So I wanted to install Mythbuntu on my old Dell C640, I downloaded the CD and started the PC. Things went cool until the installation reached 25%. At that point ubiquity decided that the CD was corrupt and the installation could not continue.

So I tested the CD on both the old computer and a newer one. The newer computer didn’t find any error, but the C640 said the cd was completely broken (19 broken files, but one of them was the squashfs image).

Now what? Boot from USB? Didn’t seem to be an option, since there is no option in the boot menu. After a lot of time I found the following working solution:

• Boot the laptop from the CD (remember only the installation failed)
• Have a copy of the CD on an USB Disk
• Mount the USB Disk (mount /dev/sdb1 /tmp/usb)
• Mount the squashfs filesystem image that is located on the USB Disk (mount -o loop /tmp/usb/casper/filesystem.squashfs /tmp/squashfs)
• And now the big trick: bind the new location (/tmp/squashfs) on the location that is created by the installation CD (/rofs). The command to do that is: mount –bind /tmp/squashfs /rofs.
• Start ubiquity.

As of today I will not maintain this ebuild anymore. Please have a look at this post for more details. I would like to take the chance to thank you all for the positive feedback you have always given me.

Current version: amarok-svn-1.4-r9

Here you can find the latest ebuild for amarok-svn. This ebuild will get the latest amaroK source code from subversion and build amaroK.

amaroK is a music player for Linux and Unix with an intuitive interface. amaroK makes playing the music you love easier than ever before - and looks good doing it.

Change list:

• 1.4-r9 I haven’t had a lot of time to work on anything except for my paid job lateley… But thanks to radfoj there is now a version that supports the updated build process.
• 1.4-r7 thanks to captain obvious and all the others who provided me with feedback (mainly during my holidays) I can now present you a new version with the following new features and or changes:
  - in sync (again) with the official amarok ebuild
  - rename of the moodbar use flag, it is now called exscalibar
  - as with the original release this build depends on xine
  - removed use flags for arts and gstreamer
  - included a use flag for gstreamer010, let me know if you have problems with it
  - included a use flag for ifp, which adds iriver support
  - included a use flag for aac
  - tunepimp now correctly depends on the musicbrainz use flag (minor bug)
• 1.4-r6 now depends on ruby, since the lyric scripts need it
• 1.4-r5 now fixes the checkout bug in portage. This bug caused a full checkout of subversion every time you emerged amaroK. For others (see the comments) it caused a complete non-working ebuild. Thanks go out to Anli for pointing it out and helping with the bug fixing with the Gentoo developers.
  For this to work you will need a very recent version of portage and probably a testing Gentoo environment as well (ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=”~????” in your /etc/make.conf).
• Works with the latest changes in the amaroK subversion repository. Versions before 1.4-r2 will not work with the current structure in subversion.
• Supports libgpod (ipod library) with the ‘ipod’ use-flag. You will need to have libgpod as well. Please check here to find out how to get this library.
• Supports exscalibar (or moodbar) with the ‘moodbar’ use-flag. You will need the exscalibar ebuild as well
• Now makes sure you can’t install it together with the ‘normal’ amaroK
• It now comes as a package you have to unpack into your portage overlay directory (no more ebuild amarok-svn-1.4-rx.ebuild digest).

To use:

• Download the package
• Check your /etc/make.conf and see what the value of your PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable is
• Change to one of your ‘overlay’ directories and execute:
  tar zxvf /path/to/amarok-svn.tar.gz
• Execute:
  emerge amarok-svn

Filed as Gentoo bug nr: 121717. This ebuild will never be in portage.

Current version: smartdj-1.0.

Here you can find the dependencies for Smart DJ, an amaroK script. With all these dependencies installed you can go ahead and install Smart DJ.

Smart DJ lets you find tracks based on how similar they sound to each other. It can also automatically add new tracks to your playlist based on how similar they are to what you’ve been listening to.

To use it:

• Download the package
• Check your /etc/make.conf and see what the value of your PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable is
• Change to one of your ‘overlay’ directories and execute:
  tar zxvf /path/to/smartdj.tar.gz
• Emerge all the ebuilds that are part of the package (there are no dependencies yet between the packages)
• You can now download and install the Smart DJ script with amaroK

It seems that I have become the maintainer of the amarok-svn.ebuild. Might as well take the responsibility for the moment, since I need the ebuild for my own good use anyways

Well a lot has changed with KDE, everyone and everything seems to prepare for KDE 4.0, which means that the 3.5 branch has become its own branch and 4.0 seems to be developed in the main branch.

Result was that the default admin directory, checked out in the ebuild, suddenly depended on unsermake and QT4.0. Not directly what you would want. I did a little bit of rewriting of the ebuild, so it will use the 3.5 branch for the admin files (with automake and autoconf).

Works for me.

Update 08/09/2005: had a small error in the ebuild. Fixed that.

Here it is.

Paul Graham has a nice article describing what companies can learn from open source technology:

Lately companies have been paying more attention to open source. Ten years ago there seemed a real danger Microsoft would extend its monopoly to servers. It seems safe to say now that open source has prevented that. A recent survey found 52% of companies are replacing Windows servers with Linux servers. [1]

More significant, I think, is which 52% they are. At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don’t.

Link.