Xen for Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10

I was in the process of figuring out and documenting the process ofย  compiling and installing an Xen enabled kernel on Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10. This was for a specific project that’s not going to come to fruition. I’m not going to bother as I also don’t feel like having my laptop burn a gaping hole through my lap as I wait for the kernel to compile, and well you know I still have some use for the 2 lads downstairs. And after years of compiling kernels, I really can think of more productive uses of my time.

The quickest way is to grab a Debian Xen enabled kernel, this isn’t recommended by Ubuntu and if your not comfortable hacking your system and having to compile modules (drivers in Windows speak) for hardware or proprietary hardware that Debian doesn’t include support for, then don’t even think of doing this and just use KVM.

Here’s how Chris did it for a system running a AMD64 processor, if you’ve an Intel processor you’ll need to use a different kernel:

http://www.chrisk.de/blog/2008/12/how-to-run-xen-in-ubuntu-intrepid-without-compiling-a-kernel-by-yourself/

If you want a later kernel (2.6.27 or 2.6.28) poke around:

http://kernel-archive.buildserver.net/

That’s the approach I’m going to use, as I know that if I’ve problems or issues I’ll be able to figure it out. Anyways, the start of the orignal draft is below, preceded by a minor rant. When I get around to getting Xen on Ubuntu to work with a Debian kernel I’ll add a new post here. Continue reading Xen for Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10

Ryan & The Cardinals

The missues is big into Ryan Adams & The Cardinals. I’ve been listening to him too, but thought he was a bit too “countryish” for my tastes. So anyways we go see them live at the Orpheum last month, and they are one mean guitar band. Very good gig and well worth seeing.

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals in Boston 2009

Check out their tour dates at:

http://tour.cardinology.com

If your outside North American, your out of luck for this tour. But, they post a lot of live clips from their concerts on their Twitter feed:

http://twitter.com/cardinology

And some video clips at:

http://coffee.cardinology.com

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals in Boston 2009

Ryan also has or had a blog which he has had an on-again/off-again relationship with. He often does little videos of himself writting and singing new songs or just jamming away, but he’sย  deleted all the blog entries as he’s in the hate-stage of blog relationship. ๐Ÿ˜‰

But, I think he’s used to great affect to reach out to his fans and to create a relationship with his fans that he wouldn’t have otherwise. Hopefully he’ll start blogging again as it’s great to be able to see an artist at work! ๐Ÿ™‚

Testing 1 2 3 … er what comes next?

I started Firefox in safe-mode and now my WordPress editor is working fine. Methinks, maybe Google Gears was fecking up the editor somehow. Uninstalling Google Gears, exiting FF, restart in normal mode and see if my hypthosis is valid.

Yup, that might have been it. Some weird caching issues (even after clearing out the regular cache) or Google Gears was out of sync, and woudn’t sync properly, with the upgraded version WordPress. I’ll reinstall Google Gears at some point in the future and see what happens

Stuff I’ve read or reading …

Some links to stuff I’ve either read or plan to read which I think is interesting:

Python is not Java, tips for Java programmers starting w/ Python:
http://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html
Python for Bioinformatics:
http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/unites/sis/formation/python/index.html
BioPython:
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.html

I need to know Selenium better, it’s possible that I might consider using it for a project I might be working on (that sounds like it might have some UI bugs/issues/problems):
http://seleniumhq.org/

10 things every programmer should read (this will take a while to wade through):
http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/02/26/10-papers-every-programmer-should-read-at-least-twice

Xen Cluster Mgt using Ganeti for Debian Lenny:
http://www.howtoforge.com/xen-cluster-management-with-ganeti-on-debian-lenny
Ganeti admin guide and install guide:
http://ganeti-doc.googlecode.com/svn/ganeti-1.2/admin.html
http://ganeti-doc.googlecode.com/svn/ganeti-1.2/install.html

David Byrne (of Talking Heads) interviews Thom Yorke (of Radiohead):
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_yorke?currentPage=all

With a great quote, that shows how well the record companies treat their performing artists (that’s sarcasm in case you don’t have a sense of humour). First Radiohead made zip/zilch/nada from EMI sales of digitized versions of their music:

Yorke: In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever โ€” in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff …

Yorke: … It’s about whether the music affects you or not. And why would you worry about an artist or a company going after people copying their music if the music itself is not valued?

Then he talks about how the music iteself isn’t valued, but the business processes surrounding the marketing and selling of music:

Byrne: You’re valuing the delivery system as opposed to the relationship and the emotional thing…

Yorke: You’re valuing the company or the interest of the artists rather than the music itself. I don’t know. We’ve always been quite naive. We don’t have any alternative to doing this. It’s the only obvious thing to do.

WordPress 2.7.1 Editor

I recently upgraded this WordPress installation from 2.7 to 2.7.1 using Dreamhost’s upgrade tools. However, the friggin’ feckin’ post editor is busted, at least in Firefox 3.0.6 on Ubuntu Intrepid. I can still use the QuickPress editor, which is only good for basic posts. If I want to add images or files, I’d have to manually upload them and link to them … anyways what a pain. If your planning on upgrading to WordPress 2.7.1 I’d suggest you wait a wee bit.

The problem I’m having is that on the “New Post” page, where the categories sections should be is instead an embedded (maybe an iFrame) of the WordPress Dashboard. When I try and type in the editor the pages changes to a near blank page with only the editor buttons showing. Grrrr …

I’ve tried the following steps (recommended on various sites and forums) to no avail:

  • Disabled all plugins
  • Disabled Google Gears
  • Cleared the browser cache

However, it works fine in KDE’s Konqueror browser. When I get the time, I may compare the generated HTML, and see if I can determine what’s causing the problem. Here’s a screenshot … sheesh now I can’t even insert a screenshot using Konqueror gotta do it manually. Look at the “Categories” section on the right-hand side:

Emacs and tilde files

By default Emacs saves a copy of the previous version of a file you are editing in the same directory as where the original file is located. It saves a copy with ~ appended to the end of the name. ~ is pronounced tilde. However, some tools and programming environments don’t know how to handle these tilde files and this can cause various problems. Someone mentioned on the Boston Ruby list that “Rails 2.3 router picked up emacs tilde ~ file before *.erb.html file …“. And the solution is pretty easy, you just tell emacs to save the ~ files in a different directory:
http://amitp.blogspot.com/2007/03/emacs-move-autosave-and-backup-files.html

Now I wonder is there a way to have it only do this for certain types of files, or only to do it for certain workspaces, that way if I’m edit a file in a directory named ruby it will save the files elsewhere, otherwise save the file in the CWD.