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Article posted on Nov 26

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 26, 2005, 2:11 pm

Despite having a mac mini, I'm still doing Finnix development on the graphite G4. It's been very stable, up until last night, when I was compiling the latest and greatest kernel, I got the occasional failure like so:

CC drivers/pci/probe.o
include/asm/processor.h: In function 'pci_scan_child_bus':
include/asm/processor.h:186: internal compiler error: Segmentation fault
Please submit a full bug report,
with preprocessed source if appropriate.
See for instructions.
For Debian GNU/Linux specific bug reporting instructions,
see .
make[2]: *** [drivers/pci/probe.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [drivers/pci] Error 2
make: *** [drivers] Error 2

But upon, resuming the compile, the failed object would compile successfully. This happened several times, which suggested bad memory. I slept on it, and this morning, tried again:

CC [M] drivers/usb/misc/idmouse.o
fixdep: inclu`e/asm-generic/local.h: No such file or directory
make[3]: *** [drivers/usb/misc/idmouse.o] Error 2
make[2]: *** [drivers/usb/misc] Error 2
make[1]: *** [drivers/usb] Error 2
make: *** [drivers] Error 2

"inclu`e"? Yep, that's bad ram. Too bad there's no memtestppc. I'll have to swap it out into a PC to test.

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Article posted on Nov 24

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 24, 2005, 2:50 pm

'tis the season for the festive userpic

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Article posted on Nov 22

Hello free lunch drawings!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 22, 2005, 4:02 pm

I've been at this company for nearly 2 years now. My business cards just arrived :)

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Article posted on Nov 21

Announce (Woo!): Finnix 86.1 for x86/PowerPC/UML/Xen Released

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 21, 2005, 10:33 pm

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today marks the release of version 86.1 for the x86, PowerPC, and UML/Xen platforms.

PowerPC Support: The largest change for version 86.1 has been the inclusion of a PowerPC port. Finnix for PowerPC (Finnix-PPC) is a 115MB ISO that functions identically to the main x86 Finnix distribution. Simply insert the CD and boot while holding down the "C" key. Finnix-PPC is well supported on G4 and NewWorld G3 hardware, including PowerMacs, PowerBooks, iBooks, iMacs and the Mac Mini. G5 support is present, but still experimental.

UML/Xen Support: Finnix 86.1 can be deployed as a guest image on User Mode Linux (UML) and Xen virtualization systems. UML/Xen administrators can go to http://www.finnix.org/uml.php for information on deploying Finnix in a UML or Xen environment. Additionally, the x86 Finnix CD includes a built-in UML demo. Once at the bash prompt, you can type "finnix create", and a UML guest session is created within the running CD session, using the same media as the CD session itself. Full networking is available in this running guest.

Other Changes: Finnix 86.1 includes Linux kernel 2.6.14.2, unionfs 1.1.1, and updated upstream packages. Many bugs have been fixed; most visibly, the CD will now reliably eject before system shutdown. For a full changelog, see the link below.

Home page: http://www.finnix.org/
SourceForge page: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/finnix/
Download:
* x86: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/finnix/finnix-86.1.iso?download
* PowerPC: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/finnix/finnix-ppc-86.1.iso?download
ChangeLog: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=3892&release_id=371261
Finnix for UML/Xen: http://www.finnix.org/uml.php

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Article posted on Nov 17

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 17, 2005, 1:59 pm

So, I've known that CSS has existed for many years now, but I had never tried to learn or use it. But with the Finnix site, I decided to use CSS, and the result came out pretty well. Behold:

* The original site.
* The same page, with no CSS document linked to it. This page is more bland, but still looks fine, and because all the style information is in the CSS, finnix.org looks great in lynx.
* The same page, if it were a MySpace profile. Again, exact same content, but with a different CSS page.

I hope that last link didn't blind you.

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Article posted on Nov 11

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 11, 2005, 7:24 pm

After Bill O'Reilly's comments yesterday, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has responded by deploying Christopher Lowell to Fox News headquarters.

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Article posted on Nov 11

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 11, 2005, 2:52 pm

The world is shifting towards measuring network transfer speeds in bytes/sec, and I don't like it. I fear the day when I go to the store and buy a 12.5MB/s network card (or 11.92MB/s network card if those "redefine kilo/mega/giga as base 2" nuts get their way).

("Remember kids, a 100 'marketing' megabit card only contain 95.37 real megabits.")
("Remember kids, an 80 'marketing' gigabyte hard drive only contains 74.5 real gigabytes.")

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Article posted on Nov 10

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 10, 2005, 2:33 pm

A couple weeks ago, I found out that you could upload videos to Google Video, so I uploaded the only "video" I had copyright on, a 1998 high school documentary for Mass Media class, entitled "When Buildings Attack". It took 3 hours to go from "uploaded" to "verified, your video should be online shortly!", and 3 weeks to go to "published".

It's cheezy, it's got bad editing, lighting and acting. I had a cold when I did the narration. It used Prodigy as the soundtrack. Despite these obstacles, we got the highest grade in the class, probably because of the standard clips needed for a "kickass" video: interviewing the guy who flips burgers at the Hot n Now though the drive-thru speaker, and the random pothead downtown.

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Article posted on Nov 6

Awww, isn't it cute...

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 6, 2005, 8:25 pm

I now own a 1.25GHz/256MB Mac Mini. Got a sweet deal too. That now makes 4 mac machines I own, technically:

* Beige G3 "Server" with like 4 SCSI disks that equal about 2GB, hasn't been powered on in years
* Beige G3 tower, no hard drive currently, but I may install OS9 (and BootX so I can run linux on it, as it's OldWorld) that came with the mini
* 400MHz Graphite G4 AGP, debian installed, currently doing Finnix development
* 1.25GHz G4 Mini, dual-booting Tiger and debian, Finnix development will eventually be moved here

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Article posted on Nov 4

Calling all Mac geeks!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on November 4, 2005, 10:53 am

Finnix-PPC development is coming along nicely. It's "stable", but since I don't have 100 different ppc machines lying around like I do for x86, I'm turning to livejournal for hardware testing before I "publicly" release it. So if you have a NewWorld[0x01] Mac (ESPECIALLY a G5):

Read the rest of this entry »

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