Since TSM (IBM Backup Solution) version 5.3, the old web Admin GUI has been replaced by a servlet called the ISC console. Now, generally everyone dislikes ISC, cause it's slow, and uses quite some resources. One can, however, restore the old admin GUI in 5.3 :


IBM has made the old gui available for download. The site contains an installation procedure as well. After installation, you'll notice that the timeout parameter is set quite low. This is not the IdleTimeOut parameter found out in the options set. Modify the timeout value by issueing the command :

set webauthtimeout 60

which would define a web admin timout value of 60 minutes.

The last versions of Beryl contained some problems with my NVidia card, which forced me to start using the cvs versions of Beryl. However, these versions brought another problem to light : Xgl had a huge memory leak. After some hours of work, my memory and swap were filled by Xgl. Up to some point where the kernel started to kill some processes. Not much fun if you know that's mostly Xgl which was killed.


So I decided to switch over to the AIGLX/Beryl combination. Here's an installation HOWTO for Edgy. My first impression : yes, it's more stable, and my memory consumption stays reasonable. Many of the OpenGL programs like xscreensaver-gl and Google Earth work much better now too.

In Making the Distribution, a series of three developerworks articles, Daniel Robbins talks about the circumstances in which he left Stampede Linux, to found his own speed-optimized Linux distribution we all know now as Gentoo.
Beware of the one-sided view of this article : Daniel Robbins did leave the Stampede project because of severe tensions with other Stampede collaborators. The same thing seems to happen in Gentoo too : Daniel left the project in 2004 for personal reasons. He officially re-joined the Gentoo development team two weeks ago - only to resign a few days later. The reason? Strong personal attacks by some of the current developers of the project. Distrowatch even claims that Gentoo is dying.

The Camelot Project : a wonderful collection of Arthurian images, e-texts, and bibliographies, comprising everything from the Alliterative Morte Arthure to the eccentric Robert Stephen Hawker's "The Quest for the Sangraal."

Deze groene specht komt al een tijdje in onze tuin op bezoek. Opvallend zijn zijn felgroene rug, rode kopstreep, grijsgroene buik en kort staartje. Duidelijk te zien dat dit een vrouwtje is aan de zwarte baardstreep onder de ogen (mannetjes hebben een rode streep). Deze vogel houdt van weilanden en boomgaarden; je vindt hem vaak in tuinen waar hij in het korte gras op zoek is naar zijn lievelingseten, mieren en larven. Deze beschermde vogel is erg gevoelig voor strenge winters, vandaar dat hij zich in deze warme winter uitstekend thuis voelt.

If you're used to vim for your daily editing tasks, but you're on a server hosting only vi, then you might miss vims extra features like visual blocks, window splitting and folding. Here's where the vi cheat sheet comes to rescue. Fuzzyfuture.com has a list of several of these cheat sheets ranging from C++ to Oracle syntax references. Stick those on your cubicle walls and look like an expert !

Now that the french parliament has switched to Ubuntu ("Merde," said Bill Gates), this is a good opportunity to point to the Ubuntu 2006 essentials list; this list aims at Ubuntu beginners, and points out some must-have programs to make the Linux switch substantially easier.

Duplicity is a backup program that allows Unix admins to take encrypted backups. There are several cases in which this setup might be usefull. Here's a howto for setup on Debian like systems.

Sure, we Unix admins are all command line gurus. But there are always some obscure Unix commands we never heard of. Like 'col' or 'nl'. Tiny little gems, which make our daily lives so much easier. Here are some other handy Unix commands we hardly ever use.

My old camera, a Canon Powershot A10, is now more than 5 years old. Time for an update. This 1.3 megapixel camera served pretty well, so I decided to look for a new Canon camera (never change a winning team). I first thought about getting me the Powershot A710, but after some reviews, I decided I wanted a camera with some more zooming power. Enter the Powershot S3, a 12x zoom camera with 6 megapixels. Some nice features are color enhancements; have a look at this example.
Boy, I though there would be a threshold about the number of pixels cameras would support, but the race isn't finished yet : I see cameras featuring 10 megapixels. How on earth do they keep the noise out of these ?