That’s a nice feature per se, but annoying if you combine it with auto-login and a heavyweight session type like my dedicated VirtualBox session (more on that another day).

There’s a simple workaround though: Your previous session, is stored in the file ~/.dmrc. Just remove replace (if you remove it, login will fail) the Session option with Session=default in there and make it read-only:

sed -i -e '/\[Desktop\]/I,/\($\|^\[\)/{/^Session=/Is/=.*$/=default/}’ ~/.dmrc
chmod -w ~/.dmrc

From now on you’ll always be logged in with the system default.

The short story:
root@TreeHouse:~# lvextend -L+1G /dev/hd/kubuntu
Extending logical volume kubuntu to 6.00 GB
Logical volume kubuntu successfully resized
root@TreeHouse:~# resize2fs /dev/hd/kubuntu
resize2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
Filesystem at /dev/hd/kubuntu is mounted on /; on-line resizing required
old desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 1
Performing an on-line resize of /dev/hd/kubuntu to 1572864 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/hd/kubuntu is now 1572864 blocks long.
That took maybe two seconds.

The long story: Some time ago I replaced the harddisk in my notebook with a 120 GB one. When I reinstalled Kubuntu, I decided to go with LVM for everything. My typical partitioning scheme has one partition (or volume) for the root, a big one for /home and a separate relatively small one for /var (so eg. /var/tmp can’t fill up your root). Plus a big swap partiton and /tmp mounted as tmpfs (so /tmp can’t fill up root neither). Additionally I usually symlink /usr/src to /var/src. Only /boot is not located in the LVM. Which results in the following fstab:

/dev/hd/kubuntu / ext3 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hd/kubuntu+var /var ext3 defaults,relatime 0 2
/dev/hd/home /home ext3 defaults,relatime 0 3
/dev/hd/media /media/Media ext3 defaults,noatime 0 0
/media/Media/music /home/mss/Music none bind 0 0
/media/Media/pictures /home/mss/Pictures none bind 0 0
/dev/sda1 /boot ext3 defaults,noatime 0 2
/dev/hd/swap none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
tmp /tmp tmpfs size=3G,mode=1777 0 0

For a typical desktop system partitioned like that and running KDE you don’t need more than 4 GiB for the root.

My initial volumes looked like this:
root@TreeHouse:~# pvdisplay /dev/sda3
--- Physical volume ---
PV Name               /dev/sda3
VG Name               hd
PV Size               110.69 GB / not usable 1.24 MB
Allocatable           yes
PE Size (KByte)       4096
Total PE              28337
Free PE               5809
Allocated PE          22528
PV UUID               3aP8yu-j0R1-gnKW-DXOd-rPjd-BHXz-8gjmP7
root@TreeHouse:~# vgdisplay hd
--- Volume group ---
VG Name               hd
System ID
Format                lvm2
Metadata Areas        1
Metadata Sequence No  20
VG Access             read/write
VG Status             resizable
MAX LV                0
Cur LV                5
Open LV               5
Max PV                0
Cur PV                1
Act PV                1
VG Size               110.69 GB
PE Size               4.00 MB
Total PE              28337
Alloc PE / Size       22528 / 88.00 GB
Free  PE / Size       5809 / 22.69 GB
VG UUID               FBM2Pd-5yTa-iQIE-cJzO-2ZW1-bf2j-CrYymN
root@TreeHouse:~# lvdisplay hd
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/hd/home
VG Name                hd
LV UUID                ooX4NK-rScI-0ByG-tBmd-PALp-Y58V-iGCJuy
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
# open                 1
LV Size                50.00 GB
Current LE             12800
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     0
Block device           254:0
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/hd/kubuntu+var
VG Name                hd
LV UUID                Dg8Dfj-JWTY-6jlj-uER8-u311-5BQp-qTlRju
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
# open                 1
LV Size                4.00 GB
Current LE             1024
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     0
Block device           254:1
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/hd/kubuntu
VG Name                hd
LV UUID                P3Hf92-Fg2F-JX0Z-Oa2j-nffR-gQrn-dXUYQN
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
# open                 1
LV Size                5.00 GB
Current LE             1280
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     0
Block device           254:2
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/hd/swap
VG Name                hd
LV UUID                jHyLo5-AEdF-kESY-zKkS-BnbI-NRnZ-EUvwry
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
# open                 1
LV Size                4.00 GB
Current LE             1024
Segments               1
Allocation             contiguous
Read ahead sectors     0
Block device           254:3
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/hd/media
VG Name                hd
LV UUID                aosr8H-zDav-aKhx-zlmx-BUc3-LWnW-glDMw0
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
# open                 1
LV Size                25.00 GB
Current LE             6400
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     0
Block device           254:4
As you can see I kept ca. 20 GiB spare space (who needs 100+ GiB anyway…) which I didn’t allocate to any volume.

