Settings -> Default Applications -> Email Client

Check "Use a different email client"

type the following: /usr/bin/rekonq https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=%t&su=%s&%u

Where instead of /usr/bin/rekonq, you must type the path to your favorite browser. %t is the destinatary, %s is the subject and %u is the full mailto URL (needed if you want to add the body too).

Kheers!

[kde-unstable] KDE SC 4.4RC1

2010-01-11T13:38:00.000+01:00

Ok, here we are. The first official KDE 4.4 packages for Arch Linux are ready. We will move the package to [extra] only when the 4.4 stable will be released. So, if you want to try the new KDE you need to enable the [kde-unstable] repository. Run the update with this steps:

Add [kde-unstable] to pacman.conf (up [testing])[kde-unstable] Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Exit KDE

Stop KDM

Backup your ~/.kde4 directory

Run pacman -Sy qt

Run pacman -Su

Start KDM

Report any bugs!

Arch Linux changes:

Removed the Sesame backend from Soprano, now we will use the Virtuoso backend and this avoids the Java dependence

Nepomuk enabled by default

Qt-Phonon replaced by Phonon from kdesupport

New packages:

kdeedu-cantor

kdeedu-rocs

kdegames-granatier

kdegames-kigo

kdegames-papeli

kdepim-akonadiconsole

kdepim-blogilo

kdeplasma-addons-applets-blackboard

kdeplasma-addons-applets-kimpanel

kdeplasma-addons-applets-knowledgebase

kdeplasma-addons-applets-opendesktop-activities

kdeplasma-addons-applets-plasmaboard

kdeplasma-addons-applets-qalculate

kdeplasma-addons-applets-spellcheck

kdeplasma-addons-applets-webslice

kdeplasma-addons-runners-audioplayercontrol

kdeplasma-addons-runners-kopete

kdeplasma-addons-runners-mediawiki

phonon-gstreamer

Packages removed:

kdelibs-experimental replaced by kdelibs

kdeaccessibility-kttsd

kdepim-kpilot

kdeutils-kdessh

kdewebdev-kxsldbg

Fixed dependencies

Note: [19/01/2010] This repo will be unusable until KDE 4.4 RC2. DON'T USE IT.

[MySQL] I did the crap!

2009-11-19T11:09:00.000+01:00

Hi all,
Ok, I confirm, I was jealous about Allan: after the "he broke it!" everyone know him. I wanted to be more popular, and maybe with my last crap I did.

I changed configuration, pid and sock file path in MySQL; I was pretty sure that change didn't broke anything except php, but...I failed.
Yesterday I lost the whole day trying to fix this and in the night I found the solution: the problem was mysql set sock file path to /tmp/mysql.sock by default, I need to pass the option in configure. Don't ask me why, but I thought that move sock file in a new location was a minor change and setting the new path into my.cnf was enough.
mysql 5.1.41-2 is already in [extra] and will fix everything (qt applications, mysql-python, etc...).
At least, with this "little story", I'll remember to put every package in [testing] first!

Happy update :)

SVN tunneling through HTTP proxy

2009-11-17T04:36:00.000+01:00

I don't know in your university, but in mine I still cannot use version control system cause we have an HTTP proxy and only HTTP traffic is allowed.
I want my system to be ever up-to-date and sometime this means to use development software. Today, for example, I wanted to build KDE from SVN.

Usually set http-proxy-host and http-proxy-port into ~/.subversion/server was enough, but today with this method I got a nice "Permission denied".

The alternative method is to setup an SVN tunneling through the proxy:
First, you need perl-libwww from [extra] repository and perl-net-proxy from AUR.
Open a terminal and launch:
$ connect-tunnel -P proxyhost:proxyport -T 10234:svnhost:svnport
Now, keep connect-tunnel running and checkout svn in this way:
$ svn co svn://localhost:10234/svntrunk

All should works. Good luck!

Sleepy: an useful Amarok script

2009-10-21T04:02:00.000+02:00

Ok ok, I am strange I know. I like to go to sleep listening to music, but I like to stop the music after a while too.
Because of this I run a command before get up from my seat:
$ sleep 20m; amarok -s; exit
Today I was looking for new apps on kde-apps.org when I looked at sleepy.
What's sleepy? Is an Amarok 2.x script, like the old Nightingale that was for Amarok 1.x.
This script allows you to shutdown/hibernate/suspend the PC after the N song or after N minutes. I love this!
I don't know why but this script didn't allow to stop Amarok without shutdown or suspend the PC. I did a patch that add this feature.
Obviously, you can find the PKGBUILD on AUR ;)

EDIT: Author released 0.7.1 which include my patch.

Goodnight!!!

[kde] 4.3.2 in [extra]

2009-10-06T16:36:00.000+02:00

Hi kde users, KDE 4.3.2 will be released in the next hours as told in Release Schedule so Pierre and I bumped the ours KDE version in [extra] repository. Have a nice update!

