Continue reading »]]> I wanted to update WordPress to 3.2 but hit a snag. Unfortunately 3.2 requires an update to PHP 5.2 which isn’t in stock CentOS. So I followed the instructions here to update to PHP 5.2 using the CentOS Testing repos. However I use eAccelerator which was built for 5.1 so before I could update the PHP packages I had to remove the eAccelerator RPM so I could update the PHP packages without breaking things:

sudo rpm -e php-eaccelerator

Then updating the PHP packages worked fine. But I was without eAccelerator. A kind soul had created packages for 5.2 on x86_64 but I need i386 packages. Thankfully the src RPMs were also posted. So a few minutes later I had my i386 RPM. If you are in need of the eAccelerator packages for PHP 5.2 on i386 here it is. Install it like so:

sudo rpm -ivh php-eaccelerator-5.2.10_0.9.6.1-1.i386.rpm

Everything appears to be back to normal. Performance tidbit – page generation time is 37% faster with eAccelerator.

Continue reading »]]> If you have ever tried to use a new Fedora or RHEL to build packages for older systems you may have run into errors at installation time. For example, if you were to roll a package on Fedora >=10 or RHEL >=6 and tried to install it on RHEL 5 you will get rpmlib(FileDigests) errors. This is because newer versions of RPM use new compression and hashing algorithms. To force an RPM to be build using the older algorithms add these lines to your spec file:
%define _binary_payload w9.gzdio
%define _binary_filedigest_algorithm 1
%define _source_filedigest_algorithm 1

You can wrap them in a conditional check if you only want to use the older algorithms when targeted older versions of RHEL/Fedora but they are forward compatible, ie you can install a package compiled with these flags on RHEL 6 without a problem.

Continue reading »]]> If you want to run sudo from any part of a cron job make sure you comment out the

Defaults requiretty

from /etc/sudoers. Bit me twice now so hopefully I’ll remember next time.

Ed: Apologies to those who have read this before but I had to restore from backup and my last post wasn’t in that backup.

Continue reading »]]> In my last post I described a VB Script for moving IMAP email from my inbox to an archive folder. As an interesting Apples to Oranges (or Apple to Microsoft?) comparison here is the Apple Script I use with Entourage to perform the same task. I will post two versions: one that performs the exact same task and a second version that is significantly longer that integrates with the popular Growl notification system for OS X. I would just like to highlight the overall simplicity and elegance of the Apple Script vs. the VB script. Yes I know their history is totally different and perhaps VB script is overloaded in usage these days but the point stands: the Apple Script is readable and intuitive while the VB script is neither.

Once again I apologize for the formatting but WordPress is butchering <code> posts lately and insert all sorts of uglies inside the code blocks and I don’t feel like fixing it at the moment.

tell application “Microsoft Entourage”
set acctName to “BA”
set folderName to “Archives”
set destFolder to null

set currMsgs to (current messages)
set currCount to (count of currMsgs)

if currCount is not 0 then
set folderList to folders of IMAP account acctName
repeat with x in folderList
if name of x is folderName then
set destFolder to x
move currMsgs to x
end if
end repeat
end if
end tell

And the second with Growl support:

tell application “GrowlHelperApp”
set the allNotificationsList to {“General”, “Move message”, “Error”}
set the enabledNotificationsList to {“General”, “Move message”, “Error”}

register as application “Entourage AppleScripts” all notifications allNotificationsList default notifications enabledNotificationsList icon of application “Microsoft Entourage”

if currCount is 0 then
notify with name “Error” title “Entourage Error” description “You attempted to move a message but no message was selected.” application name “Entourage AppleScripts”
delay 10
return
end if
if destFolder is null then
notify with name “Error” title “Entourage Error” description (“You attempted to move a message but the destination folder \”" & folderName & “\” is not valid.”) application name “Entourage AppleScripts”
delay 10
return
end if

– 1 Notification…
if currCount is 1 then
notify with name “General” title (acctName & ” Notification”) description (“1 message moved to \”" & name of destFolder & “\” folder of account \”" & acctName & “\”") application name “Entourage AppleScripts”
delay 10
end if

– Multi Notification…
if currCount > 1 then
notify with name “General” title (acctName & ” Notification”) description (“” & (count of currMsgs) & ” messages moved to \”" & name of destFolder & “\” folder of account \”" & acctName & “\”") application name “Entourage AppleScripts”
delay 10
end if
end tell

