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It's really not that bad, after all. popt had problems on Solaris, but I found a precompiled version on sunfreeware.com, sidestepping that issue. I found the ORBit-martin-forked repository, just like it tells me in the oaf README file. So the operator headspace was mine, in this instance. I reckon that means I should take it easier when a user has some headspace issues.
I just don't want to contribute to Gnome's undeserved bad rep.
Why compile? Well, there are no packages for Solaris yet. Ximian promises packages soon; but I can't wait.
Why can't I wait? Because, after 8 years of Unix desktop at SEARHC, my boss is about to cave to user pressure. The users want PCs to run MS-Office. The users want PCs because they are prettier.
Some of you are going to say, "Let the users get what they need to do their jobs." Sure, fine. But they don't need PCs!!!!! Some people do, yes. But they already have PCs. Out of 450 desktops, only about 30 are PCs. And because of this, our IS department has an operating budget of less than 3% of the total of the consortium's budget. Most users do quite well with X terminals and (now) SunRays.
So, I figured I'd install Gnome and KDE, and show everyone a nice, pretty, easy-to-use desktop, with Nautilus and Evolution. Get them excited, you know?
But Gnome is so Goddamned hard to compile, from CVS. There are so many conflicting dependencies; some core modules require ORBit, and some require ORBit2. Fine, but ORBit2 doesn't even compile. So I can't compile bonobo, which requires oaf, which requires ORBit2.
Yeah. I know. I should just go back to source tarballs. I will. But Gnome desperately needs some sort of build manager, something that can keep all the packages in sync with the latest possible source from CVS. I like to test Gnome, to play with new features, to see what it does. A need to fill-- something I should write code for, yes? In my copious free time perhaps?
*sigh* Back to tarballs with me. I'm not looking forward to it; but what the hell. As long as I can get Evolution and Nautilus to compile. They don't even have to compile on the same box. I have more than enough computing power-- part of that 3% went to buying a couple of additional E450s, and a bunch of Sun Fire 280Rs. I have horsepower out the wazoo. (Whatever the hell that means.)
Rant mode off. I've just had a bad day; spent hours working on Crisis Problems, and *all* of them turned out to be operator headspace-- and not mine.
Oh, well. Such is life.
Bike Stuff
I think this weekend I will work on my bike, and not touch
the computer at all. I have a BMW R90/6. The starter relay
went out, and I found a great link pointing to using
alternate relays (as opposed to the Bosch stock relay). So
I will try that. Should be fun, don'tcha think? I'm really
excited about getting my bike back on the road.
Then I can ride the full 14 miles of road available to me. So far, that's the only drawback to living on an island. Not much space for road trips.
Again, sorry. Didn't mean to post twice, though I took that chance when I did it, understanding the possible repurcussions
WindowMaker
I worked around the WindowMaker menu/docking problems. I
wrote some menu management scripts that create stub scripts
to launch applications from the appropriate server. Now we
can install the same menu on any of our machines, adjust a
file specifying the location of the stubs and the servers
from which the apps are run, and then run an install
script. It's much easier than it sounds, and it works well.
This is a problem with X11, and not with WindowMaker, per se. X11 apps report the binary invocation, and not the shell script used to launch the binary. Since we use a lot of shell script wrappers to set up environment variables, log events, etc, this makes it difficult to inform the window manager how to properly re-launch the application.
My solution is definitely sub-optimal, but works well.
SHEXEC "rsh denali /usr/local/bin/netscape -display $DISPLAY"
and then you dock the netscape icon, the docked icon will try to launch netscape with this command:
/usr/local/bin/netscape -display sunray:2
for instance.
This is an undesireable behavior, in a lot of cases.
Anyway, I have a work-around that works fairly well, but it's non-optimal.
Long Live Casbah
I hopped on over to #casbah at the casbah.org irc server,
but
noone was home. Sigh. I first saw this project almost 2
years ago, and thought it worthy. I finally have a use for
it, and an excuse to dedicate some time, and I find it is
dead. Another worthy project, dead and unremarked.
The road to software freedom is strewn with the husks of dead and desicated projects. Some are nothing (such as my own Gnome Filer project), killed by worthier projects (have I mentioned entity yet?); others died too young.
Such is Casbah.
Casbah promised to be a great and cohesive Java-based object-oriented buzzword-compliant object-service behemoth. It coulda been a contenda. It shoulda been a contenda.
Now it is dead.
Again, *sigh*.
I haven't gotten very far.
It has nothing to do with Entity, which is well-designed (IMHO). I just don't have time for outside activities these days, it seems. Work takes a lot of time, as does the house (though I must say I am now proficient at drywalling).