[pidgin] GTalk Audio/Video support added

2009-10-04T17:27:00.000+02:00

Hi again archers, pidgin is now built with voice and video support.

You can find pidgin 2.6.2-3 in official repository [testing].

I added farsight2 to depends but I keept gstreamer0.10-{base,good} as optional.

Bug Squashing Day: results

2009-10-04T17:05:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we did the 1st Bug Squashing Day made by me and Paul.

We closed 76 bugs in Arch Linux project, 27 in Community, 3 in Pacman and 10 in AUR. Many bugs are still open but with the fix provided by some user. Really we want to say thank you to all archers who helped us in this!

A special thanks to Ionuț, Roman, Eric, djszapi, Bluewind, jelly12gen, Arkham...and others who probably I forgot now.

If you missed it, you can repair: join next, next month!

[sonata] fetch lyrics now works!

2009-10-04T16:42:00.000+02:00

I was looking for a source tarball from one week, cause berlios.de have problems, and finally I got it!

This new release fix the annoying problem with fetch lyrics feature.

I can tell you: sonata 1.6.2.1 available for archers!

September 21, 2009 (Version 1.6.2.1):

Library artwork caching/displaying improvements

Lyricwiki screen scraping workaround

Replace Amazon.com cover art fetching with Rhapsody.com

Bug: Fix library sorting when adding, e.g., albums to playlist

Bug: Fix window positioning weirdness when unwithdrawing from systray

Bug: Fix album being labeled various artists when a duplicate exists

Bug: Fix album tracks in the info tab being out of order sometimes

Bug: Show songs with a missing date in info album listing

Bug: Library icons change after adding stream to playlist

Bug: Cpu spike, tooltips missing in library search results with gtk 2.16.2

[ncmpc] added lyrics support

2009-10-04T16:36:00.000+02:00

Whit ncmpc 0.12 developers added an experimental lyrics screen disabled by default.

Now archers can find this screen in ncmpc 0.15-2 package who I built some hours ago.

ncmpc 0.15 changes include an improved build, updated lyricwiki plugin, fixed bugs, and a tweaked display.

NB. Lyrics plugins need python and/or ruby (depends on which you want to use)

official [kde-unstable] repository is back

2009-06-07T15:42:00.000+02:00

Hi all,
only let you know the repository kde-unstable is again active.

I packaged with Pierre KDE 4.3 beta2; at the moment packages are bigger than previous because we enabled the DEBUG build option, but we will disable it soon: there are few vantages and many disadvantages to keep it.

Pierre talked with Allan who said that pacman 3.3 will be out soon, so we are working to split KDE packages. Will be nice to have splitted packages in time to the new KDE release.

Cheers

Kopete Facebook Plugin

2009-05-25T03:26:00.000+02:00

This is real man, Duncan Mac-Vicar P. is working to add facebook support in Kopete. So I made a PKGBUILD to build his nice plugin, obviously you can find it on AUR.

It works with KDE 4.2 or above; you also need qjson.

Now you can chat with anyone in your facebook contact list from Kopete. It supports proxy.

Enjoy!

KDE 4.3 beta 1 packages

2009-05-24T18:46:00.000+02:00

Hi all,
I'm working on kde 4.3 beta packages - we must be ready for the official release - so I temporally created a repository [kde-unstable] where I'm putting the packages that I built.
The repository is located at http://dev.archlinux.org/~andrea/kde-unstable/ and here I'm putting the PKGBUILDs that I'm using.
So if you want to try the new beta simply add this repo to your pacman.conf. Only i686.

Please report to me bugs which are related to a bad PKGBUILD.

Enjoy ;)

How to set the icon in KDE Kicker menu

2009-05-04T11:16:00.000+02:00

To change the Kicker menu icon you have to change ${icons_dir}/places/start-here-kde.png icon.

For example, to set archlinux-icon-crystal-128.svg, from archlinux-artwork package, as Kicker menu icon you must run this (you need librsvg):

# for i in 16 22 32 48 64 128; do rsvg-convert /usr/share/archlinux/icons/archlinux-icon-crystal-128.svg -f png -h $i -w $i -o /usr/share/icons/default.kde4/${i}x${i}/places/start-here-kde.png; done

Now re-apply your icon theme and enjoy ours logo ;)

[libmsn] Kopete crash caused by emesene

2009-04-24T16:32:00.000+02:00

After two months of awesome window manager, I'm back to use KDE4 on my laptop to test KDE applications.
This means I'm using Kopete instead of Pidgin, or Quassel instead of XChat, or QMPDclient instead of Sonata, etc...

Sometimes I get a Kopete crash, without any reason. Or said it better, I thought it was without any reason.
Looking on the web I found this bug report which said is libmsn faults caused by emesene MSN client.

To fix this, a patch was made an sent to Tiago Salem Herrmann which merged in libmsn SVN trunk.

