MiniHOWTO: Save and recover full list of installed packages with dpkg

Oh, the things you catch flying by on the mailing lists! This tip comes from Ulrich Grün:

To make installation of your favoured packages more easy, you could save your list of installed packages from your old system, and then use this list for your new one:

dpkg –get-selections > list-of-installed-packages

dpkg –set-selections < list-of-installed-packages

then with aptitude with option ‘g’ or with synaptic or other packaging programme: installation of this list of packages. Maybe, an apt-get upgrade will do this as well (not tested)

One very important thing to note, as another poster in that thread brought up, is to always check the list and make sure you know what you’re doing before you use it as basis for an upgrade, especially if the list is from a different version (Gutsy to Hardy, for instance), or you could really hose yourself. But god damn, I can’t count how often I’ve looked for something like this! Thanks, Ulrich!

Still Bartering!

Here’s the spring barter list! Let’s make a deal!

• A quality bike trailer
• General bike knowledge (I need to learn how to fix this thing myself, it’s costing me a damn fortune)
• Accounting/small business administration and startup knowledge (help me file my DBA and all that rot)
• Shelving and storage of varying sizes for varying parts, from video cards up to minitowers and CRT monitors
• Interior design expertise. If you can come in here and put together an organizational scheme that lasts me more than a month, as far as I’m concerned that’s better than money.
• A flatscreen monitor or two

From now on I’m going to post a barter list in the middle of every month. I think barter is great business. I mean, what’s money other than a middleman? If I have a $THING_0 you need, and you have $THING_1 that I need, why would I instead take money and then go try to find $THING_1 somewhere else? Wasted effort and wasted capital. So drop a line or give a call if you can bring me anything on this hit list and you’re the market for our services, we will work something out. I always take staples; food, bulk whole bean coffee, cigarettes, etc. will pretty much always be accepted as payment.

Gimp MiniHOWTO: Make a black border around a selection

Okay, this was hard as hell for me to figure out, but once I did, it was appallingly easy, so I want to put this out there in case anyone else stumbles over it in the future. See the logo at the top of my page with the fist and the monitor? The original image of the monitor is a black image that I found in the “openclipart” package (which is chock full of fun stuff, btw, sudo aptitude install openclipart). Yesterday I was fucking with my business card layout, and I wanted to turn that monitor into a white image with a black outline so I can superimpose my text on it. Here’s how to do it.

Using the color select tool, I select the monitor. Ctrl-C Ctrl-V to make a copy of it as another layer. Flood fill that layer with white, then scale it down by a few pixels. Viola, a white monitor with a black outline!

It’s one of those things that if you’re not savvy, it takes you an hour to wrap your head around but once you do, you’re like, “Oh shit I’m an idiot!” So maybe this post can save someone else the embarrassment

-pd-

We’re still here!

It’s been quite a while since I posted something that was actually Guerrilla Tech-related, so much so that I’ve gotten a few emails asking me what’s going on. So here’s an update.

The day job’s been absolutely off-the-handle insane, and it’s occupied damn near every conscious moment for the last month and a half. But that’s okay, I planned for that, and the cash influx has been very welcome. Now that the anarchy at the office has begun to abate, I’ve been able to start returning my focus to Guerrilla Tech.

The Bad Vista campaign, of course, continues, and now that the weather’s turning and my bike’s fixed, pamphleteering shall once again proceed. I’m also working on getting a more traditional flier together with the same content, for hanging at bus stops and lampposts.

Also, in addition to the money that the day job’s been bringing in, I received a small-medium sized grant last week, and I’ve been kicking around ideas for how to spend it. There will be some local newspaper ads in the offing, I’m in the market for a cheap bike trailer, perhaps a new demo laptop (maybe a Cloudbook, they look damn nice and I feel that it’s an idea I should support). It’s funny, I’ve become so accustomed to running this show on zero dollars, that now that I’ve got a little cash to throw at it I’m almost at a loss as to how to spend it. If you ever have the opportunity to have this problem, I highly recommend it.

And that’s where we’re at. Waiting on a bolt of inspiration for the next bold stroke. Stay tuned.

-pd-

HOWTO: Compiling 101

Quite often, on scanning some of the more n00b-oriented forums (fora?), I will come across the perennial “I have to actually compile something?! WTFOMFG! Linux is sooo not ready for the desktop! How the hell am I supposed to perform such brain surgery?” posts. Not that I’m picking on anyone. In fact, for the bash virgins, compiling source can oft be a source of fear and frustration, and I think one of the unintended side-effects of n00b-ready distros like Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS is that the “you should never have to compile anything” mentality, while good by itself (I use aptitude for installation of new software whenever possible), ultimately is a disservice to first-time users, because a month or five down the trail they’re going to run into something that’s not in the repositories that they want, and because no one’s ever explained to them what the compiling process is and how it works, they’re going to go apeshit like the (completely fabricated) fictional n00b poster above. The following is a ten-step recipe for compling code, and found on the Kubuntu mailing list, originally posted by Luís Silva, and reprinted here with his gracious permission. May it find the eyes that need to see it most.

A tar.gz is a set of files that was first archived with tar and then
compressed with gzip. You will also often find tar.bz2. The difference being
the compression utility used, in this case bzip2. tar itself can handle them
both.

Here is how it goes:
1- Create a folder named BUILD in your /home/YourUserName (This is just to
keep your home tidy!)
2- move/copy the tar.gz into this folder
3- I suppose you have already used the command line before. If you did the
above in the command line just cd to the BUILD folder. If not, open a
terminal, type “cd” (without the “) (this is to make sure you are in your
home folder), type “cd BUILD”.
4- Now you are in the BUILD folder, you are going to unzip and untar the file:
tar vxzf yourfile.tar.gz
The “v” is for verbose, the “x” is for extract, “z” is because you have a
gziped file (you should use “j” instead if you had a tar.bz2), and the “f” is
to say that the next word is going to be your file name.
5- now you should have a new folder there. Check it with “ls -hl”
6- “cd” to the new folder.
7- Each program in source code comes with one or several scripts that perform
the actual compilation and installation for you. Typically you have
a “configure” script there. Again, check it with “ls -hl”. Run it
with “./configure”
8- If you get any errors just post them here so we can help you going through
them. If don’t just type “make”. This should compile your program.
9- If everything went as expected, and you want to install the program in your
system type “sudo make install” and enter your password when asked for it.
10- That’s it. There are surely a lot of things I omitted. If you want to know
more about each command you used (and you should be learning about these)
type ‘man command’ on the command line (replacing command by what you want to
know about.

A nice thing about kde (I assume you are using kde) is that you have man, info
and help available in konqueror. So typing man:command, info:command or
help:command in the location bar gives you help on the desired command. For a
newbie I would recommend its EXTENSIVE use.

Ok! Have fun and keep trying. Don’t stop just because something didn’t work
the first time.

That’s great advice at the end. Don’t quit on it just because you can’t figure it out right away. Maybe you’re missing a library somewhere, or the configure script is looking for something that you do have, but in an unexpected place. Keep poking, put up forum posts, trawl IRC channels. Email the author if you have to. Everything worth doing is hard and scary the first time. There’s a whole big raft of people waiting to help you. Good luck!

-pd-