The Pædantic Programmer's LiveJournal

building unmodified_drivers

2009-11-20T20:55:59Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

This is the gist of it:

$ cd /usr/src/
# $ sudo chmod a+rwx .
$ wget ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/kernel/kotd/SLE11_BRANCH/src/kernel-source-2.6.27.39-0.0.0.25.15a4c6f.src.rpm
$ alien -tg kernel-source-2.6.27.39-0.0.0.25.15a4c6f.src.rpm
$ cd kernel-source-2.6.27.39
$ tar xfj linux-2.6.27.tar.bz2
$ for f in patches.*.tar.bz2; do
tar xfj $f || break;
done
$ for p in $(./guards x86_64 < series.conf); do
patch -d linux-2.6.27 -p1 < $p || break
done
$ cd linux-2.6.27
$ fakeroot make-kpkg debian
$ fakeroot make-kpkg build
$ sudo make install modules_install
$ cd /usr/src
$ hg clone http://xenbits.xen.org/xen-unstable.hg
$ cd xen-unstable.hg/unmodified_drivers/linux-2.6
$ XEN=/usr/src/xen-unstable.hg/xen XL=/usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.27.39/linux-2.6.27 ./mkbuildtree x86_64
$ make -C /usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.27.39/linux-2.6.27 M=$PWD modules
$ sudo make -C /usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.27.39/linux-2.6.27 M=$PWD modules_install

Hi

2009-11-14T04:37:01Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

I’m posting from my new android 1.6 Cyanogen. Nifty, eh?

Xen PV network driver

2009-11-13T18:36:38Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

I haven’t used Xen HVM until recently. When I was at Amazon and
hanging with the Xen provisioning folks, I recall complaints about the
performance of network drivers on HVM instances. I’ve recently
discovered that this was due to the use of the ioemu virtual interface
(vif) system. In paravirtualized environments, Xen vif devices are
more efficient because the guest kernel can talk to the hypervisor to
schedule I/O. In hardware virtualized environments, the hypervisor
emulates the back end of a common network driver and the guest uses it
as if it is the real thing.

The Xen team (or was it RedHat?) patched the 2.6.18 kernel such that
HVM guests got the best of both worlds. The guest ran in a HVM
environment, but also had a way of talking with the hypervisor by way
of the xen-vnif kernel driver
(kernel/drivers/xenpv_hvm/netfront/xen-vnif.ko).

I may not be looking in the right places, but I can’t seem to find
such a paravirtualized network driver for any kernels more recent than
2.6.18. This has recently become a bit of an issue, since karmic (and probably sid)
depends on udev 145, which depends on signalfd, and thus won’t run on
kernels before (something like) 2.6.25.

Unless I miss my guess (which is quite possible =]), this means one of
the following needs to happen:

signalfd needs to be back-ported to the 2.6.18 xen kernel
xen-vnif needs to be forward-ported to >= 2.6.25

Has this already happened? Am I missing something?

A quick update – I’m a grad student!

2009-10-11T16:38:31Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

Hey all!

I’m sorry I haven’t been very active with my packages recently. I all-of-a-sudden started grad school and have been swamped with studying. I also started a contract and have been busy trying to learn a new codebase while contributing something other than snark.

I promise I’ll get back to packaging IronRuby and IronPython on Mono for Debian as soon as things start settling down. Getting an A in the class is higher priority, though, sorry…

Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you ;)

Cheers,

C.J.

PS, I am implementing a Perl library to exercise my understanding of the class. You can follow along at the search.cpan.org page for Lingua::HPSG or by cloning the git repo:

$ git clone git://karma.colliertech.org/colliertech/langparser

Well, that was an eventful day!

