beslog

Since a few weeks I am a happy alpha-tester of the not yet released application Smuxi, formerly known as Gnosmirc.
It is an IRC client written in C# and I am running it on Mono@Gentoo Linux.
Of course it is not yet as feature rich and pwetty as Xchat, but it has already the nice feature called detachable frontend, which is the main reason I want to use this application (i.e. running smuxi-engine on a server and attach the smuxi-frontend from my desktop -> no need for a bot to log a channel).

This has been bugging me for quite some time now.
Ever since upgrading GTK+ to the 2.6.x series, the gtk based programs on my computer would crash when doing something like browsing the open-file dialog or opening files on the desktop.
When running the programs from command line, the error would look like this (swap meld with any other gtk program):

(meld:17337): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(meld:17337): Pango-CRITICAL **: _pango_engine_shape_covers: assertion `PANGO_IS_FONT (font)' failed

(meld:17337): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(meld:17337): Pango-CRITICAL **: _pango_engine_shape_shape: assertion `PANGO_IS_FONT (font)' failed

Pango-ERROR **: file shape.c: line 75 (pango_shape): assertion failed: (glyphs->num_glyphs > 0)
aborting...

With the GTK+2.4.x series it worked. So I suspected either that or Pango, but reinstalling both did not help.

And until recently the gentoo forums did not have an appropriate solution either.

But today I looked again and finally found a solution:

Change the Application and Desktop font of Gnome from ClearlyU to Bitstream Vera Sans !

The last couple of days I have been looking into Mono.
I am using the SportsTracker program, I have been using since a couple of months, as object of my studies.
Its based on gtk-sharp and glade.
I am in contact with the main developer and even sent him a patch already.

To get rid of the annoying /index.php/ in the URL, I did the following (thanx to baraboom and web.archive.org):
put this code into a file .htaccess in your main xaraya directory

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^index\.php - [L]
RewriteRule ^val\.php - [L]
RewriteRule ^ws\.php - [L]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|gif|png|css|js)$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.+) index.php/$1 [L]

Additionally uncomment the last two lines in your var/config.system.php file

$systemConfiguration['BaseURI'] = '';
$systemConfiguration['BaseModURL'] = '';

Of course you need to have working Short URL support in articles first (in Articles/Modify Config/Defaults tick “Support short URLs” , and in your pubtypes configuration tick “Use Title in short URLs”)

[Update 16:48]
Another way is to follow the points 3 and onward on this xaraya document (thanx to fcd)

[Update 17:44]
Ok. I experimented some more and ended up with the following .htaccess file

# Dont let this file be accessed


order allow,deny
deny from all


# Dont let theme templates and install/upgrade files be accessed


order allow,deny
deny from all


# Rewrite Rules for getting rid of index.php

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.+) index.php/$1 [L]

I uploaded my portage overlay.
Feel free to browse and grab an ebuild or two.

Today I had a look at tomboy, a note taking application for the desktop.
Fortunately there was an ebuild in portage already, but it was a little outdated (version 0.2.2-something vs. the current 0.3.1). So I copied the ebuild file over to my portage overlay, renamed it to read …0.3.1.ebuild and emerged it.
Installation went w/o any problem, but all the software did when I called it from the command line, was writing “All done. Ciao!”. Wtf?
But after using Google I was able to find an answer: tomboy is supposed to run as applet. So I added an applet, and – what can you say? – there really was a tomboy applet.
Yay. works for me.

Now I “only” have to get beagle working :-/ …

Created an ebuild and sent it to the developer of Timer Applet.
Additionally I wrote a feature request.

Switched on my laptop yesterday evening and wanted to log into Gnome.
No workie. Grrrr. What did I emerge this time, that breaks stuff? …
Trying to log into Fluxbox… aha! That works.
Ok… lets see if we can find something about it in the excellent Gentoo Forums. Context menu, Firefox…
Duh. No workie.
Starting it from aterm to see the error… oy.
It says:

error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0: invalid ELF header

Ugh. Time to reemerge that package… but what is it?

qpkg -f /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0

reveals that it belongs to dev-libs/glib (hm, i could have guessed it, duh!)

emerge glib

takes a little while, and after that Firefox works again… Gnome too! yay!

Finally I found the time and installed Xaraya on this webspace. At first I will use it as a weblog, adding my findings on various computer related things.

Later on I will reimport some blog entries from my previous Wordpress installation.
As you can see, I already did a few things other tha n plainly installing a Xaraya distribution tarball

• use latest bitkeeper repository
• create an own theme (most visible change, wasnt too difficult)
• create some categories
• delete default publication types and add a blog pubtype

more to come, stay tuned…

When I prepare my favourite green tea steep it, and go back to the computer, I regularly get sidetracked and forget about the tea.

But no more.
Here is a great new Gnome applet called Timer Applet provided by Jimmy Do.
It is really The Applet I was looking for. And he even provides an Ebuild for easy installation on Gentoo Linux!

[Note] At the time of writing, this ebuild file was in dos format and thus didnt install. The developer was informed. In the meantime just emerge dos2unix and use it :)