Rasher journal

Automatically building with module-assistant

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:44:27 +0100

If you, like me need a driver that's not included in the main Debian kernel, you have hopefully found module-assistant which helps automate the process of building kernel module packages. However, this is tedious to do each time you update your kernel, and you'll probably forget, like me.

But fear not, the kernel packages provide hooks that will call scripts for you on pre/post install/remove. With this knowledge, we can automate the task of building and installing driver packages completely.

Put this in /etc/kernel/postinst.d/build-module-assistant-modules:


#!/bin/sh
# Based on
# /usr/share/doc/module-assistant/examples/non-interactive-auto-update.sh

KERNEL_VERSION=$1 # This is how kernel hooks work

# apt-listchanges should not interrupt it
APT_LISTCHANGES_FRONTEND=mail
export APT_LISTCHANGES_FRONTEND

t=`mktemp`
# hide output if everything was okay, good for cron jobs
module-assistant -vito -l $KERNEL_VERSION update,a-i alli > "$t" 2>&1 || cat "$t"
rm -f "$t"

I haven't had chance to test this yet, so I'll fix this post if it turns out there's a bug.

How does homeopathy work?

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:57:24 +0100

Just found a page explaining how does homeopathy work?.

Huawei E1752 on Debian Unstable

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:03:31 +0100

My ISP Telenor recently gave me 6 months of mobile broadband, and a Huawei E1752 modem for it. After some attempts at using udev's modem-modeswitch, it turned out that simply installing the usb-modeswitch package was enough to make the modem appear in network-manager and from there it was simply a madder of following the onscreen intructions (picking Cybercity as ISP).

Music music music

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 01:20:03 +0200

More music acquired over the last couple of months. Some bought, some birthday presents.

Java browser plugin on Debian amd64

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:03:20 +0200

Apparently ~~there is no working Java plugin for Debian/amd64~~ EVERYTHING SUCKS. What utter crap.

Parcel tracking

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:27:36 +0200

A situation we all know too well:

Comic by xkcd

Fear not! The solution to all your problems is here, in the form of libparceltrack. A python library for monitoring packages and taking appropriate action when their status changes (which would usually involve notifying you in some way).

X61s

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:43:59 +0200

A new toy.

More music

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:59:14 +0100

Hardware

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:04:21 +0100

If I were to buy a new desktop computer right now, it should probably have the following characteristics:

Motherboard with integrated 965-series Intel graphics adapter, probably GMA X3000
Probably a Core 2 Duo CPU with VT-x support
A quiet CPU fan
A likewise quietly cooled PSU
Probably 2GiB of RAM

Looking around, I might go with something like: Intel DG965OT Motherboard, Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz CPU (using the included fan for now), Antec EarthWatts 650 PSU, 2x1GiB Kingston RAM which weighs in at about 2800DKK. Of course I won't, because I'm not really in need of a hardware upgrade, but it was fun looking around.

More stuff

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:08:52 +0100

I've bought more stuff. It just never ends, I guess. First, CDs:
Mew - And the Glass Handed Kites
Live - The Distance to Here
Genesis - The Way We Walk, Volume 2: The Longs

Also, I'm posting this from my new Nintendo Wii (thank god for usb keyboards).