Continue reading »]]> Been meaning to post this quickie for awhile. Took me a good bit of searching and tweaking but I’ve been using this macro for about two months to move email in my IMAP account in Outlook (2007) to my archive folder. Then I bound it to a hotkey combo by adding it to my menu bar and placing an ampersand in front of the “trigger key.” For example, I added the macro to the menu bar and then renamed it to “&@rchive” to move the mail to the archive folder. Now when I press “Alt-@” (really Alt-Shift-2) when I have mail selected it moves the mail to the appropriate folder. You can’t overload hotkeys and since “Alt-A” was already taken I had to choose something else.

Note I’ve tested this with Cyrus. Other IMAP servers may have different namespacing conventions.

Sub MoveSelectedMessagesToBAArchives()
On Error Resume Next

Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace, objItem As Outlook.MailItem

Dim TestFolder As Outlook.Folder
Dim FoldersArray As Variant
Dim i As Integer
Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace(“MAPI”)

‘Convert folderpath to array
FoldersArray = Split(“BA\Inbox\Archives”, “\”)
Set TestFolder = Application.Session.Folders.Item(FoldersArray(0))
Dim SubFolders As Outlook.Folders
If Not TestFolder Is Nothing Then
For i = 1 To UBound(FoldersArray, 1)
Set SubFolders = TestFolder.Folders
Set TestFolder = SubFolders.Item(FoldersArray(i))
If TestFolder Is Nothing Then
Set objFolder = Nothing
End If
Next
End If
‘Return the TestFolder
Set objFolder = TestFolder

‘Set objFolder = objNS.GetFolder(“BA\Inbox\Archives”)
‘Set objFolder = objInbox.Folders(“Archives”)
‘Assume this is a mail folder

If objFolder Is Nothing Then
MsgBox “This folder doesn’t exist!”, vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, “INVALID FOLDER”
End If

If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count = 0 Then
‘Require that this procedure be called only when a message is selected
Exit Sub
End If

For Each objItem In Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection
If objFolder.DefaultItemType = olMailItem Then
If objItem.Class = olMail Then
objItem.Move objFolder
End If
End If
Next

Set objItem = Nothing
Set objFolder = Nothing
Set objInbox = Nothing
Set objNS = Nothing
End Sub

Sorry for the busted formatting. WordPress sucks sometimes.

Continue reading »]]> In a social networking site that is truly extensible and robust we wouldn’t feel the urge to move on. Restarting on a shiny new site or culling or pruning your “friends” on an existing site wouldn’t be necessary. But we have been misled. Social networking doesn’t have to be all or nothing. We shouldn’t feel constricted in how we express ourselves on a given site. And to exacerbate the issue, some of us are misleadingly tied to our online social networks. For example, some people feel obligated to update their profiles constantly or to accept friendship/relationship requests (regardless of their relationship to the requester), particularly those that rely on the Internet to construct their professional persona [0]. The bottom line: these social networking sites [1][2] continue to fail us as a society.

Why do so many exist? Why do so many fall by the wayside as we progress? Why does each and every attempt at social networking eventually fall to its successor?

The answer to the first question is simple – new social networking sites crop up because of need or because of fad. No one site has all the required features for its user base. Why do social networking sites fail as time progresses? Well, some would argue the maturity level of the user base has changed. Or, more often these days, perhaps the site’s interface is more Web 2.0 friendly, and everyone wants to be on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Your friends jump ship, you jump ship. Finally, the user’s social network constructed on the site changes. As you mature, you leave one social network for a new social network. For example, the mass migration from Friendster to MySpace and now to facebook. Still others would argue the usage of the site is tied to user interface: this argument being that facebook is more “mature” than MySpace. The end result of this interface maturity is the same as others. Some people leave, others follow. Some even suggest a class bias between the sites, thus alluding to the fact that as one’s class changes, so does their social network (and thus the social networking site to which they should belong)[3]. Finally, perhaps we are merely sheep, following one another from one social network to another.

