Sunday 22 July 2007

Set up a ramdrive


$ sudo mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /mnt/temp -o size=100M

If you want to mount it every time, put this in /etc/fstab (all on one line):

tmpfs /mnt/temp tmpfs defaults,users,noauto,exec,size=100M 0 0

Friday 13 July 2007

How to install Ubuntu Feisty Alternate installer on a USB Flash Drive


After much searching, I found the instructions at https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/installation-guide/i386/boot-usb-files.html

These didn't work for me:
http://learn.clemsonlinux.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Install_from_USB_drive
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

Note: with the syslinux that comes with Ubuntu 7.04, you have to format the partition as FAT16 (type 6) and specify the FAT type when using mkdosfs:

$ mkdosfs -F 16 -n UBUINSTALL /dev/sdX1

Download boot.img.gz, initrd.gz, vmlinuz from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/feisty/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/

and copy to root of target

Unmount the target device

$ syslinux /dev/sdX1

Create file syslinux.cfg in root of target

default vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=12000 root=/dev/ram rw

Copy iso image into root

$ cp ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso /media/disk/

Install the Master Boot Record (after unmounting the target device):

$ sudo apt-get install mbr
$ install-mbr /dev/sdX

Should be ready to boot

Saturday 17 March 2007

dwm - Dynamic Window Manager A truly minimalist X...

dwm - Dynamic Window Manager

A truly minimalist X window manager by Anselm R. Garbe, author of wmii.

Home page at http://dwm.suckless.org/.

(See also dzen and dzen author's page).

To configure it, you edit dwm/config.h and recompile! We don't need no steenking config files.

An essential change from my point of view (emacs user) is to change Mod1Mask to Mod4Mask to use the Window key instead of the Alt key as the Modifier key.

I then recompile (very clean compile by the way), restart and presto! My dwm now uses the Window key as the Mod key.

I like its minimalist aesthetic and economy - 2135 lines of code (as reported by wc -l *.c *.h).

It should be ideal as an example to study how window managers work.