Free who wants to be software for linux

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)

Want is a Perl module created to implement the `want command.

SYNOPSIS

use Want;
sub foo :lvalue {
if (want(qwLVALUE ASSIGN)) {
print "We have been assigned ", want(ASSIGN);
lnoreturn;
}
elsif (want(LIST)) {
rreturn (1, 2, 3);
}
elsif (want(BOOL)) {
rreturn 0;
}
elsif (want(qwSCALAR !REF)) {
rreturn 23;
}
elsif (want(HASH)) {
rreturn { foo => 17, bar => 23 };
}
return
}

This module generalises the mechanism of the wantarray function, allowing a function to determine in some detail how its return value is going to be immediately used.

...

EXAMPLES

use Carp croak;
use Want howmany;
sub numbers {
my $count = howmany();
croak("Cant make an infinite list") if !defined($count);
return (1..$count);
}
my ($one, $two, $three) = numbers();


use Want want;
sub pi () {
if (want(ARRAY)) {
return [3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9];
}
elsif (want(LIST)) {
return (3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9);
}
else {
return 3;
}
}
print pi->[2]; # prints 4
print ((pi)[3]); # prints 1


sub backstr :lvalue {
if (want(qwLVALUE ASSIGN)) {
my ($a) = want(ASSIGN);
$_[0] = reverse $a;
return undef;
}
elsif (want(RVALUE)) {
my $t = scalar reverse $_[0];
}
else {
carp("Not in ASSIGN context");
}
return
}

print "foo -> ", backstr("foo"), "n"; # foo -> oof
backstr(my $robin) = "nibor";
print "$robin is now $robinn"; # $robin is now robin

Copy To is an Amarok script that will copy selected track(s) to destination location.

Featuring kdialog so it can use kio_slaves, eg.: media://, fish://, ftp://, bluetooth://(?)

http://blog.neofreko.com/index.php/2007/01/04/amarok-script-copy-to/

Known bug(s):

Stopping the script doesnt remove custom menu from playlist.

Scriptol to binary Compiler is a C++ native compiler.

Installation:

It is better to install Scriptol at root of a disk, for example:
c:scriptolc

Once the archive is extracted into the scriptolc directory, you have just to change to this directory to run the compiler.

To use the compiler at command line from any directory, you have to put the compiler into the path variable.

The setup script installs required file into sub-directories, or into the directory given as argument. Before to use the compiler, you have to read the licence, in the doc
directory: licence.html.

Usage:

Just type:
./solc mysource

Type "solc" only to list the options.

If your program is a multi-file project, the source given as parameter must be the main source file, the compiler will know dependencies from "include" statements and will build what is needed.

Exemples:

Type from the main scriptol directory:
./solc -bre demosfibo

Configuring:

By editing the solc.ini file, you may change the second pass compiler (you may have to rebuild the libsol library for this compiler), change the options of the compiler or add header files to include.

To add header files, just add "header=someheader.hpp" lines into the config file.

A xxx.cfg file may be written for each project main source beeing xxx, and if present, it overloads the solc.ini file.

Send to Coppermine is a service menu for send a jpeg/gif/png file to a Coppermine gallery install.

The add-on has been tested on Fedora core 2 and 3 (should work with FC4)

PNG and GIF support depends on your coppermine settings.
You can add keywords and description for the image while uploading.

This add-on requires the Coppermine API which we have already released.

The attached tarball contains a copy of API and two other files needed.

Installation:

1. Untar the attached tarball.
2. Copy the api folder to your coppermines root directory.
3. Copy kdesh to your home directory.
4. Copy Send2Coppermine.desktop to your/home/.kde/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus (create servicemenus folder if not already there)
5. Now open kdesh in your favourite editor and modify the values of aid, username, password and URL to your coppermine installation.

Currently, the album id where photo is uploaded needs to be hardcoded in this file. The future version may allow choose album for each picture.

Scriptol to Php Compiler is a scriptol program that may be interpreted by the Php interpreter and it may be also compiled either to C++ or directly as an executable.

The Php interpreter is required by solp (download it at www.php.net or get it on the Scriptol CD).

Installation:

It is better to install Scriptol at root of a disk, for example:
/home/user/scriptolp

Once the archive is extracted into the scriptolp directory, you have just to go to this directory from the console to run the compiler.

To use the compiler at command line from any directory, you have to put the compilers into the path, in the usr directory for exemple, or any directory assigned to the path variable (see .bashrc or equivalent). You may also add the scriptol directory to list of paths. Before to use the compiler, you have to read the licence, in the doc directory: licence.html.

Usage:

Type the source of your program in a text editor and save it as mysource.sol or any other name with the sol extension.

Then just type:

./solp mysource

To know the compilers options, type solp without argument, at command line.

Examples:

Type from the main scriptol directory:
./solp demos/helloyou