My computer was running fine, save for the fact that the cpu ran at 1500+ speed instead of 2200+, which it should. Googling around I find that my CPU has a 266MHz FSB. So I shutdown, enter the BIOS, and set the FSB frequency to 266MHz (it previously was 100). Save, reboot, and... BOOOM! The computer wouldn't turn on again. The status leds got stuck in the "System Power ON" state, which means, according to the MB documentation, that the CPU is either damaged or not properly installed. Resetting the CMOS didn't help.
I thought I had burned the processor, but after installing an old MB the computer powered up just fine! However, I will need to buy either a SATA PCI controller or a new MB, because the old one doesn't have a SATA controller.

I've been in a sequel of failing hard drives that is making me sick. About 3 or 4 months ago my primary hard drive died. Well, not exactly: it started making clicks, and after a while I got a BIOS warning about an inminent drive failure. The drive was somewhat old, and had been used a lot, so I just thought it was time's fault. After that, I got a new hard drive, which managed to fail in a record (at least for me) time of about a month (the same simptoms as above apply). So I thought "Well, there must be something wrong with my hardware". Replaced the motherboard and power supply, and just a couple of days ago, I bought a new hard drive (this time SATA), and installed it. However, I am hearing the clicks again. I am baffled at what could this be. I moved the computer away from magnetic sources (such as speakers), and the clicks continued. I changed the electric setup, and the clicks are less numerous now. I rearranged the setup again, so I hope this will kill those damned clicks once and for all. I just don't know what to do.

We had a bit of a reordering at home, and I ended up far away from my router, so I have to (at least for now) connect wirelessly to it. The problem is that my wireless card is an USB DLink DWL-120+, which happens to not work on my computer. After installing the Windows driver and getting internet access, I started googling around, and found that there is a driver for it, the acx100 driver. After downloading all necesary stuff, compiling and installing the drivers, messing with the necessary firmware, all of this offline (I had to reboot to Windows several times to download extra stuff), I was able to configure the wlan0 interface.
However, I haven't been able to connect reliably to my router. Most of the time it can't get an IP address from the DHCP server, and when it does, it manages to bring down the router, thus bringing the complete LAN down. I am trying to work this out, but it is very cumbersome, since I don't have internet to google around for information, or post on the user forums for the driver (this is very irritating, since I need to post driver output for the post to be useful, and I can't really copy it by hand).
My plan is to place a wire across my place to forget about wireless networking. The other option is to place a temporary cable so I can debug the wireless driver without having to reboot. The first option seems like less work, but I guess the second option is the better in the long run.

I've been planning for a while to buy a (.com) domain name. However, I don't want to buy hosting yet (I plan to host it on my home pc for a while). So I need dynamic dns services. I've searched a bit, and found dyndns.com, but it seems a bit expensive (you have to buy both the domain and the dynamic dns services). Are there other alternatives?

Hah! I managed to get my first package into debian :). I am now the maintainer for checkinstall. Please upgrade your packages if you are using unstable. For those not knowing what checkinstall is, Steve made an article about it a while ago. Wohoo!

I've been recently annoyed with a bash bug I can't seem to workaround. The thing is that when bash is called noninteractively (eg, a script), command substitution doesn't work properly. Take the following example:

#!/bin/bash
alias foo=echo
echo `foo hi`
echo $(foo hi)

When I execute that script, I get the following error:

./test: line 3: foo: command not found
./test: line 4: foo: command not found

If you change bash for zsh or dash, the script works perfectly. Moreover, if I execute the commands manually, they work as expected. So I'm completely annoyed for I need this to use checkinstall. Last week I submitted a bug report to the debian BTS, but I don't really expect an answer, since the bug is not RC. So I just sent a report through bashbug, and hopefully they can provide a fix, and I can move on.

I've been experimenting now with zsh. So far, it is a great shell with lots of nice features (I'm liking it more than bash). However I just stumbled upon an article from Steve, and I saw something I feel curious about now. Why is it a bad idea to change root's shell? If it indeed is, then changing the default /bin/sh link to bash is even worse. I imagine this is bad because /bin/sh scripts may have bashisms in them that may break other shells, but then shouldn't this be a bug in the script?

As a sidenote, I can't seem to find any simple document on zsh completion. Anyone has seen any?

My brother got a new Dell Inspiron 630m, and (of course ;) ) we had to install Debian on it. So we go and download the latest testing image, pop it in the cd drive, boot up, and voilá: The installer fails to detect the cd drive (a sony dw-q58a, a pci ide drive). After several workarounds performed (noone worked, of course), we tried using an old image we had, the first Debian we ever installed: testing from august 2004. Guess what: it worked!

So, happy with our (not so) new Debian installed, we tried to update. Horrible things happened: upgrading e2fsprogs is a pain, and some bug in the init scripts set the date 4 hours late, so the dates in the drive were all in the future... Anyways, I quickly got tired of all this upgrading (pre-sarge->sarge->testing->unstable), I decided to download and try the netboot installer. It worked fine, and after a long wait and struggle (damn key expiral, breaks the installation!), I got debian installed and working (finally)! So I proceeded to install GNOME, and quickly discovered that X doesn't handle the Intel 915G chip so nicely: only one available resolution was shown. So after _a lot_ of googling, I apt-got 915resolution, and managed to get a decent display, and a pretty good one: at 1280x800, glxgears full screen averages 168 fps.

Now that I have a desktop, I can begin to worry about other stuff: the CD still is not recognized. I have googled around, and haven't found anything useful. I still can't manage to find the driver for my cd drive! I am beginning to think that it has something to do with ATAPI being disabled (found out through dmesg), but I can't figure how to turn it on, or if this is actually the cause.

Conclusion: either debian-installer, the damn cd drive, or I suck (I am inclined towards the cd drive ;)).

I have always wondered why the apt default remove action doesn't purge configuration files. Of course, one could use the --purge option (or command, whether you are using aptitude or other front end), but then any automatically removed package would still not be purged. And today I found out how to purge all those files easily:

dpkg --list | grep '^rc\b' | awk '{ print $2 }'\
 | xargs sudo dpkg -P

The explanation: dpkg --list lists all the installed packages. Then we pipe it through grep to select only the lines that start with 'rc' (I guess for Remaining Configuration or somthing like that). Then awk will print the second word of each line (the package name), and finally xargs receives all those packages and passes them as the comand line to dpkg.

I recently installed trojan-scan, following these instructions. Nifty tool. However, I found out 3 things I didn't like: Kopete likes to connect ispell to someone (apparently the msn server) whenever a chat window is opened, and most importantly: sshd runs as root instead of a dedicated user, and smbd opens random ports with the root user. Am I just being too paranoic?
I sent a message to KDE forums about ispell, but I don't really know how to handle these programs. Should I treat them as normal behaviour, or do something about it?