2009-09-12T14:37:26Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

*whew* I did a bunch of things yesterday. We took our kindergärtner to her first Friday at her new school (and were about 10 minutes tardy. oops). We then took our toddler to a nearby playground with swings and slides and let her expend some energy. After she had been sufficiently exercised, we walked back home, stopping at a coffee shop on the way. The baristo (you call male baristas “baristos,” right? :) ) recognized my MC Frontalot shirt and asked whether I had caught him the previous weekend at PAX. Unfortunately, I have not attended PAX since 2006, but I *did* purchase the tee directly from The Front himself ;)

When we got home, I worked a bit on an English Language parser implementation and then went to the University of Washington to meet with Emily Bender about getting in to the Professional Master’s program in Computational Linguistics. It all looks good, and I even got the good news that the GRE is no longer required!

After the meeting, I headed home and poked at the parser for a little while longer. I then picked Scarlet up from after-school care and brought her home. I then hopped in the car and drove toward Bellevue to meet up with Monty while he’s in town. I over-estimated the amount of time traffic would steal on my way to Bellevue, and had an extra hour to blow. So I dropped by building 41 and shot the IronPython bull with Dino. It turns out he’s got an android phone, too. I told him it was possible to put a debian chroot on it and that he should even be able to ‘apt-get install ironpython’ to his phone soon ;) We talked briefly about the CodePlex Foundation and Sam Ramji’s departure from The Evil Empire. Dino seems skeptical about the project. I don’t have enough information to have much of an opinion. However, it sounds like some folks I trust are involved, so I’m hopeful.

I left MS just in time to make it to the wrong address at the specified time. My phone had just enough juice to call Monty to get the right address and then use the navigation system to find my way there. I wasn’t able to make reservations at the place we intended to go for dinner until 8:15, so we went to the Barnes & Noble for a bit. They only had one NLP book in stock and the examples are all in Python. I should learn that language one of these days… As we were leaving the Pacific Place, Monty mentioned to me that he is on the advisory board for the CodePlex Foundation, and that they have been responsive enough to his input that they changed the Mission statement, at his recommendation, just one day before the Foundation was publicized. He feels that this is a very good direction for Microsoft to be heading.

My brother Chris was kind enough to watch the kids while we went out to dinner. Quick note: he recently graduated from UW with a BA in Electrical Engineering and is looking for work using his acquired knowledge, in case anyone needs one of those ;)

We met up with my wife, Hannah and our friends, Mike & Cynthia at our place. Monty graciously avoided mentioning the terrible state in which our apartment has recently found itself. The kids were super cute and polite and said hi/bye.

Over dinner we discussed building an android app (Monty has one, too ;) ) to automate the process of creating bounties for apps and getting folks to implement them. We also talked about MySQL and MariaDB, of course. Hannah and I recalled my time working for MySQL, Inc. on the MaxDB project and some subtle cultural differences we noticed while traveling. It was interesting getting the inside scoop about the Sun acquisition and some of the recent goings-on in the MySQL/Sun/Oracle world. I wasn’t aware, for instance, that the EU is balking on the merger because of monopoly concerns.

Mono 2.4.2.3+dfsg-2 just hit debian

2009-09-08T01:21:25Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

Thanks to Meebey!

Sorry for the being out of touch thing and the not posting anything recently thing. A vacation took me by surprise and clocked me right upside the head.

Next on the TODO list:

Update the dlr-languages package to indicate dependence on the new release
make sure it builds correctly on my sid box
present changes to doko
???
profit

some links to my language-related blog posts

2009-08-17T19:07:16Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

http://cjcollier.livejournal.com/2716.html
http://cjcollier.livejournal.com/7191.html
http://cjcollier.livejournal.com/8730.html
http://cjcollier.livejournal.com/113549.html

dlr-languages package passes another hurdle

2009-08-16T20:56:00Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

It looks like the upload of the Iron* languages to Debian is imminent. We’ve gotten the debian/watch file downloading a tarball of the git tag we’ve chosen for this release. This was the last bit meebey needed in order to present it to the maintainer of ironpython in lenny. He has agreed to let the Debian CLI Libraries Team adopt ironpython under the conditions that our packaging doesn’t suck and that he remains in the uploaders list.

Now that we have a package suitable for review, we have now presented it for said review.

Let me take a moment to mention how excited I am to be involved in packaging for Debian one of the first pieces of DFSG-compliant software sponsored by Microsoft. This is a true community effort with great work done by a lot of hard-working contributors. I believe that Microsoft has put its money where its mouth is with this project.

