the birdhouse in my soul

Fabian (of RPMforge and CentOS fame) wrote a blogpost about using pv (pipe viewer) to watch a datastream through a pipe, such as a dd-over-ssh copy from one machine to another. I knew pv existed, but I've often used dd on systems where pv wasn't available (e.g. rescue CD), or used dd without sending data through pipes. Even in these situations, you can keep an eye on dd's progress: open another terminal window, then run # while sleep 10; do killall -USR1 dd; done and switch back to the shell where dd is running. It will show its status every 10 seconds. Note, your version of dd needs to support this. The dd from RHEL3 doesn't (version 4), but the dd from RHEL5 does (version 5) !

Today at VMworld Europe 2009, VMware demoed a preview of their vCenter management server running on Linux in a virtual machine, pre-packaged in virtual appliance format. Aside from that fact that this is a great idea with all the advantages that virtual appliances have to offer, and that a lot of people have been waiting for, it was a really pleasant surprise to me that they chose to build it on top of CentOS 5 ! It'll take months before a final version will become available for download to VMware vCenter customers, but it's going to happen, that's for sure. Kudos to the CentOS team !

I used VirtualCenter (vCenter) to put an ESX in standby mode. I restarted VirtualCenter for Windows patches, and now VirtualCenter says the ESX host is "not responding", and doesn't give me the option to wake it from standby mode. Fortunately, the solution is right there under your fingertips: do manually what VirtualCenter would have done for you: Log on to another ESX on the same network, get the MAC address(es) of the sleeping ESX host, and run: # ether-wake -i vswif0 aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff You could optionally repeat this for every interface you know of the sleeping ESX. Remember to use the real MAC addresses of the real NICs, not the virtual MAC addresses of service console ports, vmkernel ports, or virtual machines. After a couple of minutes, VirtualCenter will notice that the host is responding, and will connect it again. If you wish, you can put it in standby mode again using the VI-Client. If you don't know the MAC address of the host in standby mode, you would ne...

Any sysadmin who runs postgresql (or sqlite) knows he should vacuum once in a while. You didn't ? Probably because nowadays, there's an autovacuum function. But what about the Real World (you know, the big room with the blue ceiling) ? After years of manually vacuuming the floors, I now got myself an autovacuumer to take care of my office space: the iRobot Roomba 560. This robot can drive around on the floor and cleans it. After having cleaned the room, it automatically returns to the dock where it recharges the battery. Aside from the "cool" factor, it really does a good job. I've seen comments from people who claim that a vacuum cleaner can't run on batteries for an hour, even proving their point with calculations, but don't be fooled: the Roomba is not a vacuum cleaner like the one you already own. First, doesn't suck dirt through a 3 meter tube. Second, it isn't even a vacuum cleaner in the strictest sense: it uses brushes to pick up most of th...

mc2xml is a TV schedule grabber that can be used for MythTV. The output of mc2xml (why isn't this program opensource, by the way ?) is in the xmltv format, but the channel names are rather cryptic. I don't want to see "I147350.750834.microsoft.com", but rather "ned 3". Getting rid of these codes is easy with a small shell script . mc2xml -c be -g 3000 cat ~/channelconvert.txt | while read line do sed -e "s/$line/g" -i xmltv.xml done Where channelconvert.txt contains lines such as I343250.54932.microsoft.com/cnni I399250.70.microsoft.com/bbc1 Then input it in your database with mythfilldatabase. Happy pvr-ing !

Last week, I decided to buy a goosync subscription. I thought about this for a long time, and now a Christmas special convinced me. And honestly, I shouldn't have postponed it. Setup on my E71 was so easy I was amazed it worked as quickly as it did. Talking about my availability with my clients without firing up my laptop and connecting it to the network to open my Google Calendar, that's what I bought a smartphone for. There are a couple of improvements that could be made, like not requiring labels for every single calendar that needs to be synced (why add a label to a week-numbering calendar, or a public holiday calendar ?). Allround verdict: great service !

Sudoku's have been quite a hype in recent years, attracting puzzle lovers all over the world. I have solved quite a number of them myself, or at least, that's what I thought until earlier this year. Seeing the daily "difficult"/"superieur"-level sudoku in a Swiss free newspaper, a coin dropped. They've been publishing the same sudoku for over a year now. Yes, that's right, the same sudoku, every day. Or more precisely, an equivalent sudoku. By using four simple transformations, yesterday's sudoku can be transformed into today's, and so can the solution ! rearranging rows withing the same 3-row block (idem with columns) rearranging the order of the 3-row blocks (idem with 3-column blocks) permutating 123456789 into a different order transposing the grid (making rows into columns and vice versa) How long can they keep this up, you wonder ? There's a total of about 1.2x10E12 combinations to every sudoku puzzle. It will take them 4.6 billion ...