Getting ready to head to Nuremberg this morning, and wanted to copy some files over to my USB key so I could work on the plane. (Florida to Germany is a bit of a commute, so I might as well have something to do while I’m in a tin can over the Atlantic Ocean, right?)

I’ve got an account with rsync.net (highly recommend) and wanted to copy some files to a fresh system with openSUSE 11.1 RC 1 to transfer to USB. (11.1 looks very good, by the way…)

I didn’t have my rsync scripts handy, so I decided to see about mounting the remote system using FUSE. You can also connect using Webdav in Nautilus and the “fish” protocol in Konqueror, but this method is good if you’re not a desktop user. (For instance, if you have a server running openSUSE and want to mount a filesystem on another server while working over an SSH connection.)

You should have FUSE installed already, but I didn’t have sshfs, so I popped open a terminal and ran this command:

zypper in sshfs

I’d created a directory called “rsync” (not very original, I know) and mounted the remote filesystem using the SSH Filesystem:

sshfs user@host.rsync.net: rsync/

Once that’s done, the remote filesystem is mounted as the directory “rsync” and I can copy and move files just like they’re local. (With, of course, the exception of the fact that they’re being transferred over an Internet connection rather than on local disk — so copying and moving may not be quite as snappy.)

I know a lot of experienced openSUSE users already know this, but I’m guessing a lot of other folks don’t so I thought I’d slap up the instructions since it might be useful for others.

Got my ThinkGeek fix Friday, which included a Vantec NexStar SATA drive dock. I had a spare 320GB SATA drive sitting around and slapped it on my test system running 11.1 beta 4 (was backing up for the 11.1 beta 5 install…) and everything just worked.

I’ve tried various removable drive products over the years, but they always seemed to require some drive case that was a pain to hook up. This, on the other hand, is easy as pie — insert SATA drive, power on, use, unmount, remove, repeat as needed. According to the product specs, it handles up to 1TB drives, though I’m not sure what would limit it to 1TB if you can find a SATA drive with higher capacity.

You have the option of connecting via eSATA or USB — I’m using it over USB, but would like to test out eSATA when/if I upgrade to a machine with an eSATA connection. Very handy, especially if you’re doing anything that makes sense to back up off site. I was moved to buy this after realizing the last real data backup I’d managed was from February. Not good.

Ars Technica has a useful little piece on paste services for geeks, with a special focus on GitHub’s Gist.

For years, I’ve been using several old standbys, namely the pastebin and pastie implementations, which are hosted at numerous websites. My favorite pastebin site is pastebin.ca, which adds numerous features on top of the standard pastebin.com distribution. Recently, though, irc friends have been pointing me towards github. So I finally bit the bullet and checked out github’s “Gist” pasting system. Sure enough, Gist takes pasting into the next generation.

I’m convinced. Signed up for a GitHub account a few minutes ago, and seriously thinking about signing up for a paid account to sync some of my documents and config files in my home directory…

Gobby has also been useful for collaborative editing in the past, but I don’t hear too much about it these days. It’d be nice if OO.org had that sort of functionality as well. (Or maybe it does, but I missed it in the feature list. But I don’t think so…)

What do you use for sharing code/text?

Spending some time in #opensuse-testing and working through the features list on the wiki.

We’ve got a few people in channel and getting a few tests knocked out. We can always use more testers, of course. We’ll have people in channel until 13:00 Eastern (19:00 CET).

Since we’re testing on a workday, I know that makes it a bit difficult for some people to join in — but testers are always welcome, and there are usually people around on #opensuse-factory.

Also, suggestions for improving our testing procedures are always welcome. Right now, I don’t think we have quite as much directed and organized testing as would be optimal. I know we have a lot of people from the community who report bugs as found, but we could probably do with additional directed testing.

I know a lot of openSUSE users and contributors probably don’t look at the openSUSE landing page (front page) every day — I have most of the openSUSE pages I need bookmarked or have the URLs memorized, and rarely ever start from the front page.

So, you may not have noticed that the front page has been redesigned. Go ahead, pull up a new browser window and take a look.

Isn’t it fantastic? I liked the old page, but this redesign really looks great. Robert Lihm and Andreas Demmer have done a great job rethinking the page and putting a lot more information on the landing page without making it look cluttered or ugly.

One of the things the marketing team will be looking at now is how we can start improving pages further inside the Web site to better serve new users and the existing community as well. If you’re interested, please be sure to sign up for the marketing list and join in. The openSUSE Web site is the first contact for the project for many people, so it’s vitally important that it look good and be as usable as possible, and the new landing page is both usable and great-looking.

