Older blog entries for fxn (starting at number 376)

20 Feb 2005 (updated 20 Feb 2005 at 15:45 UTC) »

Running Linux inside Virtual PC for Mac (cont.)

Today I think I got the keyboard right.

I have a PowerBook with a Spanish keyboard. This means that to type some characters as common as @, {, or #, a modifier is needed. That key is AltGr in PCs, and Option in Macs.

As far as I can tell, the Option key is seen as the Alt key by the guest Linux, so in console mode Option+f2 switchs to the 2nd console. The Esc key acts this way as well. Looks like in order to enter Option, in the Mac sense, you need to type the combo Option+Command.

Once that combo was discovered (I founded nothing in the documentation nor Googleing), the keyboard I finally configured is a standard PC Spanish keyboard. For the console dpkg-reconfigure console-data and select choose from arch list -> qwerty -> Spanish -> Standard -> Standard. The first choice might not be exactly worded that way in English, the dialog is in Catalan here. For X set XkbModel to pc105 and XkbLayout to es.

Here's a screenshot depicting the working configuration in a X session.

Running Linux inside Virtual PC 7 for Mac (cont.)

Victory!!! X running!!!

The basic steps were

  1. install Debian (I dist-upgraded to unstable)
  2. install xserver-xfree86
  3. install x-window-system-core
  4. choose the S3 graphical chipset
  5. choose the "macintosh" keyboard type
  6. choose "/dev/psaux" as mouse device
  7. choose "ImPS/2" as mouse type

I don't know whether that's minimal since some trial and error was done until it worked. I think it is enough to install xfree86-common instead of 2 and 3 for instance. Also I need to work out some minor details yet, as keyboard layout.

The great news are that since Virtual PC abstracts the guest OS from some host hardware stuff, the touchpad of the PowerBook works out of the box (including SideTrack's scrolling), Apple bluetooth keyboard and mouse work like a charm, Ctrl-click works as right-click just fine, nothing needs to be done to switch between Ethernet and wifi, it works out of the box, etc. Impressive!

15 Feb 2005 (updated 15 Feb 2005 at 23:04 UTC) »

Running Linux inside Virtual PC 7 for Mac

I have been a few days trying to get a Linux running inside Virtual PC 7 for Mac.

First I tried Ubuntu. The installation more or less run fine. There was no network though, and the graphics appeared mangled. The very application window changes to a too rectangular shape when X launches, and there are a few strange colors on black with something that resemples the Ubuntu logo or letters.

Then I tried Fedora Core 3. I hadn't seen Anaconda before, how beautiful! The installation run smoothly except for the OpenOffice package. For some reason when that package was being processed the installer freezed. I tried both desktop and developer presets to no avail, at that point the installer hanged. After that I went with the custom configuration and it got to finish. Everything looked fine, until I rebooted the virtual Linux. After a few console messages a Virtual PC dialog saying An unrecoverable processor error has occurred. The PC will now restart shows up and cannot go on, but restart (the virtual Linux, not the Mac of course). No luck either.

A coworker had a Debian Woody so I gave it a try. The minimal installation was OK, it even founded the network automatically. Afterwards I dist-upgraded to unstable and it worked like a charm. Unfortunately my first attempt at getting X working produced a screen as the one with Ubuntu. The console is right for the simple stuff I want it for however.

5 Feb 2005 (updated 5 Feb 2005 at 08:52 UTC) »

II Barcelona Perl Festival

Last Thursday Barcelona.pm organized the II Barcelona Perl Festival at the UPC. Carlos Escribano gave an overview of XML in Perl, and our guest speaker Juan Julián Merelo talked about YAML in Perl. JJ is a Perl veteran in Spain who lives in Granada. After that we all went to have dinner and had a good time. It was a pleasure for me to meet JJ in person.

Open Source at work

The directors of the company where I work have made an explicit statement saying that the company is going to start a business line around Open Source services. Now, isn't that magnific?

Thanks to my personal involvement all these years it's very likelly that I'll work in the definition of our offer together with some other coworkers, including the sales department. That will be when I finish my current project this month. Sounds exciting!

salmoni, congratulations for you PhD. Good bye!

Busy

No coding at home lately. My spare time these days is mostly dedicated to my lovely 6-months old daughter, and reading.

That is because I have a moderately high workload now, on the one hand the three-year long European Project I've been working in at work is about to finish, and on the other hand the Perl course I give in the University of Barcelona has finished and there are exams and exercises to correct. I expect it to decrease by the end of February.

New release of Acme::Pythonic

I just uploaded a new version of Acme::Pythonic to PAUSE, it will appear soon on CPAN. Thanks to the help of esteve the module runs under Perl 5.6.1 and has a few more tests. In addition do {} modifer are uncuddled. For example,

    do:
        do_this()
        do_that()
    while $condition
is transformed into
    do {
        do_this();
        do_that();
    } while $condition;
The while hanged on its own line in previous versions.

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