Pardon a brief interruption of the ongoing silence but; Guess what? Turns out, this place isn t quite dead just yet! :-) It has been quite a while since I posted around here, or anywhere to be fair, but after some time away from the keyboard here I am again. Now I haven t fully resumed all that I had going "before" and I ll be honest, there are things I haven t dared looking at so far. This means…
As I m sure you have noticed by now, a new version of pacman (5.1) has been released, and with it API changes to ALPM requiring some compatibility changes. Nothing big, but it needed to be done of course, so here s a new version of kalu with the required changes, a fix to actually be suspend-aware, and a small addition in form of a context menu to the "Mark Watched (AUR)" windows. Downloads and…
About time a new release of kalu was made, so here it is! Apart from a few bugs being fixed, this release sees a couple of command-line options mainly useful for CLI use, and the addition of Spanish to the list of languages supported by kalu thanks to pepecuis! Main changes since last version: kalu: Add --tmp-dbpath and --keep-tmp-dbpath Mainly useful for CLI use (or not?), to be able to keep &…
A new version of anopa - init system/service manager built around s6 supervision suite - has been released. Main changes since 0.4.0 are : tty: Fix when multiple devices are listed as console. Thanks to linsam. status: Report "Up; Getting ready..." as needed. Longruns that are up (i.e. not (yet) ready) but do support readiness will be announced as such, making it obvious they support readiness and…
As long last, a new version of statusnotifier is out! This has been due for a (very) long time, and it s finally arrived. Many thanks to everyone who helped, especially contributors Bradley Xu and Vladimir Perepechin, and apologies it took so long for a release to happen. As you ve no doubt noticed, this is version 1.0.0 -- Two reasons for that: one, it s indeed considered stable; And two, it…
Time for a new release of slicd - a simple lightweight Linux cron daemon - with fixes regarding DST handling and the addition of a new per-job "special DST" mode, amongst other things. DST handling By default, slicd handles DST in the simplest way, and one that (I believe) makes most sense: by doing nothing special at all. For example, if time jumps backwards an hour going from 02:59 to 02:00, and…
This is a "minor" bugfix release, mainly affecting building of journal-triggerd; though there was an important issue since configure was still looking for libsystemd-journal even though it has been removed & merged into libsystemd since v230. This, and a failure on non-existing build-aux , is now fixed with 0.2.1 No other changes. And thanks to maxime1986 for the report, as I totally missed this,…
Time for a new release of kalu. Mostly a bugfix release, though thanks to AdmiringWorm kalu now speaks Norwegian Bokmål! Note that there was a bug in the updater, where /etc/pacmand.d/hooks was not set as default HookDir if none were specified in pacman.conf - which means unless you set it there, any custom hooks were not used. Other changes since last version include: Update AUR URL to work with…
alsactl: sysfs_init:48: sysfs path /sys is invalid Found hardware: "HDA-Intel" "Analog Devices AD1989B" "HDA:11d4989b,10438311,00100300" "0x1043" "0x8311" Hardware is initialized using a generic method This is what I could read on boot after a recent kernel upgrade (4.4.1-2 -> 4.4.3-1, to be exact), as a result of running alsactl restore Now, the good thing is my audio didn t stop working, but…
"Release often" they say, right? Yet another release of kalu, since a stupid mistake on my part led to notifications being empty in 4.0.1, making them much less useful indeed. This is now fixed; Thanks to adam777 for the report. Hopefully this is the last release for this week :p Downloads and whatnot See kalu for a description & all the links you should need. And of course, as always, new bug…
2016 will be different, and there s already a new release of kalu! Nothing to be pleased about though, as I let slip a bad bug with the templates reworking, and kalu would segfault when running and no configuration has been loaded. In other words, news users - or anyone without an existing kalu.conf - would see a segfault as soon as the first checks were ran. Not good. This is now fixed; Thanks to…
As I don t doubt you re aware, pacman 5.0 is out. I managed to take some time and here we go with new releases for kalu & PkgClip -- though, really, only the former has a link to the new pacman, since as said before PkgClip wasn t actually affected by the API changes. (For pacdep: API changes aren t relevant, so a simple rebuild will do the trick. No new version coming as of yet.) PkgClip 1.3.0 A…
