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New packages in Debian 8.0 Jessie

[I liked the #newinwheezy effort for the last Debian release, so I tipped Mika off about it again this time] A short post about what is #newinjessie, Debian’s new 8.0 Jessie release. See Mika’s debian-devel post for more information. For this release cycle, I have uploaded two new packages: dtv-scan-tables - Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) initial scan files This is a new package which splits out the DVB initial scan files from linux-dvb-apps (see below). Read more →

NCurses Internet Radio Player

Since moving house last year, I’ve found myself unable to receive Saorview (Irish DVB-T) using an indoor aerial (my new house is about 10km further from the transmitter). This was previously my primary way of receiving the RTÉ Radio stations when working on my desktop. I have a high gain wideband antenna in the attic which works great, but with no neat way to get a cable to my desktop, this is unfortunately not an option. Read more →

Git remote helpers

If you follow upstream Git development closely, you may have noticed that the Mercurial and Bazaar remote helpers (use git to interact with hg and bzr repos) no longer live in the main Git tree. They have been split out into their own repositories, here and here. git-remote-bzr had been packaged (as git-bzr) for Debian since March 2013, but was removed in May 2014 when the remote helpers were removed upstream. Read more →

DVB-T on Linux using DVBStreamer

I’ve tried most of the DVB streaming solutions for Linux, including VDR, MuMuDVB, DVBBlast, dvbstream, DVBStreamer, GNOME DVB Daemon. I’ve only managed to find one that does this well though, which is DVBStreamer. Getting started with DVBStreamer is pretty easy. First of all you need a DVB adapter that works with Linux. I use a USB ITE IT913x-based adapter, which works well for me. Once you have a compatible package, you need to install necessary (Debian/Ubuntu) packages: Read more →

Debian /etc/ Cleanup

After upgrading a Debian system, it is a good idea to clean up any old configuration files that remain in /etc/. The following one-liner should find most of them for you: find /etc/ -name "*.dpkg-dist" -o -name "*.dpkg-new" -o -name "*.dpkg-old" -o -name "*.ucf-dist" -o -name "*.ucf-new" -o -name "*.ucf-old" | sort Running it on my desktop yields the following files: root@lambda:/etc# find /etc/ -name "*.dpkg-dist" -o -name "*.dpkg-new" -o -name " Read more →

New packages in Debian 7.0 Wheezy

Given that Debian 7.0 Wheezy will be released in a few hours, I thought it would be a good time to take part in Michael Prokop’s #newinwheezy effort to publicise the new packages that have uploaded to Debian as part of Wheezy. I have introduced two new packages to Debian for this release: nyancat - nyancat is a program to display an animated poptart cat in your terminal transmission-remote-cli - ncurses interface for the Transmission BitTorrent daemon I’ve also have become (co-)maintainer of the following packages, updating them for this release: Read more →

MATLAB R2012a system() function

MATLAB does not integrate nicely with Linux operating systems, and instead, provides its own copies of binaries, and libraries. These libraries are often outdated, which can cause problems such as the one below. When calling external C++ compilers though the system() function, I found myself running into an eglibc error. This occurred when running MATLAB R2012a on a Debian Wheezy machine with eglibc 2.13 and gcc 4.7.1. /tmp/hello-world: /opt/matlab/bin/glnxa64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3. Read more →

FIGlet 2.2.5-1

I’ve uploaded FIGlet 2.2.5-1 to Debian. This long-overdue update resolves all the existing licensing issues, and allows the package to move back to main, after an extended period in non-free. _ _ _ __ _ _ _| | | || / _` | || |_| \_, \__,_|\_, (_) |__/ |__/ Read more →

Debian Gitweb server

After getting sick of GitHub’s clunky closed-source interface, I decided to migrate my repositories to my own Debian-based server using the gitweb web interface. Considering that I already have SSH access to the server, I only needed to provide read-only public access. As well as providing this access via the traditional 9418/tcp git protocol port, I wanted to provide access via HTTP too (I sometimes get caught behind firewalls which block 9418/tcp). Read more →

Update Intel CPU Microcode

You are probably familiar with the terms firmware and drivers in the context of computer hardware, and the endless updating that they require. Most people associate these drivers and firmware updates with peripheral equipment such as graphic cards and DVD drives. You might not however be aware that you can also update the firmware on your CPU (firmware is called microcode in CPU speak). These microcode updates are normally bundled in with BIOS updates. Read more →