Category Archives: Linux

What I Really Hate About Windows

Posted on 2010-07-13 by Stefan Rubner

I don’t run Windows regularly. I use Mac OS X. I use Ubuntu. I use Solaris. But when I need to run Windows it will never, ever fail to remind me why I don’t run Windows. It’s as simple as … Continue reading →

Posted in Helden der Technik, Linux, Mac, Software, Solaris, the ugly truth | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Scan Magic With Scan Tailor

Posted on 2010-07-05 by Stefan Rubner

If you do a lot of newspaper scanning you know the problem: grey backgrounds, blurry pictures. No longer. Using Scan Tailor, a high quality scan is just six mouse clicks away. Scan Tailor is available for Windows and Linux – … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Software | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Bash: Dynamic Variables

Posted on 2010-06-24 by Stefan Rubner

Every once in a while I need to use dynamic variables in shell scripts for doing things like echo ${{$foo}_bar} but unfortunately it won’t work like shown in the example above. What will work however is this:

Posted in Bash, Helden der Technik, Linux, Software, Solaris | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Hard Typing Ahead

Posted on 2010-05-14 by Stefan Rubner

This camera module is known to be mounted upside-down in some notebooks. Applications that use the libv4l library should display the video correctly, as libv4l detects upside-down cameras and rotates the image automatically. See Hans de Goede’s post on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Hardware, Helden der Technik, Linux, Multimedia | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Apache Patch: Pass environment variables to backends connected via mod_proxy_ajp

Posted on 2009-11-20 by Stefan Rubner

One popular method to connect Tomcat or JBoss to the Apache web server is using mod_proxy_ajp. This of course works very well except for the case where you want to pass some environment variables to the backends. This is especially … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Networks, Software, internet | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Varnish 2.0.5 released

Posted on 2009-11-09 by Stefan Rubner

As mentioned here, Varnish 2.0.5 has been released. Changes include performance improvements on Linux and reduced memory consumption when processing ESI. Going to test it on this site in a few …

Posted in Linux, Networks, Software | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Give more threads to Varnish

Posted on 2009-11-04 by Stefan Rubner

When running my preferred proxy cache Varnish on Linux I realized that I couldn’t start enough threads on heavily accessed systems. As I found out, reducing the stack size is the key to get to the number I need. Oh … Continue reading →

Posted in Helden der Technik, Linux, Networks, Software, internet | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Make your ReadyNAS the NTP time server of your network

Posted on 2009-10-06 by Stefan Rubner

Since it wasn’t that much work I decided to honor the request and build the server component of the NTP protocol suite for the ReadyNAS Duo/NV/NV+/1100/X6. There are two archives available: NTP-Server_4.2.0a-readynas-0.9.2.bin This is the standard version that would be … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Networks, ReadyNAS, Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

CentOS5/RHEL5 fix for ImageMagick “cpio: MD5 sum error” and “cpio: read”

Posted on 2009-09-04 by Stefan Rubner

Back on CentOS 5 for a customer I stumbled across a little problem while installing RMagick for Ruby. Said interface between Ruby and the Image Magick tools requires Image Magick in a version greater then 6.3.5 to be installed on … Continue reading →

Posted in Helden der Technik, Linux, Software | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

iSCSI-Target 0.4.17svn220 fixes memory leaks

Posted on 2009-08-17 by Stefan Rubner

I just upgraded the iSCSI support for the older ReadyNAS line to version 0.4.17svn 220. Most notably this version includes a fix for some memory leaks in the previous versions. For more information see the details or if you aren’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Networks, ReadyNAS, Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

VLC media player 1.0.0 – Goldeneye

Posted on 2009-07-08 by Stefan Rubner

The best video player for Linux, Mac and Windows finally made it to version 1.0.0 ;) Go grab it here. You’ll get:

Posted in Entertainment, Linux, Mac, Software | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Bypass fsck on Linux startup

Posted on 2009-07-01 by Stefan Rubner

While re-installing the server hosting this site yesterday I ran into an interesting problem: The inital run of fsck on booting up the Linux image provided by my hoster would would report a file system inconsistency and wait for either … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Networks, Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

10 questions to ask before migrating to Linux

Posted on 2009-05-22 by Stefan Rubner

If you’re thinking about making the switch to Linux, Jack Wallen is all for it — but only if you approach the migration with your eyes open. He recommends that you evaluate a number of key issues before taking this … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How To Convert Any Video File Format Under Linux

Posted on 2009-05-20 by Stefan Rubner

This video tutorial will explain how to losslessly convert any video file format, including quicktime .mov, flash .flv files, open source .ogv, .mp4, .wmv, .asf and more. I show you how to install ffmpeg, check the formats and codecs available … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Misc, Software | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Astaro PostgreSQL Fix

Posted on 2009-05-19 by Stefan Rubner

For some months now my Astaro firewall was unable to start the PostgreSQL service on boot. Since this didn’t seem to have any real impact on function or performance, I started some feeble attempts at fixing it but never succeeded … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Misc, Software, security | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

ReadyNAS 2100: Now for the Racks ;)

Posted on 2009-05-13 by Stefan Rubner

Netgear today released the ReadyNAS 2100 for 19″ racks. As with the ReadyNAS Pro and the ReadyNAS NVX, the ReadyNAS 2100 uses an Intel CPU to power the Linux kernel inside. For the moment, the ReadyNAS 2100 comes in two … Continue reading →

Posted in Hardware, Linux, ReadyNAS | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

SCO just won’t die

Posted on 2009-05-07 by Stefan Rubner

They really don’t know when it’s time to quit. The Department of Justice’s Trustee program, which has finally had enough of SCO’s stalling tactics and failed reorganization attempts, has filed a motion to transition the company to Chapter 7. SCO … Continue reading →

Posted in Helden der Lyrik, Linux, Misc, Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Nagios forged: Icinga proposes to do better

Posted on 2009-05-07 by Stefan Rubner

Now it happened to Nagios: Users and parts of the original development team have formed a forge of the original code. The new project is named ICINGA (ugh, all caps) Icinga. Now, why the fork. That’s what the people behind … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Misc, Software, security | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Mirrorbrain: A DIY-CDN-Framework

Posted on 2009-05-06 by Stefan Rubner

I really wonder how this has managed to slip my attention for so long. With MirrorBrain you can set up a distributed content delivery network. What it does is to redirect users according to GeoIP location detection to the server … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Misc, Software | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

ReadyNAS Package PHP5-IMAP: Dependency Hell

Posted on 2009-05-04 by Stefan Rubner

I just uploaded the PHP5-IMAP package to ReadyNASFreeware.org. This was harder than expected because of some really ugly dependency problems introduced with RAIDiator 4.1.5.

Posted in Linux, ReadyNAS, Software | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment