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Installing Friendly Interactive Shell (FISH) on Upgraded OS X Snow Leopard

All the cool kids are using Fish, so why can't I? BASH is so 90's. Cause it won't fracking install on my copy of Snow Leopard, dang it. I spent the greater part of this weekend trying to figure out why Fish didn't like me. Read this so you won't have to endure my pain.

port install fish

wouldn't install. ports/fish kept asking for iconv, gettext, or whatnot. 64-bit/32-bit unix apps don't play well together in Snow Leopard, and because I upgraded from Leopard and I needed to reinstall ports to deal with it. Long and painful, indeed. You, though, can do this with 60 seconds of typing:

1. Reinstall ports (via http://trac.macports.org/wiki/Migration)

a. Save the list of installed ports:

port installed > myports.txt

b. Clean any partially completed builds, and uninstall all installed ports:

sudo port clean all
watch football/do laundry/deshell next week's pistachios
sudo port -f uninstall installed

c. Browse myports.txt and install the ports that you actually want to use (as opposed to those that are only needed as dependencies) one by one, remembering to specify the appropriate variants:

sudo port install portname +variant1 +variant2 ...

2. Install fish

port install fish

3. Make it default

append "opt/local/bin/fish" to the /etc/shells file
utilize accounts.prefpane, unlock it, right click your icon, and set your shell to "opt/local/bin/fish"

4. Voila! Enjoy fish!

For a more on Fish, here's an old Ars Technica article, and a lwn.net article.

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iPhone OS unix linux win

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RT @mackozer: Technologia Grand Central Dispatch zaimplementowana w systemie FreeBSD (#apple mac linux unix): http://bit.ly/4q3cHi

A note or two about those forking pipes in Ruby and Unix...

This is probably obvious to old school Unix hackers but didn't make ANY SENSE AT ALL until I realized that:

1. When fork gets called without a block it spawns off a child process.
2. Which means that the if statement will get run twice, once on the parent process and the other on the child process.
3. if fork evaluates to true in the parent process since fork returns the process ID of the child procecess.
4. In the child process if fork goes through the else statement instead because fork always returns nil in a child process.
5. The child process will be left hanging in a zombie state untill Process.wait gets called in the parent process.
6. You can't write to a pipe until you close the read port and you can't read from a pipe until you close the write port.

Safe-rm to fight with your bad habits

Safe-rm is a safety tool intended to prevent the accidental deletion of important files by replacing /bin/rm with a wrapper, which checks the given arguments against a configurable blacklist of files and directories that should never be removed.

via blog.rimuhosting.com

Well...

While I absolutely agree that the idea is really nice and would safe a lot of asses from big pain, personally, I would never use it.

You know, there are some things in this world that cannot be taught. They need either to be fully understood and burned deeply or learned by your own pain. Sometimes a lot of pain.

Whenever I'm typing rm -r I'm already nervous. Whenever I see rm -f I'm freaking scared. This is just my gut feeling, I can't do much with it and I don't need to. I had a few painful lessons in the beginning and now I'm so thankful for that.

You know what, try rm -rf / yourself. It's not just one lesson. It's a set of lessons about working as root instead of regular user, keeping regular and proper backups, thinking before act and whatever not. You'll not forget that and you wouldn't need safe-rm anymore. :)

The same with molly-guard that prevents accidental reboots. Come on, this one is really fun. Why do you need that at all? If you server reboot is painful, you're already in danger. If your services doesn't boot well, doh, go fix it. If you don't have any load balancing and fault tolerance policy, go implement one. But don't go for the hack to save your ass from not doing anything else.

P.S. Don't get offended, just my 5 cents. :) Have fun.

Ubuntu & Me

Image by Diana Lili M via Flickr

Let me first point out that I am a recent convert to Linux. I, like many others, was a die-hard fan of Windows, which I believe is due to shear laziness (Linux requires a little love, now and then to get it to do some of the things you want it to). Anyway, last year I was having problems with my laptop -- mostly due to my ignorance of computer operating systems -- and I was getting tired of getting my computer fixed. Also, I did not want to switch from Windows XP over to Vista, because of all the negative reviews I had been hearing. So I decided to be daring and switch to Linux.

