Posts tagged Ubuntu

Google doesn't know how to set up this card on Linux yet, so... I use Ubuntu. Debian uses the same structure for pppd config files. Users of other distributions may have to adjust some things. Here are the PPPD configuration files that work for me. They may contain some unnecessary things, but at least they work. Substitute providername with any name you like, 1234 with your PIN, and apn with your GPRS APN ('banga' for Bite GSM users in Lithuania).

I keep my home directory in a Subversion repository. A month ago that repository broke down. Subversion developers were unable to help me without access to the repository, which I didn't want to grant, since my repository contains some private data (Jabber account passwords and the like). I spent a day debugging the problem until I found the cause (a loop in a data structure). Then I was too busy to do anything, and a month went by without regular backups.

Backups: everyone knows they're important, but no one does them until they lose data (or barely escape losing data, if they're lucky). My old laptop's old hard disk almost died once, and that made me think about backing things up. I read an inspiring article by Joey Hess, and decided to keep most of my home directory (all the numerous small files) in a Subversion repository on a remote server.

I upgraded to Breezy yesterday morning (1 hour dist-upgrade, 1 hour patching and compiling a kernel to fix radeon power drain bug, 2 hours figuring out why Firefox won't start). I decided to try out Beagle. sudo apt-get install beagle beagled best& This is all it takes to install it, run the indexing daemon, and run the search utility that sits in a tray icon. (I had enabled user_xattr in my /etc/fstab a while ago.

Bitlbee is the best thing ever! apt-get install bitlbee, open a new server tab in X-Chat, connect to localhost and there's a friendly bot that walks you through the configuration of this incredible IRC to instant messaging gateway. I can now use Jabber painlessly!