Brian's Blog

Well, I'm all done. I passed the last test! I am officially upgraded to MCSE on Windows 2003. I'm glad that's over with.

Now, what game am I going to waste my life on? I still haven't finished Metroid Prime yet, and there is always Neverwinter Nights 2 among others.

I'm not sure why I fall for these things and keep taking them. I mean, you take one and you've taken pretty much all of them I guess. Anyway, here's my nerdy results.



Big surprise eh?

There's nothing to see here. Move along...move along.

I used to swear by Linuxpackages.net for nearly all of my Slackware packages. Apparently it didn't make really big news but I just learned that a couple of months ago Linuxpackages.net has intentionally released a malicious ISO on P2P networks that included a package that would nuke your HD if you used it. I guess they wanted to make sure you bought it from them rather than downloaded it somewhere.

According the the article linked above the following text was included in the WARNING file:

Standard information here. We take no responsibility for what any of these packages may do. They are checked but for only minor things. As with any software you download you should check it very well before installing it.

Also if you have downloaded an ISO of this archive from a P2P network or purchased it from a source other than Linuxpackages be warned there is a package included in the archive that will remove all the files from your HD and yes we put it there to prevent unauthorized mirrors and leeches that try and make money off of the hard work of many without giving them credit. These ISO.s that are out there are not authorized by us and should not be trusted. The archive is available for purchase from us or you can download the packages from authorized mirrors. To see the list go to http://www.linuxpackages.net/mirrors.php

LinuxPackages.net

This sort of thing by anyone is absolutely not cool in anyway whatsoever. Not to mention terribly illegal (IANAL). Of all the people who should know that this is wrong you would think it would be an organization that is centered around Open Source Software like Linuxpackages.net. This sort of thing is usually in indication of a deeper issue within an organization and shows us where it's true priorities lie. In this case, that priority is money. Either that, or there is some colossal stupidity in the ranks and they didn't really think their actions through.

So, this is just one more thing to urge me to stick with SlackBuilds or even CheckInstall if it is ever updated to work on Slackware 12.0.

I was just lurking about on ##slackware at freenode and learned that Slackware is 14 years old today. Supposedly Slackware 1.0 was released on July 16, 1993.

I know this is old news, but I finally read that the former head of the Chinese Food and Drug Administration has been executed for corruption. Hmm...executed for corruption and causing the deaths of innocents for personal gain? Sheesh, here in the United States such trivial actions generally get a slap on the wrist. You know, a fine and maybe some jail time if it doesn't get pardoned or commuted.

Don't get me wrong, death sentences are as harsh as you can get and should not be given out lightly. Still, our system of punishment for government corruption seems to be failing and maybe we need to kick it up a notch to get the message across to our public "servants".

Perhaps we have something to learn from China in this regard. What do you think?

As I've said, I've been messing with Slackbuild scripts since checkinstall is unhappy with the latest Slackware. I have to say one thing so far about them and that is, "Why didn't I mess with these things earlier?" There are a few apps I feel I need and don't really want to wait and rely on someone else to make a package on Linuxpackages.net. One of them is digiKam. Of course, it and it's dependencies aren't available yet on Linuxpackages.net and the slackbuild at slackbuilds.org is only validated for Slackware 11.0 in addition to be a slightly older version. Lucky for me all but 2 of the dependencies already existed on Slackbuilds.org so I only needed to make scripts for the 2 missing dependencies and digiKam itself. That wasn't all to hard as I just grabbed an existing script and modified it accordingly. The resulting packages seem to work OK so I submitted them to Slackbuilds.org if they want them. Maybe it'll save someone else a bit of time.

Making a Slackbuild from scratch would take much more work but then you'd only have to do the work once as the script will create a .tgz for you. And once the initial one is made it seems fairly easy to updated it to newer versions of the thing it's meant to build. I see the benefits of of Slackbuilds over existing packages. Those being:

• The resulting package is compiled specifically for you system.
• You can read the script and see what options are compiled in which could be useful if the program isn't working as expected.
• It makes a tgz which can be installed via the installpkg command which is nice for if you want to ever remove it from your system. Not every makefile seems to have the uninstall option making it sometimes difficult to get a manually compiled program removed.
• You don't have to rely on someone else to make the package and, since you compiled at and can review the script, you will know exactly how the package was made and can easily make changes.
• The resulting package will be true to "The Slackware Way" if the script is written correctly.

If that isn't nice enough I ran into a really nice script on Chess Griffin's Blog. Yup, that's the Chess of the Linux Reality Podcast. Anyway, the script is called buildsbo. What it does is rsyncs the Slackbuilds.org repo to your system and will automatically get the source for you, validate it's checksum, and run the slackbuild for you in one command. For example, to install digiKam it would simply be:

# ./buildsbo digikam

And when it's all done you'll have the .tgz in /tmp. Pretty cool eh?

It seems rather odd having two such polar opposite things in the same post but it is what it is.

So, I put Slackware 12.0 on my system which had Slack 11.0 on it. It's gone pretty smooth so far. Normally I would have just upgraded but this time, after something like 4 or 5 years I decided to do a fresh install to clean cruft. The cruft that I had was caused by inexperience and now I'm hoping to hold of cruft for longer now that I know a bit more. I think I mentioned all of this in a previous post somewhere. Things are all 100% rosy though. 12.0 is so new that Linuxpackages.net doesn't have much which means I have to compile my own stuff. Now, I wouldn't mind that but checkinstall is also not compatible with 12.0 so I won't even be able to easily include what I compile in the package manager. I've used a few Slackbuilds for some stuff. I'm going to either have to wait, or write my own slackbuild scripts. I'm considering trying to update a few slackbuilds that are for 11.0 and contributing it back. At least it would be educational.

On an unrelated note I've been having much of my life consumed by Metroid Prime. Man, this is a good game. It's not much for story line but the action is more than enough. I'm at the point where I have to fight the Omega Pirate who is repeatedly kicking my little butt all over the place. I know the pattern on what has to be done to kill the bugger though, so it's a matter of practice. Eventually he'll go down.

Now for the MCSE part. I've finally gone and schedules my last MCSE exam (70-296) for July 27th. I guess I need to pull myself away from the GameCube and do a final review. Wish me luck.