Advogato blog for licquia

5 Sep 2000

Tue, 5 Sep 2000 21:07:25 GMT

I've been busy. Boy, have I been busy.

The biggest thing is that I've been hired as the sysadmin at Progeny Linux Systems in Indianapolis. This means I'll be moving very soon. It'll definitely be interesting.

Got lots of little bugs and things to pick out of cupsys and diald, and the foomatic thingie from gtaylor to play with. Between that, packing, and my current employer's frantic rush to get lots of things done before I leave, I should be plenty busy.

20 Aug 2000

Sun, 20 Aug 2000 20:01:47 GMT

Rejoice, all ye lands. CUPS 1.1.2 packages are in woody. All the build problems are gone, and upgrades from 1.0.4 should be smooth as silk.

On an unrelated note, gtaylor popped a note to me about integrating gs with CUPS. One thing led to another, and we got to talking about his foomatic project, which it looks like I'm going to package for Debian. This will likely be the mechanism for integrating gs into CUPS, although the package scope will go far beyond CUPS itself. This will be mondo cool, I think, and has the potential to make printing on Linux infinitely better, whether you use CUPS, PDQ, lpd, LPRng, or whatever.

I just read the humorous piece about Wall Street "rejecting" Linux. The "rejection" itself isn't too bad; how long has Bob Young been saying that his goal is to reduce OSes to commodities? It's the implications in the article that kill me. The fact that Linux isn't the darling of Wall Street somehow has implications in the IT workplace in terms of Linux's appropriateness in day-to-day operations. I wonder if Red Hat systems somehow start breaking if RHAT drops below 50 on NASDAQ. Anyone know? (Debian, of course, crashes constantly, since it's run by a non-profit, and Windows is the most stable of the bunch, although the antitrust trial has caused a few more BSODs than usual recently. :-)

Next on the agenda: diald. Grandma's in town with the wife and kids, giving me play time. :-)

17 Aug 2000

Thu, 17 Aug 2000 05:16:34 GMT

OK, so I lied. But I have a good excuse: I ran into more build problems.

The problem is that the Easy SW people were really nice, and incorporated lots of the changes I wanted into the build process, as well as others I hadn't suggested, but would've thought were nice.

This means that a lot of the hackage in my Debian build scripts is no longer necessary. Unfortunately, some of it is now actually harmful, so I have to "seek-and-destroy". Like now: I used to have to specify --prefix to configure, but now I shouldn't. Of course, I did, and CUPS wanted it's config files in '/usr/etc/cups'.

So, onward. I'll tell you what I was told today by someone: "Sooner, rather than later." :-)

15 Aug 2000

Tue, 15 Aug 2000 20:55:18 GMT

Debian released today! Woohoo! Time to apt-get upgrade a couple dozen boxes all over the place.

Some CUPS status: It builds. Tonight, assuming all goes well, I'll test for upgrade-cleanliness and the like, and upload to woody. I've got some other things to do, though, as well, so we'll see how far I get. I may just upload whatever I end up with tonight and invoke the "it's called unstable for a reason" excuse.

Noticed the Printing Summit stuff from advogato's article on the GPL. Wow. I think I'm going to try and play with some of this at some point - assuming I think it's more important than splitting pstoraster from the rest of CUPS and making straight gs a replacement for it. Assuming that's even possible.

It would be nice if prospective employers would return my phone calls when I ask for a status report.

10 Aug 2000

Thu, 10 Aug 2000 02:59:14 GMT

Welcome one and all. This site looks interesting, and even if I never get anywhere on the rating system, it at least provides me with a chance to post rants and other stuff. Which could be a good thing, or not.

The biggest thing: lots of people have asked me about CUPS 1.1 packages for Debian woody. So, here's my status.

I had almost working packages for beta 3 not too long ago; there were only some upgrade issues from 1.0.4. Then I merged in 1.1.1. Now the thing doesn't build; it appears easysw did some fun stuff with the build parameters and such. So, I'm slogging away at it. I'm a bit distracted with some personal issues at the moment, but hopefully we'll get this done soon.

Well, enough for now. Enjoy my simply scintillating prose!