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May 9, 2008

Hans Fugal
no nic
The Fugue :
» Fixed Point for Sysadmins

In CS language theory we sometimes talk about fixed points. Everyone seems to have a bit of a hard time understanding what a fixed point is at first, and I thought of an interesting analogy just now that will make sense to sysadmins.

When you go to install foo, with apt-get install foo, apt will tell you all the dependencies it will install, and it will also tell you the recommendations and suggestions, then ask for your permission. You might decide to say no and repeat the command with one or more of the suggestions added. Then it will do the same, but now with the suggestions of the suggested packages as well. You might repeat a couple of times. Finally, you will be happy with the selection of packages you're going to install. You've found the fixed point.

Apt itself does the same thing when resolving dependencies. If you remember rpm-based distros before apt-alikes, you used to have to find the dependencies fixed point by yourself. We called this rpm hell for good reason.

So when you're finding a fixed point in math, you're doing a similar thing. You're repeatedly performing the operation until further operations don't change the answer. The fixed point of a function f(x) is x0 such that f(x0) = x0.

by Hans Fugal at 9:55 PM under cs , deb , fixed , package , point , rpm , sysadmin , theory
November 6, 2007

Clint Savage
herlo
Sexy Sexy Penguins » Tech
» Thoughts on the Fedora Upgrade - Part 1

So its been a whole two days since I upgraded to Werewolf. I love it! Most everything works out of the box (OOTB), wireless, bluetooth, even suspend/resume seem to be possible for the first time!

But one of the oddities I encountered while upgrading was the names of the packages. Mind you, this is just my twisted mind being interested in some of the funny odd or strange package names I found while the yum upgrade was taking place.

So here’s the list anyway, with a short description of each. Enjoy:

  • gwenhywfar - A multi-platform helper library for networking and security applications and libraries.
  • meanwhile - Lotus Sametime session functionality.
  • neon - An HTTP and WebDAV client library.
  • coolkey - Linux Driver support for the CoolKey and CAC products.
  • rarian - Designed as a replacement for scrollkeeper; A documentation meta-data library.
  • openjade - An implementation of the ISO/IEC 10179:1996 standard DSSSL.
  • sox - (Sound eXchange) is a sound file format converter.
  • cadaver - A command-line WebDAV client.
  • booty - Small python library for use with bootloader configuration.
  • orca - A flexible, extensible, and powerful assistive technology.
  • zenity - Lets you display Gtk+ dialog boxes from the command line and through shell scripts.
  • eog - Eye of GNOME (EOG) is an image viewer.
  • gok - Enables users to control their computer without relying on a standard keyboard or mouse, leveraging GNOME’s accessibility framework
  • devilspie - A window-matching utility.*

This information was gathered using the command ‘rpm -qi <packagename>’.  This provided enough information to help understand at least the basics of each of these packages and whether to consider using them in the future.

The packages in italics above are packages that I consider interesting, and I plan to attempt to blog about each of them in turn as part of my POW series.

The devilspie package has a * which means that I’ve used this program before.  I quite enjoyed using the Devil’s Pie, and plan to take a look at it again in Fedora 8 as the previous package had some real limitations and lacked needed flexibility.

Please watch for the upcoming articles on these utilities.  Also, if there are packages that you found interesting during your upgrade, please comment and let me know what they are so I can learn and possibly use them as well.

Cheers,

Herlo

by herlo at 6:43 PM under fedora , fedora 8 , install , packages , rawhide , releases , rpm , tech , upgrade , werewolf , yum (Comments)