Teleidoscope

Mon, Nov 12, 2007

mlocate

Posted at 10:51 pm MST to Code

Notes from setting up the server:

The installation package for ClearCase on RedHat/Centos 5.0 has a glitch: it doesn't configure mlocate properly, so it gets into an infinite loop in the /view directory tree and eats up all the available disk space.

According to an IBM technote the workaround is to edit /etc/updatedb.conf, and add 'mvfs' and 'nfs' to the PRUNEFS variable and '/view' and '/vobs' to the PRUNEPATHS variable.

I also needed to clean out the 32 Gig file that had built up in /var/lib/mlocate, and reboot the image to make it realize it had available disk space again.

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Give One Get One

Posted at 10:33 pm MST to Current Events

The One Laptop Per Child project has developed rugged, inexpensive laptop computers for use in schools where technology is otherwise unavailable. In the process they have made technological advances in both hardware and software. Special low-power swivel displays that are still legible in sunlight. Mesh networking. Extreme power efficiency. New ways of handling security to make them harder to hack.

The first generation of the laptops are now in production. They are a bright lime green, partly to make them readily identifiable, so it will be trickier to put them on the black market, partly to make them fun for the kids. I imagine later generations of them may be done in different colors so that the feature mix can be told apart.

I'm not sure which countries the first million or so are scheduled for -- Microsoft has been trying to bribe and strongarm countries into not taking them, because they don't run Windows -- so the list keeps mutating.

Geeks in the developed world have been frustrated because they couldn't get samples of the hardware to experiment with. But just now, for a 14 days period the Foundation is making a limited number of the PCs available on a "get one give one" basis: you pay for two laptops, and one is shipped to you and the other to a child somewhere in the third world.

I ordered mine today. I'm glad I have small hands, since the keyboards are designed for children.

The original goal was to create a $100 laptop. Economies of scale haven't kicked in yet, and the dollar has tanked, so the current price for two laptops, for purposes of the program, is just under $400, plus shipping. I think the price of the donated laptop is tax deductible.

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