I have spent a fair amount of time criticising Microsoft for its “embrace and extend” sort of monopolistic actions. Having the somewhat unique experience of being a Debian GNU/Linux early-adopter and growing up in Microsoft’s back yard has given me the opportunity to bring up the concerns that the Free Software community has with the development practices of the 800-pound gorilla. To my surprise, the blue badger engineers with whom I have spoken have been responsive and even proactive in addressing the issues that have made Microsoft so combative toward the F/OSS development community. I see this as a very important step toward reconciling some poignant differences in the community.

MS-PL is acceptable for Fedora as a GPL-incompatible license

2009-08-16T05:17:34Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legal-list/2009-August/msg00017.html

In addition, IronRuby/IronPython/DLR may make it in to FC 13, thanks to Brett.

Randal Schwartz interviews Michael Foord about IronPython

2009-08-15T18:59:36Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

The FLOSS Weekly folks (including my homie, Randal) just published this week’s interview. It is with Michael Foord, who I just met a couple weeks ago. He published a book about IronPython. He mentions Mono, the DLR and IronRuby, too ;)

dlr-languages packaging

2009-08-07T00:59:51Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

An update on recent changes to the IronRuby packaging.

We’ve changed the name of the source package because
We’re packaging IronPython as well as IronRuby (thanks doko!)
I’ve added the wrapper scripts (irake, igem, etc.). Maybe this is showing that I’m not a heavy user…

After building meebey’s packages and installing them:

$ cat /etc/debian_version && apt-cache show mono-xbuild | grep '^Version' | head -1
squeeze/sid
Version: 2.4.2.3+dfsg-1~pre1

After installing my build of IronRuby:

$ apt-cache show ironruby | grep ^Version
Version: 0.9.0+dfsg-1

Twitter Updates for 2009-08-05

2009-08-05T17:18:12Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

@sandyarmstrong: O RLY? in reply to sandyarmstrong #
@diakopter: it's been over a year since the Lang.NET I attended, but I've finally gotten back to the DLR language packaging thing ;) #
@jdub: what, the default configuration of the clock applet? 'cuz I run my clock applet sans date… in reply to jdub #
@edropple: don't you mean "@schestowitz is a wonderful man"? #
@migueldeicaza: my band teacher had a debater friend. A sign was hung up when he returned from a meet saying JOE IS A MASTER DEBATER in reply to migueldeicaza #
@edropple: I wouldn't be much of a master baiter if I didn't even hyperlink, now would I? in reply to edropple #
@schestowitz: don't forget Collier Technologies! We're helping Microsoft to piggyback OLPC, too! in reply to schestowitz #
@toshok: sokay. I'll catch you next time you're in SEA in reply to toshok #

@skud:

2009-08-04T21:34:21Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

@jdub pointed me to twitter-tools

Twitter Updates for 2009-08-04

2009-08-04T17:19:15Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

@zbowling: I hate writing web pages. get over it. #
@voidspace: can you join #debian-cli on irc.oftc.net to help us with ipy tests right quick? #
@DinoViehland: Can you join us on #debian-cli on irc.oftc.net when you get in? We need some ipy packaging tips. #
@casualjim: can you fix the build so it packages ironruby & ironpython to its own directory instead of putting files in the root? #
@casualjim: 07:06 < sanxiyn> Eh, bin/ipy seems to run ir.exe? #

Twitter Updates for 2009-08-03

2009-08-03T17:19:29Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

@bgoldy: PCC? #
@bgoldy: http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/locations/vr.html #
@sungo: I don't want to!!! #
ha: RT @voidspace Microsoft connect is showing me 1-0 of the 0 results it found. Impressive. #
@directhex: I mock ur pain #
@sungo: like "what is your sexual preference, and what do you think Jesus thinks about it?" #
@rjbs: not braü.net? #
@voidspace: hub = gnome w/o memory. switch = gnome wif memory #
@casualjim: but! no keyboard! #
@casualjim: Tim said something the other day about having a new Erlang book out in reply to casualjim #
@sungo: can one normally catch ennui by hanging out on irc with a carrier? #