As you may know, pacman 5.0 was just released (and is available in testing ) so you might want to give it a try (and play with hooks) ! To do so, here s what you need to know wrt my tools: kalu : if you build it without the updater ( --disable-updater ) (or without GUI altogether, of course) then a simple rebuild should be enough. With the updater however, a few changes are in order and a branch…
There are already many cron daemons out there, and I honestly don t remember how I came about looking into such tools, but as I did I realized I wasn t too happy with the way most worked. For instance, they all seem to operate on the same model: wake up at the top of every minute, to check if there s any job to run or not. Many also include some operations other than dropping privileges to the…
As a user of a Linux system, you should have a runtime directory available for applications. Such a thing is even defined in the XDG Base Directory Specifications , as $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR -- and it is quite likely that you do have one set up. You may have a session manager or some other component of your system handling this directory for you, in which case the following likely won t be of much…
A new version of anopa - init system/service manager built around s6 supervision suite - has been released. Main changes since 0.3.0 are : Change how the logging works: instead of logging into /run/initramfs/boot.log in stage 1 & 2, and using aa-mvlog to move said file to /var/log/boot at the end of stage 2, now stage 1 & 2 (much like stage 3) log directly into /var/log/boot/current As a special…
There is something I ve been meaning to do for some time now, I really should have, yet haven t found some time to: writing some sort of proper/actual introduction to anopa . So let s try to do this now, with an actual example. A little while back, I explained why I was looking for another init system , and since I couldn t find what I was looking for, I started working on my own. That s how…
A few years back, as I wanted to switch OS and enter the world of Linux, I needed to pick a distribution (or first, figure out what makes a distribution, what sets one apart from another). Did some research, downloaded and tried a few ISOs, but quite honestly this wasn t a deciding factor in the end. No, what really helped me make up my mind was doing a bunch of reading, learning the "principles"…
A new version of pacman (4.2) has been released, introducing some API changes to ALPM. To go along with it, version 3.0.0 of kalu has been released, with the usual few fixes as well as some new features. If you ve been using branch pacman-next you re already familiar with said changes, mainly the fact, using kalu s updater, it can now keep track of any .pacnew and .pacorig file created during a…
A few changes have just been pushed to branch next of donnatella, introducing some changes when it comes to IO operations (i.e. copy/move/delete files). Starting at the top: donnatella doesn t perform any such IO operations itself. This isn t a not-yet-implemented feature but a design choice: there are plenty of tools which specialized in such things, no need to re-invent the wheel, let s use the…
A new version of donnatella, your GTK3 file manager, is available. A few fixes since 0.3.0 , as well as the addition of option cancel_childless for terminals. Enabled by default, it will cancel the running task on Enter/Esc if the running process (i.e. terminal emulator) has no children. For example after running df -h in an embedded terminal that doesn t autoclose when the running process is done…
Ever since I switched to (Arch) Linux, I ve always loved the command line. It can often be quite amazing, I find. Back in the Windows world, you re pretty much expected to forget that such a thing even exists. Things are different over here (particularly with Arch, I guess), and that s all for the better. Many reasons for that, one being the fantastic simplicity and power that it offers you. Case…
A new version of donnatella, your GTK3 file manager, is available. A bunch of fixes and improvments/optimizations since 0.2.0 , some new things as well, the most "important" ones being the addition of custom properties , and facilities for scripting Sicne day one, things have been quite configurable in donna, but there was no scripting support. Instead, donna uses commands and lets you combine…
Yes, GTK+ 3.14 has been out for some time now, and it s even been available in Arch s official repos for a little while as well. Unfortunately I haven t been able to find enough time to work on donna as of late, and I didn t follow GTK s developement closely, so when 3.14 was released I had a few patches to rebase, and some to rewrite completely (think rubber band handling, since the internals are…
A quick update regarding all things kalu; As you might have noticed since GTK+ 3.14 hit the official repos, there might be "glitches" due to the latest breakage changes in GTK, notably some icons in menus/buttons being quite oversized. This, and a few other bugs, has been fixed, however no new version is available yet. This is mainly because the next version is planned to come alongside the next…
