Free to attract software for linux

This is the IRC gateway for Microsoft(tm) Messenger.

You probably wonder what this is and why I wrote this. Some more information can be found in the DESIGN document that is included in this package.

This software is written by Johannes Verelst and is licensed through the GPL license (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).

Note that this is pre-alpha code, it probably does a bit that you want, but dont email me bugreports or feature requests. It is under heavy development.

If this program doesnt run try to install corectly all required perl modules yourself.

The idea for this program came when I was getting annoyed by the fact that I had to use different programs for both IRC and MSN. Since I dont know of any good MSN clients that can do IRC too (on unix, ofcourse), I started thinking about the other way around: an IRC client that can do MSN.

When I saw a piece of software written by Adam Swann that allows easy connectivity to MSN with perl, I decided to write an IRC server in perl that would connect to MSN for you. This is the result.

MS Word to plaintext converter is a service menue easily converts MS Word documents to plain text files. The generated text file is named *.doc.txt.

I hope it is as useful for you as it is for me.

Gem to rpm converter creates an RPM spec file from a Ruby gem. The project uses the gem metadata to fill out most of the information needed for building an RPM containing the gem.

Usage:

Run gem2rpm --help for options

At its simplest, download a gem (lets call that file GEM) and run

gem2rpm $GEM

This will print an rpm spec file based on the information contained in the gems spec file. In general, it is necessary to edit the generated spec file because the gem is missing some important information that is customarily provided in rpms, most notably the license and the changelog.

Rather than editing the generated specfile, edit the template from which the specfile is generated. This will make it easier to update the RPM when a new version of the Gem becomes available.

To support this process, it is recommended to first save the default template somewhere:

gem2rpm -T > rubygem-GEM.spec.template

Now, edit the template and then run gem2rpm to generate the spec file using the edited template:

gem2rpm -t rubygem-GEM.spec.template > rubygem-GEM.spec

With that, you can now build your RPM as ususal. When a new version of the gem becomes available, you should edit the saved template and rerun gem2rpm over it.

Template Details:

The template is a standard erb file; there are three main variables available in the template file:

format - The Gem::Format for the gem
spec - The Gem::Specification for the gem (the same as format.spec)

Conventions:

A typical source RPM for a gem should consist of three files: the gem file itself, the template for the spec file and the spec file. To ensure that the template will be included in the source RPM, it must be listed as one of the sources in the spec file.

The resulting rpms should follow the naming convention rubygem-$GEM where GEM is the name of the packaged gem. The default template also makes sure that the resulting package provides ruby($GEM), according to general packaging conventions for scripting languages

Booting Ubuntu To RAM is an article aims to document the process of creating a customized Ubuntu that loads an image from the hard disk to RAM, then boots an entire Ubuntu session out of RAM. It is intended for intermediate to advanced Ubuntu users who are familiar with the shell, and may have limited experience customizing the livecd (LiveCDCustomization) and shell scripting. We will customize a LiveCD and copy it to the hard drive, and make a few modifications to bootup scripts so that it copies to RAM via our good friend tmpfs.
WARNING: The author asserts that this procedure works for him, but cannot guarantee that this procedure works for anyone else. Although this procedure is meant to be 100% safe, it is feasible that there may be mistakes, or a chance of misunderstanding the instructions in a manner that causes loss of data. Please make a backup and do not attempt on mission critical systems. Read through this article thoroughly, and do not attempt if you do not comprehend or feel comfortable about any of the instructions!
CAUTION: I hope this is intuitively obvious, but Ill humor you and state it bluntly: Changes you make under the live session are NOT saved and WILL BE LOST when you reboot or shut down. Dont save anything important to the "home directory" and expect it to still be around! If you want to save data permanently, mount a permanent medium (such as your hard drive), plug in a thumbdrive, or use some network functionality built into Ubuntu to save your data to a non-volatile destination.
There are many cases where one would like to boot Ubuntu to RAM:
- Performance: The desktop performance is dramatically improved. A 400MB squashed filesystem in RAM, that holds 1200MB of data, is read back on a 1.6GHz Core Duo in about 3 seconds, including decompression time.
- Power, Noise, Durability: Although modern hard disks dont use much power compared to other system components, this may still be important for some. In laptops, hard disks are often the noisiest components, so this setup can reduce system noise. With the hard disk spun down, a laptop can potentially withstand greater shocks without damage.
- Abrupt poweroff: Since the hard disk is only momentarily used in read-only mode during boot, then never touched again, there are few or no negative consequences of an abrupt poweroff. If a system is used where power is inconsistent, or the system is regularly used in a context where fast shutoffs are required, this is very handy.
- Privacy: Anything you do in this session are lost when you reboot or power off. This is great for kiosks or other systems where permanent modification are not desired. (Note that by default the livecd user has full sudo access, so potentially a malicious user can still make permanent changes by mounting the hard drive and following this HOWTO)

Intro to Bash Programming HOWTO is a bash programming tutorial.
The Intro to Bash Programming HOWTO is meant for newbies who wish to learn how to write shell scripts for bash, the GNU Boure-Again shell.
It contains several samples. It is very early in its development, but it is hoped that some people might find it useful.
Enhancements:
- New translations included and minor correcitons.