Zelda and the girls play

2009-08-02T17:40:44Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

This was far too difficult to post. I lost my username/password for youtube. Anyone remember my name? :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuDdzdDjCPQ

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-02

2009-08-02T17:20:04Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

@directhex: that was quick. I remember it sucking my life away for much longer than that. #
@brianaker: yuck. Have a good time there ;) in reply to brianaker #
@sungo: no u in reply to sungo #
I'm wearing my wife's wife beater #
@sh4na: when you say "cat stuck inside the engine," what exactly do you mean? in reply to sh4na #
@sandyarmstrong: re "micro$haft": wow. I had never let my mind drop down enough notches to realize that. just wow. in reply to sandyarmstrong #
@directhex: excellent… I wonder if it is compatible with a budget diet… #
@trinitysp96: who are you and why are you following me? are you a spambot? #
@marthafi10: I think maybe you are a spambot, too #
@sandyarmstrong: you are now following me along with a bunch of spambots. Yays. #
@timoreilly: heh, did you know about this? http://aralbalkan.com/2284 #
@sandyarmstrong: debian is pretty good ;) in reply to sandyarmstrong #
@meebey: you don't love us! #
@casualjim: of course the servers all go offline directly after I post that ;) in reply to casualjim #
"everythink LOOKS live – there was a comcast truck out back a few minutes ago though…" #
thank you comcast for unplugging my residential service. but next time would you please leave my business service plugged in? kthx bi #
via @Skud: RT @emmajanedotnet: Awesome remix of @webchick's "what is a contributor" slide by @david_a_eaves http://is.gd/1RM0r #
@rjbs: amen, brother. system install? I laugh at you. #
@BarackObama: but I'm making dinner… *whine whine whine* #
helping @meebey #
@migueldeicaza: I hope Laura's okay. The world can be a scary place… in reply to migueldeicaza #
@spouliot: byebye!!! in reply to spouliot #
@sungo: amen, brutha. I ❤ me some autotools sometimes. in reply to sungo #
@timoreilly: what qualifies as a "broadband expert"? I wonder if I qualify… in reply to timoreilly #
Blue Angels! #
haha. if you visit http://bit.ly/187fKb
and forward-search for "ass" you find a reference to… #
@zbowling: you'd have a cc-agent handle the card number, silly ;) #
@migueldeicaza: thank you fir that, sir. #
@arjenlentz: you mean like the linux kernel module? in reply to arjenlentz #
@casualjim: I like Tim's books ;) #
OMG. I'm being followed by @LinuxAlive. I guess that means I haven't done enough to kill it with my "M$" shilling yet! #
@toshok: you're in my hood!? Come visit! #
an interesting blog: http://is.gd/1WfYe #
RT @timbunce It's SysAdmin Appreciation Day. My thanks @ask & Rob for great work keeping many *.perl.org servers & services running sweetly #
@toshok: d'oh. you didn't visit me while you were in SEA? #
22:29 < CIA-6> debian-pkg-cli-libs: cjadamscollier-guest * r4204 /packages/ironruby/trunk/debian/ (12 files in 2 dirs): initial checkin #
@meebey: NO U #
03:53 < casualjim_> we're running tests for rubygems, rake and yaml #
@btmspox: ironruby package in pkg-cli-libs svn on alioth. help me test? #
@brianaker: lolz #
@voidspace: woo hoo. I should prolly learn one of them. I got into this biz cuz guido told me to get perl6 hosted on mono at #OSCON06 #
@directhex: come visit SEA. you'd fit right in. #
@voidspace: how 'bout imap? #
our ladybug babies have hatched #
@mitchellwheeler: say something interesting #
@mitchellwheeler: OMG SHILL! in reply to mitchellwheeler #
@baulig: fail whale ahoy! #
@directhex: But the diet! #

Twitter Updates for 2009-08-02

2009-08-02T17:20:03Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

our ladybug babies have hatched #
@mitchellwheeler: say something interesting #
@mitchellwheeler: OMG SHILL! in reply to mitchellwheeler #
@baulig: fail whale ahoy! #
@directhex: But the diet! #

Awww, thanks guys!