If you ve been following development of the next version of pacman, and are using pacman-git , then you weren t able to use kalu; Let s fix that today. Also, you might already know that some new events have been added into ALPM, notably events when .pac* files are created . This will make it possible/much easier for frontends (such as pacman, or kalu) to know when such files are created. From a…
Finally pushed to the branch next on donnatella s github are a few commits, focusing on one thing: allow you to script donnatella! Since day one, customization has been a big thing in donna, with columns you can create and customize fully, or click modes & key modes that let you decide exactly which commands to trigger and when. And while you could combine commands, either using the return value…
Freshly pushed to the branch next on donnatella s github are a few commits, some fixes and other improvements here and there of course, as well as the introduction of a new time format called "fluid" and some changes regarding custom properties. First off, the obligatory screenshot that might make everything obvious in seconds: The "fluid" format As seen previously , donnatella allows you to use a…
Freshly pushed to the branch next on donnatella s github are a few commits, as usual some fixes and other improvements of course, but mainly this is about the addition of "custom properties." As you may know, in donna everything is a node, and a node has properties. They are the name, size, dates and permissions of your files for example. But sometimes you need more than just those basic…
Freshly pushed to the branch next on donnatella s github are a few commits, some fixes and other improvements here and there of course, as well as the addition of command exec, allowing to execute a command line as a command, and have its output be the command s return value. We ll see how this can be used, but first as some improvements and fixes were done on column types, let s have a quick look…
Quick question for anyone who s been running Arch Linux for some time now: do you know when you installed glibc ? This isn t a trick question or anything of the sort. Yes, glibc is a pretty essential package, required by lots of things (directly or not), and you most likely did install it when you installed your system. Remember, back in the days... But when was it, actually? Any good Archer will…
A new version of donnatella, your GTK3 file manager, is available. A few things have happened since the last push to branch next (and obviously even more since v0.1.1). Let s have a go over the main changes; First of all, since the last push to next there were a few fixes & optimizations, as well as some fixes/adjustements done regarding the latest GTK+ release (3.12.0), although some dialogs…
Freshly pushed to the branch next on donnatella s github are a few commits, some fixes and other improvements here and there of course, and a few things worth spending a few more words about. First of all, you could use patterns in a few places in donna, such as when filtering via names (or any text property) or to define arrangements. A pattern was a string that could contain wildchars in a…
Freshly pushed to the branch next on donnatella s github are a few commits, some fixes and other improvements here and there of course, but mostly the addition of embedded terminals . Let s rewind a bit: you could already run external process in donna by using the domain exec which supports a few modes: simply run the specified command line, run & wait for it to be over, run it in a(n external)…
A new version of kalu is available, with a few fixes, more visibility for the system upgrade simulation feature introduced in 2.3.0, and the addition of FIFO commands. FIFO commands will allow you to send commands to a running kalu simply by writing text to its FIFO. One use for this might be to assign keyboard shortcuts to some common commands, so you can e.g. (un)pause kalu, run the checks or…
A couple of weeks ago was the first public release of donnatella , and for those of you trying it out, you don t have to wait for the next release. The branch next on github already contains a few things. For Arch Linux users, you can use donnatella-git in the AUR to easilly get it. An event for log messages Firstly, donna now has an event log for some of its log messages, specifically those at…
A new release of donnatella is out, fixing a few bugs. Most notably might be that if you tried donna without the GTK patchset, no click would work on the list! This is a silly mistake on my part, setting the default click mode to a non-existing one. New installations won t have the problem anymore, but for others this can easilly be fixed (even without the update, though you should upgrade as…
