Category: Linux

Categories
Linux ROOT

Quickfix: libroot-python-dev for Ubuntu Gutsy

Since my last post on building ROOT packages for Ubuntu the resourceful Christian Holm Christensen has got the unofficial Debian/Ubuntu ROOT repository back online. One problem is that due to a dh_python bug in Ubuntu, the libroot-python-dev package (required for PyROOT) is broken for Gutsy (and probably Feisty too), since it depends on python < 2.5. I’ve hacked the ‘control’ file to remove that broken dependency and repacked the .deb file to make a package that is installable and doesn’t break apt.

Download it here:
libroot-python-dev_5.17.05-3-quickfix_i386.deb

Steps to create this:

  • Get the libroot-python-dev package from the repository
    wget http://mirror.phy.bnl.gov/debian-root/...
    ubuntu/pool/main/r/root-system/libroot-python-dev_5.17.05-3_i386.deb
  • Unpack the .deb
    ar -x libroot-python-dev_5.17.05-3_i386.deb
  • Unpack the control data:
    tar -zxf control.tar.gz
  • Edit the file ‘control’ to fix the dependencies and bump the version number
  • Repack control data:
    tar -zcf control.tar.gz control md5sums postinst prerm
  • Repack the .deb
    ar -r libroot-python-dev_5.17.05-3-quickfix_i386.deb debian-binary control.tar.gz data.tar.gz

I hope to help fix the underlying issue soon but right I’ve got a ton of thesis-related work to plough through so this band-aid will have to do for now.

Update 2007-12-11:
I spent a morning last week tracking down this ROOT Python bug. Turns out there was a file not being deleted during the ‘clean’ stage of the debian package creation which led to a dependency confusion with python versions. New source packages have been uploaded which fix this issue:
deb-src http://mirror.phy.bnl.gov/debian-root unstable main contrib

Binary packages should be up shortly.

Update 2009-03-02:

Noticed a typo in the re-tarring command, now fixed.

Categories
Linux Physics ROOT

Building ROOT Packages on Ubuntu Feisty

I read with satisfaction the fact that Cern’s ROOT physics and data analysis framework has finally been integrated into Debian. I assumed that this would lead to easier installation on Ubuntu and in the future, hopefully, ROOT in the Ubuntu repositories. For a brief and happy period there was a third party repository with up-to-date and semi-official ROOT packages.

My hopes were dashed with the news that the Brookhaven machine hosting the repository lost a hard disk and the Ubuntu repository was down. I frequently need access to ROOT packages, so I just recently built .debs from the lastest stable release (5.16.00). Here’s a guide as to how to make it work:

Continue reading “Building ROOT Packages on Ubuntu Feisty”

Categories
Linux

Creating a RedHat 7.2 VMWare Image

Update: I have created a CentOS 2 virtual machine image for
VirtualBox which is available for download

I’ve created a VMWare image of a RedHat 7.2 operating system. I need one for compiling and testing programs since a cluster that I sometimes use runs this aging OS, and programs that I compile on my Ubuntu laptop or the Fedora Core 6 server at the lab don’t work properly on that system.

I would love to redistribute the base image for other people who might require it but unfortunately Red Hat’s trademark protection policy prevents this. I don’t have time to go through the image and remove all the trademark-covered files, so here’s a quick guide to getting a useful system in a short time. By useful, I mean with Subversion, GSL and Boost libraries.

Continue reading “Creating a RedHat 7.2 VMWare Image”
Categories
Linux ROOT

Scaling ROOT PostScript Files

I encountered some trouble today printing PostScript files from ROOT at smaller sizes. This is most useful to me because my lab notebook, heretically, is smaller than ‘letter’ size, which I find more convenient for carrying than the huge squared notebooks which seem to be the norm around here. I was looking for a quick way of printing PostScript at 80% scale.

Continue reading “Scaling ROOT PostScript Files”
Categories
Linux

Slug USB Audio

I use a Linksys NSLU2 (slug) network attached storage device on my home network. The device is great, primarily because it is low power and runs full-fledged Debian GNU/Linux which makes it extremely versatile. I use mine as

  • File server – runs Samba, serves up music, videos and photos to home network
  • Print server – allows wired and wireless PC/Mac/Linux computers to print to the laser printer
  • Backup Server – makes automatic rsync backups of my website
  • Music Server – serves up MP3s from a web interface to play on other computers
  • Music Jukebox – has web interface to play songs through the stereo, using a USB Audio device

All this, and for less than 25W — 14W for the slug, which has no moving parts, and 5W each for 2x320GB USB hard drives.

Update: Tenx chipset USB adapters suck! See the end of the post for more details.

Continue reading “Slug USB Audio”
Categories
Linux

Bash Output Redirection

I know that doing this:

foo 2>err.log > log

will capture the output to stderr and stdout.

I was just trying to redirect ALL the output to a single file. I thought this would work:

foo 2>&1 > log

But for some reason the stderr stuff was still being output to the console.

Luckily the top result in Google led me straight to the answer: To send all output to a file, use &>

foo &> log
Categories
Linux

My Backup Solution

For my first post I’m going to document the backup solution I use on my web server.

The backups happen in two parts:

Continue reading “My Backup Solution”