Today, when I ran the regular update of my gentoo systems there was an update for compiz-fusion in portage. The compiz update did not work out of the box on my x8_64 systems, missing keywords, blocking packages, etc.

Here is the way I got it to work. The procedure is similar to the one I described in upgrade-to-compiz-fusion-0.82.

emerge -uND world

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy “>=x11-plugins/compiz-plugins-main-0.8.6” have been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
– x11-plugins/compiz-plugins-main-0.8.6 (masked by: ~amd64 keyword)

Add to /etc/portage/package.keywords:

=x11-plugins/compiz-plugins-main-0.8.6 **
=x11-plugins/compiz-plugins-unsupported-0.8.6 **
=x11-plugins/compiz-plugins-extra-0.8.6 **
=x11-plugins/compiz-plugins-unsupported-0.8.4-r1 **

the last line is there just because I don´t know if there will be a newer version of compiz-plugins-unsuported or not.

emerge compiz-fusion

[blocks B ] x11-plugins/compiz-fusion-plugins-extra (“x11-plugins/compiz-fusion-plugins-extra” is blocking x11-plugins/compiz-plugins-extra-0.8.4-r1)
[blocks B ] x11-plugins/compiz-fusion-plugins-main (“x11-plugins/compiz-fusion-plugins-main” is blocking x11-plugins/compiz-plugins-main-0.8.4-r1)

emerge -C compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported

emerge compiz-fusion

Afterwards I had a working compiz-fusion-0.8.6.

regards

Jürgen

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The recent upgrade to thunderbird-3.0.3 rendered the virtual identity extension unusable due to a version conflict.

The virtual identity extension allows you to edit the sender field when composing a new mail. Furthermore it warns you when trying to send a mail to a recipient you used another sender address for, before. This is especially useful if you use multiple accounts in thunderbird since you surely don´t want to write business mails from your private mail account.

The extension itself works with thunderbird-3.0.3, but thunderbird-3.0.3 is not in the range of compatible versions specified in the Addon package. It is possible to override this. To do so install MR Tech Toolkit via Tools->Addons and restart Thunderbird. Now, when installing an Addon you get an additional checkbox to deactivate the maxVersion test. Also in the context menu of the extension list there is now a menu entry “override compatibility” which allows you to activate installed Addons that fail the version test. Afterwards you can activate or install virtual identity again.

Edit: V0.6.4 is out and the procedure described above is not necessary any more for virtual identity.

The URLs for virtual identity above do not seem to work anymore. XPIs for the extension can be found here: ftp.uni-erlangen.de

regards Jürgen

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Posted in linux, mail | 3 Comments »

Some years ago I played nethack on my old PC. Nethack is a Diablo like RPG that was originally released in 1987. Before playing a game, you have to create a character. You can choose between different character classes: Archeologist, Barbarian, Caveman, Healer, Knight, Monk, Priest, Ranger, Rogue, Samurai, Tourist Valkyrie and Wizard. These classes have different abilities in fighting and using magic. Afterwards you can descent to the dungeon where you have to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor and defeat the bad Moloch. For some more information on gameplay and how to win see the links below the post.

By chance I discovered a maemo package for vultures eye which I installed on my Nokia N810. Vultures eye is a nice graphical frontend for nethack.

Which dragon shall I ride? – Vultureseye on the N810

Then I felt it would be nice to have Vultures Eye also on my PC. With a large screen and real mouse/keyboard input the game is easier to play, than on the small n810s touchscreen. Since the latest available Gentoo ebuild was far out of date and the sources for it are no longer available I wrote a new ebuild based upon the old one. You may download my new ebuild from here: vultures ebuild (1527 downloads )

vultureseye on gentoo

To use the ebuild it just copy it to /usr/local/portage/games-roguelike/vultures/. You probably have to create the directory. Then run

ebuild /usr/local/portage/games-roguelike/vultures/vultures-2.2.100.ebuild digest

Be sure to include the following line in your /etc/make.conf.

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”/usr/local/portage”

Then just emerge vultures and enjoy many YASDs. But beware, one can get quite addicted to this game.

