Tag: debian

firefox 3.x on debian amd64

I’ve been running a firefox 3.0 pre-release build for ages now, and finally thought I’d upgrade – (it turns out) mozilla do not provide 64 bit binaries. The i686 build that you can download from getfirefox.org does not work on my debian amd64 system – but not everything is lost.

As I’m a developer, I’m reasonably happy to play with nightly builds – and so – http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ has what I need – today its firefox-3.1a2pre.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2.

Unziped into my non-debian firefox dir, and runs seemingly fine, except that the firefox addins won’t run, as they are scared of firefox versions that they have not been tested on 🙂

That too can be solved – edit the application.ini file, and replace the Version=3.1a2pre with Version=3.0.1 or whatever the release is that your addons are willing to work on.

so far, only VMWare’s addon won’t run – perhaps I need to set the Version lower, as it worked on Minefield 3.0pre.

http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=iceweasel&searchon=names&suite=testing&section=all tells me that 3.0.1 is in amd64 debian testing since July 2008

VMWare’s addon to give console access won’t run in the 3.0.1 debian version either – talk about disappointing. The 3.1 nightly build seems to feel faster too, so I suspect I’ll be running that most of the time, and will look to migrate away from VMWare over time.

ever had Perl CPAN not work on your debian, even though you installed make etc?

CPAN, while incredibly useful, can be a pain, if you forget that you need to re-configure it after installing essential tools.

For example, if you make the mistake of setting up a basic, non-development Debian virtual machine, configure CPAN, try to use it, and on seeing ‘make’ errors like (from install Bundle::CPAN of all things) :

Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
Running install for module Compress::Raw::Zlib
Running make for P/PM/PMQS/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz
Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012
Has already been processed within this session
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
Running make for P/PM/PMQS/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz
Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012
Has already been processed within this session
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible

cpan>

You install make apt-get update ; apt-get install build-essential…, only to continue to see the same errors wizz past….

CPAN really truly needs to realise that the make settings are mis configured, and tell you.

What you need to do, is to tell your cpan about it by running:
cpan> o conf init

OR, if you’ve not yet messed (configured) up your cpan, install build-essential first.

And while you’re contemplating using cpan, think hard about trying dh-make-perl instead 🙂

Ideally, CPAN should be able to realise that it can’t call make if it does not know where it is – and point this fact out, rather than making it appear as though the package being installed has an issue.

Debian TWiki repository now with 212 TWiki Plugins, Contribs, Skins and more.

I’ve just updated the Experimental TWiki and Plugins repository. It now contains TWiki 4.2.0 and 212 Plugins, Contribs and Skins that you can simply apt-get install

To use them, add the following 2 lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib
deb-src http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib

then type

apt-get update

to update the available packages.

you can now see all 212 packages with apt-cache search twiki-

and install (assuming you don’t have twiki installed yet)

apt-get install apache2 twiki

and TWiki Contrib installation is as easy as

apt-get install twiki-bugscontrib

You will still need to use configure to enable Plugins.

Please report your experiences to me – bugs, gripes, you name it – its a work in progress. and I need your help!

debian repository for TWiki

I’ve set up a debian repository that you can help test the release package before it gets uploaded into debian proper.

To try it out, add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib
deb-src http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib

and then run

gpg --keyserver the.earth.li --recv-keys 3C0C33BB442B5BE9
apt-key add /root/.gnupg/pubring.gpg
apt-get update
apt-get install apache2 twiki

I will be putting my ongoing work into the experimental distribution there, until they are ready for general use from my stable. From there I’ll be pushing them to my debian mentors.

This repository contains about 226 twiki-plugins – autoupdated nightly direct from twiki.org. THe packages have as many dependencies as I was able to coerce my build scripts to work out – but there is more work needed.

This article shows how simple it is to manage your own debian repository. The hard thing is making usable packages.

Sorry, you will get a gpg error on these packages, they are updated nightly direct from twiki.org – and signing the repository requires personal intervention (as far as I can see).