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Book Review: "Linux Pocket Guide" by Daniel J. Barrett; O'Reilly Media

by Dave on Wednesday, June 06 2012 at 21:08:11 EDT

As part of the O’Reilly Bloggers program I was able to review a copy of Daniel Barrett’s “Linux Pocket Guide.”

Daniel writes this guide to be a reference. He covers many of the most important commands and options.

In the introduction, the author describes some the basics of Linux – what a distro is and the difference between the command line and GUI. He then builds up the reader with knowledge of how the file system is laid out and how the shell works.

The rest of the book is broken down by tasks one may want to accomplish. For example, Daniel has a section on “File Compression and Packaging.” He discusses such commands with tar, gzip, gunzip, bzip2 and bunzip2. The discussions around the commands are set up much like man pages, but are easier to read and have well explained examples. He also includes a table of useful options.

While not a comprehensive book of every command, option and examples, this guide offers a good reference for those that need to look up common commands.

You can buy the book from the O’Reilly Site.

Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff

by Dave on Wednesday, February 22 2012 at 11:11:58 EST

I modified a recipe for Beef Stroganoff all over the web:

2 lb. beef sirloin cubes, raw
2 sm. onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 can cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
3 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
8 oz Package of fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup of red wine (I used Ravines Keuka Village Red which has a nice hint of peppercorn)
16 oz. sour cream

Mix all ingredients except sour cream in crock pot. Cook for 8-10 hours on low. When done, mix in sour cream well and cook on high for 15-20 minutes.

Serve over noodles or rice.

And everything turned out well.

Groklaw: SCO and IBM Stipulate on Going Forward with Utah Litigation -- It's Game On

by Dave on Friday, February 17 2012 at 12:32:00 EST

From pj at Groklaw

SCO and IBM have reached a stipulation [PDF] on how to go forward on reactivating the Utah litigation, and SCO has filed it in Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Assuming it’s signed by the judge, the Hon. Kevin Gross, in time for the April 23rd hearing now scheduled in Utah District Court in Salt Lake City before the Hon. Dee Benson on SCO’s laughable motion to let only it go ahead and IBM not, I’d say it’s game on. They’ve agreed IBM can proceed with its defenses and counterclaims. It was IBM that suggested in its opposition to SCO’s motion that the best way forward was to ask the Bankruptcy Court to lift the stay on both parties, which is what the stipulation agrees to.

Aren’t these guy’s dead yet?

Kodak gets out of camera business

by Dave on Friday, February 10 2012 at 10:03:59 EST

I know I’m a day late with this:

The company that pioneered cheap, easy film photography and invented the digital camera said Thursday that it plans by July to quit offering digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames as it sharpens its focus on more profitable business lines while in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Source: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Rebuilding rpm database

by Dave on Friday, February 10 2012 at 07:44:33 EST

Ever get this error?

# yum update --skip-broken
error: rpmdb: Thread/process 3099/140508766635776 failed: Thread died in Berkeley DB library
error: db4 error(-30974) from dbenv->failchk: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: cannot open Packages index using db4 -  (-30974)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
CRITICAL:yum.main:

Error: rpmdb open failed

This is how you fix it:

rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
rpm –rebuilddb

Then all is right with the world.

First Post!

by Dave on Wednesday, February 01 2012 at 23:55:13 EST

Hello world!

This is my first post on this blog. I am writing this blog in Ruby on Rails.