EmacsWiki

Pretty much ever since I began programming, my editor of choice has been Emacs or some variation on it. It can be a daunting task to learn it, but once you do, you know you'll be all set for life, because there will always be an Emacs for you to use on whatever platform you move to. It's been around since the days of TECO, and it'll keep going forever.

The version for Windows called NTEmacs is a wonderful version. Pretty much everything works "out of the box". I haven't bothered to try and use the Cygwin port, because NTEmacs is better integrated with Windows. I've been carrying around my .emacs (the startup file) for years. Heck, I don't even know what half the stuff in there does any more! But I can just copy it to my latest platform (Mac OSX in this case) and I'm good to go. If it can't be done in Emacs, it just isn't worth doing!

Anyway, I stumbled across this great looking Emacs Wiki site. Lots of good info, especially about Major Modes for programming, like php-mode and the like.

EmacsWiki: SiteMap

The Complete FreeBSD

The book that got me all fired up about FreeBSD has been released under a Creative Commons license - yeah! It has the best explanation for the boot process ever! I was proud to help out with the 4th (and most recent) print edition, even getting a mention in the forward and a free copy of the book. I'm looking forward to helping out with the online version now. Download it and have a read!

The Complete FreeBSD page

Playing Audio CDs

Someone on the PC-BSD forums was saying that they couldn't play their audio CDs. KsCD, the KDE audio play, wouldn't recognize that there was an audio cd in the drive. After some poking around, here's the answer I came up with:

Okay, here's what I found out vis-a-vis playing an audio cd using KsCD. The problem is two-fold:

1] KsCD defaults to use /dev/cdrom. This isn't enabled by PCBSD by default.

2] The CDROM device, usually /dev/acd0, isn't readable by a non-root, non-operator user.

For the default user, just changing which device KsCD uses should make audio playable. You do via the Extras button, and "Configure KsCD..." to use /dev/acd0. This is because I think the user created at install is a member of the operator group, which means you should now be able to play your audio cd.

However, if you create another, completely "vanilla", user, they will not be able to play audio cds, because the permissions aren't correct.

Both of these problems can be fixed with a couple of small tweaks to the /etc/devfs.conf file. This file sets permissions and the like for device filesystems at boot time, and already has the lines in it that you need.

For problem #1, you can uncomment the line that says "link acd0 cdrom" by deleting the leading #. Note the comment just above, which says many ports use this.

But a normal user still won't be able to play audio CDs. You need to go down a couple of lines and change the appropriate 'perm' line that matches your cd drive(s). Change the 0660 to either 0664 (to allow normal users to read the cd) or 0666 (to allow normal users to read and write the cd). So in the usuall case, it would be thus:

perm /dev/acd0 0666

I would suggest at the very least, the link line should be uncommented in an install, and I would further suggest that the perm line for /dev/acd0 be changed to be 0666.

Emulator schmemulators

When I get my computer upgrade, I'm going to install an emulator on it.  I've used and enjoyed the heck out of vmware, but it is too expensive for my dilettante tastes.  So I've been casting about for a freeware alternative and keep hearing about qemu.  So I'll probably try this one first.

And on the freebsd.questions list, someone asked about getting kqemu to work with it. I guess kqemu is a kernel patch or something that makes qemu run faster and jump higher.  The trick is to build qemu with a Makefile define so that it pulls in the kqemu port as well.  This once again points out the usefulness of reading the makefile before building a port.  The exact command is:

# make -DWITH_KQEMU install clean

Port description for emulators/qemu

/usr/ports/emulators/qemu

Allow KDE root login

A little note if you want to be able to log in as root from the KDE login screen:

To enable login as root in KDE open /usr/local/share/config/kdm/kdmrc and change the line
AllowRootLogin=false
to
AllowRootLogin=true

There, that's easy enough, right?

So, you want to host a blog?

Here's an excellent table showing the capabilities of 15(!) different blogging platforms, from b2Evolution to Wordpress (the author's eventual choice). He doesn't include any of the more ambitious CMS platforms, like Drupal or even blog sites, like Blogger or TypePad - just server-side blogging scripts.

He talks about the "whole MovableType fallout", which I'm not entirely clear on. I think he means the move by SixApart to make MT a commercial app. I've been using MT for quite some time now, and have never felt constrained by its licensing. Now, with 3.2, the free version is even more clear - unlimited blogs, but only one author. Not a drawback here, as I'm the only writer for my little family of blogs (see links at the left for others).

Blog Software Breakdown

Cheat Sheets

An interesting collection of short setup tips for various FreeBSD chores, like building a custom kernel, setting up Samba, configuring Apache, etc. Something like my blog, only with more depth and focus :-)

FreeBSD Cheat Sheets


Technorati Tags: freebsd

OS Comparison chart

Here is Yet Another OS comparison chart. This one compares FreeBSD vs Linux vs Win2k, from a FreeBSD advocate's point of view. But it seems to try and be reasonably objective, in any case.

FreeBSD vs Linux vs Windows 2000

And here is another one, simply comparing Linux with FreeBSD:

bsd-linux-comparison