So I have been working on this little project for some time now, and I am happy to finally have a first (pre-alpha) release to share with the world. That makes a first (and important) milestone I can check. donnatella - donna for short - is a free software, file manager for GNU/Linux systems. Did the world really need (yet) another file manager, you ask? Well, obviously I felt it did. I have my…
In order to make this blog, I use jekyll . It does the job quite well, but it s not the first time I find it s becoming a PITA to keep it updated and running. Today it wasn t so much one of the many dependencies that caused issues though, but the very much required rb-gsl, if you don t want jekyll to take about 2 to 6 months to generate a small site like this one. Arch Linux is now offering ruby…
This certainly comes a little late, but it took me this long to finally look into it, and I m glad I did, so let s share. As you may know, with Firefox 24 the behavior of the "Click to Activate" feature for plugins, most notably Flash, was changed. I don t remember when it was first introduced, and am too lazy to go look for it, but for a little while know there has been an option…
First of all, I ve shared before a PKGBUILD to build kalu from its branch next on github, but I had yet to upload it the the AUR . I m not sure why I hadn t, but this has now been done. So if you want to test the next version of kalu, you just need to switch from kalu to kalu-git in the AUR. And speaking of the next version of kalu, you can now send it "commands" simply by writing to a FIFO. On…
A new version of kalu is available, with a few fixes and the simulation in case of conflicts as previously discussed, as well as support for \e in template variables, which can be useful if you re running kalu as CLI application, to use bold/colors. Also, following the GTK 3.10 upgrade and for those who didn t downgrade or patch their GTK, i.e. are missing their icons in menus & buttons, I ve also…
A new version of journal-triggerd is available, fixing a possible segfault when certain loading rules, and some other little changes : Failing to load a rule will now simply be announced & the file skipped. Only if no rule could be loaded will journal-triggerd not start. Added options --verbose & --quiet Added support for $ FIELD on trigger, that allows to not include the field s value as-in, but…
Recently GNOME 3.10 was pushed to the Arch Linux repos. I don t really care about GNOME as I don t use it, but with a GNOME release usually also come new versions of a few independent components such as GLib or GTK+. Unfortunately, it seems GNOME developers have no problem trying to force their decisions not only to their users, but also users of any application using GTK+ regardless of their DE.…
Running Arch Linux , I ve now been using systemd s journal as logging engine for a little while. This isn t about how good/bad it is, or how it compares to other solutions (e.g. syslog). I m using the journal, and for a little while now I ve been wondering about having a few things automatically triggered when certain messages are logged. I looked for a tool to do that, but couldn t find one.…
For a little while now I ve been using a little module of my own to handle switching DPMS off automatically when playing, but as I recently upgraded to VLC 2.1 it broke. I had to have a look at this again, and after fixing it I figured I might as well share this, since I hadn t really done so yet, in case it might turn useful to someone else, maybe you. Why is anything needed at all? VLC does it…
Every once in a while, kalu will not be able to tell you what upgrades are available. This isn t due to a bug, or because there s something wrong anywhere, it s simply because there is (at least) one conflict. A conflict often isn t a big deal, and handling it is quite simple, but it requires your intervention, and that s why kalu can t list the upgrades: because you need to decide whether or not…
A new version of kalu is available, which will now set a user-agent to be used for all its connections, including those done via ALPM (i.e. synchronizing databases, but also downloading packages when using kalu s sysupgrader). It s not a bad thing to do, and will even fix issues some have been having with e.g. infinality-bundle repos, where lack of user-agent resulted in a download error (HTTP…
A new version of pacdep is out, fixing optional dependencies not working since pacman 4.1.0, and introducing a new option to show the "dependency path" for each package, inspired by karol s request for pactree . Using option --show-path will show the (shorter) "dependency path" for each of the listed dependency, that is showing why a dependency is there, up to the main package. This can be useful…
Couple of updates are available. Nothing new for pkgclip , just minor tweaks in the code and a little rewrite to move the process of loading packages into a separate thread. This should ensure the GUI doesn t get somewhat unresponsive during that time, and even make things be/feel a bit faster. As far as kalu goes, a couple new options were added as well as a tweak that might be helpful for those…