Where oh Where has my little command gone?

While perusing some port stuff, as I try to figure out which port utility to use, I came across this little command - whereis. Now, I've actually used it before, when I couldn't find the md5 command (I didn't have /sbin in my PATH as a user). But I didn't realize it also searches the port tree for programs, which is pretty cool! For instance:


$ whereis firefox

firefox: /usr/X11R6/bin/firefox /usr/ports/www/firefox

$ whereis lsof

lsof: /usr/ports/sysutils/lsof


whereis(1)

Much nicer than some of the other ways I've used to search the ports, and more inclusive, as it even tells me if I've already had it installed. My normal method for searching ports is via the Freebsd.org web page for ports. I have a Firefox quicksearch set up, so I can pop into Firefox's address bar and type 'ports lsof' and immediately do the search. It is very simple to set this up.

• Go to the Freebsd.org ports page here


• Right click on the "Search ports for: " text entry box


• Select the "Add Keyword for Search" menu item


• Give it a name (say "FreeBSD port search") and a keyword (I use 'ports' - this is what you'll type in the address bar). Select a folder to store this "bookmark". The "Quick Searches" one is a good place:-) Then click Add.
• 
  

Now you can click in the address bar and type 'ports lsof' and it will immediately do the search. This is very nice and can be done with any search-type text box. See this posting on Lifehacker.com for a good starter kit for quicksearchs:

Fifteen Firefox Quick Searches

Now play together nice!

Got another little thing working in my PC-BSD installation - getting Firefox and Thunderbird to work together. Now, when I click on a link in my email program Thunderbird, it opens in Firefox (instead of the drag'n'drop I had to do before). And when I click on a mailto link or do a Tools->New Message in Firefox, it opens up a new message in Thunderbird. And, unlike on Windows, when I do that the signature even shows up correctly. Wee haa!

How To Integrate Firefox and Thunderbird

The only thing I would change in the first posting is, as mentioned in the last message, use the more generic spot for the programs, rather than the funky PBI "/Programs" spot, which also includes the version number. For me, firefox (built from ports) was in /usr/X11R6/bin, and thunderbird (via a PBI) was in /usr/local/bin/. Also, in firefox, you can do the "about:config" trick and just paste a new key in there, rather than hand-editing the file.

Oh, and be sure to heed the advice at the bottom - close Thunderbird before editing the prefs.js file, as the last thing Thunderbird does before exiting is to overwrite it. So if you edit the file then exit Thunderbird, you lose your changes. Yup, I did it that way the first time...

Change is Good

I've been thinking about recompiling the kernel and tweaking it a bit for my PC-BSD machine. I just found out the custom kernel config file used in the building of PC-BSD is found here:


/PCBSD/conf/PCBSDv1.2



So you would start with that and go from there. My next task was going to be to get multimedia to work, as I wasn't able to play movies or audio, but then all of a sudden it all started playing via Kaffeine, so I can't complain. Well, I can a little bit, as I couldn't get CD audio to work for some reason, although I didn't play with it for too long, as I got my WZBC audio feed working, so I was a happy camper.

iX {hearts} PC-BSD

Good analysis of the new iXsystems and PC-BSD merger, along with interviews with Kris Moore and Matt Olander.

NewsForge | Why iXsystems bought PC-BSD

Keep your job for life

Very funny page on how to write code that is unreadable, unmaintainable and unbelievable. Unfortunately, I see many of these "bad practices" nearly every day:-(

How To Write Unmaintainable Code

PC-BSD goes pro

Jeez, I go away for a few days and the whole world changes! Well, maybe it hasn't, but still, it is interesting news that iXsystems has "acquired" PC-BSD, my currently installed FreeBSD version. I guess objectively speaking, it should be good news, and has already paid off by making Kris Moore, the brains behind PC-BSD, a full time PC-BSD worker, which can only mean good things. But there are so many ways this could go wrong it is scary. I hope it remains the vibrant, user-supported FreeBSD variation that attracted me to it in the first place.

Here is a link to a long thread about it in the PC-BSD forums: PC-BSD Forum :: iXsystems and PC-BSD

Here's the official announcement: iXsystems Announces Acquisition of PC-BSD Operating System

CMS for life

We've been evaluating CMS software and I'm amazed at the breadth of offerings, just in the free/PHP4/MySQL arena. I haven't been bowled over by any yet, but it's still early in the evaluation process. We've defined what we're looking for and now we are examining candidates. A tricky thing is to figure out how well each would handle a big demand, in the off chance our web site should become really popular. And it doesn't seem like switching your CMS (Content Management System) (or even a CMF - Framework) is something you could easily do. So we're trying to be very careful here.

We've come across a couple of sites with long lists of contenders. The first only considers free, PHP4, MySQL CMS packages, and even with that stringent requirement, there must be over 50 listed. There's even demo setups for each of them, which is really cool. Also neat are the user comments for each.

OpenSourceCMS

The other one doesn't even narrow it down that far, but it does let you compare a matrix of features, talk about each and rate them.

The CMS Matrix - The Content Management Comparison Tool