Thias' Blog» Computers

OpenERP on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Thias — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:07:20 +0000

Here are some quick instructions to get OpenERP 6 up and running on RHEL6 (or any of its clones such as CentOS, Ascendos, etc.). It’s not meant to be a full howto, but might help in some cases.

OpenERP is still not included in Fedora nor EPEL as of writing this. Hopefully this will change soon, [...]

» OpenERP on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Nexus S Android update to 2.3.4

Thias — Mon, 02 May 2011 18:32:28 +0000

These are my quick notes after updating my Google Nexus S Android phone to the latest 2.3.4 release from this week. The main issue I had was that my phone was rooted, making the official update package fail with a “status 7″ error, because the existing system was modified.

Updated 2011/10 : The 2.3.6 update works [...]

» Nexus S Android update to 2.3.4

Firefox Sync with your own server

Thias — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:51:47 +0000

I’m now sharing browsing history, stored passwords and bookmarks between my work desktop computer, my home desktop computer and my laptop, thanks to the Firefox Sync add-on. The best part is that all of the shared data is encrypted directly at the web browser level and stored on my own dedicated server using https. You [...]

» Firefox Sync with your own server

RHEL6 (Beta) minimal installation

Thias — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:10:58 +0000

I’ve just started testing the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta, and I was really happy to see that the Minimal installation option is back at last. I know it’s always been possible to achieve something similar with RHEL5 and kickstart, or even something close enough by choosing to not install anything except the Base [...]

» RHEL6 (Beta) minimal installation

Apple iPod Nano 5th generation and Fedora GNU/Linux

Thias — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:24:20 +0000

I just got my first Apple iPod. Yes, me with an iPod. Don’t ask. It’s the latest Nano, the 5th generation, available since late 2009. It’s tiny, yet it packs 8GB of flash memory, a camera (for video only, not photo…), a microphone, an accelerometer, a relatively big screen, a radio… even a speaker.

I really [...]

» Apple iPod Nano 5th generation and Fedora GNU/Linux

Linksys WAG160N vs. D-Link DSL-2740R

Thias — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 09:08:10 +0000

I was having problems with my home DSL gateway device a few months ago. It was an old-ish Netgear device which had been running fine for years. Since it supported only wireless A/B/G, I decided it was a good time to replace it for a wireless (draft) N compatible device as my latest laptop supported [...]

» Linksys WAG160N vs. D-Link DSL-2740R

FreeNX headache

Thias — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:36:38 +0000

I’ve just wasted a couple of hours trying to get a FreeNX server working, but just kept getting this error :

Cannot establish any listening sockets - Make sure an X server isn't already running

Not very explicit, not very useful, and searching returns many results about people having the same problem. The solution is simple, though [...]

» FreeNX headache

GNOME menu entry for Xine DVD playback

Thias — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:24:09 +0000

Most GNU/Linux distributions include the proper mime types to be handled by Xine when it is installed, but not for DVD Video ISO images on disk. But it’s really easy to add.

If the DVD button in Xine work for real Video DVDs, then just create the /usr/share/applications/xine-open-iso.desktop file with the following content, and you’ll now [...]

» GNOME menu entry for Xine DVD playback

Fedora to display automated image or video slideshows

Thias — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:42:14 +0000

Here are some instructions on how to configure a computer using Fedora for image or video slideshows. The idea is to have the computer automatically run some fullscreen application on boot, which is typically what is wanted on public displays in fairs, hallways, stores etc, all this without running any window manager.

To achieve this in [...]

» Fedora to display automated image or video slideshows

Creating a restricted bzr+ssh smart server

Thias — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:39:12 +0000

The bazaar documentation is quite extensive, but not when it comes to setting up an ssh server. The solution for allowing bzr+ssh access to a server without a full shell access is nowhere to be found. But it’s actually quite simple…

Just make sure the ~bzruser/.ssh/authorized_keys entries are as follows :

command="bzr serve --inet --directory=/home/bzruser --allow-writes",no-port-forwarding,no-pty,no-agent-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding ssh-dss [...]

» Creating a restricted bzr+ssh smart server

Dell OptiPlex FX160 and GNU/Linux

Thias — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:19:05 +0000

I needed some SFF (Small Form Factor) computers for a project, and Dell recently released the FX160 which looked exactly like what I was after. But let me give you some quick advice before you read any further : If you want to run GNU/Linux, you’re in for some ugly surprises.

It’s really a shame since [...]

» Dell OptiPlex FX160 and GNU/Linux

Playing Blu-Ray Video Discs with (Fedora) GNU/Linux

Thias — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:15:10 +0000

I did it. I bought a Blu-Ray and HD-DVD player yesterday… then I bought a couple of Blu-Ray video discs earlier today (Superbad and Stranger Than Fiction, two movies I absolutely love).

My problem is that I want to watch them using exclusively free software. On Fedora 10 x86_64 to be more precise…

So I’ve started looking [...]

» Playing Blu-Ray Video Discs with (Fedora) GNU/Linux

Upgrading a Cisco 3750 IOS from a .bin image file

Thias — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:34:46 +0000

I just wasted hours trying to figure out how to upgrade a Cisco Catalyst 3750 using the .bin image instead of the .tar archive, since I don’t want any fancy web interface on any of my core network devices.

All of the current documentation explains only how to use the archive command, which can’t be used [...]

» Upgrading a Cisco 3750 IOS from a .bin image file

Using bonding with Xen bridging on RHEL5

Thias — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:32:13 +0000

I ran into a chicken and egg problem recently, while trying to configure Xen’s bridging interfaces on top of bonding interfaces.

This setup is for HA (High Availability), since with 4 network interfaces on the system, connected to two different switch cards or stack units, and configured as 2 LACP bonding interfaces in RHEL5, you can [...]

» Using bonding with Xen bridging on RHEL5

Encrypting the data on your USB key to use with GNOME

Thias — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:17:24 +0000

I just got a brand new Sony Micro Vault Tiny USB key. As you can see on the picture, it’s about half the size of an SD card, although slightly thicker. The trick it uses to be so small is to slide directly inside the USB port. The size makes it very handy to keep [...]

» Encrypting the data on your USB key to use with GNOME

Serendipity (this blog ran it)

Thias — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:32:23 +0000

I have to admit that I’ve been impressed by Serendipity. It just works. I really like PHP, but very often things are implemented pretty badly with it, and code gets rapidly hard to improve, modularize and so on… but here, it really looks like the developers have done a great job, congrats to them!

Update 2010/04/11 [...]

» Serendipity (this blog ran it)

Dell PERC5/E and MD1000 performance tweaks

Thias — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:39:33 +0000

I fought for days, literally, to get an external SAS enclosure, the Dell MD1000, working with decent performance on RHEL5 x86_64 (PowerEdge 1950 III w/ two quad cores and 16GB RAM) . It’s a 15 disk enclosure, and this one is stuffed with 15 Hitachi 1TB SATAII drives which deliver a raw linear read speed [...]

» Dell PERC5/E and MD1000 performance tweaks