Compiz-Fusion on Mandriva Spring 2008

Upgrading Mandriva 2008 to Mandriva 2008.1 aka Mandriva Spring

Screenshot of KDE 4 on Mandriva Spring 2008

Here are the steps to upgrade mandriva 2008 to 2008.1 via online repos.

1) Back up the current urpmi.cfg
2) Change the repos mentioned in urpmi.cfg from 2008.0 to 2008.1
3) Run urpmi.update -a to verify repos
4) urpmi --auto-update -v

If there are problems with dependencies, remove the old versions (notably KDE4 as in my experience, yours maybe with different packages). Then in some cases you have to run this command:

5) urpmi --auto-select

Relax and sit back while watching the packages being upgraded. For my system, almost 1600 packages upgraded. Lastly, you will be instructed to reboot the system because of kernel and dbus upgrade. So far the new system is running smoothly without problem.

reference: Mandriva Forum

My history of commands

Based on kagesenshi's post titled Me! Me!, I also want to know what commands were used by me regularly. So:

[zamri@localhost ~]$ history | awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head
126 ssh
100 ls
97 smbclient
86 cd
76 su
58 wine
48 ping
35 joe
32 exit
17 ps

There you go. The ouput isn't surprising. I did lots of ssh to my servers and wine (ahaaa!! surprise!), I played windows games a lot for the last 4 months. Now I stop playing 'em completely. It is boring when you always win. :P

clamav 0.93 released

I just feel like it was yesterday I upgraded my clamav to 0.92.1. Now it is version 0.93. I gotta upgrade it ASAP. Thanks to the spirit of OSS. The excitement will never end. :)

Changes since 0.92.1:

  * libclamav:
   - New logic in scan limits: provides much more efficient protection against
     DoS attacks but also results in different command line and config options
     to clamscan and clamd (see below)
   - New/improved modules: unzip, SIS, cabinet, CHM, SZDD, text normalisator,
     entity converter
   - Improved filetype detection; filetype definitions can be remotely updated
   - Support for .cld containers (which replace .inc directories)
   - Improved pattern matcher and signature formats
   - More efficient scanning of HTML files
   - Many other improvements

 * clamd:
   - NEW CONFIG FILE OPTIONS: MaxScanSize, MaxFileSize, MaxRecursion, MaxFiles
   - ** THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS ARE NO LONGER SUPPORTED **: MailMaxRecursion,
     ArchiveMaxFileSize, ArchiveMaxRecursion, ArchiveMaxFiles,
     ArchiveMaxCompressionRatio, ArchiveBlockMax

 * clamscan:
   - NEW CMDLINE OPTIONS: --max-filesize, --max-scansize
   - REMOVED OPTIONS: --block-max, --max-space, --max-ratio

 * freshclam:
   - NEW CONFIG OPTION CompressLocalDatabase
   - NEW CMDLINE SWITCH --no-warnings
   - main.inc and daily.inc directories are no longer used by ClamAV; please
     remove them manually from your database directory

Please note the new config file options.

Well... happy upgrading!. :)

Yakuake - An easy access console

Yakuake (Yet Another Kuake KDE terminal emulator) is a KDE console application that I use the most for months now. Before, I used to use konsole but after installing yakuake, I rarely use konsole anymore. The most important feature is the quick easy access to it by pressing a key. The key is configurable. I can't remember what is the default key for it but I choose F8 because the default is used by another application.

Installing yakuake
Debian - use synaptic or aptitude or apt-get install yakuake
Mandriva - use graphical rpmdrake or urpmi yakuake
other distros - please consult your distro documentation.

I have read a Linux mag (don't know which) that it is favorite among KDE developers and will be replacing konsole. I don't know whether this is true. Anyone can confirm this?

References:
Yakuake home page (new update)
Yakuake - An easy access konsole for KDE
More info : http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=29153

dbmail 2.2.10 released

I have just upgraded my dbmail to 2.2.10. There are bugs fixed. So upgrade is highly recommended.

Changes since 2.2.9:

- - PostgreSQL 8.3 compatibility (# 676).
- - Duplicate key errors and other insertion problems ( #685, #686).

Download:
http://www.dbmail.org/download/2.2/dbmail-2.2.10.tar.gz

Debian etch backport:
deb http://debian.nfgd.net/debian stable main

Full changelog:
http://git.dbmail.eu/?p=paul/dbmail;a=shortlog;h=v2.2.10

Refer my previous post on how to upgrade dbmail (without database schema change).

Transparent proxy with squid 2.6

I have upgraded my squid from 2.5 STABLE13 to 2.6 STABLE18. Transparent proxy is setup differently in this version. You need this directives in squid.conf (usually in /etc or /usr/local/etc or /usr/local/squid/etc, check with your distro).

acl our_networks src 192.168.2.0/24 127.0.0.1
http_access allow our_networks
http_port 192.168.2.1:3128 transparent
always_direct allow all

where 192.168.2.1 is your proxy server IP address.


If you have flushed your iptables, create new rule:

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i  eth0 -p tcp –dport  80 -j REDIRECT –to-port 3128

where 3128 is the port where squid is running.

References:
http://www.deckle.co.za/squid-users-guide/Transparent_Caching/Proxy