January 18, 2008 · 1 min read

Today's row

05:01:24 vjt@voyager:~/Antani/trunk$ replace(){ sed -e "s|$1|$2|g" 
< $3 > ${3}X; mv ${3}X $3; }; egrep -r 'XP_[A-Z_]+[[:space:]]+-?[[
:digit:]]' Headers |ruby -ne "f,m=scan(/(.+):.+(XP_[\w_]+)/).first
;puts '%s %s %s' % [ f, m, 'kXP'<<m.scan(/(_[A-Z])([A-Z]+)/).map {
|a,b| a[1..1]<<b. downcase }.join ]" | while read hdr from to; do
replace $from $to $hdr; for src in `grep -rl $from Sources`; do
replace $from $to $src; done; done

January 16, 2008 · 2 min read

How to compile python2.5 on SCO_SV

🔍

2026 retrospective
Both Python 2.5 (EOL 2011) and SCO OpenServer are extinct. SCO/Xinuos went bankrupt, and Python 2 itself reached end-of-life in January 2020. This is a digital fossil.

You must have PTH installed, and maybe other libs.
This was tested on SCO_SV os507 3.2 5.0.7 i386

If you have UDK, run:

$ CFLAGS='-I/usr/local/include -belf' LDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/lib' \
  ./configure --with-threads --with-pth --disable-shared --disable-ipv6

Add /usr/local/include to BASECFLAGS in Makefile (autocrap sucks).
Patch Modules/ctypes/_ctypes_test.c by putting an #ifdef HAVE_LONG_LONG around functions that use PY_LONG_LONG (hints: lines 384 and 318).
Patch Objects/longobject.c and on line 817 put the IS_LITTLE_ENDIAN macro before the #ifdef HAVE_LONG_LONG block, and put _PyLong_FromSsize_t and _PyLong_FromSize_t after the HAVE_LONG_LONG block.

If you have GCC, run:

$ CFLAGS='-I/usr/local/include' LDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/lib'            \
  ./configure --with-threads --with-pth --disable-shared --disable-ipv6

Either with UDK or GCC:

Edit pyconfig.h and comment out the socklen_t define
Edit Modules/socketmodule.c and on line 226 add || defined(SCO5) in order to define INET_ADDRSTRLEN.
Run make (or gmake if you wish)
You will be left without _curses.so, _curses_panel.so, _locale.so and readline.so if using GCC and also pyexpat, elementtree and sha512 if using UDK.

      __   ____  __ __  ____     __
      \ \ / /  \/  |  \/  \ \   / /
       \ V /| |\/| | |\/| |\ \ / / 
        | | | |  | | |  | | \ V /_ 
        |_| |_|  |_|_|  |_|  \_/(_)

[vjt@os507 ~/Python-2.5.1-vjt] $ python
Python 2.5.1 (r251:31337, Sep 13 2007, 22:40:33) 
[GCC 4.2.1] on sco_sv3
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import socket
>>>

[vjt@os507 ~] $ hg clone http://code.wuhrer.thc/hg/Antani
destination directory: Antani
http authorization required

!! YAY! :D

December 22, 2007 · 1 min read

Ruby 1.9 has got the answer to life, universe and everything

🔍

2026 retrospective
Ruby 1.9 reached end-of-life in 2015. Ruby is now at 3.x, and Symbol.all_symbols no longer includes this easter egg — it was removed long ago. The answer to life, the universe, and everything remains 42.

22:33:24 vjt@voyager:~$ irb19 -f
irb(main):001:0> Symbol.all_symbols.grep /^the/
=> [:the_answer_to_life_the_universe_and_everything]

unluckily, the answer isn’t 42:

irb(main):002:0> _.first.object_id
=> 5048

:\

Thanks for this strange finding, nextie! :D

November 21, 2007 · 63 min read

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth

A really, really, really NERD novel by Cory Doctorow that tells about a bunch of sysadmins that strive to keep the good ol’ Net online after a catastrophic event that brought the entire world to its knees. They fight with scarce power and food supplies and communicate over the Usenet… using the good old alt. hierarchy.

Vote: 10+ for the geekiest thing I’ve ever read. It’s really worth the hour needed to read it completely.

👉 Read More…

November 2, 2007 · 3 min read

How to Backup with Time Machine on a Network Share

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2026 retrospective
Apple added native SMB-based Time Machine support in macOS High Sierra (2017) and deprecated AFP in Big Sur (2020). Today any NAS with a plain Samba share works out of the box — no Netatalk, Avahi or marker files needed. Time Capsule was discontinued in 2018.

Ingredients: Debian, Netatalk, Avahi, some trickery.

Step 1: Recompile Netatalk with SSL Support

Recompile Netatalk with SSL Support.

You can safely ignore the “.passwd” stuff, because afpd uses PAM for user authentication.

Hint: Disable the atalk protocol handlers in /etc/default/netatalk for a faster startup:

# Set which daemons to run (papd is dependent upon atalkd):
ATALKD_RUN=no        # appletalk protocol
PAPD_RUN=no          # printer sharing daemon (printers are soooo '90s)
CNID_METAD_RUN=yes   # don't remember but is needed, rtfm!
AFPD_RUN=yes         # you will always need this
TIMELORD_RUN=no      # my time lord's name is <a href="http://openntpd.org">openntpd</a>
A2BOOT_RUN=no        # boot? nah! :P

# path         name           perms     charset
/some/where/tm "Time Machine" allow:vjt volcharset:"UTF8"

into /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default.

Step 3: Let the AFPD server show up in finder

Download the avahi service file, put it into /etc/avahi/services and reload avahi with /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon reload (sorry, original links are broken).

Step 4: Set Up Time Machine Backup

You need two files on your afp network share: .com.apple.timemachine.supported and a dot-file named with your en0 MAC address. To create it, the easier way is to attach an USB/Firewire disk, rename it with the name of the intended network share (specified in the AppleVolumes file) and enable time machine on it.