In the last days I used my time to work on my paid job more than on Gentoo, just because I’m quite at the end of the job and I want to complete it ASAP.
This doesn’t mean that I haven’t done anythign in a while: you can find on portage a beta version for VLC (0.8.2_beta2), hardmasked, to test the new 0.8.2 version which should come soon. This because the new version has quite a few changes and I preferred having it tested so that users can see if it works before the final release is done.
So if you feel like testing recent VLC versions, try with 0.8.2_beta2, but remember but it’s supposed to be broken respect to 0.8.1.
I’m also still working on Gentoo/FreeBSD and OpenPAM stuff. I managed to have a testing chroot with OpenPAM instead on Linux-PAM on Linux Kernel and GNU userland.. it wasn’t all simple because pam-login and shadow depends on the use of libpam_misc which isn’t provided by OpenPAM, but that is something I already worked out. The problem now consists of the fact that the modules built from Linux-PAM doesn’t get along well with OpenPAM, or at least so it seems; the ones from FreeBSD hardly depends on FreeBSD’s libc (or probably on a generic BSD libc) and this makes them useless on Linux. I think I’ll need to fork the modules from Linux-PAM and use them with OpenPAM to have a working PAM environment with minimal modules support (ho pam_chroot, no pam_pwdb, no pam_cracklib and so on, having only the base modules as you have in FreeBSD, anyway a lot of other modules are available on their own and can be used if you want them.
Talking about FreeBSD, today with inspiration by KingTaco, I though of using a Firewire connection to mount the NFS share, with portage tree, CVS, distfiles and package tarballs, in the G/FBSD development box, removing its load from the switch and the general ethernet network shared with the router, the Access Point and the eventual new machines which are going to be added in a not-so-near future.
Unfortunately, seems like BSD support for IP-over-FireWire isn’t so stable: it stops working after a few minutes of hard-load NFS transactions, and that’s something really bad, but I’m going to sort this out soon because I really want to have this working.. at least the FireWire cable isn’t going to be unused, it costed me quite a bit.
A part from technical issues with OpenPAM; Gentoo/FreeBSD and in general with Gentoo, the last days are being difficult mainly for my keyboards: my desktop’s keyboard is breaking, the keys doesn’t press too well, and the one of my iBook, being used every day for my job is having its key’s label deleted by the use.
I’m a bit afraid of change my desktop’s keyboard, for two reasons: the first one is that when I bough that keyboard I was able to provide Pavlik Vojtech the information needed to have the keyboard’s scroll wheel working on Linux; the second one is that I don’t know a shop where I can go trying a couple of keyboards, because I really need to feel the way they type, and I want a keybord with as more extra buttons as possible, because with KDE I can remap quite everyone to provide extra functions. The one I have here has a lot of them and didn’t cost me too much, but I’m not going to take another one because it has the problem of being PS/2… I’d like to try an USB keyboard, also because in that way I can hook it up on the iBook if it types better than its own keyboard (also if it’s difficult.. iBooks’ keyboards are really good to work at). If you have suggestions on a model of keyboard which works fine under Linux, which has extra keys and perhaps a scroll wheel, they are really really welcome as comments in this blog entry 🙂