That saved my ass when yesterday suddenly my updates started to fail (after I installed Lazarus). With all those installed libraries, headers and development environments my system doesn’t really qualify as a standard desktop anymore. Now I can even think about installing the KDE 4.1 Beta packages

In case of less anticipatory planning, you might be interested in another article which explains how you shrink one of your volumes first.

Customers in shopping centres are having their every move tracked by a new type of surveillance that [...] has already been installed in two shopping centres, including Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth [...].

There’s no reason to worry of course:

Path Intelligence, the Portsmouth-based company which developed the technology, said its equipment was just a tool for market research. “There’s absolutely no way we can link the information we gather back to the individual,” a spokeswoman said.

Nobody would ever think to link your IMEI or IMSI number to your bonus card, your gift card or even your credit card number of course. And if anybody did so, they’d probably put a notice to an easy-to-find place, like an 8pt sign at the entrance or on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.

Seriously: I always had some issues accessing my digicam (an Olympus SP-700) from KDE (actually, Kubuntu): The system always first tried to access it via some magic camera device while it actually offers a standard usb-storage device. I always had to cancel the dialog which offered me to use the first one and wait for the second one to appear. Weird but it worked.

Since I upgraded to Kubuntu 8.04,  the workaround doesn’t help anymore. The second dialog never appears. Not even the /dev/sdx-device is created anymore. So it seems like I’ve actually got to start debugging that stuff. My guess is that its a weird clash between the HAL and/or udev and gphoto2. Ie. somehow gphoto2 (which creates those weird camera devices/mounts) thinks it should handle the camera while it is actually not necessary and the default handler would handle it just fine.

But debugging HAL/udev is actually not as easy as looking at some dmesg output. Looking at /etc/udev/rules.d didn’t help, seems like I’ve got to dig deeper and somehow get some debugging output from the daemons working in the background…

But I shouldn’t complain: Debugging got indeed a lot more complicated, almost as tangled as the Windows stuff. But while both systems work in 99% of all cases, in the remaining 1% I can at least have a look at the sources and grep some plain text config files.

But can somebody please explain something to me?

Why does a little update in KDE packages always trigger such an update madness?

Like currently in kdepim:

debian/control: Added Conflict/Replaces on ksync for kitchensync. “ksync” gets shipped with kitchensync now. (LP: #133944)

That’s only two packages. Why do I have to update all the stuff coming from PIM? Actually, why do I have to update at all if its only metadata which was changed?

Or in kdebase:

* Stable release update, support new Flash in Konqueror
* Add kubuntu_9917_flash_xembed.diff, adds xembed support to Konqueror
* Add build-dep on libglib2.0-dev
* Closes LP: #184149

Great, flash should work again. But why do I have to download kdebase-data for that?

One of the reasons Gentoo switched to split ebuilds for KDE was the advantage that you didn’t have to download the whole package again just because only one small app like ksync was changed. Why does Portage manage to do that and the good olde dpkg not? Or does that only happen in gutsy-proposed? Can somebody enlighten me?

I guess the same might happen to the brand iPod. If I worked at a department store and somebody asked me for an iPod, I’d ask them first if they really want an iPod or just some kind of MP3-player (where even that term is wrong as most of those also play WMA or Ogg). Reminds me of Sony’s Walkman, though I’m not sure what exactly happened to that brand as they still use it nowadays.

