Strav's blog

One of my major hesitations about upgrading the myth frontends to kernel 2.6 was the LIRC modules. The modules are not included with the kernel source distributions and can be tough to compile. Well, since Zap2it discontinued their free guide data service and I had upgrade Myth to accomodate the new DataDirect service, I was forced to update libc6 and thus the kernel to 2.6. Getting the LIRC modules to compile has been every bit as fun as I had anticipated and we have spent several days using the wireless keyboard to control Myth since the remote control hasn't been working. With the help of the following 2 pages I was able to finally get the modules to compile and load.

This article describes the 'new' method of compiling the lirc modules. Basically use module-assistant to do it. It would have been fantastic if the documentation had mentioned this (fantastic meaning several days worth of frustration and effort could have been saved).

Version 8 of LIRC apparently needs to have the serial port configured properly as this page details. The command is "setserial /dev/ttyS1 uart none" and as illustrated, I have added this to the /etc/rc.local file so it is executed every time the system is started.

After one of my recent system updates, I started getting these cron errors daily.

/etc/cron.daily/rkhunter:
PHP Warning: mime_magic: type search/400 \\input text/x-tex invalid in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: mime_magic: type search/400 \\section text/x-tex invalid in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: mime_magic: type search/400 \\setlength text/x-tex invalid in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: mime_magic: type search/400 \\documentstyle text/x-tex invalid in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: mime_magic: type search/400 \\chapter text/x-tex invalid in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: mime_magic: type search/400 \\documentclass text/x-tex invalid in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: mime_magic: type regex [Cc]onstant[[:space:]]+[Ss]tory text/x-inform invalid in Unknown on line 0


After much searching, this is the workaround:

In the /usr/share/misc/magic.mime file, find the section that begins "# TeX documents, from Daniel Quinlan" and comment out the lines in that section.

# TeX documents, from Daniel Quinlan (quinlan@yggdrasil.com)
#0 search/400 \\input text/x-tex
#0 search/400 \\section text/x-tex
#0 search/400 \\setlength text/x-tex
#0 search/400 \\documentstyle text/x-tex
#0 search/400 \\chapter text/x-tex
#0 search/400 \\documentclass text/x-tex

# Type: Inform interactive fiction language
# URL: http://www.inform-fiction.org/
# From: Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>
#0 regex [Cc]onstant[[:space:]]+[Ss]tory text/x-inform

NOTE: For Debian, it appears that this file is located at /usr/share/file/magic.mime

FINALLY!!! I've been wanting to do this for ages since I have several laptops with only USB 1.0 hubs.

The problem:

Whenever I plug-in my USB flash drive or wireless card (both of which are USB 2.0 devices), I get the annoying ballon/message pop up stating "This Device Can Perform Faster" (if plugged into a USB 2.0 port etc).

The solution:

In Device Manager, click on the USB host controller,
Click the Advanced tab
Check the box on the bottom of the window that says "Don't tell me about USB errors."

This needs to be done for each USB controller listed under USB in Device Manager so that the error message will not appear no matter which controller the device gets plugged into.

Being primarily a Linux user, I'm used to the GNU tar program with gzip included. UNIX tar (at least HP-UX) doesn't have gzip included as part of the tar option set. Here's how to do a tar+gzip as a single command:

tar cvf - . | gzip > ~/backup-020916.tar.gz

Sort by the 5th field, numeric, descending:

ls -l |sort -k5rn,5