Regardless of the specifics, the users of these sites inevitably leave, thus forsaking their previously well-developed social network on MySpace for a new social network they must construct on facebook. And this is doubtfully an isolated incident – as soon as facebook’s yet-unheard-of young competitor, social.blah.org.net.com.dontcare, appears on the scene, another mass migration will occur. Or perhaps the reason for this migration is the users of these sites are leaving to shed – shed previous acquaintances, previous friendships, previous lifestyles.

This mass migration from social network to social network is merely a side effect. It is tied to the way those websites create implicit relationships. They ask, “Did you know this person?” while forgetting to ask, “How would you like to know this person NOW?” Life experiences previously allowed us to prune our network based on lifestyle changes. You grow, you change, your relationships change, perhaps you even shed relationships – that is the natural evolution.

Current social networks inhibit this natural pruning and the evolution of real-life social networks[4]. This is no longer the case with the rise of facebook and MySpace. But perhaps you don’t want to “shed.” Perhaps you like your old friends, but not in “that way.” Perhaps you would like tighter control of how your information is sent to your social networks, or more specifically, how your “social flows” are constructed. While such pruning of social networks has been proposed[5], it is not effective in that it is not driven by you, but by simple inferences about the populous as a whole. And besides, who says you actually want to “prune?” Perhaps you’re just lacking fine-grained control.

Only you can define how you want your social flows to actually work in the present, and in the future. Or rather, you should be able to define your social information flows and the social networking site should support you in doing so. And eventually your social networking site should create these flows for you, based on your existing flows. You shouldn’t have to rely on some coarse-grained all-or-nothing approach. Such is the case with current social network sites.

You add a friend, you remove a friend. That is all you can do. They can read everything, they can write to everyone. Coarse-grained filters aside, they are similar to you in that they lack controls over what information flows to whom, or more precisely, how they socialize in general. You are in or you are out. There is no in-between on current social networking sites. There are filtering tools in facebook[5], but for the most part they are coarse-grained with respect to the filtering of content, not quite capable of expressing how your information is shown to your social network.

In addition to the coarse-grained nature of social information flows, there is the problem of duplicated information being presented, cluttering the consumable information on individual sites [6]. This often results from people wanting to share information with multiple social networks, a side effect of wanting to maintain multiple online personas. Some people create multiple personas to communicate with multiple distinct social groups online. For example, my Twitter network and my facebook network are distinct. Yet at the same time, most of the information I’m posting makes it to both networks. Thus, people following me on Twitter and facebook must consume the information twice, once on Twitter, once on facebook.

To reiterate, social networking sites currently provide coarse-grained control over who sees what parts of your profile [7]. They aren’t totally living in the dark ages. The downside to the current approach is still the fact that is remains all or nothing. There exists no middle ground in which you can control which information flows to which person. Sure you can set up groups, but who wants to go through all of that work?

A novel proposal is in the works. One that allows you true flexibility in constructing your online social network. One that doesn’t represent an all-or-nothing approach to social networks. One that doesn’t leave you questioning your own social network members and how they interact with you. Instead of a wide-open network that exchanges all information to all people, you will be able to create your own network and define how the information flows between the people or groups in your social network. Finally, you will be able to define your own social matrix, and you will be able to evolve your social matrix as your life changes. You won’t have to shed or prune friends [8]. This network will be able to learn or make inferences about your socialization style. And it will eventually learn how you socialize based on numerous aspects of your life.

Thanks to Vitak, Brandon, Josh, and Justin, for the inspiration for this post. Oh, and IPAs.

[0] About Spencer
[1] Facebook
[2] MySpace
[3] Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
[4] Scott Brown on Facebook Friendonomics
[5] The Future Of Facebook’s Feed Is Granular Filters
[6] Eliminating Cross Posting in Social Networks
[7] 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
[8] Pruning Social Networks Using Structural Properties and Descriptive Attributes

Continue reading »]]> A few things all of us are probably interested in:

• SSD Write Amplification:
  
  
  http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2329594,00.asp
  
  
• Journaling and write performance in ext4:
  
  
  http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/03/01/ssds-journaling-and-noatimerelatime/

The bottom-line as far as wear and tear: vfat is basically the same as a journaled FS from a wear-leveling standpoint, both are worst case. Thankfully vfat, being the worst case, forced the manufacturers to deal with the problem early. So all those outlandish claims I made about the world being flat and NTFS on thumbdrives are unfounded. Ted’s evidence does not speak to the amount of effort it takes to create an NTFS thumbdrive in Windows, however

Continue reading »]]> The past few days people in Linux blogosphere have been bringing back up the noatime/nodiratime mount options. These options disable the updating of file and directory access times. On many standard systems when you read file a “last read,” or access time, timestamp is written to disk. Disabling the writing of access times can provide performance increases in some conditions. Probably in a lot of conditions. Disabling the writing of these access times can be accomplished with the noatime and nodiratime mount options on a typical FS on a Linux system. Well in OS X and hfs+ nodiratime doesn’t exist but noatime does.

