Background Processing

I am managing a headless server (GNU/Linux) for provisioning network under my supervision. I remotely manage the server via ssh and using it as fileserver as well. Therefore, linux iso images from many distros are downloaded and stored there

One thing I love from this scheme is that I can download any iso files from the net and left the downloading process in background using wget, such as:

$ wget -b http://someurl/someisofile.iso

However, when the source server get busy, downloading from http or ftp is not a good idea. Hence, bittorrent comes in handy.
Using combination of screen and btdownloadcurses.py, the command looks like this:

$ screen btdownloadcurses sometorrentfiles.torrent

I can left the download process in background by pressing Ctrl-A followed by D.
Whenever I want to check the download progress, I can list the screen process by typing

$ screen -ls

Then, to get the screen-ed process back, I just type

$ screen -dr name-of-the-process

Now, I'm downloading every distro I can get for free.
I just have to make sure I'm not clogging my company's bandwidth, otherwise, I'll be in trouble :-D

Enlightened Ubuntu

I scrapped my Xubuntu two weeks ago to be replaced by Vector Linux 5.1 Standard. From what I read, VL is a very good distro for old hardware, thus, perfect for my ECS A907 desknote.

Having it installed, I immediately know what I missed from Xu/Ku/Ubuntu: excelent package management, good configuration utility and strong community support. It's not that Vector Linux is bad. It runs very fast! However, I don't feel convenient with its Slackware-style and decided to reinstall my ubuntu.

Now the problem is that both Ubuntu & Kubuntu are too slow, and having tried VL, I want something faster than Xubuntu. Hence, I decided to have Enlightenment clean-installed.

So far I made it :-)

I just install ubuntu server install, then after first login I did:

$ sudo apt-get install linux-686 x-window-system-core enlightenment eterm enlightenment-themes esound menu e16keyedit e16menuedit

I also grabbed several tools I need such as minicom, mc, abiword, gnumeric, xmms, firefox, sylpheed, epiphany-browser (for light browsing) and the three apps I need from KDE: Gwenview, Konqueror and Ark.

I am still tweaking my system, but overall, I love E16. Light yet Elegant.
I just can't wait for E17 :-)

Split Personality

Wow, finally...
First post of the year :-)
It seems I am not narcissist enough to write regularly last year.
However, It doesn't mean that I had nothing to write about.
I just couldn't write it here since I would like to keep several things private.
Now, since I have splitted my dark-self into other pensieve, I think there will be more writings here...probably :-)

Anyway...
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!