Stephan Paukner :: syslog - GNU/Linux

How to add new quote sources to GnuCash

paux@paukner.cc (Stephan Paukner) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:40:00 +0100

... or, actually, to Perl’s Finance::Quote, under Ubuntu 11.10:

Clone one of the source modules in /usr/share/perl5/Finance/Quote (came with libfinance-quote-perl), say, Morningstar.pm, and place it under a new name into /usr/local/lib/perl/5.12.4/Finance/Quote, say, as Morningstar/AT.pm. (That’s what I did, I’ll probably make that module available.)
Modify this module into a uniquely new entity, providing appropriate IDs, like morningstar_at.
`perl -e ‘use Finance::Quote::Morningstar::AT’` should not display anythingespecially no error.
Copy /usr/share/perl5/Finance/Quote.pm to /usr/local/lib/perl/5.12.4/Finance and add Morningstar::AT to @modules.
Execute `gnc-fq-dump | grep --color=auto morningstar`, you should see both morningstar and morningstar_at.

Your new quote source should now be available to GnuCash:

Go to Tools → Security Editor → Add (or Edit) and enter the appropriate “Symbol/abbreviation” and “ISIN, CUSIP or other code”—note that the symbol is not the ISIN in the case of Morningstar.at, it’s the ID in the URL! Check Get Online Quotes, switch to Unknown and select morningstar_at.
Go to Tools → Price Editor and click Get Quotes. After a few seconds you should see new entries with the current prices.

Admin search FAIL

paux@paukner.cc (Stephan Paukner) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:14:18 +0100

Syncing with rsync to FAT devices

paux@paukner.cc (Stephan Paukner) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:35:00 +0100

(I started this as a draft two years ago, but wasn’t sure about its correctness then.)

Usually, one uses the -a switch when archiving files with rsync from Unix to Unix. -a is an abbreviation for -rlptgoD, which means

-r: recurse into directories,
-l: copy symlinks as symlinks,
-p: preserve permissions,
-t: preserve modification times,
-g: preserve group (ownership),
-o: preserve owner,
-D: preserve device and special files,

but this doesn’t make sense if the target is an MS FAT device (such as a USB key) or a CIFS/SMB/Samba host, as that old file system cr4p doesn’t know anything about symbolic links, file permissions, ownerships or other Unixy properties. Thus, rsync fails to match these features at all and synchronizes every single bit of every single file again.

The solution I found is to simply use the tuple of time-stamp and file size as the only criteria whether something has changed. This still results in warnings about that the time-stamps of directories couldn’t be set, but at least the sync works. An example command line could thus be

$ rsync -rt $source $target

I should do a web comic

paux@paukner.cc (Stephan Paukner) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:22:06 +0100

Probably.

Server migrated from virtual to virtual

paux@paukner.cc (Stephan Paukner) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:02:00 +0100

Almost three years ago I migrated to a virtual server at HostEurope.de. It was a real relief to not care for any hardware anymore, and I’m really satisfied with their service which includes monitoring and restoreable snapshots. The only major problem I had was when I once tried to upgrade the C-library on an incompatible kernel versionI learned to use Debian Stable on servers. Minor problems however arose once in a while when I hit the privvmpages (private memory) limit. As only 256 MB RAM were guaranteed for my package in their 2.0 line at 15/month, I upgraded to the 512 MB package for 20/month a few months ago, which was a smooth single-click task. As they now already introduced their 4.0 line, I upgraded to 1024 MB for only 13/month. But I had to do the migration to a parallel machine and had only one week to accomplish this. I’ll never do it this way again, however, rather pay for two servers for a short time and decide when to finally switch. And as the monthly fee has now decreased, I had to pay 10 for this downgrade anyway.

I had planned to simply sync /etc, /usr, /var and /home to the new system to have a nonetheless smooth migration. But the new system turned out to be on 64-bit. So it took me more time to do a migration by hand, although I had asked their service in advance if that were possible. A further drawback was that I couldn’t keep the system’s RRD-files, as they seem to be platform-specific as well; that meant that all system log counters were starting freshly, as I was too lazy to export/import their data.

A WTF-situation arose when I noticed that the system had various server packages installed but was missing their symlinks in /etc/rc*.d and cron tabs in /etc/cron.*. I had to compare those with my old system.

phpMyAdmin wasn’t working anymore as it suddenly needed a localhost directive for MySQL in the config. That took me some time to find out.

Finally, ajaxterm didn’t launch in --daemon mode. That took me some time as well. As a quick hack I now start it without --daemon but with /usr/bin/nohup to the background.

I also had to take care that /etc/hosts is now dynamically created/overwritten at boot time. In my /etc/init.d/hostname_vps I now copy it from /etc/my.hosts.

For TCP forwarding I used rinetd and set up Postfix relaying like previously.

An interesting detail is that I moved from a 2×1500 MHz machine to one with 16×141 MHz.

Cheap time lapses with gphoto2

paux@paukner.cc (Stephan Paukner) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:39:00 +0100

“Cheap” should mean here that you don’t need to spend money on extra hardware like a remote timer or on extra software like Windoze (which Canon’s EOS Utility depends on). With a GNU/Linux system, just install gphoto2in Debian, take version 2.4.5 from ‘squeeze’. After attaching your e.g. Canon EOS camera via USB, you can issue the command

$ gphoto2 --auto-detect --force-overwrite --capture-image-and-download --frames 360 --interval 10

to automatically shoot and download images for a time lapse, in this example every 10 seconds for one hour. You should keep all exposure values constant and switch to a lower resolution in advance. You can render an HD video e.g. with

$ mencoder mf://*jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=1:vbitrate=7200 -mf fps=25 -o timelapse.avi

If you make it bad, it might look boring like my very first try:

If you make it good, it should look like this.

My hope is that I can use gphoto2 with an Android smartphone.

Or what?

paux@paukner.cc (Stephan Paukner) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:10:18 +0200

Linux autorun FAIL

paux@paukner.cc (Stephan Paukner) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:34:21 +0200

That’s why GNU/Linux will never conquer the desktops.