I applied that patch to libmsn-4.0beta4-2 in [extra], so...enjoy with emesene people!

[kdebase-workspace] patch to fix calendar resizing bug applied

2009-04-14T15:46:00.000+02:00

I applied a patch to kdebase-workspace to fix the KDE bug #187699:

In KDE 4.2.2, the calendar plasmoid uses 100% of CPU when the user try to resize or move it.

package: extra/kdebase-workspace-4.2.2-2

[kdelibs] patch to fix kickoff menu focus applied

2009-04-14T15:40:00.000+02:00

I applied a patch to kdelibs to fix the KDE bug #188655:

In KDE 4.2.2, Kikoff menu doesn't get the keyboard focus anymore when opened

package: extra/kdelibs-4.2.2-4

Repoman is back!

2009-03-04T17:52:00.000+01:00

Do you remember Repoman?

Well...I was more busy in the last months: university, arch linux and real life take me more time.

Finally this night I worked on it, so I fixed a big number of bugs:

- fixed the annoying bug #3

- devel packages (svn, cvs, git, ...) now build correctly

- keep option now checks for PKGBUILD in the <package> dir. This give more sense to this option

- repoman is more verbose now: it always says what it are doing

- fixed getopts options

- after built packages repoman asks to clean the pkgs directory; it will keep PKGBUILD, .install and others files needed

- fixed others stupids bugs

All these changes are available from the release 166. Enjoy!

11 reasons to switch to Linux

2009-02-04T15:18:00.000+01:00

11 reasons to switch to Linux

Giovanni is no more alone!

2009-01-10T08:07:00.000+01:00

Since I started to use Linux, my dream was to become a developer of some popular distribution.

Today I realized that dream.

I'm the second Italian who is became an Arch Linux Developer and I'm very happy and proud for this.

Mainly my task will be to help Pierre Schmitz with KDE maintenance: we want a powerfull and stable KDE for the archers.

Also I'll work on AUR and Pacman and I'll continue to help archers on flyspray.

Thank you to all!!!

News on:

archlinux.org

archlinux.de

archlinux.hu

archlinux.it

archlinux.ru

Are you ready to Awesome 3.1?

2008-12-13T18:42:00.000+01:00

Awesome 3.1 has been released yesterday and soon it'll be in community, are you ready for it?

You'll must do some changes in your configuration file:

First, the statusbar objects no longer exist now they are wibox objects;
```
mystatusbar = wibox({ ... })
```

The syntax for adding widget changed, now it must do with:
```
mystatusbar.widgets = { ... }
```

Taglist have a new form:
```
mytaglist = awful.widget.taglist.new(screen, taglabel_function, button_table)
```
taglabel_function could be:
- awful.widget.taglist.label.all (Return labels for a taglist widget with all tag from screen)
- awful.widget.taglist.label.noempty (Return labels for a taglist widget with all *non empty* tags from screen)

As for the taglist, tasklist have a new form:
```
mytasklist = awful.widget.tasklist.new(tasklist_function, button_table)
```
tasklist_function could be:
- awful.widget.tasklist.label.allscreen (Return labels for a tasklist widget with clients from all tags and screen)
- awful.widget.tasklist.label.alltags (Return labels for a tasklist widget with clients from all tags)
- awful.widget.tasklist.label.currenttags (Return labels for a tasklist widget with clients from currently selected tags)

Now it's possible to add an image widget with:

myimage       = widget({ type = "imagebox", align = "right" })
myimage.image = image("/path/to/image.png")

This article is a summary of "Awesome 3.0 to 3.1" wiki page.

Enjoy!

Arch Linux Wallpapers

2008-12-13T14:44:00.000+01:00

My wallpapers for Arch Linux :D

Adriana Lima

Jennifer Garner

Heidi Klum

Laetitia Casta

Extras

RepoMan!

2008-11-25T22:24:00.000+01:00

Manage a repository seems simple, but is not. It takes a long time.
For this we, deelab's boys, started to write a tool to keep simple the management of repositories; this is Repoman.

With Repoman you can add, remove or upgrade packages of your repository by running a single command script.

The software download the tarball directly from AUR, then extract files, build the package, insert/delete it into the repository's database and add a line in ChangeLog file who keep trace of the actions made on your repository.

Obviously it can be found on AUR ;)

-docs, offline documentation

2008-11-25T21:42:00.000+01:00

When I'm traveling or when I'm in university, sometime, I work. So I need the documentation of the language in which I'm developing, but I haven't Internet connection and so I have to give up or use an old copy of the docs that I had saved some months ago.

This is no longer a problem. I discovered the -docs packages. They are in community and unsupported. Through -docs packages, you can always have an updated version of the docs stored on disk (are installed in /usr/share/doc/).

For example, I'm using:

$ pacman -Qqs docs
bash-docs
css-docs
gcc-docs
gtk2-docs
html-docs
mysql-docs
python-docs
xhtml-docs

Enjoy ;)