Entries posted in April 2010

It is unfortunate that most server-packages don't seperate out their init scripts into separate packages:

• foo
  • Contains the server binary, associated config files, and libraries.
• foo-run or foo-server
  • Contains the init script(s).

Right now its a real pain to have to modify things like /etc/init.d/ssh to launch two daemons, running on two different ports, with two different configuration files.

Running multiple copies of SMTP daemons, databases, and similar things is basically more complex than it has to be, because our packages aren't setup for it.

If you maintain a daemon please do consider this, failing that honoring a flag such as "DISABLED=true" in /etc/default/foo would allow people to use their own /etc/init.d/foo.local initscript. (That's not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction.)

ObFilm: Little Miss Sunshine.

Tags: daemons, debian, mysql, ssh | 12 comments

I'm constantly amazed by how blasé electricians are with regard to live voltage.

I'm used to mixing with software developers, who have a healthy fear and respect for "hardware", or physicists who're a very cautious bunch on the whole.

A week or two ago I developed a leak in my flat's roof, which lead to a small amount of minor water damage and a failure in my lighting.

I've had a couple of people out to look at it, and they all seem quite happy poking around with the (potentially soggy) electrical cables without me disconnecting the ring / main supply.

Still I guess they must know what they're doing; they've not previously been killed ...

ObFilm: Juno

Tags: drama, electricians, flat, flood, household | 4 comments

This past week has had a couple of minor software releases:

chronicle

I made a new release which improves support for foreign language; so dates can be internationalised, etc.

The online demos now include one in with French month names.

slaughter

The perl-based sysadmin tool had a minor update earlier today, after it was pointed out that I didn't correctly cope with file content checks.

I'm still pretty pleased with the way this works out, even if it is intentionally simple.

milli

This is a simple bug-record-thingy which I was playing with recently, and I've now started using to record bugs in other projects.

I'll pretend its a fancy distributed-bug-tracker, but actually it isn't. It's nothing more than a bunch of text-files associated with a project, which have sufficiently random names that collisions are unlikely and which thus becomes semi-distributed-friendly.

Today I'll be learning to love Javascript a little more. I want to use the gallerific image gallery - but it doesn't make thumbnails automatically - which galleria does.

I need to either come up with my own which looks like galleriffic, or port the thumbnail bits over.

(I'm currently using a slightly modified version of gallerifific for my people-shots.)

ObFilm: Hancock

Tags: chronicle, galleria, gallerific, javascript, jquery, slaughter | 6 comments