Tin Foil Hat Show - Episode 004

Success!! Well, my bar is low.  I have made it to Episode 4.   I've really appreciated the feedback and participation in the podcast so far.  You guys are a real credit to "fans". Please find the link to the feed on the right of the blog or here.

The podcast is also available to play directly online at the Fuzion Podcast Network.

For the instructions to get the show notes please see the instructions as posted in the post for the first episode.  These instructions haven't changed.

Feedback as always is welcome, tinfoilhatshow@gmail.com or you can contact me by any of the other methods listed here on this blog.  Please remember that the show is very new and still settling in, but constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Enjoy and please do send me feedback and corrections, it can only make the show better.  A permanent link to the show's rss feed is listed on the right side of the blog.

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CafeNinja

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tin Foil Hat Show - Promo

For promo's of the Tin Foil Hat Show, please feel free to download and use with authorization of the original artist the following mp3 files:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/396749/TFH-promo-1m.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/396749/TFH-promo-29sec.mp3

Thanks for spreading the word, if you use the promo in your show please let me know in the comments so I can return the favor.

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CafeNinja

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

CLI - Vim and Awk

Vim and awk.  It is great to make a list, then modify that list and save it out.  These types of tools are why using any text editor on Linux is way more powerful than on the competition's operating system.  Just like with most solutions in Linux is that the tools are probably too many and do too much so the first steps are overwhelming with choices.

While a use case that doesn't happen every day here is the quick geek-mode of explaining a recent use I had.   Situation: home server runs dnsmasq (dns and dhcp server) for the home network.  I needed to ping assigned IP's for a monitoring script.  This is the geek-mode of explaining what I did.  With the resulting screenshot.

$vim fake-hosts   

This makes the new empty file.

:r !cat /etc/hosts

Fills the file with the current hosts file contents.  I've cleaned up comments and lines that won't change by using "dd" to delete the self referring IP's and lines that start with "#" since they aren't really IP addresses

%!awk '{print "ping "$1}'

This takes the IP column and prints it as the second column while creating a new first column with only the word 'ping' and notice that there is the space included inside the double quotes.

Remember, if you make a mistake with one of these that while in the CMD mode of vim the keyboard command "u" does undo just as you might expect it should. 

This process works differently than a search and replace where you need to change the subnet, it would make since to just do a search and replace of "168.0." -> "168.2." which would replace only that value.

This process works if you need to do transitive work on a text file that isn't a csv format.  Note that with this tool it is easy to take a list of results and make a csv with something like  %!awk '{print $1 ", " $2 ", " $3}'  and the 3 column file turns into a csv.  But wait, the original is correct, but in the wrong order, make your corrected csv with the following -> %!awk '{print $2 ", " $3 ", " $1}' with awesome results.

Play with it, have fun.

--
CafeNinja

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

MythTv troubles

Well, I have had a couple of issues this month with mythtv.  I should clarify that statement, not with mythtv so much per se as with the mythtv frontend builds.

On my home network during the run of Ubuntu 10.04 I had the server, 4 Ubuntu desktops and 2 Mac's all using the mythserver that was in the standard 10.04(.01) repo's without any issues.

When Ubuntu 10.10 was released I did a single clean install on my netbook to ensure the clean install went well and there were no other issues when I discovered that the 10.10 Ubutnu mythtv backend and frontend had been upgraded to 0.23+patches (build 26437). 

While independently this gave me no worries since I knew once I upgraded all Ubuntu machines everything would jive up and be right with the world.   And to their Apple-ish credit, as long as I did just that, everything worked out dandy and without issue.  Five complete in-line upgrades of the server and desktops and all worked smashingly well.

Oh, save two.  Turns out there haven't been any "nightly" builds of the MacOS version of the frontend of myth using the 26437 build, so any version of the mythtv frontend of MacOS just fails claiming the database is 9 versions too old.

This issue would normally not even raise an eyebrow since one of the two machines actually dual-boots to Ubuntu so I can watch from that side however the last machine in question would be the Mac Mini in the living room attached to the large screen TV.  When it's easy, the family is good at managing the situation and watching their media in comfort, but now, I have no answer and only hope and pray someone updates the MacOS frontend.

I love open source and I know this is one of the perils of version control that isn't strictly released and maintained by some monster company.  But I would like for this article to serve as advise for anyone deploying "systems" or "servers" on their own.  Beware, there is a reason why SysAdmins and Network Eng get paid the money they do and it is very easy for a home user to forget to check such things and he/she should do their due diligence if they don't want to break things that they and their family depend on, which happens if you build it well :)

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CafeNinja

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tin Foil Hat Show - Episode 003

As an additional appointment in the continuing saga that is the Tin Foil Hat Show, it would seem that episode 003 has been dropped in the feed.   Please find the link to the feed on the right of the blog or here.

The podcast is also available to play directly online at the Fuzion Podcast Network.

For the instructions to get the show notes please see the instructions as posted in the post for the first episode.  These instructions shouldn't change.

Feedback as always is welcome, tinfoilhatshow@gmail.com or you can contact me by any of the other methods listed here on this blog.  Please remember that the show is very new and still settling in, but constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Enjoy and please do send me feedback and corrections, it can only make the show better.  A permanent link to the show's rss feed is listed on the right side of the blog.


--
CafeNinja

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.