Mindstab.net

So Ubuntu hardy doesn't ship with the handy git wrapper/tool cogito because git has all the features in it incoperated... somewhere...

But documentation is surprisingly sparse. Anyways, if you want to set up a git repo nowadays using just git, it should go as something like follows:

root@server # cd /git
root@server # mkdir newrepo
root@server # chgrp git newrepo
root@server # chmod g+ws newrepo
root@server # cd newrepo
root@server # git init

And if this is a public repository

root@server # touch git-daemon-export-ok

On the client side.

user@client $ cd project
user@client $ git init
user@client $ git add *
user@client $ git commit -m "Initial code dump"
user@client $ git remote add origin ssh://user@git.server.com/git/reponame
user@client $ git push origin master

and after that regular

user@client $ git push

works just fine.

Upgraded the kernel on the server today. That went fine but the reboot exposed some library update problems with moving from libexpat 1.9.* to 2. revdep-rebuild -X solved it. All is good.

I just stumbled on an really neat simple little article on how dead easy rsync is for doing backup work. It's easy to use, can use existing infrastructure (SSH) and does diffs to minimize data transmission.

It's as simple as this

rsync -a -e ssh Documents haplo@kvasir.mindstab.net:~/backup

And then the reverse to get new stuff.

The full article is at www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/10951_1573881_2. I'm doing this with a bunch of my data now! I'm excited because I'd been thinking about setting up some backup solution for a bit but this is so trivially easy and more than good enough it's delightful.

So I finally got around to setting up a Jabber/XMPP server. Every now and again over the last few years I've thought I should (like when LiveJournal started offering it with accounts, and when Google Talk popped up) but I never got around to it.

Anyways, today I sat down and installed EJabberd, a decent Jabber server. The quirkiest part of the whole thing is it is written in Erlang and it's configuration files appear to be Erlang code as well. Still, I wandered through the install with the help of the Gentoo Wiki EJabberd documentation and got it set up. It was fairly straight forward (not dead easy, but not super bad). I had to disable a couple of modules in the configuration file till the testEJabberd.sh test file stopped giving me errors but hen it worked. Right now, it's just a one user system, me, but thats all I need right now. Now I should be able to chat with people on Google Talk, Livejournal, and other Jabber servers. How very open source of me ;).

My account is dan@mindstab.net.

Weird, some how my wordpress plugin for grabbing my mobile pics from picassa just re-added all the pics from there. I can only assume google probably screwed up and some how made all the items 'new' in the rss feed or something? Or the plugin screwed up. Either way I caught it and deleted the entries and killed the plugin. Annoying to have like 10 new entries of pics I took in the summer. :/

So I've been adding a lot to my RSS reading list lately. In an attempt to broaden my world view a bit I added some stuff from the BBC and CBC. And for my own interest in random things I added some stuff like grinding.be, Coilhouse and a few other treats. I've also expanded my geek reading with sites like Phoronix and a few others. So in summery, lots of new additions!

Anyways, through all this, planet.mindstab.net grew less and less reflective of what I've been reading, but I finally got around to refreshing it's list of feeds, so go take a look, thats what I read or skim every day. It's a massive flow of information on things I wish to stay informed on. (The full reading list is displayed on the right side of the site, it's not small :))

As a note, the PlanetPlanet software that runs it is glitchy. I cannot seem to make it do times properly, and it insists on adding my timezone onto everything (+8 hours) even though no other webapp or app on the server has this problem.

Adding tagging support to Gallery has revitalized my interest in it some. Also, easy F-Spot syncing helps. So I spent some time today and tagged a ton of the photos in there. Check out the Tag Cloud at my gallery now. A bunch of old shots of me and friends and a ton of old screenshots too.

So this has been in the works for a bit, and now that I have the basic server software up and running I can let the cat out of the bag! We (some friends and I) are having ourselves an AI competition writing Go bots (Go the ancient Japanese board game). All the details of the competition are on the wiki at ai.mindstab.net and the client (and server) software can be gotten from ai.mindstab.net/wiki/index.php/Goserver.

Anyone who is interested is more than welcome to join our merry little band of novice AI hackers. Just sign up on the wiki and make your presence known.

As for writing the Goserver software, that was an interesting little adventure. We built it around GnuGo's twogtp.py initially. This was my first time really working in Python, and I've got to say it was a pleasure. The language does a really credible job of getting out of your way and just letting you do stuff. There are a few odd little things about the language but once you get up to speed coding in it they hardly seem a problem. I still think I like Ruby overall for elegance, but until Ruby 2.0 lands with it's proper VM, execution speed isn't even comparable. Not that for this server that was an issue, more that we had a bunch of already written python code in gtptwo.py, which is is why Python was chosen. Still defiantly pleased, it's a fine language. So yeah, fun times.

As for a little more history for the 0 people who are interested, we're using GTP (Go Text Protocol) for the communication between engines and server. It's a protocol penned by the folks at GNU for GNU Go but being adopted else where. So there's plenty of software that can speak GTP as a client and several engine vs engine pieces of code using GTP out on the web GPLed for public use. However, running an actually Go server means you need to facilitate lots and lots of matches and also keep track of scores. Code for all that for the different internet Go servers is all closed source, which is why we had to write our own before we could start the competition. That done, we're all ready to Go!

Upgraded from Apache 2.0.59 to 2.2.6. Configuration file rearrangement again. Not bad though. They generally seem to be doing logical things. Took a little bit to make everything work, there were some Apache Directory Allow/Deny problems with my vhost setup but I got those sorted out pretty quickly and now everything seems to be working again. Let me know if you see anything broken but it seems like a pretty smooth migration :)

I'm beginning to wonder about my city's power system as of late. There have been a couple of power outages in the last year in my general area, and several other in neighboring areas.

Ah well, my APC UPS did the trick keeping my server powered and online. I gave it an extra boost it wasn't thrilled about in an effort to the power last longer by plugging my UPS into my XPower Pocket PowerPack (The one I picked up in the summer to power my IPaq and IRiver during a cabin trip). The thing says it can portably run a laptop for a while, and it has a 3 prong AC power outlet on it, but my UPS, probably understandably, insisted on flashing its faulty wiring light while sucking power from the thing. Still, it worked. You on the net never knew I had another power outage.

There's something kind of satisfying about being on a dark block in a dark house, but still having a server connected to the internet.