perl CPAN fails install DateTime::TimeZone

technology

doing a simple

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install DateTime::TimeZone

the screen starting throwing LOTS of errors at me. And they end along the lines of:

... skipped lots of output ...
t/10deprecated.t   (Wstat: 512 Tests: 0 Failed: 0)
  Non-zero exit status: 2
  Parse errors: No plan found in TAP output
Files=12, Tests=0,  0 wallclock secs ( 0.04 usr  0.03 sys +  0.26 cusr  0.05 csys =  0.38 CPU)
Result: FAIL
Failed 10/12 test programs. 0/0 subtests failed.
make: *** [test_dynamic] Error 255
  /usr/bin/make test -- NOT OK
Running make install
  make test had returned bad status, won't install without force

That does not look so promising – does it?

Actually the fix was easier than the output had let me to believe. Scrolling up I saw there were lots of errors starting like

Can't locate Params/Validate.pm in @INC ...

When I tried to do a

install Params::Validate

I got a similar error – just now Attribute/Handlers.pm

Much to my happiness

install Attribute::Handlers

actually worked. After that Params/Validate could be installed and finally I was back on track with installing the module that I actually wanted.

I do not know why my CPAN install is not having the right understanding of its proper pre requisites. Since this worked for me I probably will not find out …

blocking facebook on OS X

internet

It is quiet easy to block a website if you run a mac and are not afraid to edit system files.
Simply adding

127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com

in /etc/hosts takes care of all facebook traffc. Not only will the site be not accessible navigating to other page that run embedded facebook will also no longer tell Mr Zuckerberg & Co where you are going on the Internet.

fast mac keyboard

OSX

Just in case that this tip about fast keyboards should go away.

Enter

defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0

in the terminal and logout and login to have a super fast keyboard. Using 1 instead of 0 will make it slightly slower. 2 corresponds to the fastest setting accessible via System Preferences.

learning vim

technology

First there is ‘vimtutor’ which covers the basics.

Drew Neil publishes insightful screen casts about vim.

Bram Moolar himself has a great commented page about books he recommends about vim. [A little bit as if Jesus would point out his favorite Bibles]

These vim keyboard maps might be handy. Not sure since I have not used those yet.

LSI megaraid write cache via CacheCade

technology

If you like to use the MegaRAID write cache feature make sure that you indeed have a version 2.0 key.

Version 2 keys have the part number LSI00292 while Version 1 keys have the part number LSI00248.

It is possible to get the Version 1 flavor, since both keys share a part number. If you use a Version 1 key
nothing will say this in the MegaRAID “WebBIOS” software or any of the command line tools that LSI offers.
The only indicator will be the part number on the packaging and the fact that write cache will not be enabled.

assemble images randomly

linux misc

Want to assemble images randomly into one? That’s easy in the command line if you have imagemagick installed:

Assuming you have all pictures in the current directory:

for i in *jpg ; do mv "$i" $RANDOM.jpg ; done

this renames all files ending in jpg into files that have a random number. Files might get overwritten should the random number come up again.

Assembling is as well:

montage *jpg -mode concatenate outputfilename.jpg

If you would run this again outputfilename.jpg would be a used as source image as well.

avoid enum suggestions in mysql procedure analyse()

technology

If you don’t want to see enum suggestions in a mysql procedure analyse() call on a table then you simply run it like:


select * from table_name procedure analyse(1,1) \G

The (1,1) will always show you non enum solutions for each column.

Firefox 22 . Mac OS X 10.6.8 and Quicktime 7.6

OSX technology

It seems that in any dying project the bureaucrats, middle managers and otherwise challenged people are the last to leave. They cling on to past greatness and try to re-evoke what is gone.

The last Firefox update 22 put the latest available Quicktime Version 7.6.8 on their blocklist. Clips will not longer play, but a warning will show up, requesting an update. Only problem is that Quicktime 7.6.6 is not out of date for OS X 10.6.8. FF has acknowledged this and it is fixed. But a download of FF still has the broken blocklist.xml.

If you want or need to fix this manually you can do:

1) locate blocklist.xml for instance via

mdfind blocklist.xml

2) remove the 3 lines:

<pluginitem blockID="p408">
<match name="filename" exp="QuickTime Plugin\.plugin" />                      <versionrange minVersion="0" maxVersion="7.7.0" severity="0" vulnerabilitystatus="1"></versionrange>
</pluginitem>

3) restart Firefox

Hey Flickr …

internet

Hello Flickr,

next time that you remember that I did set up an account in 2006 and send me an email please make sure that your stuff, actually, well, how I can put this: works.

I knew about you. All along. I didn’t us you. Many reasons. Now there is 1TB of storage. That’s great. Just that I was unable to upload anythings since your uploader is broken.

Maybe wait another 7 years, and content me again if you have something else worth looking at. You had my attention. Bummer that you were not ready for it.

– your truly

linux

When installing opendkim on a Centos 5.7 or 5.9 system following the wonderful howto by Steven Jenkins mail stops going out and the maillog shows:

May 23 12:55:53 her9 postfix/cleanup[4836]: warning: cannot receive milters via service cleanup socket socket
May 23 12:55:53 her9 postfix/smtpd[4832]: warning: premature end-of-input on public/cleanup socket while reading input attribute name
May 23 12:55:53 her9 postfix/smtpd[4832]: warning: cannot send milters to service public/cleanup socket
May 23 12:55:53 her9 postfix/smtpd[4832]: 8DBDB4D48004: client=localhost.localdomain[127.0.0.1]
May 23 12:55:53 her9 postfix/master[4824]: warning: process /usr/libexec/postfix/cleanup pid 4836 killed by signal 11
May 23 12:55:53 her9 postfix/master[4824]: warning: /usr/libexec/postfix/cleanup: bad command startup -- throttling

The syslog is even scarier:

May 23 12:55:53 her9 kernel: cleanup[4836]: segfault at 0000000000000008 rip 00002b152350db10 rsp 00007fff855746e8 error 6

Yes, a segfault. Things work better when SELinux gets disabled.
Without going deeply into the reason of this incompatibility the following commands make opendkim work while SELinux is still active.

This command will show you what did cause trouble today, and convert it already in to the syntax for an ‘allow’:

ausearch -m avc -ts today | audit2allow


If what you see is indeed only about opendkim you then can go ahead and install this:

ausearch -m avc -ts today | audit2allow -M yourdesiredmodulename
semodule -i yourdesiredmodulename.pp

Things work much better then.

The Centos SELinux How To is a helpful resource for this kind of thing.