Niels Horn's Blog

I built several new / updated packages over the last few days, but did not have enough time to post about them.

First of all there is FreeCiv, a Civilization-like game for Linux.
The new version was adapted to run on smaller screens, like on netbooks.

The second update is for brlcad, with a new release 7.16.10 that solves some bugs in the previous version.

The third and last one is for Zarafa 6.40.1, the mail and collaboration suite.

All new / updated scripts have been submitted to SlackBuilds.org and newly built packages are available from my site.

It was time to update the monitoring packages on my server, so I spent some time to get them all up-to-date to the newest versions that were released recently:

First of all, there is new version of cacti, with several patches from upstream. It corrects a few bugs that appeared after the release of version 0.8.7g. Since there have been five patches, I called this version 0.8.7g_p5.

The second update is for Zabbix. I created new versions for zabbix_server and zabbix_agentd and added a new module, zabbix_proxy. All use the new 1.8.3 version that was released a few days ago.
I also implemented some suggestions I received by e-mail, mainly corrections in the documentation.

The third update is for ntop, which released a completely revamped version 4. I actually waited for version 4.0.1, as I had some stability problems with the 3.x series. This new version seems to be quite stable and adds some nice features.

The new SlackBuilds have been uploaded to SlackBuilds.org and packages for Slackware (32 & 64 bits) are available on my site.

Jacob Dekel released the new version 1.2.0 of Hercules Studio last month.

It has, apart from some small bug fixes, a few enhancements to the GUI. The one I like most is the ability to click on the tray icon to minimize / maximize the program. I normally use Hercules to run servers I connect to from terminal programs, so this cleans up the desktop with a single click.

Another nice addition is the “gauge” to show the current MIPS instead of the LED display. If you prefer the display, you can use the Preferences to set it as the default.

The new SlackBuild has been submitted and packages are available on my site.

QComicBook 0.6.0 was actually released almost a month ago, but only now I had some time to create the new packages…

This new version has support for translations (including Portuguese!) and some minor enhancements.
There are some very interesting changes in the development branch, but these will probably only be released in the next stable version.

A new SlackBuild has been submitted and the new packages can be downloaded from my site.

New pieces libraries

LDraw.org released its second update for 2010 of the pieces library this month. As always, a short time afterwards the updated pieces library for LeoCAD was also released.

New LeoCAD version

A new version of LeoCAD (0.75.1) was also released, fixing the Minifig wizard that was broken in the previous Linux versions. With it, you can easily create minifigs using all possible combinations of arms, tools, etc. and insert the result in your model.

Here are some examples of what you can do with it:

Darth Vader

Creating the Darth Vader minifig in the wizard

And after using l3p and povray to create a nice image:

An impressive figure...

Han Solo

With a screwdriver, always fixing the Millenium Falcon...

And with some basic ray-tracing:

Judging from his smile, he fixed it again

Downloading

The SlackBuilds have been submitted and are in the pending queue at SlackBuilds.org.
Pre-built packages can be found on my site…

After the problems with Cacti release 0.8.7f a few weeks ago, the updated version 0.8.7g was released this week.

I successfully updated my server, which was a very simple process.
After installing the new package, the web-page automatically redirected to the upgrade-page and with a single click Cacti was up-and-running again.

The new SlackBuild is in the pending queue of SlackBuilds.org and the pre-built package is available on my site.

DeVeDe is a simple to use graphical front-end for dvdauthor and vcdimager. With it you can create VCDs and DVDs that can be played on “normal” home players, from all kinds of video formats normally only playable on computers:

A simple menu can be created to choose the video on your home player.

Version 3.16.9 of DeVeDe was released a week a go and a package for Slackware can be downloaded from my site.

Last Monday rrdtool-1.4.4 was released. It contains some bug fixes and improvements you can read about here.

The SlackBuild was also improved to solve some problems with the lua, tcl and ruby bindings, that are all installed in the correct paths now.

The new SlackBuild has been submitted and new packages can be downloaded from my site.

A few weeks ago the Cacti developers released version 0.8.7f of Cacti, but it was removed from their site shortly after the release because of some new bugs that were introduced.

While we’re waiting for the new version to be re-released, I built a package for the current release (0.8.7e) with all the patches that upstream made available on their site.
This way we can have a stable and secure Cacti installation while we wait for the new version.

The package can be downloaded from my site.

I’m not really that fanatic about football, but one of the questions I’m always asked when I tell people here in Brazil that I’m from the Netherlands is: “And what if the Dutch team plays against Brazil?”. Well, today this finally happened, after so many years.

So since it was clear this game was going to happen, I have heard that same question over and over again. I can’t deny that I am Dutch, and that I spent most of my life in the Netherlands. So, although Brazil has embraced me, I had to defend the Dutch team and answered each and every time that I was convinced that they would defeat the Brazilian team. After all, you can only win if you believe in your own capacity.

My faith was answered with laughter and disbelief. But faith is exactly just that: faith – believe or don’t believe.

Today the game finally happened and the result is there. Probably this picture shows what it was all about: The Brazilian players loosing their control of emotions, while the Dutch team remained strong, believing that they could achieve what they came to do:

It's all about controlling your emotions...