Sounds like a cop-out, doesn't it? It's not, really. I can devote some time from work to coding, once I've knocked out a few of my current projects.
Sunrays
One of my current projects is the deployment of Sunrays
across the consortium. We currently use NCD X terminals on
most of the desktops (with a few PCs for the diehards), and
Sun hardware in the back room. This has worked very well
for us, but since NCD has stopped development on their X
terminals, we've not had a good idea for their replacement.
We tried Netwinders (which were OK, but expensive), iPAQs
(ditto), and Sunrays. Of the bunch, the Sunrays look the
most promising. Although they have their own drawbacks
(they are true thin-clients, and every client has an X
server running on a Sun box), they have a lot of potential,
as well.
What I like: the Sunrays have a card slot. Each user is given a card. If you log in with the card in the slot, your session is tied to the card; you can remove your card from one Sunray, walk across the room (or across the hospital) and insert your card, and viola! your session appears at the new Sunray. And securing your session is as easy as removing the card and placing it in your pocket-- true physical security.
And, it allows us to use the Sunrays and X terminals in the same environment.
Also, I convinced my boss to use Windowmaker as the standard desktop. Cool.
What I dislike: I hate that it is tied to Sun hardware. I like Sun machines for the most part, but I dislike proprietary protocols.
Sitting here listening to Ben Folds Five, contemplating my keg of stout (which is finally ready for consumption), staring out the window at the alternating bands of blue and grey, I have to wonder: what the hell have I been up to these last few months?
Not much, really. I spent a couple of weeks contracted to TG Embedded in Cleveland, working on some semi-Linux related things. Fun stuff, really; I did some coding (though not much), some sysadmin (very little, really), and lots of hanging out pretending to earn my money. I did learn about kernel module programming, though. Now if only I could get some cool new hardware and become a kernel hacker.
After New Years, I went to a conference in Anchorage (which is really just a chunk of Down South grafted into the least-desirable bit of Alaska) concerning health care issues across the state, as it relates to Indian Health Services providers. (SEARHC, the company for which I work, is an IHS provider.)
The only thing everyone agreed on was this: we need high-speed reliable network access to the villages. Like we needed X-ray glasses to see that.
Anyway, I don't have anything brilliant to say today. (Yep. I know I don't have anything brilliant to say any day.) I just wanted to get back to Advogato, as it is my only active link to other geeks.
Instead, I am contributing what I can to Entity. Anyone interested in XML-based interface languages should check this out. This is how Gnome Filer should have been done in the first place-- the XML engine was perfected, then they started adding "renderers," DTDs based on whatever interface you require-- language (Perl, Python, Javascript, etc) or GUI (Gtk+ so far-- Tk is in the works, I've heard).
I always considered Javascript a toy language. Now that I've seen what it can do outside the limited environs of a web browser, I've changed my mind. It's not going to replace Perl anytime soon, but it isn't nearly as terrible as I'd supposed.
Other Jobs
I have a technical interview tonight with a consulting
company. I'm not too concerned; I posted my resume on
Monster on a lark, and was surprised they contacted me at
all. I am asking $90k, which is preposterous, but they seem
ready to give it, should I prove as able as I claimed.
Does anyone else consider this astounding? I mean, *I* shouldn't be able to command such an outragous amount. It's nice knowing someone considers me worth that much, but... noone needs that much money.
Of course, I'm not leaving my current position for anything less. So I guess it's a moot point. Greed has nothing to do with it. I love Sitka-- I love hunting, and fishing, and hiking.
Anyway, it's been on my mind. Thought I'd rant a little.
This is the highlight of my year. I had been so isolated as a geek that I had forgotten what it was like to *be* a geek in geek society. We had discussions on inane topics (like the impact of Internet communications on society, and the nature of crop circles ("Two blokes with a bit of string.")) and topical (the nature of ideas wrt ownership of knowledge).
Mostly, though, we talked about simple technical matters, and about how good the beer was.
I'll post a couple of pictures sometime in the next few days.
gnome-filer
I've accomplished a little bit with gnome-filer, but I
haven't committed most of my changes. Why? Because I'm not
entirely happy with the code. I want to get back to the
point at which it worked; that is, I want a user interface
builder that uses pluggable language bindings. (I had all
that last October.)
Life
Anyway, life has gotten in the way of coding. This is the
summer of teenage girls; a friend of the family is staying
with us for a week during the music festival (she's 13); my
daughter comes to visit in July (she's 12); and then, a
cousin (14) is coming to stay with us while her sister (17)
has a baby.
Yikes.
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