понедельник, 27 февраля 2012 г.

Minor PostgreSQL updates and different unpleasant surprises

Today I've updated two our DBMS servers to PostgreSQL 9.0.7. It was a minor update, everything went smoothly: I just updated ports and let pormaster to do its job...
But I got an interesting consequence - something was fixed and our server began to write error log in Russian. Oh, shit! It wasn't pleasant. Have you ever tried to find something about particular error using its localized description?
I've checked my environment: LC_* variables were not set, pgsql's user class was not "russian", nothing has changed. However, I got a nice log with localized reports... One more trouble - they were messed up in some way (don't know, whose fault was this - OS, PostgreSQL) and hardly readable. I really don't understand, why OS or any service should ever print any errors or logs in native language, this practice leads to difficulties in their interpretation.
In any way, it turned out that in postgresql.conf lc_messages were set to "ru_RU.UTF-8", maybe since initdb run, but before update this GUC didn't have such influence. Something was fixed, and behavior changed. So, keep in mind, even minor updates may lead to different surprises...

воскресенье, 26 февраля 2012 г.

Libreoffice is a slow piece of shit

Subj!!! I hate this piece of software. It is fucken slow, when
a) it works with PostgreSQL-based datasource (e.g. as a bibliography source),
b) it works awfully slow with document, in which we store editing history...
The bad news are that there is little alternatives. Maybe the next time I wish to write some big and complex document, I'll try to do it in Google Docs...

вторник, 14 февраля 2012 г.

French symbols without azerty

So, sometimes I have to type some text in French. And I dislike AZERTY layout, it's too unfamiliar. So, what should I do? Right, to use altgr-intl US layout. To do this you just need to set XKB Variant to "altgr-intl" (something like this in hal policy file - /usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/policy/x11-input.fdi on my FreeBSD system):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keyboard">
<merge key="input.x11_options.XkbModel" type="string"> pc105</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XkbLayout" type="string">us,ru</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XkbOptions" type="string">grp:rwin_toggle,grp_led:scroll</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XkbVariant" type="string">altgr-intl,winkeys</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>


Now, to type something with ^ , like û, you just type RightAlt+6 (^ symbol is there) and press u. To type è - RightAlt+` and e... Big list of shortcuts is here. And if you don't touch right alt this layout behaves just like basic us layout...

понедельник, 6 февраля 2012 г.

Illumian is here...

Today I've tried the first Illumian version. This is illumos-based Nexenta OS. Just a few remarks.
What I liked:
1) VTs finally work in illumos installer, it's good to have a possibility of going to text console and checking installer's log.
2) It seems, the installer can install system on mirror pool. C'est beau.
3) APT... I finally shouldn't learn one more package system and apt is IMHO faster then IPS.
4) It's still Solaris: you have DTrace, ZFS, projects, fair share scheduler...
5) git change number in place of OS version looks cool :)

# uname -a
SunOS oi-test 5.11 4cece89cac3e i86pc i386 i86pc Solaris

What I disliked:
1) Zones don't work:

root@oi-test:~# zoneadm -z myzone install
sh[1]: exec: /usr/lib/brand/ipkg/pkgcreatezone: not found

And Solaris without zones is a very strange thing...
2) /usr/gnu/bin in front of path... How can you use GNU chmod with ZFS ACL?
3) Soft, soft, soft... Where are you?

root@oi-test:~# apt-cache pkgnames |grep postgres

4) apt-clone doesn't work

This is just a first glance on this OS. It is very raw and is still in development. I doubt that calling this release 1.0 was a good idea. It seems, we will have a production-ready OS not sooner then in half of year, but still... I wonder, what Illumos-based OS will be first to reach production quality: OI or Illumian? It seems OI is in better form nowadays, but the fact is that OI team has failed to create a stable release in about 1.5 years.