Older blog entries for niemeyer (starting at number 4)

I've just tested the patch floppy_cs on kernel 2.2.17 and it works just fine!!! I had no problems applying it. Now my Libretto 50CT has a floppy drive. Maybe Conectiva Linux can ship with this patch. The only drawback is that floppy support must be modular.

In the few last days, I've implemented support for Inputgrid into gnome-linuxconf. It allows one to define sensitive areas into a drawing area. Gurus are already working with it.

I've also created two new commands for Linuxconf's gui protocol: Splash and Hidesplash. Linuxconf will send them while it is starting, and the graphic frontend is suposed to show a nice splash screen. Support in gnome-linuxconf has also been implemented with an image designed by Everaldo (thanks!!!).

Btw, yesterday I've fixed a bug in Python's bsddb module. It was handling DB_RECNO databases with string keys. As the documentation says, these databases must use, in key's "data" field, a pointer to a memory location holding a recno_t type.

My parents have arrived yesterday!! They'll stay here until monday and then will go to Minas Gerais, visiting Raul and Lulude.

Yesterday I've implemented a message signing module for Mailman. Darian (aka dmalloc), from openprojects.net has asked if I could do such module to use on lists.openprojects.net. (I said yes... ;-). I'm going to ask the people here at Conectiva if they want to use this module in some of our lists.

Pybot has a few new features: CTCP handling/sending, timer module, unhandled messages hook, and something else I probably forgot.

About Linuxconf, I have spent the last days fixing a few simple bugs introduced in 1.24r2 and in the last modules developed by Conectiva. I hope to release a Linuxconf update to Conectiva 6.0 tomorrow.

gnome-linuxconf has won a home with screenshots and everything else at http://distro.conectiva.com/projetos/45. I've also published it at freshmeat and put files to download at SourceForge.

Oh, good news I forgot to tell: for those of you that are using wxxt-linuxconf, Jack (Jacques Gelinas) has implemented the Treemenu icons into this frontend as well.

Today I've fixed a bug in the Pythonmod module of Linuxconf. Linuxconf has a default handler for the SIGCHLD signal that controls all of its child termination. This method has a few disadvantages. Before calling any external processes without using default Linuxconf methods, you must block this handler, otherwise Linuxconf will get on your way. Because of this, If a Pythonmod module tried to fork external processes, they were failing. Now Pythonmod is setting the SIGCHLD signal to SIG_DFL (POSIX doesn't allow us to SIG_IGN it) before calling python code, and after returning from a few Linuxconf API functions that set the handler back. When the python code returns, popen_initsignal() is called, putting the Linuxconf handler back in place.

On the gnome-linuxconf side, I've implemented the drawing context command Defpen. Now we have colored lines and primitives!! (ok... not that good... ;-)

I've also spent a few hours in the last two days backing up and restoring data in my colocated machine. Now my personal emails are back online and the server has an updated kernel. I hope it doesn't bother me for a long time.

Unfortunately, the server stuff didn't let me work on Pybot, but I had time to implement dynamically loading, unloading and reloading of modules, before I started on the server. This will help a lot in the development, since I don't have to reboot the bot everytime something is wrong. Anyway, now that the server is ok (I hope so), I'm planning to spend some of my spare time on the bot (yes, I still have some... ;-).

Today I've added the ability of using icons while in the Treemenu mode of Linuxconf. I have just changed some functions to pass the icon name around until it got into the treemenu module and then sent it to the GUI front-end. A little hack on gnome-linuxconf did the work at the front-end side. Following this line of improvements, I'm planning to add a splash screen or something like that soon. Icons would also be welcome in the web interface.

Besides that, I'm also playing with a Python IRC bot. It's not meant to be a war or a channel control bot. I'm planning to implement useful modules to help making IRC even more useful as an information media (no it won't be just another infobot clone). The core and a few modules are ready. I'll post more information later... for now, I'll just tell that it is a multi-channel, multi-server bot, and that I'm trying to make its commands with natural language (eg. forward messages from #blah on servername to #bloh on servername).

Happy birthday Diogo!!

Created advogato account.