So if you really think you need some automagic redirection like this (eg. to count outgoing clicks) please implement at least these easy rules:

• If its used by a form only (like in the Google case), make sure it works with POST only.
• If you want to use it in clickable links, check the Referer. Not every browser sets that header, in those cases show a static page which explains the user what is happening and offer him a link to actually exit.

Even more secure is to put every link ever used on your site in a database (you want to track the clicks anyway, right?) and add an id to the URL. Then people can only hop over your site when you posted that link yourself before.

Or just don’t do stuff like that.

Hmm… interesting, this link redirects to port 9185 on g4035180.swr.de. Not that this machine was accessible from the outside but if the rest of the CMS is written as bad as this part…

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ARD is the joint organization (most of) of German broadcasters under public law. As always, Wikipedia can tell you more. It’s financed by fees collected from anybody who owns a radio or a tv. All in all, it’s similar to the BBC. The main difference being that it’s not a single company but rather a federation of more-or-less independent entities. The main similarity? Same as between Germany and the UK I guess, both are rather conservative and slow in adopting changes. Especially in technology and transparency.

Both are taking first steps in the right (as defined by me) direction: The iPlayer might be a Windows-centric mess, but it’s a start. The ARD is working on a similar thing, called the Mediathek. I hope it will be better than the one the ZDF (the other German broadcaster under public law) opened to the public. (I just noticed that you can search it now, that’s a new feature.) Oh, and the ARD got a bunch of podcasts plus some kind of software called Podcast Mixer.

And there my praise stops and the complaints start (I wouldn’t be German if I didn’t find something to complain about, right?).

Don’t get me started that only a handful of radio programs are available as podcasts, everything else is just streamed (at least not in RealMedia anymore, but in MP3 and sometimes even Ogg). The really interesting stuff often isn’t available for download. Like the N-Joy Soundfiles and the full Zündfunk shows. (Hmm… seems like radioeins has a nice archive though.) Ok, most of the other stuff isn’t worth it anyway. But I’ve paid for it, so it would be nice if it was available. And don’t tell me about broadcasting rights, not in times where Amazon sells MP3s without copy protection and you can listen to full songs on Last.fm. If the podcast is interesting I’d even listen to the commercials on my MP3-player!

At least the people at ARD and ZDF think about releasing content as “Open Source”; whatever they mean with that, I hope they have a look how the BBC did it.

But, back to technology, the stuff which got me started. Remember that software Podcast Mixer? Well, obviously the ARD paid somebody to create it. Wouldn’t it be just fair if the source was available then? Maybe I could even port it to Linux and use it then. Ok, bad example, there’s a lot of better software freely available already. But there’s also a lot of other software created at the ARD as well.

I once worked for the NDR (the northern member of the ARD) and had to write a tool to implement access control for USB-devices under Windows. The team I worked at created a really easy-to-use tool to create, install, and auto-configure Windows images, all based on some Linux distro and Partimage. I had loved to use it at some other places I worked since then. And somebody else was working on an administration tool all the time, can’t remember what it was supposed to do. But all those people (including me) were payed by a public entity. By people’s money.

The same is actually true for government-created stuff as well, projects like LiMux are a start but definitely not enough. But I’ll stick with broadcasting for now.

In contrast, look at the BBC. On their website they’ve got their own Open Source area. And don’t be surprised if you search CPAN and stumble upon a Perl module created by a user called BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). Well, I was, but I’d be even more surprised if there was one called ARD.

And have you ever heard about a blog called ARD Radio Labs? Nope, me neither, but BBC Radio Labs. (Hmm… seems like they’re still streaming with RealMedia, point for the ARD here.) blog.tagesschau.de is a start, but not comparable to a whole, well, let’s call it a Planet.

What else is there?

I heard the BBC managed to make DAB quite popular in the UK, by broadcasting some programmes digital-only. The ARD was just cut short of funds for digital radio by the KEF, the committee responsible for the ARD’s finances.

I read that 80% of the tv programmes of the BBC are already subtitled, they are aiming for 100% by April. ZDF is aiming for 25%, ZDF for 12% or less.

And I don’t know if the numbers have changed in the last few years, but at least in 2002 the BBC had more programs, more employees, but needed less funds.

The list is now available on GMANE, the archives are imported, starting with Thiago’s introduction. Happy procrastinating!