Julien Valroff's weblog and personal homepage
Posts tagged Geek
Laptop as desktop computer replacement
Nov 2nd
I am currently studying the possibility to change my current desktop computer for a laptop. This is the first time I am looking at these powerful laptops, as I now only use cheap laptops for small office use (email, web etc.) when traveling.
My aim is now to use a laptop for my daily tasks: picture editing, small development, multimedia etc.
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Ubuntu 8.10 as a guest in VirtualBox
Oct 27th
Though I only use Debian on all my machines, I like playing with new Ubuntu releases, just in case I have to set it up on someone else’s machine. I use VirtualBox for testing.
When trying the upcoming new Ubuntu 8.10 release, and after installing the VirtualBox clients on the guest, I had the following issues: More >
Firmware update for Sony DSLR-A700
Sep 20th
Sony has recently published an updated firmware for the DSLR-A700 camera.
Changes since oldest v3 firmware are:
- The choice to select auto exposure bracketing (single & continuous) with 3 shots in 2 EV steps has been added.
- The choice to turn [Off] the High ISO NR feature has been added.
- Improvement of the image quality in high ISO setting.
- Improvement of the auto white balance and D-Range Optimizer performance.
- Improvement of reliability for communication between camera body and vertical grip.
Though I haven’t yet tested the improvements of the image quality using high sensibility or D-Range Optimizer, I mostly appreciate the possibility to make 3 shots at +/-2EV in auto-bracketing, which eases creation of HDR or exposure-blended images.
Download link for Windows work well on GNU/Linux (using Wine to extract the firmware file): http://support.sony-europe.com/dime/digistill/alpha/alpha.aspx?site=&m=DSLR-A700&site=odw_en_GB&odw_model=DSLR-A700
Note that upgrading the firmware resets the counter for file naming.
How to fix DNS zone serial numbers
May 24th
A small memo in case it happens again… Maybe this can also help others…
I have made a typing error when incrementing a zone serial number this morning (I thought we were in year 2009!). I realized this error after the transfer was made to my secondary server, and I couldn’t figure out how I could fix this: if the serial number on the slave server is lower than the serial number on the master, the slave server will attempt to update its copy of the zone.
I have read some websites explaining one should add 2147483647 (2^31-1) to the number, reload the zone, let the slave get updated and revert to the appropriate serial number.
Unfortunately, this solution hasn’t worked for me.
I have read in RFC 1912 (section 2.2 – SOA records), that the system was planned until year 4294. I have henced updated the number of my master server to year 4294123199 (ie. the last possible serial number), reloaded the zone. After the transfer was propagated to the slave, I could simply revert to a standard serial number.
Server migration successful
May 24th
All my web-services are now running on a new host (namely nix.kirya.net).
The DNS transition is not completely over, but should be ok tomorrow.
It appears everything is working well.
Please report any issue you might notice.
Hosting problems and side effects of the OpenSSL vulnerability
May 19th
I am in the process of moving all my services (including this website and my mail server) to a new host (actually a virtual server). Until now, almost all of them were (hum, are… see below) hosted on my home server on a DSL line.
The aim is to ease maintenance, reduce power usage, and avoid any risk of fire when not at home.
Most of the websites and the mail server were moved to the new virtual server at the beginning of the week.
I had to postpone my backup configuration to deal with the OpenSSL vulnerability.
Unfortunately, one of the filer of my new hosting company crashed on Thursday and all the data of my virtual host have been lost.
The server is still unreachable, I had to move back to my home server on Friday.
This lead to some outages on all my websites in the meantime. Sorry for any inconvenience.
I have also lost a few e-mail (which I have received on the new host, but not yet read, ie. not yet in my MUA cache). If you sent something I haven’t yet answered to, please send it again.
I hope I will be able to work on the virtual server again next week-end.
iPod nano video
Dec 26th
My girlfriend received an iPod nano video for Christmas.
As for music, it works fine with rhythmbox from experimental rebuilt against latest libgpod library.
But I can’t find any Linux software which would allow us to transfer pictures. I have tried gpixpod, but it seems the iPod is too new as it doesn’t even detect it. iTunes does not run with Wine.
I think I will try to set up iPod Linux some day…
libpam-gnome-keyring
Dec 9th
Some time ago, I had explained why I thought I would never use network-manager, especially because of the gnome-keyring password which should be typed in at every new session.
The last evolution-data-server upload introduced a gnome-keyring binding which forced me to inquire again on how to avoid this annoying gnome-keyring password.
This led to the libpam-gnome-keyring which allows the keyring to be unlocked automatically at login from the display manager. This is great!
I am now using network-manager on my laptop!
I am still puzzled about the fact that there is no network connection until someone logs in, but I guess I will live with this, especially with a desktop machine.
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