Hack Week seems to be going well so far. Skimming Planet SUSE, I see that several people are blogging about their progress:

• Martin Vidner is working on OpenStreetMap Diaries via a GeoRSS Box Filter.
• AJ has an update from Hack Week in Nuremberg.
• Klaas Freitag is working on cross-compiling apps for Windows in the openSUSE Build Service.
• Jakub Steiner is working on a replacement font for Cholla.

Lots more going on. Looking forward to more updates on lizards.opensuse.org. Later this week, Novell and openSUSE folks will be hacking at the Utah Open Source Conference, so if you happen to be within driving distance of Salt Lake City Community College (Redwood Road campus) be sure to sign up and be there.

Just a quick reminder that the kernel team is going to be holding a Bug Squashing Day tomorrow to reduce the number of kernel bugs in bugzilla, get rid of duplicates and invalid bugs, and to test and review fixes for kernel bugs. So, put your bug-stomping hat on and join the kernel bug massacre tomorrow!

The bug slaughter commences tomorrow, starting at 00:00 UTC and lasting all day. Join in on Freenode in the #opensuse-kernel channel.

Happy bug squashing!

Spent a little while today getting an EV-DO card working with openSUSE 10.3. It was nowhere near as difficult as I was expecting it to be.

I found a decent resource on this site, though it specifies Ubuntu. I’m using wvdial to connect, and it’s fairly straightforward. The page makes it look more complex than it is, so I’m going to boil it down a bit more…

Here’s the wvdial config (found at /etc/wvdial.conf):

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 921600
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = ATM0
Area Code =
Phone = #777
Username = xxxxxxxxxx@vzw3g.com
Password = vzw
Ask Password = 0
Dial Command = ATDT
Stupid Mode = on
Auto Reconnect = on
Compuserve = 0
Force Address =
Idle Seconds = 300
Auto DNS = 1


The modem line may be different depending on what device it’s assigned. I’m using a V740 Cardbus card with a SIIG Expresscard adapter that converts it to USB.

Just take the wvdial.conf that I’ve displayed there, change the username to be your device’s phone number (plus @vzw3g.com) and then save the file. Run wvdial and you should be connected in a flash.

Regular old wireless would still be a bit faster, but this does great in a pinch when hotel wireless is either unreliable, or when you’re at a show and the wireless connections have died from too many connections. (Which, it seems, they inevitably do…)

Here’s a great chance to get involved with openSUSE — no development experience required. We’re having a bug smash on Friday from 09:00 to 18:00 UTC in #openSUSE-Factory on Freenode.

The announcement is over on news.opensuse.org, and we’ve sent it to the announce list as well — but we could use more help in spreading the word! Please send the info to anyone who might be interested in joining in.

This is the first bug smash event we’ve done in a while, but I hope to see this become a regular event. This is a great way for contributors to help openSUSE devs focus on real issues rather than wading through a lot of duplicate or defunct bugs in Bugzilla.

This will help close irrelevant bugs, and draw more attention to relevant bugs that still exist.

I’d like to thank everybody who’s helped get this organized so far: Christoph Thiel, JP Rosevear, Stanislav Visnovsky, Duncan Mac-Vicar, Jiri Srain, and Andreas Jaeger. (I hope I didn’t miss anyone!)

If you have additional input on what we can do to help with bug triaging, please feel free to leave a comment. And remember — you can do this any time, bug smashing is not limited to bug smashing days!

Quick reminder — we’re having a Packaging Days event tomorrow and Saturday. A number of openSUSE contributors will be holding an online workshop all day April 4 and April 5 on Freenode in #opensuse-buildservice.

Anyone is welcome to join, but it is helpful if you have some experience compiling software.

What will you learn? The event is designed to teach you how to create packages using the openSUSE Build Service. If you have any favorite applications that you’d like to see packaged for openSUSE — or if you’re a developer of any packages that you’d like to see packged for openSUSE — this is for you.

If you’ve been meaning to learn to package, this is definitely for you. Lots of openSUSE contributors with tons of packaging and build service experience will be standing by to answer questions. (OK, sitting by, more likely, but still…)

You’ll probably want to have an account in the build service, and look over the docs linked on the wiki about creating packages.

See the wiki page for more info, we’d love to have you! (Thanks to Dirk for pinging me to put out the reminder.)