2009-08-02T03:38:30Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

I got props for hosting the IronRuby/IronPython continuous integration. Yesterday was SysAdmin Appreciation Day. I feel appreciated.

IronRuby .deb is looking better

2009-08-02T01:49:36Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

cjac@dev0:/usr/src/git/alioth$ sudo dpkg -i ironruby-cil_0.9.0+dfsg_all.deb
Selecting previously deselected package ironruby-cil.
(Reading database ... 67034 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking ironruby-cil (from ironruby-cil_0.9.0+dfsg_all.deb) ...
Setting up ironruby-cil (0.9.0+dfsg) ...
cjac@dev0:/usr/src/git/alioth$ which ir
/usr/bin/ir
cjac@dev0:/usr/src/git/alioth$ ir
IronRuby 0.9.0.0 on Mono 2.4.2.3
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

>>> exit

Hey, look! debian/control and friends are on Alioth!

2009-08-01T22:24:58Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-cli-libs/packages/ironruby.git;a=tree;f=debian;h=c5642e8a4a4aa3b5e15af5f607a1604f3169bd47;hb=449af4392c1fbddacee4f52b9998e23e674a7434

*whew* now I won’t have to worry about losing (or misplacing) my changes.

Thanks meebey and #debian-cli for your help. Now to tune those files a bit and get something that actually does what users expect ;)

nice

2009-08-01T17:50:59Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/real-floss-community-and-faux-floss.html#c5581975764835681515

Twitter Updates for 2009-08-01

2009-08-01T17:18:54Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

RT @timbunce It's SysAdmin Appreciation Day. My thanks @ask & Rob for great work keeping many *.perl.org servers & services running sweetly #
@toshok: d'oh. you didn't visit me while you were in SEA? #
22:29 < CIA-6> debian-pkg-cli-libs: cjadamscollier-guest * r4204 /packages/ironruby/trunk/debian/ (12 files in 2 dirs): initial checkin #
@meebey: NO U #
03:53 < casualjim_> we're running tests for rubygems, rake and yaml #
@btmspox: ironruby package in pkg-cli-libs svn on alioth. help me test? #
@brianaker: lolz #
@voidspace: woo hoo. I should prolly learn one of them. I got into this biz cuz guido told me to get perl6 hosted on mono at #OSCON06 #
@directhex: come visit SEA. you'd fit right in. #
@voidspace: how 'bout imap? #

#ironruby – shilling it up for fun and profit!

2009-07-31T20:08:57Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

We want to be like IronPython.

12:54 < mletterle> http://twitter.com/mletterle/statuses/3056990457
12:54 < cj> lolz. signing up:
12:54 < cj> Unknown Error
12:54 < cj> An unknown error occurred while processing your request. This is most likely due to a connection failure. Please try again.
12:54 < jschementi> HA
12:54 < cj> M$ sux
12:55 < mletterle> Probably running a LAMP stack in the background
12:56 < cj> NO U $HILL
12:58 < mletterle> *hrmmrmm* *recorded voice* Sorry, mletterle can’t speak to you now, he’s too busy sucking on the teat of the Big Blue Monster *end recorded voice* *thumbs up, suckling noises*

Twitter Updates for 2009-07-31

2009-07-31T17:20:09Z

Originally published at The Pædantic Programmer. Please leave any comments there.

Blue Angels! #
haha. if you visit http://bit.ly/187fKb
and forward-search for "ass" you find a reference to… #
@zbowling: you'd have a cc-agent handle the card number, silly ;) #
@migueldeicaza: thank you fir that, sir. #
@arjenlentz: you mean like the linux kernel module? in reply to arjenlentz #
@casualjim: I like Tim's books ;) #
OMG. I'm being followed by @LinuxAlive. I guess that means I haven't done enough to kill it with my "M$" shilling yet! #
@toshok: you're in my hood!? Come visit! #
an interesting blog: http://is.gd/1WfYe #