Jürgen

Resources:

NetHack

beginner’s-guide-to-nethack

how-to-win-at-nethack-wishes

vultures-eye-nethack-nice-graphics

nokia-n900-downloads

gentoo bugzilla

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Posted in fun, games, gentoo, linux | No Comments »

On a gentoo system you may get the error

QA Notice: Package has poor programming practices which may compile but will almost certainly crash on 64bit architectures

during emerge. This is usually a wanted behaviour since one does not want to have broken packages installed, but sometimes you may want to decide yourself or you need the program and can live with crashes that may occur under certain circumstances. As far as I know portage does not give us an easy method to override this.

You may change this behaviour by changing line 477 in /usr/lib/portage/bin/misc-functions.sh to i.e.

if [[ ${abort} == “disabled” ]] ; then

After emerging the brocken package you usually want to change the line back to

if [[ ${abort} == “yes” ]] ; then

to prevent having broken packages on your system without knowing about it.

Hoping this information is of some help.

Jürgen

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Posted in gentoo, linux | No Comments »

One year ago I provided a gentoo ebuild for mplayer which included support for quad-buffered stereo, enabling mplayer to display stereoscopic movies like the great movie Avatar3D I watched in cinema today. To learn more about the movie look here and here. Sadly the patch I referenced there does not apply over newer mplayer versions. So I had to modify the original patch from Stuart Levy to work again with newer mplayer versions. You may download the updated patch from here:

mplayer-stereoscopic.patch (1934 downloads )

New version available!

The patch should work at least with nvidia quadro boards, probably with some others. It can be used with CRT and generic shutter glasses or HMDs like the Vusix VR920. Some stereoscopic sample movies for trying it out can be found on www.3d.wep.dk.

For Gentoo users I also modified the mplayer ebuild from portage to include the patch. The modified ebuild is available here:

mplayer-1.0_rc2_p28450.ebuild (1168 downloads )

New version available!

The older ebuild is still available on mygnu.de.

To use the ebuild it just copy it to /usr/local/portage/media-video/mplayer and copy the the patch to the “/usr/local/portage/media-video/mplayer/files” directory.  You probably have to create these directories. Then run

ebuild /usr/local/portage/media-video/mplayer/mplayer-1.0_rc4_p20091026-r1.ebuild digest

Be sure to include the following line in your /etc/make.conf.

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”/usr/local/portage”

Then just re-emerge mplayer.

Now start mplayer with -vo gl2:stereo and enjoy the experience in the 3rd dimension again.

Jürgen

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Posted in 3d, gentoo, linux, multimedia | 9 Comments »

With linux kernel 2.6.32 module parameters for kvm-intel changed so if you cannot load the module anymore and you get errors in dmesg like

kvm_intel: Unknown parameter `enable_vpid’
kvm_intel: Unknown parameter `enable_ept’
kvm_intel: Unknown parameter `flexpriority_enabled’

you should update your module config. For gentoo users this means to edit the file

/etc/modules.d/kvm_intel

and to remove the obsolete parameters. Afterwards run

update-modules -f

Now you should be able to load the module and do kvm vitualization again.

For me this problem occured when trying the new zen-sources-2.6.32-zen1 (also in zen2). Sadly this kernel is affected by the bug which causes higher power consumption (at least on my Precision M65) when not running a suspend to ram cycle before. This also occurs with vanilla sources. For more information on this topic see bugzilla.kernel.org.

Jürgen

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Posted in gentoo, kernel, linux, zen-sources | No Comments »

I just upgraded the vserver kernel in my test environment to 2.6.31-vs2.3.0.36.23. After rebooting the machine I recognized that the hostname of the host machine was set to the hostname of the last vserver started. Checking all vservers I found out that all had the same hostname.

A quick google search revealed, that I am not the only one having this problem: linux.derkeiler.com. But the search revealed no solution.

Afterwards I remembered that I masked util-vserver-0.30.216_pre2841 as I described in util-vserver-0.30.216_pre2841 vserver startup fails.  So I removed the mask and installed the newer version of util-vserver. Afterwards everything was normal and the vservers, as well as the host machine had the correct hostnames.

It is important to use the  version of util-vserver matching the vserver kernel version running. The vserver kernel 2.6.31-vs2.3.0.36.23 seems to work with util-vserver-0.30.216_pre2841 and the vserver-kernel 2.6.28-vserver-2.3.0.36.4 works with util-vserver-0.30.215-r3.

Jürgen

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Posted in gentoo, kernel, linux | 2 Comments »