At the time, I was working in a book store so I had access to literally dozens of books on computers: operating systems, hardware configurations, databases, programming languages, et. al. Also, there were a plethora of computer nerds working there, and just about every one of them doted on Linux. So, after perusing several 10-pound books, I took a leap of faith and bought one on Fedora Core 6 (which, coincedently, had a disk with the operating system in the back).

Migrating to Fedora Core 6 6 was a challenge, to say the least (lots of configuration screens to go through). However, even though I knew not what I was doing, I managed it quite successfully. I enjoyed using the GNOME GUI for a while. Then, for reasons I don't recall, I reinstalled FC6 using KDE. I liked that GUI much better, because it had better games on it, and we all know that you can't have a computer without some kick ass games to play. And since I was to stupid to figure out how to install an application like Wine, I had to make do with whatever came with the chosen GUI. Also -- any of you readers who are familiar with Linux can testify to this -- both desktop environments have their own set of applications, most of which are native only to one interface. Therefore, being totally ignorant of my new OS, I again reinstalled the software in order to play ther other games -- see a pattern here?

Now, going back to my educated decision on which operating system to choose, I neglected to pay attention to the fact that, being open source, all Linux distros are either continually being updated, or they are only being updated for a set period of time. (Do you see where I'm going here?) Well, a few weeks ago I tried numerous times -- in vain -- to run updates. Finally, remembering an old acquaintances suggestion -- which I had previously ignored -- I downloaded Ubuntu 8.04. The reason for going with 8.04 instead of 9.04 was because it is being maintained longer.

So. After about 30 minutes of jacking with my CD drive I finally downloaded and copied Ubuntu. After reading through everything on the website, to say I was thrilled would be an understatement. But, being Mr. Murphy's favorite plaything, luck was not on my side -- I couldn't validate or install my download. Never fear, though, because I was desperate I requested a "free" CD. Now the first thing I will brag on Ubuntu about is the fact that it took about a week to get my copy (the website says 6 to 8 weeks).

Being the impatient, ADD-afflicted freak I am, I immediately turned on my laptop and popped in the disk -- installation was as easy as one, two, three. Now I can check my Twitter account every ten seconds, email and my Facebook profile every ten minutes, and watch my FriendFeed updates constantly update in the lower right-hand corner of my screen continuously.

However, all this took some tweaking to accomplish, but being so user-friendly, Ubuntu makes it easy. If I have a question about how to install a new app, or a plug-in -- which I always do -- help is only a few keystrokes away. Also, I am easily able to update at any time.

• Why I chose GNU/Linux (internetling.com)
• Vista Sucks (sciencetext.com)
• Linux Newbie, You Have Options. (daniweb.com)
• The Perfect Desktop - Kubuntu 9.04 (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com)
• Gnome Shell - Your Next Desktop Environment (maketecheasier.com)
• Gnome Vs KDE? That it? (lockergnome.com)
• The Great Software List for Linux (menson.wordpress.com)
• 5 Little Useful Sticky Notes For Linux (makeuseof.com)
• Do one thing, and do it well: 40 years of UNIX (crunchgear.com)
• Best way to change you GNOME Desktop look (techie-buzz.com)

60 ezer orosz tanár fog Linux-ot tanulni 2009 végére | HUP

Unix User-friendly?

UNIX is user-friendly, it just chooses its friends.

Andreas Bogk - Chaosradio 40

Mac OS X is a true UNIX®

Oooop !!!

I tried to upload a "certified" PDF which didn't show because for legal reasons Posterous choose to not permit that kind of action.

No problem, still, since I found this article on Ars Techica linking to the UNIX 03 certification PDF file I meant to show you!

Sorry for the little hiccup!!

Watch Star Wars Episode IV in ASCII via Terminal

Open Terminal and type...

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

...to watch Star Wars Episode IV in it's entirety in ASCii characters! 

[robg adds: I thought we had run this one before, but a quick search proves my memory is failing after 8,600+ hints...]