These options are old news to some. I had used them in Linux in the past – heck I think it was even in the standard Gentoo install docs – but I had never them a second thought since I moved to OS X. If you know me personally you know I can’t leave something untweaked. And those recent discussions got me to thinking…

Be forewarned, I haven’t gone to great lengths to explain the concepts of the notes below so if you’ve never seen a terminal this isn’t going to be comprehendible.

I wanted to mount my filesystems with the noatime option in OS X to disable the updates to access times for files. Problem is that, at least in 10.5, OS X no longer honors /etc/fstab for system disks, only for automount disks.

After wrestling with it for awhile I gave upon trying to find a location where I could specify mount options for system disks. I decided to just remount the disk later with the correct options. I created a StartupItem entry to remount the disk. I created a directory:

# mkdir /Library/StartupItems/spencer_boot

Then I created the StartupItem plist. Pretty straight forward.

# cat /Library/StartupItems/\
spencer_boot/StartupParameters.plist

{
Description = “Spencer’s Boot Script”;
Provides = (“spencer_boot”);
OrderPreference = “None”;
Messages =
{
start = “Starting Spencer’s Boot Script”;
stop = “Stoping Spencer’s Boot Script”;
restart = “Restarting Spencer’s Boot Script”;
};
}

Now I needed the shell script that would be run on boot.

# cat /Library/StartupItems/spencer_boot/spencer_boot

#!/bin/sh

. /etc/rc.common

case “$1″ in
start)

ConsoleMessage “Starting Spencer Boot: remounting root fs noatime”
mount_hfs -o noatime /dev/disk0s2 /

;;
esac

exit 0

This solved the problem for the root fs but I also use Filevault. If you don’t use Filevault you can stop reading here. How would I go about this? Same problem as before, no where to add mount time options. Additionally the fs is mounted upon login, not boot. So our previous method of creating a StartupItem won’t work. We’re going to have to do it later after it has been mounted – again.

<redacted> I did have some other information here but after review I wasn’t happy with advocating the “hack” I’m using. But the gist of it is to run something like this: /sbin/mount -u -o noatime,nosuid,nodev /dev/disk1s2 /Users/spencer/ after the volume is mounted. This happens after you enter your password. So a good place would be login items if you can figure out how to run mount as root from a user’s startup scripts.</redacted>

After you login and the system has completely finished running your startup apps open a terminal and type “mount”. You should see “noatime” listed as a mount option for you system and Filevault disks.

spencer_boot shell script
StartupParameters.plist for the spencer_boot StartupItem
remount_filevault for noatime in Filevault volumes

Continue reading »]]> My favorite BASH shell completion of all time is hostname completion for all of my favorite commands:

SSH_COMPLETE=( $(cat ~/.ssh/known_hosts | \
cut -f 1 -d ‘ ‘ | \
sed -e s/,.*//g | \
uniq | \
egrep -v [0123456789]) )

complete -o default -W “${SSH_COMPLETE[*]}” ssh scp sftp rsync nmap traceroute ping nslookup dig host nmap nc

I find most of the hosts I ssh into I use for basic network diagnostics. So performing completion for traceroute, ping, etc based on the contents of known_hosts works great. Just add it to your .bashrc.

Update: 2008/11/04

I’ve modified it to support completion of SVN commands leveraging the hostnames expanded during the SSH completion above:

SVN_COMPLETE=( $(svn -h|grep -e '^ '|awk '{ print $1; }') $SSH_COMPLETE )
complete -o default -W "${SVN_COMPLETE[*]} ${SSH_COMPLETE[*]}" svn

Adding these may lengthen your shell exec tasks.

I test at work. I work from home. But I will not test from home. Fix it yourself. (trademark pending).