www.jezek.ch

Just did again some graphing with rrd.
Thinking (googling) some metrics to graph I found some interesting articles:

• some nice rrd examples: link
• List of Cacti Scripts and Templates: link (I did not try them out yet!)
• 20 Linux System Monitoring Tools Every SysAdmin Should Know: link
• article about graphing spend cpu ticks: link
• opennms graph gallery: link
• tool to create color gradient steps: link (mentioned in the link above)
• pmacct could be used to get protocols out of network traffic: link (will try it, once I have more time)

And here are some pics:



(as this machine is idleing it graphs only between 0 and 5 %)

Btw: am using catcti to graph and some custom code to push metrics to cacti. Will post about it, once it is on github.

...to prepare some photos to play with Photomatix Pro.

it's a bit unsharp without a RC - out of battery exception :-)

Arg, ok, back with debian for my servers and new hardware.
With debian I got a more recent kernel for xen (someone forward ported xen to the current debian stable kernel), but an older xen hypervisor.

However I need an even newer igb network driver (where gentoo had backported them).

This line only builds the xen flavour:

fakeroot make -f debian/rules.gen binary-arch_amd64_xen

Location of the full howto.

Building only the kernel module:

apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.26-2-xen-amd64
/usr/src/igb-2.3.4/src && make && make install

I just hat the issues that my external WD drive showed no partition to mount.
It contained a timemachine backup.

Luckily I found testdisk which could restore the partition table.
Here are some screen shots:

One year has passed by...
...it's again buenz.li time :-)

I like dropbox and I use it to sync stuff around my different boxes.
Btw. If you don't have dropbox installed, please use me as a referral.

Today I found an open source project sponsored by Novell called iFolder.

There is also a howto install on debian.

Hope I will find some time to play with it, at it allows me to be my own host of my files and still have the ease of "Dropbox" alike behavior.

Finally I found the time to test some of the new features of the upcoming Unity3d.
So far I am very impressed.

My favorite top 3 features are:

1. Unified Editor
   
   One Editor to build for Standalone, Web, iPhone, Android, XBox 360 and PS3
2. Working Debugger (MonoDevelop)
   
   What happens on runtime? Yeah: step over the code. Comes with build in "sync MonoDevelop project" button.
3. Versioning
   I could not test it with my current project. I fear that it's already grown to much to proper set up subversion as VCS afterwards.

If I would have to give a note: it would be 10 out of 10 points so far.

I finished my modifications to shiftit. The modification I made are small.
It supports now the resize window to 1024 x max. height.

It looks like this:

A super helper to find the virtual key code for the letter "C" was Peter Maurer's Key Codes.app.

Here is an example apple script which can resize a window to 1024 px wide and use the maximum screen height:

-- script based on:
-- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/273242/is-there-anything-like-winsplit-revolution-for-mac-os-x#2977827

-- hardcoded screen resolution:
property screenWidth : 1280
property screenHeight : 800
-- read screen resolution:
-- comment out next 2 line to speed up the script 
-- if you use always the same screen hight
set screenWidth to (do shell script "system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution | awk '{print $2}'")
set screenHeight to (do shell script "system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution | awk '{print $4}'")

tell application "System Events"
	set _everyProcess to every process
	repeat with n from 1 to count of _everyProcess
		set _frontMost to frontmost of item n of _everyProcess
		if _frontMost is true then set _frontMostApp to process n
	end repeat
	
	set _windowOne to window 1 of _frontMostApp
	set position of _windowOne to {0, 0}
	set size of _windowOne to {1024, screenHeight}
end tell

It works from launchbar with "run in Background" or from the AppleScript Menu Bar for the last top most window.

I searched for tools to manage application windows with a short cut.
Thanks to a superuser.com article I found some nice apps.
This is the order in which I would try them out:

1. shiftit (OOS, shortcuts, but still under heavy development)
2. optimal-layout (has layouts, resize multiple windows at once)
3. sizeup (shortcuts, knows spaces and multiple screens)
4. breeze (shortcuts, settings per app possible)
5. divvy (draw position rectangle, but uses a fixed grid)
6. cinch (move window to a "hot" border to position)
   

I guess that only optimal layout would solve my most use case: browser window "resizeing" to 1024px with maximum of height possible.

There is also an app which remembers not only window positions but also some system settings based on the current location:

1. airportlocation

Luckily I found also some hints how to the positioning with apple scripts:

• stackoverflow.com (initial article with a simple script)
• macosxhints.com (more in depth article about scripting windows positions)

Let's see if I can use launchbar with some custom scripts to fit all my needs.

I will blog a new post once I have my scripts ready.