First, we go ahead and install the needed packages. I’ve tried to include “my” list of packages that were needed to get a vanilla 7.10 image up to steam. apt-get install build-essential libltdl3-dev autoconf libtool automake \ postgresql postgresql-8.2-postgis postgresql-server-dev-8.2 \ wget subversion libboost-python1.34.1 libboost-thread-dev \ libboost-program-options-dev libboost-regex-dev \ libboost-python-dev libboost-serialization-dev \ libboost-filesystem-dev libpng12-dev libjpeg62-dev \ libtiff4-dev zlib1g-dev libfreetype6-dev libgeos-dev \ unzip apache2-prefork-dev Next we start to download a few components. I did this in my home directory, /home/kelvin

I have no idea if these notes on how to install mod_tile will be useful for anybody. The current readme states that you need to edit the source code, but never actually where. Well, this is where, at least until the code can either take switches or can auto-configure itself. This is quite brief, so if you need more details, shoot me an email or leave a comment. I have repeated this process on two Ubuntu 7.10 machines.

My new guest VMs under Xen seem to be having issues where upon each reboot, the network interface gets incremented by 1. For instance, it starts at eth0, then goes to eth1, then eth2, and eventually ethX. There are two issues to fix: 1) get the count back to 0, and 2) stop it from counting again. I was able to get them to decrease by looking in the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file and removing all entries.

I have managed to install mapnik 0.4, 0.5, 0.5.1 and various SVN releases in-between on Ubuntu. While this isn’t in itself exciting, I think I manage to stumble at every installation. I typically forget to add the flags when building, so, to prevent myself from stumbling again, I’m going to write them out here. Build mapnik $ python scons/scons.py PYTHON=/usr/bin/python \ PGSQL_INCLUDES=/usr/include/postgresql \ PGSQL_LIBS=/usr/lib/postgresql BOOST_INCLUDES=/usr/include/boost BOOST_LIBS=/usr/lib Then install it $ sudo python scons/scons.py install PYTHON=/usr/bin/python \ PGSQL_INCLUDES=/usr/include/postgresql \ PGSQL_LIBS=/usr/lib/postgresql BOOST_INCLUDES=/usr/include/boost BOOST_LIBS=/usr/lib …

This is a fairly inconsequential entry, but I found the incident amusing. I assembled my external drive enclosure this morning and noticed a bug crawling around inside it; I hadn’t used the enclosure in a while. I decided not to interrupt what I was doing to remove it, so I closed the enclosure and hoped for the best. About an hour later, while moving files from my laptop onto the drive, I heard a dreadful “blugrrrrrrrrrrrr.” I looked over and said, “Oh no!” For a few seconds, I thought the hard drive was failing. Then I realised the bug had tried to crawl out through the little fan.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to go on a boat ride with my co-workers as a team-building activity. Although we didn’t do the usual team-building exercises, I think everyone had a great time. Clinton and I brought a case of beer, Alanna brought the wine and food, and James was the designated boat driver.

I have finally decided to do another remodel of this site. I had a few goals before starting: Use one image Use the YUI-CSS framework Use Django Make it easily extendable So far, I think I’ve accomplished these goals. The site is easier to read, easy to modify, and has a few new features. More entries to come!

I returned to my computer today to notice I had the following error: (145, "Table './databasename/comments_freecomment' is marked as crashed and should be repaired") Darn. The solution is quite easy, however: mysqlcheck -uUsername -pPassword databasename comments_freecomment Now you know what you already know, you can fix it: mysqlcheck -r -uUsername -pPassword databasename comments_freecomment If that doesn’t work, you can try a slightly different method. First, go to the location where your databases are stored on the disk (most likely something like /var/lib/mysql/databasename). Next, stop the database – and try to free up as much memory as possible. Then run:

Yesterday I was sort of curious if I could use my 3 Skypephone in a pinch if I got lost, which here in Sydney, happens quite often. Luckily 3’s Skypephone has both Bluetooth, and supports j2me apps. Mobile GPS unit, here I come. The recipe to get maps on your Skypephone is pretty darn easy. You’ll need one dash bluetooth GPS receiver (I have the Qstarz BT-Q1000), TrekBuddy, a TrekBuddy acceptable map (easily downloadable), and one dab computer – but since you’re reading this, I figure you’ve got that part taken care of.

I’ve been playing around with OSM a little lately, and have been meaning to construct my own slippy map. At first I wanted to do it on my VPS – but with rather limited storage, and even more limited memory, there just isn’t a way. Three problems exists: the first occurs when trying to use osm2pgsql to import the OSM file into the database. Current records state that this typically uses 650+ MB, something my 512MB VPS just doesn’t have (although I’m writing some code that might make this possible in the future).